Context tag:hyperradiant.net,2007-09-12:/blog//1 2009-05-28T13:06:31Z Movable Type Publishing Platform 4.0 Organize Your Cables for Sanity's Sake tag:hyperradiant.net,2009:/blog//1.251 2009-05-28T12:53:05Z 2009-05-28T13:06:31Z bad: Artistic interpretation by sjdunphy [without being aware of the connection, knowing that I exist, nor giving a damn about my terrible cable situation] of the mess previously below my desk. better: Actual photo of the organized state of my... Alex bad: photo by sjdunphy Artistic interpretation by sjdunphy [without being aware of the connection, knowing that I exist, nor giving a damn about my terrible cable situation] of the mess previously below my desk. better: Actual photo of the organized state of my cables, taken 10 minutes ago, after 10 minutes of sweeping, culling, zip-tie-ing, etc.]]> AIM-bot Spam FTW tag:hyperradiant.net,2009:/blog//1.250 2009-05-02T14:53:05Z 2009-05-02T14:59:37Z Over the past few months, I've been getting a fair amount of AIM-bots *randomly* messaging me. Their usernames usually end in 'coho' - and could be quite entertaining... Unfortunately, I fear that to validate them with a response would in... Alex Maybe the spammers should take this as a hint. Turn spam into something useful, even if it's a tasteless joke. Or provide a fun fact before the message turns into a request for help from a government official in Nigeria, or an offer for cheap penis-enlargement magic dust. ]]> Cell Tower Viz tag:hyperradiant.net,2009:/blog//1.248 2009-03-16T20:27:53Z 2009-03-17T02:26:12Z I was recently going through my archive drives, and stumbled upon some work I did for a data-visualization class at ITP taught by Lisa Strausfield (of Pentagram). My final project was a visual abstraction and exploration of the FCC cell... Alex After I had my fill mapping out the towers and displaying their cell id's, I started to explore the height of the tower structures: The beauty of custom code allowed my to write controls to drill down and explore the structures that came out of the data. The roughly rendered tower abstraction reminded me of poorly realized sci-fi imagery of cyberspace. These images don't make good visualizations in and of themselves. The interactivity made them good. I didn't build these for anyone but myself. There was no GUI [aside from movement controlled via the mouse coordinates] - only a code interface &em; I controlled the visualization with code I wrote and could manipulate to show me what I wanted to explore. For the non-hackers, interfaces are a must - as large data-sets like this are difficult to explore without control of displayed data-points, scale, base coordinate projections...]]> Pulse-Labs [@ETech] tag:hyperradiant.net,2009:/blog//1.246 2009-03-13T06:12:11Z 2009-03-13T06:51:57Z I'm happy to announce the debut of Pulse-Labs at ETech this week with a spatial metrics platform. Nick Sears and I pulled off a kick-ass system of wireless RFID reader units that we placed around the ETech conference space.... Alex I'm happy to announce the debut of Pulse-Labs at ETech this week with a spatial metrics platform. Nick Sears and I pulled off a kick-ass system of wireless RFID reader units that we placed around the ETech conference space. Even with the short dev time and limited attendee awareness, we got ~300 taps in the ~3 days the network was up. Not bad at all! Look forward to more visualizations as we get further into the data. We'll be posting most of the code and hardware schematics on the pulse-labs github account.]]> Sending Serial Commands to XBee series 2 on OS X with Screen tag:hyperradiant.net,2009:/blog//1.245 2009-02-27T05:02:33Z 2009-02-27T18:38:02Z In the spirit of consolidation and to support my own laziness... Initial set-up of XBee ZB modules... for fancy-pants meshing: in terminal, # list serial ports $ ls -l /dev/tty.* # open usb port /dev/tty.usbserial-A9003QNn with 9600 baud $ screen... Alex /dev/tty.usbserial-A9003QNn with 9600 baud $ screen /dev/tty.usbserial-A9003QNn 9600 # in screen... # enter command mode +++ # get XBee Firmware (ctrl-A b for a break - pain in the ass, really) # ATVR ctrl-A b # get XBee PAN id # ATID ctrl-A b # get serial number high # ATSH ctrl-A b # get serial number low # ATSL ctrl-A b from aldwyn on this sparkfun forum post:
"put those values [serial number high and low] into into the destination address of the xbee you're sending from (ATDH and ATDL, respectively)."
Which makes perfect sense, as the nodes route and identify dynamically in a mesh network. Unfortunately, the bulk of tutorials/documentation on teh interwebs is for XBee series 1, and Series 2 with the older firmware. The documents from Digi are a must-read.]]> Muppet-Fur Coats tag:hyperradiant.net,2009:/blog//1.244 2009-02-24T15:50:17Z 2009-02-24T15:59:05Z Last night's IgniteNYC was awesome. Tikva and the rest did a great job setting up and running the event. The speakers were great, and the crowd was amazing. My slides, although no notes just yet. Soon?... Alex My slides, although no notes just yet. Soon? ]]> IgniteNYC III, now with [at least] 97% more Muppets tag:hyperradiant.net,2009:/blog//1.243 2009-02-22T20:38:52Z 2009-02-22T20:46:55Z I'll be speaking at tomorrow evening's Ignite conf here in NYC. On what? Muppets. And fur coats. And... data-visualization. I'm super excited for the talk. Slides and notes from my talk will be posted later this week [i promise]. Looks... Alex Muppets. And fur coats. And... data-visualization. I'm super excited for the talk. Slides and notes from my talk will be posted later this week [i promise]. Looks to be a great event, with a kick-ass line-up of speakers. Info at ignite.oreilly.com and ignitenyc.org]]> Sinatra/DataMapper latest on Dreamhost via Git and Capistrano tag:hyperradiant.net,2009:/blog//1.241 2009-01-25T05:46:47Z 2009-01-26T03:13:50Z I was going to post a thorough tutorial on how to get a Sinatra 0.9 app up on DreamHost... and it was going to be great. There are a few things to deal with, and documentation on all fronts is... Alex fuck it. This week, I'll post some Sinatra code, and maybe open up a few git projects... But I will not have anything more to do with DreamHost. Or launching ruby apps on ANY shared hosting. Not worth it.]]> Cyberspace FTW tag:hyperradiant.net,2009:/blog//1.240 2009-01-19T17:49:21Z 2009-01-19T18:41:26Z Cyberspace is a dated term. Its patterns of use in discussions on topics Internet and computing have fallen the way of 'information superhighway' - and Neal Stephenson destroyed the term more effectively than I could have in that behemoth of... Alex Cyberspace is a dated term. Its patterns of use in discussions on topics Internet and computing have fallen the way of 'information superhighway' - and Neal Stephenson destroyed the term more effectively than I could have in that behemoth of nerd-fiction Cryptonomicon. But the term 'cyberspace' was coined by William Gibson [fuck citations, you can look this shit up yourself - footnotes FTL], when he was wearing his futurist [sci-fi] hat. When I say these terms died, I'm talking about various things, across multiple levels. The surface meaning is that it's unfashionable to say 'cyberspace' and/or 'information superhighway', or any of those speculative and whimsical terms heralding an age of technology unfettered by mundane things like REALITY, economy, etc. While AOL was enjoying it's hay-day, I was re-reading Neuromancer, and fantasizing about a reality in which I could escape the meat and blast off into adventures with AI's and body-hackers and ninjas, all the while getting completely fucking ripped on some serious neuro-inhibitors and psychotics and banging mysterious cyber-and-or-extremely-human women. Such a romantic naivete did nothing for my social-life, but brought about an unrealistic reverence towards hackers (and ninjas) that would be blasted to hell once I actually started taking action and put the proverbial money where my desires were - when I started programming. I quickly learned that AI isn't simple. I learned that any given piece of functional software was actually an extremely complicated endeavor to undertake, and shit. I underwent a change in those first years. The fantasy buckled to reality. But neither died. I kept hacking, learning, doing... and I kept reading, fantasizing, staying cerebral and whimsical consuming and re-consuming++ Gibson and his buddies. Point is, I progressed. Meanwhile, Gibson and Stephenson were right there. wet-dreams of cyberspace gave way to EveryWare, and ubiquitous computing, and neo-marketing. Fantasy was meeting reality in the middle, like Benjamin Button and that red-head of his. And I was doing the same. I spent two years working on a degree from ITP [such a vulgar way to put it!], applying skills I didn't have in order to learn not only the skills but the application, and the resultants... We didn't quite work on flying cars [if you'll allow that term], but we were just ahead of the widely-accepted while keeping it almost possible. We had one foot in cyberspace, while keeping the rest of our bodies in Cable prime-time. I keep seeing this intersection. Not all hacking is computer-centric. tag:hyperradiant.net,2008:/blog//1.239 2009-01-01T00:54:34Z 2009-01-01T00:59:30Z I'm hopelessly addicted to nice furniture. But, good furniture is [almost always] super expensive. Last year, I started building my own furniture. This is the second *real* piece, a bed-side table. The horizontals are solid African Mahogany, and the... Alex I'm hopelessly addicted to nice furniture. But, good furniture is [almost always] super expensive. Last year, I started building my own furniture. This is the second *real* piece, a bed-side table. The horizontals are solid African Mahogany, and the legs are Gabon Ebony. I learned a lot making this thing, and the next one is sure to be better. ]]> Decompressing and Renaming Tiff images tag:hyperradiant.net,2008:/blog//1.235 2008-10-05T22:18:36Z 2008-10-05T22:38:54Z I've been messing around with OCR for a possible new project. To train Tesseract, I had to decompress and rename a bunch of .tif files. Rather than deal with Photoshop, I decided to hack a little bash script using tiffcp.... Alex OCR for a possible new project. To train Tesseract, I had to decompress and rename a bunch of .tif files. Rather than deal with Photoshop, I decided to hack a little bash script using tiffcp. This also gave me a chance to play with the regex powers of Bash.
#!/bin/bash
for fname in *.g4.tif
do
if [[ $fname =~ (.*)\.g4\.tif ]]
then
tiffcp -c none $fname ${BASH_REMATCH[1]}'.tif'
else
echo "foo"
fi
done
]]> Map function in JavaScript tag:hyperradiant.net,2008:/blog//1.234 2008-09-21T17:25:49Z 2008-09-21T17:37:37Z While building out my new lifestream, I ran into a wall, and needed a function to map a variable from one coordinate space (specifically arrays). I remembered that Proce55ing had just such a function. OpenSource Software FTW! function map(value, istart,... Alex my new lifestream, I ran into a wall, and needed a function to map a variable from one coordinate space (specifically arrays). I remembered that Proce55ing had just such a function. OpenSource Software FTW!
function map(value, istart, istop, ostart, ostop) {
return ostart + (ostop - ostart) * ((value - istart) / (istop - istart));
}
]]> GTD FAIL tag:hyperradiant.net,2008:/blog//1.233 2008-07-22T16:19:30Z 2008-07-22T21:42:00Z In an effort to organize my life and increase productivity, I've been trying to adopt some GTD conventions. GTD == "getting things done", and there are many tried and true methods being talked about all over the interwebs. I've long... Alex OmniFocus. OmniFocus is touted as "professional grade" personal task-management software (straight from the product page on their website). The Omni Group has developed this software to help people organize their lives, and make doing so as transparent and painless as possible. This seemed like a great tool, and the iPhone version of the app could live on one of the things I always carry with me. Match made in heaven. So I bought and downloaded the app and started throwing tasks and lists at it. I liked how I could create contexts as well as projects, and just dump my todo thought-stream into the inbox to come back to and organize later. I liked how i was notified of upcoming, and overdue items and projects. I liked how I could sit on the train on the way to work and get all my ducks in their respective rows. And then, I saw that an update was available in the App Store. Naturally, updates should fix bugs, add features, etc... so I updated. Launched the app. And I was confronted with a dialogue saying that OmniFocus did not detect a database, and I could either create a new database, or sync with a computer... I didn't sync OmniFocus on the iPhone with OmniFocus on the laptop because I don't have the desktop software (why would I pay another ~ $100 on top of the just to have a desktop version, when I only needed the mobile?). So I opted to create a database, completely resetting OmniFocus. FUCK THAT SHIT. I suppose it's my own fault in some way... but I think there was no way to update the software and keep my existing data. There was no option to back-up, export, etc before updating the app... There was no warning that the update would reset the database. And now the productivity app is anti-productivity. FAIL [UPDATE] The folks over at OmniGroup have been great in addressing my concerns, offering advice, and accepting ideas I have to [hopefully] improve or otherwise augment the OmniFocus experience. Much respect. This issue is in large part a problem with iTunes and the iPhone app environment, and addressing these issues in any depth will require at least an additional post... stay tuned. ]]> RFID without the Pain pt. 1 tag:hyperradiant.net,2008:/blog//1.231 2008-06-02T14:07:34Z 2008-06-02T15:02:26Z I've been working on an RFID project at work and was required to build a bunch of RFID readers. Picked up most of the components from SparkFun, with no hassle. We decided to go with the ID-20 readers - which... Alex work and was required to build a bunch of RFID readers. Picked up most of the components from SparkFun, with no hassle. We decided to go with the ID-20 readers - which had to be connected to a break-out board to play nice with our boards. Getting these assembled was kind of a pain, as the male-to-male straight header pins required a bit of space, otherwise the break-outs wouldn't fit to the ID-20s. To get around this problem, I made a jig out of an old Starbucks card (any plastic card will do) - just a straight notch. No more headaches.]]> I'm not alone in my newfound hatred of TechCrunch tag:hyperradiant.net,2008:/blog//1.230 2008-05-24T04:38:38Z 2008-05-24T04:46:12Z Today, I read a blog post that made me smile. Timgo of ProgProg wrote up his translation of the recent TechCrunch hate on Twitter (the lack of a hyperlink for TC is totally on purpose) - they've lost all credibility... Alex blog post that made me smile. Timgo of ProgProg wrote up his translation of the recent TechCrunch hate on Twitter (the lack of a hyperlink for TC is totally on purpose) - they've lost all credibility in my eyes. That is all. Carry on.]]>