Persistent navigation menus are awesome. I’ve seen them in action on a few websites, like the LDS scripture site and LMT’s website. Not sure what I’m talking about? Go to one of those sites and scroll down. See how the navigation menu pops out and follows you?

The code to make this work is ridiculously simple. Addy Osmani has been kind enough to package it up and release it under a GPL license. As an added bonus, the code includes some nice CSS buttons that you can use anywhere.

Apparently it takes 4 support reps to fix my voicemail.

My old phone (Samsung Intercept) has had the bad habit of randomly calling the wrong people or sending SMS messages to the wrong people. Very annoying to click on the button to call my wife only to have it call a guy from church. The past week or two it has also started randomly rebooting, and sometimes is so slow that I can’t get it to answer a call before it goes to voicemail. Ugh.

So Becca agreed to let me buy an unlocked Galaxy Nexus. This phone uses different cell technology than my old phone, so I had to switch carriers. After looking around a bit, I decided to go with Straight Talk on their $45/month unlimited everything plan. The internet is crazy fast and I no longer have to watch my minutes. Yay!

Almost everything went more smoothly than I could have hoped. My number ported just a few hours after I put in the request and I was off and running on the new network. Except for my voicemail. My phone has had this insistent ”you have a voicemail” message. When I call my voicemail, it says my mailbox is invalid. Ugh.

I tried to solve the issue on my own but without success. Basically Straight Talk’s idea of online help is “call our support number”. So I gave up and called.

And wanted to shoot myself. These reps have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. I had to put my cell on speakerphone and play the voicemail “invalid mailbox” message for them to get them to believe me that the problem was on their end. After being transferred multiple times and placed on hold for eternity, I was told to keep my phone turned off while they “updated my phone’s features” (what the heck does that even mean, and why would it matter if my phone was off for this alleged update?). At one point they even had me try changing my voicemail number to my own phone number and, surprise surprise, it made it so I got a busy signal when trying to call voicemail.

I eventually just gave up fighting it when they told me to take the battery out of my phone while they worked on my account. Unless spy movies are right and the government is tracking our phones even when they are turned off, I don’t see how taking the battery out could have any effect whatsoever on my voicemail. Actually, even if spy movies are right I don’t see how taking my battery out is going to make any difference.

Finally, 45 minutes and 42 seconds later, I have voicemail access. In hindsight this was a complete waste of time considering how much I abhor voicemail.

Everyone with a Kindle is probably aware of the ability to borrow a book for free every month if you have a Prime membership, but there are other ways to borrow books, too.

Borrow from your local library. Many local libraries now offer the ability to borrow Kindle books for free. Sadly, the company that manages most of these programs (OverDrive) doesn’t provide all libraries with the same selection. For example, my local library only has a few hundreds ebooks (maybe 300 total) and many aren’t in Kindle format. They do have some popular books though, like the Twilight series, so it is worth checking with your library before purchasing an ebook or trying to borrow it from somewhere else.

Borrow from BookLending.com. Many publishers allow you to lend your own ebooks at least once to anyone you want. BookLending.com helps you find people that want to borrow the books you have, and helps you find people that are willing to lend the books you want. I haven’t been using it long but I’ve already saved a few dollars by borrowing a book I’ve been wanting to read instead of buying it.

The big trick to BookLending.com is to take advantage of the free ebook offers that are frequently offered on Amazon.com. I have literally hundreds of dollars of Kindle books that I didn’t have to pay for. Many of these are books that I’m not particularly interested in, but I “bought” because: 1) they were free, 2) they were highly rated, and 3) once they are no longer free I can lend them on BookLending.com. If you don’t know where to find free Kindle books, check out Pixel of Ink.

Do you know any other ways to get free Kindle books? Please let me know! I’m a book addict.

A common phrase used by advocates of passive income is “trading time for money”. This generally refers to working for an hourly wage or a salary. The company you work for has something you want: money. You have something they want: your time. So you trade. You give them your time, they give you their money. Sounds like a fair trade, no?

But sometimes you end up on the other side of the equation: you have enough money but what you really want is time. This is where I find myself. My business is earning enough money to pay the bills and put food on the table, but I’d still like more time to spend with my family.

Luckily, I found a few great opportunities to trade my money for time:

Tax preparation. My taxes are a bit complicated. I have two W-2′s, a handful of 1099-MISC/-DIV/-B/-INT/-G, and a 1098-T. I have business income and expenses. I have a handful of charitable gifts, a new daughter, quarterly payments, and education expenses. I really didn’t want to do my taxes on my own. I spent a few minutes calling around and found a great guy that has prepared my tax return for just a few hundred dollars. Totally worth it.

Maid service. I feel like I keep a fairly clean house, but I’m sure our maid service wouldn’t agree. We just started with The Maids and they had a team of four professionals spend four hours getting my tiny apartment to an acceptable level of cleanliness. They mop, scrub, vacuum, dust, and more for a very affordable rate. I’ve got hours and hours of my life back, my apartment is more comfortable to live in, and I’m not worried about my baby crawling on our kitchen floor anymore. Totally worth it.

Living close to work. When I lived in Virginia I had a 1+ hour commute to and from work. It was awful. When we moved to Connecticut we made a conscious decision to live close to where Becca would be going to school (I was telecommuting). It cost us more (a lot more) than living just a few more minutes outside of town, but we feel it is totally worth it. She saves 10-30 minutes a day in travel time. That is as much as 10 hours a month of her life that she isn’t stuck traveling to or from school.

Community supported agriculture. We are in the process of trying to join a CSA. Basically, we pay up front for a share of the harvest from a local farm. Each week the farm bundles up some fruits and veggies and delivers them to a central location near our house, and we drive by and pick it up. We save time by getting a wide variety of ultra fresh food each week. We don’t have to drive store to store trying to find decent produce, or waste time selecting produce. If we get in the CSA we selected, our pickup is only about 2 miles from our house, which is about as close as our nearest grocery store. We are pretty sure this will be worth the expense.

Amazon Prime membership. I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, even if it costs a pinch more than a competitor. A Prime membership makes it even better. If I need a stapler, I go on Amazon and BAM! It shows up in a day or two. If I order early in the day then my stuff almost always arrives the next day. We do this for tons of stuff: diapers, dish washer detergent, crayons, envelopes, screws/nails, toilet paper, kitchen pans/gadgets, and anything else we want fairly quickly. Sometimes stuff is cheaper than Walmart, sometimes it isn’t. Either way, we’ve found the Prime membership to be worth every penny.

I don’t have a real Kindle, but I do like the Kindle app on my wife’s iPad, my iPod Touch, my computer, my phone, etc. Recently there was an awesome deal to get The Hunger Games trilogy for only $3.06 total:

1. The Hunger Games for $0.83 with promo code HUNGERGAMESDEAL
2. Catching Fire for $1.16 with promo code HUNGERGAMESDEAL2
3. Mockingjay for $1.07 with promo code HUNGERGAMESDEAL3

The deal may still be valid, not sure. Feel free to give it a shot.

The problem was the ebooks were only available in Adobe Digital Editions format. Adobe has some fine software, but I’d rather read it on a Kindle. So I searched Google and found how to remove the DRM, convert to Kindle format, and load the book into my Kindle software.

First, you need to make sure you have Adobe Digital Editions installed on your computer. It is free and takes about 2 minutes to install.

Next, load your purchased books into Adobe Digital Editions. For me, this was as easy as clicking the “download” button at the site that I purchased the books from. The books were downloaded and opened in Adobe Digital Editions automatically for me.

Adobe ebooks use DRM to keep you from doing what you want with the book that you paid for. Lame. Use this awesome free DRM removal tool to strip the DRM out. That page has clear instructions on how to use the application.

The last step is to install Calibre. When you set it up, be sure to tell it you have a Kindle. It lets you set up a Kindle email address (view your Amazon account or your Kindle software if you aren’t sure what your Kindle email address is).  Once Calibre is installed, it is pretty easy to add your books, right click on a book, then go to Connect/share ->Email to xxxxx@Kindle.com. Calibre will convert your ebook then email it to Amazon.

Once Amazon gets the book, it will make it available to your devices. This can take 5-15 minutes, so be patient.

It may sound complicated at first, but really the whole process takes maybe 5 minutes. Anyways, the process worked great for me. I finished reading The Hunger Games yesterday, and my wife isn’t far behind. I’m waiting for her to finish the first book before I move on to the second. Hopefully she hurries because I’m dying to know what happens next!

My wife has an embroidery machine. She has had it since way before we knew each other, but I’ve never seen it used. We hauled it from Virginia to Connecticut, and promptly placed it on a shelf. The poor thing hasn’t seen any use.

Luckily for the embroidery machine, our scout troop is making t-shirts and I offered to embroider them, if they want me to. For example, I could put their names or troop number or BSA logo on their shirts for them. We’ll be coming up with the design for the shirts pretty soon at a troop meeting and I wanted to bring a sample with me so they would know what was possible. This meant we had to get the machine working.

The first problem is that the software portion of the machine only runs on 32-bit Windows, so I had to dust off my wife’s obsolete and ancient ThinkPad, load Windows 2000 Professional, and try to get the dang USB attachment to work. Took hours but I finally got it working. The set up lets me move designs from the computer to a proprietary storage card which is then inserted into the embroidery machine.

Next, we had to figure out how to set up the mechanical part of the machine. It took some practice and some manual reading but we finally got it working. We created a sample that said “TROOP 515″. It looks really good!

Today I spent some time trying to figure out how to make my own designs. It took some trial and much error, but finally it worked. I converted my company logo to an embroidery design file, loaded it unto the card, and hit the go button. It took about 40 minutes but finally I was left with a rather large (about 4 inches) embroidered logo on a scrap of old t-shirt. Not very handy, but fun to know that the machine can do something so large and have it come out so nice looking.

Embroidery machine at work on my logo

Anyways, we have some Winnie the Pooh designs that we want to put on some onesies for Anna. I tried a few minutes ago but failed miserably, so I’ll have to wait until Becca gets home. She is really much better at this stuff than I am.

I’m still trying to think what else we can do with this machine. Maybe custom “Team Allred” shirts for game night? Even fancier stay-at-home-dad merit badges? I’m open to suggestions!

UPDATE: Forgot to put anything about the profit part. I am, of course, thinking of numerous websites I can make that are embroidery related, and a bunch of things I can easily make that I could sell on Etsy.

A few months ago my wife made me stay-at-home-dad merit badges to encourage me to do the things she wants me to do. Well, they are for things I’d like me to do, too. The badge is a little rough but keep in mind that it only took her 2 minutes to make. Personally, I think it is awesome.

I’ve finally put forth the effort to earn one. I’ve earned the “take your baby for a walk 5 days in a row” badge. We’ve walked 8.52 miles together this week, not counting the numerous miles hauling the baby around stores and church.

I’ve been using the Endomondo Pro app to track my walks. It was on sale for $0.10 back in December. I’d never paid for an app before but for 10 cents I couldn’t resist. Realistically the free version does everything a normal person would want though, so I’d highly recommend checking it out.

I bought FakeMoneyGenerator.com on Saturday and was so excited about the project that I’ve practically finished it. There are a few things I’d like to improve, but the basic functionality is fully functional.

So what does it do? Well, first you pick a currency. For example, you could pick a $50 bill, or a 10 franc bill. There are 30 options, so you are bound to find one you like.

Next, you log in using Facebook. This gives the site access to photos that you are tagged in, and lets you pick one. If your face is tagged properly, then it automatically puts your face in the hole on the money.

Last, you can move your picture around, make it bigger or smaller, rotate it, whatever. You can get it exactly where you want it. Once you like it, you can download the picture to your computer.

The site was a ton of fun to make. I had to do some research into counterfeiting to make sure I was following the law, and ended up having to delete a few of the images I had planned on using.

The site uses canvas to handle the image compositing, moving, rotating, etc. This is the first time I’ve done anything using canvas, and had to fight some browser quirks to get it to work. It should work perfectly in Chrome, Firefox, and IE9, but I had to disable a few features in IE7/IE8. I really don’t care about IE6, but it probably doesn’t work at all in it.

To make sure the visitor gets a high quality image, the download functionality is entirely in PHP. The position of your Facebook photo is passed to PHP, and the script places it on the money then spits out a high quality PNG. This eliminates any browser compatibility issues with saving from a canvas, and ensures the image quality wasn’t reduced due to poor browser scaling.

My lovely wife, Becca, made the arrows and rotate icons for me.

It still needs some work. There are a few UX issues I want to fix, such as remembering where in the Facebook photo scroller the user is when they go to a new page, and making it easier/faster to scroll through photos. But, as you can see by the photo on this post, it works! Yay!

I’m one of those weird techie dads that thinks everyone in the family should have their own domain name, so I bought a domain for my daughter shortly before she was born.

I’ve struggled to know what to put on it. I don’t really want yet another blog to maintain (I barely maintain the ones I already have) and she isn’t old enough to have created any content of her own. A picture gallery doesn’t seem useful when it is so much easier to just use Facebook for sharing photos. So what to do?

Last night I had a great idea: a personal landing page. A simple page that says who she is, has a photo of her, and links to a few sites that are likely to provide some interesting reading to family and friends. So this morning I whipped up something that I think turned out pretty dang cute. Check it out at AnnaAllred.net (the .com was already taken).

SOAP loves to throw objects of objects of objects back at you when you make a call. There isn’t anything terribly wrong with that, but it makes it a bit hard to loop through the object’s properties using a foreach loop. get_object_vars can convert an object to an array, but leaves any objects contained within the object as objects, which makes it sort of pointless by itself. So here is a function that converts ALL of the objects in an object to arrays.

function conv_obj($Data){
	if(!is_object($Data) && !is_array($Data)) return $Data;

	if(is_object($Data)) $Data = get_object_vars($Data);

	return array_map('conv_obj', $Data);
}

First, we pass the object into the function. If the object isn’t actually an object or an array, then we return it as-is.

If it is an object, then we use get_object_vars to convert the object’s properties into an array.

Last, we use array_map to put all of the elements of $Data (the passed in object/array) through the same conv_obj function that we are already using so that all of the elements in the entire object/array are converted into arrays.

Nifty, eh?

PS- I didn’t write this code, which should be obvious by the lack of curly braces in the if statements.

For use in a class

function ConvertObjectToArray($Data){
	if(!is_object($Data) && !is_array($Data)){
		return $Data;
	}

	if(is_object($Data)){
		$Data = get_object_vars($Data);
	}

	return array_map(array($this,'ConvertObjectToArray'), $Data);
}