RoboJenny

Upgrading My Macbook Air to Snow Leopard

2009-09-03T22:57:00.002-04:00

I haven't really minded the lack of CD drive or ports on my Macbook Air. I briefly minded the lack of CD drive when I tried had bought a Mac copy of Civilization IV, but then could not play even through Remote Disk due to DRM issues. So instead I played it on my boyfriend's secondary Macbook Pro, got Civilization Revolution for our XBox 360, and got Civilization Revolution for my iPhone. Between the three of those, I no longer cared that I didn't have it on my own computer.

As everyone knows, last week, Snow Leopard came out. My company ordered more licenses than we had Macs in the office, and my CEO generously offered to let me use one of the extra licenses on my personal Macbook Air. He personally had a Macbook Air himself, but disliked it and often referred to it as his "Crapbook Air". He has since sold that machine to one of his younger brothers and bought himself a new Macbook Pro, loving it. I do not share this same dislike of the Macbook Air. I absolutely love mine, despite its lack of power. But I have to admit, getting Snow Leopard on my machine was non-trivial.

The Macbook Air was advertised to not need a physical drive thanks to remote disk, and no ethernet jack in favor of using wireless. True, you can buy all the accessories to get these things, but then it feels like it defeats the intention of the Air.

So, I tried using Remote Disk to install Snow Leopard. My Macbook Air is actually my only personal computer. I used to have a Dell XPS Gen 2 that I used as my desktop replacement, but it died a year ago and I never bothered replacing it since I haven't found a need. After all, Starcraft II hasn't come out yet. But anyway, this meant I had to borrow a computer in order to run Remote Disk. I tried this, but it turned out I needed to remote boot from the drive. Not too difficult. Following those directions, I held down my alt/option key while restarting my machine. It gave me a list of wireless networks. My office wireless network did not show up on the menu, but I had an option to type it in myself along with the passkey. Unfortunately, it did not let me select what type of authentication and the grey wheel just kept spinning without letting me in. Next, I tried creating a computer-to-computer network but that had similar problems. Very frustrating that I didn't have advanced options to be able to connect to networks. There was a public wireless network open in the area, but that turned out to be too slow.

I gave in and went for an ethernet dongle. This actually worked, though booting off the remove disk was still extremely slow. Once it was booted however, the install itself took about the same speed as it did for my coworkers on their Mac Pros and Macbook Pros. It wasn't incredibly hard, but still considerably more effort than it was for those with physical drives. I wonder if anyone out there with a Macbook Air successfully upgraded to Snow Leopard without any fuss and without using any extra accessories other than the Air itself, and the drive of another machine with Remote Installation installed.

As for Snow Leopard, I haven't really explored a lot but I have already noticed two things I love. First of all, I have a first generation Macbook Air with SSD, so I only have a 64GB drive that shows up as 59.54GB capacity. Prior to installing Snow Leopard, I had 11GB available. Now I have 21.87GB, almost doubling my free space and giving me back almost 15% of my total drive space. Second, I love the four-fingered swipe up/down for Exposé.

Princess Bride Ambigram

2009-01-14T01:00:00.002-05:00

I love ambigrams. I first discovered what one was when my 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. Tomayko, showed us the newest cover of our high school literary magazine, Silver Quill. It was a beautifully done ambigram reading "Silver Quill" both upside down and right sight up. I was instantly mesmerized.

From then on, I have designed a handful of ambigrams myself. My favorite one I did was for my college ultimate team, Pansy. I doodled it over the course of a few lectures. I never did show my teammates though. I had hoped it would be printed on one of our discs, but I never got it scanned and sent out to my team.

What brought all of this about? Well I just ran into the cover of the The Princess Bride (20th Anniversary Edition):

Yes, it is an ambigram. Look:

Gorgeous.

BTW, if you love the movie, read the book. Seriously. If you someone who will bump into me in person, borrow my copy. You will learn of why Inigo seeks the 6 fingered man and how Buttercup rose to become the most beautiful woman in the world. You will love it.

Eat Out a Lot? Save Money with No Effort with Rewards Network

2008-12-03T17:53:00.004-05:00

I rarely cook. By rarely, I mean I make food at home at most once a month. Otherwise, I go out to eat, get carry out, or delivery. As I've mentioned before, though I know I should really learn to spend less and save more, I love my lifestyle and do not want to change my habits. That's why I was super psyched when I learned about Rewards Network. I just signed up for free and told them what credit card I wanted to enroll and that was it! Whenever I dine at any restaurant on their list and use that credit card, I automatically get 5-10% of my bill including tax and tip back credited to my credit card about 2 days later. I don't have to carry a membership card or a coupon. I don't have to notify the waiters or the restaurant that I'm part of this program. I don't have to request my money after I reach a certain amount of credit or anything since I get credited directly on my credit card no matter how small the amount. Really, once I'm enrolled, I don't have to do a thing but just do what I normally do.

True, I could save more money by actually looking online ahead of time and seeing what restaurants are part of this program and only going to those, but like I said, I don't want to change my habits and I want to dine where I want. But I'm surprised to find that many of the restaurants I already dine at are already part of the program! I have no clue even until I do my regular check on mint.com to see how my budget is looking, and am surprised to find money credited to my account thanks to this program!

What was the most amazing thing was that the day I signed up, I happened to dine at one of the restaurants in their program, and I was credited! I didn't expect my account to be activated and working so quickly.

Honestly, I'm not completely certain how they make money off this program. I assume restaurants pay the program an amount greater than we get back each time we dine there. Perhaps other people really do change their habits and purposely look up restaurants on their list and it does draw business for the restaurants, but I dine out all the time so it will not personally draw me to be more likely to go to their restaurants. All I know is that I found another way to save money without exerting effort. And that excites me.

Monthly Personal Update

2008-11-10T01:00:00.002-05:00

As promised, here's the delayed monthly personal update.

I'm typing from my bed and fully plan to turn off the lights and computer once this post is done to go to sleep, so I'm already in my pjs and everything. That's a pillow behind me, instead of the usual couch. I just took that picture, and am impressed how though my hair is messy right now, it turned out ok.

Anyhow, October I moved to a place only about half the size of my previous place. Since the middle of college, I've had a group of boxes that move along with me even though they haven't been unpacked. They followed me for six moves, with more and more boxes being added in this group. It got so bad that at my last apartment, a one bedroom and den (the den was very large and could definitely be used as a second bedroom), I used the whole spare room for these boxes. There wasn't much floor space in that room to walk between the boxes. Well, I finally went through each and every one of these boxes and threw out what was now trash, and reorganized the contents I wanted to keep in boxes according to what they were. Now some of those are in storage and some are with me. I donated most of my furniture to the Salvation Army, and have several boxes (currently living in my car) to donate to a food bank, Toys for Tots, Dress for Success, and Goodwill. I was awful stressed during the whole process though.

A few family members celebrated birthdays in October. My ultimate team ended our regular season losing only one game at the very beginning. I played a session of bridge at the Silver Spring Sectional, and one at the local unit game one night. Some dear friends came into town for a conference, bringing their two kids. I took the oldest of the kids to see the National Archives, the WWII memorial, FDR memorial, and paddle boating in the tidal basin.

For Halloween, I dressed up as a gypsy at work and brought in candy for everyone. I also baked cupcakes and gave those out to my fellow coworkers also in costume. The best was Pee Wee Herman.

The last weekend of October I went hiking in the Shenandoah. Also stopped by Luray Caverns, which I hadn't gone to since I was a little girl, and The Garden Maze. The website claims the maze to be one acre. Looking at it from the outside, I was disappointed because it didn't seem like an acre, but once inside, it seemed huge, and it was certainly of good relative difficulty. You could kind of see through the hedge to the path adjacent to you, but that didn't help you get there in the slightest. Next time in Luray, I would def suggest trying it even though it looks gimmicky. And look for the stamp stations (there are 4 landmarks to find). If you have younger children though, be warned that I saw many poor parents whose kids had run ahead be terribly lost and unsure of how to get to their kid that appears to just be a few feet away.

Novel Writing Tools

2008-11-05T16:05:00.004-05:00

For those participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, something I often claim I'll do but never have gotten close to succeeding in), Macworld had an excellent article on Mac novel writing tools. The tools featured in their article feature 30 day (or more) free trials, and a discount on the purchase if you decide to keep it. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to start and finish a novel of at least 50,000 words all in the month of November. These trials are plenty long enough for this whole goal!

As you may have guessed, the software featured in the Macworld article is indeed Mac-only. PC users may want to look at Liquid Story Binder XE, also available for a 30-day free trial and at a discount for those who want to purchase it. Another great PC-only tool is Q10. Those are the top two I've seen PC users use. Meanwhile, Writer's Cafe is available for both Windows and Mac.

Personally, I had started in TextEdit on my Macbook Air, and then decided to try Scrivener after reading the article. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to work on my novel since then, so no review from me yet!

Poll Open and Close Times by State

2008-11-03T14:13:00.010-05:00

I know, first Monday of the month is supposed to be my personal update, but I decided to postpone it a week this month for a more important message.

If you're a US citizen, no matter what state you're in and no matter which candidates or issues you support, get out there vote!

For those who have already voted via absentee or early voting, good for you! But if you're state doesn't have early voting, please don't let long lines, weather, or what the polls claim be excuses. Even if you feel like your presidential election vote doesn't count, there are other important candidates and issues on the ballot besides the presidential election where your vote will definitely count. And be an informed voter! Don't just vote for the name you recognize because they are the incumbent. You can look up how your senator or representative has voted in the past on various bills, and decide whether or not you really do want to keep them in office.

If you lost the little card with your polling site, you can go to http://maps.google.com/vote.

What time do polls open/close?
I couldn't find a good resource with a nice table of all the poll times for all the states so I looked them all up for you (ok halfway through making the chart I found Vote411 had information for all the states, but it still wasn't an easy chart). Yes, I took the time to do this. You can make sure to schedule some time in your day tomorrow to go vote. All times in local time unless noted. Feel free to send me corrections if you find a mistake.

Alabama	8am to 6pm
Alaska	7am to 8pm
American Samoa	No voting rights in national elections at this time
Arizona	6am to 7pm
Arkansas	8am to 6pm
California	7am to 8pm
Colorado	9am to 7pm
Connecticut	6am to 7pm
Delaware	7am to 8pm
DC	7am to 8pm
Florida	7am to 7pm
Georgia	7am to 7pm
Guam	No voting rights in national electionsat this time
Hawaii	7am to 6pm
Idaho	8am to 8pm
Illinois	6am to 7pm
Indiana	6am to 6pm
Iowa	7am to 9pm
Kansas	7am to 7pm
Kentucky	6am to 6pm
Louisiana	6am to 8pm
Maine	10am-8pm (though most polls open earlier)
Maryland	7am to 8pm
Massachusetts	7am to 8pm
Michigan	7am to 8pm
Minnesota	7am to 8pm
Mississippi	7am to 7pm
Missouri	6am to 7pm
Montana	7am-12pm (varies) to 8pm
Nebraska	8am to 8pm CST and 7am to 7pm MST
Nevada	7am to 7pm
New Hampshire	Varies. In general, open between 6am and 11am and close at either 7pm or 7pm
New Jersey	6am to 8pm
New Mexico	7am to 7pm
New York	6am to 9pm
North Carolina	6:30am to 7:30pm
North Dakota	Mostly 7am-7pm
Northern Marianas Islands	No voting rights in national elections at this time
Ohio	6:30am to 7:30pm
Oklahoma	7am to 7pm
Oregon	No polling sites. All vote by mail drop. Drop off by 8pm
Pennsylvania	7am to 8pm
Puerto Rico	No voting rights in national elections at this time
Rhode Island	7am to 9pm
South Carolina	7am to 7pm
South Dakota	7am to 7pm
Tennessee	7am to 7pm (mostly) but all must close by 8pm EST/7pm CST and be open at least 10 hours and at most 13 hours
Texas	7am to 7pm
Utah	7am to 8pm
Vermont	10am to 7pm (most locations open earlier)
Virginia	6am to 7pm
Virgin Islands	No voting rights in national elections at this time
Washington	7am to 8pm in King and Pierce counties. Otherwise, varied
West Virginia	6:30am to 7:30pm
Wisconsin	7am to 8pm
Wyoming	7am to 7pm

Sweet Dreams Security

2008-10-27T09:44:00.003-04:00

As you may have noticed, for personal reasons, I'm not going to be posting here as regularly for a while. Don't worry, I'll return to regular posts soon.

This isn't really technology related, but it does appeal to my the wannabe-design-geek in me.

You know how on some walls, they put that broken glass stuff on the top so people can't really climb over it? Here's an attractive version of that:

Barbed wire:

But here's my favorite:

These products were all designed by UK company, Sweet Dreams Security.

Boxy jQuery Plug-in

2008-10-16T16:34:00.009-04:00

I've been playing around with jQuery's AJAX capabilities lately in some PHP reports I have to do for work. I wanted to have pop-up forms to prompt the user for information and update the database without using a real pop-up window and without needing to submit the page. I found the Boxy jQuery Plug-in and found it to suit my needs nicely.

While I can't post my exact work code, I wanted to post some notes about how I did it for future reference and for others who may be just picking it up themselves.

Installation
Installation of Boxy was simple; all I had to do was copy three folders from their zipfile into my html directory.

Implementation
My page already included a jquery.js script since I was already using jQuery to do my database submits. I had to add these two lines to be able to use boxy:

<script type='text/javascript' src='javascripts/jquery.boxy.js'></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="stylesheets/boxy.css" type="text/css" />

I also put my "images" directory in a different place than the css expected, so I had to edit that.

For work, I had a table displaying data which was stored in the database. In one column of cells were dropdowns with the value from the database selected. I needed the user to be able to change the value and have it save to the database. I also wanted to prompt the user to enter a comment for why they were modifying the dropdown. I started with a call to a javascript function in my onchange portion of my select.

Here is my javascript code (with proprietary information modified):

function prompt_user(rowid) {
    new Boxy("
        <h2>Please enter a comment for the change:</h2>
            <center>
                <input type=\"text\" id=\"comments\"
                onchange=\"update_db("+rowid+");
                Boxy.get(this).hide();\"/>
           </center>",
       {modal:true}
    );
}

I use rowid since each row in the table refers to a different row in the database and I need to be able to pass that on to the next function that will do the db update. The onchange will activate when the user either pressed enter, tab, or clicks away from the textbox. It will not activate if they just change the value of the textbox without doing one of those things (that would be an onkeypress).

The modal:true option makes the rest of the screen inactive until the user supplies the prompted information.

For my update_db function, I use jQuery to help me out. Now this isn't the best way, passing the whole db statement from here but for me it was easier to write and debug for now and it will be fixed in the final version.

function update_db (rowid) {
    var comments=document.getElementById('comments').value;
    $.post("submit_sql.php", {
        sql_query: "update my_table set
          choice='" + document.getElementById('choice_select_'+rowid).value + "',
          comments='" + comments + "'
          where id="+rowid},
        function(error) {
            if (error != '') {
                Boxy.alert(error, null, {modal: true});
            } else {
                document.getElementById("comments_"+rowid).innerHTML=comments;
                new Boxy("<h2>Success</h2>", {
                    afterShow: function() {
                        var self = this;
                        setTimeout(function() { self.hide(); }, 1000);
                    },
                    modal: true,
                    closeable: false
                });
            }
        }
    );
}

Here, I am sending the SQL query as a parameter to a separate php script. In the callback, I create a Boxy alert if there's a problem. It's a modal again, so the user cannot ignore it and has to close it before doing anything else. If there's no error, then in the callback I make sure the page updates with the comments and I alert "Success", but I have this Boxy auto-close (actually I just hide it) after 1 second (1000 milliseconds).

For reference, here is some sample html code for submit_sql.php:

<?
include('dbinfo.inc');

$conn = pg_connect( 'host=' . $dbhost
  . ' dbname=' . $dbname
  . ' user=' .  $dbuser
  . ' password=' . $dbpass )
or die ("Can't connect to db");

$queryString = $_POST['sql_query'];
$result = pg_query( $conn, $queryString );
#echo pg_affected_rows($result);
if ( !$result ) {
    echo(pg_last_error());
}
?>

The Eyeballing Game

2008-10-13T13:45:00.003-04:00

Thanks to a tweet from a friend, I tried The Eyeballing Game. It's just a silly little Flash game where you try to do geometric constructions in your head by eyeballing.

I was terrible at it, getting a 4.20 when I tried. Though I am proud of this one moment on my first try:

I did try a few more times and found that I consistently did the worst at parallelograms, as you can see my score. I then tried rushing them to see if a time limit would make things worse or if maybe going with my gut instinct was better. My scores stayed about the same, but this may not be the case for all people.

Safeguard for Drunk E-mailing

2008-10-08T23:54:00.003-04:00

While in college, I had the habit of always checking my computer before going to bed and when waking up in the morning. Actually, pretty much anytime I came in and out of the room. Anyway, some morning I would come back to an e-mail from a friend (who I know reads this and I hope doesn't mind!) from sometime in the early e-mail. It would be a drunken e-mail explaining all the craziness from the night before, usually with a boy involved. I loved getting the e-mails, though didn't always think I did a good job of consoling.

The problem was that I wasn't the only one receiving drunken e-mails. Members of the male persuasion also received digital messages, and many that were regretted the next morning. I was highly amused when she sent me a link to Google Lab's "Mail Goggles". With "Mail Goggles" turned on, you have to answer five math questions within 60 seconds before you can send outgoing mail. The difficulty of the questions and the dates/times that the check should be automatically turned on are configurable. Then again, this friend is known to have powers that she can do drunk that she cannot do sober. Since she's already an engineer and great a math, I doubt it'd hinder her ability to do her problems.

Monthly Personal Update

2008-10-06T23:55:00.002-04:00

Sorry, I've been sickish lately. I guess another month has gone by. September went by really quickly for me, though now that I write this post, I can't really explain why.

It was the start of fall clique ultimate league. We had a beginning of the season party, with a very nice dinner cooked by my co-captain, and lots of drunken Rock Band and Mario Kart. My team now stands at 3-1.

One of the weekends, a bunch of college friends were in town from SF, Seattle, and Pittsburgh for a wedding and some other reasons. We all went out for Ethiopian food and played some cards. It was very nice.

September also marks my little brother's birthday. He came home to spend it with family, and I introduced him Race for the Galaxy, which I had learned in July in Las Vegas. He liked it very much. We had dinner Saturday night at home with our grandmother and aunt, and on Sunday with our parents at The Melting Pot, my favorite national chain restaurant.

Netflix "Watch Instantly" Service Coming to Macs

2008-10-01T16:28:00.004-04:00

My two closest video rental stores (Blockbuster's and Hollywood Video) have closed down. The next closest is awfully inconvenient to get to and is not on the way to anything, making it more annoying to return videos. I speculate that the combination of Netflix, ON-DEMAND on cable, DVRs, Apple TV, and those $1 one-day video rental machines in supermarkets have made going to video rental stores obsolete. My bf and I argue over which of those factors we think is a heavier culprite, but nevertheless, the market in this industry is certainly changing.

I have mentioned a few times before that we use do use Netflix and own Macs. Well, looks like now we can use them both together! Netflix just announced that their "Watch Instantly" content will be available on Macs by the end of the year. All of the Netflix "Watch Instantly" content is available for free with any level of subscription, and there is no limit on how many movies you can watch a month or a time-frame in which you have to finish watching the movie by. They have vastly increased their selection since when I first mentioned it, and I no longer run into the issue where movies disappear from availability. You can make a separate queue to bookmark "Watch Instantly" movies if you come across one you want to watch later.

While I'm enjoying watching all the HD content on our Apple TV, I like that I will now be able to watch movies off my Macbook Air when on a business trip in a hotel room, and have a large selection of movies to watch for free.

My Decorated Gadgets

2008-09-29T01:00:00.001-04:00

I've mentioned my Macbook Air and my iPhone on numerous occassions, as I love them both. The techie in me loves these gadgets. What I haven't mentioned, is that the girl in me has also customized these products to have their own unique look.

My iPhone has an SGP metal skin (specifically the blue Alice one).

Here's a picture (click for bigger version):

You may or may not be able to tell that I also have an invisibleShield on it. Here's a picture of the back of the inviabile shield (click for bigger version):

My Macbook Air is unique as well. On the top and inside, I have a skin from 3acp.

I also have the invisibleShield on the bottom of my laptop. (click for bigger version)

Bridge

2008-09-26T22:15:00.006-04:00

On Monday, I talked about my hobby of card making. On Wednesday, I explained my sport of choice, ultimate frisbee. Today, I'll talk about my obsession: bridge.

Bridge seems to get associated to grandmothers sitting around a kitchen playing cards. I find duplicate bridge to be actually a great mental game. Here's what most people don't realize about duplicate bridge: everyone plays the same hands and your score depends on how you did on that hand compared to how other people did. I suppose I've tried explaining this before, but to me, this is the most important aspect to the game that makes it interesting to me. Also, all information is open knowledge. As you may know, there's a auction portion with bridge where you bid for your contract. You and your partner can make up special meanings for different bids to convey information to each other. What sometimes non-bridge players don't realize is that if you assign special meanings to bids, you MUST alert opponents and explain what the bids mean. Assigning special meanings is something done because you might find the standard meaning not to come up enough and you want a more specific way to describe your hand. It is not for trying to talk in a code to advance knowledge of your partnership versus the opponents'. Each player gets the same information and it's up to you to figure out how to best use the information and to deduct different inferences.

There are many things you can do to improve you chances on a hand. A very basic technique is taking a finesse. Here's an example:

Let's say you're declaring the North-South hands. Look at the spade suit. If you bang down the Ace of spades, surely you Queen will lose to the King. However, if you start in the south hand and play up to the Queen of spades before your Ace goes away, you have a 50-50 shot of the Queen getting to win depending on where the King is. Let me demonstrate:

In this case, the King will play after your Queen, capturing it. But this is the same result as if you banged down the Ace so you lose nothing by trying.

But now let's assume the East and West hands started in the opposite positions.

Now that the holder of the King plays before you do, if s/he plays the King, you play the Ace over it and your Queen is free to win the next trick without worrying about a higher card being out. If s/he doesn't play the King as you lead from South, then your play of thw Queen will win triumphantly.

As you delve further in the world of bridge, you start learning squeezes, endplays, coups, and all sorts of interesting stuff that gets easier as you learn how to use information available in both play and bidding. I'm terribly obsessed with the game. If you're interesting in learning, the ACBL has clubs all over, and many of them sponsor beginning bridge lessons or can recommend you to teachers.

Ultimate Frisbee

2008-09-24T14:23:00.002-04:00

Last post, I talked about my crafty hobby. Today, I'll talk about a sporty hobby of mine.

I used to hate to throw frisbees. I was kind of tomboyish growing up, playing a lot of sports. I'd rather toss a football than a disc (in fact, out of the neighborhood kids, I was the first to throw with a spiral). In 2000, some friends dragged me onto their coed summer team since they lacked females. I was surprised to find that organized ultimate frisbee is a lot more interesting than the jungle ultimate pick-up that was played in the schoolyard.

I really got into the strategies of ultimate frisbee, and because of that, I forced myself to learn to throw and catch.

Here is the example of the most common strategy:

Unlike a football, it's not easy to hurl a frisbee over crowds of people. Therefore, if you aren't one of the people in a good position to catch the disc, it's important to pull the defender who is guarding you away from the path of someone who is in a good position to receive the disc. Therefore, as offense, you form a line in the middle of the field called a "stack". This allows people to have plenty of space on either side to use as "cutting lanes". Only one person should be in each lane at a time.

The defense employs a strategy called the "force". Notice that the yellow dot guarding the person on the disc (this defense is called the "mark") is on one side of the field while all the other yellow dots are on the other side of the stack. The mark is forcing the thrower to throw to the "away" side of the field. The mark will allow throws to go up on that side of the field and work hard to prevent throws from going towards the "home" side, in this example. Meanwhile, the other defenders trust the mark. They will prevent their opponent from getting to the disc on the away side, where the thrower can easily throw to. If their opponent tries to get open on the home side, the defender will allow them, knowing that the thrower will have a lot of trouble getting it to them on that side.

To see this in action, there is more description as well as a Flash illustration here in the Ultimate Handbook.

I have heard ultimate frisbee players stereotype themselves as "techies and hippies". Older generations who haven't heard of the game get confused as to how throwing a frisbee can be a "sport". I assure you though, ultimate frisbee players are definitely athletic. I find it to be a great sport and I love that it requires little equipment or investment to play.

Card Making

2008-09-22T10:27:00.005-04:00

I think this week, I'll go through some of my various hobbies that I have briefly mentioned in passing. For example, in my Spoonflower post, I mentioned that I had originally signed up for the beta for card making.

It was my youngest first cousin once removed's birthday last week. He turned five! In addition to his presents, I made him a cute little card (none of which I've managed to get out in the mail yet -- oops!). It's not the most elaborate card I've made, but it's certainly cute I think!

Front of the card:

Inside of the card:

Front of the envelope:

Back of the envelope:

Most of my papers and envelopes I buy from my favorite store in all of NYC, Kate's Paperie. Every time I go to NYC, I try to stop by and buy pounds and pounds of paper. I get all my stickes from Michael's, and sometimes some paper from there as well. In the past, I have even made my own paper (usually out of tissue paper), but it's probably been over a decade since I've done so.

Genius Playlists

2008-09-19T17:23:00.006-04:00

One of the things Apple anounced during their "Let's Rock" event on September 9 was the addition of "Genius Playlists" to iTunes 8 along with all of their iPods. Personally, I think it's an unfortunate name, especially since they already have termed something else "Genius" (their tech support people in their boutique shops). I don't think those people behind the counter came up with my playlist.

I finally gave it a try though. At first, I tried to use Groove Coverage's cover of "Poison" as my seed song, but that didn't yield any results. Then I tried The New York Doll's "Dance Like a Monkey" (one of my favorite songs plus it references one of my favorite plays).

That yielded this list (click to view larger version):

Now, it did a good job of avoiding putting any of my rap, hip hop, country, or metal music on the playlist. I listened to it all the way through, and actually thought it did a reasonably good job. I was only tempted to skip one song that I felt changed the mood of things, and the rest were fine.

So then I decided to try something in one of the other genres. I chose "I Like It, I Love It" by Tim McGraw (Kyle, I thought of you while choosing it). I got this playlist (click to view larger version):

First notice that it only gave me 19 songs (of them happened to be marked as "Country"). I had it set to create 25. Now I own 30 other Tim McGraw songs, so it was possible to find 25 similar songs I would think, but it only found 4 of those. Instead, it found all 10 of the Gretchen Wilson songs I own. While I love Gretchen Wilson at times, many of the songs on that one CD I own did not fit the mood of "I Like It, I Love It" so I actually ended up skipping over some of them when they came up.

I'm also a little suspicious about the generation process. It somehow put my Johnny Horton song on the list. Sure, Johnny Horton is country, but the rest of the list is modern country while Johnny Horton passed away in 1960, seven years before Tim McGraw was even born (and thirteen years before Gretchen Wilson existed). His style is extremely different from anyone else on the list. He was good friends with Johnny Cash and married Hank Williams' ex. I didn't think this belonged and thought it unlikely that "Genius" really collected data that said a bunch of people had this song on their playlists with the other songs I have. Even though I own both songs, I have never placed them in the same playlist as each other. I wonder if it only added the Johnny Horton because of the "country" label.

Praise for Apple

2008-09-17T15:08:00.005-04:00

I think Macs got a bad rep because it's what my generation used in school (and schools had old Macs that never got upgraded) and older generations didn't like change. But Apple is a smart company. They started gaining popularity from the public through the iPod's sleek design and smooth interface that could be synced with either Macs or PCs. They provided a way to obtain mp3s legally at a reasonable price. They came out with pretty colors and varying size and price options.

Then they gained the "geek" population through changing Mac OS to be BSD-based in their tenth version. Previously this population would have to buy a machine, reformat the drive, find and install some distribution of Linux, change the desktop environment to whatever they prefer, and go through all sorts of configurations to get their machine set-up. Now Macs were pre-packaged and ready to go without the hassle, and with a nicer desktop environment.

Next, they improved their Macs to include an Intel core. These Macs can now dual-boot into Windows, and actually run Windows faster than PCs. Suddenly doors opened in terms of the range of software available.

I personally have a white 16 GB iPhone 3G and a Macbook Air with SSD. What's amazed me even more about owning two Apple products is how well they work together with each other. While the iPhone can still sync with a PC just fine (which I used with my work PC while my Macbook Air was being repaired right when I first got my iPhone), I somehow find it smoother syncing straight with the iCal and Address Book on my Mac. (I actually use CalGoo to sync my Google Calendar and my iCal together so I can also view my calendar on any machine through any web browser, and my friends can view my calendars too.)

Their repair policies seem to be pretty good. When I first heard of the "Genius Bar", it was hard not to make fun of the name. But my Macbook Air's fan died down so I made my appointment. Unfortunately, I couldn't get one for a few days so I decided to stop by and hope to get a walk-in appointment. I told the concierge why I was there and they let me do a Quick Drop, since it was a mechanical problem. I got a phone call the next day telling me they were shipping my machine away and it'd take a week. Exactly a week later, I got a call saying I could pick up my machine. My machine came back with all my data, with my invisibleShield intact, and with a brand new fan inside. It cost me nothing, and I loved that I didn't have to mail it off myself.

Yesterday, I had another appointment with the Genius Bar. This time, it was for my iPhone. My top button of it was extremely recessed and almost impossible to find and press. My Genius took one look at it and immediately said she'd replace it. She asked if I backed up all my data before coming in, which I did. She let me take off my invisibleShield (which thanks to their amazing warranty policy, I can send back for a new one at no cost) and helped me clear my data. She pulled out a brand new white iPhone 3G, opened it up and moved my SIM card into it. Immediately it was activated with my phone information and I was all set. Again, at no cost.

My boyfriend has a Macbook Pro (his second one) and an iPhone himself. With our confidence in Apple products, we just bought a 160 gb Apple TV. Upon connecting the Apple TV, both of our laptops recognized it on the network and offered to control it. Our iPhones can also be converted into remotes. The picture quality of the content offered (which includes HD movies) looks stunning on our TV (and the movie rentals have free previews you can watch prior to renting). Even the device itself looks nice and sleek.

Apple's great at causing geeks to technolust for their products because their products are both well-packaged and they work well. Their support policies are excellent as well. Best of all, once you already have an Apple product, other Apple products seem to work seamlessly together with it. Next up, we hope to buy a 1 TB Time Capsule.

How I Got Started Programming

2008-09-15T01:00:00.000-04:00

I saw a link to this article on DZone and figured they were good questions to answer publicly.

How old were you when you started programming?

I can't remember my exact age, but I was in elementary school. My brother and I had two games that we liked to play in QBasic. I can't remember the names, but one of the two had two apes on buildings that threw explosive frisbees at each other at different angles, trying to take in account the wind. We would go into the program and try to hack it to change different settings. That was my first experience with programming.

I didn't actually write my first program until high school (besides some HTML, making my own webpages in middle school). At the beginning of 9th grade, we were told about a computer programming contest called the ACSL. I hadn't ever written a program before, but I really wanted to give it a try. So I opened up QBasic and with what I learned from playing with settings, I programmed a solution to the given problem. The teacher was shocked that anyone in the class had tried at all, since she knew none of us in that class had any real programming experience.

How did you get started in programming?

Well I guess being in the Math, Science, and Computer Science Magnet Program at Montgomery Blair High School, we were required to take programming classes all of freshman and sophomore years, as well as the beginning of junior year. The classes were easy for me, and I ended up taking Artificial Intelligence with LISP, Computer Graphics, and Networking II as electives later.

For most of my life up until my senior year of high school, I had thought I'd go into some sort of science. Then I started applying to colleges and needed to decide on a major. It seemed like I liked engineering, but it had become pretty clear that I had a natural knack for computer programming. A friend suggested robotics as a combination of the two. I entered Carnegie Mellon through the School of Computer Science, declaring a Computer Science major, Political Science second major (which through the course of college, turned into a minor), and Robotics minor. The math minor I eventually got, I got by accident through just happening to take enough math courses that I thought were interesting.

What was your first language?

My first language, as stated earlier, was BASIC, unless you count HTML.

What was the first real program you wrote?

Well, I'm not sure what would be classified as a real program. My first program for that programming contest was perfectly functional... it took 3 numbers as the lengths of the sides of a triangle, and outputted whether it was an equilateral, isosceles, irregular, or not a triangle. For someone who had never programmed before nor taken a class in programming, it was a nice achievement. I wrote a number of programs after that for classes, some games for myself on my TI calculator, etc. My first program that I used that got to be used by other people was during an internship at one of the national labs in the area during high school. I was working as a chemistry intern, and had programmers who I could ask to write programs for me. They were bogged down with work though, so after they hadn't gotten to my program for a few weeks, I sat down and wrote it myself in Pascal. The programmers who were originally assigned the task were shocked I knew how to program. My program had a very short lifetime though, because as soon as they had the time, they rewrote it in C++, which was the language the rest of their programs were in, for consistency's sake as well as ease of maintaining the program.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

While learning BASIC, I also was taught a modeling and simulation language called STELLA. Sophomore year of high school, I learned Pascal through classes, which I loved for three years even though it wasn't as sophisticated as other languages. Junior year I got a 5/5 on my AP exam in C++, which I studied for on my own though I had never written a program in C++, and did some Java and LISP in classes. Senior year, I played around with perl on my own. Then I got to college. I don't think I really picked up any new languages in college, but I certainly ramped up greatly in my knowledge and skill in both Java and C++. I was a TA for Java for three semesters, and I did all my robotics work for five semesters plus three summers in C++. Now in the work industry, I mostly use Java and SQL with some perl and HTML. I have also picked up shell scripting, and have done some work in PHP as well. I am trying to learn Ruby on the side.

What was your first professional programming gig?

After my display in the chemistry lab, the next two summers the lab decided to actually pay me to be a programmer. I wrote some HTML and perl scripts to display data from a weather vane on the top of the building to a website, I programmed a stepper motor in one of their custom devices, and I wrote the front end application to their colorimeter.

I had several other part-time professional programming gigs in college. I worked at one company whose software could tell you how much you'll like or dislike a song before you hear it. The rest were all robotics related.

My first full-time professional programming gig was with a government contractor. I worked for them for over two years. The first project they put me on was a project tracking system for the FDA and IRS.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Sure, I don't see why anyone would take back their choice to start programming. Now if you change this question to "would I have become a software developer", I think that's a different question. This does not mean that I learned anything negative about software development though. Instead, I have learned that other professions that I previously thought were boring or no fun are actually pretty interesting, and it may have been interesting to have tried delving into them earlier in life. The biggest negative I've learned though, is that being a social person, my position doesn't seem to allow me to interact with people as much as I would've liked to otherwise. I do interface with clients sometimes, but not to the level that the analysts or other colleagues on the business side do.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Speak up, and show motivation. Always strive to take the next step in your career. Doing what you're told and getting your tasks done shouldn't be your goal; it should be what's expected of you and your goal should be to advance in your domain expertise, technical expertise, and technical leadership. Also, to reiterate from a previous post, look for a job that will help you grow your career; don't just accept the highest offer.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had… programming?

I loved working on robot soccer. I got to go twice to the international competition, and it's really satisfying seeing your code work in a game. You cheer on the little robots as if they were your kids and they could hear you. You watch them shoot that ball into the wooden goal and hear that satisfying *THUD* against the back of the goal. You stay up until the wee a.m. hours programming for the next round after every match you win (our team triple code reviewed any piece that went in during the competition, since we were so prone to errors when programming so late. Errors still made it into the system though). I loved it. So much, that I ended up volunteering and helping Johns Hopkins start a team as well.

Feel free to ask me any other questions if you feel this was incomplete, or share your own answers if you'd like.

Designing Your Own Fabric on Spoonflower

2008-09-12T11:04:00.003-04:00

I'm totally psyched! After about a two months wait, I finally got accepted into the Spoonflower Beta!

Spoonflower is a site that lets you upload images, and they print fabric with your images on it. Currently they only have one fabric available for the Beta (100% Kona® cotton from Robert Kaufman Fabrics), but they are about to add a second fabric. Images can either be the full size of the piece of fabric you want to order, or if it is smaller, it will be tiled.

This post from one user shows examples of how the fabric turned out with different digital images she submitted. There is also a large Flickr pool of pictures. The prices for the fabric and shipping it are totally reasonable too! For those who do not know how to prepare digital images, they have some good pointers on their FAQ.

While I am no good at sewing or using a sewing machine, I use fabric for handmade cards and bookbinding. I signed up for the beta with these uses in mind, however after seeing all the different things other people came up with, I am dying to try to learn how to sew! I have already picked out a good starter project for myself: making a scrunchie. I have a design in mind for the fabric, but have not made my digital image yet. If my scrunchie turns out, I'll update yinz.

Sharing Queues on Netflix

2008-09-10T22:57:00.002-04:00

My boyfriend and I have a Netflix. It's great; we get Blu-rays to watch on our Playstation 3 as well as watch an unlimited number of movies a month through the online content. The only problem is that we would argue over which movies to receive next. We both have the password to the account (don't worry, we don't share our passwords for anything else) so that we can both add the movies we want to watch, but constantly we are promoting are demoting each other's choices on the queue.

Luckily, after the outcry from users, Netflix brought back profiles. Netflix profiles are a way for couples, families or housemates to fairly share the queue.

How to Use Netflix Profiles.

Using the main account, go to the Your Account link in the upper right corner after you login.

Then click on Account Profiles

Now you can add a profile for each user in your household! After creating the profiles, you can assign how many DVDs that user gets to receive at a time, out of your membership total. Now there's no more need to be malicious with the Netflix queue!

Comments on Spore

2008-09-08T23:23:00.004-04:00

(I really miss my Macbook Air. It's really making it harder for me to get my posts out on-time.)

Spore received a lot of hype before coming out. It has received decent critic reviews from GameSpot and other sites, but has a really poor rating on Amazon despite being its top seller right now. The main reason for this is that EA put DRM on the software. I've mentioned before about DRM on music. What does it mean in terms of software? In this instance, it means that you can only install Spore three times. If you get a new machine or your hard drives crash and you need to reinstall your OS, then reinstalling the software counts as another time. Uninstalling the software from a machine does not gain you back an install and there's no way to unregister a machine; you only get 3 installs and there is no way to get back an install once one is counted. Also, similar to the music, if somehow EA goes down or decides to discontinue their DRM servers as Yahoo! and Microsoft did, then the software would stop working as well.

Of course, the reviews are a little skewed. Postings on anti-DRM forums encouraged their members to spam Amazon reviews about the DRM information. Many of these people may not have even bought the game even if it was DRM-free, yet they made posts about how they refuse to buy the game because it isn't. At the same time, actual user reviews so far haven't been so hot either, saying that the gameplay is pretty dull in the early phases of the game.

Honestly though, I am less likely to buy the game after hearing about the DRM policy on the software. I am pro DRM-free, but I would still not qualify myself as anti-DRM; I think I would've been more likely to buy this game if it had DRM but I was able to unregister my machines, but the strict three install policy is too much for me to deal with.

Making Iced Tea

2008-09-05T21:12:00.002-04:00

My boyfriend loves iced tea. He gets it in restaurants, at fast food chains, from Starbucks, from vending machines, from the gas station fridges... pretty much anywhere where he is getting a non-alcoholic beverage. His main complaint with iced tea though, is that he doesn't like how artificially sweet some of them are.

So, as an impulse buy (I classify it as impulse because I personally take days to research things before I buy them online. He just saw it and used 1-click to buy it), he found and bought an iced tea maker from Amazon. My post-purchase research into reviews seems to indicate that the one he got, the Hamilton Beach Electric Iced Tea Maker, does surpass its competitor by Mr. Coffee. You can use either loose tea leaves or tea bags. It only takes 5 minutes to make 2 quarts, and it is immediately cold and ready to drink. Unfortunately, we could only find bags at our local grocery store and we wanted to experiment with loose tea leaves.

I decided I'd take it upon myself to find him some to buy for him. The best I could find in local stores was some sort of flowery tea at the local Turkish store. I couldn't understand the Turkish on the package though, so I was hesitant about buying it. So I went online. After a little research, the artisan tea pouches at Mighty Leaf Tea. I know I was looking for loose tea, and they do carry loose tea as well (and that's how they came up in my searches), but these pouches really piqued my interest; they contain whole leaves with flowers and fruit rinds and other flavors. I bought three variety packs. Yesterday, the package arrived. We opened up the boxes and it already smelled really good. He picked out the Orange Dulce Black Tea and brewed it. Now, I'm normally not as much of a fan as he is of iced tea (and I've tried it when he brewed other teas with his machine), but this tea was phenomenal. So much so that I ditched my original topic for today to make this post! Now, the machine itself is incredible and the tea really tastes fresh even when you brew the cheap tea pouches, but it wouldn't have been as worthy of a whole blog post without the combination of both the machine and the tea. We can't wait to try the other flavors, which include vanilla bean black tea and their "African Nectar" tea. What's particularly nice is that people who have ordered their teas have written reviews on each different flavor, so you can get an idea of what it would taste like and how much you would like it. They have both caffeinated and caffeine-free teas.

Reading reviews of the iced tea machine, it also says a good option for sweetened tea is to pour sugar on top of the ice before brewing. Apparently placing the sugar here is best for dissolving it and having it mix into the pot of tea. Personally, I'm curious if this can be done with honey. I'll have to investigate that next.

Monthly Personal Update

2008-09-03T17:41:00.002-04:00

This month's update is both coming on the wrong day and is missing a picture. Unfortunately, the fan on my Macbook Air died, so it's being looked at by the Apple "Geniuses". (Which is also why there wasn't a Monday post.) I was pleased to find that I didn't need an appointment or need to wait in line for my problem; they recognized that it was a clear hardware issue and let me use their "QuickDrop" to just drop it off and leave it there. Supposedly, a Genius will call me today or tomorrow to update me with the status. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a way to find out the status until they call, even though I have a reference number.

Anyway, August was filled with some more travel. I got to visit Connecticut twice to a very nice house on the Long Island Sound. I went to the Borgata in Atlantic City. with my brother and our SOs for my birthday where we gambled and at wonderful food at Ombra. It was my first time playing poker with more than $5, and I actually did it in the Borgata Poker room. We just played $2/$4 Limit Hold'em and I was expecting to just blow a couple hundred while taking advantage of the drinks, but I did a lot better than expected, and the waitresses were being slow anyway. I think all the hours of kibitzing John Kranyak play poker on his laptop (and clicking for him while he went out for a smoke) somehow helped. Now I have the itch to play again.

My boyfriend and I took our third couples cooking class together. We pretty much never cook at home, but we're slowly trying to learn. In the class, we made pesto bruschetta, grilled portobello salad with a vinaigrette dressing that we emulsified ourselves, grilled lamb, potatoes au gratin, and creme caramel. Everything came out delicious.

I played bridge at the Hunt Valley Regional. My corporate league ultimate team didn't make it past the first round of the playoffs while my advanced league ultimate team lost in the semifinals.

My cellphone contract with Sprint finally ended, so I bought a 16gb white iPhone for myself and added my brother to my plan, getting him an 8gb black iPhone. We're both very happy with them.

I was nominated for the Hot Blogger Calendar, but unfortunately, I did not win, so no photo shoot for me.

I miss my Macbook Air.

Hot Blogger Calendar

2008-08-31T02:04:00.005-04:00

Update: Unfortunately, I did not win. Thank you all for your support. I remained within spots from making it, but the top vote-getters really pulled away on the final day.

I've been nominated for the Hot Blogger Calendar. I've been noticing some hits from it, so I decided I should put up a picture of myself more prominently. You can vote for me here (search for RoboJenny) or here (the link may be easier to find my name since it'll be the only instance of "RoboJenny" on the page):

The Hottest Blogger Calendar is a response to other hottest blogger lists where the list was just chosen and not voted on. They plan on having a real photo shoot in NYC with make-up artists and professional photographers.

Voting ends Sunday, August 31.