Mike Dirolf's Blog

This Site is Deprecated

2008-10-02T00:20:00.003-04:00

So this will officially be my last post on this blog. This may come as a shock to a lot of you, since I was posting SO often recently and everything. The blog will stay up for a while at least here. But the recommended place to get your fill of me is now dirolf.com. That site is very new and there are more features to come but it should be a little bit easier for me to keep up to date then this was. Check it out, let me know what you think.

The Subprime Mortgage Crisis is Funny

2008-02-20T14:28:00.000-05:00

This one courtesy of Chris...

I'm Alive

2007-11-30T16:13:00.000-05:00

So until about 15 minutes ago, it had been over 3 months since I updated this blog. I guess after school started I just lost my will to keep it updated. Maybe I'll try to give it another shot...

An update on what has been going on with me for the past 3 months:

Back at school, having a decent semester, classes are winding down (finals aren't until January though).

Club soccer lost in regionals 2-1 to BC, who went on to win the tournament. Not a bad final season with the team.

I recently accepted an offer to work for ShopWiki next summer. I'm really excited to give real work and city life a shot.

I'm now a vegetarian (it pains me that this qualifies as news, but some people see it as a big deal). That's been going on for almost a month and a half now, and my reasoning behind it is probably subject for a future post.

My hair has gotten really long. I think I should probably get a haircut.

Zoomix: Another Javascript Game

2007-11-30T16:01:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wrote another game using javascript and the <canvas> tag. This time the design of the game is completely original, and I think it came out pretty nicely. Hopefully you should be able to figure out the rules / object of the game after playing with it for a few minutes. Let me know what you think!

The look and feel of the game was inspired by the Rubik's Cube. After creating a static image of a face of the cube, zooming in on it seemed to be the only logical thing to do. After that was implemented, the mechanics of gameplay just fell out.

The complete list of these small games I've written is here.

I Can't Wait

2007-08-16T02:27:00.001-04:00

Only a few short weeks until football season starts - I think Chris and I might hit up training camp at UAlbany tomorrow so I can get my fix.

Why I Don't Like Texas

2007-08-16T01:56:00.000-04:00

Aaron just finished telling me a story that reminded me how much I hate Texas.

He was driving around with some friends and they decided to hit up a drive-through on the way home. He pulls in and there is a guy stopped near the line. Aaron gets in line in front of the stopped car (which he described to me as "this huge monster truck looking thing"). I guess the guy thought Aaron cut him off and got upset - thirty seconds later somebody taps on Aaron's window. A shirtless 20 year old kid is pointing a SHOTGUN right at him through the window. How messed up is that. Texas sucks.

Before any Texans get upset and tell me that my hate is unfounded, let me say that I wholeheartedly agree. Also, you should feel better because there are other places that I hate even more for even fewer reasons... *COUGH* Seattle *COUGH*

Live Free or Die

2007-08-16T01:53:00.001-04:00

This is a pretty awesome movie about a "gangster" from New Hampshire. Chris and I watched it in Cape Cod by accident a few weeks ago and enjoyed it. Gave it a another shot tonight and it didn't disappoint, so... watch it. It's funny.

Camping

2007-08-13T14:10:00.001-04:00

Fishing
Originally uploaded by m.dirolf

We just got back from camping on the Saranac River. Everybody had a great time - it was great to spend a few days in the Adirondacks. We did a lot of fishing, canoeing, and relaxing. The last morning Eric and I saw a bald eagle attacking a Turkey Vulture, which was a cool way to end the weekend.

Gone Camping...

2007-08-09T12:41:00.001-04:00

Eric, Jared, and I are leaving in a few hours to go camping. We're going to head up to Saranac and camp out by my Uncle Bryan's camp. Chris is going to meet us up there after work tomorrow. It should be a great time, watch this space for some pictures or whatever afterwards.

Buffalo's Are Awesome

2007-08-08T22:33:00.001-04:00

Jared's Foot

2007-08-07T18:06:00.001-04:00

While Chris and I were relaxing on the Cape this weekend Jared made a surprise trip to the E.R. Now that I write that, I guess pretty much all trips to the E.R. are surprises, but oh well.

Anyways, Jared got run over by a car and has a huge hole taken out of his foot. It is really disgusting so I'll spare everybody the pictures - but needless to say I'm hoping he has a speedy recover. Fortunately he is still going camping this weekend! What a trooper that kid is...

Hiking

2007-08-02T14:47:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Jared and I went hiking with my cousin Chris and my Uncle George. We woke up at 4 in the morning and were on the trail by 7:30. We climbed Phelps Mountain, one of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks. The views were gorgeous and we made quick work of the hike. We finished the day by stopping at the Cascade Ponds and swimming for a while. It was a perfect afternoon.

EQXFest

2007-07-31T13:57:00.001-04:00

AWESOME FRISBEE ACTION SHOT
Originally uploaded by m.dirolf

Yesterday a bunch of us went up to spac for EQXFest. It was my first (and maybe only) trip to spac this summer, and as usual it was a great time. We hung out for a long time in the park before the show started, then went in and saw matisyahu and 311. It was a beautiful day and a lot of fun.

When I got back I went over to Ralph's to wish Nicky Lynch a happy 21st birthday - got to see a bunch of old friends also.

Cooking Cedar

2007-07-26T20:33:00.001-04:00

Right now Chris, Dad, and I are all outside working on the addition. We are using cedar shake siding, with a flare where the addition meets the existing house. Trying to bend the shakes for the flare has proven to be more difficult than thought - we have resorted to steaming the shakes on the grill... i'll try to post some pictures in a few minutes - its a pretty funny scene.

UPDATE: I uploaded some shots to my flickr account. I also put up some new ones from the rest of July. These were all taken with my new camera, a Canon A460, which seems to be pretty effective for the cheap price tag.

Having Two Password Fields Makes No Sense

2007-07-20T18:09:00.000-04:00

A lot of websites require you to enter your password twice when you first register. The del.icio.us screenshot below show what I mean (in case you haven't been online since ARPANET):

For years I never questioned this approach, diligently entering my password twice for each new site I registered with. After all, it was always in my best interest - an incorrectly typed password means a lost account!

Waaaaait a second... every site out there has a password recovery mechanism in place. The one that seems to be used most often is where you enter the email address you used to register and a reset password link is set to that email account. My question is... if my email address is the last ditch, reset my information, save my precious account piece of information, then why is everybody so concerned about the damn password? Facebook gets it right:

It seems to me that websites should just trust us to fill out forms correctly in one try; if we fail the password can always be reset anyways. Do everybody a favor and stop making us type a password twice.

Visual Voicemail on the Cheap

2007-07-18T12:15:00.000-04:00

When Apple announced the iPhone back in January one of the features that I found most compelling was "Visual Voicemail". This feature allows you to browse your voicemail messages like an email inbox: you can see the caller for each message and play the voicemails in any order. This eliminates the annoying calls to your voicemail, wading through messages to get to the one that matters, listening to the annoying voice telling you how many you have left. Unfortunately, I don't have 1200 dollars to spend on a phone / contract this year, so no visual voicemail for me.

That has changed, however, thanks to Callwave. They have several widgets available for all of the major platforms. One allows free texting while the other allows, you guessed it, visual voicemail. Callwave replaces the voicemail service on your phone with their own service (for free) and allows you to browse messages from your computer. All the functionality of the iPhone with none of the price tag.

Cool Video

2007-07-17T10:11:00.000-04:00

This commercial, for French energy conglomerate Areva, has got to be the coolest video I've seen in a while. The music, the visuals, the story of how mining in Canada becomes lighting in China... its got all the requisite elements. Almost makes me want to build a nuclear power plant myself.

Here's a music video made by the same artistic team. It's almost as cool, maybe cooler, so check it out also.

Day 4 (I Think): Murphy's Law

2007-07-09T21:57:00.000-04:00

Woke at 7 to panicked cries: water was pouring in the ceiling underneath where we had done demolition and started construction on the addition. Ran outside in the pouring rain and tried to cover what I could with tarps (we had put tarps up yesterday, but forgot one area). The lightning and rain was unbelievable. We spent most of the rest of the day battling with water from the morning's storm, and trying to fix the tarps in case another storm came through.

Another storm did come through... or more like another five storms did come through.

At around 4:30 the rain started up again, so I jetted home with Eric to try and make sure everything was water tight. Turns out things were pretty far from that. By 5ish when my dad got home we were just trying to push water off of the new floor to keep up with the torrential rain and prevent any more damage to the ceiling underneath. After 20 minutes or so of sponging, siphoning, and sump-pumping the rain finally let up. We started to bring up plywood and create a better covering over the new construction.

The break didn't last long - within minutes the rain started harder than ever, and the wind picked up too - the rain was literally going sideways. I was trucking sheets of plywood up the ladder to Jared when the hail started. That was really the last straw... it was like being drowned all day long until somebody decided that water wasn't enough, so they started pelting me with ice cubes. The chunks of ice were huge, the size of quarter or bigger.

After a lot of work we finally got a better temporary "roof" on the new construction. By this time a bunch of the family was over helping out in the family room, where water was literally pouring through the ceiling. All the furniture had been moved out and there were buckets all over the place.

As things calmed down everybody took a break and relaxed in the soaked family room for a little bit. Then we all went outside to inspect the damage (there was a lot to check out). It seemed like the worst was over. That was when the entire ceiling collapsed...

Day 1: Demolition

2007-07-06T00:35:00.001-04:00

Demolition
Originally uploaded by m.dirolf

We started the new addition today. My dad has decided that he wants a new huge closet so he doesn't need to put stuff in the attic anymore. Today we did demolition on the roof of the family room. More photos are at my flickr page.

Also played some tennis today with my brothers and cousins, that was fun.

Happy Independence Day

2007-07-04T19:49:00.001-04:00

Happy 4th of July everybody! Hopefully the weather is nicer wherever you are than it is here in Albany.

How T-Mobile Changed the Phone Industry More than Apple This Week

2007-07-04T19:37:00.000-04:00

In the midst of all of the iPhone hype this past week T-Mobile had an announcement of their own that went relatively unnoticed. Jared saw a commercial for the new HotSpot @Home and pointed it out to me. Basically T-Mobile is now allowing calls to be made over wifi as well as their national network. The phone seamlessly switches to wifi when it is available, and all calls made on wifi are free. This allows the company to provide guaranteed perfect service whenever you are in your own house (they even give you a wireless router if you need one) or anywhere else where wifi is available.

Keep in mind that Apple could've done this with the iPhone. The iPhone is wifi enabled, and it will use wifi for all of its internet features when it is available. It will not, however, make calls over wifi. This is incredibly short-sighted from a company that claims to be hell-bent on revolutionizing the phone industry. What Apple did was make a really cool phone. What T-Mobile did was revolutionize the phone industry.

No End in Sight

2007-07-03T19:24:00.000-04:00

UPDATE: I'm an idiot - Jared and I were watching last year's contest. Chestnut won. Congratulations to him... I'm gonna go have a hot dog.

So, as it turns out, the jawthritis wasn't so bad after all... Kobayashi showed up and kicked ass. This was also the first time I actually watched the contest - it was on ESPN this afternoon. The whole thing is pretty disgusting, especially when you watch it live. I wouldn't recommend it. Long story short, Kobayashi ate 53 and 3/4 hot dogs, while Joey Chestnut only got like 52 or something. We'll have to wait until next year for another chance at an upset.

The End of an Era?

2007-07-01T23:40:00.000-04:00

It looks like we might soon witness the end of an era, as Kobayashi might miss his first Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest in 6 years. His claim of "jawthritis" sounds like a cop out to me... is that even a real thing?

A google search for jawthritis, excluding results that include Kobayashi or "hot dog", returns no results - seems pretty made up to me. It might be a good one to remember when you need to get out of work (or escape a really intimidating competitor) for a day.

Good News for Me, Bad News for Kratsios

2007-06-30T16:52:00.000-04:00

It looks like the space hotel might happen sooner than I thought. Mike and I have a bet for $2000 on whether or not there will be a space hotel by the year 2025. It looks like this is the first step towards me being able to really rub this in his face.

Rollerblade Hockey

2007-06-28T20:43:00.000-04:00

Today was the first time we've played hockey in a long time - it's awesome. My team lost unfortunately... At tennis I actually had a decent serve most of the day, though, so thats good news!