Where There's a Hill

My sister-in-law got me a cool t-shirt for my birthday this year. It's got a drawing of a bike on it, and it says "Where there's a hill, there's a way." I love it. Perfect slogan, it's a nice neutral dark yellow color, it's lightweight, and it fits good.

We biked 22 miles this morning. 11 miles to the Cracker Barrel, a big breakfast, then 11 miles home again. There are a few hills along that route, none too ultra-challenging, but a couple of good stretches that make you work a bit.

Sometimes when I'm riding, I think of the perfect thing to say on the old blog... Then by the time I get home, it's usually gone. Unless it's really, really good. Then I can remember it.

Today, as I was going up one of the hills, it occurred to me that there are several strategies for tackling hills on a bicycle. I consistently use two of them: the one that I prefer is to keep pedaling, staying in the same gear, kicking those thigh muscles up a notch and working a little bit harder. With that technique, you keep your speed up, you get to the top faster, and you get a nice sense of accomplishment. But sometimes, I'm just a bit too tired and I need to use strategy #2: downshift until I can keep the same cadence with the same level of effort as before I got to the hill... This one slows you down a little bit, but sometimes ya gotta.

Looking forward to a few more bike rides yet this summer. The weather is finally just about perfect for bike rides a few times a week lately. I like it.

Pedal always!

Beat the Heat: Workout Indoors with Sgt Fitness

Stay cool, America. Don't let this summer heat bubble stop you from working out...

Just move it inside and stay in the AC. And let Sgt Fitness tell you what to do. A tiny afternoon nap might help, too.

Talking Too Much?

It's official, now.

June, 2011 is my bloggingest month ever, and 2011 is now my bloggingest year ever.

Am I getting too talkative? Will I ever shut up again?

These and other burning questions shall be answered in July. Tune in again next month for more Reflections, on the Sarge and other topics.

The Sergeant, Fitness Report, Second Four Weeks

Still going slowly? Yes. More single digit weeks? Absolutely. I may or may not keep publishing these reports, but here's a recap of my second month selling Sgt Fitness on the app store.

Weekly sales numbers for weeks 5 through 8: 1, 3, 1, 2
Monthly sales, June 2011: 7
Funds earmarked for charitable donation: $8.75
Votes for favorite charity: 1
Top (only!) voted charity: Susan G. Komen for the Cure

Running totals: 18 units, $22.50 raised for charity

Like the Sgt Fitness Facebook Page

Can you do me a favor? Please? Like the Sgt Fitness page on Facebook. Help me get to 25 "likes" so I can get a URL without the crazy bazillion digit number in it...

Right now it looks like this: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sgt-Fitness/221545647858010?sk=wall&filter=1

Thanks!

An Open Letter to Deborah Roberts of ABC News

An Open Letter to Deborah Roberts of ABC News
June 17, 2011


Dear Deborah,

Thanks for your video report shown on ABC World News last night regarding the health risks of sitting all day long:

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/everyday-health-hazards-13862146

This may be a cliché already, but I'll say it anyway. Believe it or not, there's an app for that.

In early May, I released Sgt Fitness, an exercise reminder app, exclusively for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It's a workout coach for the Twitter generation, if you will, an app that displays reminder notices several times a day for you to do some sort of exercise. The sergeant will drill you with pushups, sit-ups, squats, stretching, balance, laps and stairs.

It's a great app for people who have those office jobs where they are typically sitting all day long. Sgt Fitness turns your iPhone into the dose of self-discipline you need to get up and move a little during the day.

You can find Sgt Fitness and more information about it:
- in the app store http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sgt-fitness/id427780309?mt=8
- on my web site http://www.dlrsoftware.com/SgtFitness
- in my blog entries from May and June, 2011 http://dlrdave.blogspot.com

I encourage you to check it out. It just might be a part of the solution to the problem of "people stuck at their desk" jobs.


Sincerely,

David Cole
Creator of Sgt Fitness

Who Uses Sgt Fitness?

So who uses Sgt Fitness anyway?

Well, it's a useful app. A remarkably simple exercise reminder app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Really, anybody who is interested in getting or staying fit could use it.

But I imagine there is a certain sort of person who will be the ideal candidate for being an avid, every day, do or die Sgt Fitness drillee. (A "drillee" (you) does the drills that the driller (the sergeant) tells him to...)

This certain sort of person has the following characteristics:

• busy, possibly over-scheduled
• lacks discipline to exercise regularly without being badgered
• works in a sedentary job, frequently sitting for hours and hours and hours on end
• wants to be physically fit, but can't find the time
• can't / won't pay for a gym membership
• already has an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch that is with them all day at work anyway

Perhaps you recognize one or more of these traits in yourself. If all of them apply to you, then you are the perfect candidate for using Sgt Fitness. You've got nothing to lose by giving it a try. Except maybe a little flab.

I'm sure this entire list of characteristics, each and every one of them, applies to millions around the globe... Now, I've just got to let them know the Sgt is here now, ready to drill them. Help me get the word out, and point some of them to my blog today.

Stay fit, my friends.

iPad Only, Bring It!

I'm ready for the future. I'm ready for the day when an iPad will be my only computer. The only thing that I cannot do on the iPad *today* that I still need to do on a "real computer" is... write programs for the iPad. And for the other pesky computers that remain on my desks at work and at home. Unfortunately, that writing sort of pays for the rest of my life right now, so I'll have to keep at it for a bit.

This is absolutely amazing to me. I know I predicted when they first announced the iPad a year and a half ago that it would be a death knell for the personal computer as we've known it. But I didn't really think it could actually happen quite so fast. Now that I've been using an iPad for about two months since getting one at work, I'm quite convinced: it is definitely the way of the future.

There is no reason whatsoever that regular people should buy anything but iPads or their progeny from now on. There's no turning back. It's a brave new world: I'm embracing it; you should too.

Give It Away Now

I think I'm going to adopt "Give It Away" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers as the official theme song for Sgt Fitness.

"Give it away, give it away, give it away now..."

One of the things that inspired me to give away a significant fraction of the revenue from Sgt Fitness was a twitter campaign for, believe it or not, a museum of computing history in the UK. They were trying to raise £1.5 million to build the museum, and their tactic was to appeal to the "twitter-verse" to see if they could get 1.5 million people from all over the world to donate £1 each. Their logic went something like: if certain unnamed (in)famous Hollywood personalities can garner twitter followings of a million or more fans in days with their drivel, then a worthy cause should surely be able to raise some money. A little viral fundraising action.

"I realize I don't want to be a miser"

The thought then occurred to me as I was putting the finishing touches on the first release of Sgt Fitness. What if I donate a dollar, or a little more, for each copy of Sgt Fitness I sell on the app store? And then, what if I spread the news far and wide that it's my goal to sell a million copies of the app, thereby donating a million dollars or more to charity? I know, let's make it even more interesting: let's let the folks who actually buy a copy vote on what charities to donate the money to, and put a deadline of the end of the year on it. Could we do it? Is this idea good enough to take off? Will the Sgt go viral?

"Come on everybody, time to deliver
...
Give it away, give it away, give it away now..."

So How Is This Sgt Fitness Charity Thing Gonna Work Anyway?

I haven't gotten much direct reaction yet (in front of my eyes) to my "Help me give one million dollars to charity!" tag line. I'm curious to know what people think: do they think I have a million dollars in the bank already, ready to give away now? (Hint: I don't...) Or that I'm delusional to think I could sell so many copies in such a short amount of time?

My wife's told a few people over the last month, handing out some of my Sgt Fitness promo cards, and she tells me some have asked "How are you going to give away a million dollars?"

The answer is really simple, actually. It's just a matter of a little discipline, some arithmetic, mixed in with a little publicity, a bit of luck and some dogged persistence.

Here's my pledge at its most basic: I will donate $1.25 to charity for each copy of Sgt Fitness that sells on the app store from now until the end of 2011.

To get from that pledge to $1M to charity is simply a matter of selling 800,000 copies of Sgt Fitness on the app store. Ambitious, perhaps, but certainly within the realm of the possible...

Now, Sgt Fitness only costs $4.99+tax for each person who buys a copy. A one time cost. There are literally now millions of iPhone users out there, each paying something like $30 a month each and every month just for their data plan. I really don't think it's a stretch to say that a very small fraction of them would: (a) be financially able to purchase a copy of Sgt Fitness, (b) actually find it useful in helping to stay fit, and (c) have that warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing they're helping to fund a worthy cause or three.

Everybody who buys a copy also gets a say in how the money will be donated. I have set up a voting capability on my web site so that people who visit the voting booth from inside the app may cast a vote (once per day, per device) for their favorite charity. I'll tally up the votes at the end of the year, and use those votes to decide how to divvy up the million dollars (or however much we're up to at that point...)

Obviously, I'm going to have to exercise some discretion and judgment with respect to tallying and evaluating the votes. For one thing, the charities will have to be real, recognized charitable organizations, and not just "Joe the Plumber's Belt Fund." For another, depending on the numbers, I'll probably end up splitting the vast majority of the money proportionally among the top three vote getters, with "substantial" donations going to the runners up. Perhaps even up to 10 to 20 or more organizations, if there are that many organizations receiving votes.

So: regardless of how many copies I actually sell this year, whatever funds are available based on $1.25 per copy, will be donated to charities in December 2011. I, for one, am hoping to meet and even exceed the million dollar goal.

Hope with me, won't you?

Stay fit and be generous!

(And spread the word to help me reach this goal!)

First Four Weeks, Made Public

A slow start? Maybe. Single digit weeks? Yup. I'm not sure I'll do this every month, but here's a recap of my first month selling Sgt Fitness on the app store.

Weekly sales numbers for the first four weeks: 5, 2, 1, 3
Monthly sales, May 2011: 11
Funds earmarked for charitable donation: $13.75
Votes for favorite charity: 2
Top voted charities: Hannah's Hope (1) and 3 Day for the Cure (1)

I am still confident that the future is bright for Sgt Fitness. Once this catches on, it's gonna take off. You'll have to wear shades. Stay tuned.

Sgt Fitness Promo Cards

I've printed up a few promotional cards for Sgt Fitness. I'll be handing them out to people sporting iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches wherever I go for the foreseeable future.

Let me know if you'd like a pile of 10 or 20 of them so you can hand some out, too. :-)

Stay fit, even while keeping your deskbound day job; get the Sgt Fitness iPhone app today.

Sketching is Good For You

Back to sketching again. On our recent vacation. Staying at Azul Sensatori south of Cancun, Mexico.

Here's how our Nikon Coolpix saw it:

And here's how Scratching-with-Pencil Dave saw it:

Be creative! It feels good!

From 0 to 1,000,000 in 8 months

Possible? Or am I crazy?

Could we possibly go from 0 to 1,000,000 users in a mere eight months?

So far, only a handful of people have purchased and downloaded Sgt Fitness since its release 2 weeks ago. Thank you. You know who you are. ("Thanks, Mom, Rob, my sisters and my cousins.")

But it will ramp up. I am trying to figure out strategies to get the word out. Writing and publishing the app was a piece of cake... now comes the hard work of continuously promoting it. I'd like to see everybody who buys Sgt Fitness "talk it up" and convince one other person each month moving forward to check it out. And by check it out, I mean, buy a copy, use it, and then convince one other person each month to check it out.

If we can somehow get that sort of a user base as the first 4,000 Sgt Fitness devotees, and we can get to that 4,000 level quickly, watch what happens:

Starting with 4,000 people, each convincing one other person to check it out each month, after 1 month, we'll have 8,000 people.

Then after 2 months: 16,000 people

After 3: 32,000

4: 64,000

5: 128,000

6: 256,000

7: 512,000

8: 1,024,000

Perfect. Eight months from 4,000 to over a million people once we get that rhythm established.

Now: how to establish such a rhythm?

Will you be one of my first 4,000 that helps launch us to the "million dollars to charity" level? I hope so.

If you are one of my early adopters: thank you. Help spread the word by leaving Sgt Fitness on all the time, and actually using it. When people see you doing pushups in the office, they're bound to ask "What's up?" When they do, tell them it's all Sgt Fitness's fault and they should do it, too.

Leave the sound turned on for your iPhone. With the sound on, people will hear your phone saying "Drop and give me 20!" and ask "What's up?" When they do, tell them...

Of course, to go from my first 16 users, to 4,000 may take just as long. It may take sixteen months rather than eight to hit the goal. I might not achieve the million dollar goal until 2012 at that rate... :-)

Starting with 16, which we will definitely have by the end of May, 2011, we can get to 4,000+ after 8 months by doubling each month:

1: 32

2: 64

3: 128

4: 256

5: 512

6: 1,000

7: 2,000

8: 4,000

Which, if it actually pans out that way, would put us at 4,000 users by end of January, 2012.

Or... we could get somebody famous to be our spokesperson, and accelerate the whole thing, by speaking to millions of people at once. Got any famous friends who'd be willing to have lunch with me?

 

Sgt Fitness: now available in the App Store

Help me give $1,000,000 to charity!

My latest creation for the iPhone, Sgt Fitness, the workout coach for the Twitter generation, is now available in the App Store.

It's an exercise reminder app that drills you daily with short workout sessions that you can do anywhere, anytime. Each one only takes a minute or two, but over the course of the day, these drills add up to way more activity than you normally get just sitting in front of your computer.

If you've been making excuses like "I don't have time for a workout" or "I can't afford a gym membership" or "there's no shower at work" or ... then Sgt Fitness is for you. Everybody's got time for a minute or two here and there, the app costs way less than a gym membership, and working out in micro-bursts of activity won't get you too sweaty for your officemates.

Sgt Fitness converts your iPhone into a pocket-sized dose of self-discipline to help you get and stay fit.

Watch out, though. Sgt Fitness has a voice! If the sound is on, sarge'll let you know it's time for a drill with a verbal "Drop and give me 20!" Or, if you're like me, and you hate it when your phone makes sounds in the middle of a conversation with somebody, you'll get the old "vvvmmmppp" vibration alert. Either way, it's time for some activity, private.

Got ADD? No worries: the sergeant tells you exactly what to do and when to do it. You don't even have to think about it. And by the time you get distracted while doing the drill, it's over anyway. On to the next shiny thing, and before you know it, another couple of hours and a few hundred web pages have gone by, and it's time for the next drill.

"David, this is fantastic!" you say. "I've been thinking I should get more fit, and Sgt Fitness will help me there. I get it. But how will this help you give a million dollars to charity?"

I'm glad you asked. But I'm not going to answer that question until the next blog post. For now, suffice it to say that I am seeking the first 4,000 users of Sgt Fitness, and that I hope to recruit them within a month. Friends and family, I implore you: help me sell Sgt Fitness to the whole wide world -- blog, tweet, linked-in and facebook it up for me.

Sgt Fitness is available exclusively for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. Buy a copy today, and then let all your friends know there's a new workout in town. No gym membership required.

Stay fit!

Follow @SgtFitnessApp on Twitter for news and updates about the app... And check out the Sgt Fitness web page.

Building an iPhone Web Page

Excellent article on building a web page for display on an iPhone or iPod Touch: http://www.engageinteractive.co.uk/blog/2008/06/19/tutorial-building-a-website-for-the-iphone/

Thanks, man. That was helpful.

(Hard to believe that page is almost 3 years old now...)

Bedroom Wall

My first "Brushes" sketch on an iPad. Very cool pencil on paper substitute... With a splash of red.

Five Fingers

We went running again this morning. Just over 5 miles looping around our neighborhood.

The Vibram Five Fingers shoes are awesome. They're "barefoot" shoes -- super thin, snug, you can feel the ground with much more tactile sensation in your feet than typical heavily padded running shoes. It's like your fingers on a touch screen, your feet in the Five Fingers on the road.

We got them last fall, and we do not wear anything else on our feet to run anymore... just the Five Fingers. If you are a runner, and you have not tried these shoes yet, then you must!! What's stopping you? And if you're not a runner because of knee, hip, back or other impact related issues... try again with the Five Fingers -- they really make a difference: you don't land as hard in these shoes, so you don't hurt yourself as much.

Before we got the shoes, we were lucky to be able to run for a half hour or so before knees or backs were complaining too much. Now we can run for more than an hour, no problem. Now we wish we had more time to run... Before we thought 5k, no problem, maybe 10k at the most. Now we're thinking maybe a half or even full marathon might be in the cards for us down the road.

By the way: "Yay for spring!" too... We were warm enough today when we started out for the first time in months. Literally, I think the last time we were this warm was last fall, maybe in October. Very nice to finally be past this winter.

Bling, bling, it's silver...

Another geek badge:



From their "about" page:
"Ohloh is a free public directory of open source software and people."

If my ranking is true, I'm in the top 1% of open source contributors in the world. Not sure I believe such a ranking...

Rebels with a Cause (and American Shame)

I was ashamed to be an American (yes, just like the Dixie Chicks said) when we invaded Iraq on a pretense without any just cause all those years ago. I lost what little respect I had for George W. Bush when he sat there and tried to convince us all it was the right thing to do just because it was what he wanted. Just cause? Just because.

Are we still over there? When are those boys coming home?

And now, once again, I'm ashamed to be an American because we have not yet invaded Libya. What kind of sick, f***ing twisted world is this? There are people over there who really are willing to die to make Libya free from a terrorist dictator crazy-a** madman and we're sitting back, doing NOTHING? WTF? Hello!?

Come on, America! Do something! I'm lookin' at you, Obama. Do the right thing.

Rebels with a cause are worth our help: as the original rebels with a cause, you'd think we'd understand.

Reading Time

This article:
Fact and folklore in software engineering

...led me to want to read this blog entry:
http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2008/03/27/productivity-variations-among-software-developers-and-teams-the-origin-of-quot-10x-quot.aspx

...and these two books:
Aramis, or the Love of Technology
Making Software

When am I supposed to find time for all this reading? When? Huh? Sheesh. Who filled up this internet thing with all this information anyway?

got flair?

Been using Stack Overflow again recently. Answering questions about iPhone/Objective-C stuff and CMake stuff.

This is what they're calling my Stack Overflow flair:

And here's an rss feed link of my recent answers:

recent answers feed

Cool, right? Or maybe I really am just a geek.

Beautiful Home For Sale 26 Mountainwood Drive

It's official: we're downsizing on the home front. I nailed a "For Sale by Owner" sign to our mailbox post this weekend, uploaded photos of our beautiful home, and listed our Glenville, NY house for sale on Zillow.

If you'd like to buy it, call us, or if you know somebody looking to buy a house in the Niskayuna school district, send them our way. We'd be happy to show it to you: just let us know when you'd like to stop by.

It's a 2,900 square foot craftsman style home, 4 bedroom / 2.5 bath, gorgeous stone fireplace (gas, double sided) right in the humungous kitchen, stainless steel appliances, other side of the fireplace is the spacious, yet cozy family room, custom tile and hardwood floors, office/den with French doors, generously large bedrooms, double headed shower in the master bath, gas fireplace in the master bedroom, 2 car garage, full basement.

It's on the cul-de-sac block of Mountainwood Drive, the neighborhood is wonderful, lots of families, diverse population, friendly people.

Make us an offer! You'll love it here.

Links:

Photos on PicasaWeb

The listing on www.zillow.com

Contact:

David Cole

DLRdave@aol.com

518-429-8849

Cyclist's Creed

I am a cyclist and this is my creed:

Shift up when you can
Shift down if you must
And pedal always!

Go Mom!

My Mom is going to walk 60 miles this Friday, Saturday and Sunday! 20 miles each day. She's been training for months now. And she's been raising money, too. It's all for a good cause -- the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. Net proceeds from the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure are invested in breast cancer research and community programs.

Her fundraising goal was $5,000. She started at $0 last November or so. Tonight when I checked her thermometer, she was up to $5,777!! Woo-hoo! I love it when a goal is massively exceeded: 115+% - awesome.

See what she has to say about it herself in her posts here:

http://www.the3day.org/GoTo/JaneClaus

And while you're there, make a donation. Do it in honor of somebody you know who is fighting cancer. Or in memory of a loved one you've lost.

Don't worry if you run across this later: she'll still be fundraising after the event is over. I think she told me donations could still be made on that web page until the end of the calendar year.

Go Mom!

We'll be there to cheer you on over the finish line on Sunday.

Love ya,

David and Robin

Busy, busy, busy

June 30. Crazy. I haven't even been golfing yet this year.

I've been remiss posting anything to the old blog because I'm working too hard lately...

I've had several fleeting thoughts, and some not even so fleeting, that deserve writing down. Maybe I'll get them organized and coherent enough to put here... and maybe not. Time will tell.

So, today, I take the time to post this, so that I have at least *one* post in the June archives.

Why am I working so hard? Just to pay the bills. Looking forward to the next vacation already that's for sure.

Freedom on Memory-al Day

Memorial Day. Time to remember stuff. Most importantly, that people who have gone before us sacrificed their lives so that we can enjoy the lives we have today. They gave freely, so that we may continue to have the opportunity to give.

I remember this: when I was a kid, there was a saying. I don't know if I heard it from my parents, or grandparents, or teachers, or if I read it somewhere ... most likely, I'm thinking it was just the common sentiment of the time. And it makes me sad that I haven't heard anybody saying it lately. It went like this: "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." People who say that are the people that I want to see defending this great country.

America is still about freedom, people. Don't let the TSA fool you. It's not about security or privilege -- it's about being able to believe, say and do whatever the heck you want and not have anybody be able to do squat about it. It's about being the underdog, and winning anyway. It's about coming from nothing, and making something of yourself. It's about viewing every obstacle placed in your path as a growth opportunity, and growing.

I am thankful that we still have freedom. Even if most of my countrymen have forgotten that we do.

Share Your Scientific Results

Hey Scientists! The world wide web was invented so you could share your results with the wide world. It's near on 20 years old now. Maybe you should start sharing?

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090909/full/461160a.html

So Long, Tundra Dog

Mocha D., Oct. 1996 - May 1, 2010

From Reflections

You were the best dog ever. I'm gonna miss ya, buddy.

Low Carbs or Low Fat?

Low Carbs or Low Fat?

That's still the question.

Recently, I went to see the doctor, just to make sure that objective outside observers agree that I'm in very good health. They do: both my doctor and her medical student intern agree that I'm in very good health. But... they took a blood sample, and they measured stuff in it, and they said: "you have borderline high cholesterol... you should try a low fat diet and exercise to see if you can lower it..."

So I am. Bleh.

And I'm being very strict with myself about not eating stuff that's on "the bad list." No cheese, no egg yolks, no butter, no mayo, no sausage, no bacon, no burgers. Read the labels. Check the fat content per serving. Is it saturated? Believe me, I hate saying no. And this is a pain. But I am determined about this, at least from now until late June or early July. I will see if the low fat diet actually makes a difference in my cholesterol measurement. I've survived one month like this, another two or three is do-able.

In the meantime, I'm trying to sort through all the data that's out there to see if diet and exercise really can make a difference for people. Apparently, for some, it can, and for others, not so much. Hence, my own self-depriving experiment.

Anything that crosses my path that's related to cholesterol, fat, diet and exercise are catching my eye, too. So when a friend on Twitter pointed out a recent Scientific American article, I was intrigued. This tweet grabbed my attention: "More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart" http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=carbs-against-cardio -- good article (thanks, Eric Butler...)

But then, even better than that article, was an older (2002) New York Times Magazine article that was mentioned in a reader's comment on the Scientific American article. This article is very in-depth, representing a multitude of perspectives. It's very strange to say nowadays, but it actually felt like I was reading a fair and balanced article that simply presented the reader with the facts, leaving the reader to draw his own conclusions. I was astounded. You should read it too: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=1

However, both of these articles call into question whether or not aiming for a low cholesterol measurement is even something one should strive for. And they certainly call into question what's the best dieting method to achieve it.

I firmly believe that the answer to most of America's obesity problems is simply "eat less food." I really don't think it matters much what you eat, as long as what you eat is satisfying for you. If you're basically happy with your food and eating experiences, then you will find it's easier to "eat less food" than if you're not. Sort of makes sense, doesn't it? Maybe just a reasonable, balanced diet is all any of us need in the end. Forget about the content except for this: make sure you're eating quality food, fresh as possible, and eat just enough of it, not more than you need.

So ... we'll see. I'll post an update later with my results and more thoughts.

Hello, April 13th: Back on the Saddle

Hello, tentative neighborhood SUV driver, afraid that I may veer in front of him before he turns the very same corner I'm aiming for... step on the gas already, this is supposed to be cardio!

Hello, line of cars waiting to pass through the one-lane railroad underpass.

Hello, smell of cigarette smoke wafting from cars waiting at traffic lights (although I'd rather that you hadn't said hello to me first).

Hello, field. Weren't there trees or brush here before?

Hello, construction site of new "senior apartment complex."

Hello, goose from Canada floating on the pond.

Hello, red-winged blackbird.

Hello, overpopulation of Shenendehowa school buses at one intersection.

Hello, hill.

Whoosh! Downhill's always more fun.

Boring flat part, not much to say hello to here.

Hello, northway traffic.

Hello, S curves: last burst of cardio for now.

Hello, parking lot.

"Hey Ken! How ya doin'?"

Sigh. Hello, work place.


Stay healthy out there!
- Cycler Dave

"Fun" With Batch Files

Here's how to compute the root Program Files directory of the Visual Studio 2008 installation from the VS90COMNTOOLS environment variable... (for example...) Obviously: same technique may apply to other env vars and other programs.

The Line of Code
In a batch file:
for /f "usebackq delims=" %%d in (`echo "%VS90COMNTOOLS%\..\.."`) do set VS_ROOT_DIR=%%~fd

Directly in a command prompt:
for /f "usebackq delims=" %d in (`echo "%VS90COMNTOOLS%\..\.."`) do set VS_ROOT_DIR=%~fd

The only difference between the two is the doubling up of the "%%d" percents when referencing for loop variables. Don't ask why, just learn: that's the way it is. Actually, if you want to ask why and then go figure out the answer... that would be a good blog post for you to write.

The Dissection
On my machine, the command...
echo "%VS90COMNTOOLS%\..\.."

...produces:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\\..\.."

Nice. Accurate and all, but look at all the ugliness we've produced. Doubled up backslashes, enclosing double quotes, ..s, not to mention the length.

So. That fancy "for /f" line. Let's clean up that output to remove the ugliness.

Using "for /f" with the "usebackq" option allows you to put a command inside backticks, as in `echo something`, and capture the output of that command in the for loop variable. In this dead simple example, the for loop would iterate exactly once, and the value "something" would be in the loop variable.

Using the "delims=" option allows you to split the output by delimiter characters. When you say "delims=" with the equal sign right up against the closing double quote, that means: no delimiter characters, give me the full output all at once. Much different result than "delims= " with a space in between... that one loops over the output separating by space characters, giving multiple for loop iterations based on how many spaces are in the output. You could also say "delims=\" to split at the path separator character, or "delims= \/:" to split at common date time separators.

Now that usebackq and delims are well understood, or at least explained, how does that help us get rid of the ugliness? Well... it's mostly the magical "%~fd" at the very end of our friendly line of code that makes the universe beautiful again. The usebackq/delims pain we went through was really just a way to get the string we want into a for loop variable so we can take advantage of for loop variable expansion modifiers.

for /f "usebackq delims=" %d in (`echo "%VS90COMNTOOLS%\..\.."`) do set VS_ROOT_DIR=%~fd

The "%~fd" says this: give me the value of the loop variable %d, and while you're at it, remove any enclosing double quotes (~), and resolve it to a full path, assuming the variable represents a file or directory name (f).

The net effect of all this is that our line of code...
for /f "usebackq delims=" %d in (`echo "%VS90COMNTOOLS%\..\.."`) do set VS_ROOT_DIR=%~fd

Finally, in the end, simply evaluates to the line of code we wanted to write in the first place, but without hard coding a machine specific path name in a batch file:
set VS_ROOT_DIR=C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0

Type "help for" in a Windows command prompt for more of the gory, sickening details regarding loop variable expansion.

And help keep the universe beautiful. Even if you still have to write batch files once in a while.

Kickbox: The Workout Playlist

OK... so I'm not sure why people are asking for this sort of thing on Facebook lately, but remember... you asked for it. Lara, cousin Matt, talking to ya both. (I'd like to take credit for this, but really it all goes to my sweetie, Robin Holly. She put this list together back when she was teaching a kickboxing class in our Seattle area Tae Kwon Do dojang.)

Kickbox: The Workout Playlist
=============================

• Mr. Bartender (It's So Easy), Sugar Ray
• Look At You, Hanson
• It's My Life, Bon Jovi
• Everyday, Bon Jovi
• Sk8er Boi, Avril Lavigne
• Two Hearts Beat As One, U2
• You Really Got Me, Van Halen
• Walk This Way, Aerosmith
• Satellite, P.O.D.
• Bounce, Bon Jovi
• Pour Some Sugar On Me, Def Leppard
• Hey Baby, No Doubt
• Elevation, U2
• Objection Tango, Shakira
• Send Your Love, Sting

And don't forget to cool down...
=============================

• Little Wing, Sting
• Valparaiso, Sting

Whew! This was gonna be the longest Facebook post ever... but then Facebook told me it was too long. I never knew there was a 420 character limit to those suckers.

:-)

Must Have Windows Software

Whenever I get a new computer running Windows, like I am today at work, the first thing I download and install on it is Firefox. Then, using Firefox, I have to download and install the following shet of shtuff to make it programmer friendly. This is my way of avoiding being ripped to shreds by the open source sharks for actually having paid money for a computer running Windows... Actually, to avoid that completely, I'd have to install emacs or gvim, too. But I won't do that until somebody else has to use the computer and looks like he's floundering without it.

Must haves:

• Process Explorer
• notepad++
• PuTTY
• VNC
• CMake
• TortoiseCVS, including CVSNT command line client
• TortoiseSVN
• SVN command line client, usually the CollabNet one
• Git, the msys one

And then, the hard core development tool:

• Microsoft Visual Studio, whatever version(s) necessary to do my job...
  

And then, as necessary, but only as necessary:

• xampp, for a localhost web server
  
• NSIS, the installer builder
• doxygen
• graphviz
  
• ActiveState Python
• ActiveState Perl
• ActiveState Tcl
  
• MagicDisc, or similar ISO image mounting utility

Details:

notepad++ -- like notepad, but seriously OD'd on steroids: all kinds of built-in language syntax highlighting

VNC -- if I'm lucky, one that includes a free server so I can access the Windows box from other computers... if not, then at least RealVNC client so I can access other machines

Anybody out there have any other "must haves" that belong on a Windows box?

Sick of these C# warnings? Here's how to eliminate them...

8>warning CS1668: Invalid search path 'c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\atlmfc\lib\i386' specified in 'LIB environment variable' -- 'The system cannot find the path specified. '

8>warning CS1668: Invalid search path 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\lib' specified in 'LIB environment variable' -- 'The system cannot find the path specified. '

The Visual Studio installer does a mysterious thing here.

The entries found at "Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > VC++ Directories" point to some non-existing directories. But the entries are used to populate the LIB environment variable when building projects inside the IDE. So... if you build a C# project in the IDE, you get this warning about invalid search paths in the LIB environment variable.

Now, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt: maybe some installations of Visual Studio *do* produce these directories. However, this warning has been occurring all through the VS 2005 and 2008 series and I have always encountered it on every machine I've ever built a C# project on. Of course, there's one thing unusual about the way I typically build C# code that I forgot to mention: I usually build C# code with custom commands that drive the C# compiler directly from the build context of a C++ project. So I understand if Microsoft doesn't have a test that tries this scenario out. "Why would anybody do that, anyway?" :-)

The fact remains: those settings cause these warnings, and the installer has never installed those directories for me. I'm calling it a bug.

The way to get rid of this warning is to edit the entries to remove the ones that point to non-existent directories. The trick is figuring out which ones they are.

This one: "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\atlmfc\lib\i386" comes from the entry for "Win32" / "Library files":

$(VCInstallDir)atlmfc\lib\i386

VCInstallDir evaluates to "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\"

This one: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\lib" comes from the entry for "Win32" / "Library files":

$(VSInstallDir)lib

VSInstallDir evaluates to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\"

Click on each of those in the Tools > Options dialog and delete them.

Voila. Warning gone.

Using git on your Mac

Good hint:

http://antoniolorusso.com/2009/03/09/ignore-ds_store-forever-in-git/

Thanks, Italian dude.

Useful iPhone coding links

Just so's I don't forget and lose track... A couple of useful articles on UITableView and data entry screens in iPhone apps:

http://iphoneincubator.com/blog/windows-views/how-to-create-a-data-entry-screen

http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/01/multiple-row-selection-and-editing-in.html

I love the "Cocoa with Love." guy... I'd like to meet him someday...

The iPad will be another game changer... and here's why

Changing the game? Will the iPad really change anything? Did anybody really think different here?

Yes. It will. And they did.

The simple facts are:

• it weighs 1.5 pounds
• it's about half an inch thick
• its battery lasts 10 hours
• it's bigger than your phone
• it's full color
• it has a multitouch screen
• it's a multi-function device

Let's put these facts into perspective, into terms we can relate to.

It weighs 1.5 pounds. That's less than two pints of Guinness. That's less than my dinner weighed last Friday at Red Robin. It's an order of magnitude less than your average backpack, purse or briefcase. You have to admit: carrying it around is going to be easier than carrying around a laptop.

It's about half an inch thick. It's thinner than most of the books on your bookshelf. It's a little thicker than your laptop's screen, but not quite as thick as your laptop's base. It's approximately the size of a regular pad of paper.

Its battery lasts 10 hours. Ten hours. Ten. Hours. Of real, actually using it time. That's long enough to watch the entire Lord of the Rings movie trilogy on a single charge. One charge will last longer than your longest domestic flight ever. Even most international and overseas flights. No fair counting time stuck in airports when flights are cancelled. You can plug in when that happens...

It's bigger than your phone. Which means you'll be able to see the movies you watch on it without a magnifying glass, or holding it up just a foot in front of your face. Reading web pages in the browser, facebook, twitter, email, reading books, checking out photos, viewing map details, playing games: all are bound to be nicer on a larger screen.

It's full color. Obviously. Why anybody would make a black and white or even gray scale device these days is beyond me. I just don't get it. Even granted that you're trying to emulate a book or a newspaper... I still don't get it. Books and newspapers have bits of color in them, especially books with charts and figures and photos. The Kindle app on my iPhone has color: the covers are full color photos and the chapter headings are blue underlined hyperlinks. I wonder what those things look like on the real Kindle...

It has a multitouch screen. Using your fingers on a touch screen is a way better interaction experience than a mouse, keyboard, pen or set of mechanical buttons ever dreamed of. If you haven't tried a good multitouch device yet with your own fingers, you gotta try one. It's just really cool. The tactile sensation of controlling stuff with your fingertips rocks.

It's not "far superior" -- it's way better. What's the difference? "Way better" is what regular people say. And that's where the iPad will find an audience. Regular people around the globe will flock to the iPad, maybe even faster than they did to the iPhone. This is not just for geeks. It's not even for geeks. It's for everybody.

It's a multi-function device. It does everything regular people need a computer to do. It surfs the web, plays music, movies and games, reads books, shows you photos and maps, helps you organize your life, stay in touch, share with friends and family. And more.

Yet some people are saying it won't be successful. Why would anybody pay such a high price for it?

Um. Because it's a better watching-movies-on-airplanes device? Because it has a battery that lasts all day? Because it's not really that much more money than a digital picture frame or a Kindle, but it does a bazillion things more?

And actually, it's extremely price competitive with lots of computers from lots of manufacturers. High price? With the exception of my iPhone, graciously subsidized by AT&T, the iPad is way cheaper than any other computer I have ever purchased. Ever. Manufacturers who have counted on Apple keeping their computer prices high forever have got to be a bit apprehensive about what this means for them. Their competitive landscape just got a whole ecological makeover with Apple selling portable, capable stuff in the $500 to $800 range.

I'm not a big one for making predictions, but this time I'm going out on a limb. I foresee all of the following happening...

The iPad is going to be a huge success. It will transform the entire worldwide market for computing devices. There will be several copycats in the months and years following its introduction. Some computer makers will go out of business because their sales will decline sharply after the iPad comes out and they won't be able to adapt quickly enough.

High school and college kids will be carrying these around instead of the 30# backpack full of textbooks. People will be watching movies on them on airplanes instead of on their tiny little phone screens or their "this-laptop-doesn't-quite-fit-on-my-lap-when-I'm-on-an-airplane" laptop screens. People who do presentations all the time will abandon Microsoft PowerPoint and start using Keynote on an iPad.

The iPad is the Apple computer for the people who have until now been thinking that Apple computers are just a tad too pricey. Now that they're just as cheap as any other computers, people will flock. Stampede even.

The cool factor doesn't hurt either.

You'll see. Mark my words. :-)

Earthquake in Haiti: How Did You React?

How did seeing scenes from Haiti after the earthquake earlier this month make you feel? Sad, dismayed, horrified, afraid? Thankful? Compassionate? Those scenes on the television made me feel all of those feelings and more.

I mean, can you imagine what it must have been like to live there on that day? The earth shakes for a few minutes and everywhere around you, buildings collapse into complete rubble. What would you do? How would you deal with that?

I thought it was a great idea to try to reach out to those people with a helping hand, an absolutely great idea. I was happy to see much of the world rally around them and send food, water, medical supplies, doctors and other volunteers to help out. I was proud: I'm married to a woman who heard that you could text the word "Haiti" to 90999 and thereby donate $10 to the Red Cross to help out... and the same day she heard it, she texted it.

But then.

Then I heard talk on the radio one day of a certain "evangelist" (sorry, but I won't even repeat his name here, I don't think he deserves the publicity: you know who he is, he knows who he is, and certainly God knows who he is, although perhaps reluctantly...) -- Anywho, he actually had the gall to claim that this earthquake was some sort of divine retribution or judgment on the people of Haiti for actions that their ancestors took more than 200 years ago. Really? Come on. I mean... Really?

Then my wife showed me a posting from one of her facebook "friends" and its follow-on commentary and I just could not believe that what I was reading was actually on that little iPhone screen. They were actually complaining that we Americans were spending too much money and help and airtime on the people of Haiti... and how dare we extend that kind of support when we don't even "take care of our own" here in America. Really? Come on. I mean... Really?

People are people, people. People in need deserve our help. People trapped under collapsed buildings deserve to be rescued. We are the richest country on the face of the Earth and we have plenty to go around. Yes, I understand that there are people right here in this very country, state, county and town who have problems, who are sick, who are hurting, who are depressed... and, I'm sorry, but we do take care of "our own" as best we can. That doesn't mean we should shun others who are in desperate need. And if you think we should, then you should be ashamed of yourself.

If you were buried in some rubble, would you want your neighbor to come looking for you? Or just sit there and complain: "Ohhhh.... why do they have to show this stuff on TV tonight? Why are they pre-empting my (insert lame TV show name here) to show this crap?"

Grow up, people. This is America. You're an adult. Act like one.

101 iPhotos

I am waiting for my first ever iPhoto calendar made from 101 of our own photos to arrive... Should be cool!

Here's how you can do it too:

• Open up iPhoto on your Mac
• Create a new album
• Put all the pictures you want on the calendar into this new album
• Select the album (click on it) so you can see just the photos you've gathered
• Click the "Calendar" button on the bottom toolbar in the middle
• Choose one of the styles in the list that pops up and click "Choose"
• Choose from various calendar-y settings in the next dialog and click "OK"
• Click "Autoflow" to let iPhoto place the pictures for you
• Or, drag and drop photos from list view to calendar (or vice versa) to add or remove them
• Drag and drop photos from one place to another on the calendar to swap them around
• You can even drop photos onto specific days to use a few more photos
• When you're done fiddling with it...
• Click "Buy Calendar" and pay $25-$30 for your custom calendar to be delivered straight to you

You need around 50 or so photos in the album if you are going to use the "Autoflow" button to let iPhoto choose/place the pictures for you. Using Autoflow on a typical 12 month calendar, it seems to consistently use the first 47 photos. You need more if you want to put different photos onto individual dates, or if you change the default layout of some months to use more photos.

I added a bunch more photos and changed most of the months to use the smaller print area 7-photo layout because most of my photos are from my old 3 Megapixel camera. iPhoto will warn you with a little yellow triangle "!" if the photos are going to print with "too low" a resolution. I did a few of those anyway, hoping that they don't look too chunky when we see the final print job.

All of these instructions are valid with iPhoto '08, version 7.1.5 (378) - I will wager that they are still valid with iPhoto '09, too, but I haven't looked at that version yet. If you're using an older version, I'm not sure if this works or not. I do not know what version of iPhoto introduced these books and calendars that you can buy... It might be just '08 and later.

I put just my immediate family's birthdays onto the calendar and a little photo of each of us on the day just before our birthdays. I would have done that for all my extended family, too, but I wanted to get the calendar done before the year was up... :-)

I also just wanted to put a bunch more photos on than there was room for, so I put 'em on those useless dimmed out squares that represent the days of the previous and next months, too.

In the end, I paid $29 and change for ours to be shipped express to us so we'd have it by early next week. With standard shipping, it would have been $26.xx. I figured since we're a week into January already, it was worth an extra three bucks.

Try it yourself... after it arrives, you'll be able to enjoy it all year long.

Have fun!

xampp on Vista: Problem Solved

So xampp is cool. When it works. It's everything you need all rolled into an easy-to-install package to turn your computer into a web server. (This is crucial if you are a web developer and are trying to build/debug a web site. You must have one of the computers that is in the same room with you acting as a web server...)

But here's the problem: there's so much junk installed on computers these days that it is quite common to get "port conflicts" with some other piece of installed software. When you try to enable the Apache web server or the MySQL database server that are installed with xampp, sometimes they just won't start up. They seem like they're trying to, but then... nothing.

I googled it. Turn off skype, they say. I don't have Skype, can't be that.

Google again. Turn off the anti-virus. Nope. Not that.

Google again. Turn off World Wide Web Publishing Service. Nope. Not there. Not even listed as a service on my Vista laptop.

For the life of me, I could not see what was opening port 80. I use Process Explorer all the time on Windows. But there are so many things running on my Vista laptop, it would have taken me forever to find port 80 looking through things one at a time. I finally traced it down to a process called "System:4" (process ID 4, that is) by using a tool called Tcpview, from the same very cool cat that keeps Process Explorer in tip top shape. Thanks, Mark.

Finally... google led me to this post saying that I should also turn off "SQL Server Reporting Services (MSSQLServer)". Additionally, I turned off everything else SQL Server related in the services control panel. I really probably don't need them for anything that I actually use. They were "accidentally" installed/activated as a side effect of installing some Visual Studio or SDK, I'm sure...

Whew. Hopefully this helps somebody out. Maybe save you the handful of hours I just donated to the bit bucket.

One more comment: I really do not understand why Skype, WWW Publishing, SQL Reporting, or any of these other things should be grabbing onto port 80. What the heck? Port 80's for a web server. Go away unless you're a web server! Leave me alone so when I want to run a web server, it just works like it's supposed to. Or at least show me something when I go to http://localhost in my browser.

But hey, I'm done ranting. Apache and MySQL are running now. I can run CDash on my Vista laptop again and....

Life is Good (really, it is.... :-)
Dave

Last Day of July

Too busy lately. Kids about to start college. Have we started summer yet? It's been a strange month. But oddly enough, we've been relaxed and happy despite the busy-ness. And there's time to squeeze in a few rounds of golf now and again.

But, hey: we finally got iPhones. And all my music and pictures fit in 20G. I am carrying them all in my pocket, at least for now. :-)

Toll Free Bridging

http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/archives/2006/09/09/bridge/ -- way cool article about "toll free bridging" -- the mechanism used to make CFString look like NSString on Mac OSX.... -- thanks to Rob Fahrni for the pointer

Reading List

Also on the must read list: anything by Seth Godin. Purple Cow. Permission Marketing. Not that I've read them yet, but they are on the must read list. So someday.

iPhone App Contest

Contest to develop an iPhone/iPod app for middle school math learning:

http://www.lwbva.org/applications.cfm

Enter by June 19th...

Vacation Photos

Last September, we took an awesome vacation in the beautiful land of Scotland. Then, later on, I finally went through all the photos and uploaded the best of them to a web album... For those of you we've talked to recently and promised to send you a link to them, here they are:

http://picasaweb.google.com/dlrdave/BestOfScotland

Enjoy!

Frackle: It's Here!

It's here!

Frackle: The simplest fractal explorer on the planet. Now available as Frackle, in the iTunes app store. (Click this link directly, which launches iTunes, or search for Frackle by DLR softWare LLC in the app store...)

Frackle documentation online here:
http://www.dlrsoftware.com/Frackle/iPhone

Check it out. Buy it. Put it on your iPhone or your iPod Touch.

Let me know how you like it. Or if you have a brilliant idea to improve Frackle.

I'm thinking maybe a blog entry a week featuring a cool fractal image straight from Frackle would be a neat way to show it off... Maybe I'll do that.


Take it easy,
David

Get a Job

So I read this book in the fall of 2008. "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss. You may want to read it, you may not. It'll only take a few hours at most. You might believe some of what he says, you might be skeptical. The concept is simple: stop spending so much time making a living and create something that produces income for you without as much effort as a "real job." If you could do that, you could spend your time pursuing what you want to pursue, and forget about going to work all the time. Stop making a living and make a life instead...

He recommends going on an information diet: consume less of the daily internet headlines, blogs, books, magazines, newspapers, tv, radio... And do stuff instead. Be more productive. Make more time for yourself by taking charge of your day each and every day. Ignore the unimportant.

But then he has four must read "other book" recommendations near the end of his book. Someday I'm going to read all of these, too:

• The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz


• How to Make Millions with Your Ideas by Dan S. Kennedy


• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber


• Vagabonding by Rolf Potts

(Big long subtitles of all five of these books omitted in all cases to save me time typing this...)

Maybe I'll come back later and put in links to these books on amazon. Or maybe I won't.


;-)
David

Mono .NET and Interop

Excellent article on interop and .NET libraries on the mono web site:

http://www.mono-project.com/Interop_with_Native_Libraries

Coming soon...

Frackle: The simplest fractal explorer on the planet. For iPhone.

Documentation is online now:


        http://www.dlrsoftware.com

        


(which, for now, immediately redirects to http://www.dlrsoftware.com/Frackle and then to http://www.dlrsoftware.com/Frackle/iPhone)

Deep in the text of this posting is how to find the file "com.apple.dock.iconcache" using Spotlight on a Mac:

http://weblog.commandlinejunkie.com/articles/2008/12/20/changing-os-x-finder-icon-in-the-dock

Whew! Not sure why that file has to be quite so hidden, but there you go.

To framework or not?

Good (but long) article from a guy who seems to know what he's talking about...
http://www.wilshipley.com/blog/2005/11/frameworks-are-teh-suck-err.html

So the weekend after my last post, Nate and I went to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

It's a very cool place... at least, Nate and I thought so. The Beatles, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Aerosmith, U2, The Police... and on and on. If you're a rock and roll fan, there is something here that will thrill you or inspire you.

Cleveland is actually a very clean city, and for some reason, much nicer than I expected. The cashier dude at the Rock Hall store recommended eating dinner at a place up the street called Fat Fish Blue, and boy was it good. All kinds of southern style stuff way up north here on the shore of Lake Erie.

Check 'em out next time you're in Cleveland...


View Larger Map

So... we quietly launched a new product yesterday from Kitware Headquarters in Clifton Park, NY. It's called "ActiViz .NET" and it lets C# and VB. NET developers simply *use* VTK, the Visualization Toolkit, without all the hassle of downloading it, building it, having to understand CMake and C++, figuring out how that .NET interop stuff works ... all just to get a simple 3D graphic of your complicated scientific data up on the screen.

Suddenly it's easy again.

Check it out:
http://www.kitware.com/ActiViz


Unleash the Power of VTK on the .NET Framework!
Limitless functionality. Infinite possibilities.


Build something cool with it and send me a screenshot.

Cheers!

All right, so maybe some of my family members do not see photos included in emails... May as well just write it / post photos here because it is simply more reliable. Freakin' computers! Who writes the software for this stuff anyhow? It goes something like this:

The Trim: Before & After (aka "I was an East Coast Fahrni up until last Saturday")

Perhaps you've heard the rumor, perhaps not. I've got the photos to verify it, though... :-)



Me and five other ponytail donators are making a wig for some woman who's lost her hair to cancer treatments... via the Pantene Beautiful Lengths program.

So now I'm the coolest I've ever been.

Hairless Summer, dead ahead!

Wow. Yet another chain of "accidental" connectedness. I read an article on video game complexity just now on a whim, enjoyed it, found it interesting and then followed a link to the author's blog, where the most recent two articles also turned out to be extremely interesting... If you're a geek like me, or are interested in why humans make the choices they make, or have any musical inklings at all, check these out:

The Science of Interrogation

Musicians suppress self-monitoring functions of the brain while improvising...

A little bit of improv might be just the thing each of us needs to reset for another round in the real world.

This one is just a draft of stuff to write about eventually:

- no fault job loss? big deal, just get a new job
- your fault? do something to change yourself, learn new behavior, and still: get a new job

- my experience when my company went out of business and got acquired...

Funny the way the universe is put together...

I have been thinking for weeks now that I have to go read what Mr. Fahrni's been up to lately. I don't think I've read his blog in a year. (Shame on me. He's far too prolific to ignore for that long...)

So I go to read his blog for the day, and it happens to be Thursday, a.k.a. "movie line of the week" day, and it's a really easy line. And I'm there like minutes after he's published it. So I send in my guess, and then I keep reading.

Lo and behold, he was actually writing about me (what!!??) and folks we worked with back in the Visio days. Thanks for the kudos, Rob -- same back atcha -- Visio would not be what it is today without the Fahrni influence. And then, to top it off, I actually won the movie line. It's been a while, but it's always cool to win it without having to google. :-)

On another note, I now have 100 connections via my presence on the LinkedIn website. Curiously, I do not seem to know anybody whose last name begins with any of the letters QUVXY. Send me a note if you're not already LinkedIn, especially if you are one of these QUVXY types: I'd be happy to invite you. It's a great way to stay in touch with folks from previous jobs, schools, lives.


Stay tuned!!

Dad's Advice

Back on April 17, my Dad's birthday, I sent email to my brother and sisters, asking them what was the best advice Dad ever gave them? I told them I would put it all together and post it on my blog as a sort of birthday present for Dad. Well, of course, it took a couple weeks to hear back from everybody..., then it was on the back burner for a bit..., then the timing didn't seem quite right when Grandma died in late May..., then I didn't have time to get it done by Father's day... on and on and here we are in late August and Dad's in the hospital from a heart attack and none of us quite knows what to expect.

We all love you, Dad and are rooting for you to pull through this and hang out with us a while longer. I want you to know that I love you and I appreciate your passion, your smile, your laughter, your music and your love. For me, the good outweighs the bad in the end, and I'm glad you are my Dad.

And now, here's what your kids have to say:

The best advice Dad ever gave me was...

When the side of the beer can says not to operate machinery, that includes snowblowers.

When it gets cold in the house, put a sweater on.

When there's not much to eat in the house, peanut butter and onion sandwiches taste like filet mignon.

Plaid flannel and wool socks are good any season.

It's always noon somewhere.

Unconditional love.

Leave the campsite (and the world) in better condition than you found it.

Don't pee into the wind.

Don't talk with your mouth full. (This story is famous, I think Dad tells and retells it...)

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose...

...and:

I know it's not advice, but teaching me to fish was probably the best thing that Dad has given me. (That, and a roof over my head for the first 22 years of my life!) Actually, almost anything outdoors that I like to do I can thank the old man for. I appreciate the fact he took the time to teach me to enjoy nature instead of plopping me in front of a television w/ an Atari joystick! Love ya pop!

We all love you, Dad. Get better, ok?

Word for the week: parhelion (also known as a sun dog). The photo on the left is not one, but it is a "sun pillar" or "sun column." Robin and I saw it this morning on our walk. I took the picture from our driveway. I don't remember ever even hearing of this phenomenon until this past year. And now this is the second one that I've seen in the last month in real life... Just one of those things.

Seeing that shaft of light reminded me of parhelion, which I looked up last year after getting the Rosanne Raneri CD of the same name. Rosanne is a friend of ours from high school and she's a fabulous musician who plays various gigs around the Albany area. In fact you can see her at Sage college this Thursday for a live lunch!

Speaking of live music, come out on Saturday night to Northern Lights in Clifton Park to hear HourGlass and the fretboard frenetics of another musician friend, Scott Cunningham. They're a local rock band just starting out and they play/sing some pretty cool original stuff. Check them out...

Tuesday seems to be the day of the week for blogging. Work through the weekend a few times... suddenly Tuesday is the new Saturday! Ack!

Take it easy...

Discipline. Definition #2, please... Word for the day. If I had as much of it as I wanted, I would have posted this on Saturday... :-)

I admire my sweetie, who is disciplined and faithful, exercising and walking the dogs before work every day. You go, girl! I'm trying to be disciplined enough myself to get to work early every day. Log those hours even when I have to leave early to help out at home.

The ice storm presented us with several power related challenges yesterday. We drove through the dark neighborhood to the lights on the other side of the hill and brought home some Chinese food to eat by candlelight... But as we were sitting down to dig in, the lights came back on! Fortune: "Choose vegetable delight and you will be rewarded."

Peace out, dogs.

Happy Birthday, Rachel!! May your artwork always be beautiful...

First off, Happy New Year! Hola 2007, hasta ayer 2006.

And now... time for some reflection. I renamed this blog in preparation for philosophical ramblings like this one. Usually my brain rambles like this internally while I'm driving to work, washing my hair in the shower or trying to fall asleep at night.

Belief. It's a fundamental force in the universe. I'm thinking it's right up there with gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Us human beings are strange and wonderful creatures. Our beliefs can cause us to act or to avoid acting. And our actions affect those around us and the universe we live in.

The weird thing is that our beliefs aren't necessarily based on reality. By reality, I mean the things that are objectively true for everybody regardless of any one person's beliefs. We develop our beliefs over time based on things that happen to us, on things that other people say or do, on things that we think, on our intuition, on our emotions, on our desires. And sometimes we even modify our beliefs.

We choose to believe the things that we do. That's why some people can live in denial about things that are clearly true. One can choose not to believe something even though it is apparently objectively true. One can also believe complete bunk that's not even close to true.

If I believe something passionately, then it's true for me. If you believe something passionately, then it's true for you. It doesn't matter if the things we believe are objectively true or not, or if others believe them. We act based on our beliefs. If you believe in something, you'll fight for it. You might even be willing to die fighting for it. But if you don't believe in something... forget about it.

Belief can trigger a positive feedback cycle that actually causes the thing believed in to become more true... do you believe that? I believe that 2007 is going to be a good year for me and my family. Simply because I have that belief, it is now more likely to become reality for us compared to if I did not have that belief. This is some powerful stuff. It's what faith is based on. Also reminds me of one of the best DVDs we watched back in 2005: What the Bleep do we Know? Get it from Netflix. Definitely worthwhile.

I think about freedom and belief a lot lately. Stories about the war in Iraq make me think along these lines. Seems like some folks in positions of power might be believing some things that aren't necessarily based on objective reality... Not to name any names, but I bet reading that last sentence brought a couple of names into your mind.

Listening to the new John Mayer song Belief, from his latest album, Continuum, also gets me thinking about this stuff. (If you've got iTunes installed on your computer, this link takes you to that song: Belief by John Mayer. Check it out.) There are a couple of great lines from that tune:

Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword
...
It's the chemical weapon
For the war that's raging on inside
...
What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand?
Belief can. Belief can.
What puts the folded flag inside his mother's hand?
Belief can. Belief can.

Happy new year, everybody. Let's make it a good one.

What do you believe?

Where does Google lead you if you're searching for freedom? Why you might even stumble across this blog entry someday. A year from now this entry could be three clicks away from a million web pages...

I'm three friendship/acquaintance links away from a St. Louis Cardinal. A friend of mine is friends with a friend of Taguchi, their outfielder. He's actually met him - he's watching the world series this year, saying to himself, "I know that guy." Kinda cool.

Just couldn't fall asleep right away tonight. Figured it was time to simplify the old blog, change the color up a bit and add a graphic logo finally. Whew... now I can sleep. :-)

I've mentally blogged my philosophical ramblings again and again while driving to work over the last several months. Seems it's just rare I get around to typing them in. Mostly I want to talk about freedom before it's too late. While I still have some, that is. Is anybody listening?

I've been shocked many times over the last few years as our elected officials in Washington, D.C. jump on the "we must make things safer" bandwagon. Meanwhile, they're throwing our freedoms into the toilet and flushing before they think about the downstream consequences of their actions.


Freedom. Belief. Love. The most powerful forces in the human universe are not physical at all, but spiritual, ethereal, intangible, invisible. What's stronger - the gravity that holds you to the surface of the earth or the bond of love that holds you

It's alive...!



http://www.elevenmillion.com

That thing you were supposed to check back in March for... Well, it's here. March, May, you know how it goes. Last week Robin and I posted some of our latest sweat and tears to ElevenMillion.com with a little hosting help from our friend, Mr. Fahrni. Our latest online venture takes us into the world of online advertising for the masses. It's one of the waves of the future. Buy a link to your website, we'll publish it for you for a quarter, a year or a lifetime!

So... browse on over to ElevenMillion.com and buy yourself an online advertisement. It's cheaper than Google, easy to do and could just send thousands upon thousands of web surfers to your site.

Keep an eye on it to see how it grows and morphs as we get more customers. Should be one of two things: completely stagnant or quite interesting over the next year or so. Time will tell if we've wasted our time. :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

Giddyup!
(Not that Rachel will read it... but there it is. I am "The Giddyup Man.")

Did I mention it's cold out? Holy single digits Batman!

Wow. It's cold out.

Wow! Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, COLD!

It's all the way up to 19 degrees F here today. How about where you are? Did I say wow??

Check back in March... Exciting news pending... :-)

Whoops. Missed December. (Mumble, mumble, let's post something before January is over, mumble, mumble.)

Happy New Year everybody!

I try not to get too technical here, but I'm going to today, because I keep forgetting how to do this, despite my computer hacking skills. This post might end up being a future reminder to myself for the next time I forget. I've done this several times over the last few years and keep forgetting the specifics. When you forget things, you have to derive them from scratch and/or look stuff up here, there and everywhere all over again. And the documentation's not that helpful when you are able to find it, so here it is...

Here's how to make an ActiveX control fill Internet Explorer's window via HTML and get rid of all the "ugly" blank space around it and the silly useless scroll bar:

<BODY
  BOTTOMMARGIN="0" LEFTMARGIN="0" RIGHTMARGIN="0" TOPMARGIN="0"
  SCROLL="no"
>
  <OBJECT
    ID="MyControlsHTMLID"
    CLSID="CLSID:blahblah-blah-blah-blah-blahblahblah"
    WIDTH="100%"
    HEIGHT="100%"
  >
    <PARAM
      NAME="MyPropName"
      VALUE="String value for the custom property named MyPropName."
    />
  </OBJECT>
</BODY>

Obviously, you'll have to replace the blahblah and the MyPropName with something useful.

And if you write your own ActiveX control using ATL, take this little piece of advice... Implement IPersistPropertyBag and add entries for any properties specifiable via "HTML param name/value pairs" as PROP_ENTRY lines in between BEGIN_PROP_MAP and END_PROP_MAP.

Wow. Now if I forget, I'll hopefully be able to find my own post with Google... ;)

Thanks for your patience. Less geek speak next time. That's a promise!

Are you ready?

We patiently await tomorrow... We had a 3-movie-marathon at our house last Saturday. Can you guess which 3 movies we watched all in a row from 1:00 to 9:30? Here's a hint: we'll be on our way to the Boston area tomorrow with tickets to a sold out showing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on the IMAX screen in Natick. Nothing like a dragon flying at you out of a six story screen, I'm sure.

Enjoy! I know we will.

I ran across a blog entry called "Most classroom learning sucks." How could you not read it with a headline like that? My wife home schooled our kids for four years when they were in elementary school, so I guess I have a natural bias to click on that one.

Funny how other people writing their real thoughts down and publishing to the entire world in this uncensored medium of the blog has become such a catalyst for thinking.

Thanks to my wife for encouraging me to transform this sketchbook into a place that will hopefully make some other people think, too.

More philosophizing later...

I started this blog at the insistence of my friend, Rob Fahrni, an incessant blogger, who is still, after a few years, posting, on average, many times each week to his blog. At the time, I was totally into learning how to draw and thought it would be natural to use this blog thing to share my sketches with friends, family ... the world at large.

I haven't had a lot of time for drawing since our family moved back to New York state, so my "Online Sketchbook" blog has stagnated. In the meantime, I've been reading various blogs semi-regularly and have had the itch to write about more than just my sketches. So, I've decided to transform this site into one where I can write about, well, just about anything.

Some folks label their blogs as a "spout" or a "dumping ground." I think I'm just gonna call this one "Reflections" for now...

Wow... It's been a year since I had anything worth saying about drawing; or anything I could actually scan in and share up here.

One of these days, I will get to that Harry Potter drawing.

Until then, here's my yearly post to the ole blog. Today's Thursday; don't forget to check out movie line of the week over at Rob's place.


Later