Mental Note: Change This Title » Life=Boring

Announcing allbfcards.com

crccheck — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:12:55 +0000

So I’ve been playing this game called BattleForge, and there are a handful of websites that exist just to display information about these cards you can collect in the game (think Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon). People have also made Adobe AIR applications and Microsoft Access databases. So, naturally I thought I would pollute the web with another website.

At first, I was going to use xml + xslt to make it. I actually got a proof of concept working nicely. But once I tried using javascript, it got weird on me because it was XML instead of HTML. Then I changed it to plain HTML + an XHR request to get the XML file and got basic realtime filters working. Then someone pointed out that there was some google docs with the information I wanted so I switched from XML to JSONP.

Anyways, this is the limit of my attention span so I’ll paste the URL now. http://allbfcards.com/

Blast from the Past [2000] my !hme script

crccheck — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:03:10 +0000

I completely forgot about this mIRC script I made back in 2000, but apparently I was ahead of my time. I wrote a crowdsourcing script before there was crowdsourcing. The script was very simple, query it with !hme and the script replies with how many episodes it thinks are in the show. To contribute, anyone could say !hme.add . I did have a blacklist of people who couldn’t add, but I don’t think I ever had to use it. You didn’t care about the accuracy of the name of the shows, because the script searched the best fit, and if there were duplicate variations (Evangelion vs Neon Genesis Evangelion), it didn’t matter. I just stored extra information. The last time the script was used… 2002… it had 500 entries.

Jamba Juice Secret Menu

crccheck — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:55:27 +0000

Tried

White Gummy – delicious+
Red Gummy – delicious
Strawberry Shortcake – pretty good

Want to Try

Pink Starburst
Orchard Oasis
Peanut Butter and Jelly
Skittles
Raspberry Dreamin’
Pineapple Dreamin’
Apple Pie

Not sure if my Jamba Juice knows about

Fruity Pebbles
Push Pop
Bluetopia
Sourpatch Kid
Now and Later
chocolate gummy bear
Blue Gummy Bear

What I Did Today

crccheck — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:27:48 +0000

What I Was Planning On Doing:

bike to work
hang out, sync up with Austin @ work
go to a local bike shop and check out pedals / new brakes
P. Terry’s

What I Did Instead:

spend an hour taking off old corroded toilet lever
bike to Home Depot
get new lever / longer supply hose
find out new lever doesn’t quite fit properly, spend an hour grinding it down
“test” new toilet several times
laundry

Things I Hate About Macs

crccheck — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:55:32 +0000

So when I get frustrated at work, I work on this list of things that annoy me while working on Macs. Of course when the problem shows up, it’s things I hate about Macs. I’ll update this post once in a while as I add and revise the list.

Finder

Takes up too much space
can’t copy/paste files
mpeg 2 files have to load in memory before previewing, causing massive lag (not just mpeg2)
Inconsistent Keyboard Shortcuts. Cmd-D shows desktop, but only work in dialogs, Cmd-1,2,3 changes views, but not in Spotlight. Back/Forward not the same as Safari
No hierarchal structure
hides files
hard to see file size, free space
orphans status windows, have to kill Finder to close them
windows take excessive amount of space
if a file transfer fails, Finder freaks out (data corruption, orphaned files, orphaned windows, locked files)
[OSX 10.4] Shortcuts in Sidebar mounted across networks get de-linked occasionally

Quicktime

Can’t play AC3
Always processes video (pixel aspect ratios, display frame size, actual frame size, etc)
Tons of other stuff
Takes 50% more bitrate to achieve the same quality as equivalent PC solution
Can’t play back uncompressed AVIs unless they’re RGB

OS X

lack of keyboard navigation/ mouse dependent
mouse stupidity… 1 button?!
dialog boxes… why can’t i tab between all fields? (i know there’s an option but it’s not consistent… if it even works). Why does hitting space not do the same thing as hitting the ENTER key? it’s like they WANT you to use the mouse.

FCP

Doesn’t remember any settings, takes forever to do many operations because I have to go through every setting every time!
Everytime I export to Quicktime Movie, picking the right frame size is a chore every time. Current view only works at 100% magnification and full sized viewer.
Export to Quicktime Movie: picking AVI defaults to poor quality settings, while picking Quicktime defaults to nice settings
can’t rename tracks
depends too much on it’s render cache, which is wrong often times and you have to clear it and force it to rerender.
Asks you to save everytime you open a project no matter if you actually changed anything
Bug: broken AR for outputting 16:9 text to Compressor (it stretches it to 4:3 and then crops it to 16:9)
No backwards compatibility at all, even between minor revisions
Media Manager can’t handle files with the same name, but different paths.
Can’t play back AAC audio
Broken 44.1 ↔ 48 sample rate conversion
broken frame geometry
Auto-sequence-settings doesn’t change audio settings to match the source

Compressor

buggy, unreliable
doesn’t take advantage of multiple cores. I’m rendering here and none of my 4 cores is above 25% utilization!
new UI is horrible, everything takes up so much space
can’t apply a setting or destination to multiple files
rename auto selects the file extension too. not consistent with OSX 10.5 Leopard

DVD Studio Pro

Converts everything to mpeg-2, even if it re-renders (unnecessary renders)
quits so easily. not robust. causes most of the problems itself
buggy
refuses to use assets even if they’re within spec and play elsewhere
can’t interchange m2v and mpv file extensions
Won’t remember Asset sort preference
Scrolling through Assets is laggy
Refreshed Assets = Broken Asset = start over from scratch
marker placement is stupid (won’t snap to GOPs post-creation)
audio gets off sync unless babied
audio and video can’t be grouped together
can’t zoom/pan around the track w/o workarounds
can’t encode assets over the network
one a process fails, it will always fail until you restart the program

Hardware

c’mon… two button mouse please, three would be better. Personally, I prefer 7
optical drives (i know apple doesn’t make them) are unreliable. give more read errors than what other OEMs
headphone jack high pitch noise problem

The Search for a TODO List

crccheck — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:14:43 +0000

I used to use this Greasemonkey script for my todo list, but it stopped working months ago with no fix in sight.

A good place to start looking for things that let you pretend to be productive is lifehacker, and they do not disappoint.

http://lifehacker.com/399985/five-best-to+do-list-managers

Some factors I’m considering:

I don’t want to register for yet another service (Remember the Milk)
I don’t want to use something unless I already use it on a regular basis (Outlook)
Must exist “in the ether”. That is to say… I have to be able to drop it and pick it up wherever I go (pen and paper)
That kind of leaves plain text… todo.txt

Althought todo.txt sounds nice. With dropbox, my todolist can go whereever I go, but I use Gmail more than Notepad. I think I’ll try using a gmail draft message(s) for now. I might even be able to make it one of my quicklinks.

Economics and Dishwashing

crccheck — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 05:29:25 +0000

So I just realized that the way I do dishes is influenced by basic supply and demand. Here’s the skinny: I don’t wash cups and utensils. Because I believe my roommates are too loose and wasteful in the use of both. So by refusing to wash them, I artificially decrease the supply of available cups and utensils, thus creating a perception of a scarcity of resources, and forcing them to use fewer cups and utensils.

I also do all sorts of ROI analyses when I do dishes. How to arrange them so that they maximize the excess falloff water (stack them from largest size to smallest, and in increasing concavity). And how to minimize the total amount of effort required to get an item clean (if no lipids touched it, clean it right away, otherwise it will get dirtier before it gets cleaner).

I need more free time.

I

crccheck — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:24:28 +0000

With the rise in food and commodity prices, I’m concerned about my favorite local ice cream manufacturer, Blue Bell. So I’ve decided to buy Blue Bell ice cream at every opportunity, no matter what the cost. Partly in support for them not downsizing their containers (I’m looking at you, Breyers!) and for nostalgia purposes later in life. (Hey, guys, remember Blue Bell? Well I do because I ate it every day for a year!) I’m a sucker for cake batter ice cream, so today I got Centennial Cupcake. This is also why I always end up with cake batter ice cream at Coldstones.

New computer plz

crccheck — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:58:39 +0000

I think I go through a new desktop every 5 years. That sucks. Most of the time I find a hot deal on a Dell, but this time I’ve decided to build it from scratch. I’ve been researching most of the components for six months and I starting buying components a month ago. There are still some things I plan on buying but I can function without them for now.

Chassis: Antec P182 $60
Power Supply Unit: Corsair 650W $77
Motherboard: Gigabtye EP35-DS3P $162
CPU: Intel E3310 45nm 3.0 GHz dual core Xeon $200
RAM: Corsair 4G $74
GPU: BFG 8800gts g92 OC $250
HDD: Seagate 500GB 7200.11 32MB $120

So far I’m a little under the budget I set for myself for a decent computer. Now I’m thinking that instead of every 5 years, I should upgrade every year.

Pros:

I have a system that’s more up to date
I can afford to wait for hotter deals
I can buy middle-tier technology instead of buying top-tier stuff because I expect it to have a shorter production life

Cons:

Costs more overall (offset by being more productive?)
trickling down components takes a lot of effort