After a long thought, this blog is going to be losing most of its geekyness and be more of a personal blog. While I would love to keep this blog going on its own, I think that nearly everything I have to blog about these days would work well over at Alacatia Labs, and since subscribing to the blogs over there also gets you excellent posts by my other cohorts, it makes sense to make the Alacatia Labs blogs as good as they can be.

So while I hope there will be some people interested in my life in general, I hope that most of you subscribe to the RSS over there, as it gets updated several times a week with some very interesting stuff. The latest being: how does iCal update its dock icon, and how can you take advantage of it?

And the good news: Just a bad cable, no mice in the attic. That’s a relief.

We had a fun trip up to New Jersey. I’ll post pictures of our cute niece and other stuff to our SmugMug later (the Pictures link on the site), and I’ll try to write a longer update tonight.

So now I get to find out if my 2 year “complete” home warranty will cover it or not. If not, Time Warner actually doesn’t charge an outrageous amount to replace it. It appears that the worst case scenario is that I’m out $70 plus potentially money to deter squirrels or mice from my attic, which while I’ve never heard anything in the attic, the tech scared me by saying, “it is a pretty common thing, especially in new homes. Mice love the rubber on the wires.” I’ve seen mice in the far side of our backyard a few times. Not what I wanted to hear.

But at least I’m online again. It’s strange how often I will be doing one thing, and want to Google something. You never realize how much you use something like the Internet until it’s gone. Then you truly appreciate it.

I guess that’s like a lot of things in life.

Have a great week everyone. With my trip leaving out Wednesday morning, I’m not sure how much blogging I’ll do until I get back.

The tech shows up maybe an hour and a half later, and tries what I did — unplug, powercycle, and notices it not working. He unplugs the cable to test it, everything looks great. He then plugged it back in, and it magically started working.

The tech was really nice, and we actually chatted for perhaps 20 minutes or so. He left, and things were fine.

I decided today was the day to buy Metroid Prime 3, and went to the local GameStop. I get back and begin enjoying the great game when my wife says, “so the Internet is fixed?”

By the questioning tone, I could tell it wasn’t. I tried recreating the tech’s earlier movements to no avail. Finally, I picked up the phone and called again. Sadly, hold times were worse.

When I finally was talking to someone, I tried to shortcut the process, explaining that I had already had a tech out at my house a few hours ago, but the problem was back. No dice. He was trained for situations like these: follow the prompts.

Fifteen minutes later, he agrees there is a problem, and I get transferred to someone else. This guy was helpful, and got the tech contacted to make another stop here. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

So I’ll be calling again in the morning. Wish me luck.

When I started this post, the iPhone’s autocorrect wasn’t working. However, at some point it started working. Additionally, wordpress’s edit field is much too wide when zoomed in. Finally, with this much text in a single field, each letter takes about half a second to appear, and clicks are actually buffered, just as a normal keyboard would. I attribute the slowdown to the autocorrect feature. Anyways, it’s annoying, so I’m calling it a night.

Ok, it’s unforgivable, I know. It’s been nearly two months since my last update. But I’ve been busy, I promise.

First and foremost, myself and several others are now officially Alacatia Labs, Inc. It’s great working with other people on projects, because it seems that every time I look, there’s something interesting that one of the others did.

At my day job, I’ve been working with C# 3.5 and Linq, and I must say I’m very impressed. Today, I solved a the last of the harder problems that were bugging me. It involved a particular query that required three separate group by’s, and I was impressed with the outcome of the query. Yes, it was big, but Linq has a certain readability that doesn’t come with straight SQL. Perhaps it’s just Visual Studio being nice, but overall I think Linq is one of those technologies that will change how a lot of people work everyday.

In my personal life, Erin and I took a week long vacation up to visit my parents in Alaska at the beginning of September. That’s where the picture above is from. There are more pictures if you head over to SmugMug, but not nearly as many as I’ve taken in the past. It was a great, relaxing trip.

I’m learning Chopin’s Ballade #1. It is in many ways the hardest piece I’ve ever undertaken. It’s not nearly as flashy as a few pieces I’ve worked on over the past few years on my own, but technically it’s much more difficult. If you’ve watched The Pianist, this is the piece that he plays in the very dramatic section when he is alone with the German officer. If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it — it’s a great movie.

Erin and I are taking a trip up to New Jersey next week to visit her parents, and that should be fun. We also get to attend a recital being put on by her best friend from college.

All in all, I can’t complain. Except for the allergies — they’ve been driving me crazy this entire week. And that’s even more reason to look forward to a trip out of Texas.

How’s everyone else been? Do I actually still have readers?

The problem, however, is that I don’t have any friends with an Xbox 360 that I know play games online. If anyone enjoys playing games casually online, add me as a friend on Xbox Live. My gamer card is on my About Me page.

But in addition to finding some gaming buddies, I’ve been trying to solicit some good games to play online. I currently have Guitar Hero II, Catan, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Enchanted Arms (enjoying this game so far, but alas, not online). I have two other games that I bought used to try, but will be returning them because they weren’t that fun to me

Let me apologize for the lack of updates here. Everything is going great for me. Aside from playing some Xbox 360 and being a married man, I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my plugin I’m writing for REALbasic. Hopefully this will make its debut in a few weeks with a public beta, but until then I’m keeping it under wraps.

Hope to see some of you on Xbox Live!

iPhone

I did treat myself to what I consider the ultimate gadget. Remember a few days ago how I was saying I didn’t want an iPhone? Well, I changed my mind. I came to the realization that:

• I don’t use my phone as a modem except for when I’m en-route somewhere, or sitting in an airport. And when I do use it in this situation, it’s generally to email, read news, or chat. Thus, the iPhone would suit my needs. I generally make it a rule to only stay in hotels with free Wifi, so my laptop can connect at my destination anyways.
• The clipboard issue I thought about more, and while I could see what this guy was saying in his review, I realized that my Sony Ericsson doesn’t have a clipboard either (non-smartphone), and I get around just fine with it. Additionally, this is something that could come via software update.
• Programmability — well, I’m busy right now with other things anyways, but I feel reasonably confident that an SDK (even if only for more glorified widgets) will become available within the next few months.
• My iPod nano’s battery won’t hold a charge — I needed to replace either the Nano or the battery to keep my sanity. I’ve been wanting to upgrade to a Video iPod anyways because of the vast resources on Google Video that I’ve been downloading. The Google Tech Talks are a great source of information. If I was going to get a video iPod, there’s $250 out of pocket anyways.
• I hate carrying multiple devices. The appeal of having my iPod and phone as one is very high.
• Your comments of praise also influenced me even more

As of yesterday, I’m a happy iPhone user. I’ve got the 4 GB model. Activation was nearly instantaneous — maybe 3 minutes to go through the entire setup. It truly is a great device. The screen is truly brilliant — on full brightness it is really “too bright.” I find the 60% brightness to be about the right level.

The keyboard works really well. The auto-correct is impressive and works about 95% of the time for me. Two thumb typing isn’t that great for me, as I have huge thumbs, but with autocorrect it was OK. However, I find using my index and middle finger of my right hand while holding the phone in my left works the best for me, and I’m pretty efficient even after just one day.

I love carrying around pictures with me. I could do this on the Nano, but let’s face it — 1.5″ display versus 3.5″ display for viewing pictures… it’s a no brainer that I didn’t use my Nano for carrying pictures.

The recessed headset jack isn’t really that optimal — I need to get that silly adapter, as the in-ear headphones have always bugged me. They’ve always hurt my ears after more than 15-20 minutes of usage, and I prefer over-the-ear headphones.

Overall I’m very impressed, and I can’t wait to see what other improvements are made in the lifespan of this product with software updates.

Other fun

Erin bought me a game I’ve been wanting to play for a while — Tiger Woods 2007 for the Wii. I’ve always enjoyed this series. When Aaron and I were roommates, we would often come home from work to play Tiger Woods on the GameCube while we ate Chinese food.

My first game I was really upset with the controls. I just couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I gave up.

After Erin and I went out to eat, I got back and tried again, and I started getting the hang of it. As of this morning, I’m a pro again, and it’s a great game. Using the Wiimote as a golf glub adds a level of difficulty that wasn’t there before, because the analog swing system was very easy to stay consistent with once you got used to it. However, swinging a club requires a lot more effort to remain consistent, and mistakes are still made. It makes it feel more like a real golf game.

She also made me my favorite cake — a German chocolate cake, and it turned out fabulous. I hadn’t had a homemade German chocolate cake in quite a while, and it really hit the spot.

All in all it was a great birthday, and I’m looking forward to next weekend when Erin and I take a trip to Corpus Christi to celebrate our one year anniversary. We have an ocean view suite that’s right on the beach. It should be a lot of fun.

Well, Tiger Woods is calling me for another round of golf. Have a great weekend!

I loved The Fountain, but I’m still not sure exactly the full timeline behind the movie. I’m avoiding reading about it simply because that’s part of the enjoyment with his films — realizing how each part is connected is part of the joy of the movie. It’s like a puzzle in movie form.

In about an hour and a half, weather permitting, our city is going to have a 20 minute fireworks show that should be clearly visible from our home. We may venture out though and watch from the park — haven’t quite decided.

So before I close my MacBook and enjoy the rest of the 4th, I wanted to wish everyone a happy 4th of July.

I cracked open REALbasic and set to work. Ten minutes later, I had a message box with the correct sequence, and tons of brownie points. Here’s the problem:

You have 8 lights, all of them are off. Each of these lights is also a switch that when pressed, not only will the light being toggled switch, several others will also. Find a way to turn on all of the lights.

Here are the boxes, and which boxes they also toggle:

1. 1, 3, 5, 6, 8
2. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7
3. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7
4. 2, 3, 4, 5, 8
5. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7
6. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
7. 2, 3, 6, 7, 8
8. 1, 2, 4, 6, 8

For example, if the boxes are in this state:

and you toggle block 3, you’ll get:

After the cut is the algorithm I chose and the sequence I arrived at.

(more…)