Innovation through Idiotic Ideas
John
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Posts by John
Making WordPress Social
2July 10, 2010
in Social Media
In today’s Social Web users have come to expect a certain level integration from the websites they visit and has become the key to success in helping your users spread the word. Bringing a totally integrated social experience to WordPress is not as hard as it was a few years ago, but wading through the garbage and building a total strategy can still be daunting. The best way I can think of to handle this is to build a comprehensive list of all possible integration points and then attack them one at a time via plugins and theme modifications. One of the primary things I will be keeping in mind is that I do not want to overwhelm the user with share buttons that totally destroy the usability or visual appeal of the website.
You can do too much social media integration and you need to pick a few of the top sites to focus on. For StupIdiocy I will be setting my social media focus on Facebook and Twitter integration, other sites might find it more relevant to use LinkedIn, More >
Rovio Room Positioning Data
0July 8, 2010
The built in Northstar system for the Rovio allows us to track the current position of the robot in real time using IR room beacons. When I started the Automated Mapping System for my Home AI I ran into a few issues, mainly that as the Rovio gets further from a beacon the positional data became less reliable. I realize this is to be expected but it makes mapping the robot dataset to a real-world view of the home a bit difficult. That is when I realized I don’t need the robot to see the world the way I see it, I need it do see the world in a consistent manner. Even if I perceive the dataset to be flawed, the robot sees it as perfectly valid data time and time again.
With this in mind I redesigned my internal use of the data and cleared the position database. In my prior version I was only storing clear and blocked paths in front of the robot but I have now expanded the database to store Known Clear, Assumed Clear, and Blocked locations which are displayed in Green, Yellow, More >
Flash Development with AS3
2July 6, 2010
in Development
Any developer looking to stay current with technology has looked at Flash development at one point or another in their lives. If you’re like me you installed the development environment and then sat with a dumbfounded look on your face at the monster that is the Flash UI. Timelines? Symbols? I just want to write CODE! The way I see it the Flash IDE is geared towards the designers of the world with ActionScript tossed in to allow them to do a few tricks that they could not do with the UI alone. This is not how most of us learned to program and this paradigm shift is very overwhelming, do you really need to learn to program in a totally new way? This very question put me off from Flash development for a good 7 years and it was only recently that I dove back in.
After being tasked with doing some Flash development at work I set out one weekend to find a better way. It didn’t take long before I came across FlashDevelop and the Flex SDK to ease my fears of Flash. More >
Using the Google Maps API with AS3
0July 4, 2010
in Development
When I start using a new API in an application I generally start by making an abstraction layer to simplify my calls and so I can swap out the API at a later date if needed. Tonight when I started working with the Google Maps API I wasn’t sure if I was going to need an abstraction layer, but after creating a few maps I realized I was constantly copying and pasting the same code over and over. I went ahead and wrote a quick wrapper that handled all of my initial needs. As I progress this layer will be extended and updated, but a good foundation is a requirement up front.
With the application I’m currently developing most of the maps needed to be 700×400 so I made that the default while still allowing custom sizing. One requirement I had was to lock the user to a very specific point on the map so I begin with all dragging, zooming, and clicking disabled. For a bit of style I tossed on a DropShadowFilter and a black border so it didn’t look so flat and in no time I had a working More >
WD Caviar Black Performance Raid
0July 3, 2010
in Geek Life, Technology
When I last reloaded my primary development computer I took a page from AtomicInternet and went ahead with a full blown Raid 0 setup for my primary drive. Raid 0 spreads the data for each file across multiple drives in order to increase performance, the only drawback being if one of the drives fails you lose all of the data. With a proper backup solution (such as Windows Home Server) the risk is greatly reduced and when doing a lot of compiles or gaming the performance is well worth it. AtomicInternet had purchased two 300GB VelociRaptor drives, which netting him a very nice performance increase over his previous setup as shown below.
The VelociRaptor’s are a bit more expensive than I wanted to go ranging anywhere from $150 to $200 each. I found a deal on the Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB drives for $70 each and after reading a few reviews I was sold on them. I knew going in that the raid setup would be slower since I was going with 7200 rpm drives as compared to the More >
Facebook Development using AS3
0July 3, 2010
I decided to use some time this weekend to take another look at the Facebook ActionScript API for a new project I have been meaning to work on. Since I recently reloaded my primary development computer I went ahead and reinstalled my Flash development tools.
I remember the last time I used the Facebook API with Flash I ran into all sorts of silly issues so this time I want to be sure to build a reusable library as I go to make things easier in the future. There are going to be a few simple features that I am going to use with the API and I plan on documenting with examples as I go through each.
- Facebook Authentication
- User Information and Profile Picture
- Post to Stream
- Friends List
- Invite Friends
Tomorrow I complete the UML diagram for the application and then I will begin the fun!
Archos 7 HT vs iPad
0July 1, 2010
in Geek Life, Technology
Last night at the Mashable Social Media Day in Detroit I had a chance to sit down with Adonis (wutwutman) and compare my Archos 7 HT and his iPad to see if I could confirm my thoughts on these two pieces of amazing technology. As suspected the iPad is a very slick device with smooth screen transitions and a beautiful display. The applications were very polished and pretty but much like my Archos many of them suffer from the “I’m running on a phone” assumption, making for some interesting issues now and then. I attribute the polish of the iPad to the fact that they have a closed marketplace and a small fee to even get started, where-as on the Android platform all it takes to release an app is the Android dev kit and a little programming knowledge. This gives the iPad a distinct advantage with its application marketplace making jumping in for newbies that much eaiser. I could see where new users picking up an Archos for the first time would be totally lost since it wasn’t until I More >
Hacking the Archos 7 Home Tablet
8June 29, 2010
in Geek Life, Technology
One of the users on the ArchosFans Forums has been building a custom firmware image for the Archos 7 HT to bring full Google application support to the device. I decided tonight to go ahead and give his update a try and see if hacking the firmware would be something I’d bother digging into or if I should stick with pure application development. Flashing the firmware on the device means I will lose all data and installed applications, but since I had just documented the applications I use in a previous post on here I wasn’t too worried.
The first step in the update meant heading over to the Operation Unbrickable post by Dom on ArchosFans and grabbing the latest firmware image. He’s been pretty good about keeping the first post updated with the most recent information, so if you are going to update your tablet be sure to read the entire post, paying particular attention to the Instructions paragraph.
With the update downloaded to my PC I hooked up the tablet via USB (making sure More >
Rovio Automated Room Mapping
2June 27, 2010
Using my C# Rovio library I wrote an autonomous room mapping application that randomly sends one of my Rovio’s around the room plotting data as it goes. The application uses the Rovio’s Northstar data to fetch the current x/y/theta of the robot and it then plots any obstruction at that location. (I also went ahead and start plotting both the wifi and Northstar signal strengths on separate images that I can use as overlays.)
I currently sample the Rovio status every 100ms, and process movement commands once every 5 seconds. This gives me a sample size of 50 points per stop helping to eliminate any sensor errors. (It also helps correct errors caused by a curious cat.) The movement is rather silly right now and it simply rotates 2 degrees to the left if it sees an obstacle., but it works for a starter set of data. After taking a quick 10 minute run which included about 3 laps around my computer room I ended up with the following dataset.
This is a one to one visual display More >
Facebook Fun
0June 26, 2010
The Facebook Fun page is now fully operational once again! I will be tweaking the page once more but the URLs should be stable now.
Now that Facebook has launched the Like button for external websites it has started to show up everywhere. You can’t browse a news article, a blog post, or even shop online without seeing the familiar little blue button. I don’t blame websites at all, who wouldn’t want the extra exposure that even a single Like can generate, especially if the person clicking has a lot of friends. The Facebook stream is important to some people — it is where they get all of their information for the day. As I watched my Facebook stream slowly fill up with likes from all over the Internet I started thinking, if they give us control over the page name and the site name, we could have a bit of fun with this.
A bit more thnking turned into research and research turned into a quick 30 minute coding session. The end result is my Facebook Fun page, where you have total control More >