This is hilarious

Take a look at this AT&T chart. The guy who made it obviously was born to do this.

Intel workers shot from cannon

This is what Intel workers do every day. I wonder what Microsoft does...

New Google GPhone Info Leaked

Google released it's new Google Phone to it's employees for test drives and info was leaked. Apparently, unlike Droid 2.0 the GPhone has a Google OS and it's hardware is designed by Google as well (although HTC actually made the hardware). Employees are quoted to have been said it is "like the iPhone but on beautifying steroids". More info can be found here.

Iranians Hack Twitter

An Iranian Hacker Group hacked Twitter at 10pm last night with a DNS redirect, making the homepage look like this:

the article can be found here. You would think twitter would have better security this is kinda crazy. Lots of people's information is available and it's unsafe to be so vulnerable.

I admit it

I have been claiming over the past few years that Blu-Ray is not here to stay. I was wrong. Blu-Ray and PS3 have announced 1080p Blu-Ray 3D. That is cool. HD 3D. It's supposed to come out on PS3 soon. Here's an article on it, check it out.

FTP Applet

So I designed another application that uploads the txt file onto his ftp server. It was a little unusual that Java doesn't have an easy integrated way to upload to ftp's, but I found a nice little .jar file online that made it easy enough. I also made an applet that I will just put into his inventory.html page. It's basically just a table that gets its cell data from the txt file that I had uploaded to the ftp server. This way, my dad can update his inventory, and when he feels like it, just double click the updateInventory.jar file and it will automatically update his online inventory. He doesn't have to fool around with dreamweaver or excel anymore. How's that for stupid-proof?

FTP

I've been looking into expanding the Inventory Application I designed earlier. My dad has a website for Rose Street Guitars however he's not a computer wiz so just having the Inventory App I made for him isn't enough. He needs to be able to easily update his online inventory listings, so I'm going to design him a Java Application that takes the txt files in the Inventory Application and directly upload them to the website ftp. From there, I'll design a Java Applet that takes that file and produces a table that will automatically update each time he uploads. That way he doesn't have to do anything...

As you can see I like Java, I've been trying to use Ruby for something but it just isn't that useful (yet).

Must have Computer Applications

I know there's a million lists out there, but I thought that it would be useful to others as well as myself to write one on my own blog. This way, if someone asks me, how do you do this? I can say, go here and try this first!

All of the programs in this list are free, enjoy!
(Windows)
AVG Antivirus
Spybot Search and Destroy
WinRar or 7-zip
OpenOffice
CCleaner
VLC Media Player
Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird
GIMP
Foxit Reader
Ultimate Boot CD
K-Lite Codec Pack

And obviously download all the newest drivers and BIOS for your system

Books + HCI

I've been looking at more local bay area companies, trying to find ones that look like a place I would want to work after I graduate. Found a few, and emailed them asking what they look for in a job applicant. The responses I got were interesting. A lot of the User Interface companies said they like well rounded artistic abilities over technical ones, however skills in Flash, CSS, HTML, and Javascript were major pluses. I guess a huge part of Interface Design is done with websites, however the really interesting stuff (to me) is when companies design custom machines for events and companies. For example, one of my friends Patporn Cheeweewat (his blog) has a company in Thailand which builds custom touch screen devices for events, now that's interesting. I wanna know what I can do to get into something like that. However I did find something useful on one of the company websites that caught my eye. A recommended book list.

I ordered two of the books off of half.com (that place is cheapppp).

"Designing Visual Interfaces" (One of the books on that reading list)
and
"Outliers: The story of success" by Malcolm Gladwell. I read that this is an incredibly inspiring book, ill let you know how these books pan out.

Israeli Troops blow up laptop

This is pretty funny, read it.

Ruby

Just finished reading chapters 1-9, 14, and 16 of The Book of Ruby. Very powerful language, really looking forward to integrating YAML into applications. Did some research and found that this wiki shows how you can use NetBeans to make a javax.swing GUI for a desktop application and operate it with Ruby code. I really like the NetBeans GUI builder so I'm enthusiastic about creating future desktop apps using Ruby and a Swing GUI. The other Ruby GUI options I considered were foxGUIb and wxRuby. I ran into some technical problems so I basically gave up on the last two.

On another note, I have also been researching making mac and iphone apps using Ruby. It seems that in the history of iPhone apps, most of the ones coded in Ruby have been rejected by Apple, however once compiled all programs look the same so I don't think that this correlation means Apple is biased.

A new application called MacRuby basically converts Ruby into Objective-C so that you can use Ruby with the standard Mac "stuff" (cocoa, iPhone SDK) and develop a Mac app. This also means that you can use this program to create an iPhone app. This is a nice surprise however you still have to know lots of Objective-C to use this application, and even more about Objective-C classes. More information is here. Another alternative is rubyCocoa, which does basically the same thing but is not in Beta. Again, you need to know about Objective-C classes to use this.

So in conclusion, it's going to be a while before I can write an application for any Mac based platform.

USB 3.0

Just came out. Uses the PCI-X slots in combination with USB 2.0 technology to create a 5gb/s transfer rate, which allows you to connect devices which normally wouldn't function well under USB 2.0, such as Capture Cards or Video Cards.

See the article for more information here

New version of Inventory Application with GUI

Just finished (after two days) making the new version of the Inventory Application. This version features a new Java.Swing based GUI instead of a text based interface. It also is packed into a .jar file, meaning you have to have a recent version of java installed on your system. I think it's great, nice and easy to make using NetBeans IDE.

Check it out here: link

I've been waiting for this

The solution I was wondering about for a long time: HD Wireless. There's lots of HD monitors around now and no type of wireless to get it to my monitor. Meaning if you get HD cable you HAVE to have a HD cable box next to your computer and have the wire coming from the wall all the way to your computer. But what if your computer is in a different room than your cable box. Too bad. Not any more. Check it out. In stores Fall 2010.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Wireless-HD-Video-WHDI-Uncompressed,news-5306.html

Good news for laptop gamers

Intel just released a new CPU that has a built in part that offloads graphics duties to an integrated GPU, meaning people who have integrated graphics cards can more effectively play games and process video. This won't help you if you have non-integrated GPU.

Ruby

I have to say after reading the first 3 chapters of "Book of Ruby" by Huw Collingbourne, that I'm excited for Ruby class. This language looks great. The thing that is crazy to me is that I don't have to declare variable types AND I don't have to declare variables. First class on thursday. One step closer to iPhone apps. Check out the free online textbook it's an easy read.

Intel releases 48-core processor

Say hello to the beginning of the beginning of iRobot. Check it out

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10407818-264.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0

Inventory Program

Finally done. Took me longer than I thought it would because I had lot's of studying to do for finals. Let me know what you think, be sure to read the readme.txt file if you are having trouble resizing your DOS window. Here is the link for the .zip file Enjoy..

Edit: Fixed null pointer exception when user opens for second time and has empty file. Replaced link to point to new version 1.01b

Program for Rose Street Guitars

Today I went to work for my dad who owns Rose Street Guitars in Berkeley, CA. If you're interested check him out danalexanderaudio.com or rosestreetguitars.com

He gets new guitars and vintage audio gear every day and for insurance reasons he needs to constantly update his inventory. This is getting annoying to do in MS Excel because he has so many different types of things and organizing them alphabetically by multiple categories is annoying. He also would like to be able to see what he had in his inventory in the past, and that's hard to integrate because if you don't delete the item in Excel when you sell it, you would have a million things in there and it would be impossible to find anything.

To solve his problem I'm going to write him a customized program for his inventory using java and then somehow (gotta figure this part out) use a .bat file to allow him to run it easily.

It will use .txt files to keep track of the inventory and have a text based UI that I will simplify as much as possible to make it so he can use it. He's not a computer genius in any way so this could be a challenge. When I'm done I'll post the code online for anybody whose interested to take a look at. Thanks for reading.

Microsoft Surface

Check out this video (I know it's old):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr1O917o4jI

When is this going to become mainstream. I can't wait for this to be a coffee shop table top. Kind of unnecessary I know, but think of how this could affect Microsoft. They have been bashed over and over again since XP, and for good reason. I have actually started to like the Mac OS more now, even though I dislike Apple (great product horrible price).

Beefing up my resume

Recently I've been actively trying to find things to put on my resume. My goal is to have an insanely good resume when I get out of college. I've never written a resume before so I had to start from scratch. Basically what I did is search "Computer Engineering Resume Sample" on google. This brought up a bunch of examples and one of the things I saw that I could improve was my "Languages" Section. I know Java and C, but a lot of the resumes I saw had like 7 or 8 languages. So I signed up for a 1 unit online Winter Break course with Professor Staley (see LinkedIn group "Staley Survivors"). I'll work my ass off learning Ruby over break. I also just finished reading half of a book on Python. The most straightforward language I've seen yet. I'm also trying to learn Objective C-2.0 . So that would be 5 languages if I could become competent in the additions. Hopefully I can take a class on something else like PHP or something over Spring break.

I also realized I have very little job experience even though I feel I know a lot of what is necessary. I am very good with computer hardware but haven't had formal training even though I was selling custom built computers in high school. I was thinking that an A+ certification would probably help me out, but thats $1700...and I don't really want to work with hardware after I graduate. I'm also great with people, but I have nothing to prove that as far as jobs goes on my resume. So I told "Computer Courage", a company in Berkeley, that I would work for them for free next summer in exchange for training and something to put on my resume. I think they'll pay me though. Got an interview on Wed. I think it's a done deal already though based on what the guy was saying.

Joined IEEE, ACM, and the Video Gaming Development Club so that I could be up to date with what's going on in the field. It also helps out the resume. Subscribed to Computer World Magazine and should be getting some IEEE subscriptions weekly.

Created a LinkedIn account because I read that a high percentage of company's are now searching your name on google and some social networking sites to filter through job applicants now. I don't really have anything bad on my facebook/twitter profiles, but it never hurts to have a positive outcome to people searching your name does it? That's another reason I'm writing this blog. I'd like to be able to look back and say to myself this is what you've done for the past two years and look how much you learned, but at the same time it would be nice if I could get something else positive out of it as well.