The End Is Nigh
2008-01-09 11:22:37
It’s clear that I am incapable of regularly updating the site. I’m exploring some other avenues of interacting with the collective.
First, I think I’ll split the site into a couple of parts.
I have some regular, shall we call them “features”, such as the construction of the CNC machine or Yamato, that deserve their own threads. I’ll call this area “doublellama labs”.
Then, the personal blog, in its own area. What I’d like to do, if the site had a mobile interface, where I could text or e-mail updates from my cell phone, including photos, I might be likely to do so more often. It’ll be more a random, sort of frenetic, whatever the heck is going on this second sort of thing. Maybe include geo-tagging or something.
This’ll be a good chance for me to refresh the site and explore new tech.
Look for it “Real Soon Now”(tm).
comments: 0
Spammers are So Stupid.
2007-09-20 11:44:47
The number of attempted spam posts to my blog is astounding, probably a hundred per day. While I don't use logins or captchas, I do use a little bayesian module (I won't say which) for php to reduce the number of messages I have to moderate.
I don't know of a single blog or forum where posts are not filtered or moderated.
It might be interesting to put a little graph on the right to illustrate how much of their lives spammers are wasting.
comments: 0
Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference
2007-05-23 11:10:54
Wednesday through Friday of last week was spent at the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference at the Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle.
Microsoft can throw a pretty good party, which is good enough a reason to attend their events, but I’m currently ramping up a BI initiative at the office and some exposure to the players in the market seemed like a good idea -- so long as that player is Microsoft!
Whether your flavor is Oracle, SQL Server, or MySQL, database design is pretty much the same, regardless of platform. I don’t see any challenges in laying out a dimensional model for a data warehouse using Kimball method, but one of the big missing pieces is visualization. Microsoft’s BI Business Intelligence Development Studio is bad and Oracle’s offering is even worse.
I think the solution is either build it in-house or buy from a third party -- the latter will probably be faster, cheaper and produce a more feature rich result.
There where several use-case break out sessions lead by IT professions from some big name companies. They shared the technical details of their BI projects; if I took away anything thing from the conference, it would be that everyone is solving the same problems, which genuinely increases my confidence in our ability to deliver solutions.
Oh, and I got a couple of free t-shirts.
comments: 0
Nintendo Wii
2007-04-30 11:10:50
I picked up a Nintendo Wii bundle at Costco this weekend.
I played Wii Sports for an hour or so, long enough
for a couple rounds of each sport offered. So far, I am not really impressed. The control scheme is
innovative, yes, but sloppy and regularly unresponsive – and hugely frustrating.
We all knew the graphics were going to be bad, but game play was supposed to make up for it.
Zelda: Twilight Princess was
included in the bundle. I was bored in about two minutes. Maybe I’m just not the right audience for an
RPG.
After a 20 minute software update and a 10 minute channel download, I fired up the Wii Internet Channel
to surf online reviews of various game titles. There are really only fifty titles in the entire library and not a
single one will cost you less than fifty dollars. Most of the titles I might be interested in are available
for the PS2 or original Xbox, where the graphics are better and control scheme less "innovative".
For the number of dollars dropped to acquire this toy, I feel I would have been far happier with a 360 Elite or PS3. Truth be told, I still have PS2 and original Xbox
games I haven’t played through completely, and in the end, we always play Halo 2 anyway.
comments: 0
Science on Tap
2007-03-27 19:25:50
I spent the evening at Science on Tap at the Ravenna Pub. Science on Tap is a Seattle science salon that invites experts in various fields to present their work in a format “where anyone can come to explore the latest ideas in science and technology in a relaxed atmosphere”.
Last night, François Baneyx Director, Center for Nanotechnology at UW, offered "A Brief Introduction to Nanotechnology".
This was a bit of a change from my regulars, DorkBot and Ignite. DorkBot and Ignite consists primarily of applied nerdness, revolving around things Make:’ed or hacked. The presenters and attendees tend to be dirt under the fingernails type who prefer to be up to their elbows.
The people at Science on Tap where mostly academic, and remarkably clean.
comments: 0
Older News >> |