moonlee.org

Fun with soldering

moon — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:03:00 +0000

Well, I finally got a chance to put the Weller soldering iron and Panavise that Santa brought me for Christmas to use today by assembling the tvbgone kit that I purchased from the Make store. I have to say, after using several crappy soldering irons, that using a quality iron makes a huge difference. I don't know if I'll be using it very much (probably not), and certainly not to the grand effect that the folks at Gizmodo recently did, but it was fun and an opportunity to work on my soldering skills. Of course, Zoe, after some consideration, suggested we go try it on a wall of TVs at Best buy...

So far so good

moon — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 02:16:00 +0000

For those in the know, Arlo had his surgery today and he did just fine. From the way he was wolfing down dinner and banging his toys around later this afternoon, you wouldn't think he had been in a 3 hour operation this morning, knocked out cold, intubated, with an IV hanging out of his little arm. Other than being a bit insecure for the rest of the day (understandably), he seems to be coping pretty well. Perhaps it's the codeine elixir that we're giving him for pain management that's cheering him up. Zoe and I, on the other hand, have been up since 3 am, and it's been a *very* long day... He's got about 6 weeks until he's healed up if all goes well.

New Year, New Job

moon — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:06:00 +0000

Well, it took some time to settle, but I've been offered a full-time position with Trackvia as Chief Software Architect, which I've accepted. It's been a few years since I've worked a full-time position, but I think it's the right opportunity at the right time and I'm looking forward to it. I'll be telecommuting from Chicago for the time being, but it looks like a move back to Denver to work on-site sometime in the spring is pretty likely. For those of you in CO, I look forward to seeing you sometime soon! Best wishes to everyone for the New Year!

A month for traveling

moon — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 04:17:00 +0000

Well, a short hiatus in between a couple of trips. First Arlo took his first plane ride to NYC, where he spent some time with his grandparents, then went to Pennsylvania to meet his grand aunties and uncles and his great grandmother, and then up to Ithaca to spend some time with yet more family, and finally, a 2 day roadtrip back to Chicago, topped off by a visit from Max here from Boulder for the weekend (Good to see you Max!). It was a lot for an adult in 7 days, let alone a 5 month old. He held up admirably well, but he was a bit freaked by the end of it all. Well he's settled out a bit now, just in time to visit more grandparents in Minneapolis for Thanksgiving. Well, at least we'll all be spending a nice, quiet, relaxing Christmas at home. And now, I must change my hoodie since Arlo woke up, and in the process of rocking him back to sleep he promptly barfed on my shoulder. They don't tell you about this stuff... like waking up at 6am... Everyday...

Found

moon — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 04:00:00 +0000

While walking through the Target parking lot a while back with Zoe and Arlo, Zoe noticed some film negative on the pavement. So I stuck it in my wallet and forgot about it. I scanned it the other day and here it is. Looks like the kiddo was born at Northwestern like Arlo. They look happy...

Screen Recycler

moon — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:16:00 +0000

A while back, I wrote about Synergy, a neat free tool that allows you to control multiple computers across multiple monitors with a single keyboard and mouse. I've been extremely happy with that setup, working almost seamlessly among 3 different machines and dual monitors using a single keyboard. Now I say *almost* because I occasionally found myself wishing I could simply drag a window from one monitor to another, which synergy doesn't allow me to do. The screens remain isolated spaces unto themselves. While it is nice to have the flexibility of multiple machines to work with (especially if one is churning away doing something processor intensive), sometimes you just wish all that screen real estate was somehow physically connected too. Now of course, if you have the ability to stick another video card into your PC, no problem. But since I swore off bulky desktops several years ago, my Apple laptop and mini don't have that option. There are hardware breakouts that might work, like dualhead2go, but those are less than ideal for a variety of reasons. Well, yesterday I stumbled across a software product called Screen Recycler, which has finally let me have my cake and eat it too. It's a driver for macs that basically creates a virtual external display which is then accessible using any vnc client. Too cool! So, fire up screen recycler on the host mac, connect using a fast vnc client on the second computer in full screen mode, and voila, it's basically a seamless dual head setup. It even works pretty well with Synergy. And, since it shows up as its own display on the host's displays preference pane, you can position it, change its resolution, wallpaper, etc., just as you would a normally connected display. The only caveat is that for nice response times on the vnc side you do need decent bandwidth between the two -- terrific on GigE, probably fine on fast ethernet, but 802.11g was definitely not cutting it. Granted, this probably isn't generally useful technology, but for those of you with multiple computers and monitors on your desk, hey, it might do the trick.

Mac Development Tools

moon — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 19:15:00 +0000

So last week CG tells me that he's decided to make the jump to the Mac as a development platform from Windows after a lengthy period of soul searching. I think that's pretty cool -- the Mac is a wonderful development environment for so many reasons. And it has that magic combination of Unix and an elegant GUI to appeal to both developers from both the Windows and Linux camps. While obviously not all the same development environments are available across platforms, there are quite a few packages on the Mac that have made my life much better:

Locomotive: A self-contained ROR container, with packages for various versions of Rails that lets you start developing right away. Just drag and drop into your Applications folder. Provides ruby, rails, some choice gems and dependent libraries so you don't have to install/compile them yourself.
MAMP: Basically the same thing for PHP4/5, but goes a step further and gives you a full stack with MySQL and Apache as well. This is nice because getting Tiger's stock PHP4 install to play nice with the MySQL binary install is kind of a pain.
TextMate: A very wonderful and powerful text editor, with bindings and macros for more languages than you can shake a stick at.

There are of course many more tools out there -- stuff that I use the shell for, but you could substitute with GUI applications, like FTP clients and the like. If you have any personal favorites, definitely let me know -- I'm always on the look out for better tools.

Changes

moon — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:17:00 +0000

So I've discovered having a newborn adversely impacts blogging frequency (not like it was that frequent before... ;-) No real news to report -- Arlo is 2 months now, becoming more interested in the world and interactive, which has been a lot of fun. It's been really fascinating watching him grow and develop. Despite all the long hours involved, having him beam a huge grin at me is probably one of the coolest things I've ever experienced. Zoe's had a whole bunch of friends and family visiting to help us out with the baby and life in general, and that has been really great. Thank you!

Wow, welcome to parenthood

moon — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 03:49:00 +0000

Well, it's been just over 10 days now with the little one and what a time it's been. Calming a fussy Arlo, feeding him, changing him, watching him nap... it's a full-time job man. It's definitely been a bit rough with the sleep deprivation and things have certainly been up and down as he keeps his own schedule, but it's been really nice getting to know the little guy. For anyone who's interested, Arlo now has his own site where he'll be posting some pictures and deep thoughts (well maybe that will come later). You can get the lowdown at www.arlolee.org.

Arlo Henry

moon — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:01:00 +0000

Great news! Arlo has finally decided to join us out here in the world. Yesterday morning at 10:34 am, after about 12 hours of labor, Zoe gave birth to Arlo Henry Lee, weighing in at 7 pounds 9 ounces. We're in the hospital now and he's busy learning how to breastfeed, getting measured and examined by the nurses here with lots of cuddles from Mom and Dad in between. It's been pretty exhausting, it seems like Arlo really isn't into the whole sleeping for 8 hours uninterrupted thing. Darn those small stomachs! We get to go home tomorrow. Here's a pic of Arlo just a few minutes old.

Befuddlement

moon — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:29:00 +0000

When I was a younger man, I'd often view older people with a mixture of exasperation and amusement as they would try to figure out a function on some piece of consumer technology that they owned. They would stare at the buttons for a while in complete confusion until they would give up and hand it to me. I would look at the object, quickly scan the buttons and immediately intuitively grasp the sequence of buttons that needed to be pushed to achieve the desired effect. So you can imagine my surprise when in the past few months, I found myself having trouble working simple things like Zoe's digital camera. After staring blankly at the buttons for a while, a weird feeling of disorientation came over me and my eyes slowly started to glaze and none of the symbols next to the buttons made any sense to me whatsoever. "Augh, I'm turning into an old guy!!" I shrieked. Man. Soon I'm going to be the one handing over that piece of new-fangled electronica in resignation to someone younger and more adept. I can just hear it now... "See, Moon, this is how you do it... just press this big green button here." I knew I was in trouble last night, when I picked up the remote control to my stereo and I had a few seconds where I was completely drawing a blank on how to even turn the damn thing on. Good grief.

Virtual Experiences

moon — Mon, 28 May 2007 17:58:00 +0000

It was around 15 years ago that I stumbed into the world of real-time virtual interaction in the context of MUDs. Back then, it was simply disembodied text floating by on a black background, as I banded together with other adventurers to hack away at monsters for fun and xp (experience points of course). A lot has happened since then, and these days, it's evolved into things like the hugely popular MMORPG World of Warcraft. But it was from those roots that I became interested in the possibilities of the internet, virtual communities, and useful applications of the virtual experience. So it was with some interest that I observed the rise of communities like Second Life and other similar ventures. In some respects, it's extremely exciting: as the space continues to mature, the possibilities it presents are genuinely intriguing. However, I can't help but think that at this stage, tremendous amounts of energy are going into things that don't really add true value to your real life. As Second Lifers are spending and earning their virtual dollars to buy clothes, animations, houses and land, dancing their avatars in virtual nightclubs and concerts to flirt with other pixels, a feeling gnaws at me: so is this it? This should and could be so much more that just a giant game of "The Sims". Are you doing something cool in Second Life? Let me know! (SL: Kaiman Oh)

Small steps.

moon — Thu, 10 May 2007 10:20:00 +0000

My first Yiquan student came out from Madison, WI last weekend to train with me for the afternoon. The Yiquan teaching body here in the U.S. is not... large. It was nice to have an excuse to expound on the beauty and science of Yiquan even if for just a few hours. Some zhan zhuang, shi li, tui shou; we covered a decent amount of ground. Well, the stone has now been dropped into the pond...

OMG..GH!!!

moon — Wed, 09 May 2007 23:42:00 +0000

Not owning a PS2 or a XBox 360 (or knowing anyone who does), I hadn't had the opportunity to play the game Guitar Hero... until today. While killing some time at a local electronics store, I wandered over to the XBox 360 demo kiosk to see what the guitar hero hype was about. Man, I was totally sold after the first 5 minutes and about a frenzied half-an-hour later, I started getting some looks from the floor staff of the 'are you going to buy something or what?' variety. I was rocking out. I reluctantly put down the plastic axe and left. Easily the most fun I've had playing a video game in quite a while.

Hey Dug

moon — Wed, 09 May 2007 22:52:00 +0000

Doug and Nicole were both in Chicago this week, and Zoe and I had a chance to hang out with them and meet some of Nicole's friends as well, which was great. Doug was in town on business, doing some interviews for people interested in "alternative health," and interviewed Zoe as part of his research. I guess he's pitching a client for a new product for this demographic. We had some interesting discussions on encouraging corporate responsibility -- he's our man on the inside :-)

Synergy

moon — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 03:21:00 +0000

While unpacking my office, I dug out my flat panel LCDs, which I was psyched to use again. I hooked one up to my MacBook to use as a secondary screen but still had another panel to use. So I hooked that one up to my old powerbook and fired it up. But it wasn't very practical to try to use 2 laptops on the same desk. So I installed Synergy on both laptops, and voila, I had 3 screens of space all controlled from my MacBook. Synergy allows you to use a single mouse/keyboard among multiple machines -- pretty neat. If you're using it on a Mac, I would suggest SynergyKM, which wraps the program into a preference pane. Another neat gem I found while cleaning out some old desktop PCs that are bound for donation is Darik's Boot and Nuke, which you can use to boot your machine and automatically securely wipe your hard drives, a must if you're getting rid of a computer.

Truckin'

moon — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:12:00 +0000

Flew to Denver/Boulder last week for a few days to load up our storage unit into a 22-foot Penske truck and drove back to Chicago with Paul. Lots of rain and occasional hail in Nebraska, but made good time and arrived after about 20 hours of driving. It was a good trip, and nice to have Paul's company on the way. However, now the apartment is packed with boxes that Z and I have been working through this week unpacking bit by bit. It's slow going -- a lot of this stuff we haven't seen in a good 4 years, so we're discovering stuff we totally forgot we owned. But after living so lean for the past few years, we've discovered we simply don't need a lot of it and have donated quite a few boxes to the Salvation Army or freecycled it. Going to tackle the living room tomorrow. It's odd having furniture again...

American Born Chinese

moon — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 03:22:00 +0000

I just finished this graphic novel American Born Chinese today. While it's intended for a younger audience, and a pretty quick read, I just wanted to offer it out there as a recommendation. It's a really well written graphic novel and one of the few that deals specifically with asian-american culture and integration. And, of course, it has toy robots and the Monkey King, so what more could you want really? ;-) Amazon's review:

Indie graphic novelist Gene Yang's intelligent and emotionally challenging American Born Chinese is made up of three individual plotlines: the determined efforts of the Chinese folk hero Monkey King to shed his humble roots and be revered as a god; the struggles faced by Jin Wang, a lonely Asian American middle school student who would do anything to fit in with his white classmates; and the sitcom plight of Danny, an All-American teen so shamed by his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee (a purposefully painful ethnic stereotype) that he is forced to change schools. Each story works well on its own, but Yang engineers a clever convergence of these parallel tales into a powerful climax that destroys the hateful stereotype of Chin-Kee, while leaving both Jin Wang and the Monkey King satisfied and happy to be who they are.

GTD.

moon — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 07:24:00 +0000

Three or four months ago, I bought a book called "Getting Things Done," by David Allen, which then proceeded to sit around the house for the next few months since I didn't really have anything to do. That has changed, however, and I thought I'd give the book a read to see if it might help me be more productive with my time. The book describes a system for organizing your projects and goals, and a methodology for producing results towards those ends. I've only been using it for a few days, but I've actually found it to be quite effective. I've run into quite a bit of interest on the system out on the web (which is how I came upon it), and productivity-oriented sites (e.g. 43 folders, or LifeHacker) have a lot of tips on implementing the system. I'm trying out Kinkless GTD as my software tool of choice, but there are a few other approaches.

Visitations

moon — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:36:00 +0000

On his trip out to Cleveland, P took a side trip to pay a visit to me here to Chicago for a few days, which was great (thanks man!). It's definitely comforting to have good friends around, if even for a short time. It was nice to take a break for a few days, enjoy the warm spell, take some good walks, eat some good food, and just hang out. However, the conclusion to that game of Nexus Ops will have to wait until next time...