/dev/null

man, i’m upset with myself right now! I just had my interview and totally botched a SUPER easy question!

“name some of the events that fire during a page’s lifecycle…”

ugh, this should have been SO simple but my rusty mind just drew a blank! I got Init but completely forgot about PreRender, Render, etc. AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! MAD!

The other questions weren’t too bad…

“Dataset vs DataReader” — freakin’ softball!

“Remoting” — I said I understood the remoting concept but had written zero lines of code for remoting. I then mentioned that in today’s “service oriented architecture” and “the web as a platform (web services)” that tightly coupling objects through remoting just didn’t seem like a good design. As luck would have it, the interviewer said that MS had recently issued a decree that service platforms should move towards SOAP and away from remoting…sweet! I didn’t know that! It’s nice to get points for NOT being able to answer a question.

“tell me the role of the CLR” — wasn’t too bad…MSIL, JIT, blah blah blah

“reflection” — run-time type inspection…though I couldn’t come up with a good example of where it would make good sense to use reflection…

“what are the benefits of stored procs” — performance, simplicity of calling, probably a less likely chance of injection attacks due to typed parameters…

The interview only lasted about 30 minutes and I was really hoping for some more grilling! I just really hope i came off as knowing something…time will tell, I guess.

Prodigem rules! Auto RSS Torrent is here!

By specifying a feed in your Prodigem account settings, they will automatically scan your RSS feed to find an item that contains an enclosure and automatically create (and host) a torrent for you! Super-cool stuff!

I recently purchased a couple of used Jabber development books through Amazon. I was reading through one of them today and am continually amazed at the flexibility and design of Jabber.

Previously, I posted about a jabber bot I was working on. This got me thinking…since Google is using Jabber for the Google Talk service, how long will it be until Google creates a bot that I can call from within the Google Talk client, say my search query, and get the results in a browser? They’ve got the technology — Google Voice Search. Integrating this from within Google Talk seems like the logical next step! It would “close the loop” as the following article describes:

http://webword.com/moving/googlevoice.html

Oh, and it would be easy to simply instant message the bot to get search results as well…that’s a given.

this is crazy stuff! via BoingBoing…

Gmaps hack shows effects of high-yield explosive detonations


Here’s a haunting Gmaps hack: “The High Yield Detonation Effects
simulator maps overpressure radii generated by a ground-level
detonation; these radii are an indicator of structural damage to
buildings. No other effects, such as thermal damage or fallout levels,
are included in this tool. Note that the displayed rings are
“idealized”; that is, no account is taken of terrain, urban density,
ground type, weather conditions, and so on.”
Link

(Thanks, Eric!)

Minneapolis recently installed cameras at several intersections which take pictures of red-light runners and automatically sends them a ticket. I decided to create a Gmap with the locations…check it out

http://flyhouse.homelinux.org/~perickson/gmaps/api/mplscams.html

Google Map: Minneapolis “Stop On Red” Cameras

next up…get the locations of the other traffic cams since MNdot’s website sucks.

hey Gwyneth and M, any idea if MSN spaces supports comment syndication? I’m lazy and don’t like having to visit your sites to see if there are new comments…

in the spirit of beating a dead horse, another gmaps post.

Check out this neat magnifier control. +10 cool points to Richard Kagerer

The magnification extension for Google Maps

I decided to post a few of the cooler gmaps apps I’ve run across while trolling the mailing list. Some I discovered on my own, others I found over at Google Maps Mania…great site.

My list is on my wiki:
http://www.blissjunkies.org/wiki/index.php?title=Gmaps_apps_list

Courtesy of Smart Mobs

someone has integrated Gmaps with Hot or Not. Finally, I can narrow my search to my neighborhood. hahahahhaha, funny stuff!

check it out: http://apps.hotornot.com/jeff/

I finally got some time to play with Gmaps a bit more today. I have to say, that API is freakin’ clean and extremely simple to use. Google will soon rule the world if they continue to release such functional and straight-forward APIs. Here’s a map of some data I’ve been playing with for work. The map is best viewed in Firefox and be patient as there are 361 data points being loaded…lots of XML parsing.

http://flyhouse.homelinux.org/~perickson/gmaps/api/demo.html

You’ll probably get denied access if you attempt to click on the Name href…this is linking to an internal page at work which contains additional customer data.

I’d like to add a few more features:
* info panel (like google local)…need to create a nice xslt
* narrowing points to display by proximity (zip code, for example) - might take some work, but it’s possible
* drop down for additional maps based on other captured data.

I picked up a Linksys USBBT100 bluetooth adapter for my laptop last night. The latest Treo-Sprint firmware (1.12) enables dial-up networking over bluetooth so I can use my phone as a modem again. I had been using a tool called PdaNet but I didn’t like how it functioned and it’s nice to not have to drag my USB cable along everywhere. The Bluetooth was actually a pain to setup (it required rebooting the Treo a couple of times) but it’s working pretty slick now. The next useless toy to go into the queue is a bluetooth-enabled GPS device. Man, I _really_ wish the Treo had built-in GPS. That would make the device so much more functional.

Oh, Alissa returned my call last night so I was pretty excited about that. We’re getting together Tuesday night to do something…now I just need to figure out what. There’s a lot to do in Uptown (especially if the weather’s nice) so I’m sure we’ll figure something out.

Work is quiet today since the “important people” are at a ground breaking ceremony for our first network. Peaceful days in the office sure are nice!

I’ve had a bunch of X10 gear laying around my apartment for quite some time. I installed a few devices several months after I moved into my apartment. I got 3 devices wired up (live, mind you) and decided that wiring things hot when you’re alone in your apartment, probably isn’t such a good idea….but it would be interesting to see how long it would take before anyone noticed…

anyway, back when I installed everything, I installed a tool called bottlerocket which gave me command-line control of the devices using my linux box’s serial port. I then installed a cgi programmed called bluelava which uses bottlerocket as a backend (it also supports other X10 backends) and has a built in WML UI (to control them from my mobile). I played around with it for a while, then broke it, then got distracted and never touched it again. Fast forward a few months….since I got my new Treo, I decided to set everything up again. After chmod 777 my serial port (777, whatever, I don’t care) everything worked again. I can now browse to the following url and turn on/off my devices.

I’m going to regret posting this to the entire internet, but it might be kinda fun.

Control my lights via WML