MindInHand

2007-11-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

Does Broadway reinvigorate actors? Why else would multi-millionaires return to the theater. They go to play their favorite roles in front of a real audience that will laugh and love them. Will Kevin Kline go far enough in Cyrano De Bergerac to do this?

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/theater/reviews/02cyra.html

2007-11-07T20:07:00.000-08:00

How did Jerry Seinfeld break free? There is only one way that Jerry Seinfeld could be in a movie and not be Jerry Seinfeld... An animated film! Perfect, he is able to act once again, and we can finally learn that his abilities have no depth. But is this enough to sink Bee movie?

http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/movies/02bee.html

2007-11-07T20:03:00.000-08:00

The BQE is one of the world's ugliest express ways. I know you've thought it before, and you certainly aren't alone....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/arts/music/03sufj.html?

2007-11-07T19:58:00.000-08:00

We can watch anything for 8 minutes! So lets capitalize on it. BAM is producing a series of short attention span nights. Quick hits of art mixed with $3 beers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/arts/05take.html

2007-11-07T19:53:00.000-08:00

Experimental movies heal us. They take the unspoken pains of our lives and place the spotlight on them. But without the hollywood glamour. Glass Lips is one of those films that helps understand the tragic in our lives.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/movies/07bloo.html

2007-10-17T20:07:00.001-07:00

Digging around for new york short term sublets I came across these good links:

www.nyhabitat.com/
and www.shittyhabitats.com/new-york-habitat-means-run-like-hell/

www.eurocheapo.com/search/index.php

2007-03-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

http://lineage2.plaync.jp/l2fun/flashGame.aspx

Why do some puzzle games seem captivating? Its rare to see a game that warrants the effort required to solve puzzles that take over 15 minutes. But this game provides remarkable clever puzzles that keep the user entertained. The combination of innovative puzzles, re-usable components and giving the users recipes that they must fullfill, allows the player to stay enchanted.

Blah blah blah. This game takes 2-5 hours to beat. It is excellent. Try it out!

2007-02-28T09:24:00.000-08:00

Unit testing with Php.

http://codepoets.co.uk/doc/php_unit_testing_with_simpletest

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-php-unit/

2007-02-19T08:16:00.000-08:00

I recently game across this cool J2ME game. Its still rough around the edges, but its a mix between a space shoot-em up game and guitar hero. I definitely recommend grabbing a copy of the test version while its still free. .

http://www.getjar.net/products/8751/MobileTechnoDestroyerAlpha3DGraphics

2007-02-14T15:50:00.000-08:00

One of the better J2Me handheld games I've seen is located here:

http://www.getjar.com/products/5720/Zelda/

A free version of Zelda. It saves where you left off. Explore your way around a world map, into dungeons, across rivers and through parks. Its still a work in progress, but kudos to the development team.

2007-01-22T16:33:00.000-08:00

Cool stuff at Mashup Camp or bookmarks stored in a blog. Big thanks to the organizers for
running such a nice space. Cool presentations and lots of self-organized events as well.

The folks from eventful , tourfilter and hypemachine.

Somebody mentioned HousingMaps a pretty slick mashup with google maps and craigslist housing listing - along with mapbuilder - a tool for making your own mashup.

Kapow is a excellent scraper. I guess dapper is too.

Gangstamaps brought more branding and interactivity to the mashup space.

original signal -blogs that follow web mashup
Programmable web - more mashup news.

AIM instant messenger has a great api. Its super easy to get robots up and running.

Firefox plugins worth checking out:
firebug - javascript debugger
tails - good for finding microformatted tags

Kevin Lawver gave some nice presentations on microformats

Massachusetts put its geographic data on the web here : http://www.mass.gov/mgis/
There is an open api to access it all.

2007-01-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

Expriation date came too fast, and I ended up giving in to netsol. Another 35 bucks siphoned out of my wallet.

2006-11-08T11:23:00.000-08:00

Send a request to customerservice at netsol for the "auth-id" needed to change a domain name.
An automated response told me to expect an answer in three days.

2006-11-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

I'm tired of the $35/yr pain of network solutions. Its time to move away from their empire.
Today marks the beginning of the process of switching to joker.com. Of course, there is no mention of how to do this on the netsol website. The first step in the process is to request the Auth-ID for the domain registration which I need for joker.com

Lets see how long this process takes... wish me luck.

2006-10-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

Electronic music guru Nick Didkovsky leads more students into interactive audio applications at New York University.

These pages require the JSyn plugin. Check out their latest work here.

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jeh371/javamusicsystems/hw2/
http://www.jibberia.com/classes/jms/hw2.php
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~wws217/JavaMusicSystems/Homework2/Homework2.html
http://www.dodody.com/JavaMusicSystem/HW2/JavaH2.html

2006-10-11T01:40:00.000-07:00

A quick comparison of 4 free video editing systems:

Contestants
T@b - www.zs4.net
Windows Movie Maker - www.msn.com
Jahshaka - www.jahshaka.org
Motion DV Studio LE Edition - free with panasonic camera

Judging
Jahshaka is the most professional and feature rich of the bunch. It has the ability to add color filters, layer multiple vide images together and a huge library of realtime effects. However, since its difficult to learn and constantly crashes, its gathering binary dust.

Windows movie maker is the best for arranging clips that are already set up. Its really easy to set up transitions, change clip length and add titles. Its storyboard feature is wonderful. It also provides export features that enable users to set a target filesize.

T@b is not too user friendly. But if you need facilities to change the colors in a clip or crop a clip, then it provides features that other programs lack. Just watch out which codec you use!

Motion DV Studio is great for organizing a collection of video, and for chopping up a long clip into smaller bits.

Verdict
If I only had one choice, motion DV is the clear winner. But the combination of the last three is a potent punch.

2006-10-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

The blogger as a CMS experiment has begun. I am using blogger as a datamanagement center, and incorporating blog posts in an iframe on another site. So far so good, although everybody warns me that iframes are inherently evil.

2006-10-02T13:47:00.000-07:00

Top ten geek business myths triggered some good debate.

My favorite comment on slashdot:

It's ironic. The two things that make engineers so good at engineering are the two things that make them so unsuited to running a business.

Hubris is a trait of engineers that makes them strive for greatness in their products. After all, you can't really have good pride if you're constantly getting negative reactions to your stuff. However, it also leads to a close-mindedness and tunnel-vision in regards to other technologies and solutions. A good businessman must be able to survey the market and understand the positioning of his product. Someone who thinks that they have such a great solution that it is applicable to any and all problem domains is selling snake oil. See Netscape and Sun's Java for two examples of solutions that were billed as much more than they realistically were.

Laziness is a good trait for engineers because it forces them to seek efficient, easily-implementable solutions to everyday problems. Automating tasks is absolutely essential to creating value in a company. However, the business side of running a business is not reduceable to a script. There are serious tradeoffs that must be weighed all the time in order to guide a business down the road to success. These can't be automated. The laziness trait leads engineers to seek easy solutions when they should be seeking difficult-to-find synergies. Well-designed software is modular with simple interfaces. Well-run businesses are well-integrated and derive their strength from business units coordinating with each other, not simply acting as a pipeline from one end to another.

Yeah, I'm guilty of that.

Soviet tank raised from being underwater for 56 years - still runs!

2006-09-15T04:42:00.000-07:00

14 September 2000, a Komatsu dozer pulled an abandoned tank from its archival tomb under the bottom of a lake near Johvi, Estonia. The Soviet-built T34 tank had been resting at the bottom of the lake for 56 years. It was found that oil was still in the tank, and the Estonian war history club members successfully started the engine.

read more | digg story

10 Reasons To Drink More Water

2006-09-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

I bet you don't know how important is water for your health, figure and well-being. But sipping water from fancy bottles is not just a trend, it's essential! Everything your body does it does better with a healthy supply of water, every system in your body depends on water. So here are 10 reasons why drinking water is good for you.

read more | digg story

2006-09-05T04:21:00.000-07:00

I bet you can't beat my top 4 fav web design templates:

Mother Nature

Naturalist

Internet Services

City In Paint

CSS templates allow web develoepers to easily seperate content and data. The data is stored in an XML format and the css template tells the web browser how to render that page.

Software Design Patterns

2006-09-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

Martin Fowler - author of some good design patterns book and the famous refactoring book, provides a primer on how to write your own design patterns

read more | digg story

21 Tactics to Improve Blog Traffic

2006-08-31T14:23:00.000-07:00

A comprehensive, in-depth list of blog-specific marketing strategies designed to drive traffic from search engines, referrals and brand building. Includes descriptions of how to implement each tactic and pitfalls to avoid.

read more | digg story

2006-08-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

Disposable email address with Pookmail

Useful for registration services that require an email.

The email address you create with pookmail will disappear in 24 hours.

2006-08-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

Build your ownWind Generator its time micropower got more and more serious.

Also, if somebody has plans to harness kinetic energy that could potentially be generated by going down an escalator. Please contact me.