Hello everyone. I am not making apologies.

So. Things going on here.

Three months ago we hired Jeffery D’Urso for a 3 month contract to get some line of sight and direction in technology.  He was great.  It doesn’t seem like it has been 3 months, but as of friday it was.   He is now heading off into the sunset riding his 18.5 inch laptop…

But huge things have changed, I will detail those in other posts. Now I just want to review the big ones.

• Work developments
  • Website almost fully redeveloped in PHP on the Code Igniter framework. Some highlights -
    • Completely redesigned data framework, much cleaner
    • New design, and complete content reorg
    • HUGE drop in processing needs
    • Much more streamlined code -  at least a 75% drop in code volume
    • 2x the features (including, integration with video chat, workflow tool, new CRM integration points)
    • re developed customer section for better usability
  • Brand New curriculum and tests!
  • Many Many More.  When the site launches live I will give you a better update and maybe a walk through.
• Musical Developments
  • Picked up the Bass guitar
  • Expanded horizons
    These are my last 3months of listening changes
    
    Compare to overall
    
• Extra Curricular
  • My bowling team wow the league championship.
  • I am doing crossfit.  My crossfit number is 925
  • I started eating outmeal and PB&Js again.

Those seems like the biggies to get out there.   I will post a work update on the site once we go live (hopefully for 2010)

This video is simply amazing so I had to post it immediately

This is always an interesting topic to post on. People love diets… There are 25,433 books on amazon you can choose from the help you loose weight (including – The no S diet, or the obviously effective 5 Day Diet etc)  and those are just the diets with enough backing to get a book deal.  It doesn’t count the weird internet diets (check out Forbes 7 Wacky Diets) or probably effective, questionable healthy things like “The Master Cleanse” (the lemon juice and maple syrup diet).

I think that the most effective way to lose weight is just to keep it in mind.  Not in the forefront, but kinda back there.  Like on a stickynote you never look at but always see.    For me that was casually tracking it via “weightbot” which was good.  But not great.  I don’t like its method.  you can see it here (after the break) Read the rest of this entry »

• I think I am moving apartments.  Now that the Office is moving in next door i decided to move alittle furthur out of the square, somewhere still in walking distance though. – I like looking at places, so I am excited about that.
• Runkeeper (my iPhone app for tracking my running progress) just proved I am one of the fastest people in the world.  It recorded a run of 100mph and about 48 miles. Sweet.  I knew I was going fast, but that was extra sweet.
• The new iPhone OS!   Finally Cut and Paste!  Looks like MMS and tethering won’t be immediatly available with At&T (stupid AT&T, comeon!)
• Billy Bragg and Wilco’s Mermaid Avenue stuff!   so good!
• Tom Waits VH1 Storytellers.   So good.
• Chocolate
• Boston Organics
• 

Did you all see that Microsoft decided to relaunch Live Search as Bing.  What a weak attempt.

TO Microsoft: You can keep rebranding it, but Bing will never be a verb and your search just isn’t going to catch up.  But I like the vigor at which you rebrand and relaunch your search!  Keep trying you will at least keep competition alive!

Image Via Proidee

This seems like a just really interesting things that i would have running as my screensaver on my PC if i could!  Read the rest of this entry »

I thought this was great.  This guy turned off the lights and tracked his roomba as it cleaned his room.  Its a pretty small room, so i am not sure if it is the same as a bigger room. But still cool:

Now here’s something interesting, I set up a photo camera in my room, turned out all the lights and took a long-exposure shot of my roomba doing it’s thing for about 30 minutes. The result is a picture that shows the path of the roomba through it’s cleaning cycle, it looks like a flight map or something. It really hits every spot!

Roomba, Economics and Long-Exposure Photography

Oh man, Google is kickass.  They don’t just find a solutions to a problem (this time the problem is the curve of a book when open) they find kickass solutions to problems.  I kinda guessed that google just cut all the pages out of books, but turns out they don’t.  They actually have a set of infared cameras make a 3D rep of the pages so they can adjust for the curving.   “Dude!  Why don’t we just 3Demensionally render every page so we can make the perfect scan”  Sounds like stoner logic.  And a really cool piece of software.

Turns out, Google created some seriously nifty infrared camera technology that detects the three-dimensional shape and angle of book pages when the book is placed in the scanner. This information is transmitted to the OCR software, which adjusts for the distortions and allows the OCR software to read text more accurately. No more broken bindings, no more inefficient glass plates. Google has finally figured out a way to digitize books en masse. For all those who’ve pondered “How’d They Do That?” you finally have an answer.

The Secret Of Google’s Book Scanning Machine Revealed

Found this also very cool solutions for book scanning.