A Series of Tubes | An archive of old posts.

Jul 18 2008

Date Difference 1.0

Today I’m releasing version 1.0 of Date Difference, my first real app. It’s pretty simple, just give it two dates and/or times, and it tells you the length of time between them. It’s completely free, and you can get it here.

There are preferences for what units to enable or disable (days, hours, minutes, and/or seconds), and it compensates for the disabled units with the next largest enabled unit (for example, if the difference between the dates is 1 day and 2 hours, but you disable days, then it becomes 26 hours).

Stuff I’m planning on adding include support for weeks, months, and years, as well as possibly iCal integration, as well as porting it to the iPhone (as soon as I get my developer membership).

UPDATE: It seems that version 1.0 of Date Difference only works on OS X Leopard, see here for more information!

UPDATE: Version 1.1 released!

Tagged Apps, Computers, Date Difference

Jul 12 2008

Uncategorized

iPhone 3G

I went to the Apple Store today to check out the new iPhone 3G. It isn’t that different from the old one, but it has much faster data speeds (getting internet data over the cellphone network), and GPS, not to mention iPhone OS 2.0 and a new back design:

The new design is actually slightly thicker than the old one, but it isn’t that noticeable, since it’s also slightly curved in the back. It feels better in your hand, and also a tiny bit heavier than the old one. It has more…presence than the old one, I think.

The 2.0 software is nice, the new App Store allows you to download applications written by people who aren’t Apple, stuff like games and apps for social networks like Facebook and MySpace, plus an official AIM client by AOL. Some of the stuff (most of it) is free, but a lot costs between $.99 and $9.99 (Super Monkey Ball, the most popular item on the store at the moment, weighs in at $9.99). The software is a free upgrade for people with the original iPhone, but unfortunately it’s $9.99 for iPod Touch users such as myself.

The new iPhone costs less than the old ones did, only $199 for the 8gb variety and $299 for 16gb. Unfortunately, the upped data speed means that the monthly plans cost more, $10 more for the faster data (mandatory), and $5 more for 200 text messages (optional, but there are no text messages included with the data plan), bringing the monthly cost to $85/month. The 16gb model also comes in white:

Tagged iPhone, Releases

Jul 02 2008

Uncategorized

MO:RE

Yesterday, Cyan Worlds delivered a letter to the Guild of Messengers, to be released to the community-at-large. It reads:

Shorah,

We’ve got some good news. GameTap and Cyan Worlds have reached an agreement that would return the rights of Myst Online to Cyan Worlds! We’re very excited, but at the same time, there are some hurdles to overcome. Cyan Worlds is currently operating at a reduced capacity. We’re not in a position where we have plenty of resources and people to bring MO back fast and furiously. But we’ve got a plan, and we’d like to run it past you – our fans and supporters.

Read the whole letter here…

Basically, the letter says that we will see yet another incarnation of URU (this being the fourth Uru, following Uru Live, Uru:Ages Beyond Myst, Until Uru, and Myst Online: Uru Live, which closed just a few months ago), and that it won’t have any new Cyan-based content (at least, not at first). Instead, Myst Online: Restoration Experiment is to be much more community-supported, with a heavier emphasis on the Guild system that was established, but never really put to good use during the extent of MO:UL.

The initial thinking on the cost of this project is $25 for six months, a fee I will gladly pay for more Uru, especially if it is to have fan-run servers, like Until Uru did. I attempted to set up my own UU server back in the day, but I never got it accessible to the public before D’mala (Cyan’s official server) opened and everyone stopped caring about the fan-based servers. Understandably, I’d like another shot at running a server.

Here’s hoping that this is the Uru that finally makes it, and that the fourth time’s the charm.

Tagged Myst games/Cyan Worlds, Uru

Jun 29 2008

2 Comments

Life in general

RSS Subscribers: Full Post vs. Summary Preference?

I don’t use RSS Feeds to read things, I prefer to see content the way a site designer meant it to be seen…So I really have no idea what people want to see in an RSS Feed. I recently received some complaints that some of my posts have images that are really big, and mess up some RSS Readers. Of course, on my site I use CSS to resize images to the right dimensions, so I don’t notice things like that.

Anyway, I found a setting in WordPress for putting out summaries of posts on the RSS Feed, instead of the full post, meaning that images don’t get posted to the feed. I don’t know if this is better…Would people rather have a full feed with oversized images every now and then, or would you rather have a summary?

I don’t know if you can tell from this post, but I don’t like RSS Feeds. They make it impossible to get a real count of the people who read my blog, since WordPress doesn’t track them…

Tagged Blog, Life in general

Jun 29 2008

Life in general

Happy Birthday, Eve!

My MacBook Pro arrived on my doorstep two years ago, yesterday. She is still an amazing computer, and I use her every day. I’m learning to program in Objective C now, so I can make better use of her. The only things I have changed since buying her are an upgrade to Leopard and an upgrade to 2gb of ram instead of 1. Anyway, Happy Birthday, Eve!

Tagged Computers, Life in general

Jun 29 2008

Life in general

Happy Birthday, Eve!

Tagged Computers, Life in general

Jun 25 2008

Life in general

iRemember Stores Cookies on Mobile Safari

If you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch, you absolutely need to get iRemember now. It fixes the fact that Mobile Safari doesn’t save cookies, meaning that after you install it, Safari will remember your passwords. You have no idea how long I have wanted this.

Just add the iSpazio repo (http://repo.ispazio.net) to your sources list (in Installer.app), and then install iRemember. It can be uninstalled as soon as you install it, the change it makes is permanent. This app is a godsend.

Tagged Computers, iPhone, Life in general

Jun 25 2008

Life in general

Larger Firefox Icon

I noticed today that the official Firefox icon is still using the old 128×128 resolution, rather than the new 512×512 icon size that is the standard in OS X Leopard and I think Windows Vista too. Since the Firefox icon is a vector image, it is (in theory) infinitely scalable, so it should be a breeze to make a larger one. In light of that fact, I made a larger icon, which you can download here.

For comparison, here’s the new icon compared to the old one, at 512×512 resolution (click for full resolution):

To use the new icon, you can get a program like Candybar, or simply ctrl+click on firefox (in the /Applications folder), choose Show Package Contents, and replace the icon in the Resources folder.

Tagged Computers, Life in general

Jun 22 2008

1 Comment

Life in general

Geese

I went with my girlfriend to feed some old bread to the geese that live down my street yesterday, and figured I should bring my camera. I got some pretty good pictures, but let me just say this: geese are vicious.

This guy kept attacking other geese and hissing at us for more bread. He had a metal ring on his ankle:

I wonder if that has something to do with it? Perhaps the park rangers marked which ones are really aggressive? Maybe that one is the alpha male? Do geese even have alpha males? I have no idea.