IsaacRaway's Blog

These guys are really great, you got to check out some of their videos. They do live street performances using massive full body puppets. Only 500 views on this, which I find hard to believe: Seagulls

Why do I want one of these? I have too many computers already. I still want one of these.


I strongly dislike the MySpace? branding, but it doesn't look like it's on the case anywhere so I could get over it.

How cool is that? Build 123, number totally unplanned.

Anyway, this is the first build I've managed to get into usable form since November 11th, so I'm pretty happy with myself right now. Check out the news post or just go download it.

After some failed attempts to create a flash based music player, I've found one that actually works with the MP3 files prodcued by the software I use: Muxtape.

Check it out.

The font is too big, but at least the songs play at the correct speed. Oh and you can't jog or otherwise change position in a song - you can only play all the way through. You can also stop songs, but if you're listening to my Muxtape why on earth would you want to do that?

This is pretty cool.

• 150 programs running in Mac OS X Expose:
  

I'm going to have to try it. I'll let you know how it goes. I want to see what the animation looks like when you hit F11.

Been trying to figure out exactly what the official way to use my Phone as Modem (PAM) plan with Sprint is. Finally found an answer, thought I might share it and make it easier for me to find in the future in case I forget.

Install Sprint PCS Connection Manager. For tethered data purposes, you'll need to set up the Sprint Connection Manager software in Windows XP, which you'll find on the CD that came with your phone. Once installed, the process is very simple: connect your phone, fire up the application, wait for it to find your handheld, and then click the Connect button.

#

Update: Turns out all of that is wrong, at least for the PPC 6800 (the 6700 did actually require Connection Manager) - all you have to do on Windows is plug the device in to the USB port, and turn on Internet Sharing on the device. It's recognized as an external network interface and a new "Local Area Connection 2" is created automatically. About 30 seconds after that appears you're online, nothing left to do.

After way too many calls to Sprint on 4 different 800 numbers, my Mogul is activated using the same number I've had ever since I first signed up with Sprint (then went to T-mobile, then AT&T, now back to Sprint).

So far I must say I am very happy with the device. It is noticeably quicker than the PPC-6700 was (owing in part to a faster CPU but also the separation of the CPU for applications and a dedicated DSP chip for communications), and way lighter. This thing almost weighs nothing. It's lighter than the iPhone, which I found really surprising.

Keyboard

Of course the Mogul is an upgraded version of the PPC-6700, so it has the characteristic slide out keyboard. The direction has however changed - the top slides to the left, with the keyboard on the right of the device. This is flipped from how the PPC-6700 was configured. I actually tend to like this because when I hold the device in my left hand (which usually I will do since it is a tablet device and I am right handed), I notice that I had a sort of tick of slightly pressing on the top of the PPC-6700, pushing the screen just a bit open. This would wear on the slide mechanism and is probably part of why that started to fail on my old one. This is probably really specific to me, but this is my blog so there.

The keyboard is even better than I remember - a real joy to use actually, compared to touch screens certainly. I don't remember if the PPC-6700 did text correction, but it is nice and not too intrusive on the 6800. Things like capitalizing each word in a contact name are nice touches.

Networking

Bluetooth PAN was ridiculously easy to set up - just go to Internet Sharing on the Mogul, set PC Connection to "Bluetooth PAN", pair the device with my MacBook? , then select "Connect to network on Isaac Raway" from the Bluetooth drop down on the Mac menu bar. Connected in seconds. This is really a win for Apple as much as Microsoft - the addition of Bluetooth PAN support is apparently recent to Mac OS X. I am so glad it isn't Leopard only - I am holding out as long as I can before I upgrade, though I'm not really sure why. For a different article perhaps.

The speed does leaves a bit to be desired, but it's more than fast enough to actually do some stuff and grab a small download or two. Results of the test:

I feel sorry for my friend Brian that uses this kind of connection for XBox Live, however.

Home Screen

As always, I feel like the Home screen in Windows Mobile is a bit crowded. I was hoping this would be cleaned up a bit between WM5 and WM6, but it seems to me that it's actually gotten worse (or maybe just HTC's and/or Sprint's version of it has).

There 11 different lines, the last of which has 4 large icons in it. Way too much stuff going on here. I'm considering installing HTC Touchflo, which Spj has on her Mogul. She says it works well for her so I'm tempted to install it. I must say the default screen does look a whole lot more inviting than the default WM6 Home screen, and the ability to really use almost all phone functions with just one thumb is very nice.

Contacts

Programming all my contacts into the phone didn't take too long, but I did notice that the process was a lot less inviting than the iPhone experience. There are 11 items between the Name and Mobile Tel lines for a new contact, which in portrait mode appears on one screen, but not so lucky in in landscape mode. Here the Mobile Tel line appears below the fold, which means in order to create a new contact you have to page down, then select the field. Really, there should be only three, maybe four visible fields for a new contact: Name, Company, Mobile, and possibly Work. The rest should be hidden either by adding only the ones you want for each contact or by pressing a "more details" button to view all fields. This just feels like I'm editing a database table directly, less than ideal. It does however get the job done. I'm a bit lucky though, I only have 42 contacts (weird).

Hard Buttons

Since I used the PPC-6700 my thumb keeps going up to the right to press OK when in landscape mode. I have to adjust to pressing those special buttons with my left hand. I don't know how annoying this would be to a right handed person if she hadn't used a PPC-6700. It's not anything I can't get over, however.

I also find the Green and Red buttons to be a bit too small. THey are pill shaped and raise above the two action buttons, the Start button, and the OK button. The configuration works but it's the kind of thing where you just have to trust that it's only going to press the raised button if you simply press with your thumb or finger. It's very unlikely you'll press the other buttons, but it still feels a bit off.

Well UPS finally delivered my package. I have not had a chance to inspect it yet, so we'll see what condition it is in. Hopefully this ends the delivery FAIL saga and begins a new wondrous chapter of Windows Mobile 6 productivity.

A dark cloud is on the horizon, however, as Sprint has seen fit to assign me a new phone number. Hopefully they get their act together and transfer my existing one, or things aren't going to be so ducky... we'll see.

moar funny pictures

Package went back to Louisville again, then to Minneapolis, then Eagan. Maybe it'll wind up at my door later today? Maybe not.

View Larger Map

Thats:

1. LOUISVILLE, KY (start)
2. MINNEAPOLIS, MN
3. EAGAN, MN
4. SALT LAKE CITY, UT
5. LOUISVILLE, KY
6. SALT LAKE CITY, UT
7. LOUISVILLE, KY
8. MINNEAPOLIS, MN
9. EAGAN, MN

This is really awesome looking stuff.

A bar with LEDs is suspended in a bowl lined with electromagnets, which can simulate resistance of physical objects. Check out the video for a really lame demo and then a sort of cool one.

UPS... seriously.

Package went back to Louisville, then back to Salt Lake City.

View Larger Map

WTF?

My cell phone is currently at D.

View Larger Map

Sprint is also to blame, however, since I ordered this on Tuesday and they didn't give it to UPS until Saturday.

From Rental Car IT on Meme Agora:

I walked into a conference room at one point, and saw a diagram that literally covered the entire wall with boxes, lines, and 8-point font describing the enterprise architecture (no, sorry, E nterprise A rchitecture). When one of the client developers walked in, I said "Wow, it's a good thing you guys dismantling this mess" to which he replied "No, that's the new one we're going towards". Decisions like this mean I have to spend my time in long lines in places like rental car counters.

I was really hoping I'd never have to argue with a rep over giving him/her my SS number again. It turns out that hope was misplaced. From my thread on Sprint's Customer Care forum:

I just ordered the new Mogul. Very excited to get this phone, and actually excited to be back on Sprint's amazingly fast EVDO network. I am transferring my existing cell number to Sprint.

I get a call today from 888 211 4727. Sprint rep, saying she needs a number from the back of my phone, or something. I can hardly understand her message - she needs a new headset I think. Anyway, that doesn't bother me much. Not sure how anything on the back of my iPhone is going to help (yes, I'm switching away from an iPhone), but anyway I call the callback number she leaves.

I'm shocked to get an answer after two rings, a real person picks up. He asks for the cell number I'm calling about, I give it to him. Then he asks for my social security number.

I ask if the last 4 will do and he says, "no I need the whole number," something to that effect. I ask why I can't use my password. He says this is the only way he can get my account information. I know this is simply not correct, and might even be illegal. I tell him as much, check his system, that's not correct.

I have a PIN for this kind of thing. According to this site (How does Sprint protect my account information?) the PIN is the only number used to confirm identity. That's what it's for. I'm sorry but I'm not giving my SS number to anyone over the phone, ever. Anyone who does should have their head examined.

I'm wondering if I should have just given him my PIN and see if that will work. The guy clearly doesn't know what he's talking about or doesn't work for the same company as whoever wrote the article I liked to above:

"The PIN will be for your account only. It will provide a greater level of account security than the last four digits of your Social Security number, tax ID number, or account number.

You will use your PIN to identify yourself when calling Sprint or visiting a Sprint retail store."

I should have asked the guy for his ID number.

"No man can serve two APIs: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve Cocoa and Win32." - Jobs 4:20

(Edit: I couldn't resist: long sleeve black shirt, and one for the ladies.)

(Edit 2: Thanks to Michael for the suggestion that the Holy Jobs might have uttered the words that came to me.)

Well I've done it. I decided to switch back to my beloved fast wireless internet providor, Sprint. I know, I know, "my brother has all kinds of trouble with Sprint." Well I never did. Always had great reception and good customer service. Their data network is blazing fast (by US standards anyway), and I actually loved my PPC-6700 but for it's rather sluggish nature.

What did I order? The PPC-6800, a faster, better version of the phone I actually really liked. Finally I'll have my laptop wireless connection back (something iPhone just doesn't do), a way faster data experience, custom software available (including scripting languages so I can mess around if I have some down time), and most importantly, a real QWERTY keyboard again.

I'll probably post some experiences later, but I might not. Basically, I'm not an iPhone fan.

Shock. Horror.

And this, boys and girls, is why public traded companies are a bad idea: Yahoo sued for spurning Microsoft

Although I guess in this case Yahoo! just wants more money per share. The way it reads to me, however, is the idea that selling a company to whoever has the cash to buy it is always a good idea. It isn't.

Sometimes companies need to be held by the people who know what to do with them. Companies need to be driven by a vision, selling wholesale to another firm is a sure way to pervert and eventually destroy the vision of your company, to the end effect that you drive away customers.

Yesterday I found myself following a white pickup truck, sort of beaten up, with two burly looking guys in the cab.

Instead of the compulsory red-neck bumper sticker(s), there was a simple tag that read: "Life is good" with a smiling face over it. It was such a strange juxtaposition against what I would expect. I guess that says something about me, something I'm not entirely comfortable with, but I was glad to be surprised by it. It sort of made my day.

Feeling pretty sick today, so it's a nice reminder to try to keep in mind.

Development

I've been working on a framework for cross platform application development in BlitzMax. It's initially based on VB6 and Delphi, using a similar FRM and VBP format (very simple extended INI formats basically) to organize resources. From there I'm going to extend it to serve cross platform needs. The GUI for now is based on MaxGUI? but I plan to provide support for wxWidgets as well as at least a third cross platform toolkit.

Who wants to get this for me for my birthday?

• Cintiq 20WSX:
  

Finally figured out how to clean up the title of each blog post as shown in the RSS feed, with the help of a little plugin:

This plugin provides a CLEANBLOGTITLE tag that fixes blog titles of the form

"2008-02-12_iPhone-test" to "2008-02-12 iPhone test", for use with BlogAddOn.

I'll probably package this up some time for others to use but for now I'm tired of looking at perl code.

This is probably the best series I've seen on YouTube? .

• David Blaine Street Magic 1
• David Blaine Street Magic 2
• David Blaine Street Magic 3

Well iPhone support is a bit poor. It works, sort of. The WYSIWYG editor loads but doesn't actually work. A bit too much panning while editing text only. Put it this way, I'm so tired of writing this with the iPhone's touch screen non-keyboard I hardly even had the will power to say I'm tired of it, much less finish this by now unbelievably painful to enter sentence.

I don't think I've ever seen such a customizable web app of any kind. You could really do anything with this stuff. It's so easy to create simple applications, just fantastic. I mean, a wiki that can act like a blog or a decent BackpackIt? replacement (for me anyway), and I can modify the functionality of on the fly, from anywhere I have a browser? Fantastic.

We'll just have to see how well it looks on the iPhone, but if it doesn't look good (I'm kind of expecting it will work just fine), I'm pretty confident I can tweak it to work.

I'm going to try using TWiki as my blog engine now. I'm not sure if I'll end up converting the old entries over to TWiki articles. It shouldn't be too hard really, since all I need to do is export a text file in the right format and the new Wordpress provides a nice little XML format. We'll see if I end up bothering. First things first though, at least in my slightly scewed view: I need to fix up the Blog web (a section of TWiki is called a "web") so it looks a little more like a blog.

Link: TERMINUS

I just did a search for BlitzMax? on Google’s Blog Search and I’m a bit disappointed in the results.

It seems that everyone writing about BlitzMax? is doing so from the perspective of game development, but I beg to differ with this position. BlitzMax? is a fantastic language for general application development. Where else can you get all this for $80 (partially stolen from their site, I don’t think they’ll mind. I can personally confirm every feature I mention here works as advertised.):

• Cross platform on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
• Easy to learn and powerful basic syntax
• Ability to include C, C++, ObjectiveC and ASM source files directly in application with a simple Import - including access to C++ objects as if they were defined in BlitzMax itself
• Garbage collection
• Access to full source of all code modules provided
• Function pointers
• Dynamic arrays
• Inheritance and polymorphism
• ‘By reference’ function parameters
• Array and string slicing
• Flexible ‘collection’ system for dealing with linked lists etc
• Low level pointer handling
• UTF16 strings
• The ability to ‘Incbin’ binary data and access it as easily as if it were a regular file

Libraries I have (all free except the MaxGUI? modules which is another $30):

• Robust XML support
• Cross platform GUI - MaxGUI (relativly simple) or wxWidgets
• Database access to sqlite, mysql, msql, dbase
• Regular expressions
• Unit testing
• Many scripting languages integrating into BlitzMax code
• Several libraries for access to audio drivers, advanced graphics manipulation, and the list goes on

I just can’t find anything like this, other than BlitzMax? , for any price and produces fully small compiled executables with no external runtime requirements (some modules might require a single shared library, none are required by default), and does it on three platforms.

If there is another tool like that out there, I would sure love to see it.

P.S. Actually, now that I think about it, there is one that seems really close: Radio UserLand? and/or OPML editor. In my opinion they desperately need bindings to wxWidgets or at least a simple GUI toolkit not based on a browser, simply to allow me to create fast, local interfaces to my scripts. Of course Radio based stuff isn’t compiled, and I’m not sure that there’s even close to the amount of free code available for it that there is for BlitzMax? , but it could otherwise meet most of the functionality requirements I believe.