Monthly Archives: March 2009

Twitter "Following" Ordering: The Secret Of The 6 x 6

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For every user’s page on Twitter, you’ll notice a 6 x 6 area of profile images of the people they are following. Here’s mine:

twitter profile 6x6.jpg

Just in case if you ever wanted in what order they’re in, here’s a page on Twitter’s GetSatisfaction page on this same topic. It’s based on when the user signed up.

But this is when I started to think… maybe people will start selling and buying earlier-signed up accounts in an effort to increase visibility. I mean, Calacanis attempted to buy a slot on the “Suggested Users” list for $250K. (I can’t help but associate this kind of “shadiness” with the buying and selling of WoW accounts.)

This is only made easier by how easy it is to change your name on Twitter (a feature which, I think, ends up making me think more about online user accounts in general).

Just as a little easter egg, to find out when a specific user joined Twitter on Twitter itself, you can use the “whois” command after you’re logged in. Try it.

whois joshkim

twitter whois.png

And that ends today’s tidbit on Twitter.

I Gotta Get More Fired Up!

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This weekend has been spent largely on learning more and more about the joys of iPhone development: Going through this book, hacking away at this Cocoa Twitter engine, and trying out Tweetie (iTMS)/TwitterFon (iTMS) in a more developer mindset.

Being the list-maker that I am, I was a little happy that I finally got the ball rolling this past Wednesday. I was happy with knowing that I was able to act on these deep desires to create.

Around the height of my productivity, at 2 AM, I got angry.

Awesome things happen around and after 2 AM, contrary to “popular belief”.

I was angry at myself for not being able to do this earlier, faster, better… I realized that I maybe it’s because of some ridiculous standards that I set for myself, but it was more than that.

This cool, controlled frustration was exactly what I needed. I ended up taking most of it out on the “Whiteboard of World Domination”, attempting yet again to plan out the new new projects I will begin in the next couple of weeks.

I feel great to be in the high part of my waxing and waning productive cycle. Definitely took a new programming language, framework, and platform to get me started. Let’s see how far I can take it until I become lazy again.

Prism vs Fluid: Revisited

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It’s been a while since I looked into Prism. I’ve used Fluid on and off since the last time I wrote on them.

Prism seems a lot more stable now, but still, Fluid comes out on top. It just completely blows Prism out of the water. So if you’re wondering which one to use (while being on a Mac, that is… not sure if there are even any other options other than Prism on Linux or Windows), just pick Fluid, and show some love to @iTod.

A Prism app has nowhere near the functionality of Fluid apps. For a normal Prism app, it seems like it behaves as a nerfed Firefox window: The preference pane seems to have been lifted from Firefox.

The apps created by Fluid seem a lot more like real applications. The “Cocoa”ness is still very much evident. The ability to assign shortcut keys is always fun, at least for the keyboard jockey in me. Dock Badges, for when applications like GMail and Google Reader to show how many unread items you have. The list goes on.

So stop looking. Just go get Fluid. And be sure to look into the Flickr pool of lickable Fluid icons.

Need More Focus: iPhone Development

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In the beginning, this post was just titled “Need More Focus”. I was going to talk about how I’ve been working towards making HanMeta a self-sustaining entity.

But then, I watching the iPhone OS 3.0 preview presentation after coming home. Then, I had to make some very quick decision about how I’m going to reach that goal.

How Far I Have Come: A Review

2009 started with a bout of laziness. Definitely a lot of resting, clutching onto the 360, all the while, trying to figure out what I wanted to with the blog. The month of January was spent on learning more and more about dealing with the Linux server as I moved my blog to slicehost and hoped to launch a Rails app on the same slice.

Oh, the joys of being the linux admin. Definitely learned to fear (the respect kind… and… the other kind, too… who are these great demigods placed on the Earth anyway?) the server admins that power the Pipes.

I visited Seattle later that month, and came back refreshed, ready to bite into something hard. I chose the guitar. Yes, the real kind, although, I did end up returning to the awesomeness that is Rock Band. I learned about how to learn again. (I’ve been writing up this in another post.)

February: a week or two was spent on learning Cocoa and iPhone development. It was a nice break from trying to futz around with linux server administration. DevPhone 2009 was extremely important in helping me get started. Also, there was a nice (much shorter) presentation on iPhone Development for Education at NCSA. And of course, I can’t leave out Hillegass’s amazing book on Cocoa Programming.

After that, my desire to finish a web application started to flare up again. I started hacking away with some libraries that I would need to make FeedSt a reality. Instead of doing a feed reader, I decided to finish up an easier non-paid project called GadgetGet. This was around the beginning of March.

Of course, on top of this, earlier this month, I started a tiny little podcast called JKast. All the while, there were blog posts waiting to be written.

The Multiple JKs

I sat down yesterday, trying to figure out how to divide up my focus. Instead, I avoided making any decision and continued to read Atlas Shrugged, a book that I’ve been meaning to read ever since I found out that there was a yearly scholarship for it back in college. It being in the news, I just had to get it for the Kindle to test some fiction reading on it.

Today, it hit me. I need to start focusing. Now.

Why Not Earlier?

The reasoning behind trying to do both Web and Desktop development was simple: To be awesome twice. Of course, what I forgot was that cloning hasn’t been perfected yet. And even then, why would the world need a second me? Ridiculous.

Is it the newness of the iPhone SDK? Is it the third 2 L of Dew I just cracked open in four days? Maybe, but I find myself wanting to do more iPhone development, over all the Rails hacking I’ve been doing. It could be because of all the other things that I have been having trouble with; more correctly, it could be because of all the other things that I’ve been learning.

Heck, my skills in vi/m has increased significantly. I find myself wanting the shortcuts in all circumstances. rails.vim, a vim plugin, totally blows my mind every time I load up MacVim. My desires to do things with the shortest amount of keystrokes and the least amount of time has been on the rise, with more and more usage of Quicksilver and GeekTools. The server admin insanity helped me understand more and more about the state of the Internet in general. Also, gaining a much more deep understanding of git and deployment through Heroku so I can just sidestep almost all the server admin pain…

So, I don’t discount the fact that my desire to learn and implement a web app has gotten be very far. It’s just that, from the business standpoint, time to market and any form of money seems to be much faster with the iPhone.

I also feel that there are many more possibilities for interesting human to computer interactions with the iPhone than a traditional web app. The other data provided by just having an iPhone from the GPS, accelerometer… and now, other iPhones in proximity… At times, it just feels more real to me. You’re touching your UI elements, goodness.

Also, I need to act on this excitement. I took way too long to commit myself to Rails. I’m still wondering why I didn’t latch onto it back in 2006, when I knew full well that was what I wanted then.

But again, learning from mistakes, and pushing forward. Hard.

Game Plan

It’s simple: Get it done. All the while, enjoy the awesome-izing process.

I could bore you with the list of things I want to get done, but I’ll do it in my notebook instead. Really, I want to make sure that the process I go through stays as transparent as possible.

Notes About The iPod Shuffle During Lunch

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  • So when I first saw it on apple.com, I was amazed. Sweet, so we have touch/gesture controls now? NOPE. Instead, in-line controls.
  • The larger in-line controls… I wonder how much heavier they are.
  • And if you think that I would replace my headphones for those earbuds… you’re crazy. I’m sure a third-party solution is going to come, but I’m probably not going to like it.
  • The song info/playlist creation seems like it’s just enough: I love the simplicity of the iPod Shuffle. I’ll have to play with one to make up my mind.
  • $79, eh? Up from $49? I think I’m going to keep my used 1st Gen that a friend gifted to me, thanks. Sorry, economy, I already helped out with my Kindle.

Drilling down…

I was completely stoked when I saw the shuffle this morning. It looked like it was about half the size… and screw buttons, there was none (minus the 3-way toggle switch). Then I poked around a bit… what? More in-line controls on the earbuds? Freaking.

In my opinion, not showing the in-line controls in the same image as the Shuffle borders on false advertising.

I would have bought it immediately… if the UI was on the Shuffle itself. If I could slide my finger across the Shuffle. If I squeeze the Shuffle. If I could… shake the Shuffle.

Sorry, Apple

This fanboy isn’t all that amazed. Even VoiceOver, because it just seems like this should have happened when I bought my iPhone. I said it, from day one, that when there was an incoming call while I was listening to music, it should tell me who was calling.

Whatever, it’s not like I can change any of this. End rant.

Hacking The Kindle: Kindle Books Store – Free Books?

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If you’re keeping up with my Tweets, you know I made my first impulse purchase on the Kindle yesterday night. The fact that Kindle makes buying books so ridiculously simple forces me to make the comparison to buying songs from iTunes (except, I don’t buy songs from iTunes… I’ll talk about this in another post).

This isn’t like those other “hacks” that people keep talking about getting your own eBooks on the Kindle, but to download from the Kindle Store; free, copyrighted material.

Disclaimer: This is all for educational purposes only. I’m NOT responsible for what you do with your Kindle with this knowledge. And I can only hope that Amazon figures this out faster than the rest of the Kindle freaks like me. If you know someone who can fix this bug inside Amazon, please let them know.

The hack

Steps are as follows:

  • Buy the book
  • Lie and say you’ve accidentally purchased the book
  • Turn off the wireless just after the book has been downloaded

I don’t know, but you probably should wait on the screen that has the accidental purchase link until the book has finished downloading… I didn’t really think about this, but my download is fast enough on the awesome 3G network anyway. (Go Kindle GO!)

A couple of seconds after I turned on the wireless, the books did disappear. To get around this, simply make a copy of the file on your computer.

As a sidenote, while I was messing around with moving .azw and .mbp files the book that was downloaded seems to be about twice as big as the sample… I wonder why this is the case. I can only think that there’s some compression going on.

I had to see if there was some kind of remote killswitch on the DRM, and turns out… there isn’t. After the original downloaded copy was erased by Amazon, Amazon was satisfied it seems. I turned on my wireless again and as I expected, I was able to use my Kindle on wireless while reading my “free” book.

Dear Amazon,

Fix it. I don’t even know who to talk to, but I’ll try to forward the link to this post to some people I see on Twitter.

Commentary On “Commentary!: The Musical”

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A progressively less-edited first episode. I got tired of editing at around the 25% mark. 36 minutes of me and @ehjayb (blog).

Really, this conversation should have started when I found out that there was an amazing “commentary” for the amazing Joss Whedon series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog a long while ago. I quote the word “commentary” because it really could have been a CD release by itself. Since there was no real way to get at this awesome content, other than buying the DVD itself, I ended up pirating the thing about two days ago.

I am first to admit that this is a very grey area: I definitely pirated the content that I should have paid for. Of course, I have my justifications… I paid for the series when it came out on iTunes. I don’t want to buy a physical DVD (ever again, mind you… but maybe for you people who want it) and have to divide up the commentary into tracks so I could enjoy them on the go on my iPod. I would have loved to have the ability to pay a little bit more extra to get the commentary track. That’s pretty much all I wanted to say.

Instead, this whole thing spun into a podcast episode. I hope to actually have a separate feed so that the podcast can be more than just an mp3 attached to a blog entry. Or maybe podpress will work just fine…

Sidenote: I can’t believe I didn’t say a word about NPH in this podcast.

Sidenote #2: FBI, please don’t burn down my apartment. Thanks.

JKast – The New Podcast

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After months and months of trying to find someone to start up a podcast with, I got a newfound friend to get into a Skype conversation with me, with something half relevant to what I wanted to talk about. Tangents be welcomed around these parts.

What’s the deal with the name, JKast?

It’s kind of an inside joke. A long time ago, I liked to slap on a JK in front of all my domains and project names. JKorp.net was one… then JKmain.com. To this day, I do not know why I thought this was ultra cool.

Now, throwing a JK in front of anything with a hard “k” sound that actually doesn’t start with a “k” has become kind of something I do for fun. A few of my friends actually take this to a whole new level. I’m not certain, but it might have been Alex that came up with the name in the first place, but I don’t know… I must have had this name in the back of my head before he spoke about it.

What is it about?

I’m fairly certain it’s just going to be whatever the heck I feel like talking about, hence the name. If you know me in person, I’m fairly certain you’ll enjoy me sounding like a total idiot.

Web Applications. Technology. Internetz. Apple. Movies. Music. Video Games. Nerd Rage. coughRomanticComediescough You know, the stuff that I kinda know something about.

What’s the Format?

It’s going to be fairly unedited. I edited this first episode a bit, just so that I didn’t sound like a complete idiot (I still have a feeling I do…). I’m shooting for 30 minutes to an hour, but I have a feeling they can totally vary in length.

And we all know that the probability for awesome tangents rise with the number of people I talk with anyway.

Who’s going to be involved?

I don’t forsee any permanent host, but that can be changed. One thing’s for certain, I don’t want to be the only one talking in these podcasts, which means I will have to find someone to talk to. I may have dry spells because either I can’t find anyone or I’m just too chicken to find new people to talk with.

So where is it?

Um. I’m working on it. I hope to have it up before midnight CST.

Also, I’m going to have to find an image for the podcast. Not sure what I want to do here…