....Creating Chaos Since 1981!
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My new Nokia N900
\n Well folks, last night I managed to get my hands on a (slightly) used Nokia N900. I am very excited about this. I have wanted one since they first came out! Compared to the iPhone or the Xperia that I had most recently, it is a brick of a phone…but I like that. The keyboard is a lot easier to type on than I thought it would be…(much easier than the god awful touch screen on the Xperia!) Expect more updates as I learn more about it. In a side note, we got rid of both my Xperia and Arina’s at the same time. She is using my old 1st gen iPhone until we can get our hands on something newer. If anyone reading this has a 3gs for sale, let us know! …
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Factory Design Pattern in Ruby
\n Ok, so here is a return to my absolutly favorite language…ruby. This is a modification of my js Factory Method. It’s a good little bit of code. I decided to make it a bit of useful code. I am waiting for keyboard input. A B and C will create pizzas and Q will end the program …
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New Site Design Coming Soon!
\n I am redesigning my site now. It’s gonna have a brand new look as well as be rewritten in Rails 3. The blog will still be posted through Posterous. But I’m working to make it even more transparent than it is now. Also, I am working on a slightly more professional look for it all. Not so much black! Also working on a Rails Picasa Web plugin. Keep your eyes peeled for updates! In other news, I am waiting on a Thinkpad t60 to arrive..my hackintosh! Also, getting ready to get back into iPhone development. Trying to find someone to buy or trade my Sony Ericson Xperia x10a so I can get at least a 3GS. I really am not all that fond of Android. I have already reverted back to my old iPhone whilst I wait for a new one. But, more on that later. Needs an entire post on that and I really need to sit down and articulate my dislike before I do that. :) …
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jsfiddle...get ready to be blinded by sheer awesomeness!
\n So, as anyone can tell, I have become recently very into Javascript. I am constantly blogging about it, I support the Docs project. Yeah, I like the javascript. One of the coolest resources for playing around with JavaScript, jsfiddle, just got a whole hell of a lot better! They now offer accounts. It’s in alpha and the accounts are limited at this point….so if you want one go get one now! Jsfiddle has long allowed us to save snippets and share them with the world, but if you ever forgot the crazy tag they gave you, that was it. It was gone. Now you can save all your little fiddles under an account for instant access latter! Cool stuff! I went and made a fork of my most recent fiddle so it would be under my account. Then I relinked it under the new account here on my blog. Yes, this is blinding stuff!! …
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JavaScript Design Patterns
\n I was thinking recently about design patterns and realized that though I am familiar with them and their uses in php and ruby, I have never used them in JavaScript. I quick search found some code on Wikipedia for a singleton…but that is arguably not a very useful pattern. I looked under the entry for Factory Method patterns and found that while the singleton had an example for nearly every language under the sun, the Factory Method Design Pattern only had an example in Java (and a rather tasty one at that!) So there I was, the challenge was on. I decided to try and implement a Factory Method Design pattern in JavaScript without looking, using the Java source as my guide point. So here it is, using prototype in all it’s glory. I present to you, a JavaScript Factory Method Design Pattern: …
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Useful Unix Tools
\n I can’t really remember how long I have been following the blog of Axel Beckartbut it has been awhile. His blog posts, at his very awesome Blogging Is Futile, has been sparodic but always useful. Recently, he has been running a series of posts on cool unix tools that you might not know about. If you are a Unix or Linux system admin, or just a power users, I highly recommend you check them out. And if you are a fan of Debian, you need to have his blog on your reading list!! …
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Last.FM Feed in Ruby
\n So I had a flash based Last.Fm applet that I had been using to display my most recently listened to tracks. I really wanted to remove all the flash from my site (plus the applet was no longer supported and who knows when it would have gone away!) So I started looking into how I could get the recent tracks on my page. The easiest way seems to be using the same feed code that I was am using for my blog and read the rss feed. So, here is the basic code. …
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Some random thoughts on Medical Records
\n I have been facinated by the concept of Electronic Medical Records for years. This is majorly due to some interesting conversation I have had on this topic with a former professor. Lately I have found my mind dwelling on the concept particularly. I guess that it is partially due to rather large stack of unpaid medical bills that are laying on the refridgerator, a result of a rather large amount of medical attention my wife and I have recently been recieving. I also blame it partially on House being played regullarly over the past week on USA. The key to Electronic Medical records is not how they can be produced, but rather how they can be consumed. What good is it if my doctor has all my records stored electronically if I can’t have a doctor access it while I am on vacation? Or if my doctor can’t get updated from my vacation? I have been spending some time playing around with Google Health. It’s a very neat idea, but unless you want to hand code all your infomration, the only data that can be imported seems to be pharmacutical only. And they don’t have a function to export this data either. It is very important that we are able to define a standard that will regulate this field, and that all systems providers will stick to this standard. This seems to me to be a potentailly strong and facinating area that needs the ability to grow and prosper. The most important part, is going to be how doctors and hospitals share this information between one another. There has to be a method doctors can use that will give them access to medical records, but at the same time allows for us to maintain our privacy. Maybe some form of encrypted pair can be used. Where I as the patient can give a public key to a doctor’s office, allowing them to use it with their private key to gain access to my records. This way, there is an audit trail of a) that I gave permission and b) the doctor who accessed my information. I don’t know, just thoughts spinning around my head. I wonder how I could become a part of this field. It would be facinating to be on the cutting edge of this sort of thing!! …
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Small Business Website Special
\n Hi Everybody! I am currently running a special on websites for Small Business owners! If you or anyone that you know is in need of a site, please check out my ad for Small Business Web Design on thumbtack. …
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Here is the Magic Pull Posterous rss feed into your site with Ruby!
\n I know it’s been a bit since I’ve posted. I’ve been busy! I’ve decided to go ahead and post a gist of the ruby code that I used to get my Posterous feed on my blog. First you need to put this in your controller for the the page where you want the rss feed to display. …