I just got a new cell phone: The T-Mobile Sidekick ID. This is re-branded version of the Danger Hiptop. I got the "light" version of the Sidekick III that does not come with bluetooth or a camera.
Overall, I am very happy with my Sidekick. It has many features that I've never had in a handheld device before. Many of the limitations that I have found are compared to a full featured desktop with a wired internet connection.
Co-worker Reed Meyer collects astronomy links. The page has both popular astonomy links and more technical links for serious astol --er-- astronomers.
I have been eying products that transmit your Ipod on a radio station for listening on your car radio for over a year now. Up until now, the offerings have seemed rather limiting in some way. Either it has been too hard to change the station, the Ipod didn't charge in the car, or the Ipod sat inconveniently on the passenger seat. The Griffin Road trip seems to be the best Ipod transmitter available, as it doesn't have any of these problems.
Since I spent about six months of my professional life working on TripAdvisor's hotel availability comparison feature, I thought a little writeup about it here would be appropriate. If you fill in the form over on the right you will be taken to a page on TripAdvisor that shows hotels that are available for the dates that you chose.
When my DVD player died recently (a Toshiba SD-3750 -- the motor on the DVD tray died), I decided to replace both the broken DVD player, and my 40 hour TiVo2 with a new Humax TiVo with DVD.
The jar file format is common for distributing programs and libraries that are written in Java. Jar stands for Java Archive. Your browser may download Java applets in a .jar file or you may get a .jar file that contains a Java application that needs to be run. The file format is also by Mozilla and Firefox as the format for XUL applications, plugins, and skins.
The jar file format is a container and compression file format. Each jar file compresses and contains other files. Jar files are very easy to open. There are many programs that will act as an opener for jar files. In fact, any program that can open zip files can open jar files. The jar format is identical to the zip file format.
Dilate is a function that accepts a black and white image. It is also known by the names "grow", "bolden", and "expand". It turns on pixels which were near pixels that were on originally, thereby thickening the items in the image.
A singly linked list is a common data structure familiar to all computer scientists. A singly linked list is made of nodes where each node has a pointer to the next node (or null to end the list). A singly linked list is often used as a stack (or last in first out queue (LIFO)) because adding a new first element, removing the existing first element, and examining the first element are very fast O(1) operations.
When working with singly linked list, you are typically given a link to the first node. Common operations on a singly linked list are iterating through all the nodes, adding to the list, or deleting from the list. Algorithms for these operations generally require a well formed linked list. That is a linked list without loops or cycles in it.
A good friend of mine from college, Andy, has been programming music visualization software for many years now. He started SoundSpectrum, a company based on his work. Recently another friend of mine, Anton, joined him. They just released their newest version of G-Force on June 8, 2005.
I'm a fan of the Bugzilla bug tracking system that came out of the Mozilla web browser project. It is a web based system that makes it pretty easy to track issues with pretty much any piece of software. Furthermore, it isn't that hard to set up, so I have used it in more than one employment setting.
At work, we have a private Bugzilla installation that is only visible to employees. Given that everybody that can enter bugs should know how to fill in even the more complex fields, the enter bug form seemed a little inadequate. Our QA department really wanted to be able to specify the target milestone for a new bug to be for the next release when they entered a bug for a regression during the full quality assurance check a few days before a release.
If you have ever programmed using Java IO, you will quickly run into a situation in which a class creates data on an OutputStream and you need to send it to another class that expects to read the data from an input stream. You'll soon be asking the question, "How do I convert an OutputStream to an InputStream?"
Nowhere in Java will you find a OutpStreamToInputStreamConverter class. Luckily, there are several ways to go about this.
If you have ever programmed using Java IO, you will quickly run into a situation in which a class creates data on a Writer and you need to send it to another class that expects to read the data from a Reader. You'll soon be asking the question, "How do I convert a Writer to a Reader?"
Nowhere in Java will you find a WriterToReaderConverter class. Luckily, there are several ways to go about this.
I recently got routine maintence done on my 2000 Honda Insight, but the mechanic neglected to turn off the "maintenance required" indicator on the dashboard that comes on every 6000 miles or so. Not a big deal, the owner's manual has instructions for doing so. You would need to be able to if you did maintence yourself. Except the instructions they have don't work. The manual states:
To reset the maintenance required indicator, turn the ignition switch to the LOCK position, then press and hold the trip meter reset button until the indicator resets.
First, the LOCK position isn't labeled as such (further in the manual they explain that it is position 0). Second, they forgot a step. Better directions would be the following:
I recently purchased a 5.8G Hz digital spread spectrum, multi-handset phone from VTech. Not wanting to pay full price, I found a used base station and some used handsets on Ebay and purchased them from different people.
I bought a hybrid electric Honda Insight when they first came out in 2000. In addition to the amazing dual gas/electric technology, the car has a sleek aerodynamic design, wheel covers over the rear tires, flashy silver paint, and an antennae centered on the roof that give it a futuristic look. I call my car "The FJM". Here is the story of how it was named.