Archive for tag Life
October 04, 2008 at 11:20 PM · Posted under programming, television, videogames
We now return our regular infrequent updates, already in progress.
The iPod Touch continues to be a really nice gizmo. Now only do I still use it as my primary home email interface, but it’s also my front end to Wikipedia, the New York Times, and Pandora Radio thanks to some excellent applications. Every night Sarah and I pass a game of Scrabble back and forth. The Scrabble app is surprisingly complete, considering Hasbro phoned in their facebook version. It includes a nifty game play mode wherein each player places a word from the same set of letters, each player gets the score from their word, and whoever’s word has the higher score is kept on the board. It nicely eliminates luck from the game, so it’s all down to whoever can tease out the best word.
My XBox 360 briefly suffered from the red ring of death, but Microsoft’s surprisingly expedient (and free, even though my box was out of warranty) repair service had it back to me in about a week. While there was a gap in my high definition gaming I decided to actually buy a game for the so far only used for moving watching Playstation 3. I wanted a game exclusive to the PS3 (why would I play a game without achievements when I have the choice?) and a game on the cheap: Motorstorm fit the bill. Turns out, it’s not all that bad. I mean, if I had bought that as a first game for my PS3 for $60 I’d be mighty let-down, but as a bargain-game is pretty ok. Just imagine Excitbike thrown into a multi-route, gorgeously 3d (and it a very gorgeous game), and multi-vehicle game work and you’ll have a pretty good grasp of the game. It’s even got the same boosting/overheating mechanic. Unfortunately the developers were so focused on making the pretty, the forgot some of the fun. Yes there are some races were you can just pick any vehicle from big rig to motorcycle, but to artifically extend the length of the game the developers take away that choice whenever possible and force you to race in a a specific type of vehicle. As you win races you unlock new cars and courses, but most often you’ll unlock…the same course but with a different vehicle type that you are forced to use. Lame.
Sarah and I are enjoying the new series, Fringe. The science is completely bogus, but the show clicks together in a fun way.
Work continues to be awesome. I’ve finished up an internal IP address tracking tool and had a great time learning mod_python and jQuery while I was at it. jQuery is, simply put, an amazing accomplishment. JavaScript and AJAX made sane. jQuery plugins allow us coders to add in some terrific shiny things (e.g. jQuery Tablesorter) for the cost of properly marking up our HTML (which would have been done anyway), a one line include, and a one line jQuery script ($(”#myTable”).tablesorter();). Hello awesome!
Edward continues to get cuter and cuter. He loves to play peek-a-boo and is starting to get ticklish, which is exceedingly adorable. Moving continues to be his activity of choice and his favorite place to be is hanging out on one of our shoulders peering around at the world.
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July 11, 2008 at 11:43 PM · Posted under programming
So what’s being going on in my life, except for the whole newborn baby thing? A new job, that’s what. Two weeks ago I started work as the newest member of UNC-Chapel Hill’s University Library web team. Although this job move meant giving up my corner office (and its glorious floor to ceiling windows) in the Undergraduate Library for a cube in a windowless room in Davis, it’s been lots of fun. It’s just so great to have a job where I can actually apply the knowledge I’ve gotten from reading tons of programming and web design books. So far I’ve gotten to get into the CSS and jsp code for an upcoming catalog design (IE6, we hates you), had serious chunks of time to work on the reserves website that’s been languishing in my todo list for over a year, have been encouraged to explore an interesting project idea, and have had lots of collaborative fun with Nivex.
Today I also had the brand new pleasure of working an entire day from home. I’ve just never had a job that didn’t require me to be physically present. I gotta say, it was pretty enjoyable and genuinely productive. I wasn’t sure how well it would work, but I was really able to just hunker down at the kitchen table and hack out code for hours straight. Although library systems doesn’t allow telecommuting on a regular basis, I’ve gotten approval to do it for the rest of the Fridays this month to be be available for baby helping.
This job is also nice because I feel like I’ve finally completed a long circular journey. My library career started in Davis Library as a student assistant for the technical services department. When I was returning to the library as a reserves processor and exploring the (still on the horizon) possibility of library school I contacted one of my old bosses who put me in touch with the guy who is now my new boss in the web team. It’s weird, but it just feels complete. Like I’ve finished one major life stage and am moving on to the next. Although a lot of that may come from the whole baby thing, I’m still loving the new job. Programming has always been one of the “work” activities that just makes the time fly by until I find myself staying ten or fifteen minutes late just to try out one more idea, or wrap up to a stopping point. Somehow I’ve always ended up doing it no matter what job I’ve had, so it’s great to actually get explicitly paid for it.
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May 08, 2008 at 07:37 PM
Sarah and I continue the odd frantic-yet-sluggish countdown to Baby. (B minus two or three weeks.)
Work is busy. I am doing my best to wrap up all of my projects before B minus zero.
Grand Theft Auto IV is amazing. The world is amazingly realized. It really shows that Rockstar had essentially unlimited time and money to polish GTAIV.
Iron Man was awesome and may, in fact, be the best Marvel movie yet.
I had a birthday! Many awesome things including a sweet portable basketball goal, amazingly convienent gas grill, and cool digital picture frame. Also Sarah got me a MacBook Nano. I knew the touch was going to be awesome, but I didn’t know how awesome. I now catch up on my email on the walk from the parking deck to the library and have wifi in my pocket for whenever I need something from the net.
In site news: I’ve been getting the itch again. Rails (by which I mean Mephisto) is great and all, but now I feel like it is time to give Django a shakedown. Mephisto is large and in charge, but rather slow as well. While it doesn’t suffer from the horrible horrible mixture of logic and presentation that plagues Wordpress, it doesn’t exact feel like a lean, mean blogging machine either. Perhaps Blogmaker is the answer.
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March 14, 2008 at 12:14 AM
It’s true. We Balls are just super geeks. From our parents embracing of all cool technology, it just gets more geeky. From cooking to programming to videogames to music, we just love to know, which is the true essence of being geek.
Through reddit I found Matt Ball’s blog post Is 91 prime? (also in the quicklinks). Geeky last name? For sure. Post on mathematics? Check. Personal wiki? Oh yeah. Fan of NCAA men’s basketball? Yes!
I swear it’s like we’re related or something.
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February 24, 2008 at 11:27 PM
Wow, good thing I went back to work at UNC instead of sticking it out as a Sharper Image store manager.
The Sharper Image files for bankrupcy, plans to close 90 of its 184 stores
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February 17, 2008 at 10:54 AM · Posted under movies, tech, videogames
Happy Valentine’s weekend everyone!
Sarah and I have been enjoying a leisurely move back into our “new” house. So leisurely that this is the first time that I’ve booted up my laptop since it was packed away downstairs over two weeks ago. I’ve been online of course, but only in bits and pieces: at work, at home on the XO, on the powermac connected to the tv. There is a big difference between using any computer and using my computer though. My computer at work is awesome, but it’s at work. The XO is also a fine machine, but only for its niche of cool programs and easy interface. The powermac is great, but even connected to our beautiful 40” LCD television it’s still a little squinty for use from seven feet away. My still-kicking 800Mhz G3 iBook is where its at (ergonomics be damned).
We are seriously loving our bamboo floors. It is ever so nice to be able to look in any direction and see elegant reflections and soothing wood tones instead of dingy carpet. The leisurely move is also quite fine and well recommended. Since we had to clear everything out of every room (including artwork) except for the kitchen and bathrooms and everything was moved into the basement and garage we have the opportunity to start the house over with a blank slate. We are only moving it what we need or want, just pieces at a time, and really making sure that we keep the house nice and neat while we are doing so. Every other move we’ve had has been a regular “move out and in as fast as possible”, but this is the way to do it. It also really helps to be ruthless with your culling of stuff. We have sent boxes and boxes to good will or the dump so far and don’t even really remember what exactly we’ve sent. As two packrats it was hard to get started, but after the initial break we’ve really gotten into the “use it or lose it” mindset.
Speaking of using it (oh man, I am awesome at segues): Sarah got me a Playstation 3 for Valentine’s day! With the HD-DVD format quickly dying after Warner Brothers commited exclusively to blu-ray it was time to get with the true HD movie bandwagon. After a couple days of playing with it I am forced to admit that the better format won. Whereas HD-DVD movies felt like an HD hack of the DVD format (slow menus, buggy discs, etc.), blu-ray really feels like a next-gen movie format. Of course, that impression could stem from the fact that we have a sony television and have been brainwashed by its subliminal messages (and supraliminal, it does force our XBox360’s HD-DVD player to 1080i afterall). Either way, Ratatouille and Casino Royale look gorgeous in high definition. It is a little weird to have a videogame system without any videogames, but all the best games for the PS3 are also on, and done better by, the XBox360. The 360 features better graphics, a much better controller, and achievements! It will be nice to be able to pick up the ‘Darth Vader’ version of Soul Calibur IV though. But without the achievements I might not even do that.
The PS3 doesn’t even have a single “must have” game. There are six contenders: Resistance, Motorstorm, Rachet and Clank, Heavenly Sword, Uncharted, and Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Two of those have really short playtime (perhaps good enough for the bargin bin though), one is a remake that I’ve already bought twice, and three are rehashes of game types done better by other games on other systems. The PS3 needs its own ‘Dead Rising’, ‘Mass Effect, ‘Super Mario Galaxies’, or ‘Metroid Prime 3’.
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November 27, 2007 at 10:39 PM · Posted under family
Oh well. But we did get to hear the baby’s heartbeat with a doppler instrument. Well, not so much hear the heartbeat directly but static-like pulses emitted from the devices as it received sound waves distorted by the baby’s heartbeat. Apparently at twenty week we’ll be able to hear the heartbeat directly with a stethoscope. That’s also around the time that we’ll get a second look at the wee one.
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November 26, 2007 at 10:30 PM
It was a great Thanksgiving! A mountain of tasty food, perfect OBX weather, and fun time with family.
Did I mention the perfect weather? We had really nice warm sunny days and then a cold front came blowing through the house (literally, it slammed doors) on Thanksgiving night leaving the days crisp and cool with a strong breeze blowing in off the bay.
Andrew, Jenn, Lewis, Sarah, and I (and briefly Jess) relaxed, played videogames, card games, caught a repeat of the final game (UNC vs. FSU) of the women’s ACC tournament, and played with Mom and Dad’s two new kittens.
The women’s soccer game was good, especially since we already knew the outcome (a UNC win of course). We just had a loss in the 3rd round of the NCAA tournament on Saturday. They played a decent game, we played a bad game, and the calls were not exactly accurate. Our team will be amazing next year.
The kittens were extremely cute, as curious and playful as can be. Since they were sequestered away in Lewis’ room to keep dander as isolated from Sarah as possible we would see tiny paws darting out from under the door trying to get some attention. Aww.
The videogame sessions were great. Some Assassin’s Creed and Guitar Hero III on the XBox 360, plus some old school action with The Lost Vikings and Super Bomberman on an old Super Nintendo. They both held up quite well. Well enough that when I got home I browsed around the Wii virtual console and found Super Mario Bros III and Castlevania II, although Assassin’s Creed continues to hold my rapt attention. I bring death to those that deserve it, but something connects these men that perish by my blade….
Baby update soon, Sarah and I get to see it again at the ultrasound tomorrow.
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October 23, 2007 at 10:38 PM · Posted under family
“We’re having a baby.”
Today that turned from an abstract concept into solid reality with our first ultrasound of the wee one.
“We’re having a baby.” A baby! Tiny thing. An amalgamation of our respective genetic makeups. In one flash of amazement we looked at the screen and saw a tiny grey blob and the rapid fluttering of its heartbeat.
I must say, and note that I’m attempting to be impartial here, that it must be the cutest grey blob that I’ve ever seen. Seriously. If there were grey blob cuteness awards we’d be forced to clean off the mantlepiece to make room for the grand prize.
Apparently going for a clean win by nailing the performance judging, we caught a glimpse of it head on and saw it wiggling its little arms doing a simply adorable little dance. Yes my child the cute dancing grey blob. Aww.
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September 16, 2007 at 11:44 AM
We in central North Carolina have been suffering from an extreme heat wave. It’s been pretty bad, especially since Sarah’s and my air conditioner stopped working last Saturday (the 8th) and was not working again until last Friday (the 14th). It was actually kind of nice to fully feel the summer, even if it meant sleeping in a wind tunnel, because that means that we really appreciate this weekend. On Friday we had rain, lots of rain, thanks to the remnants of Humberto and the heat (at least for now) has broken.
Saturday was absolutely gorgeous. Hot, but not stifling, with a nice and steady breeze moving through. We opened up the entire house and it was just wonderful. A perfect day for the grilling out party Lewis and I had planned. It was Parent’s Day at NCSSM so Sarah had to work. While she was gone I cleaned and straightened the downstairs of our townhouse, which had rather needed some attention, and prepared the burgers and started the chili, a long simmer is the key to delicious chili (that, and the secret ingredient).
The grill out was great. Fun company, delicious food, Halo 3 movies (only ten more days!).
Now it’s a nice Sunday morning, even cooler than yesterday. The breeze is still drifting through and temperatures are in the low 60s. A perfect day for drinking coffee under a blanket, ahh.
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