This place hasn’t quite become the “Cupertino Square” they’ve rebranded it as, but its not hard to see that they’re working on it. Over half of this huge mall has atrophied to emptiness. It makes me wonder how its gotten along all this time. Befor the megaplex movie theatre went in, it was easy to call this place The Mall That Time Forgot because of its _heavy_ 1980’s design aesthetic. I don’t know how they are going to handle all the brass bar railing and colorful tile all over the place. Hopefully with a total do-over. I’m hanging out with Max at lunchtime. someday this mall may be cool.
As of version 0011 of the IDE, you can now allegedly program arduino boards like the modern device bare bones board via the ICSP pins. This is way cool. Now you can supposedly forego the FTDI cable and just get a programmer box like LadyAda’s USBTinyISP, AND get the benefit of being able to program other AVR chips and circuits if you get beyond the Arduino.
They’re constantly trying to tell you how great their service is. That’s an instant warning sign that it’s not.
>3x industry rate for domain registrations
They charge you for basic services that the industry otherwise gives away for free.
You must talk to a human to get an “auth code” to move your domain.
12+ minutes on-hold time to talk to a human.
I just got faked out where the phone rang and then went back to on-hold music. bastards!
Annoying as hell automated sales pitches while on hold. “need a website? talk to our rep about blah blah blah”
Smooth Jazz version of “that’s the way love goes” is the only song they play on hold. Over and over. 12+ minutes. That’s reason enough, in my opinion. Never attack your customers with an ear worm.
“Don’t leave!” sales tactics after being on hold. Recently I went through this process and got suckered into taking a cheaper rate and staying at register.com. Now that I have to renew other domains I’m seeing the errors of my ways.
> Twitter, what can I say? You’re a curiosity. I thought you were more
> than you are. Maybe I can still use you. Lots of other sites are all
> up in you now, so maybe I centralize my content authoring here and
> just send notifications to you and then you can go republish all my
> headlines out there in the world of social networks. Or at least the
> ones that won’t let me publish my feedburner feed directly. Maybe
> you’re just a destination for notifications of new posts. Twitter, I
> want you to be more, but maybe you’re just not that interesting. I
> don’t know what I was thinking. Fractioning my content across
> multiple social networks doesn’t do me any favors so… Time to take
> a step back.
After I self referentially declared that complaining about Twitter is the new “under construction” animated GIF file, I’m making a firm commitment to putting that twitter energy right back where it belongs: on my own site and without the 128 character limit. I discovered a great wordpress plugin that augments the post-by-email functionality to accept a photo attachment, thereby opening up a pretty good iPhone workflow. I tried the iphone “post photo to web gallery” feature and wasn’t 100% impressed, and I even tried the flickr photo by email and still feel like its not what I want either.
I’m watching NASA TV tonight since STS124 launched yesterday. the Space Shuttle Discovery and International Space Station crews are doing stuff that would be completely mundane back on earth… then it hit me:
Jobs are only interesting to watch relative to the number of people who get do them.
php|architect is spamming me. I made the critical mistake of signing up for a free webcast of theirs like 4 years ago, and every effing month since then I get a commercial spam email from them promoting their for-pay content and books, and they provide me with no opt-out mechanism.
I’ve asked them to remove me easily 3 or 4 times.
I’m sure I’ve informed you three times now that I do not consent to you sending me email. Check it out:
8(1) Every person, other than an indi-
vidual, who contravenes subsection 8(1) is
guilty of an indictable offence and liable
(a) for a first offence, to a fine not ex-
ceeding $500,000;
Now, I acknowledge this isn’t a law yet. I hope it does become a law soon. I’m going to remind you that I do not consent to you sending me email. We do not have any current relationship. You are willfully continuing to email me without my consent and without providing a mechanism for me to opt-out.
I don’t know what they are thinking. This is no way to run a business. What planet do they live on where that attracts friends with this behavior?
Sure, I could set up an email filter. It’s more about the principle in this case because I can actually trace the source back to a physical location and organization. Beyond that they’re trying to make money promoting a free technology that I hold close to my heart, their willful disregard for peoples common right to non-communication could tarnish the brand of PHP. So it’s pissing me off that they’re being so stupid. Just freakin’ unsubscribe me already.
This two hour workshop provides an overview of open-source, third-party virtual-world server technology based on Second Life(TM), and the opportunities afforded to artists and experimenters who are now able to cheaply host tailored synthetic spaces.
The first hour will be devoted to a brief overview of Second Life and the “OpenMetaverse” initiatives (libsl, opensim, etc.) Bennett Goble of Ars Virtua will discuss features and show demos of the most popular alternatives (OpenSim, OpenLife & realXtend), their qualities, strengths etc.
We will consider the issues surrounding installation, maintenance and function of the OpenSim server and will be connecting participants through third-party clients and through modifications of the Linden Lab Second Life client.
During this session participants will have an opportunity to look at code, and to consider the space as a place for artistic experimentation and collaboration. Special consideration will be given to coding within the environment and control afforded by building and running servers.
…
The workshop will be held from noon - 2 p.m. Friday June 6 in room 237 of the art building on SJSU campus. This workshop is free and open to the public.
Google Doctype - Google Code I'm not 100% sure this is useful yet. However, I will choose to believe the extreme thoroughness of google will make this useful down the road.
someday this mall may be cool.
Now you can supposedly forego the FTDI cable and just get a programmer box like 
