Friday, May 7, 2010

Linode VPS

After over 10 years of having a dedicated server in one data center or another and paying the bill I decided to put those days behind me. And no, I’m not going to give up having an access to a Linux box on a high speed connection, nor am I planning giving up my root access to such a machine.

We’re simply moving to virtual hosting. Hosting has evolved considerably in the past several years and VPS business has matured to a point where it is a perfect solution for somebody like me. All the same benefits as having a dedicated server without the cost. My monthly bill is going to go down from $130 to $40. And that considering that $130 just came down to that number from $170 only a couple of months ago. Continue Reading

In: Gadgets & Gear, Software Tags: blog, hosting, Linode, Linux, LTS, server, site, Slicehost, Ubuntu, VPS, VPS.NET
Time: 20:20 Comments: 4 Comments Post a Comment

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Gowalla

Home screen shows me some basic stats about my account.

It seems Alena and I have developed a bit of obsession with an iPhone app I stumbled upon a couple of days ago. I don’t think that most people will understand, but I’m sure Ignat and Mike will.

You see, Gowalla is an iPhone based geocaching app on steroids. Throw my passion for National Park stamp collecting into that and you got a killer app, at least as far as I go.

Ignat and Mike have been into geocaching a while ago and it didn’t really appeal to me as there was no record of your discoveries or check-ins left.

Stamps that I have collected, or the places that I've checked-in into once or more.

With Gowalla you have a list of spots located close to you. If there are places you go to often and they are not on the map you can commission a spot yourself. Then you can become a founder by leaving one of the items behind. And each of your check-ins is logged in your stamp list.

A list of spots near by. The closest one shows up first in the list and as you move the distances changes. Check mark denotes that fact that I've been there before.

A screen showing a specific spot. In this case JFK is a featured location which is denoted by a custom icon assigned to it.

Each user is given 5 items at the start. As you check-in into more places you have a chance of discovering more items. If a place already has founder(s) you can pick up the item left by other people on the condition that you leave one behind too.

Each item has a history attached to it and you can see where it has been from the start to the point that you got it and then after you left it somewhere. But you can read more about items on Gowalla blog.

List of people who have checked into this location recently.

Then there are special stamps and pins. There are goals like visiting 5 pre-set locations in Central Park and you’ll earn a pin. Or commission 10 places. And so on. Also if you check-in into any location inside New York state you’ll get an NY stamp and the same happens for any other state.

And you can also see the activity of your friends and what kind of achievements they have.

Overall the feel and the design of the application and their web-site (where you can check for spots and multiple other stats) are pretty amazing. I usually like to nitpick on the smallest details and here everything just looks great. So if you have an iPhone or any other phone with location aware browser do join in with us.

In: Software Tags: geocaching, Gowalla, GPS, iPhone
Time: 20:09 Comments: 14 Comments Post a Comment

Friday, November 6, 2009

Twitter Integration

Here’s a small Twitter integration showcase. The idea behind it is that it’s much easier to leave a simple note or observation through one of the numerous Twitter applications available than to make a blog post. And I tend to leave such simple notes during vacations, when we’re away from any computers, through iPhone.

Single Post

I used a slightly modified¹ version of Alex King’s Twitter Tools. Now this plug-in is actually a bit of an overkill for what I needed it to do, but nobody is forced to use more than needed. I also put together an ugly hack to force this thing to import tweets from both myself and Alena. It runs every 10 minutes and imports all the new stuff it finds.

Multiple Posts

I’ve modified Rubinary template and devised a new way to display this type of posts. One special thing about it is that it groups consecutive tweets into a single post. The time “sticker” on my posts shows up in blue and on Alena’s in green — as all other things on the blog.

Tweet Reply

If you mouse-over over a “sticker” you will see a reply option. By clicking it, you indeed, can reply. But there is a catch — you need to have a Twitter account to do so.

That’s pretty much it. For those who care — I personally use a free version of Twitterrific on the iPhone. And of course no post of this kind would be complete without a mandatory “I hate IE” conclusion.

Modification allowed me to pull and import our older tweets. [↩]

In: Software Tags: blog, design, import, integration, iPhone, template, Twitter, Twitter Tools, Twitterrific, WordPress
Time: 17:57 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

I finally got my hands on an invitation to Google Wave. Thanks, Mike! And Igor. I was thinking to use it for some collaboration projects at work. Now I’ve got to wait for my invite ability to show up, invite more people, and start testing it out. 0

Wow, this is genious — Google Chrome Frame. Is this a way to finally kill of IE6 and the like?

Google Chrome Frame is an early-stage open source plug-in that seamlessly brings Google Chrome’s open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer. With Google Chrome Frame, you can start using open web technologies – like the HTML5 canvas tag – right away, even technologies that aren’t yet supported in Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8.

You can detect if user has it installed and just use HTML5 if so, or prompt and redirect user to install it if not. 2

Saturday, September 19, 2009

New Look?

How this blog could look, but probably never will.

I’ve spent a good part of day drawing up a new look for the blog in Photoshop. I most certainly do not have plans to actually implement this as it would be way too much work, but I figured I might post to for everyone to see. I think it came out looking damn well.

What do you think?

In: Software Tags: blog, design, template
Time: 17:23 Comments: 2 Comments Post a Comment

Daniel says: Subscribed

September 22, 2009 @ 11:27

Thanks.

It’s way too much work. Besides what is shown on the image I have to convert snippet and movie types of posts, design comment forms and comment sections for each one. Then there is photography section which was a lot of work on its own and stuff like archives.

I keep tweaking the current template since the moment that I released it and I still find minor things that require adjustment.

I just can’t see myself spending so much time on something that I’m pretty happy with anyhow.

But I do like the clean look of my new draft myself.

B-Bot is a cool little app that lets you create avatars of your friends by selecting body, shoes, pants, shirts, hair and so on. It’s well done and can be used in your address book if you don’t have an actual photo. (via iPhones.ru) 2

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

CheckSpit 1.2

Apple has just approved my first update to CheckSplit. It should be popping up in your App Store Updates tab very soon if you one are of the proud owners of CheckSplit.

The update carries a number of a small updates and one major new feature:

You can now tap on the tax or tip fields to get to the tip & tax adjustment screen.
You can now label parties with text initials, in addition to colors. Just tap any colored icon while entering the check and you will be presented with a screen to enter the initials for that person or group. To clear it out simply drag the letters off the icon. These will be saved for future use as well, so you do not have to re-enter them every time.
Splash screen while loading.

Please rate CheckSplit in App Store, or update your review if you like it.

In: Software Tags: Apple, AppStore, CheckSplit, iPhone, update
Time: 18:28 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

First Week Sales

For those who are interested — here are the results of sales for the first week. I’ve included the first day in the chart, but it should be noted that the app was released somewhere late in the evening.

Overall it’s a pretty interesting experiment. While the app was showing up in new released, the sales very relatively strong. As the app moved off the first screen the “volume” went down. It’s also interesting to note that all other countries combined have got nothing on U.S. market alone.

Beside that I’ve been contacted by some buyers saying that they really like the simplicity and streamlined interface. There also have been some good feature suggestions that I’m going to try to implement.

In: Software Tags: app, Apple, AppStore, CheckSplit, iPhone
Time: 14:47 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

CheckSplit — iPhone App

After a long time of not moving ahead with this project I was persuaded by those around me to publish an app that I wrote and we were successfully using for months now.

So I added the final polishes to the application, created a mini-site for it with all the information about it, with the help of my wife put together a good screencast that demos the application and its functionality. And then it was uploaded to Apple for a review.

I’m happy to say that CheckSplit was approved by Apple and is up in the AppStore as of yesterday. I would appreciate any feedback and reviews.

In: Software Tags: app, Apple, AppStore, CheckSplit, iPhone, SDK
Time: 10:06 Comments: 7 Comments Post a Comment

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Beejive IM 3.0

Apple has finally approved the newest version of Beejive, the one that supports new push notifications. In essence that makes IM as effective as SMS with a key difference of IM being completely free.

Feel free to contact me through AIM or ICQ on iDR2000 or 424614398 respectively. I will get your messages instantly on my phone.

In: Gadgets & Gear, Software Tags: Apple, Beejive, IM, iPhone, push
Time: 12:06 Comments: 1 Comment Post a Comment

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Home Infrastructure Updates

Office desk — Windows XP, Mac OS X 10.5, Ubuntu 9.04.

I haven’t done anything with our home network infrastructure in quite some time. Yesterday I decided to improve and utilize some of the resources.

Namely I updated our Linksys WRT54G router with new 3rd party firmware — Tomato to be exact. A vast improvement over the factory firmware — support for static DHCP, automatics dynamic DNS updates are among the new things.

I also installed Ubuntu 9.04 onto our old WoW box that hasn’t been turned on in over a year. Nice to finally have a local Linux box again after all these years.

I also plan to do something about internet line redundancy in a near future and setup some security equipment around the house, but I’m guessing I will not going be posting about that.

In: Software Tags: Linux, router, Ubuntu
Time: 18:24 Comments: 2 Comments Post a Comment

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Themes in Google Apps Mail

Gmail themes finally appeared in the Google Apps today. It took Google awhile to roll these out, but it’s nice to finally have them.

A small tip for those whose logo started looking ugly with different background colors — you can upload a PNG file as your logo and PNG files support alpha-channel transparencies and all modern browsers support PNG files. If your browser does not — it really is time to update!

In: Software Tags: Gmail, Google, PNG
Time: 18:03 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

Friday, February 20, 2009

Which Arrow?

There is a bit of dilemma now — too many ideas from Geoff, Alex and myself resulted in a humongous number of “Photo Post” arrows. Seven to be exact.

Question is — which one do I pick? Click on the image to see a full list and leave your vote in the comment. Please do it before reading what I like myself in the last paragraph. Your input is much appreciated.

I myself seem to be leaning towards number 4 the most. And maybe 5 and 6 after that.

In: Software Tags: arrow, blog, design, poll
Time: 17:26 Comments: 10 Comments Post a Comment

Friday, February 20, 2009

Photo Library

Photo library is a feature that I have been meaning to add to the blog for quite some time now. It required a bit of a format change the would be labor intensive, so I never got around to doing it. Until now that is.

The purpose of this is for me to have a way to publish some of my best (in my opinion) photographs. Majority of them have already been posted on this blog, but there will be new ones as well.

I’ll start with 2 previously seen HDRs of mine. Move your mouse over the image itself once you’re on the photo page to navigate the library.

In: Photography, Software Tags: blog, design, library, photo
Time: 15:25 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

Friday, January 16, 2009

Photo Post-Processing

Photoshop postprocessing of an old shot of Grand Canyon from our 2005 trip.

Stumbled upon a couple of really old shots of mine (way back from 2005) that show a dramatic difference between the image that came out from the camera and the final version.

Original shot, fresh out of camera. Grand Canyon.

Granted the final image is not all that stellar, yet the difference is striking. And then again, it’s not often that 2 shots differ so much, but it shows what a little tweaking in Photoshop can do. Adjust the levels, increase the contrast, some sharpening. There’s nothing more to it.

In: Photography, Software Tags: Photoshop, post-processing
Time: 18:33 Comments: 3 Comments Post a Comment