http://www.rubinary.com Our Small Place In The Virtual Universe Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:39:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 en http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/18/ikea-food/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/18/ikea-food/#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:37:58 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=518 Yesterday we went to a new IKEA in Brooklyn, for the 2nd time — we wanted to get a couple of things for our apartment, but as always most were out of stock.

Either way, by the time we were passing the restaurant for the 5th time or so I couldn’t resist my hunger anymore. We went in and got ourselves one set of meatballs and one set of chicken tenders.

For about $5 each we had a decent dinner, which even seemed delicious at the time. However I don’t think we’ll go there any time soon again. Cheap food is cheap food after all.]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/18/ikea-food/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/18/pocono-mountains/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/18/pocono-mountains/#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:46:41 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=517 Mountain Springs Lake Resort in Pocono Mountains. Yesterday we made a reservation. Maruk, Alina and their parents reserved a cottage #40 and Alena, my parents, Ignat, Misha and myself will stay in cottage #36. This should be fun.]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/18/pocono-mountains/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/13/ilightr/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/13/ilightr/#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:53:09 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=516 cool little apps that developers are putting out. I think iLightr is one of them. What I don’t get is why some people keep whining about that fact that it’s useless and demand that Apple doesn’t approve those. Don’t like it — don’t fucking buy it, assholes! It’s that simple.]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/13/ilightr/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/13/split-check-entering-info/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/13/split-check-entering-info/#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:57:34 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=515
I still have a lot of development to do to finish this app up, but here’s a short update on progress.

The check creation (list display + price entering) screens are ready, so is the screen to set up tip and tax values with persistent data storage. The split itself is the last thing that needs implementation, but it’s probably going to be the easiest step now.

On Saturday we gave it a real life test on entering information only to find out that the original idea was flawed. The people entering mechanism was not flexible enough. The idea was that for example I would assign red to Alena and I and say green to someone else. Then in order to count appetizers for example fairly you could specify in settings how many people belong to each color. So basically I would turn red and green on for an appetizer and it would split it 3 ways, assigning 2/3rds to the red.

However in this particular place Ignat, Alex and I happen to order the same thing, so it showed up as one number on the check. But if I mark this for red, green and blue I get the item split 4 ways 2 of which would go to red. Upsetting that after so much work the whole idea fell apart.

Then everyone started thinking and throwing out ideas. Ignat came up with the best solution. Instead of having on/off switch replace it with count for each person per item. And I already had a similar control on the settings screen. So that’s what I did. Spent a Sunday and rewrote the whole thing.

Now it should be able to handle any situation.]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/13/split-check-entering-info/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/11/vending-frankenstein/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/11/vending-frankenstein/#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:54:21 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=514 We have the weirdest vending machine in our office. That’s what I call a good idea and a horrible execution.

It runs on nothing else than Linux. It’s able to read your finger print and based on that know how much money you have on your account and if it can dispense drinks for you or if it needs to recharge your credit card. And if something gets stuck while dispensing it generally can sense it and give you an option to select something else or try to drop the item again.

That’s where good things end. Software constantly slows down and crashes. I get a feeling that it’s unable to process more than one request per reboot. Then you have to get behind the machine and pull the cord. Also it has some cryptic system of picking drinks. You need to combine either 2 green lights or one green and one red.

Anyhow, figured I’ll just post something about this monster here. Photo taken with iPhone, so quality is mediocre.]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/11/vending-frankenstein/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/10/mice-infestation/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/10/mice-infestation/#comments Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:53:38 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=513 Yesterday we went to our local Best Buy and bought¹ a whole bunch of mice. I wanted something for my Mac, since some development tasks with a touch pad are much harder to perform than they should be. A natural choice was Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse — Apple design and bluetooth technology in one package. So far I like it.

Another one was for Alena’s office. Apparently they still use non-laser, non-optical mice at her company, and since she spends all day holding that thing in hand it makes sense to get something nice, comfortable and wireless. We went with Logitech MX™ Revolution. It feels good in hand, has additional buttons to speed up certain tasks and comes with a charger — she doesn’t need to worry about replacing batteries.

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1. Apple’s mouse was $69.99, Logitech’s was $99.99.

]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/10/mice-infestation/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/09/olympics-2008-opening-ceremony/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/09/olympics-2008-opening-ceremony/#comments Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:32:22 +0000 Alena http://www.rubinary.com/?p=512 Last night we watched a translation of 2008 Olympic Games opening ceremony which took place earlier that day (08/08/08) in Beijing. I was REALLY impressed with artistic ideas, their implementation, and the sheer scale of the whole thing. Around 15,000!!! performers participated in the show. There is a good article in The New York Times on the subject.

I enjoyed feeling national pride that permeated different elements of the ceremony, I was amazed by how synchronized movements of so many people were! I also really liked how the last torch-carrier was “running” in the air to light up the grand Olympic torch. Undoubtedly Zhang Yimou did a superb job orchestrating the ceremony.]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/09/olympics-2008-opening-ceremony/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/08/office-shelves/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/08/office-shelves/#comments Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:08:03 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=511 Well, this past weekend we finally decided to do something that we haven’t gotten to in over a year that we’ve been living here — add some shelves to our office closet.

The thing is that the guy we bought the place from mean for this room to be a bedroom I guess, and he made the closet for hanging clothes. We, instead, piled up a bunch of our photo and computer bags in there, and then more then half of that space was wasted, because you can’t store anything on top of the bags.

We carefully measured the size of the shelves that we would need and went to a local hardware store — Doody Home Center. Now this place might not be as big as Home Depot or Lowes, but it’s by far the best hardware store I’ve been to. This wasn’t the first time experience either. Basically we just asked a guy working there where we could find the boards for the shelves. Not only did he help us find the boards, he cut them for us precisely to the right size. Go get someone to do that at Home Depot.

Went home, drilled some holes, installed the pins, the shelves, attached the moldings, done! Came out rather nice.]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/08/office-shelves/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/05/college-diploma/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/05/college-diploma/#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:15:24 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=510 Summa Cum Laude honors. We were slightly worried about the fact that they would find a way to screw her out of it, because of the way the bureaucratic speak is used to list qualifications for it, but they didn’t.

I just want to say that my wife makes me super proud! How did she end up with an uneducated bum like me anyhow? ]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/05/college-diploma/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/04/parking-garage-design/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/04/parking-garage-design/#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:22:16 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=509 design for a garage. How cool is that?]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/04/parking-garage-design/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/03/amores-perros/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/03/amores-perros/#comments Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:44:23 +0000 Alena http://www.rubinary.com/?p=508 http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/03/amores-perros/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/03/dan-in-real-life/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/03/dan-in-real-life/#comments Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:03:51 +0000 Alena http://www.rubinary.com/?p=507 http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/03/dan-in-real-life/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/03/mango-salad-herring-appetizer/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/03/mango-salad-herring-appetizer/#comments Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:57:50 +0000 Alena http://www.rubinary.com/?p=506 Last week was Daniel’s mom birthday. She cooked a lot of yummy stuff which included old time favorites like funchoza. I humbly participated by adding mango salad and herring appetizer to the table.

I found the mango salad recipe on Sweetlady’s blog. My salad looks a bit different than hers, but it still was pretty good and refreshing.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium cucumbers
• 1 mango
• 1 avocado
• 2-3 tablespoons of oil
• Juice from 1/2 lime
• Red pepper flakes
• Salt

I found the herring appetizer recipe on kuking.net a while ago. Basically, you spread some mayo on slightly toasted rye bred, then put a piece of marinated herring on it, and top it with a slice of kiwi fruit. Simple, but quite nice if you like herring. ]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/03/mango-salad-herring-appetizer/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/01/nothing-much/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/01/nothing-much/#comments Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:51:08 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=504 http://www.rubinary.com/2008/08/01/nothing-much/feed/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/07/28/cartoon/ http://www.rubinary.com/2008/07/28/cartoon/#comments Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:00:59 +0000 Daniel http://www.rubinary.com/?p=503 cartoon seems hilarious.]]> http://www.rubinary.com/2008/07/28/cartoon/feed/