Stuffz

Untitled: The Defense Double Pack nears open beta!

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:59:13 -0700

Untitled: The Defense Double Pack nears open beta!:

The Defense Double Pack that I took time out from my main campaign, Void, is finally nearing completion. As soon as I get the trailer cut together, I’ll be posting it up on L4DMaps.com for the first open beta.

I know there’s some issues left in it at the moment, including some physics issues with…

Idea: Wireless tablet interface

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:02:17 -0700

The idea is to have a tablet size touchscreen that has no cpu but rather connects wireless to any computer via either something like VNC or using some kind of special usb stick that you plug into the target computer. The advantage of the VNC method is no physical modification to the computer is required. The advantage of the usb stick is no software modification is required (potentially).

The point behind this is to make any desktop computer portable within a short distance of the physical base. This would free computers up from needing to be lugged around, aka a dumb terminal touchscreen tablet.

I suppose the VNC method combined with internet connectivity would be ideal because then you could connect to any computer on the internet by joining a wireless network, you’d just need enough smarts on the tablet to have some kind of firmware interface for joining wireless networks and talking through them. Add in 3G or other wireless broadband (or at least the ability to tether with a phone) and you suddenly have an ultra portable with a large screen that can switch computers.

Idea: Tag browsing hierarchies

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:29:00 -0700

Problem with Tags: Tags are flat browsing systems, making specificity a problem. Tags need to be broad and there’s a limit to the depth of specificity with combinations of broad tags resulting in lots of manual browsing.

Problem with Hierarchy trees: Hierarchy trees work like tags that get more specific as you get deeper into the tree. The only way to provide multiple tags is in your branches which can lead to lots of redunancy issues. Hierarchy trees are bare often either drag and drop, or single clipboard cut and paste, making tag manipulation wieldly.

Solution: To get the speed of a flat browsing structure, combined with an element of tag nesting, I propose a modified tag cloud system. The way a normal tag cloud works is tags that have been applied more frequently are given a bigger size. While the proposed system may actually use a different indicator than size (such as list ranking), its based off the same concept of frequency indication. The modification to the tag cloud idea is to filter the tag list based off selected tags.

The way this would work is the most broadly applied tags (those being “higher level” in a hierarchical sense) would be given prominence in the tag list. Then when any of those tags are clicked, the tag list would be culled down to only tags that have been used in combination with this tag. When another tag is selected, the list would be culled further in the same manner. This provides a hierarchical drilling mechanism to give the benifits of a hierarchical file structure. However because the list is still flat, you can skip levels of navigation quickly. The skipping will be easier once you’ve culled the list to a certain amount of course, depending on the density of your tag cloud.

Let me provide an example:

Let’s say you want to find a specific video you have been working on for a client (Microsoft), and here is your starting, unfiltered tag list with the broader tags first.

Personal, Work, Documents, Images, Video, Sound, School, Clients, Math, Science, English, Ads, Apple, Microsoft, MacvsPC, Switch, SeinfeldandGates, ImaPC, Porn

Now to start out with, thats a lot of mixing of different items ranked solely by frequency. It may look a little wieldy at first, but with a tag list this short we can simply click on “SeinfeldandGates” and “Video” to get right to the list of videos to look through and find our file quickly. However, let’s pretend that list is exteremely long and looking through it to shortcut so easily wouldn’t be as easy and look at the longest approach.

1) Clicking on Work culls the list down to: [Work], Documents, Images, Video, Sound, Clients, Ads, Apple, Microsoft, MacvsPC, Switch, SeinfeldandGates, ImaPC

2) Clicking on Video doesn’t cull the tag list down but we are going to want to do it at some point anyways because it culls down the results list.

3) Clicking on Clients and ads would reduce the list down if have any work tags that aren’t related to clients or any client tags that aren’t for ads.

4) Clicking on Microsoft however will drop this tag list down to the following: [Work], [Video], [Clients], [Ads], [Microsoft], SeinfeldandGates, ImaPC

5) Clicking on either of the two ad campaign tags left then will give you a list of the videos for that campaign, enabling you to find the one you want. Of course you could have some tags such as “Drafts”, “Unedited”, and “Finalized” to narrow that list down more.

That was an example of taking the longest approach, realistically all that was needed was clicking [SeinfeldandGates] and [Video], the rest of the tag clicking was mostly to narrow the tag list. This provides tags with two functions, thinning the tag cloud and thinning the tag results. An example with a much larger tag cloud would obviously be more dramatic but i’ll leave that to your imagination.

The one weakness in this system is the dependancy on making sure you tag more specific items with both the specific tags AND the broader tags. How detailed you want to be in this though is up to you since you are free to skip over intermediary tags in the tag cloud at any time. If you had a tag cloud as small as the example above, you could merely tag all your SeinfeldandGates videos with that tag and then skip straight to that tag and browse for the video files manually. This means density is up to you :)

Also as an additional note, because this tag list technically allows for unlimited specificity, it could be imported from an existing file hiarchy and then the user could modify down the tag list himself if the import didn’t turn out well.

Idea: Graphiti

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:19:28 -0700

Most graffiti that is respected is either artistic or trying to make a statement. When trying to make a statement, how about saying more than just “Bobo was here”.

Why not get data that supports your statement, say number of civilian deaths in iraq and make a simplisitic but visually interesting data visualization such as a graph or plot. Then make that into a stencil of sorts for easy spray graffiti-ing. That way you can spread facts in the public forum instead of just opinions. The uninformed can always use more useful data! Also I liked the play on words of the title so stfu :)

Idea: Friggin Room Bass Cancelation

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:03:08 -0700

nomel:

noise cancel stomping bass hit from the kids that live above us EVERY FRIGGIN MORNING. Woofer placement would probably be critical. Could use something like digital room correction by the awsome Dr. Denis Sbragion to optimize the room response near where your head sleeps (disjointed bodies are ok).

If you could actually make a commercial product of this and get it installed in apartments everywhere you’d be rich!

Idea: Finding parts on a PCB.

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:27:26 -0700

nomel:

Problem: On most PCB’s, you’ll find hundreds of parts. When debugging/testing/modifying these boards, you often have to look at the schematic, then find a part on the board. With potentially hundreds of parts on the front and back of the board with tiny little stencils, this can burn up a lot of time and fun.

Solution: An automatic part finder than uses an inexpensive video camera, a laser pointer, and a laser pointer positioner (probably servo controlled).

The software will find the board in the frame using feature and color detection, then board orientation and the visible side (back or front) will be found by finding known features on the boards surface. Once orientation is known, the laser positioner will point the laser to the point to the part on the board, known from the layout file of the board. Since this can be done in realtime, the lasers position could track the part, even on a moving board.

Use/Features: Enter a part number to find the part. If the part is located on the back, the laser will blink. If you wanted to get real fancy (for EMI debugging, etc) you could have the laser follow the paths of the traces between two parts.

Cool idea! Could definitely have uses in other areas besides PCB boards, any kind of cartography related activity in general really. This is basically just lower tech (because the laser pointer is the only display used) augmented reality. Luckily optical tracking stuff has gotten really good. You could probably pretty easily orient the board for the optical sensor using colored dots placed on the corners of the board or something similar.

MTV Movies Blog » Darren Lynn Bousman Wants To Send ‘Leprechaun’ Back To The Old West

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:30:57 -0700

MTV Movies Blog » Darren Lynn Bousman Wants To Send ‘Leprechaun’ Back To The Old West:

This idea has my FULL support!

Photo

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 05:11:16 -0700

Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:18:18 -0700

Pandora Radio - Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music:

I feel absolutely retarded (Tropic Thunder retarded!) for not having checked this out before, thinking it was some online indie radio station or something. Yey for recommendation systems! Will definitely rock on my iPhone since I don’t put much on the iPod side of it!

Tagged email addresses to fight spam

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:02:00 -0700

Been thinking this morning about the problem of fighting spam and it seems to me that gmail has one of the best tricks around at the moment which is to allow you to use the format <yourusername>+<anythingyouwant>@gmail.com. This means that you can generate unique e-mail addresses anytime you want.

Sure you could always sign up for websites with something like mzomzo+spambox@gmail.com and then use filters on anything going to that e-mail to shove it to the spam box but that seems like a bit of a shotgun approach still since you are likely to kill false positives.

Why not use a unique tag based on who you give it to, like lets say you sign up for playboy.com, why not use mzomzo+playboy@gmail.com. This way if you get any spam to that address you know what the source is and you can block any spam coming from them selling off your e-mail from now on using a filter.

Extending that idea you could go really crazy and instead of posting your normal e-mail address on your website you could have your website generate a random or incrementing unique e-mail address everytime the page is viewed so anytime your e-mail got harvested you could block any e-mails going to that address knowing full well that only 1 person (plus anyone that person sold it to) is using that address. The downside of this of course is that you can only setup so many filters in gmail so perhaps this is an idea for a custom e-mail service that could easily block any future spam from an address with a single click (like google’s Report Spam). Also you wanted to use it outside of your website you could simply make up the random/incremental part yourself or use some kind of widget or token to generate it.

Seems to me the only way spammers could detect this is if recognized that anything after + in a gmail address was bunk and just ignored it. I suppose this is where a service that generates full one off e-mail addresses would be useful. As far as I know none of them generate lots of one-offs linked to a single account easily.

I see it working like this:

1) Sign up for an account on the webmail service.

2) Get some kind of widget or whatever portable e-mail addy generator.

3) Generate e-mails automatically linked to your account.

4) Click a “SPAMMER” button on any e-mail spam to completely remove that randomly generated e-mail address from the system. That means no more e-mails to that e-mail address will come to your box and it means that the webmail service can purge that account from its system to save space, perhaps marking that e-mail on a deadlist so it never uses it again.

Wonder how hard this would be to throw together with Django and the Google App Engine using the Mail API…

Food for thought.

Defunct pizza parlor robot band repurposed for fan music-vids - Boing Boing

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:10:02 -0700

Defunct pizza parlor robot band repurposed for fan music-vids - Boing Boing:

This guy needs to take these on tour!

Featured Firefox Extension: Google Redesigned Facelifts Gmail and GCal

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:03:31 -0700

Featured Firefox Extension: Google Redesigned Facelifts Gmail and GCal:

Neat look for Google’s apps. Nice to see people doing stuff like this.

Jailbreak: Pwnage Tool 2.0.2 Jailbreaks iPhone 2.0.1 Software

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:50:51 -0700

Jailbreak: Pwnage Tool 2.0.2 Jailbreaks iPhone 2.0.1 Software

Weekend Watching: Complete Aurora Future Browser Concept Video Series

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:50:24 -0700

Weekend Watching: Complete Aurora Future Browser Concept Video Series:

There’s a few cool ideas in here but they are buried in really cheesy presentation and very cluttered visuals. Worth a watch though.

Change Nation:Tim Ferriss (8/8/08) | Being Happier | First30Days

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:49:24 -0700

Change Nation:Tim Ferriss (8/8/08) | Being Happier | First30Days:

A good Tim Ferriss interview.

Movie "demos"

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:01:00 -0700

Reading an article online about game piracy reminded me of something that I think would be a really interesting experiment.

Back in the early days of PC gaming, many a game was sold off of the shareware model. The way it worked was that you could download a game that was limited in some way, usually either a time trial or only part of the game (anywhere from the first level up to 1/3rd of the game or so).

What I’d find interesting is a similar model applied to movies. Movie trailers often show you pieces of various parts of the movie, often having to hint at the entire plot to try and entice you to watch it. However trailers are often very misleading or outright bad. Now I don’t think they are useless by any means but I think it would be interesting to have a website or something that allowed you to watch a portion of the movie. Perhaps it would be the first 15 minutes, or the middle 20 minutes. Whatever was enough to whet your thirst for more and really decide whether or not the movie is for you.

I think realistically you would be able to tell if a movie was worth continuing within the first 20 minutes and movies that you’d really need to see the middle to understand could definitely show that part and treat the beginning 20 minutes almost like getting a prequel.

Now imagine if this website let you watch that 20 minutes and then at the end prompted you to pay to watch the rest. Talk about pressure! If you are really into the movie I think you’d definitely be pretty convinced to fork over the rest. Who knows this could reduce movie piracy!

It would also be interesting if instead of 15-20 minutes of trailers before a movie in theaters they played the first 20 minutes of a movie that isn’t out yet to build anticipation. I have heard of situations where the first 5 minutes are previewed that way sometimes but I don’t know how well that worked and 5 minutes is pretty short.

Now that I think about it, it wouldn’t be too hard to put up the first 10 minutes of your movie on youtube and see how big of a fanbase you can get from that!

Regardless of whether or not these ideas would work, it’d be awesome to see someone try!

5 Women’s Styles/Fashions That Men Hate

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:26:30 -0700

5 Women’s Styles/Fashions That Men Hate:

Hopefully some ladies out there listen to this!

Iphone Hate: Why Rap Stars Are Hating on the iPhone

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:21:36 -0700

Iphone Hate: Why Rap Stars Are Hating on the iPhone:

Rappers are very knowledgable!

Staged Iran Pretext Could Bring National Draft

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:40:00 -0700

Staged Iran Pretext Could Bring National Draft:

Dubya Dubya Three here we come!

There Is Going To Be An i-9/11 And An i-Patriot Act

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:39:00 -0700

There Is Going To Be An i-9/11 And An i-Patriot Act:

The internetz are screwed.