Treat For Tonight

Never have tried it....

Nexus One Video

A great 10 minute video of the new Nexus One Android phone. The animated backgrounds look VERY nice. This guy also gets a bonus for the Thomas Dolby "Aliens Ate My Buick" album and video on the phone.

Purple Moon Shiraz

We enjoyed a nice wine tonight with dinner. A 2008 Shiraz. I would definitely buy this again.

Grocery Go-Getter

Took the trike out this weekend to get groceries. The ride was a lot of fun and Sam came along for the ride. It was about a mile or so each way, but the overpass was the big challenge.

Sam's Awesome Lego Fire Truck

Unpack Trike -- Build Trike!

I spent a couple hours last night unpacking and assembling my new Haley Trike. I ran into some issues with the left brakes on the front axle, but resolved it this morning. I finished the project today in about 30 minutes. I had to contact Stephen at Haley Trike because the three speed shifter on the rear wheel fell apart and I couldn't figure out how to put it back together. He was nice enough to take one off the shelf and disassemble, reassemble it for me on the phone. The Trike rides smoothly and is a lot of fun. Now to pack up the kids in the box and head out!

Best beer I've had in a long, long time.

Just kicking it...

Another Ted Hero theme screenshot...

Ted's Hero Theme

Flashed a hero theme on top of Cyanogen 4.0.4. ROM. Looks good so far and doesn't seem to slow the phone down.

Tech Journaling via Twitter

I've decided to do some tech journaling to keep track of various projects I'm working on. I might throw some music stuff in there, too. I added a Twitter update window in the sidebar, but here are the links to the actual feeds.

Twitter page: https://twitter.com/duhproject

RSS Feed: https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/69920177.rss

Old dog, new tricks...

Replacing the bearings on the old skateboard. I plan on teaching my neighbor how to Ollie and hopefully avoiding injury.

Battery usage gauge.

One of the niftiest features in cyanogens ROMs is the battery usage tool which tells you what is eating up the battery since your last plug in. Mine is almost always Bluetooth. Damn the Bluetooth!

Apps2sd installed!

I was able to partition my microSD card today with a ext2 partition. This allowed me to install apps to the SD card instead of internal memory on my G1 Android phone. This has freed up a lot of usable RAM on the device now and is faster than ever. Music and pics are still on a FAT32 partition alongside the new ext2 partition. Cyanogens ROM automatically moved my apps for me on reboot. Sweet!

G1 - Rooted!

After reading this Lifehacker article this weekend, I proceeded with something I've been holding off on for a long time -- rooting my G1 Android phone. The article highlights the top reasons to root your Android phone. The first item is "A Real Performance Boost". That had me sold! My feelings are best summarized by the first comment on the article:

UlandDexamenus commented on Five Great Reasons to Root Your Android Phone
"Rooting my G1 and installing Cyanogen's mod turned my G1 from a somewhat clunky often lagging and annoying device into a phone that is a pleasure to use."

My phone is now running very smoothly and is faster than it ever has been. It's like getting a free hardware upgrade. The root process was very easy and took less than 25 minutes. The performance upgrade is amazing. The small graphical updates make the OS more attractive and having root is very nice -- so far the best app I can run now is Wi-Fi tethering which turns the G1 into a wireless mobile access point that shares my 3G connection to my laptop wirelessly. Sweet.

Father's Day Gift

Jennifer got me a 3 month subscription to the "Beer of the Month" club offered by amazingclubs.com. My first month arrived today - 12 brews from two small breweries. The first one shown in the picture was VERY good.

1337!

Today my chess ranking says I'm leet! Yay!

En Passant (In Passing)

I used the En Passant against an opponent yesterday. This was only the second time in my life I've ever had the opportunity to do so. A lot of people I play don't know about this valid move and it's worth knowing. Check out move 18 in the game below.

Play chess online!

Chess Team

I was invited to join a Chess Team on Gameknot awhile back. I've been playing fairly well, so I accepted. It's been fun; basically you have a team captain who pairs you up with a player on a competing team. Each pairing includes two games -- white and black.

My first team game match ended a couple of days ago and I won both matches. I was feeling pretty good about that, so I asked the captain to increase the number of games I can play at once. Today I lost in NINE moves to a guy from Ireland. (I learned a valuable lesson not to deploy my Queen so early in the game)

Very humbling...

Play chess online!

Here are the first two team games I played, both victories.

Play chess online!

Play chess online!

Congrats Dr. Rima!!!

Summer's Bounty, FOUND!

I was starting to worry as I couldn't find Curve Ball anywhere this season. Just a late start I suppose -- new packaging, same old Curve Ball.

Piracy

We all need to do our part to put an end to piracy.

Holy Crap!

Philly pulled it off! Great game!

Orl vs Phi

Haven't watched a ton of NBA this year, but this playoff game has been great and very close!

Birthday Gift

My wife brought the awesome to me yesterday for my birthday by purchasing my very first car detailing. No exaggeration - my car looks better than when I first purchased it. It was the greatest gift. Thank you, J.D.!

My Run Today

This was my run today. I am pretty out of shape. My last recorded run was in February:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=102948570821804121313.0004669829db225f6d91b

I recorded this using Google's "My Track" on my G1 phone.

Android Development

With the introduction of non-free applications on the Android Market, a flood of new apps have emerged. Most applications are still free, though, and some are very useful. My first non-free application was TeleNav, which is a turn-by-turn GPS navigation system with traffic alerts. With the traffic feature, it is a very useful application and worth the money.

I've had some ideas (and so has my wife) for new applications. While there may exist an application in the market that would work, sometimes you just want an application to work the way YOU want. I'd really like a client time tracker that worked the way our central time application works at my job. I'd like a better shopping list application (and so would my wife). To this end, I'm starting to dabble in Android development.

Android development is Java based and, well, I don't know Java. Or any other programming language to be honest with you. Maybe it's time to stretch my brain and learn something new. All the Android development stuff (SDK, Eclipse IDE) is free, so there's no outlay of cash. The SDK includes an Android handset emulator, so you can run and test your application on your computer. There are a large number of web sites devoted to helping Android developers, so there's no lack of online support and help.

I've followed the VERY helpful Android Developers Web Site and installed all the software I need to begin. I even created my first "Hello, World" Android app that runs on my phone (the emulator screen shot is above). I'm not sure if I have enough free time to actually complete a big project, but learning a new programming language could be very useful in other facets of life, and I really have been enjoying my G1 phone. It will be interesting using home-grown applications on it.

New Patio Cover

We had a new patio cover installed today with an outdoor fan. It only took roughly 6 hours for the contractors to install.

Ever have a day where you are not motivated, but have a ton of stuff to do?

VCR Hack

And smiling...

Finally awake...

Trying to wake up...

Proud...

Just a touch over three months old and can hold her own bottle. Yeah...I'm proud...

I haven't touched my bass since I moved to Elk Grove (about a year and a half). I gave it some love yesterday by buying her some new strings and a new practice amp. I haven't had a ton of time with the new amp, but it's made by the same folks who make the Pod amp emulator effects box. It has built in effects and amp and cabinet emulation. It sounded great when I played last night. I was pretty damn rusty, but it felt nice to play again.

Sammy's Bad Guy Mash-Up

He's called "Skeleton Rider" and he's all Lego, part skeleton, part Indiana Jones.

Argggh you scurvy dogs!

VW Diesel Roadster

Wow! Check out the specs on this: