Update – Quickgrapher Has Been Ported To Android
Besides numerous other interesting forks which have come out of the open sourcing of Quick Grapher, I just got wind of a very interesting fork which ports it to Android. Two of my favorite projects coming together for a peanut butter and jelly style open source sandwich. Sharing for the win! Check it out!
What if HTML5 Equations and Graphs Were Completely Free and Disgustingly Easy? QuickGrapher.com is gone, Lives on as QuickGrapher – An Open Source HTML 5 Multi Equation Solver And Grapher
QuickGrapher.com was one of the research projects spun out of Discursive Labs. One of the most promising projects we worked on, it always felt like a project without an intended audience, and it never really lifted off. I'm quite proud of the work that Mark and I did, and still think it's a tremendously fun and important project.
You can see an outdated version of it in action here.
Check out the drake equation in QuickGrapher here.
Check out the set of video tutorials we did for it here.
(my favorite video)
Download, exploit, and contribute to the source at the github project here.
And check out the permalink page for it here.
Source Tree Visualizer – Now Open Source
As most of you know, Mark and I shelved Discursive Labs about a year ago. While the business didn't make it, we ended up creating some really cool stuff in our research department. One of those projects was Source Tree Visualizer. We've decided to open source it with a BSD license, so feel free to modify the code and use it most anywhere.
Check out my gallery of some really cool trees (Google+ gallery below as well):
https://plus.google.com/photos/109597056286687737899/albums/5700658936240673073
You can see the permalink page for STV here, or see the GitHub project here:
What Unlimited Storage Really Means In America – Bandwidth Limitations
So I'm on my lunchbreak, browsing the hot deals forums over at Fatwallet. I stumble upon what appears to be a very solid deal, 24 months of JustCloud unlimited storage backup service for 35 bucks. Can it live up to the hype (EDIT - Nope, it pretty much sucks for me, but their cancellation process is painless...)? Is it even possible to stress test this in the land of bandwidth caps and SOPA hearings? I'm going to find out.
For those of you just finding this blog, I'm a complete media glutton. I've (legally, at least for now) made digital backups of every DVD, audio CD, BLU-Ray, cartridge game, Playstation game or eBook I've ever owned or created. On top of that, I tend to keep a local store repository of my 600+ steam game collection for fast retrieval (and if they decide to later pull any of the games I bought). Add in the couple hundred gigs of personal photos I've taken as well as tons of software projects, virtual machines, disk images, dev environments, half-finished projects, etc and you're looking at about 5 terabytes of data. This is locally spread out over my two Drobo storage bots full of 2tb drives. Unfortunately, some facts about the internet here in America come into play:
Google is my New Cellular Carrier
Yep, I finally made the switch to using Google Voice as my primary number. My cell phone number hasn't changed though, I've simply paid google the 20$ carrier transfer fee and ported my number over to Google Voice. No more bills from Sprint. No more automatic charges. No monthly bill. Ever again. I expect to save 95% of the cost of my cell phone over the next year and lose absolutely none of the functionality.
How is this possible?
Quick Update – The Retrode Works with Android
I was just messing around with an old eee PC, seeing what it could do. First I installed Android 4.0 ICS. It worked fairly well, though the lack of sound on my particular model meant it wasn't a keeper. Still, when I plugged in the Retrode it was immediately recognized and I could play the game boy emulator on the market with the directional pad on my SNES controller. Fun!
Using an Original SNES Controller and Cartridge with your PC, PS3, or Dockstar (Retrode Pre-Order glory)
I've mentioned the Retrode before, and if you don't know it's a terrific device by Matthias Hullin which allows you to use your original Super Nintendo and Genesis controllers with anything USB. I set out to use an original SNES controller and original cartridge to play Mario Kart. I ended up doing just that on a couple of interesting platforms, and I'm terrifically pleased with the finished product. Read on for more photos, videos of the PS3 and Retrode working together, and good times.
Why I’m Hip to Android
This is a short tale of frustration. Upon hearing that GemRB had been ported to iOS and Android, I rushed over to download. This is an awesome reimplementation of the Infinity engine used in the Baldur's Gate series of games. This excited me greatly, as Planescape: torment and Baldur's Gate 2 were two of my favorite RPGs ten years ago. My current Android device of choice is rocking a 1024x600 resolution screen (widescreen) and my iPad 2 is rocking a 1024x768 screen. Wanting to play some Baldur's Gate 2, I set about to install and configure it on both devices. The iPad screen resolution matches my old PC's resolution without a widescreen patch, so I set about to install to that first. It turns out you need to install from iTunes, as apple doesn't allow GPL software on the iPad. I set about to install iTunes. After iTunes finishes, it alerts me that I need to delete all the data from the iPad before I can install RubyGM from my laptop. FINE, I proceed to back up all the data and apps from the iPad and sync to my laptop. Finally, it starts to transfer the RubyGM binary over to my iPad2 and... failure. With a generic error code, my time on iPad came to an end. I'm literally at an impasse, short of buying a mac, signing up as a mac developer, installing XCode, and debugging the install process. A complete black box.
I next set about to install this on my Android device. First I installed it from the App store. This worked great. Then I uninstalled it, and installed from the direct download link on their webpage (so I know my friends with unlicensed devices would be covered). It works fine too. Even if it didn't, there are four separate versions posted up for one to try out, and the android SDK works on all platforms.
End of story: You can find my iPad on eBay here.
Apologies for the Site Hiccups!
Apolgoies for the site hiccups everyone, I've almost got it all straightened out. I've switched from godaddy hosting and domain registration to BlueHost. See my previous post for more on that, and stay tuned for even more site updates!
Registrar and Hosting Switch From GoDaddy Plus Shameless Plug For Dropbox Storage
So if you haven't been following the geek news lately, I'll sum it up for you. GoDaddy is a big jerk company that supports SOPA, helped to draft SOPA, and is exempt from SOPA. SOPA is the worst thing to ever happen to the internet, including goatse.cx. It would restrict our freedom of speech and allow pretty much anyone to take down a domain at the drop of a hat (complaint hat). So I encourage everyone to get off of GoDaddy, boycott GoDaddy, and boycott any company that supports SOPA. Oh and apparently the CEO hunts elephants, which I am also against. I found this out while searching for a good anti-GoDaddy image to post up (thanks Boycott GoDaddy Facebook Group!).
It's also therefore unfortunate that GoDaddy has been hosting my site and registering my domains for many years now. I've been pretty happy with their service, but only really because they are so cheap. SO, it's time for me to switch hosts and registrars. I'm on the fence between Bluehost, Dreamhost, or some combination of EC2 instances and namecheap registrar. This will be happening sometime this week.
One of the reasons I stuck with Godaddy was their 'infinite storage' plan, which allowed me unlimited transfers of large files for site traffic (those Z2 images, dockstar hacks, etc). I'm going to try and start hosting up storage on Dropbox, which has good uptime and some interesting features. Unfortunately, the free plan is a bit lacking in storage space (2gb, really?, my GMAIL has 8...). However, every time someone signs up for DropBox with me as a referral we both get an extra 250megs of space. This really adds up after 10 or 20 referrals, so if you want to help support my hacking releases do consider signing up for a free DropBox account with my referral code here. (http://db.tt/r45JYJPw)