ASL.js American Sign Language Javascript
So I was unwinding after work today, and I thought it'd be fun to create a little Javascript function and mobile-optimized site for changing textual words to American Sign Language. *FYI I throw stuff up on my GitHub all the time, and it doesn't always make the blog. Everything runs on the client browser, nothing is ever sent to my server and it's safe to embed in applications. It only took about an hour to throw together, mainly because the only public domain images are that of the manual ASL alphabet. That in itself seems like a problem somebody should do a Kickstarter to solve (seriously). Anyway you can check out the page here, and check the source out here.
For those copy-pasting on a mobile site or tablet (I didn't use any libraries, it should run on pretty much anything), it's www.hunterdavis.com/asljs/
This is the sort of thing I think we should all take more time to actively do. Just write some code for the heck of it, and get it out there to share. Even if it's a little thing. Especially if it's a little thing! You never know what will come of it, and it's a great way to get ideas out there.
Speaking of a Blast to the Past, Here’s an openGL Tron Game I wrote as an Undergrad
I just unearthed all of my homework from my CS courses from my undergraduate degree (1999-2003). While assembling the retrospective gif for the previous post, I recalled I had a web page on my school's csserver back as an undergraduate. Google confirmed this, but more amazingly it was still serving my hand-written redirect page. My amazement turned to horror as I realized I had served many a redhat ISO internally, and they were probably still lingering on there. A quick ssh later, and I'm back in the csserver of my youth. The account was never shut down, and the redhat ISOs were still there. I made a quick copy of all the rest of the data, deleted the data from the account, and logged out. I then realized what I had actually unearthed, a perfectly preserved history of each assignment I had ever completed for every CS class I had as an undergrad (dozens). Not only that, i had written some simple openGL games for the csserver. Sitting in the top level of a forgotten web directory was a compiled windows executable for a shitty little Tron openGL game you can download here.
Ten Years of HunterDavis.com From Archive.org’s Perspective
I was relaxing after a hard day at work today, and thought it may be fun to throw up a little reminder of where hunterdavis.com came from and how far it's come. In glorious GIF format 
*Update! It gets better. My ancient pre-hunterdavis.com website from 2001 is still available on the wayback machine! I've posted all my rants from 2001 below the break.
Now is the Time to Buy a First Generation E-Reader
Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Sony, and many others have recently released large color Android tablets/e-book readers out into the wild. Effectively the third generation of e-book readers, these tablets priced at 150-250$ USD represent the current pinnacle of our e-book world. But I'm not telling you to go buy them. Oh no. The value may be there but the price isn't right and the technology isn't optimum for reading books.
I'm telling you to buy a first generation Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or Sony Pocket e-Reader. Why? Besides all being based on superior e-ink screens that won't kill your eyes for reading, they have each and every one reached that oh so sweet 40-50$ price point on eBay.
Yep! 40-50$. For the same cost of a video game, a night out at the movies, a dinner (a cheap dinner here in Los Angeles), a pair of slacks, or two weeks of Starbucks blended drinks you can have an e-reader. Many first generation e-readers come with Wifi and some come with free 2g internet. Heck buy an extra or two to keep in a drawer at home. Take them on the bus. Take them to the beach or rock climbing. Whip them out at the bus stop or in sketchy neighborhoods. Treat them like a book. And when they are lost or stolen or drop and crack or die as all electronics invariably do, simply pull another from the drawer and move on.
Apparently people are buying my book on the Apple book store
I hadn't logged into my account in some time (I'm registered with so many publishers and sites etc I end up checking them twice a year or something) Turns out people have been buying my books on the Apple book store. That's cool, and an extra little bump in income I wasn't expecting. Not as many sales on Google books though, I wonder if that speaks to the breath of market penetration or perhaps the percentage of book readers per platform. At any rate, I'll try and post up a preview of my fourth book sometime soon.
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?