Category Archives: Gnrl Bckt

Online Hiring Option | On-the-Job Trials

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Consider the following set:

S = [ outsourcing, crowdsourcing, trialsourcing ]

You probably have heard of the first two elements of set S. Each of the first has merit, and each has its drawbacks. Whereas one gives you a desired quality at the cost of time, the other gives you a desired timeline, at the cost of quality control.

The third item, trialsourcing, bridges the gap.

trial sourcing

hmm

I stumbled across a company called vWorker that has come up with a truly novel idea. Their solution is On the job trial: crowdsourcing, trialsourcing. The principle idea at the heart of the approach a project by letting potential employees provide actual code, for both small (crowdsourcing) efforts and larger (trialsourceing) implementations. It effectively takes the guessing game out of the equations, allowing the person issuing the contract to have confidence in the quality of the contractor’s work.

Hit one of the links to take a look. It is very novel.

V-Day Eyeglasses

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Cranky baby. Not a whole bunch of sleep. Shifted sense of humor, or some sort of tiredness induced insanity.

Either I have completely blasted past any sort of touch with reality, or this is really funny…

awesome eyeglasses

...hmm

A bit of a side note. I was poking around for some new frames, started looking at some online prescription frames, and got fully side tracked. Somehow looking at basic options found me checking out Valentine’s Day glasses, and ultimately dropping a pair of V-Day glasses on top of a sweet robot jpeg. One must admit, the frames are both completely conducive towards Valentine’s day cheer, and for robotic…oh I don’t know…something.

Zenni kills it, regardless of the style. Take a quick look at the source of the image…

zenni frame pink

yep

I think they would look equally amazing on a human. Preferably a female human.

Tired stupor aside, it is very amazing how far the internet has brought certain industries into the hands of the consumer. Glasses provide a terrific point. I have purchased three sets of frames from Zenni, and can say with a great deal of certainty, that my time in a brick and mortar spectacle shop are done. Have prescription, will go.

Anyhow…sorry about the tired ramble post. It still cracks me up though…

Managed Service Provider

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So, I’ve been doing this software thing for a while now. It is a strange, strange industry. It is becoming more apparent that every implementation of a generic service ends up falling into a similar life cycle. They all start with an idea, mash together a product, and go to market. The tricky part lies in new features, new connectivity, implementing the product on new technology as it arises, etc. That et cetera is sort of the name of the game. As the playing field changes, the product must too change.

To make matters worse, things move at a quicker pace now more than ever. It is pretty shortsighted to assume your product will ever hit a true support phase. When that happens, you are likely no longer a player in your industry.

The name of the game is managing your services…

managed service provider

single point of contact = spoc

From time to time I check out hosting and virtualization providers on the nets. I stumbled across NCC Data, a Dallas managed service provider, who offers a product that essentially addresses my rant above. The key word is, undoubtedly, manage.

Once you hit a certain level of critical mass, you must make the decision weather to support your goods in house (custom code, legacy systems, chopped and screwed…) or take on somebody to hammer out your details. NCC can handle your virtualization, support, security, and the whole other range of hosting headaches. Hit the link to take a look.

Rural Satellite Internet

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For a long while when we ~buffering~ used to stream YouTube ~buffering~ videos our inter… ~buffering~ …net connection used to be sort of ~buffering OoO buffering OoO buffering~ lousy. It would randomly stop ~buffering~ a movie for several seconds, which does ~buffering~ not seem like much of a deal unless you are trying to ~buffering OoO buffering OoO buffering~ concentrate on ~buffering~ something. Buffering.

Well, fortunately for us, our issue was an easy fix. As the technician did the normal technician thing, whereas he checks line levels at the modem and works backwards to the stub in, he (we) found a splice into the neighbor’s place. Must have been an inside deal at some point…an inside deal that would have gone unnoticed a few years ago. Once I moved in and started cranking high speed internet and two digital cable connections on the coaxial, it became a sore thumb.

The question of the day is this…what do you do in a place without the physical connections that we have? Are you just s.o.l. and stuck buffering?

Nope.

rural internet

bingo

Whereas dial-up connections were the status quo, the future is now here, my friends. Satellite Internet is your answer.

It is pretty amazing if you stop to think about it…jumping up to broadband speeds from dial-up, using technology that is superseding that of the cellular industry. Leaps and bounds, when comparing geosynchronous orbit to the height of a cell tower. Think about that.

Anyhow, hit that link above to see how a good provider does it. Or buffer…your choice.

Festive Eyewear

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I’ve made it pretty clear that I have been mulling about regarding my next cell phone. It is a tough decision. Compared to the jump in technology from my previous leap out of BlackBerry-ville, this is a lateral move. I will end up with a more mature stock operating system, better screen technology, a second (better dust off my Skype account) camera, and *hopefully a more capable battery.

That said, I am having a tough time making a decision. Two years and three hundred dollars sits in the back of my mind.

Too bad I’m not considering instead a purchase of eyeglasses. That decision is a no-brainer…Zenni Optical is my place on that front, no question.

Check out these marvelous holiday-themed beauties…

awesome robot

(this really cracks me up for some reason)

I like the frames, and love the price:

xmas frames

wild

Here in the States, Zenni ships for free on orders over fifty dollars. You could pick up twelve pairs of glasses for the amount of money I am going to drop on my phone. Seriously…a dozen pairs. That is pretty crazy.

At that cost, you may as well splurge on some holiday frames. They sure make that robot guy look dapper ^^^

Droid 4 vs Droid Razr

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Flashback to 2010. A simpler time. I was finally abandoning my BlackBerry, which is basically one step above bag phone by today’s standards. I was torn between two devices: the Motoroala X and the Motorola Droid 2. I opted for the physical keyboard, and have not looked back.

Flash back to present. A time less simple. With Katie’s iPhone 4S in the mail, it is nearing my turn to make a decision regarding my new device. The best phone on the market, in my book, is the Droid Razr. The kicker is the soon to be released Droid 4…

moto droid 4

...hmm

This thing has the same stuff under the hood as the Razr, very, very similar to the duality between the Droid 2 and X. Trading .3 inches and AMOLED for a smaller qHD screen…sort of a tough call.

But…the good news is that I have a few months left before I need to make the decision. My Christmas wishlist instead is one involving Unusual Gifts this year. I am a sucker for strange electronic devices…that should be apparent from the remote controlled clock. I’m hoping to pick up some hackable gizmos that I can chop apart, and leave the phone decision for another day.

Project Progress: H-Bridge

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I thought I could get away with utilizing the onboard 6V from my cannibalized motion platform…aka the orange thing…in order to power both the DC motors and my IOIO. My bluetooth connection was cutting out…indicating that I needed to introduce a separate power source for the board and for the motors.

My workaround didn’t pan out…time to rethink the build. Guess what I have on my desk:

ioio motor shield

yoink

Adafruit Motor Shield for the Arduino. Two good looking H-Bridges staring at me….that’ll do. I never thought I would find myself treating my Arduino gear as a scrapheap, but the day has come.

The H-Bridge will allow me to cross over (think of a capitol H) and provide bi-directional motion from the hardware level. 3.3V digital outputs…no more open drain needed (bonus.)

h bridge pins

h bridge pins

Anyhow, I ended up putting together a little test board…socket, some male pins, and eventually some wires for a more secure connection. Sucking some serious soldering fumes…

test board modified

custom mod

It looks sloppy, but here is the hardware in its entirety:

the setup

+1 great holder

Here is a quick video of my testing. I fired up my IOIOSeek program, which has two simple digital outputs triggered via buttons…

Early success? Yep. Except for the early part…this has been more work than I had assumed. More EE work…hoping the UI and hardware containment goes smoothly. Tune back in.

Quad Monitors

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The only better thing than one nice monitor is two nice monitors. The only thing better than two nice monitors, is one really nice monitor and a hi-res laptop monitor. The only thing better than one nice monitor and one laptop monitor is that, in addition to one sort of lousy monitor.

So, I guess I am winning that game…my work setup is equally that:

trips at work

trips

I need to step it up and go for quad monitors. Quads would be great…I get sort of jealous when I see something like this when I am daydreaming of the perfect work setup:

multiplex triple setup

fancy trips

Imagine something like that, with three of my 24″s from work sitting perfectly on my desk. Symmetrical, clean, and awesome. I found myself on Mulitiplex’s site looking at some of their setups…I am completely in awe of this guy:

quad setup

+4

And hence the title of the post…I have an itch to put together a quad monitor setup. Big time. I am up in the air as to whether a single monitor on top of the triple monitor setup would be better than the giant quadrilateral, but either one would be amazing.

Maybe I can get this up and going…