Portal

Brandon just pointed me to Portal, an upcoming game from Valve. It didn't make much sense to me why Valve would put its engine behind a puzzle game that's illustrated in the instructional video in the first few seconds of the above link, but it made total sense towards the end. Looks like it could be a very cool game.

Free discreet MIDI ringtone!

It feels like I write about something whenever I've spent too much time on it, thinking someone else might do the same stupid thing I tried to do. This time it happened to be searching for a better ringtone. The preloaded ones are never good and I've missed one or two calls when the phone is in silent/vibrate mode, even in my pocket. I ended up trying to make one but I was surprised how difficult it was to find software for OS X that sequences MIDI files. Download.

Portals

TechCrunch points to a screencast by Kris (on Flickr, ironically) showing an upcoming feature on Zoomr called Portals. It's pretty neat. Would've been perfect for some notes I added to some pictures on campus (e.g. this one) a while back.

Hibernate Mapping Diagram

If your hibernate.mapping.xml file is the most up-to-date documentation you have, try this XSL document to get a visual feel for how your database tables are related. Put the <?xml-stylesheet ... ?> directive in your mapping file and try opening it in a browser. I'd be surprised if it works in anything other than Firefox 1.5 (it needs to have canvas and XSL support). The XSL is pretty nasty because I wanted to include some portions of scrip.taculo.us to enable you to position the tables manually. Once the tables are in place, try hitting the '#' link in the top-left corner to connect everything together with "arrows".

Facebook RSS

They still don't support it, so here's an attempt to make that happen with the newly launched API. I wish it would at least expose the time a profile was last modified but that's probably like asking for them to publish emails and mobile phone numbers too. If you're daring, just login with your Facebook email/password. I don't know how/if other RSS clients handle HTTP authentication, but NetNewsWire does it very well.

[...]

Just the basics. What would be useful? Photos? Wall postings? Thanks goes to Ken K. for some help with the login procedure.

Update: the script is broken so I removed the link to it. I suspect the 'News Feed' feature is 10 times more useful anyway. See comments for more.

Not sure how I missed this in the 2 or so years of Java web programming I've done, but it's pretty huge: http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-07-2004/jw-0712-threadsafe.html. Basically, never use instance variables in a servlet!

The moderators at work will sometimes send out outrageous reviews they come across. This is my all time favorite:

MA STAR VANS R REAL SNEAKERS PIMPEN!!!!

By JHANAY AKA NAY-NAY BKA BOSSY CHICA(unverified) from RANCHO CODOVA on 7/3/2006

Pros: Comfortable, Durable, Stable, Warm
Cons: Stains Easily
Best Uses: Cold Weather, Travel, Casual Wear "JHANAY HARRIS GOT A PAIR", "GO DUMB USA BY JHANAY", "GET HYPHY IN THEM"

THEY R SO COMFY WHERE EVER U GO EVEN ON BUSSINESS TRIPS AND I WHERE THEM WHEN IM AT A SIDE SHOW GOIN DUMB U FEEL THEY NOT ONLY 4 ROCKERS THEY 4 PPL WHO LIKE HIP HOP LIKE E-40 KEAK DA SNEAK TOO $HORT MAC DRE(REST IN PEACE)ECT.
(0 of 0 found this review helpful)

Mad props for being able to throw "hyphy" and "bussiness trips" in the same post.

All you people who have ever bought anything from Performance Bicycle, go write some reviews ;) Tell your friends.

I took a quick poll to prove a point - nearly everyone in the room was a product of public school education (myself included). So the opportunities weren't isolated to higher education. (Mr. Jobs followed up to make the reality more painful - showing how few of us were sending our children to public school.)

Jonathan Schwartz, Lunch with Prime Minister Tony Blair

Firebug

Firebug is an awesome Firefox extension for web development that I've been late to discover. Recently I found out you could modify the source of a web page in place with the "Inspector" tool. It's handy for tweaking HTML/JS/CSS without having to redeploy/reupload/reload the page or whatever, and also helps when ordering wireless service from Cingular. I tried to get off a family plan and create my own account, but Cingular didn't want to let me register under a different zip code than my family's. The zip code was set in a readonly text input. Firebug allowed me to wipe the attribute, submit the form, and have it my way. Kind of like a disposable greasemonkey script. Never thought I'd use the extension in that context. Thanks Mr. Hewitt for helping me avoid make a call to Cingular support.

Java image manipulation

Achieving anti-aliased images through the standard Java libraries was very non-obvious. No matter what rendering hints or interpolation I used in either the java.awt.image or javax.media.jai packages, many edges came out jagged. Finally I found a solution, so I'll send some search engine juice their way, because I generate so much of it.

Update: If you're processing non-sRGB images, expect lousy performance on non-windows platforms (due to lack of hardware acceleration support).

You've all seen the transparent desktop pictures. All of you might've seen this as well but I'll post it anyway because it takes the prize.

The academic year is over. What a struggle. Work starts tomorrow.

Lately, I've been getting quite a few emails requesting the Facebook vCard greasemonkey script. Maybe one every 2-3 days. I didn't think there was actual demand for it. I wish Facebook would just change their policy. Of course they don't have to... they get all the traffic they need without having to listen to its users at this point.

Campus eateries. After a year on campus, I only knew about half of these.

I just found out that some kid in Probability took notes using T_EK, every single class, and made it available to everyone. Brilliant. Thank you, Joel G.

kill -9

Some of you liked Monzy's So much drama in the PhD that I put on a mixtape a while back. If that includes you, know that he just released a new single, called Kill Dash Nine, and performed it live last Friday. See his blog for other nerdcore tunes.

JogaTV and Zlatan

vs. Ronaldo
juggling gum

Ironically on YouTube.

In iTunes, why is there not an option when you listen to a [radio] stream to "Buy This Song"? They must know the artist and song since it's being scrolled in the display. I could be one click away from giving them 99c. Instead, it's a couple of clicks and having to copy/paste information. That and I don't have 99 cents to give them for music.

At one of today's BBQs, Paul raved about XGL/Compiz. This demo gives you an idea of what it does. I don't know how long it's been around. He claims the novelty of the effects hasn't worn off after 2 weeks, but he's also an ubergeek. Most of the usuable stuff already exists in OS X I think.

Robert Scoble points to MapCruncher, which looks very similar to what Steve and I put together except its for MSN Virtual Earth instead of Google Maps. Speaking of which, we "went live" last week.