Visual Futurist Syd Mead on Creativity

Why Programmers Should Learn to Program

New Laptop :)

So, I bought a new laptop from System76. About damn time, I say.

The specs:

• 15.6" HD+ LED Display @ 1600x900
• ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 Graphics with 512MB GDDR2 Memory
• Core i5-520M Processor ( 32nm, 3MB L3 Cache, 2.40GHz )
• 2 GB - DDR3 1066 MHz (DDR3: zoom zoom. ;])
• 250 GB 5400 RPM SATA II (I considered a bigger hard drive, but I have a NAS at the house and honestly plan on taking advantages of synchronized OSes like ChromeOS in the very near future, so I decided against it)

So far, I'm absolutely lovin' it. The hardware is very clean and Apple-like, with no disgusting third-party stickers plastered all over the thing. There's a System76 logo sticker on the back, which I could easily remove with some isopropyl if I so chose. Part of System76's sales pitch is pre-built Ubuntu boxes (which is what sold me, to be honest), so it came with Ubuntu 10.04, my day-to-day operating system of choice (especially since Backtrack makes things oh-so-awesome.)

I do have some minor complaints:

1. I had a dead pixel on my LCD. They won't replace it unless "there are more than 6 dead pixels. :(
2. As a result of the hinge design, the screen won't fold back more than ~35°. A bit of a pain in specific use scenarios.
3. A lack of one-button volume controls. The volume controls are only available through function keys, sadly. Some buttons on the top right for volume up, down, and mute would make this already awesome laptop perfect.

I don't know how much control System76 has over these hardware-design issues, but fixing them would seal the deal on any of my future purchases. ;)

Mobile is Dead or, The Future of Augmented Reality

Mobile is dead. It's just a bridge on the way towards our future, which is building on top of our real world with technologies like augmented reality.

Some key points:

• The world is not flat. 3D is the future.
• Our environment is constantly changing. Let's build on that.
• Mobile is dead. To break through this wall, we've got to innovate.
• Immersion.

Let's build something. :)

Display Foursquare Badges in Chyrp without using Javascript

If you notice, I currently display my Foursquare badges over in the right hand side. I'm not sure about how long I'll display them specifically, so here's a screenshot:

I recently received an email inquiring about how I accomplished this. Well, since I use Chyrp, here's how I did it:

1. In includes/controller/Main.php, add the following, somewhere around line 715 (immediately after $this->context["sql_queries"] =& SQL::current()->queries;):
   // BEGIN Foursquare Badges
   $cURL = curl_init();
   curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_URL, "http://api.foursquare.com/v1/user.json?badges=1");

   curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
   curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
   curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);
   curl_setopt($cURL, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "your@email.com:your_password_here");

   $strPage = curl_exec($cURL);
   curl_close($cURL);

   $foursquare = json_decode($strPage);

   $badges = $foursquare->user->badges;

   foreach ($badges as $badge) {
$this->context['foursquare_badges'] .= '<img src="'.$badge->icon.'" title="'.$badge->description.'" />';
}
// END Foursquare Badges

2. In themes/your_theme_name/content/sidebar.twig, wherever you want to display your foursquare tags, simply add:
   <div>
   <h1>Foursquare Badges</h1>
   $foursquare_badges
   </div></code>

   You can display this wherever you like, in any part of your Chyrp template.