JoshPaul

Because sometimes I forget:

find ./* -prune -mtime +30 -print | sudo xargs rm

The Vietnam Afghanistan Song

Well, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam Afghanistan
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun.

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam Afghanistan;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

Come on Wall Street, don’t be slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go
There’s plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade,
But just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong Taliban.

And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam Afghanistan.
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

(via Mish)

For those of you who question my appreciation for our troops because of this post, you obviously don’t know me.

I’ve been having a debate/conversation about Determinism (Wikipedia link) on Twitter with a few people. Although I do not subscribe to Determinism, an article about Free Will possibly being an illusion, and researchers being able to predict people’s actions, gave me pause and made me think. Here are my conclusions:

1. Determinism means that every event in the Universe is causally determined.
2. Something that is casually determined has a formula/algorithm.
3. A formula can be discovered or figured out.
4. The formula (of Determinism) would yield knowledge about every event in the Universe.
5. Having knowledge of every event in the Universe would mean one is omniscient.
6. Only a Supreme Being can be omniscient.

∴ If Determinism is true, a Supreme Being can exist (logically).

If you perceive a flaw in the logic above, please let me know.

Yesterday I had a back-and-forth with my friend Charles Hope regarding the design of Twittelator Pad.

In my opinion, the “star” of Twitter is my friends’ timeline. In other words, my friends’ tweets. However, I don’t feel that Twittelator takes that into account. Here’s an image, with my friends’ timeline circled:

Just giving a cursory glance, you’ll notice that I can only read 4 of the 20+ tweets that are in the current timeline. However, the Mentions, which are always sufficiently less often updated than the friends’ timeline, displays 7 (albeit the last 2 are semi-obscured). To add to this, there’s currently no way (that I can find) to display the friends’ timeline in the view that displays Mentions. That seems like such a basic thing to allow.

With all of the available screen real estate, I can’t understand why Stone chose to squeeze what I see as the focus of the application to roughly 30% of the screen. I personally want to see as much of my friends’ timeline as possible. In landscape mode at 90-100% width, I should easily be able to digest 10-15 tweets at a time.

In a nutshell, I feel that the app focuses on the wrong items (or at the least, doesn’t allow me to focus on what I want) and wastes quite a bit of screen real estate to simply display the background image.

My 2¢.

Having spent a few days now with the iPad, I have come to the following conclusions:

Personal computing has now changed. The iPad is the personal computer. The desktop/laptop is a Purpose computer (more on that in a minute) and the iPhone is the equivalent of a last-mile device.

I’ve found that I use the iPad as a newspaper in the morning. Whereas I used to grab a bowl of cereal and sit on the couch and “browse” the iPhone (morning email, Twitter, etc), I now sit at the breakfast table with the iPad where a newspaper would “traditionally” be. I not only check email, but I also sit and read Bloomberg, USA Today, etc.

I have it next to me while I’m working to check Twitter, stream video (CNBC), and break once in a while for a Words with Friends play. It is not my work device. It’s more personal than that.

At night I use it to wind down. My son and I play games and draw. I read on it, too.

As for my desktop/laptop…those “types” of devices are purpose-driven. If I’m writing code, editing video, or doing anything that greatly benefits from a large screen and/or CPU, that’s where you’ll find me. In a nutshell, I’ll use a desktop/laptop if I have a purpose and need to produce something as quickly and efficiently as possible. For example, doodling an image is not purpose-driven, but creating a poster for an upcoming Feature Film is. The iPad can be a “feeder” in such an instance.

As for the iPhone, it has become the “life line” for my digital life. I definitely don’t use it nearly as much as I used to, the ipad has pretty much replaced it in most instances. However, it is still with me pretty much everywhere I go. For unexpected meetings, it can function as an audio recorder or note taker. It allows me to handle email, especially those of an urgent nature. Plus, nothothing is quite as efficient as sms. …and, it enables me to grab moments of life through pictures and video.

As others have noted, the iPad “falls away” when you’re using it. The device becomes the app. Kinda cool that way.

In the end, I believe we don’t know what it is yet, nor where we’ll take it technologically. Just as we had no idea where the original Mac would lead, what the World Wide Web would morph into, nor what the iPhone would become. Get ready to stand on some shoulders.

We need better networking tools.

We need to build a “I’m ____, and I’m into _____ , and I’d love to talk about _____ , and I’d love to meet people into ______ , or just ______ . I like _____ food. If I were to support a cause, it’d be _____ , but I’m open to ____ , too” kind of tool.
We need better networking tools. We need to build a “I’m ____, and I’m into _____ , and I’d love to talk about _____ , and I’d love to meet people into ______ , or just ______ . I like _____ food. If I were to support a cause, it’d be _____ , but I’m open to ____ , too” kind of tool.

(quoted from)

Out of curiosity, related to a real need, I decided to see what I could do to animate a series of images within a UIImage view; the built-in animationImages wouldn’t work for my need. Of course, I wanted to push things a little bit, just to see where the boundaries lay.

So, for the test I ran through 5000 images (320×480 jpg) and “swapped” one after another into a UIImageView ([anImageView setImage:...]), for a single loop. The results may be of benefit for someone else, so if you’re that person, here you go:

In order of efficiency/speed:

[UIImage imageWithData:...] // 44.8 seconds

[UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:...] // 52.3 seconds

[[UIImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:…] // 351.8 seconds

[UIImage imageNamed:...] // hung

I may dive further in and experiment with Quartz to see if there are any additional (and worthwhile) gains to be had…but that’s for another day.

Obama: “We Did Not Ask for This Fight“
Bush: “We Did Not Seek This Conflict“
Obama: “New Attacks are Being Plotted as I Speak“
Bush: “At This Moment … Terrorists are Planning New Attacks“
Obama: “Our Cause is Just, Our Resolve Unwavering“
Bush: “Our Cause is Just, Our Coalition [is] Determined“
Obama: “This Is No Idle Danger, No Hypothetical Threat“
Bush: “The Enemies of Freedom Are Not Idle“
Obama: “We Have No Interest in Occupying Your Country“
Bush: “I Wouldn’t Be Happy if I Were Occupied Either“

snipped from here (will likely change at some point)

via Gaping Void

If you want to be more creative:

1. Ignore everybody.
2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.
3. Put the hours in.
4. If your biz plan depends on you sud­denly being “dis­co­ve­red” by some big shot, your plan will pro­bably fail.
5. You are res­pon­si­ble for your own expe­rience.
6. Ever­yone is born crea­tive; ever­yone is given a box of cra­yons in kin­der­gar­ten.
7. Keep your day job.
8. Com­pa­nies that squelch crea­ti­vity can no lon­ger com­pete with com­pa­nies that cham­pion crea­ti­vity.
9. Every­body has their own pri­vate Mount Eve­rest they were put on this earth to climb.
10. The more talen­ted some­body is, the less they need the props.
11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds alto­gether.
12. If you accept the pain, it can­not hurt you.
13. Never com­pare your inside with some­body else’s outside.
14. Dying young is ove­rra­ted.
15. The most impor­tant thing a crea­tive per­son can learn pro­fes­sio­nally is where to draw the red line that sepa­ra­tes what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
16. The world is chan­ging.
17. Merit can be bought. Pas­sion can’t.
18. Avoid the Water­coo­ler Gang.
19. Sing in your own voice.
20. The choice of media is irre­le­vant.
21. Selling out is har­der than it looks.
22. Nobody cares. Do it for your­self.
23. Worr­ying about “Com­mer­cial vs. Artis­tic” is a com­plete waste of time.
24. Don’t worry about fin­ding ins­pi­ra­tion. It comes even­tually.
25. You have to find your own sch­tick.
26. Write from the heart.
27. The best way to get appro­val is not to need it.
28. Power is never given. Power is taken.
29. Wha­te­ver choice you make, The Devil gets his due even­tually.
30. The har­dest part of being crea­tive is get­ting used to it.
31. Remain fru­gal.
32. Allow your work to age with you.
33. Being Poor Sucks.
34. Beware of tur­ning hob­bies into jobs.
35. Savor obs­cu­rity while it lasts.
36. Start blog­ging.
37. Mea­ning Sca­les, Peo­ple Don’t.
37. When your dreams become rea­lity, they are no lon­ger your dreams.

Grab a copy of his book on Amazon.

There’s something happening here


What it is ain’t exactly clear


There’s a man with a gun over there


Telling me I got to beware


I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound


Everybody look what’s going down

– Buffalo Springfield "For What It’s Worth"