https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/ Recent content on Rabidgremlin's Soapbox Hugo -- gohugo.io Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2026/03/11/minimal-devcontainer-with-codex-for-messing-around-with-ai-stuff/ Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2026/03/11/minimal-devcontainer-with-codex-for-messing-around-with-ai-stuff/ This is my minimal devcontainer for playing around with AI stuff, using Codex. It includes Python, uv, Node, gh and the Codex CLI. Running in a devcontainer gives me a clean environment to mess with and further sandboxes the coding agent. To use create a .devcontainer directory in your project and add the following devcontainer.json file: { "name": "Minimal Codex And Dev Container", "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/base:trixie", "features": { "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/github-cli:1": {}, "ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/node:1": {}, "ghcr. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2021/08/27/using-docker-to-run-manim-in-jupyter-notebooks/ Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2021/08/27/using-docker-to-run-manim-in-jupyter-notebooks/ If you want to develop Manim animations easily the a Jupyter notebook makes as great working environment. However it can be fiddly to get set up. Luckily there is a pre-built Docker image that can get you up and running with two simple commands: cd <your working directory> docker run --rm -it -p 8888:8888 -v "%cd%:/manim" manimcommunity/manim jupyter lab --ip=0.0.0.0 In the console you will then see a URL looking something like http://127. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2020/02/25/using-docker-to-run-jupyter-notebooks/ Tue, 25 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2020/02/25/using-docker-to-run-jupyter-notebooks/ If you are messing with data then, you can’t beat a Jupyter notebook as a working environment. Not only are they super easy to use but they are effective ways of sharing your workings and findings. Even better, the Jupyter project have a created a bunch of Docker containers that contain all the tooling you need which, makes getting up and running as simple as running a two simple commands: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2016/09/02/right-sizing-user-stories/ Fri, 02 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2016/09/02/right-sizing-user-stories/ I was asked by a customer to give a talk about right-sizing user stories. Below is the summary I gave them. This is by no means an original bit of thinking but ideas pulled from a number of sources (1, 2), however it made a nice little summary so I thought I’d post it. Form A User Story typically takes the form of: As <type of user> I want <some goal> So that <some reason> So what is the right size ? https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2016/08/10/docker-cleaning-up-after-yourself/ Wed, 10 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2016/08/10/docker-cleaning-up-after-yourself/ I’ve been doing a lot of work with Docker of late mostly for creating easy dev and test environments. One of the problems you come across when doing this, is that you land up with all sorts of orphaned images and containers which chew up disk space and systems resources. The following commands will give you a clean slate. Stopping all running containers, removing them and deleting any images. docker stop $(docker ps -a -q) docker rm $(docker ps -a -q) docker rmi $(docker images -q) Obviously take care when running these commands, you don’t want to nuke something important :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2016/07/01/google-io-2016-highlights/ Fri, 01 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2016/07/01/google-io-2016-highlights/ Last month Google held it’s annual Google IO conference. Not really a surprise but it was chock full off conversation and AI based tech which is all the buzz of late. Three bits in particular stood out for me. The first is the demo of Allo, their new chat app. The app itself wasn’t particularly groundbreaking but the embedding of their new digital assistant tech (the Google assistant) is very interesting and it really shows where Google thinks things are going. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/12/24/the-next-two-episodes-in-my-creating-a-2d-game-with-unity-tutorial/ Thu, 24 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/12/24/the-next-two-episodes-in-my-creating-a-2d-game-with-unity-tutorial/ Here are the next two videos in the series: The rest of the videos can be found here https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/12/09/creating-a-2d-game-using-unity/ Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/12/09/creating-a-2d-game-using-unity/ After much delay I’ve finally started recording a series of videos on creating a 2D game using Unity. Here are the first two videos. If you want to play the game then check out the Run Bunny, Run! website Watch all the videos in the series here https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/11/23/lego-mindstorms-colour-sorting-machine/ Mon, 23 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/11/23/lego-mindstorms-colour-sorting-machine/ Built this with the kids last weekend, using the Lego Mindstorms EV3 set they bought be for my birthday. It was the first project we have built without a set of instructions. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/11/06/how-to-create-a-private-key-for-signing-android-apps/ Fri, 06 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/11/06/how-to-create-a-private-key-for-signing-android-apps/ To create a private key to sign your Android apps with, you need to run the keytool command (installed when you install a Java development kit) as follows. keytool -genkey -v -keystore myandroid.keystore -alias myandroidkey -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 -dname "O=Acme Ltd" Replace Acme Ltd with your company name. When the tool runs it will prompt you for a password and then generate a file called myandroid.keystore. You will need this file, your password and the key’s alias (myandroidkey in this example) to sign your app. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/10/05/creating-an-abstract-desktop-wallpaper-in-blender/ Mon, 05 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/10/05/creating-an-abstract-desktop-wallpaper-in-blender/ https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/09/22/writing-a-game-using-pico-8--part-2/ Tue, 22 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/09/22/writing-a-game-using-pico-8--part-2/ Finally got over a cold so I could record part 2 of my tutorial :)   You can play the game here on the PICO-8 website https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/09/10/writing-a-game-using-pico-8-part-1/ Thu, 10 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/09/10/writing-a-game-using-pico-8-part-1/ My first attempt at YouTube video/tutorial thing. Gonna try to get one of these done a week… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/08/13/another-interview/ Thu, 13 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/08/13/another-interview/ Got myself on the radio again last week talking about “scrubbing yourself from the Internet”. Here is the audio clip: And here is a link to Daily Mail article about the Oblivion tool https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/05/04/simple-script-to-monitor-postfix/ Mon, 04 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/05/04/simple-script-to-monitor-postfix/ This script uses qshape to print out the details of deferred emails in Postfix. Useful when monitoring delivery issues. #!/bin/sh while: do sudoqshapedeferred sleep30 done https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/01/14/procedural-content-generation-creating-a-universe/ Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/01/14/procedural-content-generation-creating-a-universe/ 23114, 584, 46931, these three numbers were used to create the entire universe for Elite. Released in 1984, Elite featured cutting edge 3D graphics (with hidden line removal no less) and a rich universe of 2048 planetary systems, spread across 8 galaxies, each with a unique name, offbeat description, technology level, government type and even an economy. It was an instant hit and it set the standard for space combat and trading simulators for years to come. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/01/11/tutorial-creating-your-first-unity-android-app-2015-update/ Sun, 11 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2015/01/11/tutorial-creating-your-first-unity-android-app-2015-update/ This is a quick, step by step guide to creating a simple app for Android using Unity. This tutorial is for windows but other then the install instructions it should work for other platforms. By the end of this tutorial you will have created an app that displays a red spinning cube on a blue background running on your Android device.   Setup the Android SDK To create an Android app you need to install the Android SDK, which can be downloaded from here. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/12/09/procedural-content-generation-l-systems/ Tue, 09 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/12/09/procedural-content-generation-l-systems/ After watching this fantastic interview with Sean Murray about No Man’s Sky I’ve been inspired to write a bit about procedural content generation. I’ve been tinkering with procedural content generation for years, using it for everything from creating games levels to generating sample data for testing and it is a fascinating subject. So what is procedural content generation? Wikipedia says “procedural generation is generating content algorithmically rather than manually… The term procedural refers to the process that computes a particular function”. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/09/09/hacking-interview-on-radio-hauraki/ Tue, 09 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/09/09/hacking-interview-on-radio-hauraki/ Last Friday I got to do live radio for the first time! Since I didn’t come across as a complete idiot I thought I’d share the clip with everyone. The subject was hacking and the clip was recorded during the breakfast show on Radio Hauraki. Unfortunately I miss-heard the question about the Whaleoil hack and landing up talking about the likely attack vector for The Fappening (the August 2014 celebrity photo leaks)… the perils of live radio I guess :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/07/16/project-frankensapien-part-1/ Wed, 16 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/07/16/project-frankensapien-part-1/ Years ago I was given a shiny, silver Robosapien. It’s an awesome humanoid robot controlled and programmed with an infrared remote. Unfortunately with 90+ commands and functions the remote is pretty cumbersome. So I always intended to see if I could put something together to control him from a PC, but I never got around to doing it. My 5 year old is in his first year of school and since he now has some basic reading skills I thought I’d try to introduce him to programming. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/07/16/random-pic-morning-moon/ Wed, 16 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/07/16/random-pic-morning-moon/ It looked a lot bigger to the naked eye… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/07/07/tech-tip-start-a-simple-web-server/ Mon, 07 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/07/07/tech-tip-start-a-simple-web-server/ Python ships with a handy little web server that will serve up the files in the folder from which it is run. This is really handy for development. Run the following command to start the server: python -m SimpleHTTPServer Or if you are using Python 3, run: python -m http.server https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/30/y-is-for-youtube-facts-and-figures/ Wed, 30 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/30/y-is-for-youtube-facts-and-figures/ YouTube has changed the way we watch and shared videos so I thought that I would collate some fun facts about YouTube for this post. First off YouTube was created by 3 PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The site was officially launched in 2005 and this was the first video ever uploaded to it (a video of Jawed at the zoo): A year later YouTube was purchased by Google for $1. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/30/z-is-for-zentraedi/ Wed, 30 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/30/z-is-for-zentraedi/ In the mid 80’s my tweenish self was introduced to something that blew my mind and that was Robotech. I (and most of the western world) had not encountered Japanese animation or Anime before. With it’s complex story arc, the alien Zentraedi intent on wiping out humanity, cool transforming robots and awesome mass battles, I was hooked. When the story started to span generations of characters and the even bigger threat of the Invid was revealed, young me was stunned. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/29/u-is-for-unity/ Tue, 29 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/29/u-is-for-unity/ If you want to make games, Unity is a tool you should look at. It allows you to easily create games (both 3D and 2D) for a variety of platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac , Web , iOS, Android and Windows Phone. It also has a free version and if you ever need the pro version it is reasonable cheap to buy or subscribe to. Check out some of the features in the upcoming version: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/29/v-is-for-velocity/ Tue, 29 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/29/v-is-for-velocity/ Physics based games, especially on mobile devices have become de rigueur. It’s pretty amazing what can be done with some simply math. I recently came across this game mechanics site which provides short examples of different game mechanics, algorithms and effects. Many of these are of course physics based and involve velocity. Some of my favorites: Basic spaceship motion Lunar lander Artillery Flocking Yay for maths and physics! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/29/w-is-for-white-rabbit/ Tue, 29 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/29/w-is-for-white-rabbit/ I’m late, I’m late , I’m Late… with this blog post :( https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/29/x-is-for-lots-of-things/ Tue, 29 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/29/x-is-for-lots-of-things/ It turns out X is for quite a lot of things: In mathematics, ‘x’ is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. ‘x’ is used to signify the multiplication operation when a more appropriate glyph is unavailable. As a result of its use in algebra, X is often used to represent unknowns in other circumstances (e.g. Malcolm X). In the Cartesian coordinate system x is used to refer to the horizontal axis. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/27/t-is-for-taxes-and-delayed-blog-posts/ Sun, 27 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/27/t-is-for-taxes-and-delayed-blog-posts/ Been working on my taxes so have been a bit slack in posting… However I thought that I would share this graph which shows where all your tax money was planned to go for 2013⁄2014 (if you are New Zealander that is): Source http://www.interest.co.nz/news/64515/budget-2013-summary-all-spending-plans Pretty much what you’d expect, Social Welfare: 27%, Health: 17.7%, Education: 15.3% which is the price you “pay” for free education, healthcare and a good social welfare program. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/25/s-is-for-strange-conversations/ Fri, 25 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/25/s-is-for-strange-conversations/ I use public transport religiously. It means we are a one car family which saves a bucket of money and helps out the environment to boot. Even better I get to walk about 40 minutes a day which helps with the waistline! But there is an added “bonus” and that is: strange conversations with strangers. Over the years I have had some seriously good ones, point in case, two days ago I was walking alongside an elderly polynesian man… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/22/q-is-for-/ Tue, 22 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/22/q-is-for-/ Well, I was going to blog about Quaternions and how Unity really makes it easy to do 3D stuff without you having to have a deep understanding of math but I ran out of time! So instead here are a list of things starting with Q that I had no idea existed… Quassin Quassin is a white bitter, crystalline substance extracted from the quassia tree. It is one of the most bitter substances found in nature with a bitter threshold of 0. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/22/r-is-for-role-playing-games/ Tue, 22 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/22/r-is-for-role-playing-games/ Traylix waited, he wasn’t nervous but he was pretty sure that something was about to go wrong; it always did. He glanced over to the prince and the two marines standing further down the alley. They all wore long, shapeless cloaks with the hoods up, as did he. Hopefully this subterfuge would deprive any would-be assassins an obvious target. From up the street Traylix heard the sound of a horse and cart and out of the darkness came two more cloaked figures, Datura and Winnowen. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/19/p-is-for-productivity-in-new-zealand/ Sat, 19 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/19/p-is-for-productivity-in-new-zealand/ It costs 40c to produce every dollar in New Zealand which, is pretty astounding figure. A report released this week by the New Zealand Productivity Commission tries to determine why New Zealand’s GDP per capita is generating over 20% below the OECD average when (based on it’s broad policy settings) it should be generating 20% above the OECD average. It identifies a number of causes: The country has good resources – investment in physical capital and average years of schooling are broadly consistent with other countries. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/17/o-is-for-open-source-i-use-and-create/ Thu, 17 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/17/o-is-for-open-source-i-use-and-create/ Today I thought I’d go through some of the Open Source software that I regularly use. The Open Source movement is a interesting one, basically it calls for the source code of software to be released alongside the software. This allows anyone who can (or needs to) to modify the software and pass these changes back to the community thus benefiting all. Traditionally Open Source products have been less polished then commercial software but these days, many rival or even better their commercial counterparts and Open Source software powers much of the Internet and even the mobile devices that you use everyday. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/16/n-is-for-ni/ Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/16/n-is-for-ni/ Busy day, so no deep and meaningful post today :( Instead I give you a clip from one of the funniest movies ever: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/15/m-is-for-monkey--the-evilest-testing-tool-around/ Tue, 15 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/15/m-is-for-monkey--the-evilest-testing-tool-around/ I do a heaps of Android development and whilst it appears straightforward there are quite a lot of subtleties, particularly when dealing with threads and UI updates, that generate all sorts of app crashes. Unfortunately these race conditions are often very hard to reproduce. Thankfully (and evilly) we have the monkey testing tool. Set it loose and it frantically taps and swipes away, switching activities, causing mayhem and inevitably crashing your app. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/14/l-is-logo-and-wee-little-turtles/ Mon, 14 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/14/l-is-logo-and-wee-little-turtles/ Logo was one of first programming languages (after BASIC) that I really learned in depth. The most famous aspect of Logo is its turtle graphics which simulates a tiny turtle to which you can give commands such as forward, backward, left turn and right turn. As the turtle moves on the screen it draws a line behind it. With its graphical feedback, turtle graphics is an ideal way to introduce people to programming. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/13/k-is-for-kinect-fusion--3d-selfies/ Sun, 13 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/13/k-is-for-kinect-fusion--3d-selfies/ I’d thought I’d give the Kinect Fusion demos a try. Kinect Fusion allows you to take 3D scans of things by waving your Kinect around. It’s designed to work with the desktop/Windows version of the Kinect but I’d thought I’d give it a go with the Kinect from my old XBox 360. Turns out it works pretty well. The resolution is pretty low but if you were using one of the new Kinect v2s things would be a lot cripser. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/11/j-is-for-jasper--control-anything-with-your-voice/ Fri, 11 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/11/j-is-for-jasper--control-anything-with-your-voice/ So I bought a Raspberry Pi a couple of months ago and I’ve been having all sorts of fun trying out different things. I’ve created a wifi packet sniffer to track mobile devices and turned it into an arcade game machine, all sorts of interesting things. Jasper is going to be my next weekend project. It basically lets you build your own J.A.R.V.I.S (from the IronMan movies). Here is a video of it in action: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/10/i-is-for-insel--an-fantasy-setting-im-working-on/ Thu, 10 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/10/i-is-for-insel--an-fantasy-setting-im-working-on/ Insel is a fantasy setting I’ve been working on for a role playing game. Imagine a island covered by a crowded, renaissance city surrounded by a vast ocean. In all of history no one who has left the island has ever come back. Metal is plentiful and intricate “clockwork ” machines power the society. Food and “wood” is grown from fungus and giant mushrooms which are farmed in the many abandoned mine tunnels under the city. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/09/h-is-for-hosted-network/ Wed, 09 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/09/h-is-for-hosted-network/ Windows 7 and above has a neat feature called hosted networking. This allows you to turn your laptop into a wireless access point. This is very useful if you want to share your laptop’s Internet connection with other wireless devices or (the reason I use it) for testing. To set up a network open a command prompt and run the following commands netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=”GremlinsTestAP” key=”Pa$$w0rd” netsh wlan start hostednetwork This will create a wireless access point named GremlinsTestAP with a password of Pa$$w0rd https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/08/g-is-for-games-i-own/ Tue, 08 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/08/g-is-for-games-i-own/ The last decade has seen a renaissance in board gaming. The Internet and crowd funding platforms such as Kickstarter have made it particularly easy to publish a game and 1000s of new games are released each year. For this post I thought I’d go over my collection and talk about the games I own. Battlestar Galactica This game is based on the recent TV series. The players are the humans trying to escape the Cylons. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/07/f-is-for-feature-driven-development/ Mon, 07 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/07/f-is-for-feature-driven-development/ Feature Driven Development (FDD) is my favorite Agile methodology. I have been using it for a number of years and it works really, really well. Here is a quick intro to FDD that I wrote a while back. An introduction to Feature Driven Development Feature Driven Development (FDD) is an Agile software development methodology. It provides a simple 5 step process that focuses on the delivery of quality software aligned with business needs. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/05/e-is-for-elastic-band-contraption/ Sat, 05 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/05/e-is-for-elastic-band-contraption/ My eldest (currently 5) is big on “making” inventions” and experiments. Last weekend he desperately wanted to invent something with engines. Not having any engines handy I figured we could perhaps do something with elastic bands. Googling didn’t turn up anything too exciting but I did come across a picture of something from my childhood: a cotton reel with and elastic band threaded through the middle of the reel and held in place with a matchstick which you then wind to make a wind up toy: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/04/d-is-for-dns/ Fri, 04 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/04/d-is-for-dns/ Alright, I thought I’d do a quick blog on the DNS or the Domain Name Service? Why? Well because without it the Internet as we know it would not work and subversion of the DNS system is how Turkey recently blocked access to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube so it’s very topical! First off you need to know that every computer connected to the Internet has a unique numeric address, kinda like a phone number. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/03/c-is-for-code/ Thu, 03 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/03/c-is-for-code/ I believe that everyone should be able to program a computer! Now I can see you all rolling your eyes but bear with me for a moment. We live in the Information Age, computers are everywhere and computer literacy is a skill everyone needs. Unfortunately most people stop short, learning to drive a computer but not really learning to use its full potential. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that everyone become professional programmers. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/02/b-is-for-blender/ Wed, 02 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/02/b-is-for-blender/ I have tinkered with 3D graphics for years, using POV-Ray in the mid nineties and later Hash Animation:Master. However these tools were pretty limited or not widely supported and commercial tools costed (and still do) a small fortune which put them out of reach of hobbyists. So I was very excited when Blender was released in 2002 . With its commercial features and it being free (open source) the scene was set for great things to happen. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/01/a-is-for-apathy/ Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/04/01/a-is-for-apathy/ I started this blog way back in 2001, the 2nd of October 2001 to be exact (according to the Way Back Machine) However in the last year or so I’ve been very slack at posting anything (other then my automated tweet logs). This is a shame because my blog does get a fair bit of traffic (about 5000 unique visitors a month) and contains popular posts such as my Creating your first Unity Android App post which averages about 150 views a day. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/02/27/tech-tip-change-angularjs-template-delimiters/ Thu, 27 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2014/02/27/tech-tip-change-angularjs-template-delimiters/ I have recently been doing some development with the Bottle Python web app framework. Unfortunately it’s simple template system uses the same template delimiters as Angular (“{{” and “}}”). Worse you cannot change these delimiters in Bottle. Fortunately you can change them in Angular using the following: var myApp = angular.module('talkpoint', [], function($interpolateProvider) { // set custom delimiters for angular templates $interpolateProvider.startSymbol('[['); $interpolateProvider.endSymbol(']]'); }); Which given a Controller looking like this: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2013/08/24/a-is-for-artemis/ Sat, 24 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2013/08/24/a-is-for-artemis/ A few months ago, I had a group of friends over. Usually we just sit around and socialize, sometimes we play a board games or watch a movie but this time we did something different…. we played Artemis. So what is Artemis? Well its a multi-player Starship Bridge Simulator where each player is assigned a different station (played on a PC or iPad) of a Starship Bridge. For instance there are helm, weapons, sensor, comms and engineering stations. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/12/31/word-war-iii-dev-diary-05-the-app-meets-real-players/ Mon, 31 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/12/31/word-war-iii-dev-diary-05-the-app-meets-real-players/ Oops it has been a while since I last posted but I have actually been working on the game! As I mentioned in at the end of my last post, the plan was to get the game working end to end. First off I created a number of new classes most extending FContainer. LetterButton for each of the letter buttons that the player can tap, Letter for each of the letters of the word, Keyboard to hold and manage the letter buttons and Word to manage the word. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/11/28/word-war-iii-dev-diary-04-tween-you-and-me/ Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/11/28/word-war-iii-dev-diary-04-tween-you-and-me/ As this slightly over the top presentation shows adding motion, bounce and wiggle to your game elements can really make a game feel rich and alive:   Luckily this is easy to achieve with the GoKit tweening library that is included with Futile. The library allows you to easily change any property of an object over a specific period of time. For instance this bit of code: skyline.scaleY =0.1f; Go. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/11/19/word-war-iii-dev-diary-03-some-structure/ Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/11/19/word-war-iii-dev-diary-03-some-structure/ Next up is some “boring” housekeeping work on the code. Eventually the game will consist of four screens. If I keep up with my current approach of putting everything in a single script things will get pretty messy, pretty fast. Luckily there is a better way which is highlighted in the Futile videos and in the Banana Demo project . The idea is to subclass the FContainer for each screen and then add and remove these objects from the Futile stage. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/11/13/word-war-iii-dev-diary-02-word-smithing/ Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/11/13/word-war-iii-dev-diary-02-word-smithing/ So I need to find some words, more importantly I need a list of words that gradually gets more and more difficult to guess. So what makes a word hard to guess? Doing some research on the web turns up a couple of interesting posts such as this one and this one. It turns out that short words are harder to guess, especially ones that have “non-obvious” letters. Thus words such as “jazz”, “jug”, “by” and “gym” are much harder to guess then words such as “deployments”, “historical” or “compartmentalised”. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/11/10/word-war-iii-dev-diary-01-getting-started/ Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/11/10/word-war-iii-dev-diary-01-getting-started/ So I’ve decided to knuckle down and build AND actually release a game. I read somewhere (probably Reddit) that publishing a development diary really helps on the motivation front. It sounds like a good idea so here we are :-) Some constraints First off to narrow my focus I have decided that: I will make a 2D game. My 3D modeling is OK but it takes a loooong time. My target is a mobile app. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/10/11/did-microsoft-just-kill-flash-ie10-wont-run-flash-unless-your-site-is-on-a-microsoft-whitelist/ Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/10/11/did-microsoft-just-kill-flash-ie10-wont-run-flash-unless-your-site-is-on-a-microsoft-whitelist/ Yeah you read that right. I just received an interesting email from Brightcove (the video delivery guys) about issues with their Flash based solution and Windows 8 running the new Internet Explorer 10. To quote: We wanted to make you aware of a development with Microsoft around Windows 8 that may affect your video content delivered through Brightcove Video Cloud. Background Microsoft is expected to release the next version of Windows, Windows 8, on October 26th. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/03/30/my-romo-has-arrived/ Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/03/30/my-romo-has-arrived/ My Romo smartphone robot turned up yesterday! Romo is the brain child of a couple of guys in Las Vegas and the result of a pretty sucessful Kickstarter project (the first I have ever contributed to). Romo is a simple tracked bot, about 15cm long, which charges via USB. What makes the Romo very cool, is the fact that it’s brains is your smartphone! The Romo connects via the headphones jack to your smartphone and it accepts commands via short bursts of sound, created by the apps you run on your phone. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/03/10/tutorial-creating-your-first-unity-android-app/ Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/03/10/tutorial-creating-your-first-unity-android-app/ This tutorial is out of date. See here for an updated tutorial covering the latest version of Unity. This is a quick, step by step guide to creating a simple spinning cube app for Android using Unity. This tutorial is for windows but other then the install instructions it should work for other platforms. By the end of this tutorial you will have created an app that displays a red spinning cube on a blue background on your Android device. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/01/09/building-a-modern-web-app-some-learnings/ Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2012/01/09/building-a-modern-web-app-some-learnings/ I recently built a fairly rich web application from the ground up. Whilst I’ve being building web apps since the mid-nineties this little project had a different flavour to it and I thought I’d go over my learnings here. Firstly why was this project different: its a Facebook app and uses their JavaScript SDK. This means that 99% of the app runs client side with only a small bit of server side code. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/12/15/help-stop-sopa/ Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/12/15/help-stop-sopa/ Please help stop SOPA by completing this form! If you aren’t in the USA click on the “Not In US” option at the bottom of the form. SOPA is a new US law that is getting voted on in the next few days, it will fundamently affect the way the Internet works and it will therefore directly affect you! Want to know more about SOAP ? Checkout this infographic or this video https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/12/02/animfxnz-2011--day-3/ Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/12/02/animfxnz-2011--day-3/ [oops I totally forgot to post this sooner!] Day 3 of the conference was spent at Park Rd post productions for Weta’s digital day. This was awesome. The first part of the day was largely focused on Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the latter half on the new Adventures of Tintin movie. Chris White (VFX Supervisor) covered the huge amount of research and work that went into creating the digital apes for the movie. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/11/16/animfxnz-2011--day-2/ Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/11/16/animfxnz-2011--day-2/ Just finished up Day 2 which was spent in the Games Master class. I took a ton of notes but I’ll just jot down some interesting points otherwise it will be a long long post :-) Patrick Hudson – covered launching new IP by walking through the development of “Orcs must die”. Interesting to me was the fact that marketing was 10% – 20% of development budget, the issues with getting the game on XBL (needing a publisher and some middleware performance issues). https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/11/15/animfxnz-2011--day-1/ Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/11/15/animfxnz-2011--day-1/ Just a quick post to cover my first day at Animfx. Apart from some AV glitches everything ran pretty smoothly and all the speakers were fantastic. The MC is hilarious but he didn’t really introduce himself so I have no idea who he is! The speakers that I saw today were: Lance Priebe – who gave a good account of Club Penguin and its history. Very interesting. Patrick Hudson – ex Ensemble Studios who talked about their move from big budget to smaller scale games. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/10/06/the-food-bill/ Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/10/06/the-food-bill/ Yesterday I read Lance Wiggs’ post on making everyone in NZ part of the 1% which I believe is a fantastic idea. Of course to do this we need a government that works for the people and I’m not sure that it fully is… Point in case, this week NZ signed the ACTA (when instead it could have being announcing a bill such as Brazil’s Civil Rights Based Internet laws) and of course there is the new Food Bill. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/09/01/unhappy-skynet-day-/ Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/09/01/unhappy-skynet-day-/ The Skynet Bill is passed. The system goes on-line September 1, 2011. Human rights are removed from the Internet. Skynet begins to accuse at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. New Zealand time, September 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug… but it is too late the NZ government has sold it’s soul and the people to the lobby groups (Un)happy Skynet Day everyone! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/08/17/response-to-my-auckland-train-signage-rant/ Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/08/17/response-to-my-auckland-train-signage-rant/ Well, I received a response from Auckland Transport about my Auckland Train Signage FAIL post. Unfortunately it wasn’t very helpful as they merely (and carefully) explained how the signs are going to work and why they removed the scrolling list of stations: Thank you for contacting Auckland Transport regarding the new Real Time boards to be installed across the Auckland public transport network. Your comments were forwarded to the Customer Information team who have provided the following feedback. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/08/15/ask-gremlin/ Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/08/15/ask-gremlin/ I’ve received a couple of interesting emails recently from people asking for advice. I figured my answers might be of use to others so here are the (redacted) emails: Android App The email: I am wanting a Android Application designed for me. I am wanting to know a little more about Android Applications and how to go about getting one designed for me. How do the laws work around making a app and around how much would someone have to pay to get one designed? https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/08/10/auckland-train-signage-fail/ Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/08/10/auckland-train-signage-fail/ I’m an avid user of the trains in Auckland. It takes me 20 minutes to get from my house to downtown (and that includes a 8 minute walk) which sure beats getting stuck in rush hour traffic. But one thing that has been driving me crazy for a long, long time now is the poor quality of digital signage. In it’s current state it is awfully confusing for first time travellers which why (with the RWC looming) I was pleased to hear that MAXX was investing in some new real-time signs. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/04/28/android-tips-using-a-live-wallpaper-as-your-apps-background/ Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/04/28/android-tips-using-a-live-wallpaper-as-your-apps-background/ This one took a while to find so it’s worthy of a tip :) To use the current live wallpaper as your app’s background, simply set the theme for your activity to @android:style/Theme.Wallpaper in your AndroidManifest.xml: ... <activity .... android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Wallpaper"> ... </activity> https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/02/09/what-i-did-last-week--15-feb-2011/ Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/02/09/what-i-did-last-week--15-feb-2011/ Actually it’s more what I did last month. RC simulator A mate of mine bought himself a swish RC quad-copter. As part of the package he bought Phoenix RC. It is a simulator that allows you to plug your RC controller into a PC and you can then practice flying (and crashing) virtual RC models before tackling the real ones. Very useful and it clearly proved that I should never attempt to fly a real RC helicopter. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/01/04/things-i-did-last-week--4-jan-2011/ Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2011/01/04/things-i-did-last-week--4-jan-2011/ Gonna try a new thing here, every week I’m going to post up a quick summary of what I’ve been up to tech wise. Hopefully you find something useful in here. Lightworks Beta I tried out the beta of Lightworks, the newly open-sourced video editor from EditShare. It seems amazingly powerful and the UI is very pretty. Unfortunately I had a hard time with its concepts of bins, racks and edits. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/12/09/how-anonymous-is-attacking-mastercard-et-al./ Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/12/09/how-anonymous-is-attacking-mastercard-et-al./ During lunch I was browsing the web and catching up on the news, when I saw this image on an article by TechEye.net: Apparently it is a call-to-arms flyer for Operation Payback which is being run by Anonymous and is an exercise in “retribution” against those companies and organizations seen to be censoring Wikileaks. What caught my eye was the statement towards the end of the flier: Set your LOIC HIVE server to https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/11/28/4-little-words/ Sun, 28 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/11/28/4-little-words/ I was horrified to see that the Department of Homeland Security has begun to seize the domains of copyright infringing websites. Now I’m all for copyright protection and theft is theft but this kinda of censorship is a slippery slope. But it did get me thinking… Since it is only the DNS entries that have been seized and you are still able to visit these sites if you know their IP address, wouldn’t be nice to have a DNS like way of remembering these IP addresses? https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/11/19/android-tips-generating-a-coverage-report-for-your-unit-tests/ Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/11/19/android-tips-generating-a-coverage-report-for-your-unit-tests/ The Android testing framework has the built-in ability to generate a code coverage report for your unit tests. Unfortunately this functionality is not available within the Eclipse IDE, so you have to resort to some command line and Ant fu. First off, you need to create a test project for your Android app and some unit tests. Next, run the following command: android update test-project -m <path to app project> -p <path to test project> This will create a Ant build. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/11/05/android-tips-the-emulator/ Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/11/05/android-tips-the-emulator/ In the last two months I have written two Android apps, in doing so I have uncovered a number of tricks and quirks which I thought I’d share. To start with, the Android emulator… Keyboard shortcuts Surprisingly, the GUI for the emulator does not provide controls for a number of functions such as emulating a change in orientation, instead you need to use keyboard short-cuts. Two particularly useful ones are: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/10/17/meterrec-released/ Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/10/17/meterrec-released/ I’ve just released my first purchasable app on the Android market. The app is called MeterRec and it allows you to easily record readings for gas, water and power or other similar meters. These readings can then be exported as a .csv file for manipulation and graphing in applications such as Excel. This app is ideal for property managers, flat mates or those (like me) who just want to keep tabs on what they are using. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/08/08/if-star-treks-computers-were-real/ Sun, 08 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/08/08/if-star-treks-computers-were-real/ Posted by a friend of mine on Facebook… I LMAO: To be more realistic, Star Trek interactions with the computer should have gone more like this: “Computer, hail the Klingons.” “What was that?” “Hail the Klingons!” “To help me understand you better, please tell me what you just said….. 1) Ale to Vogons 2) Hail on Vulcan 3) Bale for Klingons” “None of the above!” “Initiating death from above.” https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/07/13/auckland-bus-stops-in-google-earth/ Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/07/13/auckland-bus-stops-in-google-earth/ Since Jonah asked for it, I have generated a KML file of the Auckland bus stop data. If you have Google Earth installed then click on this link to see the stops overlaid on an actual map: http://www.rabidgremlin.com/viz/auckland_bus_stops_kml/auckland_bus_stops.kmz If you hover over a red dot you will get the stop’s number. Interestingly if you zoom in enough, you will see that Google already has all the stops loaded and if you click on a little bus icon under a red dot, you will get the route info for that stop. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/07/13/playlist-dumper-for-itunes/ Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/07/13/playlist-dumper-for-itunes/ I’ve been meaning to write this bit of software for a while now, its a simple app that dumps out all your playlists in iTunes into .m3u playlist files. I use it to generate playlists that my HTPC (running Boxee) can play. It’s a .NET app. You can download it here: PlaylistDumper_v101.zip If the “dump folder” is the root of your music library then the .m3u file will contain relative paths which is useful for playing across network shares. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/07/09/fun-with-auckland-bus-data/ Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/07/09/fun-with-auckland-bus-data/ A couple of days ago I discovered that Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) make all of their bus schedule data available for download from the maxx.co.nz site. The data is in the Google Transit Feed format, which means that it consists of a bunch of comma separated value text files, describing things like stops, routes, trips and calendars. I decided to see what I could do with this data. Below is my first attempt. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/07/02/the-amen-break/ Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/07/02/the-amen-break/ Came across this fascinating clip about the “Amen Break”, a 5 second sample taken from a 1960 b-side recording by a funk and soul bank. Amazingly this loop became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music. Not to mention that it has been used on numerous hip-tracks too. Watch the video below and check out the Wikipedia page for more info BTW if you ever played with MOD trackers in the 90's then check out Sony's free ACID Xpress and relive those glory days :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/06/08/jumbler-my-first-flash-game/ Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/06/08/jumbler-my-first-flash-game/ Over the weekend I published my first flash game, it’s called Jumbler. There is not too much to the game, to be honest. It was really more the result of me tinkering with the Flixel game framework to see what it could do; rather then my idea of a “blow your mind, addictive game”. I’m must say that I’m pretty impressed with Flixel. Jumbler took less then 10 hours to put together and the bulk of the time was spent on the theme and graphics (such as they are). https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/06/01/the-viral-spread-of-my-privacy-check-app-for-facebook/ Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/06/01/the-viral-spread-of-my-privacy-check-app-for-facebook/ Last week, interested by the noise on the interwebs about Facebook and privacy, I put together a small app using Facebook’s API that shows exactly what information you are giving away to Facebook enabled sites. Thinking that others might be interested, I tweeted a link and shared the app with my friends in Facebook. Now I don’t have a large social network about 220 followers on Twitter and 125 friends on Facebook, but the “like” counter for the app quickly started to grow first 10, then 20 and after a day close to 100! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/05/29/theyre-baaack-revenge-of-the-blobs/ Sat, 29 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/05/29/theyre-baaack-revenge-of-the-blobs/ Well they’re back., those supposed slime moulds that have previously turned up on my lawn. This year they seem a bit more widespread. They are just so weird I had to take some more pictures: For reference they are about 7cm to 15cm in diameter. I still not convinced that they slime moulds as they don’t appear to match any picture of a slime mould that I have found on the web… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/05/23/new-theme-is-a-go/ Sun, 23 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/05/23/new-theme-is-a-go/ Well, it has been a while since I posted something meaty, I’ve been kinda doing a lot of micro-blogging and tinkering with other things like my Privacy Check for Facebook, so haven’t really had time to sit down and write a decent post. Of course as soon as I did sit down to write something, I got hideously distracted with the idea of creating a new theme for my blog… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/04/29/odd-attractions/ Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/04/29/odd-attractions/ I found these fantastic flyers in my hotel lobby this morning. Alarmingly the Amish Attractions seems to simply consist only of quilts. The Castle Winery however, sounds pretty impressive with its authentic 12th century, 121000 square foot Tuscan castle consisting of 107 rooms, 8000 tons of hand squared stones, 8 levels (with 4 below ground), 900 feet of caves, a moat, dungeon, a torture chamber, a consecrated chapel and a hand-painted grand hall. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/03/17/youtube-drops-ie6-support/ Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/03/17/youtube-drops-ie6-support/ Earlier this week YouTube officially dropped support for older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6. If you try access YouTube with IE6 you get this nice warning message: The order of the browsers appears to be random, refreshing on each load. Hopefully they used a better random algorithm then Microsoft recently used for their EU browser choice site. I’m really hoping that this trend will be followed by more mainstream sites and we will finally, finally see the death of IE6 which still holds around about a 20% market share! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/02/04/googles-timetable-for-dropping-ie6/ Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/02/04/googles-timetable-for-dropping-ie6/ I received the following email from Google yesterday. It details their timetable for dropping IE6 support: _Dear Google Apps admin, In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/01/25/paper-ship-markers-for-rogue-trader/ Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2010/01/25/paper-ship-markers-for-rogue-trader/ I've just started GMing the Rogue Trader game (from Fantasy Flight Games) with my regular gaming group and I realised, I needed some way of tracking ships. Now ideally I'd love to have some Battlefleet Gothic models out on the table but apart from the expense, I do not want to freak out the newbie (and female) players in the group by plonking down some "toy" spaceships. So I went in search of some paper markers that I could print out and use. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/12/28/tip-creating-easy-to-remember-passwords/ Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/12/28/tip-creating-easy-to-remember-passwords/ Passwords are a pain in the butt, if you use a computer or the Internet then you no doubt have a list of passwords bouncing around in your skull or worse yet a single password that you use everywhere! Here is a simple technique for creating good, easy to remember passwords. First off here are some golden rules for passwords: A password needs to be strong (see below) You should only use a password for one site or account You should never write a password down You should never tell anyone else your password (duh) Of course all of us break these rules… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/11/18/configuring-a-test-ssl-certificate-for-jboss/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/11/18/configuring-a-test-ssl-certificate-for-jboss/ I just had to set up a test certificate for my local install of Jboss 4.2.3 to try out some SSL code. It wasn’t completely obvious so here are some notes on how to do it. First off you need to create a self-signed certificate. You do this using the keytools application that comes with Java. Open a command prompt and run the following command. You will need to change the path to your Jboss conf directory to reflect your install: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/11/04/inside-google-wave/ Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/11/04/inside-google-wave/ ClearPoint held one of its regular tech-drop get-togethers last night covering Google Wave. The Cloudbreak team gave a good walk-through of the product and I gave a quick overview of some of the technology inside Google Wave and it’s APIs. Here is my slide deck: Click to see next slide The PDF (with notes) can be downloaded here. For those of you who know nothing about the wave, here is short intro video: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/11/02/ok-ive-done-it-now/ Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/11/02/ok-ive-done-it-now/ Wow, I have just announced the launch of my pet project: split-the-bill.com I’m feeling excited yet panicked at the same time. It will be very interesting to see how this pans out (hopefully well). For more details check out http://blog.split-the-bill.com/the-cat-is-out-of-the-bag-2 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/09/16/vodafone-nz-settings-for-android-phones/ Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/09/16/vodafone-nz-settings-for-android-phones/ I have an Android G1 Developer phone (based on the HTC Dream) and have had major issues getting MMS to work with the Vodafone network in New Zealand. Vodafone was next to useless in resolving this problem but after bashing my head against a wall for ages and “phoning a friend” (thanks Nick) I finally have a configuration that works. Interesting enough I actually resorted to debugging my phone to see where the issue was and then took a wander through the Android source code to see why things were going wrong. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/08/12/svnviz-1-0-0-released/ Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/08/12/svnviz-1-0-0-released/ Finally got off my butt and packaged up version 1.0.0 of SvnViz. It can be downloaded from sourceforge. SvnViz builds visualizations of the activity within a Subversion repository. Here is an example of the default visualization run against the project that I am currently working on. Green dots indicate file adds, blue dots are modified files and red dots are deleted files. The greater the activity of the user the higher their score. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/08/10/expose-/var/www-using-samba/ Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/08/10/expose-/var/www-using-samba/ This is actually more of a note for myself but it may be of use to you. I often find myself running up Linux VMs to test and build LAMP based systems but since I (generally) use Windows it is a major pain to have to transfer files via scp or worse edit files using vi. However is you install Samba into your test VM, you can simply browse to the folder using Windows explorer and edit the files directly. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/07/24/cross-browser-testing-and-virtualization/ Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/07/24/cross-browser-testing-and-virtualization/ _Update: The latest images from Microsoft now ONLY work under MS Virtual PC ! Not so useful if you are a Mac developer or you want to run under VMware like we are. Microsoft is aware of the problem, hopefully they fix it soon. _ I’ve been setting up a bunch of VMware images for testing various browser and OS combinations. This has worked out very nicely and the best thing is you can do it all for free ! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/07/07/facebook-keeping-things-between-friends/ Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/07/07/facebook-keeping-things-between-friends/ One of the most visited posts on my blog is titled “FaceBook:Do you know who is watching you?” which details how to keep your Facebook profile out of the public eye. In light of the MI6 chief/Facebook scandal (his wife obviously doesn’t read my blog), I thought I’d update the instructions so you can avoid suffering a similar embarrassment :) Log in to Facebook and from the Settings menu (top right of the page) select Privacy Settings Now select the Profile section (alternatively click on this link: http://www. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/07/03/99-things-you-should-have-already-experienced-on-the-internet/ Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/07/03/99-things-you-should-have-already-experienced-on-the-internet/ A work colleague just showed me this site (yep its Friday): Greg Rutter’s Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You’re a Loser or Old or Something Its a fantastic collection of Internet sites and videos. Check it out. Here are some of my favourites: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/06/20/scanpaste--my-first-app-released-to-the-android-market/ Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/06/20/scanpaste--my-first-app-released-to-the-android-market/ Last week I released by first Android application on the Android Market. It is called ScanPaste. The application lets you scan barcodes and then copy the scanned data to the phone’s clipboard for pasting into web pages, emails etc. I had been looking for a simple app to build, to test out the end to end Android Market publishing process and when I saw this blog post by about populating your Google books list using barcodes scanned with a USB scanner, I figured why not build an Android app to do it. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/06/18/its-going-to-get-bumpy/ Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/06/18/its-going-to-get-bumpy/ Just in the process of moving hosting providers so I expect things to get a little bumpy…. [Update] Ok everything seems to be up and running with my new provider ! [Update2] Well it was all going fine until I accidentally changed ownership /var. MySql, sshd all get very upset when you do that…. All fixed now (I hope)… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/06/04/review-balsamiq-mockups/ Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/06/04/review-balsamiq-mockups/ Ok let me start off by saying “I love this application”. It does exactly what it says on the box, it’s fast, easy to use and the results are impressive. So what is it? Well it’s an application that lets you create mock-ups for websites, desktop apps and even iPhone apps. For instance here are some mock-ups for the FDD tracking app that I’m working on. It took less then 20 minutes to put these together. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/05/31/the-contact-protocol--my-first-rfc/ Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/05/31/the-contact-protocol--my-first-rfc/ _[Update]: I have created contactprotocol.org which now holds the draft specifications._ About ten years ago I had a couple of interesting ideas but due to sheer laziness on my part I never did anything with them. One of these ideas however keeps popping back into my head and so finally I’ve decided to do something about it. The original idea is very very simple: wouldn’t be nice to have a URL that points to information about you ? https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/05/27/balsamiq-mockups-is-very-cool/ Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/05/27/balsamiq-mockups-is-very-cool/ The nice people at Balsamiq have given me a copy of their Mockups tool to review (thanks Valerie). I’m going to give it a good going over for a few days and then I’ll do a nice long write up. In the mean time here is short video to show you what it’s all about… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/05/16/the-downfall-of-agile-hitler/ Sat, 16 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/05/16/the-downfall-of-agile-hitler/ Very very funny (if you are a developer) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/05/01/all-that-sparqls-on-the-web/ Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/05/01/all-that-sparqls-on-the-web/ A couple of months ago, I watched Tim Berners-Lee’s TED talk on Linked Data in which he lays out his vision and explains why Linked Data will be the next major use of the web. During the talk he mentioned the DBpedia project which is an effort to extract structured information from the content of Wikipedia. Currently it describes 2.6 million things with 274 million facts. So how do you access all this data? https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/04/24/mpass-article-on-nz-herald/ Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/04/24/mpass-article-on-nz-herald/ My Google Alerts just turned up this very nice article about mPass on the NZ herald site. It is always nice to get good press about things you have worked on. I like the comments too: I downloaded the Air New Zealand mPass a couple of months ago and have used it successfully a number of times. It is a fantastic application and has sped up the already fast check in process with Air NZ. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/04/19/wordpress-iphone-app/ Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/04/19/wordpress-iphone-app/ Just trying out the free wordpress iPhone app. It is pretty nice. I did have to install it twice however. The first time I installed it, it just hung trying to connect. I figured that it was broken and ignored it for a few days. On a hunch I just deleted and reinstalled it. Now it is working like a charm. I’m not sure an iPhone (actually an iPod touch) is the best form factor for writing blog posts but it is nice and portable :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/04/15/its-business-time-for-twitter/ Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/04/15/its-business-time-for-twitter/ You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting as much as I normally do, part of the reason is my new job, the other reason is Twitter. If you don’t know what Twitter is, it is a micro-blogging service. Think text messaging but web based with your messages (called tweets) going out into the web for all to see. This may seem like a dumb idea but actually it is incredibly useful. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/04/13/new-blog-template/ Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/04/13/new-blog-template/ Finally put up my new template. Its still a bit beta, the template isn’t XHTML compliant yet and I have only tested it with firefox but I was getting tired of the old one. I also upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1 whilst I was at it. I love the new admin UI. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/03/23/section-92a-scrapped-/ Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/03/23/section-92a-scrapped-/ Looks like section 92a is going to get scrapped or at least get a rework. Woohoo ! The government actually paid attention to “the people” for once ;) Thumbs up to the Creative Feedom team for drawing attention to the issues with the proposed law. In case you missed it all (where have you been?) here are the top-ten issues that the CFF identified: No Independent Qualified Adjudicator: There’s no currently qualified or trusted independent 3rd party to judge (1) data forensics and (2) copyright law, so decisions must be based either on allegation or prosecution. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/03/14/hiding-from-google-ads/ Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/03/14/hiding-from-google-ads/ Google has just updated its advertising system to do “behavioral targeting”, in essence they track you as you move around the web and display ads that are targeted towards you based on what the perceive are your interests. For instance if you visit a bunch of sports related sites then Google will determine that you are into sports and serve up sports related ads to you. This is all done using tracking cookies and is built around the Doubleclick tracking infrastructure. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/03/14/kutiman-found-music/ Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/03/14/kutiman-found-music/ I just sat down and watched the kutiman thru-you youtube mashups. They are fantastic. What the guy has done, is find various youtube clips of people singing or playing instruments and edited them together to make full blown songs. It must have taken ages. I’ve put together a play list of all the tracks but here are my favorites: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/03/03/whoosh-goes-2009-dd45/ Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/03/03/whoosh-goes-2009-dd45/ Apparently a smallish asteroid just had a near miss with Earth. 2009 DD45 passed by at 63000km which is well inside the Moons orbit. It was realitively small, so if it hit, it would have only (only!) done the same amount of damage as a single nuke. I suppose the worrying thing for me is that it was only found 3 days ago ! If it was going to hit us, 3 days isn’t really much time to do anything. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/26/mpass-for-iphone-is-live/ Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/26/mpass-for-iphone-is-live/ mPass for the iPhone is now available. If you are a lucky iPhone owner then you can download the application here or visit the AppStore and search for “mPass” For those of you who are iPhone-impaired (like me), here are some screen shots: Welcome Screen Flights list screen Boarding barcode More options https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/24/auditorium--awesome-flash-game/ Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/24/auditorium--awesome-flash-game/ I stumbled across a flash game called Auditorium last night. It is an awesome game, combining physics, particles and music to make an addictive puzzle game. The graphics are fantastic, each completed level looks like a living bit of abstract art. The first few levels (called acts) are available for free. I’m really tempted to shell out the $10 to get access to all 15 acts (about 70 levels). Click here to play or click here for more info on the game play https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/23/section-92-delayed-/ Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/23/section-92-delayed-/ Looks like Section92 may be delayed !!! In a surprise announcement this afternoon, Attorney-General Chris Finlayson says the government will delay the implementation of the controversial Section 92a of the amended copyright law. See here for more info…. Could be in response to a leaked letter that shows just how RIANZ would like things to be, which is pretty far from where the current draft code of practice is at. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/21/how-we-landed-up-with-section-92a/ Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/21/how-we-landed-up-with-section-92a/ In the parliament debate, National’s Christopher Finlayson explains their reasoning for reinstating Section 92A: Christopher Finlayson: … The Minister [Judith Tizard] knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities, as a result of which the Minister has come up with a number of amendments. We will support those. The first makes some changes to new section 92A, and I need not go into that in any great detail. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/21/labour-and-national-on-section-92a/ Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/21/labour-and-national-on-section-92a/ Interesting (but brief) video of Labour and National on section 92a during a Q&A session. Basically National blames Labour for passing the law (even though they supported it) and saw they will watch how it works… Not a particularly useful response. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/21/section-92a-cartoons/ Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/21/section-92a-cartoons/ Cartoons by Rod Emmerson, Mike Moreu and Dylan Horrock on Section 92a it's insane pirating the justice system the Internet is evil Actually I suspect I just broke some copyright laws by posting these images here ;) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/18/android-g2-is-on-its-way/ Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/18/android-g2-is-on-its-way/ Oh so much prettier then the G1 and has a virtual keyboard to boot. Those who have played with it seem to love it. I want one and it looks like I’ll be able to get one since Vodafone will be releasing them here in New Zealand! Joy joy joy… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/17/sorry-for-the-interruption/ Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/17/sorry-for-the-interruption/ I’m about to try transfer my domain between registrars (again). So there is likely to be some disruption to my blog. Last time round was not very successful so we we will see how we go :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/09/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-copyright-laws/ Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/09/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-copyright-laws/ As I type this, there are 19 days left until section 92 of the copyright law comes into effect. Last week Wednesday the Telecommunications Carriers’ Forum (TCF) published the draft copyright code of practice for Internet service providers. This code will be what the bulk of ISPs will be following when dealing with section 92. I thought I’d take a quick look to see how this is all going to work (or not work as the case may well be). https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/07/i-love-the-web/ Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/07/i-love-the-web/ I love the web and its ability to feed my brain (whilst sucking up my free time). The problem of course is that there is so much cool stuff out there that you just don’t know about. For instance, on Digg I came across a nice visualization showing the edits to the “Evolution” article on Wikipedia. I was curious to see what the source of the visualization was but there was no credit on the image. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/05/party-like-its-1234567890/ Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/05/party-like-its-1234567890/ So one of my colleagues (thanks Matthew) just sent me this link which is so geeky I just had to blog about it. Apparently on Friday, February 13th 2009, 23:31:30 GMT the Epoch time count will read “1234567890” for the first (and last time). For those of you who don’t know what Epoch time is (shame on you) it is basically a count of the number of seconds since 00:00:00 GMT on January 1, 1970. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/01/the-top-25-open-source-projects/ Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/02/01/the-top-25-open-source-projects/ Just received an update email from sourceforge which contained the list of the top 25 projects hosted with them for January 09. Some really nice bits of software here: 1. ADempiere ERP Business Suite ADempiere Business Suite ERP/CRM/MFG/SCM/POS done the Bazaar way in an open and unabated fashion. Focus is on the Community that includes Subject Matter Specialists, Implementors and End-Users. We are a community fork of Compiere. 2. MediaInfo https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/31/how-creativity-is-being-strangled-by-the-law/ Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/31/how-creativity-is-being-strangled-by-the-law/ A thought provoking video of a TED talk by Larry Lessig during which, he discusses how modern culture and law are clashing and how nonsensical laws are killing creativity. Its from 2007 but is still very relevant especially when you consider laws such as Section 92a. His closing comments about how everyone is effectively breaking the law everyday and doing so knowingly and the corrupting influence that has their values and culture in general was particularly interesting to me. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/28/its-all-about-clarity/ Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/28/its-all-about-clarity/ Over the last 15 odd years I have been involved with dozens of IT projects of all shapes, sizes. Recently I have been reflecting on why some of these projects were a dream and delivered successfully, whilst others were a complete nightmare and went horribly wrong. An obvious factor is the size of the project but that does not ring true. I have been involved with huge projects that went like clockwork and small projects that just couldn’t seem to get off the ground. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/24/videos-of-us-airways-flight-1549-landing-in-hudson-river/ Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/24/videos-of-us-airways-flight-1549-landing-in-hudson-river/ Wow some pretty amazing footage here. The first from some CCTV cameras on a pier, the second from cameras operated by the Coast Guard Vessel Traffic service. mmm, just noticed that the Google ads attached to the clips are for “stress and panic relief meds”, “Internet access at sea”, “Cheap flights from New York” and “Cheap Travel Insurance” :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/24/worlds-first-deep-sea-web-cam/ Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/24/worlds-first-deep-sea-web-cam/ The ORCA EITS (Eye in the sea) has been deployed at 880m. They have a bunch of videos of what it has captured so far, as well as a live feed. The EITS plugs into the Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) which consists of a 52-km undersea cable that carries data and power to a “science node” 891 meters (2,923 feet) below the surface of Monterey Bay off the coast of California. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/13/search-the-web-destroy-the-planet/ Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/13/search-the-web-destroy-the-planet/ Apparently doing two Google searches produces half the amount of CO2 that boiling a kettle does ! At least that what has been recently claimed by the Telegraph in the UK. Google has hit back, saying that, actually they are far more efficient then that. They claim: a single search uses the same amount of energy as an adult body burns in 10 seconds (a very Matrix comparison) a 1000 searches produces the same amount of CO2 as driving an average car 1km (which actually doesn’t sound that good) Since Google claims to have some of the most energy efficient data centres in the world, one has to wonder what the planetary impact is of other search providers such as Yahoo and Microsoft. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/09/9-looks-very-cool./ Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/09/9-looks-very-cool./ Just came across this animated movie due for release end of next year. Its called “9”. It is based on a short animated film and is been produced by Tim Burton. The voice cast includes Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, Crispin Glover, Martin Landau, John C Reilly, and Christopher Plummer. I really love the animation style and the design of the rag doll characters. Here is the trailer: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/08/more-on-section-92/ Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/08/more-on-section-92/ This is a bit of a WTF. TV3 news has quoted someone from the Ministry of Economic Development saying that the reason for section 92 is that it is too difficult to identify any particular user and that given the number of users it is too expensive and time consuming to take them to court. WTF? If it is too difficult to identify a particular user how on earth is section 92 going to actually work? https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/06/stop-section-92/ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/06/stop-section-92/ The Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008 is not a bad bit of legislation EXCEPT for section 92 which allows a copyright holder to ask your ISP to terminate your Internet access if you infringe on their copyright. The problem with this is they do not have to provide any evidence to the ISP, nor are there any penalties if it is a false accusation ! This is just crazy. If you agree then click on the banner below and voice your concern. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/06/the-history-of-the-internet/ Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/06/the-history-of-the-internet/ A very nice video explaining the origins of the Internet. Love the clean, simple (mostly) black and white animation. History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo. The icons used are from the PICOL project which is the Pictorial Communication Language and is a project to find a standard and reduced sign system for electronic communication. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/05/wasps-in-speakers/ Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/05/wasps-in-speakers/ On Friday, whilst at my parent-in-laws, we chased a large bug out the lounge. After a couple of minutes it came back in and this time when we helped it out it dropped its payload (a giant spider) and revealed itself to be a wasp and disappeared out the window. I didn’t think to much of it until I saw another wasp this morning hanging around the surround-sound speaker next to the TV. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/04/crashed-ice-very-cool/ Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/04/crashed-ice-very-cool/ Crashed Ice is a combination of downhill skiing, hockey, boardercross with a little bit of “roller ball” thrown in, awesome. I would love to try this, even though I would get broken into little, little pieces. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/03/review--brisingr-by-christopher-paolini/ Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/03/review--brisingr-by-christopher-paolini/ This is third book in the Inheritance Cycle which started with Eragon. The books are far better then the movie and this book was supposed to finish off the series. Alas it did not and we can expect a 4th book. I quite like this series. Nothing groundbreaking but a just a nice, well thought out tale. Swords, dragons, battles and magic what more could you want? Synopsis: OATHS SWORN … loyalties tested … forces collide. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/03/review-graceling-by-kristin-cashore/ Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/03/review-graceling-by-kristin-cashore/ A straight forward read with well defined characters. I particularly liked the concept of “Graces”. Aimed at the teenage market so I powered through it in a day and a bit. I love been on holiday :) Synopsis: If you had the power to kill with your bare hands, what would you do with it? Graceling takes readers inside the world of Katsa, a warrior-girl in her late teens with one blue eye and one green eye. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/03/review-rambo/ Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/03/review-rambo/ This was much better then I anticipated. The acting was good, the storyline was more or less believable and the SFX were very good. Having said that it is incredibly gory with body parts and blood sprays everywhere. The Jeep mounted heavy machine gun that Rambo commandeers is particularly messy (the poor driver!). This move is set sometime after Rambo III. Synopsis: When a group of missionary aid workers in myanmar disappear into the vast green inferno vigilante vietnam veteran john rambo leaves his job as a salween river boatman behind to accompany a group of mercenaries on a daring rescue mission. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/03/review-starship-troopers-3-marauder/ Sat, 03 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2009/01/03/review-starship-troopers-3-marauder/ Ok I knew this wasn’t going to be good but oh boy was it bad. I’m not sure why exactly, it had the same writer as the first two, actually Starship Troopers 2 was pretty awful too, I’d even go as far as to say it was worse then number 3. The acting was very flat and the plot had some terrible setups. The SFX were OK but some of the CGI was noticeable, unlike the original which did a good job of making the bugs blend into the live action. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/29/my-first-t-shirt/ Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/29/my-first-t-shirt/ I came across this t-shirt site a few months ago called Threadless, not only do they have some very cool T-shirt designs but they are all user created. The idea is that you design a T-shirt, upload the design and if it gets lots of votes then its gets printed! Better yet if you design gets chosen for printing then you get $2000 cash and $500 of vouchers. So since it is a bit rainy today, I created my first t-shirt design and submitted it. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/19/happy-holidays-from-air-new-zealand/ Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/19/happy-holidays-from-air-new-zealand/ This animation was put together by a couple of the guys in my team here at Air New Zealand. Happy Holidays everyone… Air New Zealand Saves Christmas — cartoon from Photon Studios on Vimeo. BTW see if you can find the easter egg @ http://www.happyholidaysfromairnz.com there may be something in it for you :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/18/xul-the-forgotten-ria-technology/ Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/18/xul-the-forgotten-ria-technology/ I started building my first Firefox extension last night and as a result I had to dig into XUL (pronounced zool, al la Ghostbusters). XUL is the “XML User Interface Language” and is technology of the cross-platform GUI used by Mozilla products such as Firefox and Thunderbird. Now I have been aware of XUL for years but haven’t really thought about it much until I clicked on the XUL Periodic Table example that I suddenly realized that XUL makes for a pretty swanky RIA platform (not too mention it was around years before the others). https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/08/i-made-a-light-tent/ Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/08/i-made-a-light-tent/ So I wanted to take some close up photos of some Lego blocks (don’t ask) and I wanted them to be on a clean white background like you see in swanky product shots. After doing some digging around on the web it turns out that what I wanted was a light tent which would allow me to take nicely lit macro shots of items on a “horizon-less” white background. After some further digging I turned up a number of links on how to build your own light tent which would work just as well as a bought one! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/07/googles-friend-connect/ Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/12/07/googles-friend-connect/ So I’d thought I’d give Google’s Friend Connect a whirl. Friend Connect allows you to embed social networking components onto your website. Out of the box you get a members gadget, a wall gadget and a review/rate gadget. Since it is all based on OpenSocial you can add any other OpenSocial gadgets to your site as well. Here is the quick intro video: Getting set up is very easy, you simple add two . https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/21/how-to-be-an-architect/ Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/21/how-to-be-an-architect/ When people used to ask me what I did, I used to say “_I’m a solutions architect specialising in eCommerce and distributed systems_”, this invariably earned blank looks (and killed many a conversation with a potential date). Over time I have learnt to simply say “_I do computer stuff_” and if asked “_what type of computer stuff?_”, I reply: “_Architecture, kinda like an architect that designs buildings, but for computers_”. Most people nod sagely at this point and change the topic of conversation. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/11/puppy-cam/ Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/11/puppy-cam/ Oh the cuteness. This web feed shows a bunch of Shiba Inu puppies at sleep & play. Live Broadcasting by Ustream Here are some more animal cams for you… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/09/what-the-last-12-presidents-did-in-their-first-100-days/ Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/09/what-the-last-12-presidents-did-in-their-first-100-days/ Fantastic chart showing what the last 12 US presidents did in their first 100 days in office: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/06/obamas-victory-speech/ Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/06/obamas-victory-speech/ Pretty inspiring stuff ! (sorry about the 30 seconds of ads, but this was the best video clip I could find): Watch CBS Videos Online I was slightly alarmed by the “cultish” “yes we can” chanting. Its a great pity our own NZ politicians are so blah. BTW if you are still not sure who you are voting, why not take this quiz: http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/election-quiz it will match you with the political that best shares your views. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/01/mpass-is-live-/ Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/11/01/mpass-is-live-/ _Update: If you are having issues with mPass then please send email to onlinebooking@airnz.co.nz. The nice folk at Air New Zealand will be happy to help you :)_ I’m quite pleased with this bit of work: mPass allows you to download your boarding passes for Air New Zealand flights onto your mobile phone. It generates a bar code that you can then scan at their kiosks to check-in or at the gates to board. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/10/19/obama-using-in-game-ads/ Sun, 19 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/10/19/obama-using-in-game-ads/ In my last post I joked about see games on billboards in games, turns out that EA already does this and Obama is using them to spread his vote-for-change message. Obama has ads in 18 different games including Guitar Hero 3 , The Incredible Hulk, NASCAR 09, NBA Live 08 , NFL Tour and Burnout Paradise. In Burnout Paradise the ads simple appear along the side of the road as you go whizzing by, all very sneaky and subliminal: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/10/10/google-gets-into-games-and-watches-you-from-space/ Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/10/10/google-gets-into-games-and-watches-you-from-space/ Two interesting bits of news from Google today. The first is adsense for games which allows game developers to place Google ads inside games. Only flash games are currently supported and there are some fairly hefty entry requirements for early adopters: Game plays: Minimum 500,000 per day Game types: Web-based Flash only Integration: Must be technically capable of SDK integration Traffic source: Must be 80% US & UK Traffic Content: Family safe and targeted at users age 13 and up Distribution: Must be able to report embed destination and have control over where games are distributed I’m having visions of playing Counterstrike and seeing dynamic ads on bullet-ridden billboards in the future… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/10/04/who-caused-the-economic-crisis/ Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/10/04/who-caused-the-economic-crisis/ I really struggle to wrap my head around economics sometimes and the US (or is it a global) economic crisis is all pretty confusing (and crazy with the $700 billion dollar bail out bill getting the go ahead). Newsweek has an good article on who is to blame, basically it highlights that there is no one specific but rather a number of guilty parties: The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/30/because-its-funny/ Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/30/because-its-funny/ “Beached as Bro” And techno styles https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/28/broken-daylight-savings-on-nokia-phones/ Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/28/broken-daylight-savings-on-nokia-phones/ Urrggh, its that time of the year again when daylight savings kicks in. Unfortunately my very clever N73 has the wrong change over dates so for the next few weeks it will think that New Zealand is at GMT+12 instead of GMT+13 ! For most people this will not be a problem, you just set clock an hour early, but if you synchronise your phone with PC (for instance with Outlook) then all your appointments will be an hour out. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/25/google-timeline--the-last-10-years/ Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/25/google-timeline--the-last-10-years/ It’s Googles 10th birthday and they have put together a neat little timeline showing major milestones during their history. I was particularly impressed with how their home page has evolved over the last 10 years, nice and simple all the time with just minor tweaks and content changes along the way, all hiding more and more features. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/24/g1-the-first-google-android-released/ Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/24/g1-the-first-google-android-released/ With heavy guitar music and much fanfare the first Google Android handset has been released by T-Mobile. The device looks pretty nice (but not iPhone sexy) and has a ton of features. It will go on sale on the 22 October and retail for $179 US. Initial reviews are mixed but I suspect that this New York Times article hits close to the truth: “If the HTC’s new G1 cellphone, featuring Google’s Android software, were introduced two years ago, jaws would drop. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/03/android-getting-ready-for-launch/ Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/03/android-getting-ready-for-launch/ Well things seem to be heating up in the Android world… First off the new version of the SDK (0.9) became available. The APIs have undergone some rather radical changes since m15 but apparently they should be mostly stable now. Its going to take some serious work to get Bubbles! up and running again. Next all sorts of leaks about the first Android handset (the HTC Dream) starting popping up on the Internet. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/03/google-launches-new-browser/ Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/03/google-launches-new-browser/ Ooooooo, Just found a link to the new Google Chrome browser on my Google home page. Its pretty cool, very lightweight and very very fast. It even has as “stats for nerds” link on it’s task manager which gives heaps of detail on memory and CPU usage. The internals of the browser are pretty interesting as are the reasons for building a new browser. Had a couple of issues with some sites and a few pages that seemed to be showing old content! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/01/oops-the-arctic-is-now-an-island/ Mon, 01 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/09/01/oops-the-arctic-is-now-an-island/ For the first time in human history the Arctic can now be circumnavigated. Satellite pictures taken last week show that the north-west and north-east passages have opened up due to the retreating polar cap. Not so good ! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/26/its-slime-mould-jim-/ Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/26/its-slime-mould-jim-/ Well I had any number of “useful” suggestions as to what the heck is growing on my lawn including: star jelly, my growing clone (on my front lawn??) and to “dry it, smoke it and if nothing happens send an email to MAf biosecurity”. I decided to take up the last suggestion (the emailing part, not the drying and smoking part) and I received this slightly comforting reply: Yes it is a type of fungus called a slime mould. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/25/help--something-weird-is-growing-on-my-lawn/ Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/25/help--something-weird-is-growing-on-my-lawn/ Any Botonists, UFOlogists or Ghostbusters out there ? I have 3 big piles of transparent goop on my lawn! They are about 15 to 20cm in diameter, are quite transparent and have been there for a couple of weeks (I’m too freaked out to touch them but I did poke one with a stick). I’m hoping (really hoping) that they are just some sap fallen from the tree that sits in the center of the lawn. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/22/bubbles-presentation/ Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/22/bubbles-presentation/ Here are the slides for a quick presentation I gave on Bubbles! Shamelessly pulled content and images from various sources on the web. Click to see next slide Here is the PDF: Bubbles! and Google Android Presentation https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/19/bubbles-now-uses-google-app-engine/ Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/19/bubbles-now-uses-google-app-engine/ Just for kicks I decided to port the backend services for my Google Android app, Bubbles!, to use the Google App Engine. For those of you who don’t know Googles App Engine is a “free” application hosting environment. It promises to be able to scale Google style (as long as you pay of course). The free account gives you 500Mb of persistent storage and bandwidth and CPU for around 5million pages views a month which is not bad for free. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/12/windows-crashes-during-olympics-opening-ceremony/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/12/windows-crashes-during-olympics-opening-ceremony/ He he, Just found this article about a blue screen of death (BSOD) during the Olympic opening ceremony on Gizmoda. Update: Turns out that the giant footstep fireworks were faked ! What a shame, I thought they were one of the best bits of the opening ceremony. Update: Now it appears that the little singing girl wasn’t singing either ! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/07/omg-wargames-is-25-years-old-/ Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/07/omg-wargames-is-25-years-old-/ Ok now that is just a bit upsetting. One of my favourite films gowing up, Wargames was released twenty-five years ago ! Wired has an interesting article on the film that “That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars” Here is the orginal trailer for the movie: And of course because Hollywood cannot leave the classics alone, the new Wargames: The Dead Code trailer. Which is released this year sometime: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/04/does-virgin-get-the-iphone-maybe/ Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/08/04/does-virgin-get-the-iphone-maybe/ I was just sent a link to an article about Virgin Australia’s new iPhone plans. To quote: “What we hear from our customers is that they really want the iPhone not just because it’s a cool device but they want to do stuff with it, and I don’t think that’s been catered for in the market so far,” said Virgin Mobile Australia chief executive Peter Bithos. __Their top end plan is $100/month for a 16Gb iPhone, 5GB of traffic, the phone for free and a 24 month minimum sign up period. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/07/30/web-2.0-political-party/ Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/07/30/web-2.0-political-party/ One of the things that bugs me most about NZ politics is that there isn’t a political party that I actually like. Every election I basically sift through all the FUD to try and identify the parties that seems less likely to screw things up. I then cast my votes and hope that for the next 3 years the winners don’t go off on some tangent and introduce a law or bill that I don’t want and I don’t have any input into. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/07/19/upgrading-to-2.6/ Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/07/19/upgrading-to-2.6/ About to start upgrading my blog to use version 2.6 of WordPress. May be some disruption :) Update: Well that didn’t go too badly. _I did seem to lose all my category titles so I had to edit each category and reenter the categorie’s title. However the edit links didn’t work (since they use the category names as the hyperlink) so I had to spoof the edit URL by setting the catID for each category to bring up it’s edit page. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/07/17/iphone-2.0--first-impressions/ Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/07/17/iphone-2.0--first-impressions/ I received a little present yesterday, a shiny new iPhone to play with (but unfortunately not too keep). Here is what I have discovered so far: Moving Contacts Since I’m planning on using the phone for a few days I figured I’d stick in my own sim card and turn off my trusty Nokia N73. So I copied my contacts to my sim card and stuck my sim card into the iPhone . https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/07/10/get-your-iphone-now--only-6000/ Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/07/10/get-your-iphone-now--only-6000/ Yep so Vodafone announced their plans for the iPhone release this week in New Zealand; what a disaster… After getting everyone all frenzied last week with statements like “an iPhone from $199” the ugly truth emerged: Sure you can get an iPhone for only $199 but you need to sign up for a two year plan which will cost you over $6000 ! Check out this Vodafone sales exec getting beaten up in a TV interview: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/06/18/site-may-be-down-for-a-wee-while/ Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/06/18/site-may-be-down-for-a-wee-while/ I’m in the midst of transferring my domain to a new registrar (to consolidate things) but there seems to be some major mix up going on and the transfer keeps failing :( So this site might drop off the web for a wee while… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/06/13/got-my-ugly-mug-in-the-press/ Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/06/13/got-my-ugly-mug-in-the-press/ Why do I always look so silly in photographs ? Sigh….. The link: Awards’ finalists air innovative use of IT https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/06/02/birthday-goodies/ Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/06/02/birthday-goodies/ Wow I certainly scored a lot of great birthday goodies this year. I’m very impressed with my reticulating saw, sonic tape measure and carpenter’s pencils (real man’s pencils, you need to sharpen them with a knife). My sisters-in-law made me this fantastic pac-man cake: I was also given a cool mini Bluetooth based keyboard for my media center. Its a Logitech diNovo Mini, it has a full keyboard a bunch of special function keys and a track pad. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/05/22/bubbles-was-in-the-top-25/ Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/05/22/bubbles-was-in-the-top-25/ So Google has released the judge’s scoring for the Android applications. Bubbles! was in the top 25% in all categories (Effective Use, Polish, Indispensability, and Originality) and in the top 25% overall. This website pulls together some of the scores that have been publicly published. The 50 first round winners have also been release and there is a pdf with the winners in it (but it seems to be corrupt ? https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/05/22/garden-of-devastation/ Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/05/22/garden-of-devastation/ So the landscaper has started at my house. It’s only been a couple of days and the old garden is completely gone. Yesterday they had the bulldozer in to level things out. It’s all rather dramatic… here are some pics: https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/05/10/bubbles-didnt-make-it/ Sat, 10 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/05/10/bubbles-didnt-make-it/ Just received an email from the Android Developer Challenge team, seems that Bubbles! my Google Android application didn’t make it into round two: _During the past few weeks, 100+ judges around the world reviewed over 1,700 applications. They were extremely impressed with the diversity and the large number of high quality entries submitted. It is clear that the number of great applications far exceeds the 50 top scoring applications that will https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/05/05/stuttering-sound-on-ubuntu-8.04/ Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/05/05/stuttering-sound-on-ubuntu-8.04/ As I mentioned in my last post I updated my media PC to Ubuntu 8.04 without any issues. Turns out that was not the case… Over the weekend I discovered that my sound playback has started to stutter especially with apps like VLC playing back video. After doing some digging it appears to be an issue with PulseAudio which is the new sound engine for Ubuntu. Apparently it has some buffering issues particularly on older/slow machines. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/04/28/ubuntu-8.04-upgrade-fun/ Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/04/28/ubuntu-8.04-upgrade-fun/ Just prior to my Christmas break last year I “dropped” my laptop as it was hibernating, it was only an inch or so as I put it down but the knock was hard enough to corrupt my Windows registry! After trying to recover the damaged file I got XP to reboot but it was all a bit messed up. Not having my XP install disk (it is a work laptop) and desperate to have my laptop up and running over the holiday I decided to install Ubuntu 7. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/04/14/bubbles--my-google-android-developer-challenge-entry/ Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/04/14/bubbles--my-google-android-developer-challenge-entry/ Well working into the wee hours of the morning I finally finished off my Google Android Developer Challenge entry. Bubbles! allows you to create a pop (point of presence) that is ‘broadcasted’ from your phone. Other Bubbles! users in close proximity (about 50m) get to see your pop and you get see theirs. Of course as you move around so does your pop. A pop is anonymous and consists of a message and a nick name that you choose for yourself. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/03/24/the-origins-of-the-peace-sign/ Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/03/24/the-origins-of-the-peace-sign/ The BBC has an article on the peace sign, which recently turned 50 years old.What was really interesting was its origins, apparently it was created as a symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the the 1950s. The designer (Gerald Holtom) decided to combine the semaphore symbols for N (for Nuclear) and D (for Disarmament) to form one of the most widely recognised protest symbols. Very nice, using “military” symbols to form a anti-war sign :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/02/25/notcot.org-cool-design-site/ Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/02/25/notcot.org-cool-design-site/ Found this very nice “design” site called NOTCOT.org. Its tag line is ideas+aesthetics+amusement and its interesting picture oriented layout and content certainly does just that. It covers art, architecture, websites, advertising and the like, I always seem to be able to find something of interest here. For example today’s links includes: Pi10k – This experiment attempts to convert the first 10,000 digits of pi into a musical sequence. you pick the scale or ten notes of your choice and watch it go. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/02/12/the-official-grabaseat-blog/ Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/02/12/the-official-grabaseat-blog/ Grabaseat now has an official blog. The intro text reads: “Welcome to the official grabaseat blog. Here you will find behind-the-scenes information and great ‘insider’ tips for grabaseat.” Should be interesting to see what info lands up there. Check it out at http://grabaseatnz.blogspot.com/ https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/01/24/free-sci-fi-books/ Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/01/24/free-sci-fi-books/ I’m forever running out of books to read and never quite make it to the library so my interest was piqued when my friend Tim told me about a website you could download free sci-fi from. I was thrilled when I visited the site and found that the books were from authors I knew because to be honest, many free books are not really that good. The Baen Free Library is fantastic, it contains a large number of free books from the Baen catalog. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/01/10/my-new-favourite-power-tool-the-water-blaster/ Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/01/10/my-new-favourite-power-tool-the-water-blaster/ I borrowed a water blaster from my in-laws to clean off a fence, figured it would be messy and tedious but truth be told I love it. Just point and shoot and all the dirt and grime just vaporise, it is endless fun (even if it is wet and messy). Found an awful lot of interesting spiders and bugs too. Even some really big (and ugly) wetas, had to be careful not to vaporise them as they are protected, but the spiders were fair game (I don’t like spiders). https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/01/03/whatistheinternet.info/ Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2008/01/03/whatistheinternet.info/ So I have a new site up and running. Its called whatistheinternet.info The site is an easy to use introduction to what the Internet is and how it works. It will have a strong focus on security and safe surfing as well. Currently its very basic but check it out anyway. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/12/16/new-theme-for-summer/ Sun, 16 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/12/16/new-theme-for-summer/ Summer seems to finally here and whilst waiting for Portal to finish downloading, I thought I’d update my blog’s theme. Turns out there are tons out there but not that many that look good and do a “fluid” layout well. I was tempted to start fresh and build my own using these free blank templates but decided I was just too lazy. In the end I went with this theme called Skittish. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/11/30/bol0x--b1g-n0b/ Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/11/30/bol0x--b1g-n0b/ Not quite what the licensing department had in mind when they decided to allow customized plates :) BOL0X belongs to my work mate, Dave… https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/11/08/we-won-tuanz-/ Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/11/08/we-won-tuanz-/ Very very cool. We won the e-Commerce category (the ISIS booking engine), the experimental category (for How Far Can I Go) and “The Best of The Best !” award for the How Far Can I Go application. Checkout the TUANZ site for more info and the other winners. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/11/03/im-doing-movember/ Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/11/03/im-doing-movember/ So I decided (after much pressure from my workmates) to do Movember again. Which if you don’t know “is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year. At the start of Movember guys register with a clean shaven face. The Movember participants known as Mo Bros then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache and along the way raiseas much money and awareness about male health issues, in particular prostate cancer as possible. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/10/25/finalists-in-tuanz-business-internet-awards-2007/ Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/10/25/finalists-in-tuanz-business-internet-awards-2007/ This is pretty cool. For the last 3 years I’ve been working as the architect with the Innovations and Ventures department at Air New Zealand. Yesterday we found out that three of our projects are finalists in the TUANZ Business Internet Awards for 2007 ! The projects are: Grabaseat (Advertising & Marketing category) For those of you who haven’t seen grabaseat (GAS) it is a site that has daily discounted fares sometimes as low as a dollar. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/10/19/200-litres-of-paint-and-700-hours-later./ Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/10/19/200-litres-of-paint-and-700-hours-later./ A cool time lapsed video of an Air New Zealand plane getting a new paint job to promote their holiday stores rebranding. And they have a neat gallery of holidays to :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/10/04/siggraph-2007-vid/ Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/10/04/siggraph-2007-vid/ Here is a quick vid I put together covering some of the neat things I saw at SIGGRAPH. Did it for a couple of presentations at work. Figured you all might like to see it… http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1969648082235084593 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/09/11/facebook-do-you-know-who-is-watching-you/ Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/09/11/facebook-do-you-know-who-is-watching-you/ Facebook is a fantastic site but last week they went from been a closed social network to a more open one. What the heck does that mean? Well Facebook has started to allow non-Facebook users and search engines such as Google to see parts of your profile! Luckily this can be easily fixed: Log into face book and then click on the “_privacy_” link in the top right hand corner Then click on the “_Edit Settings_” link in the “_Search_” section. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/08/28/siggraph-is-over-/ Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/08/28/siggraph-is-over-/ Back at work now for a couple of weeks which is OK but not quite as fun as being in the USA :) Have been playing with ZBrush 3.1 for which there was a free upgrade. Its very very nice I’ll put some stuff up here once I do anything interesting. Also got the upgrade for Animation Master v14. Also been playing with the workflow from Animation Master to ZBrush and back again. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/08/06/im-at-siggrpah/ Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/08/06/im-at-siggrpah/ Its very cool. Check out http://travelgremlins.blogspot.com/ https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/07/27/ticktock-as-a-google-gadget/ Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/07/27/ticktock-as-a-google-gadget/ Ok I’ve gone a little crazy…. If you use iGoogle then add you can get ticktock on your personalized page. Just add http://www.rabidgremlin.com/ticktock/google_ticktock.xml https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/07/26/ticktock--my-first-facebook-app/ Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/07/26/ticktock--my-first-facebook-app/ Just added the finishing touches to my Facebook application. Its called ticktock and basically displays a clock on your Facebook page. But its no ordinary clock; it shows the local time AND Internet time. The Internet time is measured in units called tocks which are the same regardless of where in the world you are. So for instance 234tocks in Auckland is the same time as 234tocks in London. Great if you need to set up an IM chat or meeting with someone on the other side of the world. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/07/12/my-first-youtube-video/ Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/07/12/my-first-youtube-video/ Just uploaded my first video clip on YouTube ! Its a bunch of 360 degree pans of European cities that we took on our recent trip. Because of the fast pace of change the compression really messes up the video :( The actual footage looks very much better…. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/07/10/using-json-for-java-and-php-interop/ Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/07/10/using-json-for-java-and-php-interop/ I’ve been playing with Markov chains for doing ‘random’ text generation. Had an interesting problem in that I needed the GUI code to run on a PHP based web server but I didn’t want to have the processing of the source files occur every time. I also had a nice Java program doing all the source text processing for me and I didn’t really feel like porting it over to PHP either. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/06/28/my-new-blog/ Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/06/28/my-new-blog/ Alright I’ve updated my blog software and started a brand new, more sophisticated blog. I’m using the WordPress software. The content of my old blog can be found here. I’ll be porting the post from the old blog over shortly. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/04/09/auckland-traffic-cams/ Mon, 09 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/04/09/auckland-traffic-cams/ _Updated: I’ve corrected the link and the 3D maps seems to have disappeared._ Someone just sent me a link to an Auckland traffic site. It shows a nice 3D map of the region and highlights the traffic state on the main routes. If you click on the little “C” icons you also get an up-to-date webcam shot. Pretty nice. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/04/09/gmail-and-google-maps-on-your-phone-/ Mon, 09 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/04/09/gmail-and-google-maps-on-your-phone-/ Google have a couple of J2ME applications for your phone that are really cool. The first gives you access to your GMail account. It’s really easy to use. Just browse to http://www.gmail.com/app with your phone to download it. The second gives you access to Google Maps. The travel directions are great (although it can be a little messy to type in addresses on your phone). In certain parts of the world it will even show the heavy traffic reports overlaid on the maps ! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/02/06/an-inconvenient-truth/ Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/02/06/an-inconvenient-truth/ Watched this over the weekend. Its very very good and very thought provoking. Its a documentary by Al Gore on global warming. Has some very shocking graphs and statistics. I did find it a little personal, very US centric and perhaps a bit too sentimental in places but very good overall. I’d urge everyone to watch it. Checkout http://www.climatecrisis.net for more information and for things you can do to help. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/01/04/workrave/ Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2007/01/04/workrave/ Being plagued with an achy wrist of late. I suspect the cause is a new desk at work so my screen was not at the right height making me sit funny. So apart from resting my hand over the xmas break and getting my desk set up correctly I have also installed Workrave. This application pops up frequent reminders to take breaks and pauses. It works very well and I reckon that everyone should have an application like this running on their computers. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/10/25/sudo-and-squiggly-startup-screen/ Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/10/25/sudo-and-squiggly-startup-screen/ Ok so I now had the install all going but during startup the TV was filled up with squiggly text. The cause of this I discovered is that the splash screen that was shown during startup was running at a resolution that my TV did not enjoy. Turns out the fix is quite easy in /boot/grub is a file called menu.lst after making a backup of the file I simply added vga=771 to the list of boot parameters and saved the file. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/10/19/ubuntu--the-initial-install/ Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/10/19/ubuntu--the-initial-install/ Ok so I have this EPIA Nehemiah M10000 based PC that I put together as a media center for my lounge. I generally use it as an MP3 jukebox, playing back movie clips and surfing the web. I initially ran Windows 2000 on this box but I have had some disk corruption issues in the last few months and have lost all my media at least twice! Seagate drive tools indicate they drive is ok, but windows keeps messing up. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/08/02/serenity-the-movie/ Wed, 02 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/08/02/serenity-the-movie/ Serenity Rocks ! I got tickets to the preview show here in New Zealand and the film is awesome. I’m not sure how someone who has not seen the series will take it as they will miss a lot of the tie-ins to the series and they won’t empathise with the characters as strongly but I reckon the film will do well. Cannot say more without spoiling the story but go watch it when it is released ! https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/07/31/king-kong/ Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/07/31/king-kong/ Watched King Kong last night. Its not LOTR but it is not bad. I was really disappointed with the CG in the first 3rd of the movie. It included lots of floaty/cartoon animation especially with the human figures. However the CG in the later parts of the film was very good other then some very glaring green screen bits. Kong was very well rendered and the animation was great. The only other problems were the pace which was all wrong and the overuse of dramatic close ups. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/07/31/texture-maps-of-earth-moon-mars-and-venus/ Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/07/31/texture-maps-of-earth-moon-mars-and-venus/ Found these excellent texture maps (colour, bump, specular etc) of earth, moon, mars and venus. Very nice quality and free to use. Check out http://www.oera.net/How2/TextureMaps.htm. Gonna have to do a space scene just for fun :) https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/07/30/.ico-plugin-for-photoshop/ Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/07/30/.ico-plugin-for-photoshop/ Found this great plug in for Photoshop that lets you open and save Windows Icon files (.ico). It’s from Telegraphics and can be found here along with a bunch of other plug ins. If you don’t have access to Photoshop then try out GIMP and get the ICO plug in for it from whoop.org. These tools are great for creating favicons for your websites or to spice up your desktop. https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/07/30/winmorph-and-wink/ Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.rabidgremlin.com/2006/07/30/winmorph-and-wink/ WinMorph is a great morphing application that supports images and video. It’s easy to use and it’s free ! Wink also by Debugmode is a great application for creating presentations and tutorials. It does screen captures and creates a Flash animation. You can add call outs to display instructions plus customise a a range of things.