| Saturday, January 29, 2005 |
  How do some places make money? | 
Posted - 1/29/2005 9:07:46 AM | I was just reading one of my favorite websites, and somebody posted a new deal from Viking office supplies. Buy $25 worth of stuff and get a free DVD player.
I did need to buy some new padded mailers and Shelly needed a particular model of "highlighter" marker that was her favorite. I added both to my cart, and by undivine providence, the total came to $25.08. I added the magic DVD-player code, but it told me they were out of stock. Instead, they were sending me an AM-FM CD boom-box.
On top of it all, though, is that it must be sent in two boxes. One box will contain the mailers and radio, while the other will contain the marker. Now then, it must certainly cost many times the value of a $1.50 marker to box and ship.
I don't mind getting some deals, but my mind still boggles at the business models of some places. Reminds me of the heyday of 1998 and 1999 when I'd routinely get $25-off coupons for pets.com, which I'd use to buy a 40-lb bag of dog food, paying only the $6 for shipping. Of course, it cost more than $6 to UPS me the dog food, so they were losing money on the deal at every turn.
Of course, pets.com isn't around anymore.
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| 'nuther comic | |
Posted - 1/28/2005 1:41:54 AM | I'm staying up late keeping Shelly company while she finishes up a project, so I worked up another comic.
Again, it's all clipart. Amazing, eh?
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| Thursday, January 27, 2005 |
| Pulled the trigger | |
Posted - 1/27/2005 5:37:42 PM | After spending some time wrestling with a user-system for the games, I decided that it was a waste of time and went with a third-party content-management system. After a bit of research, I decided that Mambo was the way to go. After a bit of reading, I pulled the trigger and installed it on the code zone site.
Thus far, it's worked pretty flawlessly. Any problems with setup have been my own. Getting the forums working took all of an hour. I plan on the same amount of time for the chat.
They've got pretty extensive support for FAQ's, but I decided that just making a locked forum item would be the easiest way to go about it. That way all the support stuff (forum and FAQ) is in one place.
Still playing with the templates. Replacing the generic top-banner with a Flash movie took a couple of tries, but it's working now. I'm still futzing with the tables, because the default template isn't quite smart enough to size the middle panel if there's nothing in the side panels. Click the "news" button for an example.
Biggest upcoming problem I see is with how I'll dip into the user database via Flash (for global high-score tables). Mambo has nice PHP-based objects to do that very thing, but the documentation for 'em is nonexistent. Once that's figured out, I think it'll be pretty straightforward to make global high-score tables and such that'll talk with the user-database.
I'll probably replace that "search" box up in the corner with another Flash applet that scrolls the latest high scores for the games.
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| Tuesday, January 25, 2005 |
| Bask in the glory that is the COFFEE CART!! | |
Posted - 1/25/2005 2:52:36 PM | Awright, all of the remaining bits of the coffee cart and the futon arrived yesterday afternoon, and the unused half of my office is no longer a dumping ground for leftover crap but is a THING OF BEAUTY FOR ALL TO BEHOLD. It belongs on the friggin' Learning Channel, it's so shockingly well-designed.
FWIW, I didn't just do this to spend money. We have clients over quite often, and it'll be nice to let folks make a genuine Starbucks-class cup of coffee, complete with all the fixins.
. . .but mostly it's just for us.
Here's a tour, annotated with a couple of tips.
(oh, and if the perspective is making you dizzy, it's because the back wall and ceiling aren't square. The house is a modified A-frame)
This is the view from my desk. Andy The Coworker brought the pipe cutter and some bits of paneling that matched the bamboo floor, so I no longer have to worry about drippy machines. I found some old "print your own refrigerator magnet" magnet-backed inkjet paper in the closet, so I found one of my favorite old Too Much Coffee Man pictures, specifically the comic cover of TMCM crucified on a caffeine molecule, and printed it for the fridge. I figured the theme would fit in with the "coffee altar" motif. Above the big magnet is a smaller magnet containing the color-codes for the nespresso capsules. The capsules are now up on an aluminum wall-mounted dispenser (that double-helix-looking-thing up on the wall). Hooks and baskets on the sides hold all the fixins necessary for coffee.
Also, there's a power strip zip-tied to the back of the shelves. That way we can easily unplug and roll the cart to the other office if we need to make coffee there.
Here's the opposite wall. We bought a little magazine rack that's hard to see, but it's about the same color as the bamboo floor. To the right of the door is the "wall of ego" containing all my shelf products. To the left of the door is my XFL banner that is a constant reminder that spectacular failures are much more fun than ordinary failures.
The door itself leads to a bathroom with a shower, which is why we got the futon in the first place. We figured that, since the bathroom has a shower, if we got something that could convert to a bed, the office could double as a guestroom.
The pattern on the futon was a hard-sell for Shelly. I convinced her that with all the contrast in the room, a sofa with bold contrast would work better. Also, the kanji characters will work with the bamboo floor. She's grown to like it.
Here's the completed coffee bar close up. It's inspired by a neat little rolling coffee-cart that Microsoft had at the GDC about five years ago. They had a girl at a little coffee-lectern, and she could make damn near anything coffee-related even though her space was much more limited than your average Starbucks. I priced coffee carts, but they were quite expensive ($2-$5k), and had lots of stuff that I didn't need (sinks, built-in fridge), so I just went with the shelves.
Also I wanted to raise the machines up so you didn't have to hunch down to get some coffee.
Money-saving tip. You can buy a bigass box of 1500 popsicle sticks at craft stores for about five bucks. Pop 'em in an old jar, and the coffee stirrers are taken care of.
Yeah I'm proud of my new office. What of it?
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| Damn this looks nice | |
Posted - 1/21/2005 5:32:32 PM | While browsing around, I found the best 3D cartoon bulldozer ever modeled.
It's got my bulldozer beaten by a mile. If there's anyone out there who can make me a bulldozer with this much personality, my wallet's open to you.
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| Thursday, January 20, 2005 |
| Oooh look, I've got mono | |
Posted - 1/20/2005 1:10:51 PM | If you're a programmer (and you are), you spend a lot of time with your text editor, be it standalone or part of an IDE. If you have no ambition whatsoever, you leave your editor's font as the default. More often than not, the default is the old Windows 3.1 pre-TrueType Courier. If you're ambition is microscopic (like mine), you immediately change the default editor font to Courier New so you'll at least get nice smoothed edges.
Thankfully somebody over at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/6/11739/5249 has made up a little discussion of programming fonts, and he's put together a comprehensive list of monospaced TrueType fonts out there. Included are Courier and Courier New, along with the popular-but-difficult-to-find Andale Mono. He also found a whole slew of others. If you want to see all the fonts, grouped by his personal preference, check out http://www.lowing.org/fonts/allfonts.htm.
His top choice does look quite nice. I'm gonna have to install it.
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| Wednesday, January 19, 2005 |
| Umm, never mind | 
Posted - 1/19/2005 5:15:50 PM | On a whim I decided to check out the Container Store's website, and it turned out that they've got some medium-duty shelves that fit the bill perfectly. Here's the not-quite-complete coffee altar.
The 18x24 inch shelves were perfect for the fridge. They didn't have poles that were the right height, so I went with the ones that were too tall. Thankfully one of my coworkers is from a family of plumbers and is bringing a pipe-cutter tomorrow so I don't have to hacksaw 'em to the right height. I'm going to buy one more basket and another set of cup hooks and the one-stop-coffee-worship-center will be complete.
I'm a bit worried about the coffee machines dripping stuff on the supplies below. I'll likely end up cutting a piece of paneling to fit the top shelf.
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| Need some furniture help | |
Posted - 1/19/2005 2:58:44 PM | Well I'm down to one piece of furniture at the Hattan Cult Compound (as it has been dubbed by a pal) that I need for the office. I need a little rolling cart that's capable of holding all the coffee stuff. We've currently got everything on a folding table, but I want to make the whole affair more vertical so I can install a futon upstairs for a bit of a "waiting room" appeal. Also, we've got a full bathroom upstairs and adding a futon will allow one of the offices to double as a guestroom.
Basically I want a three-shelf rolling affair a bit like this. . .
It needs to have lockable casters so I can leave it locked for daily coffee use or roll it out of the way to put down the futon.
Most importantly, though, I need the bottom shelf large and high enough to hold a mini-fridge. The fridge base is 19x19 inches and is 25 inches high. It'll probably be better to have a base 24 inches wide so it'll better accomodate two coffee machines on the top. The middle shelf will hold all of the coffee cans and fixins. I'll put hooks on the outside to hold cups and paper towels.
Container store has a nice stainless steel shelf that'd fit the bill, but you can't raise and lower the shelves to fit the fridge.
And yes I have considered building it myself. I'm just hoping there's some kind of adjustable shelf-system around that'll fit the bill.
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| Yeah, well I still got the most toys | |
Posted - 1/17/2005 9:57:54 PM | Scrolling down to 12/30, you'll see that I purchased a DevNet professional subscription using the "avoid paying franchise tax" money CivilGrrl had. Also interestingly, Macromedia discontinued the DevNet program a day later in favor of a new "volume licensing program" that is so arcane and complicated that it makes your cell-phone's billing plan look simple in comparison.
Fear not that I have flushed $500-odd dollars down the toilet. They're keeping DevNet open until February of 2006, so I'll be getting all the upgrades and toys and DRK kits (which presumably will be available to dwindling audiences given that they're not taking on new subscribers). I'll still be getting the upgrades and such that I paid for.
I'm not sure if the new plan is a better deal or not. Supposedly it's $479 for 24 months of upgrades, which sounds like a better deal. Given that a new Macromedia Studio MX costs about a grand, though, I assume that you've gotta already have a license to buy the subscription. With DevNet, I ended up getting the equivalent of Studio MX (and some developer toys) and a year's worth of upgrades for not much more.
The big question I have, though, is "Since I bought the product on 12/30, and they discontinued the program a day later, how likely is it that I was the very last person to buy a DevNet subscription?"
Just wondering. It's a geek thing.
On a similar note, Flash Studio Pro, the quite-nice tool that'll make Flash applets into first-class double-clickable EXE files, is now called Zinc 2.0. I suppose it's a good move because Flash Studio Pro and Macromedia Studio MX are very different products but sound like the same thing.
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| Wednesday, January 12, 2005 |
| Free MiniMac! | |
Posted - 1/12/2005 11:58:32 AM | Okay, it does require another purchase :)
Given that those new MiniMacs are selling for $500, you'd actually save $106 getting one along with Studio MX over the purchase of Studio MX alone.
http://www.macromedia.com/software/studio/special/studio_mac/?promoid=ATXH
MacConnection prices. . .
Studio MX by itself = $999.95
Studio MX with MiniMac = $893.95
Use the extra $106 to buy a keyboard and mouse :)
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| Tuesday, January 11, 2005 |
| Umm. . . | |
Posted - 1/11/2005 4:46:50 PM | I don't wanna sound curmudgeounly, but I'm a bit underwhelmed by Apple's latest offerings. It looks like they looked at the competition and said "we can beat 'em at their own game", but fell pretty short. Apple machines have always come up short in an (no pun intended) apples-to-apples comparison with Windows machines, but it now looks like they're just cutting out stuff and hoping that nobody notices. While I rather expected the new "baby Mac" to have anemic hardware specs (256mb ram, 1.2 Ghz processor, no DVD burner), I figured I could at least count on receiving a keyboard and mouse.
I can hear the Dell and Gateway ad-writers working already. . .
[fade in]
If you spend $499 on a computer, you can get this (picture of a tiny computer)
Or you can get this (picture of computer, keyboard, monitor, mouse, and speakers)
[fade out]
Apple would've been smart to offer the thing "loaded" for a higher price. They've always carved out a decent niche by claiming that they're a finer machine and worth the premium price. If they aim at the cheap market, they'll be eaten alive.
. . .but I could be wrong.
Their new software offering is downright baffling. They came out with a new office suite called iWork to replace the old AppleWorks, but it doesn't come with the new Mac Mini. The Mac Mini still comes with AppleWorks. I understand that Apple probably needs some kind of cheap office suite to bundle with their machines. Every cheap machine you buy nowadays comes with WordPerfect Office or MS Works, so people just expect to get an office suite with their computer. AppleWorks has fit that bill for about 15 years now. It's pretty far from state-of-the-art, but so are WordPerfect Office and MS Works.
Bottom line is that if people want a simple office suite, they're gonna run the one that comes with the machine. If the want something better, they'll likely bypass iWork and get MS Office. iWork has an attractive price at $79, but it's just a word processor and PowerPoint knockoff. If it came with a spreadsheet, I might say it had a future. Until it does, though, it fits in the "I don't get it" box.
The new cheap iPod will probably do well. Apple's done a good job equating iPod and MP3 player. There are loads of flash-based MP3 players out there for $99, and most of 'em have better features than the Apple one (LCD screen, voice recorder, replacable battery), but the iPod name will make it a hit.
On another note, Macromedia's got an article on how to best use the new tweening classes that come with Flash MX 2004. It's interesting in that those classes were undocumented, so there was always the danger of them disappearing or changing in the next version. I guess since they're being "documented" on the site that they're somewhat "blessed" and won't be disappearing anytime soon.
So tween away!
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| Something game related? Gads. | |
Posted - 1/9/2005 9:22:40 AM | I'm teaching myself PHP. I wanted to use that new "baby SQL" that's built into PHP5 rather than MySQL, as it looks just as good and an order of magnitude simpler. My webspace provider, however, is still on PHP4 with the thinking that PHP5 breaks existing code (which it apparently does), so they can't start breaking other sites, go figure.
Thus far, it seems pretty straightforward. The Ghostwire PHPobject component makes the "communication between Flash and PHP" part pretty dirt-simple. There's also AMFPHP, which is a free PHP-written knockoff of Flash Remoting. It's compatible with the Flash components' communication model, but it's more complicated. We'll see.
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| Thursday, January 6, 2005 |
| I must control myself. | 
Posted - 1/6/2005 4:54:10 PM | We've got three coffee machines in the house. We've got a Senseo machine in the downstairs kitchen that's for the weekends. We've got two machines at the coffee-kiosk upstairs, a BrewStation for the everyday Folgers and a Nespresso machine to create the Water Of Life.
For the uninitiated, the Nespresso machine pumps heated water at high pressure through very finely ground coffee (basically coffee dust) in little disposable metal cans, resulting in about three ounces of slightly thick, slightly foamy, tasty stuff that can be quaffed as a shot or dropped into a cup of milk as a depth charge.
Today I noticed that the BrewStation had about six cups of stale coffee remaining in it, and I considered replacing the water in the Nespresso machine with the BrewStation brew, just to see what I'd get.
I would've done it, but the Nespresso is pretty pricey and it's pretty sensitive about running anything but ordinary water through it. I've already had to clean calcium out of it once, and that took forever. I don't wanna think what stale coffee would leave on the heating element. I need to get one of those $10 stovetop espresso machines for further experimentation.
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| Wednesday, January 5, 2005 |
| With eyes blue-on-blue I commute the Water of Life for I am the Kwisatz Haderach | |
Posted - 1/5/2005 4:51:02 PM | For the first time in ten years, I did something unprecedented. I made a new-year's resolution. I am resolved to lose a significant amount of weight because I weigh too much and it's starting to adversely affect my quality of life. I've been wrestling with the insurance company regarding weight loss surgery for two years now, and it's becoming clear that they're just delaying in the hopes that I go teats-up from a heart attack before they've gotta pay. Therefore losing weight will provide me the dual benefit of returning me my lifestyle and sticking it to my insurance company (to whom I pay $1k per month) by allowing me to live longer, during which time I plan to visit my doctor every time I have so much as a case of athelete's foot.
Don't look at me like that. They started it. Despite their original reservations about covering me, I've been a model customer for 'em with fine health and have paid enough in monthly bills to cover the surgery twice over.
In my weightloss endeavor I'm being fairly successful so far (quite a thing to say five days into the year). I'm not following any plan that can be named other than the most fundamental "eat less and/or exercise more". I promise not to bore you with status updates on my weight and/or fitness. Apart from the aforementioned lifestyle-hit, my weight and fitness concern me as much as the cleanliness of my fingernails. Some people like to talk fitness, but I'm not one of 'em. I find that talking about working out is about the only thing that's more boring than actually working out.
That being said, all of the above is simply meaningless foreshadowing for the following discovery.
I have discovered that the affect that The Bean has on me is quite profound compared to my old habits of 2004. Fact is, the difference calorie-and-fat-wise between a coffee concoction made from one shot of espresso and four or six shots is almost negligable. Couple that with some tasty Lungo Vivalto that makes my wrists sweat when quaffed in such quantities, and I've found myself sleeping less, mostly because I am now far more aware of my surroundings than before, and the sounds are keeping me awake.
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| Even better deal | |
Posted - 1/4/2005 2:47:28 PM | Following yesterday's deal post, here's how to get a load of software cheap.
1. Get the Word 2002/Works 8.0 bundle at SoftwareOutlet.com. Shipping will be about $5, bringing your total cost to about $30.
2. Go to Amazon and order Microsoft OneNote for $79.99. Shipping will be free.
3. Send in this rebate form using a photocopy of the Works 8.0 CD and the OneNote boxtop to qualify.
Total price = $30 + $79.99 - $100 = $9.99
That means you'll get Word 2002, Works 8.0, and OneNote 2003 for ten bucks, which is downright unbeatable. Microsoft is notoriously good about sending out rebate checks. I've gotten 'em back in as little as two weeks. Also, you can now keep an eye on your rebate's status here.
If you've never heard of OneNote, it's kinda cool. It's smart note-taking software. It was originally designed for tablet PC's, but it'll work on desktops too. You can just willy-nilly put up text, graphics, recorded sound, etc, and it'll keep it organized for you. It's not essential if you've got a desktop machine, but it is essental for this deal :)
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