May 2011
2 posts
3 tags
PlayBook Update: I Went With Plan B...
Well, I gave in. I just spent two weeks on the road — one week of family travel to attend my daughter’s college graduation and one week of business meetings in Germany. That mix of activities was the ideal test opportunity for the 64Gb BlackBerry PlayBook I’d ordered but when it still hadn’t arrived by 48 hours before my departure I called BestBuy to tell them I’d...
3 tags
BlackBerry PlayBook: Epic Disappointment Continues
My ongoing attempt to purchase a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet continues to get more and more unsatisfying, and in fact I’m starting to feel like I’m the victim of some sad prank. (Hey, perhaps it’s true that Punk’d is returning and with Justin Bieber as host.)
Two weeks ago today RIM released the PlayBook. After many years as a BlackBerry phone owner and given my strong...
April 2011
1 post
1 tag
Making Good Coffee in your Suitcase
My daily routine has included coffee since I was about six years old. For many years now I make a pot first thing in the morning, take a travel mug off to work, and not infrequently have a cup in the evening after dinner. These days I spend a fair amount of time in hotels and like to preserve as much of my daily routine as possible. Hotels don’t seem to always have an in-room coffee pot...
June 2010
1 post
2 tags
How Much is a Dime Bottle?
Several years ago I discovered by accident that a dime would just fit through the opening in a wine bottle, though I confess I can’t remember exactly why I even thought to try it. That begged the question, “How many dimes does it take to fill a wine bottle?” So every day as I was removing loose change from my pocket I’d toss any dimes I’d received into an empty wine...
May 2010
1 post
1 tag
Great Weekend for Viewing the Night Sky
This is a fabulous weekend for getting out and taking a look at the night sky as two extraordinary things are happening. Venus and the Moon will be very close together in the west just after sunset, and the International Space Station (ISS) will make several very bright passes overhead. Depending on where you live, you may also be able to see the Space Shuttle (STS-132) as it approaches the...
December 2009
1 post
2 tags
Geek Stocking Stuffers
In the course of my on-line Christmas shopping and hunting for good gift ideas I’ve come across a few items that I think would make excellent stocking stuffers for any geeks you might have on your gift list. They’d also be good for any low-price gift exchange you might have at the office or school. Some of them I own so can review directly, others I’ve only seen but find...
November 2009
5 posts
2 tags
Netbook Project #1 - Navigation & Travel Fun
I’m enjoying my Asus Eee PC netbook and have been tinkering around with a few projects to let me get more out of it. The first one that struck me was to use it as an in-car navigation system on family automobile trips, rather than my laptop as I have done in the past. (Before going any further let me point out that my role on long family driving trips is as the navigator so I’m not...
1 tag
LRO and the Apollo 11 Landing Site
NASA has just released some higher-resolution photos of the Apollo 11 landing site taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Detail in these new photos is good enough not only to see the Lunar Module (LM) descent stage but several of the experiment packages left behind, the primary TV camera, and the tracks Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left as they explored the site:
The boulder...
1 tag
Check out the 2009 Leonid meteor shower this week!
The Leonid meteor shower occurs ever year around November 17th and so will paying us a visit this coming week. It is one of our more famous annual showers because it has the potential to produce stunning meteor storms and has done so a few times in the past. (The picture to the right is based on the extraordinary 1833 storm as viewed over Niagara Falls.) Meteor showers occur when the Earth...
2 tags
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Last Week: Java Store, PayPal and Happy Developers
Whew, last week was crazy busy. I’ll admit, though, that the chaos was of our own making and something we put a lot of effort into planning and carrying out. When I say “we” here I mean a bunch of hard working, dedicated folks at Sun Microsystems who have been hammering away for almost a year designing and building the Java Store. No, it’s not a place to go buy coffee,...
October 2009
2 posts
1 tag
First Look - BlackBerry Desktop for the Mac
I’ve just installed the new BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac and wanted to share the good news and bad news of that experience.
First let me say that although I encountered some difficulties overall I’m glad to have BlackBerry Desktop as it’ll let me do much-needed backups, allows me to sync my BlackBerry Bold with my Mac Address Book, gives me the ability to do a restore if...
1 tag
Watch spaceships crash into the Moon
This coming Friday at 4:30am PT NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) and its Centaur booster rocket will be intentionally slammed into the Moon. The heavy booster strikes first and will create a debris plume 10km high. Following closely behind, the LCROSS mothership will photograph the impact then pass through the plume taking samples to be tested for water,...
September 2009
10 posts
2 tags
More fun with JavaFX
A year ago almost to this very day I built my very first JavaFX application. It was written using JavaFX 1.0 and borrowed heavily from a stopwatch demo that was one of the early JavaFX samples. I kept it on my desktop to keep track of the time remaining before JavaOne 2009, which at the time was the center of our universe at work.
With each major subsequent event, like the launch of JavaFX 1.0...
Chrome is not impressed...
Your plug-in is weak. Behold the jigsaw puzzle piece of death.
1 tag
Summary Report - US Human Space Flight Plans
NASA has released a summary report of the review of US human space flight plans, as produced by a panel of experts commissioned by the White House. The panel revealed their findings in a public meeting back on August 12, and the summary report available now will be followed at some unspecified date by a full Final Report. I found the summary report interesting reading and suggest you take a...
Spending my day off today on a secret project writing a special app for the Java Store. Three hours in and basic layout & data input done.
2 tags
My Third JavaFX Application
I’ve been spending some time getting familiar with JavaFX as a way of writing rich, immersive applications that, unlike other platforms, can be used on both Windows and MacOS desktops as well as mobile, web browser, and (some day soon) TV. I’m not a seasoned Java programmer but I can get the job done, though I always found building application user interfaces to be slow going. ...
1 tag
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Getting comfortable with Tumblr
Ran into my first stumbling block with Tumblr when trying to find a theme for my “tumblog” (as I believe they are called). At first I thought it’d be easy, after all there were a lot of themes on display in the Theme Garden. The first few attempts looked stylish but didn’t have what I was looking for, namely:
Lots of horizontal room for posts, given I wanted something...
It’s football time in Tennessee! Go Big Orange!! A new era begins today. Amazingly the game is on TV here California (and in HD too)!.
Enjoying a Goo Goo Cluster, the wonderful candy confection that’s been made in my home town since 1912. Always reminds me of home.
1 tag
Welcome...
I’ve never really gotten around to writing a blog. I’ve been quite happy, actually, using Twitter to share brief observations and notes on what I’m up to. I don’t expect that to change, but on a number of occasions lately I’ve been frustrated by Twitter’s 140 character limit, its unsophisticated way of including media, and the inflexibility in linking to other...