Transcending Ordinary

I had a discussion with my brother, Peter, and it got me thinking.  Later when explaining things to Isaac, I could hardly believe how obvious it seemed, yet how programed we have been to resist it.

I learned many things in San Francisco, most jewels coming from my experiences at OneTaste.  One lesson was to follow your desire, especially if you hesitate for some useless reason like social norms, public embarrassment, fear of tarnishing your image, etc.  Those reasons just don’t make real sense, however they provide a “safe” sandbox for us to live our lives in. continue reading…

Sometimes in life, even when events start at different times and build at different rates, they still seem to all reach their inflection points together. As if they were the components of a carefully prepared feast, all orchestrated for consumption together.

I’m talking about a pragmatic shift in my view of programming. Let me start by giving you some history. I started professional Java programming back when java 1.2 just came out and I worked for SAIC as a Java programmer doing CORBA work (basically a precursor to SOAP, which was a precursor to REST). Java was a good evolution for me, as my background was in C/C++. I appreciated how programming in Java was faster, yet still had the clean, logical, syntax and expressiveness of C++. continue reading…

This afternoon in a flash of understanding, I realized something profound.  I was talking about relationships, and how important it is that people are open and genuine with each other.  Often people bend the truth, or leave things unsaid when interacting with others whom we like, and who we want to like us back.  We show them the parts of ourselves that we think they will appreciate, and leave out the parts that we think they wont. continue reading…

Ok, if you’ve followed Apples’ release of Snow Leopard, you’ve probably heard that that out of the box it defaults to running 32bit, that it’s suppose to have speed enhancements, and that it’s slimmer in size.  It’s all true.  You can boot it into 64 bit by holding command-option-6-4 on bootup, or change your com.apple.boot.plist file.  Even running 32bit mode however, it can still run 64bit apps, infact looking at activity manager, most of the apps running are 64bit regardless of boot mode.  Also, things seems to run faster in 64bit mode.  For example Geekbench ran ~3300 in 32bit, but 3600 in 64bit.  Similar things can be said about other apps. continue reading…

If you own a home, you have certainly felt the loss in its value of the last few years.  But, there is a silver lining.  Mortgage escrow for property taxes, and home owners insurance.  While home values have decreased, your payments in those areas has not adjusted as quickly as falling home values, but with two phone calls, you can update them now and make three valuable changes.

Here’s a detailed explanation: continue reading…

Any computing device that can’t fit in your pocket will be obsolete in >3 years.

Am I crazy?  What am I talking about?  Imagine this, you have a mobile, always connected device like an iPhone, with even more computing power, and faster wireless connectivity to others and to a massive datastore, i.e. virtual network storage of 10 TerraBytes.

When mobile, you can use the device to stream video from your network storage or from a video service like netflix, you can call friends and have a voice or a video call with them, you can check your schedule and invite friends to play basketball or over for dinner, you can receive a reminder from your dentist about your appointment coming up tomorrow.  All this, and you are doing it from anywhere. continue reading…

Ok, so if you are like me, you’ve probably got a few email accounts huh?  I have the one which I use for web purchases, one that has a silly name I made when I was in school, one I made so I could use MSN, another that is just old… oh, and there is my Gmail address just because:) continue reading…

Ok, today I gave a technical interview for a software developer position here at Bebo.  Afterwards, I really felt the need to write a do’s and dont’s for technical phone interviews.

First off, if you write it on your resume, know it.  All that, “I did “x” 10 years ago but I don’t remember it today” is crap.  You should at least remember the basics of it, if not, make sure you do before the interview.  Related to that is actually saying, “I don’t remember/know”, if you are asked something, and you really don’t know, just say it, rather then inventing a story, or telling me a story about something else you do know.  continue reading…

Added a new page on a nice optimization I wrote for memcache a while back and would like to share it with others.

Have a look at the memcache page I just created.

So, I’ve created a quick web cast of a project that I’ve been working on in my spare time.  It’s a Google Gadget using the OpenSocial API’s which allows Bebo.com members access to their photos from any OpenSocial gadget container, like Gmail.  Have a look at this short intro (recommend you view full screen):

The gadget manifest is located at this URL:

http://unwiredthinking.com/beboPhotosGadget/bebophotos.xml

Currently I can only guarantee that it works with Firefox. If I get some interest, I’ll port it to other browsers.

I look forward to any feedback