In the past few years I sculpted this blog into a place where I could improve my ability to express my ideas clearly. The act of writing ideas out and then clarifying/defending them made me realize how important it was to share what was in my head. I guess this was my way of having strong opinions, weakly held - I really wanted to see what the public would think and slug it out if someone challenged me without a good argument.

However as I *got better(?)* at this - it seemed like I was really just padding my ideas with redundant structure and I began to not to express anything at all because it never really seemed worth it. Like putting a skittle between two hamburger buns - that makes for one shitty meal. Well then came Twitter and 3,000+ updates later and I’m still going strong. It’s not the Twitter product/brand that I like but the need to form an idea/expression into 140 characters. It forces me to express only that pure atomic idea. I now find myself thinking in tweets regardless of how big or small the idea is - which is what I wanted from the get-go.

So to sum this up (see? wtf do I need a summary for?) - I think my needs are being met elsewhere - in a more dynamic area - more exposure, more interaction. So what of this blog? My new plan in life is to drop the priority of things that I don’t have clear goals with. So for now on - follow me on Twitter. Say Hi, challenge me, question me, try to make me laugh, join in on my daily praises of how kick-ass jQuery is or how good Microsoft is at delivering big bags of DO-NOT-WANT. Even though my Tweets are mostly silly/vulgar/rant-ish there are a few conceptual gems in there but mostly I think it’s the best way for you to understand me and what’s going on in my head.

Smell ya later blog.

• AJAX - Asynchronous Javascript XML
• Google Maps, Google Charts, Google Adsense, Google Analytics
• ASP.NET 2.0 / C#
• MySQL Database
• jQuery

I was the sole web programmer for the new version of this website. However I worked along side the talented web designer Matt Brett for the user interface / look and feel elements. I analyzed the previous version which was running on classic ASP and modernized existing features. I also expanded the system and added the following features;

• Helped brainstorm, design and implement new features and services to expand the current business model
• Created various dynamic admin tools including dashboards, metrics, invoicing to increase profits and reduce administration overhead.
• Added a advertising network which brought in a new stream of revenue.
• Worked closely with the operators of the site to ensure all tools created were useful and efficent.

This application was built with the following tools.

• Visual Studio 2005
• C#/ASP.net 2.0
• jQuery
• SQL 2000, SQL 2005 Express (Full Text Indexing/Reporting Services)

The daredevils on Discovery’s Mythbusters demonstrated that if you followed a big rig by 100 feet, you could decrease your fuel consumption by 11 percent. The intrepid duo pushed the envelope further by following a truck at only 10 feet–a dangerous maneuver we don’t recommend viewers try at home!–and managed to decreased their gas consumption by 40 percent.

40%? That’s huge! I would have saved 40$ on my trip this weekend! However there are problems to doing this - it’s not co-ordinated. Truck drivers probably hate when people do this and to get the ideal %40 savings you have to do something stupid/unsafe.

So is there a business model here? Could truck drivers / shipping companies offer drafting as a service to cars passing by as a way to make extra profit to combat the fuel costs? Could people who drive cars that don’t get the best MPG (such as kick ass 04 WRX’s) use this as a way to lower their long haul costs? What if you were to somehow build a system that allows truck drivers to profit from their slipstream and create a safety system to protect both parties?

How about this idea - build a mechanical system that can be installed on top of the rear of big rig trailers. When a paying drafter approaches the rear of the truck - the system will lift and extend the drafting shield out. With the right materials you could build a very large cover that could create a draft shield for the following car. It could extend pretty far out so that a car could stay a safe distance. Or even because there would be some kind of wireless communication - an emergency tandem breaking system could be developed. Hell truckers could link a convoy together and make a draft chain. The guy out front could earn most of the money for being the wind breaker (heh-heh).

Obviously there would need to be some serious research into how the communication / payment system would work. Security would be paramount if it could interface with the drafting cars breaking system.

What needs to be researched / tweaked

1) Figure out how much fuel having the physical shield could save and tie that in with how much extra fuel cost would this add to a truck to carry the equipment. I.e. would it not even be worth doing this because the price charged to make it worthwhile be more than the potential energy savings for the end user.

2) How would the systems communicate / verify valid payers of the system. Would it be a on-demand fee? a Monthly subscription? Would there be a real-time communication between the two vehicles and a server? or just a valid token key on a daily/weekly basis?

So I don’t know - I don’t have the time/resources to work on something like this but it’s an idea - what do you think? Good business model / bad business model? It would be cool if this existed - I would use it for sure.

So to abstract it - Twitter is a disconnected asynchronous open social communication tool where all the users involved use it for small periods of time and are only really into inputting and consuming small bits of information. I think most users of this system are pretty cutting edge (which means they don’t care about ads) and I also think most of them are willing to trade small fractions of time /effort in order to keep this thing afloat.

OK so is it a stretch to call twitter a neural network?

Information passes amongst nodes (that’s us) from one party to another. Clusters of nodes (social circles) can interact with each other and information can pass to other circles. Why not leverage Twitter as .. well.. a as a super computer. Kinda like SETI@HOME but with a Amazon Mechanical Turk twist. Yea yea yea, I’m bringing up the “this + AMT = awesome” thing again. However after seeing this TED talk - I’m now 100% sure this concept is the future of the internet, in terms of big social impact.

Here is an interaction I just dreamed up if say I told Twitter I was good at both french and english (which I’m not). It could find a fragment of text needed to be translated and send it to me. My response will be seen by all of my friend and has the potential to span across multiple social clusters that could result in better and better responses.

Twitter Agent (direct message to me) Please translate to french: Press F5 to enter debug mode
Me, who only knows a little bit of french from school: @twitcore Le press f5 to entra mode du debug
My french speaking friend that knows French Fluently: @twitcore @bpandrew pressez f5 pour entrer corrigent le mode
My french speaking friends friend who knows French AND software : @twitcore @bpandrew [please imagine a even better translation here, the above one was from babelfish]
Friend of friend of friend who is even better than friend above that agrees with the above translation : @twitcore @bpandrew [i dunno, a yes/no? maybe a re-tweet of the answer above if its perfect?]

Maybe french wasn’t the best example but hopefully you got what went down there. What’s been going on amongst my cluster of friends are questions about the Javascript API jQuery, I’ll post a line of code and friends have been sending me back more optimized versions. Maybe even in addition to improving information friends can could “vote” on answers to provide a sort of social validation. That way by the time the twitter core gets and answer back, it will have multiple revisions plus a host of votes from many users.

Twitter could go out and started scoring deals to get information processed the based on “interview” profiles of their user base - figure out who is good at what, fragment out small chunks of work and pass it along. I don’t know - this probably has lots of holes in it, but that doesn’t mean the concept should be passed over. I just see the ad revenue model to be like putting cheap all-season tires on a F1 race car. It gets the job done but a lot of potential is going to waste.

What I want to do is add some context to Jon’s recent achievements. While he has been outputting the above awesomeness - he spends the majority of his day being a good husband, a father of two, working hard at a full time job and then still has time to cheat up his xbox live gamer score So his success has been accomplished in those spare hours after the kids are in bed. Not only does he put out great apps for free - each app gets supported and revised. He has change logs, installers and FAQ’s. He has a forum where he helps his *many* users. With such overhead and such little time, Jon still has been able to put out, to date, 10 tools. I’m amazed that he can manage all of this, it speaks volumes about his project management skills, his amazing and simple time management system and his overall sense of quality.

Oh yea did I mention this guy is a self-taught programmer? I remember years ago when I first met Jon, I was a co-op student where he currently worked. Jon was a systems-analyst and right away I noticed how talented he was with anything technical and how much respect everyone else in our organization had for him. Back then I knew when he took a serious stab at coding it would be a short amount of time to get where he’s at now. I really can’t wait to see what’s next for Jon and when all of his hard work starts to really pay off.

Congrats Jon!

However one thing I don’t like is I feel that I’m a fish out of water if I’m in a situation where I can’t/don’t want to take the thing out to navigate the menus or mess with the volume. One reason why I loved iPods over any other MP3 player was how I could navigate the menus while the thing was in my pocket, or in situations where I didn’t want to take my eyes off the road. Hell even if I’m laying in bed I don’t want to have to pick the thing up and put it right in front of my eyes to do the simplest tasks.

Sightless navigation Suggestions. There should be a “Travel mode” where the screen goes blank but it accepts these commands to navigate.

1. Stop/Start: Double Tap with two fingers.
2. Next Song: Double Tap right side of the screen.
3. Last Song: Double tap left side of the screen.
4. Fast Forward: One finger hold and slide second finger to the right.
5. Rewind: One finger hold and second finger slide to the left.
6. Volume Up: same gesture as zooming out a picture (pinch and open).
7. Volume Down: same gesture as zooming in.

Hopefully we’ll see something like this in an update.

Update: I checked out the manual - http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iPod_touch_Features_Guide.pdf

If you double click the home button it enables the navigation controls on the lock screen. Two problems with this.

1) When the screen goes blank again the input stops working so you have to reclick the home button.
2) You have to guess where the controls are. If you can’t see the screen it should use the entire size of the screen and methods like I mention above. You can easily figure out which side is up because of the home button and where the earphones come from.

Lately I’ve been thinking about economics, capitalism, technology, power/generation and sustainability. I’ve also been reading about projections in our technology i.e. how advanced computers and robotics will be by the time I retire. I then think about my 5+ years of work experience. The things I’ve done and the jobs I’ve seen others do around me. I was laying in bed thinking about all of this and an idea just came to me, so it’s blog time!

So here’s the problem - with our current technology and the right software - how many jobs out there do you think can be eliminated? Well what about in 5 years or in 10 years - if everything evolves in the exponential manner it is, what will the job market be like? Do you think we’ll need receptionists and filing clerks and janitors? Or even my job - who needs a lowly CMS coder when open-source systems be insanley powerful one day. With rising costs of fuel and resources how many jobs that exist now do you think we will have to scrap? So that means the modern world is screwed right? Jobs have to exist, we need to keep people working so they can earn money to buy things.

So if all of these jobs get eliminated by giant software and robotics companies - not everyone will be suited to do the jobs at these places. So what work will be left for the general obsolete-skilled masses? Can we still run a capitalist society if there is no practical value an average person can give? Well wait a second - I’ve been thinking about power and sustainability too remember?

OK so Power generation - human power generation. Not the evil way like in the Matrix but as a way for people to earn money. This kind of exists right now, but on a home and personal scale it doesn’t make sense.

So how’s this for pants-on-head crazy. Business idea of the future: make a Gym and then call it a human power plant. This gym is not only free - but people get paid to generate energy. I.e. Run on treadmills and bikes - even have weight machines that can generate power. Every person will carry a card/RFID chip that tracks their individual output. The “Gym” then resells the energy back into the grid. So everyone can just workout all day / watch TV on a treadmill and get a decent salary. Best of all this can happen anywhere - every city can have multiple gyms - and they can compete on price they pay out to the people.

Check this video out - if it’s good enough for a cat, it’s good enough for me

If this does happen - I’d take breaks from being a software designer/business guy now and then to just travel/enjoy life and get in shape. So what do you think - good idea? Crazy idea? Obviously the amount and value of energy a single human can create vs the cost of other fuels is the deciding factor in if this will ever happen or not. All I know is the only resource on this planet we are getting more and more of is human beings. Fat ones too

Update: Wee this exists! Check this out.

Quadtris is a XNA game I was working on about a year ago. I decided to remake some of my favourite classic games. I started with Pong and then moved to Tetris. After I got the basic engine done I decided it would be cool if I added 4 player co-op support. Thinking back to some of my favourite gaming experiences - I always enjoyed those moments where you had to work together. i.e. in Halo3 driving the warthog loaded up with your buddies. So Quadtris was born and I even got some time to polish up the loading screen and menus. I decided to move on to my current game project and left the game as is - it still doesn’t have scoring, and I had to upgrade to XNA 2 to get the video below. Sadly, After upgrading, my sound code got borked so you can’t hear the awesome beeps and bloops that are supposed to happen.

Video Demo

Yea I totally blow it at the end… but hey you try playing 2 player tetris by yourself!

Click here to download the XNA 1.0 360 code for this game (w/ working sound).
Click here to download the XNA 1.0 Windows code for this game (w/ working sound).
Click here to download the XNA 2.0 Windows code for this game (no sound).

Here is my tested and accepted C# solution (I got 210/250 for it) it’s a pretty direct solution for this problem.


public class HowEasy
{
public int pointVal(string problemStatement)
{
int totalchars = 0;
int totalwords = 0;
int currentword = 0;
for( int i = 0; i < problemStatement.Length; ++i )
{
int ccode = (int)problemStatement[i];
if( (ccode >= 65 && ccode <= 90) || (ccode >= 97 && ccode <= 122) ) //a-z A-Z
{
totalchars++;
currentword++;
}

int result = totalchars / totalwords;
if( result <= 3 )
{
return 250;
}
else if( result >= 4 && result <= 5 )
{
return 500;
}
else
{
return 1000;
}
}
}