WhoIsKevin

Late Night Pair Programming

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:38:31 -0500

Late Night Pair Programming

"I find it totally hilarious how dumb people who claim to be IT professionals can be. Anybody with..."

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:33:46 -0400

“I find it totally hilarious how dumb people who claim to be IT professionals can be. Anybody with 1/2 an active neuron can see that social networking is a fad with a short lifespan and business wise only useful for some minor low cost marketing. But some how you find self called “professionals” claiming that it will change the way people work. I guess that is the reason why social networking sites are at the top of the block list on MOST corporate systems and even at small businesses. Sorry to burst your delusional bubble but social networking is a time wasting FAD that (unless you are in marketing) has no place at the office.”

- Clay Shirky: Social networking will change business like PC, laptop, email | ZDNet

From the comments. Awesome!

"You target Apple products primarily. Tell me why you’ve chosen to do that? That’s a good..."

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 09:23:43 -0400

“You target Apple products primarily. Tell me why you’ve chosen to do that? That’s a good question. I started this gig four years ago — and so back then the Apple products were way easier to break into than, say, Windows. Really? Yeah, they were very far behind in security. That goes against the common perception. Yeah, I know. People thought they were secure when they weren’t. And when I told people that, no one would believe me. So the reason I started is it was easy. But since then, with (OS X) Lion coming out, it’s caught up. Now it’s not any easier anymore. I either have to find something else that’s easier to work on — or whatever.”

- Hacker can shut down Apple MacBook battery - CNN.com

"david karapetyan says: That’s not too surprising. Everybody and their mom is a social media expert..."

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 07:30:11 -0400

“david karapetyan says: That’s not too surprising. Everybody and their mom is a social media expert these days and any time there is that kind of expertise among the populous you can be sure that skill is completely useless and based on folklore and mythology instead of actual science.”

- Tim Harford — Article — Why social marketing doesn’t work

Funniest Quote from iPad event

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 15:43:41 -0500

“GarageBand for iPad. This is no toy. You can use this for real work. I cannot tell you how many hours teenagers are going to spend making music.”

LOL

My foot hurts just a bit. Yes those are screws.

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:42:44 -0500

My foot hurts just a bit. Yes those are screws.

Interesting Airline Rules

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 03:27:21 -0400

So iPads and ereaders still get no respect from the airlines. I was sitting in the plane reading on my nook. The door was still open and tons of people were talking on their cell phones.

The flight attendant made me put away my ereader. So my device in airplane mode isn’t allowed but I was allowed to pull out my cell phone and have a conversation. Out of the two which one would create the most interference?

Some day airlines and the fcc will have rules that make sense.

this takes patience.

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:02:51 -0400

this takes patience.

Sump Pump Monitor

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 07:34:27 -0400

Sump Pump Monitor:

Hooked up my sump pump monitor last night. I’ll follow up with more detail later but this was a simple implementation using an IOBridge and a tilt sensor. Hooked the tilt sensor to the digital input of the IOBridge. I just attached the tilt sensor to the sump pump outgoing pipe and since it vibrates when the pump runs I get the digital input turning on and off with the vibration of the water through the pipe.

BN eReader for iPad

Thu, 27 May 2010 09:41:38 -0400

BN eReader for iPad:

This is why Barnes and Noble rocks. Now I can read on my Nook (reduced eye strain, better in outdoor, great battery life) or on iPad. Includes LendMe ability which is awesome to share books with your friends.

iBook just isn’t nearly as good.

Bigtrak is back!!!

Tue, 25 May 2010 21:52:31 -0400

Bigtrak is back!!!:

Need I say more

Co-Working Space in Louisville

Sun, 23 May 2010 17:48:09 -0400

Co-Working Space in Louisville:

I’m so glad to see this concept taking hold in Louisville. Definitely something I want to get involved in.

Drupal Commons is growing | Acquia

Wed, 19 May 2010 14:59:16 -0400

Drupal Commons is growing | Acquia:

Drupal continues to build out more common functionality through Distributions.

Geek Dinner v0.8 | Louisville, KY | May 27th 2010

Wed, 05 May 2010 07:25:00 -0400

Geek Dinner v0.8 | Louisville, KY | May 27th 2010:

Time for another collection of geeks to gather for food and beer.

My new fixie.

Mon, 03 May 2010 14:08:46 -0400

My new fixie.

Just What Are We Developing?

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:05:00 -0500

I’ve been thinking about this post for some time and I finally decided I should go ahead and try to express my frustration with current application development.

The root of the problem is that currently the applications that are given the most press and the most “excitement” are useless. We are at a time when there is computing power literally in the hands of users that until now was unprecedented. Yet what are we developing on these new platforms like the iPhone, Blackberry, and G1? Well a quick survey of the popular applications will tell you very quickly that apparently the great achievement of having a “smart” phone is being able to play games. I don’t know about all programmers out there but I’ve never gotten excited about the potential of a game. After all it doesn’t save a company money or make a user more productive or increase safety or anything that a really well designed application might be able to accomplish. If it isn’t a game it is a restaurant finder or something that identifies a song on the radio or pretends to pour a beer. Well there is a great advancement to our society a device that pretends to pour a beer! However, one programmer did connect up a phone to a servo motor to pour a beer once you have loaded up the bottle and the empty glass of course.

Similar problems exist with the “run anywhere” platforms like Adobe AIR. So far I haven’t found many real applications written in Adobe AIR. Sure there are little apps you can download that will show you twitter feeds or pull other RSS feeds to your screen but what about a real application. I actually did find one application called Klok for tracking time that seems to be an actual application and not another glorified RSS reader. But a quick review of the Adobe AIR marketplace will let you decide for yourself.

And what about the great web applications frameworks that are supposed to allow us to put together great applications on the web? Anything out there with meat to it? Rails, Grails, Django and others all claim to speed our development and to some degree they do but what are we developing? Another friend application so I can communicate useless status to people that I probably don’t hang out with but for some reason need to be my friends. I laugh at social media applications that pull together all my RSS feeds from every useless service like facebook, twitter, linkedin and all my other “essential applications” (I apologize to my friends that have worked on these applications since I know the code does take some time but for the “real” aspect no such apology). I want to see really useful tools that people can use to really do something meaningful like save money on groceries, gas or save on heating costs.

All this useless development leads to a lot of dead ends. It causes rates to go down and makes it so that the average business person has about as much respect for programming as they have for what their kids are doing on their smart phones.

So what is the answer? I have a suggestion. Let’s all start to look beyond games and communicating with our virtual friends. Real programmers can certainly make something useful for these platforms. Let’s try to develop things that really matter? Of course this won’t be easy. First we would like to get paid. Free software is for people without families and bills to pay. So that means real work. Not some weekend of coding that produces another RSS feed reader but real work with a long time line and possibly some real use in the future. If you are in college and considering programming as a career learn more about the real world connections to computers like embedded systems and hardware. Don’t just think you can write the next facebook. Ad supported models are not good business plans. I think the future of application development is going to be in understanding how to use real data like temperature and energy use to then make real changes that can benefit users. If you are thinking about writing another game or “social” application then good luck to you. Personally I think that is the reason we will continue to see hard economic times…we can’t focus on anything beyond a day or two and that leads to games and “social media”. Which by the way tells me we are not in hard enough economic times when people are still paying an extra thirty to forty dollars a month for a data plan that allows them to look up restaurants, compare prices of other things to buy or send email.

Electric Scooter Arrives

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:36:00 -0500

My electric scooter arrived late yesterday afternoon. It is an R-30 from EVTAmerica. I spent some time last night un-crating, removing plastic wrap, and just a small handle bar adjustment.

I did a quick run late last night and this thing quickly hit 40 mph without any trouble. Very impressive. I can’t wait for the weather to let up a bit so I can ride it to work. Supposed to rain all day today so I’ll skip for now. Photos of my entire assembly process are on picassa web.

New Job with SolutionSet

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:28:00 -0400

I’ve been waiting to make this official announcement. I am taking a position with SolutionSet. Like some wild trip through the past I am going to be starting an office here in Louisville with Tom Osborne. Tom and I worked at TechRepublic a long time ago (10 years? wow!). Even a bit more strange is that we may actually be in the same building where TechRepublic started out.

The SolutionSet Blurb:
“Launched in 2003, SolutionSet (http://www.solutionset.com) combines
industry-leading technology with user-centered creative to deliver the
latest approaches in web development, digital marketing and brand
experience. As a brand technology and interactive agency, we utilize
the latest technology to turn our clients’ visions into the website,
brand promise, ad campaign, application interface, or email campaign
they need to run their business.

With offices in San Francisco and Palo Alto, we stage the convergence
of brand and technology which allows us to view each client challenge
with a bigger picture in mind and offer strategic solutions based on
that visibility. We have a proven track record for delivering to
clients like Chevron, EBay, Tivo, Verisign, Cisco, Autodesk, and
LucasFilm. SolutionSet is a Webby Award recipient and is number 23 on
the Inc Magazine Top 500 Fastest Growing Companies overall list and
number 2 in the IT Services category.”

I’m fired up about starting out with SolutionSet. We are going to have some great times and do some really incredible work. We will also be filling a number of positions for Java developers and CSS/XHTML people.

Hopefully all my clients (current and old) can come on board to do work with us at SolutionSet.

Animals Up Close With a Wide Angle Lens

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:15:00 -0400

Drupal 6 Module Development

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:38:00 -0400

In my continued quest to increase my Drupal 6 knowledge I picked up this book on module development for version 6.

Over all this is an excellent book. This is definitely targeted more at a developer which is probably why I liked this book. I think the author does a great job of explaining the basics of how Drupal works and specifically covers a lot of information on hooks which are key to understanding how to accomplish most any task in Drupal.
The modules that are developed through the book are well chosen because they cover the essential pieces of module development and at the same time allow a little time for some more advanced topics. I was surprised at how well the theming code was covered in this book. Most module development books usually leave all the user interface development out but this book shows how you implement your module in a way to take advantage of the theming capabilities in Drupal.
Over all this is a great book and if you are familiar with Drupal a great way to either learn about module development or get up to speed on some of the Drupal 6 changes to modules.