Easy on the Slaw

I have been on the hunt recently for some good test data, specifically, personal data. Like fake names, fake addresses, fake emails, fake phone numbers, and fake credit cards. I had resorted to many different tactics such as creating names from baby name lists, adding random numbers to to a standard set of a few street names. Oak St. seems to be my old stand by street name. But one thing that I could never recreate in a timely manner is international addresses & International phone numbers & fake credit card numbers, but I guess that is why the interWEB was created and sites like Fake name generator & generatedata.com exist. Fake name generator is just a great site, the international data that it generated was very high quality and helped enormously on a project I am currently working on. The other site generatedata.com was great for random selections of number ranges and ids also enums the only bummer is that it limits you to 200 rows of data where as fake name generator allows you to be emailed up to 40000 rows. The upside is that generatedata.com has opened up their source code so you can download the code that runs the site and remove that pesky 200 row limit. But all in all very high praise for both of these useful sites, although now that I look around they don’t seem to be that new so as always I am a little late to the party.

Posted on March 5th, 2008 | No Comments »

Since I made the switch and got a macbook pro a few weeks ago I have been on the hunt for software. Installing trials and downloading new software I had never heard of living in the PC world for so long. The main goal was to fill in functionality that I had come to rely on that lived on my PC. So there have been some good and some bad. Some of the outstanding software I have come across has been, Coda, Transmit, Textmate, Xcode, Aperture (its expensive but it is really good), but the software that surprised me the most was a recent offering from Flying Meat called Acorn.

The key to this software is its simplicity. This may be the only graphics program you could become proficient with in under a few hours & it still allows you to do some fairly cool stuff. At just $39.99 it is really a bargain. The tools are all packaged in one window so there is no need to keep a bunch of little tool windows open.

Now while I do really like this software there were a few minor issues that I came across while working with it. The magic wand selection of areas is a bit touchy with zoom, meaning that if you are zoomed out to far it doesn’t seem to select anything, but if you zoom in (100% zoom or greater) and select that area it works. Also the image resize seems to remove a few pixels on the right of the image when you select a smaller size. These are just 2 things I noticed while going through this otherwise excellent program.

Below are some of the images I created while testing Flying Meat’s Acorn.

Ths is the image I started with.

Now I am going to try my hand at creating a few plugins. :)

Posted on September 22nd, 2007 | No Comments »

I have written a complete code library for twitter using PHP for an upcoming project I will be releasing soon.
Get the code here twitterPHP.

Methods
update($status)
publicTimeline($sinceid=false)
friendsTimeline($id=false,$since=false)
userTimeline($id=false,$count=20,$since=false)
showStatus($id)
friends($id=false)
followers()
featured()
showUser($id)
directMessages($since=false)
sendDirectMessage($user,$text)

Examples

Get the Public Timeline

$t= new twitter();
$res = $t->publicTimeline();
if($res===false){
   echo "ERROR<hr/>";
   echo "<pre>";
   print_r($t->responseInfo);
   echo "</pre>";
}else{
   echo "SUCCESS<hr/>";
   echo "<pre>";
   print_r($res);
   echo "</pre>";
}

Update your status (change username and password of course)

$t= new twitter();
$t->username='username';
$t->password='password';
$res = $t->update('i am testing twitter.class.php');
if($res===false){
   echo "ERROR<hr/>";
   echo "<pre>";
   print_r($t->responseInfo);
   echo "</pre>";
}else{
   echo "SUCCESS<hr/>Status Posted";
}

Let me know what you think or if you find this useful.

Posted on April 26th, 2007 | 14 Comments »

I found a guitar case on the street in Brooklyn, as I was walking to practice no less, with guitar in hand (without a case). Its was a festivius miracle. The case was pretty beat up but nothing a little duck tape and elbow grease couldn’t take care of. So I set out on a mission to repair a long neglected guitar case. Here are some before shots so you know what I was dealing with.

Before

The Process

As complicated as this DIY project was I will try and simplify it, as much as possible.

1. Safety first, break out the trusty Safety Goggles.
2. Prepare your exacto knife by first putting a blade in it.
3. Practice cutting with the exacto knife on a napkin or a material of similar composition. (This may take days)
4. Move up to something like cardboard or a material of similar composition. (If you didn’t slack on the napkin cutting you may be able to learn this in under 3 or 4 hours)
5. Practice peeling and applying duck tape. (The cardboard you have already cut makes a good test subject. Careful not to accidentally tape an appendage to cardboard. It hurts.)
6. Now you are ready to move on to the real thing.
7. A break may do you good here. Maybe some tea. I suggest Green Tea it will calm your nerves
8. Estimate in your head how long a piece of duck tape you may need. (once you cut duck tape it will never be whole again)
9. Now tape all the edges that are broken.
10. And cut the remaining edges in to a design.

After

Posted on March 14th, 2007 | No Comments »

Ok, so this is my first post. Having missed SXSW and all the twitter self love, I feel a little out of the loop. So what’s a guy to do? How about write a crappy little program that has about as mush chance at saving the world as well me. So here I am jumping on the bandwagon.
Twitter Words just takes the recent twitters from a user or a user and their friends and spits back a list to see which words are used the most and where the word “twitter” falls in the list.
Here are a few examples.
johnedwards
cnnbrk
laughingsquid
Scobleizer

Posted on March 12th, 2007 | No Comments »