December 2010
1 post
Download iPhone Contacts to Linux
Motivation: My Macbook Pro from 2006/2007 quit working and I needed to get all the contacts off my iPhone and onto my new HTC G2.  You can’t just plug the phone into a windows machine and use iTunes to do a backup because the phone was formatted for OSX.  Ubuntu One can sync the contacts but that costs money, as do most of the other contact synchronization apps in the iPhone market. ...
Dec 9th
October 2010
1 post
Damn You Facebook!
Ever since bryceboe’s contributions, PhotoGrabber has looked more and more like a way to preserve your Facebook life offline. There have been requests to make it download wallposts and other information but I never got around to implementing those ideas. And it’s a good thing I didn’t bother because Facebook recently released a new feature which allows you to download all of...
Oct 12th
August 2010
1 post
Linux Style Window Dragging →
Problem: 600 lines of vertical resolution (common on netbooks) is not enough to display some windows.  This is not a problem on Linux because the window managers let you ‘alt+click’ anywhere on a window to drag it around.  Windows users have a more difficult time because a window can only be dragged around by the bar at the top. Solution: AltDrag adds linux style window dragging to...
Aug 16th
July 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Django OpenID
I’m a big fan of using a website without having to register.  I’ve been playing around with Django looking for a good way to do OpenID authentication.  There are a ton of apps out there to help with this and I’ve found two that look to be good options. http://code.google.com/p/django-openid-consumer/ https://launchpad.net/django-openid-auth Both are forked from this...
Jul 19th
PhotoGrabber r74
I hate finding bugs right in the middle of publishing a new release.  Well it’s fixed now and the new PhotoGrabber is available for download!  The previous version was downloaded over 22 thousand times.  Hopefully this release will be even more popular!  Some new features and improvements to check out: Download all albums uploaded by a user Download the full albums that a user is tagged...
Jul 1st
June 2010
1 post
Jun 4th
http://www.bryceboe.com/2010/05/27/facebook-photogr... →
Bryce Boe, a UCSB Ph.D. student has modified the PhotoGrabber source code, fixing bugs and adding some cool new features.  I plan on incorporating some, if not all, of his modifications later this week along with other bug fixes.
Jun 1st
April 2010
1 post
History of the Bunny
My unnatural interest in bunnies has been a mascot for me for 9 years now.  I have been re-hashing the same idea over and over through different technologies for almost a decade.  As I’ve been preparing for the next reincarnation, I decided to look back and reflect on what I’ve created and learned in the name of bunny. The Start It started in 7th grade when I was learning ASP, HTML,...
Apr 18th
March 2010
3 posts
Mar 21st
Mar 16th
Mar 13th
February 2010
2 posts
me: monika got me dr pepper flavored chap stick
John: nice. did you eat it all yet?
Feb 17th
5 tags
WatchWatch
Too bad I couldn’t get this on the superbowl… :-/
Feb 8th
1 note
January 2010
3 posts
Cool Beans
An Italian magazine contacted me about distributing PhotoGrabber on a CD included with their magazine.  I’ve never heard of Computer Bild Italia but according to their media kit they have a circulation of “48,784 copies every fourteen days”.
Jan 27th
Send Postcards →
My newest endeavor - a website for sending snailmail, IRL postcards.  It was written in Python using Django and all postcard designs are creative commons licensed photographs.  Send a postcard to a friend from the convenience of your living room!
Jan 14th
“he would use KDE, too. KDE is for criminals and ricers. gnome is the only...”
– My brother referring to the hacker of a linux box of mine.
Jan 4th
December 2009
3 posts
Dec 31st
Dec 30th
PhotoGrabber - 1337
Success! The Windows version of PhotoGrabber has been downloaded 1337 times and the OSX version 308 times. Facebook reports 698 application users and 9 fans (4 of which aren’t my friends!) Later tonight a new version will be released.  Some things to look forward to are: The ability to download friends’ photos Now works on Ubuntu An option to post a really creepy message on your...
Dec 20th
November 2009
1 post
PhotoGrabber Update!
I’m Famous! Kind of.  PG has been written about on at least 1 english and 2 italian blogs.  It was also mentioned on stackoverflow’s sister site superuser! And PG got its first community submitted bug/patch, Issue 5.  My brother comments: John:  cool!  you should reject the patch for not having a test or not following style though.  now that you’re an open source maintainer,...
Nov 5th
October 2009
1 post
4 tags
PhotoGrabber →
A week or so ago I released this python application for downloading pictures from facebook.  Binaries for Windows and OSX are provided. Enjoy!
Oct 29th
4 tags
iostat
iostat is a nifty tool in the sysstat package that reports CPU and disk I/O statistics.  I used it on my initial profiling of CASA to get a system-wide view of how resources were being used. Command iostat -m 60 >> iostat.info & IOPID=$1 <your command> sleep 120 kill $IOPID Explanation The -m option is the poll interval.  Here statistics are printed every 60 seconds. I used...
Oct 1st
September 2009
2 posts
2 tags
CASA Introduction
CASA is a project developed by NRAO for processing data collected by radio telescopes.  Datasets generated from typical observations are currently ~10GB in size. Upgrades to the VLA in Socorro New Mexico and the new ALMA telescope in Chile are expected to generate datasets in the range of 100-200GB for the same observation time within the next few years.  This has created a data processing problem...
Sep 26th