StudioGlyphic

Leaving MySpace

glyphic — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 06:05:13 +0000

The rumors are true. After nearly five years of making and breaking stuff at MySpace, I’ve decided to move on. Tomorrow will be my last day.

The decision to leave had more to do with the new gig than the old; it’s a small start-up where I’ll be leading the product side of things, facing new responsibilities and challenges, and hopefully learning something along the way.

As for MySpace and all my former and soon-to-be-former colleagues, I hope they all succeed fantastically. Partially for their sake, but mostly for my own. It’s tough doing tech in LA; the more any one of us succeeds, the better the chances we all succeed. Or at least get a few million in funding to go chase some crazy idea.

Having fun with iPhone testers

glyphic — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 02:14:09 +0000

I discovered something fun to do by complete accident. My wife sent me a text message from one of the iPhones at the Apple store while we were playing with them. Today I got two more messages from that same device. I promptly replied:

Don’t buy an iPhone 4, get an Android instead! AT&T sucks!

Now I wish I’d gotten all the iPhone numbers.

Revitalize your desktop

glyphic — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 06:31:38 +0000

Now that I’ve got the new machine up and running, I’m trying to figure out what I should do with the old one. Windows was running like a dog on the old box, which is why I wanted to upgrade in the first place. Just for kicks, I decided to install Ubuntu, a free operating system based on Linux. I’m really impressed.

Ubuntu was easy to install, had no problems recognizing any of my hardware, and feels like it runs 3x faster than Windows 7 on that same machine. Even browsing web pages seems faster than on my new Windows 7 machine. Plus it comes with a bunch of software pre-installed for viewing/editing/saving documents, spreadsheets, presentations, photos, videos, and songs. All for free!

The interface is kind of like a cross between Mac OS and Windows, so it might not be something that some will want to use if they’re used to the paradigms of a particular OS. But if you’ve got old hardware and want to wring more performance out of it at no cost and no risk, I’d definitely recommend giving Ubuntu a shot.

If you use the Windows installer, you can install Ubuntu alongside Windows and choose which one to load when you turn on your computer. This way you can try out everything that you’re used to doing and compare (i.e., how does Ubuntu handle re-tweeting stupid things, watching videos, reading email, and occasionally doing work?). With the dual boot, you can then load Windows whenever you need to play on Full Tilt Poker or play a PC game.

As a side benefit, there’s almost zero chance that you’ll get infected by a virus or spyware. The people who make viruses and spyware target operating systems and browsers based on market share, and Linux has only about a fifth of the market that Mac OS does, and Mac OS is completely dwarfed by Windows (20:1). Using Ubuntu does not, however, protect you from accepting a check from a Nigerian ex-President / foreign exchange student who wants to rent your room / overeager Craigslist buyer who wants your car and getting ripped off in the process. That you’ll have to figure out on your own.

Installing Windows 7 from a bootable USB drive

glyphic — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:33:39 +0000

There are a lot of Google search results with guides on how to create bootable USB drives from which you can install Windows. Unfortunately, a lot of them are outdated or missing key pieces of information. Fortunately, I found two pages that were pretty helpful:

Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool – Who needs a guide when you can have software do it for you? Microsoft’s online software store has a tool that makes it easy to make a bootable USB drive or DVD from the ISO.

at Kevin’s Blog – Kevin has put together a fairly complete guide to how to make a bootable USB drive. It’s useful even when you use the Microsoft tool because you might end up having to manually run bootsect (e.g., you’re making a x64 installer on a machine running the x86 version, so you can’t actually run bootsect from the x64 ISO).

As I type this, my computer is busily rebooting away during the installation process. I think it’s almost done.

I bought a new computer in pieces from NewEgg

glyphic — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:30:54 +0000

Five years ago I went hunting around for the best prices for computer parts online and at Fry’s. I ended up getting parts at all different times and driving to a couple different Fry’s. This time around I ordered everything from NewEgg. They generally have great prices on things, and I also like the idea of spending my money locally (their HQ is about an hour east of here). They’re pretty fast, too; I placed the order Sunday at 2, and everything showed up this morning around 10.

Case: Antec Sonata III 500
Newegg: $119.99 – $20 discount – $20 MIR = $79.99

Motherboard: MSI P55-GD65
Newegg: $159.99 – $10 MIR = $149.99

CPU: Intel Core i5-750 Processor (8M Cache, 2.66 GHz)
Newegg: $199.99

Graphics: EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+
Newegg: $129.99 – $20 MIR = $109.99

Memory: G.SKILL 4GB DDR3 1600
Newegg: $105.99

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive
Newegg: $64.99

Cooling Fan/Heatsink: Zalman CNPS9500 AT
Newegg: $40.99

Total: $891.11 shipped – $50 MIR = $841.11

If I were smart, I would have done the 2% Bing cashback and saved another $18.

Help me build a new computer

glyphic — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 07:05:58 +0000

The old computer is painful to use, and since I built it five years ago, I’d say it’s definitely time for a new computer. Any suggestions on components to buy?

I’ll probably go for a newer Sonata case, intel CPU, nVidia card, Zalman CPU fan, etc., but I’d appreciate any insights or tips y’all might have to offer. I’m not particularly interested in computer hardware, so I have no idea what’s out there, what’s good, etc. Nor am I that interested in scouring Tom’s Hardware to find out. Yep. I’m lazy.

As was the case the last time around, I’m not really interested in getting something that can play the latest video games flawlessly, just something that will give me decent performance for the price. I don’t intend to scavenge parts off the old machine except maybe the optical drive, and I’ll use my old monitor with the new machine. Overall, I’ll probably feel pretty good about the whole thing if you keep my budget around $550.

Related: The New Poker Machine

The First World

glyphic — Wed, 19 May 2010 01:43:55 +0000

This has got to be an experience that’s unique to the first world: you walk into a bathroom and your nostrils are hit with the scent of artificial lemon attempting to mask harsh disinfectants that will kill anything and you think “Clean.”

Pack a power strip

glyphic — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:14:42 +0000

Whether you’re at the airport or on jury duty, busting out the power strip can make you look like a genius. The non-geniuses are the ones walking around hunched over, laptop and power cord in hand, desperately looking for an open outlet that just doesn’t exist. Power strips are also handy for dealing with the ridiculously short length of Apple’s iPhone USB cable.

IM on the go with meebo for iPhone

glyphic — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:32:34 +0000

I’ve already talked about using meebo’s web app, but now meebo has an iPhone client:

one app to rule them all

The Meebo native iPhone app. It’s fast, it’s pretty, and it just flat-out works. Available now for iPhone and iPod touch.

via Meebo for iPhone | meebo.

Like the web app, the iPhone client has an elegant interface and keeps you logged in and alerted to all your latest IMs. Now that they’ve got both the web and the iPhone covered, I can’t imagine using anything else for IM.

Bringing Facebook comments back to WordPress

glyphic — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:01:38 +0000

If you use WordPress, import your blog’s feed into Facebook Notes, and are a little annoyed that the Facebook comments aren’t reflected on your “real blog,” then you might want to install Facebook CommentsTNG:

Facebook CommentsTNG is a plugin for your WordPress blog that will spider your notes page and find imported WordPress blogs and bring the comments back into WordPress.

via The Kingdom of Philtopia » Plugins.

The Facebook comments show up with the comment writer’s name, a link to Facebook, and a Facebook logo as the avatar.

I suppose there are a couple small privacy concerns here.

First, you need to provide your Facebook credentials in order to crawl the notes and import the comments. I’m guessing Facebook Connect doesn’t provide an API for this. So it’s a question of whether you trust a guy named Phil to write a benevolent WP plugin. You might want to take a few seconds to view the plugin code.

Second, your “friends” who have commented on Facebook haven’t necessarily opted in to having their full name published on the Internet outside of a closed system like Facebook. But if this is something that actually concerns them, I’d advise that they not comment on anything on Facebook. Just visit the WordPress blog and make up an anonymous handle. Trusting a website to keep you safe/anonymous/private is stupid. You need to take responsibility for your own online presence.