run 4/29/08 April 29, 2008
Posted by vinnyt in : Exercise, fitness , add a comment weight: 211.4
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run 4/28/08 April 28, 2008
Posted by vinnyt in : Exercise , add a comment weight: 210.4
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run 4/27/08 April 27, 2008
Posted by vinnyt in : Exercise , add a comment Weight: 210.8
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iPhone SDK, this is it. March 7, 2008
Posted by vinnyt in : Apple, Computer Science Theory, FreeBSD, GPS, Mac, Mac Apps, Programming, iPhone , add a comment I have been developing applications for mobile devices going on about 6 years now. I started out developing applications for a major medical information company here in Kansas City by the name of Cerner. Our platform was PocketPC, and from a development stand point it was nice, not that bad, but just not that powerful. There where limitations on the device that we encountered and had to overcome on a near daily basis. In the end however we successfully created a suite of applications that is in use today and doing quite well. My role was in this case to build most of the low level foundations that where used by the other developers. This sounds simple but frankly speaking it isn’t I had to in most cases devise from scratch many things that in my mind should be facilitated by the OS, but in pocketPC at the time they where not there.
I next moved on to PalmOS. I worked for a company that was targeting the trucking industry. Palm OS was about as bare bones as one could imagine, but it allowed for those of us interested in computer science and why we optimize our code a unique opportunity to explore that side of our skill set. Translation, the devices where very underpowered and so everything had to run as efficiently as possible to ensure that the user experience was not compromised. The result was we abandoned the projects and platform because well the target audience didn’t see the use and it would not fit in their business and second the applications we created where so complex they would be unusable.
Having developed on both of these there is one major problem that both devices share: designing a usable UI is extremely difficult. The stylus interface is terrible, and the screen is not big enough to build anything that needs large amounts of data. Next, each OS is very limited. Most of the applications I wrote needed to be asynchronous and networked. This meant multiple threads of execution and network connectivity when it was present. Let me just say this worked some of the time, and usually, when you did one thing you got locked out of something else. The last application I wrote for the mobile platform was on a pocketPC phone I carried for work. I used .NET and actually in very few lines I produced an application that connected to a bluetooth GPS downloaded position data and when a network became present the data would be uploaded to a web service where it was rendered(http://vinnyt.org/location/v3/) this worked pretty well but I ran into the same headaches I hit before network didn’t work all that well and the multi-threading was poor.
I firmly believe that the iPhone will solve these problems and it is going to be the future of mobile computing. To start with the OS is Unix under the hood this is hands down the future of computing. It has been the past and I believe that in the years to come it will continue to advance and evolve. With it you get multi-threading that will scale, you get robust networking and a rich API set that will take care of most of the problems that we as mobile developers encounter. The iPhone UI is very intuitive and with a bit of forethought the UI constructs provided will lead to some very interesting and great applications. I believe that in the next few years we are going to see the market share of this device expand nearly exponentially… Mark my words.
Call For Authors February 17, 2008
Posted by vinnyt in : General , add a comment Hello,
I have been operating this blog for some time now, but I’ve come to the realization that I can’t be the only author for this site. I’m trying to hunt down some contributing authors. If you have an interest in adding content drop me a line at vtoms@vinnyt.org.
Another film February 17, 2008
Posted by vinnyt in : movies , add a comment Here is another film that I had a bit of a bigger role in.
Stay the Same Never Change February 13, 2008
Posted by vinnyt in : life, movies , add a comment This summer I had an opportunity to be in a film called “Stay the Same Never Change”. It was made by Laurel Nakadate. I am still not clear on my role, here is a poster for the film. I really appreciate being given the chance to participate in this film.
The Rolex Experiment January 21, 2008
Posted by vinnyt in : General , add a comment I am an avid watch collector I only purchase watches that I won’t feel bad if they are damaged ( I buy replicas ). I saw this site and thought it was interesting because I try to conceal what I wear but seeing and documenting peoples reactions sounds pretty cool.
http://rolexperiment.blogspot.com/
Leopard October 28, 2007
Posted by vinnyt in : Apple, Mac, Operating System Debates , add a comment On Friday Oct. 26th I joined hundreds of others in a line at the local Apple store and purchased a copy of the new hotness OS X, version 10.5. I had a little trepidation about upgrading to this OS on day one due to some reviews I read on several of the popular websites complaining about a few minor here and there bugs. However, after using the OS now going on 3 days I have to say there is not a single thing I have to complain about.
First off I have a standard MacBook and it is much faster. The biggest improvement is when I put the computer to sleep and come back to it. It wakes up almost instantly and there is no hesitation with applications they all are responsive right away. So far I have to hand it to Apple they go this one right. I do have one minor complaint and that is I don’t see any of the core animation stuff that was hyped up during all the demos and so forth leading up to this launch. I suspect that development companies didn’t get their developments cycles lined up with Apples release time frame so the Leopard only applications are not ready yet. We’ll see these in the coming months. Verdict: spend the money do the upgrade it’ll be worth it.
Adventures in brewing part 1. March 21, 2007
Posted by vinnyt in : Homebrew , 1 comment so far
So I recently decided I would give home brewing a whirl I had once thought about this shortly after graduating college, but because of my work schedule with travel and the rigor of life in the fast lane as it where I didn’t think I could maintain the level of interest in the subject as would be required to produce good beers. I have to make a note here to say that home brewing is about the taste and the craft, not about saving money or creating a beer to get drunk on. I want to create beers that are an amalgam of the commercially available products that I like. The home brew process is somewhat time consuming but your reward is when you open that first bottle and taste the fruits of your labor. As of late my life is still busy but things have backed off enough and I have a brewing buddy as their called who is helping me with the process. The principle of beer is very simple: extract sugars from some grain based source, utilize yeast to consume the sugar and convert it to alcohol. This is the most basic of steps and in most if not all cases will take you from a pile of raw ingredients to a finished product that is drinkable. I purchased a kit from a local brew shop that contained everything I needed to create a batch of beer, and most on-line and local shops will sell similar kits that make the process very painless. I highly recommend investing in such a kit simply because it makes things easy. Where I hope to explore what this craft has to offer is in creating a recipe that is truly my own. I will be describing and relaying my recipes as I go down this road and hopefully if I discover something great I can share it.
