As new year approaches December 25, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : General , add a commentI’ve always enjoyed the end of the year, mainly because I love christmas, and because only a short time later it’s my birthday. Now yes these are selfish reasons to anticipate the coming of the new year, but hey it’s my life and I can like certain time periods for whatever reason I want. That being said I’m going to lay out my nears resolutions for 2007 and believe me I’m going to stick to these like glue.
1. Getting into a consistent exercise habit
2. Read at least 1 book every 3 weeks.
3. Spend as much time as possible with family and friends.
4. Show kindness to others
That’s what I’m going to do what do you have?
Mac OSX December 23, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : computers , add a commentI’m going to start going by my new name iVinnyt. I have to eat some crow on this post. If any of you have read my post I’ve done a fair amount a Mac bashing. Frankly, I was wrong. It was ultimately the fan boy user base that lead me astray. Mainly that comes from the fact that I don’t have much respect for non technical people trying to espouse the merrits of a technical system. Sales men do it every day and frankly I don’t like them either. None the less I made a lot of assumptions about the OS based on these fan boys pointless rantings about MS v. Apple. Now that I’ve used this OS and not exclusiely I might add I am now a firm believer.
To give a little backgroud I am a UNIX guy from way back and if you’ve read any of my posts you’ll know that I’ve used just about every major commercial and nearly every free UNIX like OS that has come down the pipe. I just prefer UNIX as a programmer and as a user because of it’s simplicity and elegance. I’ve built a career around it and thus far have made a decent living with out having to go very far into the MS world. That being said however, I’m an objective person and I’ve taught myself how to program in a windows environment and in fact for a brief period of my life I made considerable money working as a programmer for a windows shop.
I digress. I have to give Apple their due they have delivered on what I as a UNIX person had hoped for, a desktop system based on a UNIX system. I am going to teach myself the programming environment over the next few days and hopefully turn out some apps. This is going to be the beginning of something awesome.
I own a mac now December 20, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : computers , add a commentI never thought this day would come to pass, but I’ve purchased a mac. So now I can begin my conquest to be a coder on this platform.
Myers-Briggs test December 10, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : General , add a commentI don’t really have a clue what this means but it said I was INTJ.
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/mb/INTJext.asp
Lasik 1 year later November 13, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : eye surgery , 2commentsI have struggled with poor vision since I was in fifth grade. Finally, after 29 years of not being able to see I decided it was time to permanently fix the issue. I had worn contacts for nearly 10 years and although the correction they provided was very effective it fell short in many regards. First, I had to maintain the contacts, I have a hard time getting into a habit and typically after a few months of wear found my contacts to be too cloudy to be effective. Next because of the correction I needed I was unable to use extended wear contacts and so I was forced to remove them on a nightly basis. So at night I was rendered nearly blind and often found myself pushing the alarm clock onto the floor while reaching for my glasses on the nightstand. Finally, my prescription was nearly a year old, and facing the prospect of suffering for another year I decided to attempt Lasik as a final solution to my vision correction needs.
Seeing as I am like every other human and I am nearly 100% dependant on my vision for my income I felt I had to make a correct and informed decision when chosing a doctor to perform this operation. I looked at every clinic within a 100 mile radius of my home, spoke to nearly 40 people I know who have had the operation and consistently they recommended Discover Vision Center here in Kansas City. I went in the for the evaluation, and after a very thorough exam the doctors there suggested I receive a procedure called PRK. Because of the structure of my eye this surgery would provide the best results. I started wearing my glasses for 10 days prior to my exam. These 10 days were extremely painful for me because of the poor quality of my glasses however 2 days following my exam I was laying under the laser. I have a video of the surgery but it is somewhat gruesome. The operation itself was fairly brief about 5-10 minutes per eye. I was given Valium prior to surgery and by the time I was walking into the operating room I had no fear of my eye being touched. During the operation itself a local anesthetic is used, and at most you feel a slight amount of pressure but nothing more. Immediately post operation I could see and my vision was amazing. This lasted about 3 hours, when the drugs wore off the main was nearly unbearable. I believe it is imperative that you receive pain killers to help you during the short 3 day recovery period. My surgery was on a Friday, and the following Monday I was back to work. My vision took about 2 months to fully return to the great level I saw immediately following my operation. Looking back 1 year later this was the best money I have ever spent. I work on computers on a daily basis and thus far I have had not a single complaint about the quality of my vision or the behavior of my eyes since. Often people ask me about the cost, and yes it is not a cheap procedure and the cost can range any where from $500 an eye up to several thousand per-eye. However, because of the importance of my vision in my life I did not want to go out to find a bargain for this procedure. Most doctors who perform this procedure offer financing plans that a person on most any budget can afford. This procedure will alter your life completely. I believe that not having to wear glasses and being able to see has given me a new more positive outlook on life that I did not have prior to my operation. I would recommend this to any one that is evaluated as a good candidate for the procedure.
Why Apple Will win. November 2, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : Operating System Debates, computers , 1 comment so far For quite some time now I’ve been very anti mac. This mainly was a result of my experiences with some of the early macs, and the fact that I had spent a large amount of time working with UNIX. I guess in my youth and lack of experience I was too short sighted to give mac a chance when they release OSX. As the saying goes with age comes wisdom, and I believe I’ve had somewhat of an epiphany. I was reading through digg this morning and came across an article talking about the release of Xcode. I then discovered that all you have to do is fill out a simple form and boom you have access to this product. Personally to me this is what will put mac over the top. I firmly believe that more than a clean interface it is software that makes an OS successful. If you look at BSD/Linux/M$ over the years, they success came mainly from the fact they had simple to use and powerful applications. Apple has always enjoyed a niche market, but now that you have an operating system derived from UNIX, and with an easy to use IDE. I don’t see why there won’t be a flood of applications coming out that will increase the popularity and ultimately make OSX the hands down winner. Being a UNIX advocate I hope this will come to fruition. We will have to see what happens with the next versions of Windows but frankly based on what I’ve seen from Apple, and my experience with UNIX I’m pretty convinced this is it.My Time life line October 30, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : Art Piece, Exercise , add a commentI’m getting ready to start an art piece if you will to document my attempts at exercise and weight loss. I will take a picture of myself every single morning and upload this to my photo gallery. I will then make a movie/slide show that will show my progression over time. I think it might be rather interesting to see myself change over time.
Do It yourself GPS tracking October 29, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : Computer Science Theory, GPS, Programming , 1 comment so farI’m starting a series of articles on a recent application I’ve built to create an application I’ve created called “Where’s Vinnyt.” The name of the application clearly is a sign of my vanity. However, it is one of the more interesting spare time pieces I’ve created, and think it could be very interesting to anyone that has any interest in the fields of GPS, near to realtime tracking, and System integration. My interest in GPS arose some years ago when I borrowed a GPS navigation system from a friend of mine. I quickly discovered that not only did this system provide a fun and interesting means of getting around the city it exposed an interface that I as a programmer could access and leverage for my own fun. I will breakdown my aritcles as follows. First accessing the GPS, what data do you see, how do you get to it, and how then do you use it. Second data transmission and storage, how do I take data from where I am in the real world and store it and move it for use later. Finally, integration with Google Maps ( although this is tracking the data is not anywhere near real time, and so I think that let’s me off the hook.) Please check back I’ll be creating my first post in the days to come.
Two Long Walks October 29, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : Exercise, fitness , add a commentSo, I’ve stuck with my exercise, and as a result I’m really sore today. I initially believed that I should just go out and force myself to go as long as I possibly could and over time my stamina would increase. I’ve done some research and spoke to a few people who are near experts on the subject and I believe that my initial approach would work, but it’s not going to help me with my first goal which is weight loss. Based on what I’ve read I need to work out about about 65% of my max heartrate, which based on my age is 119 bpm. At the moment if I run for any distance my heart rate goes way past the 119bpm so I have to slow down to maintain that level. So before where I had planned on pushing myself by trying to runner faster daily I’ve decided to walk for a longer period of time. Essentially I’m giving 1 hour and some change each day to my workout. Thus far after really only about 4 good exercise days I do feel like I have more energy but like I said I’m quite sore. I’m going to give it more time and see what somes to pass.
My First Run 8/22/2006 October 22, 2006
Posted by vinnyt in : Exercise, fitness , 1 comment so farMy First run. I took my first run today. The weather was some what cold slightly above freezing and overcast, but not raining. I set my workout goal to 1.5 miles in my iPod, and started out of the house. I got about halfway down the block, and pressed the center button on the iPod in hopes of hearing a status update. Instead I discovered that I had locked the iPod, and it was not tracking my information. I quickly unlocked it, and pressed the play button launching my workout. I then proceeded to run probably about 1/10th of a mile before I ran out of steam. I have to say I???m in pretty bad shape so I suspect that for the next few runs any progress is going to be slow. However, I???ve talked to several people regarding the subject of exercise and once I get over this initial hump I should progress pretty quickly. My goal by next summer is to be averaging about 7:00 minute miles if not less, and running about 5-10 miles on a daily basis. So we???ll have to see what happens.
