Safari's Color Management: What's The Deal?
5/16/2009 @ 11:20 AM in Blog > Internet
So I was working on designing a site doing my usual Photoshop and my buddy tells me the background color of my images doesn't match in Safari. He sent me a screen shot and sure enough it didn't match.
What the hell? So after some quick Googling I found out Safari uses color management to make your images look "better" or "correct" based on the color profile you save with the image. What? Ok, I can see how that might be beneficial for photos, but not for web design where images are embedded everywhere against a specified color background.
After reading tons of "another reason why Mac's rule" comments on Flickr I removed the color profile from my image and all was honky dory. I was left to wonder if FireFox or Safari is doing things right and I've come to the conclusion that Safari sucks. This is a screen shot of what I see in Photoshop. The original image of my Twitter bird is on the left side on top of the screen shot. Indeed the background color has been changed by Safari. QTS! (quit that s***)
Here's someone that thinks like I do. Don't use Safari.
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4/28/2009 @ 10:16 PM in Blog > Electronics
Ok so I haven't updated in a while, but I've been really busy with a few projects which you may or may not see in the future. How many of you feel like you have disgustingly sick keyboards with hair, skin flakes, food, eraser bits, etc. stuck between the keys. Ever try to clean your keyboard with a paper towel or tissue paper? Fail. I know for me it doesn't take too long for the gunk to build up and I don't even eat by my computer that often. Here's a tip my coworker showed me. You can pop off the keys using a nail clipper and basically clean the whole thing. I was bored at 2AM after a night of coding so I decided to give it a whirl on my Logitech.
Don't look too close at the next pic because it's pretty nasty. I think you'd find Cheez-Its and parmesan Goldfish (my fav).
And the rebuild ... be sure you know where the keys go or make sure you have a reference keyboard! Haha.
The result isn't EXACTLY like a new keyboard out of the box, but it's close. I'll probably buy a new one anyway because I love the feel of a new keyboard.
4/6/2009 @ 5:23 PM in Blog > Off Topic
Oh no! Twitter is down for maintenance what will we do?!?! Ok turns out I'll survive without Twitter for an hour, but what are these new characters and why is Mr. Ice Cream (or Mr. FroYo these days) talking to himself? Haha. Cool Cone and Maintenance Caterpillar? Somehow those don't flow as well as Fail Whale.
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4/3/2009 @ 3:22 PM in Blog > Electronics
TiVo has been around for quite a while, but I never really saw the appeal or the benefit. It just really seemed way over priced for what it does. Now that I've had one for almost a year I feel like it's a life altering device (that is if you watch TV). Granted cable providers also provide this for a small fee (usually $5/month) the general concept and benefits are the same. Here's why ... remember all of these are based on the assumption that you regularly watch at least 1 show on tv:
Skipping Commercials
Even though tv networks forced TiVo to remove the "don't record commercials" feature you can still skip through them. This trims a 1 hour show down to just over 40 minutes. Think of how much time you waste watching commercials. Time is money!Never Miss An Episode ... Or Worry About It
My girl friend at the time (now my fiancee) actually bought me the TiVo with a lifetime subscription. The reason why was because we had dinner on Valentine's Day which ran close to 9PM so I had to rush her home to catch my weekly episode of LOST ... haha. With a TiVo you never have to watch the clock and remember to go watch tv. Or rush your Valentine's Day dinner to go home and watch LOST. Everything is at your leisure. This was a huge benefit.Record 2 Shows At Once
Ever have programs playing at the same time on different networks? Now it's no problem because TiVo has 2 tuners so it can record 2 shows at once! Now you can record Nip Tuck and Top Chef!Keep Shows For As Long As You Want
Or at least until your hard drive space runs out ...Stream Netflix
If you have a Netflix account you can stream movies (not all, but a good healthy selection). This is pretty cool when you're bored and you've caught up on all your recorded programs.
Ok so that's the good. And seriously all that good has really changed my life because it makes watching tv convenient and efficient. What more can you ask for. I would recommend a DVR to anyone. But here's the bad (not much):
A Bit Pricey
Ya it's a bit expensive, but if you're worried about it maybe go with the $5 monthly version your cable company provides. It may not have all the bells and whistles, but it should get the job done.You End Up Watching MORE TV
This may not be such a bad thing to some people, but I usually like to get work done at night. With a TiVo I think my number of regularly watched programs tripled.
Where to buy? Maybe try Amazon. Well worth it!
3/31/2009 @ 12:03 AM in Blog > Finance > Real Estate
If you own a home you should always be on the look out for falling interest rates on your mortgage. Most of my friends are new home owners within the last 2-5 years (like myself) and some of us have taken bigger hits than others, both in value of our homes and on our mortgage rates. I've found that not everyone is on the up and up on interest rates and the way mortgages really work. The goal of this post is to share what I've learned over the past few years from owning a home.
I initially had 2 loans ... a 5/1 ARM and a HELOC (home equity line of credit). The reason I had to do this was because I didn't want to get into a "jumbo" loan and the interest rate for HELOC's at the time was a low (4+%). I quickly learned that a HELOC is dangerous (or anything with a variable interest rate) as I watched the interest rate almost double over the course of a couple years to over 8%. Time to refinance. Over the years that I had owned the home I managed to pay off the entire HELOC which made me happy as I wasn't paying high interest on that money. The right time came around and I managed to refinance to a single non conforming loan. A good friend of mine did my refinance and in the process I learned a few things:
Use A Broker You Trust
This is probably the most important thing I've learned. Mortgage brokers don't always have to have you (the home buyer) in their best interest. The reason I say this is because the higher the interest rate they sell you on the more they get paid. You really need to work with someone that you trust and who you know has you in their best interest. It may be hard to find, but try.Use A Smart Broker
Not only smart, but hard working. What I like to do is tell my broker to always be on the look out for an opportunity for me to refinance 24 hours a day 365 days of the year. A broker that knows what they're doing also helps just a little bit.0 Points & 0 Fees
Always finance or refinance with 0 points and 0 fees. Lower interest rates with points and fees may sound appetizing, but it makes it much more difficult to compare loans throughout time. For instance say in 2000 you got a loan at 5% with a points and b fees (a and b are variables). If you're offered 4.5% in 2002 with c points and d fees (c and d are variables) you need to make sure it's actually worth your while to even refinance. You may actually lose money if the variables reach certain values. If you always go for a 0 points and 0 fees loan you always have a baseline for comparison no matter when you secure the loan and the decision to refinance should be easy. Say your rate is 5% in 2000 with 0 points and 0 fees and in 2002 you're offered 4.5% with 0 points and 0 fees ... ok I think I can stop there.Stay Away From Variation
Any time you have a variable interest rate it's a big gamble. 3 years can go by really fast and in this economy you never know what's going to happen. If you have to get into some form of variable rate (x/y ARM or something) be sure it's at least 7-10 years at a locked rate you're comfortable with. This comes from my experience with my HELOC interest rate that doubled faster than I could blink. Luckily my loan amount wasn't very high so I could pay it off over a couple years. I also got lucky with my initial 5/1 ARM because rates dropped and I could refinance before my interest rate started to go variable.
So those are my general tips on mortgages ... pretty basic stuff, but you'd be surprised how many people love paying on points and fees. When you're up to date and aware of what's happening with interest rates you can actually save a lot of money by locking in a lower rate.
If you need a recommendation for a broker in California, Lucy does a fantastic job (tell her I sent you).
Alternative For PHP file_get_contents
3/30/2009 @ 12:22 AM in Blog > Tech > Programming
My shared hosting web server doesn't like PHP's "file_get_contents" function for those nifty API calls. Specifically I was trying to do this to tinyurl or bit.ly the Twitter buttons for each post. Found a solution on the web using curl instead. Here's the direct function replacement:
function curl_file_get_contents($request){
$c = curl_init();
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_URL, $request);
$response = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);
return($response);
}
I lost the source of the forum I found this on, but remember it was posted by a user named "Fury". Props.
3/27/2009 @ 1:02 AM in Blog > Internet
So even though Twitter has been around just shy over 3 years now it's only recently becoming a huge success. Ok, I don't know if "success" is the right word, but at least site activity and new users seem to be growing almost exponentially. I've been on Twitter for a few months now under a different user name, but failed to see the value and the appeal of the service. Maybe it's because not enough of my friends use it or maybe it was because of the brevity of a "twit" (you're limited to 140 characters for one "twit") ... I don't know, but the first time I tried it out I probably stopped checking after no more than 3 days.
I decided to give it another go, but this time under "4GEmedia" and with a more public approach. Previously I didn't want my "twits" to be too public which filtered what I posted about and who I "followed" and who I allowed to follow me. This time I'm looking at it differently and trying to not only learn, but educate and possibly "twit" with a few people that have the same interests as I do. Over lunch I talked with @geehwan and @kewlio about how and why some people follow thousands upon thousands of users. I didn't understand how you could keep up with all the word vomit showing up on your screen or iPhone every 5 seconds, but they made a good point. You don't really have to read everything, but when do have the time you can browse through what people are currently "twitting" about. If you catch something interesting you do and if you don't you don't. So far their advice and their approach has been working for me ... it's been less than a week though.
@geehwan has been ranting and raving about this Adobe Air app called TweetDeck. At the time I had no idea what Adobe Air was but quickly learned that it's some bad ass stuff simply because I've always wanted to make desktop apps, but I didn't really have the proper skill set (I'll have to experiment with that later). Anyway, TweetDeck uses the Twitter API to access your Twitter account then helps organize the Twitter vomit to your liking. You can create custom columns with groups of users, columns that search all of Twitter for certain search terms, etc. You can even access your Facebook status updates via Facebook Connect (limited functionality, but will hopefully improve once FB makes more create API calls). Without TweetDeck I probably wouldn't have given Twitter a second chance.
I'm still a little skeptical though. One day I feel like people are just going to stop posting or reading simply because there is a good amount of spam and garbage on there. I'm also skeptical about how Twitter plans on making some coin from all their hard work, bandwidth and storage space. I read somewhere that they just reached a billion "twit" milestone. I can't even image what the back end database architecture looks like ... I'll save that for another post though.
I guess only time will tell if Twitter will be around for good ... and if I'm still on there (you can follow me @4GEmedia).
The picture you see is the notorious "Fail Whale" that you'll see once in a while on Twitter when service has come to a halt. It's cute, but it won't make them money.
3/26/2009 @ 5:23 PM in Blog > General
My original intention for this blog was to post stuff all about 4GEmedia and nothing else. I think I'm going to change that and make this my official public blog on just about anything I feel like. We'll see how long that lasts, but I have a few things I've always wanted to write about in order to help any readers. Usually these are topics going on in my life at the moment so hopefully somebody can make use of the word vomit.
2/26/2009 @ 9:02 PM in Blog > Canon 40D > San Francisco
1/13/2009 @ 11:19 PM in Blog > Canon 40D
A new toy arrived in the mail today:
