Brian's World

ViewTracker Widget

I am both tired and hungry, so I should likely be in bed. Alas I feel compelled to share a few things with you. This blog will be brief, as I have like 100 things to do tomorrow and I’ve allocated time to do like 3 of them.

1. ViewTracker Widget – I know there are like 3 of you out there using a mac, actually thats wrong, there are ~2.45% of your with a mac out there. Awsome! Well for those 2.45% of you I have a widget you should check out.. specifically if you use YouTube. No, I don’t have the precentage of readers with both a mac and YouTube, I don’t stalk you all that much. Here’s the link: http://www.brispace.net/viewtracker. Its a pretty simple widget to display view counts for videos you have on YouTube. Feel free to check it out, no harm no foul. If you like it, consider donating. If you don’t like it, delete it.

2. You probably have already added my Facebook Application Quotes, but since you have, and since my applications lacks the viral market “spam all my friends at the same time” feature, I rely on you to spread the word. Send people to this easy link: http://quotes.brispace.net, thats not too hard to remember is it?

3. I am out of things to say actually. Lol.

Nope, just kidding!

I have submitted both of these projects to their respective ‘directories’, the Apple Widget Directory and Facebook Application Directory. I expect them to get looked over in the next week or so, hopefully I make the cut and don’t get dropped. Apple isn’t very nice about it, they tell you they have recieved your request, and that that email is the last you will hear from them. You may resubmit in 90 days if you do not find your application. Facebook at least easily shows you if you’re in the directory. I hope this helps people find my applications. Its not so much the hours spent writing them as it is the surprise there are such few people who want to use them. (Ok, I think the hours writing them might play a factor, moreso in quotes.. where my relationship with Facebook and FBML was much like a dance. No, I wasn’t dancing like I normally do. I should tell you about that soemtime though). I’m an optimist, and I think that maybe someday people will find these things useful. No, I’m not planning to make myself a millionaire off them. Quotes has 0 financial prospects, and ViewTracker has a donate button. Check them out.

I might be writing ViewTracker for Google Desktop/Yahoo Widgets/Google IG… I’m not sure yet.

I am sure I should fall asleep.

Good night moon.

Driving the Volvo

Writing a blog in the middle of the day is a bit strange for me. I tend to write at night or early in the morning after the day comes to a close and I can “reflect” (if you call it that), on whats happened that day. Today is a little different because I know I won’t want to reflect in the middle of a Friday night, and the weekend tends to be filled with scrambling around to do x,y, and z.

This morning we had to bring the Volvo in for an oil change and another attempt at shutting off the check engine light. I was to drive the volvo and follow my mom, driving her car, to the place and then she would give me a ride back. I got in the car, backed out of the driveway, and let my mom take the lead. She knows where we’re suppose to be going, and I have like an 80% idea of where we’re going. I would know it when I get there, but I might not be able to locate it on a map (unless that map had Google StreetView enabled).

We started off driving away, and very quickly I noticed my mom was going moderately fast for our neighborhood. No, we don’t have any speed bumps, but I rarely go above 30 just because. Mom was zooming away and I, driving the volvo, started to get very frustrated. If you’ve driven the volvo (you probably haven’t), you’d know the volvo doesn’t accelerate like a race car, it accelerates much more like… hrm… idk… the little train that could. It will accelerate yes, but you have to be patient with it. I like this feature, it prevents me from zooming too fast without trying, and the time it takes to accelerate gives me time to think “should I actually be going this speed? Is it worth it?”

Regardless, the drive continued on, and I continued to get frustrated at my moms persistance at accelerating to a speed above the speed limit immediately after a light turned green, or after stopping at a stop sign. Maybe we were running late, I’m not sure. I am not a professional car driver, nor do I pretend to be, but I think its more efficient to accelerate slowly until you reach your desired speed. Just because you can go very fast doesn’t mean you should? I guess there is a little evidence to back me up, after driving the volvo for something like 2 years I’ve seen the MPG average go slightly. I’m not one to care about every drop of gasoline like its liquid gold, but I do think that you shouldn’t be wasting it because you feel some strange need for speed. My maximum speed is very simple to define: speed limit + 5. If there is something strange requiring urgent attention I reserve the right to add an additional +4 miles per hour.

When I drive late at night I tend to go the speed limit, its late and I’m in no rush to get anywhere. Since I cannot see as clearly as I can during the day, extra precautions need to be taken. I don’t like it when people get right up behind me when I’m going 30 in a 35, or maybe a 30.. whatever Newton Street is. Being behind me does not increase my likely hood of speeding up, especially if you start to poke your car out on the left side to peer into the other lane to see if you can get around me. Now that you are behind me I am going to try extra hard to maintain my speed, for the sole purpose of annoying you and your philosophy. There is a strong chance I’ll get flipped off during this process, or some strange sign language that would translate to “you’re going to slow for me because I clearly have somewhere more important to be at 12:15am.” I guess if I saw like a pregnant lady in the passenger seat I would consider pulling over or speeding up, but just a teenager or person doesn’t trigger any special cases.

Its now 11:19pm. I wonder what thrilling adventures I’ll go on this weekend, and more importantly.. whats for lunch?

Chair, McDonalds, String

Ok so my computer chair is broken here at home. I discovered this on New Years day but I have finally gotten the hang of sitting on it. The middle rod that connects the chair to the wheely base is partially disconnected in the middle of it, allowing the chair to tilt roughly 15 degrees down in any direction. Its very different to lean forward and find youself nearly falling out of a chair, and then leaning backwards and finding yourself in a recline position. I don’t know what happened, but I do have a few clues as to who sat in it out of ordinary. I can fix the problem by lowering the chair, forcing the two poles in the center to interlock, but I don’t like sitting down low.

A few random stories.

I was at McDonald’s today getting Katie a snack after school. She enjoys Chicken Nugget Happy Meals, they provide just enough food to fill her up but not too much so I don’t eat leftovers (like Naked Nuggets). I went up to the register, where the lady was clearly distracted, and asked for a “Chicken McNugget Happy Meal”. She replied “What size?” Panic! Exception thrown. What was she asking I thought to myself? Drink size? What size nuggets would I like? Holy Buckets! How do I respond? Kid size drink? Normal Size nuggets? EEK! So I continued my expression of mass confusion associated with processing everything I could think of quantifying the size of a happy meal. Realize I had no clue what she was asking she gave me my options “4 piece or 6”. OK, lady.. do you lack that much skill? 4 or 6 is not a size choice, unless your shopping for clothes. Small, Medium, Large, etc.. those are sizes you associate with food and are sized I’m accustom to using at McDonalds. “Big” would have been a valid option, implying the “Big Kids Meal.” Using a word like “size” lead me to believe I had lots of options, any range of potential sizes would have been valid in my mind.. but of course a Happy Meal only comes in two sizes, regular and big kid.

Story #2. I was at Katie’s helping her with some homework. The problem wasn’t terribly challenging, find the linear speed of a satellite orbiting the earth. As for all word problems, Katie began by drawing a picture. She drew the earth, added 2 continents, and a small satelite far away. We recognized we were going to need to know the total distance the satellite would travel since we knew the time it took for one revolution. Katie correctly drew its path, a circle around the earth. Then I asked her how we get that distance. She replied “I dunno, I don’t have any string around here.” Huh? String? How would string be of any help on this problem where absolutely nothing was drawn to scale. Katie felt it necessary to explain how she could wrap the string around the path and then do some math from there. Yes, if I were Greek and pro with the slide rule I might like some string, but unfortunately I’ve forgotten how to use a slide rule (that implies I did know at one point know how, yes). Luckily I refreshed her memory with 2*pi*r and we were back on our track.

Let me think, any more stories to share? Not at the moment.