Erator's Sandbox

Failing

2011-04-02T00:33:00.000-05:00

If you read my last blog post, you know I said I was going to write everyday from now on. Unfortunately, that was a couple of days ago, and as you can see I didn't stick to my statement.

I forgot. Really, after I posted that, I didn't remember to write another blog the next day. As I'm writing this, I realize I need to set the time apart to blog in my calendar — with reminders and everything!

The goal is to learn and practice to write my thoughts out, but if I don't do it, then I won't really get to do what this.

It's not easy having a clear thought of what each blog post should be about, and I'm pretty confident you can find a lot of similar posts around the internet that can back this up.

What am I doing right now? Looking at domains from namecheap.com - they're really cheap! I want to move some of my domains over and try them out as well as perhaps register a new domain to host my new projects that I can only hope one day will come into fruition.

Until next time, be well.

I am going to write daily

2011-03-26T22:30:00.002-05:00

Somewhere, I don't know where, I read writing is a good exercise for your mind because it forces you to put your thoughts together and come up with something that makes sense (most of the times).

Today, or tonight really, I'm taking the first step in a new direction that will force me to write something here daily. I really want to keep my word this time,

I will begin by writing my about page, as a quick intro so anyone who wonders here one day, might care to know who I am or who I was.

Also, who knows, maybe my children will read this one day and wonder just what the heck I was thinking.

Live and let live.

Google shares more Gmail outage info

2009-09-01T23:22:00.000-05:00

Google shares more details on what caused the Gmail outage on Tuesday -- I really admire this kind of behavior and communication with its customers.

Official Gmail Blog: More on today's Gmail issue

Discipline is a virtue

2008-12-08T01:42:00.004-06:00

One of the things I struggle a lot with is Discipline. I want to get better at what I am doing, but get distracted by learning how to get better at what I should be doing, thus not doing anything.

This is quite a problem when you're trying to finish up a project and are faced with pending deadlines. I suspect that the perfectionist in me keeps me from completing something until I have exhausted all research on ways to effectively perform a desired task. As some may already know, this takes up a lot of time, and the fastastic and ever-entertaining internet does not help me balance this equation.

I have also noticed that I am constantly being distracted and that my mind roams in the social cloud, dreaming of possible products and possibilites but seldomly detailing the requirements for such projects. I keep saying to myself that I need to focus on the task at hand, but before I notice, I'm wandering off finding something shiny to look at.

I am afraid of myself sometimes, since my behavior doesn't help me advance towards the goals I have set forth for myself.

What am I doing?

2008-07-26T16:46:00.002-05:00

As if it wasn't obvious, I haven't been updating my blog as often as I should or would like to. So in order to save face, I usually update my twitter account.

You can also stalk--err follow me on friendfeed.

I need to reconsider the purpose of this blog and if I'm really going to follow up on it. Until then, happy browsing -- you know where to find me.

Erator's Weekly Pick: the bird and the bee

2008-05-24T19:15:00.005-05:00

A friend suggested I do these "weekly picks" since I am always recommeding stuff.

So for this week I will recommend a music album: the bird and the bee
I really like this album, it flows even if a lot of the tracks have different styles, though the whole album only lasts about 35 minutes. The music style is similar to the one of Feist, with a very "indie" feel.

Check out some of their songs using Seeqpod:

When Twitter stumbles, the world panics!

2008-05-24T18:57:00.003-05:00

Twitter was down today (not that I noticed, thankfully) and the reason was "too many connections" -- the price to pay when you become a staple of the internet!

Check out the number of comments on their blog post: Twitter Blog: Man down!

The Apple Effect

2008-04-15T18:37:00.005-05:00

Why, as I sit here typing this post, have I been itching to get an Apple computer? More specifically, a MacBook Pro laptop. I already have a laptop, provided by work, and a home desktop that is close to 4 years of age but works fine, yet I am here fiddling with the options on the Apple.com web store dreaming about hitting that "Check out now" button with what I think is a decent and conservative configuration.

Why do I and so many others want to jump on the Apple bus so badly? Could it possibly be that much better, or are we just being played by excellent marketing tactics and pressure for items that provide social status?

What can I do on an Apple computer that I can't do on my current Windows XP machines? Or is it not what I can do, but how easily? And does that really merit spending over a grand (unless you choose the Mac Mini) for an Apple setup?

I'll follow up later, but I would like to know what you think.

Information Overload

2008-03-12T23:46:00.000-05:00

So just the other day I was talking about technologies and frameworks with a fellow engineer and then the million dollar question came up after much debate: "What have you done?"

And I just sat there, trying to come up with an answer to justify my points and where I was coming from, but I couldn't respond with anything recent.

I read about emerging technologies in the software engineering field. A lot. I think that's a double edge sword too, because as one keeps reading about the best practices here and there and what others have used and plan to use, you just sit there, wishing and planning on doing so many great and awesome things, but as time goes by, nothing gets done!

So my advice, which I am going to eat my own food in this case, is to learn, but above all, START SOMETHING. A popular slogan comes to mind...

When CAPTCHAs Block Users

2008-03-11T16:35:00.010-05:00

I was creating a group with Google Groups for a weekly programming meeting I am a part of, and after filling out the first page, which asks for the group's name, email address, description and other settings, this CAPTCHA came up:

It appears the CAPTCHA's service was unavailable, and so the challenge image was unavailable (I typed the error's sentence just in case I could continue), so I, a real human, was unable to create the group, and had to postpone my attempt until some other time.
I wasted time in the previous page, writing the name of the group, email address, description; all content I had to come up with was to be wasted (though I saved it to a trusty text file).

So here's my suggestion: why not verify "humanness" first -- before the user has to even start thinking about group names and descriptions. Get the "verification" out of the way first so that this doesn't happen to anyone else, because it was truly frustrating.

This may sound like a rant, but going through the sequence of actions and errors that your users might experience, will enable you to design your application in a way that will delight the user, if not, lessen their frustration.

Why Blogging Is Hard

2008-03-06T21:28:00.003-06:00

First of all, you have to setup the blog, but that's not really hard, because in this case Blogger makes it super easy to create a blog and get going in no time.

Personally, the hardest part is actually blogging. Yes, I'm talking about clicking on the "New Post" link and actually writing something to share with whoever happens to find your blog.

Then there's the actual reason of blogging (btw, not sure if it's "blogging" or "bloging"). Most friends couldn't care less about reading blogs or blogging themselves, and generally dismiss them, but in today's age, where blogs are so common and plentiful, I think they're great, because now I can have conversations and read information that other people took the time to type and share with complete strangers, and I think that has a lot of value in today's small world.

It's not often you hear a stranger tell you, "Hey, check out how I turn this Diet Coke into a geyser!"

A quick update

2008-01-24T12:20:00.001-06:00

What have I been doing lately? Well when I'm not at work, I'm usually at home with my wife playing with our daughter. Lately I have been playing Counter-Strike on weeknights and just yesterday started playing Call of Duty 4 online. As an ex-WoW addict, my coworkers don't make it easy to leave the habit behind, and so I've been contemplating playing WoW again, but am actively trying not to due to the time it consumes and may keep me from doing other things.

Other than that, life is pretty stable, watching movies via-Netflix and repeating the cycle.

What about you? What have you been up to?

Stretching the blog muscle

2008-01-07T23:26:00.001-06:00

So a friend and I are going to start a group blog, which hopefully will allow us to both gain experience blogging and knowledge about sharing ideas with people we don't know. The blog is going to focus on software, because we share some of the same interests about best practices, user experience, design philosophies, etc.

I'll post here when we get it setup and going, so that the few (if any) that read this blog, can find me --unless you already follow me on Twitter.

Blog?

2008-01-01T19:48:00.000-06:00

I think the main reason why I haven't posted anything new to my blog in a while is because I really don't think anyone else reads it.

Then I ask myself: "Am I writing this for other people to read, or am I writing this for myself, because I feel 'hip' and 'in' when I do?"

Honestly, I would love to have an active blog, where I don't feel this immense feeling of futility when I bother typing something up, and where "readers" interact and post comments (aside from the casual family member that checks out my blog after mentioning it).

That being said, I think I'm a Grammar-Nazi.

Tasties: The Porch

2007-11-18T19:55:00.000-06:00

Thinking about what to post today, I decided to give a restaurant a quick review.

The Porch is a restaurant in Dallas' night-corridor located just off I75 and Knox/Henderson exit, on the east side.

The atmosphere, drinks, service and especially the food was great! The only downside is the parking, but if you're going to any of the restaurants/bars in that area, you'll run into the same problem.

That's it! We really enjoyed our dinner at The Porch and would recommend it to anyone who likes a great place to have some drinks, food and chatter.

Accidents happen...

2007-11-16T23:28:00.000-06:00

Accidents, car accidents in particular, are very common. But unless you're in it, you really don't care or become affected by them.

Today, on my way home from work, I was about half-a-mile from my front door, and out of nowhere a car runs in front of me at the intersection and although I slam on the brakes I hit the car.

I was going north on Custer Road, and the other car was going east on El Dorado Road, but the light was green for me, as 5 or 6 other cars in front of me had already gone through the intersection, so of course I'm unsuspecting of any person at this point thinking of running the red light.

It was around 6:30pm CST, and by then it was already dark, since we just switched DST, so the street lights are pretty easy to see and to notice what color they are. So what the heck happened?

After the impact, I scream in frustration, look around and try to turn my car off, but it is already off, but I am unable to pull the key out.

I finally get out of the car, and several people have stopped to render aid in case someone was hurt, because of course, at least 20 people saw the wreck. There were cars in every direction of the intersection. North to south, south to north, east to west, and west to east. Everyone saw how this '98 Dodge Neon ran the red light and got in front of my car and got hit.

Lucky for me, I was ok, airbags didn't deploy (I guess the car didn't feel like I would need the cushioning/shock).

I was asked if I was OK by several people, and I take a look at my car... the first 6 inches of the front busted, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

The other car? It wasn't going to drive away. The rear right wheel was bent in, since I hit the car right on the edge of the rear right door. The car spun away from mine onto the median, stopping immediately.

I was thinking to myself: OK WHAT DO I NEED TO DO? WHERE'S MY PHONE? CAMERA? PAPER + PEN?

I was pretty much disoriented for a little bit. I did hit my head after all, and here it is 11:46 pm and I still have a headache after taking 2 tylenols.

So to make a long story shorter, I hit a car that ran the red light, thus it was not my fault (and yes, someone was nice enough to give me his information so he could testify that I had the green light), and my car was drivable, after all I was only 3 minutes away from my house.

Offering services the right way

2007-11-15T22:06:00.000-06:00

Last year we bought one of those pre-made Thanksgiving dinners from La Madeline because we didn't feel like cooking and their prices were great for what you got.

This year we were invited by my uncle to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family in their house, so I already has discarded worrying about the dinner, but today I received an unexpected phone call from La Madeline: "Last year you ordered the Thanksgiving dinner package from us, would you like to place your order for this years now?"

It took me a minute to figure out what they were talking about and to remember what we had last year, but I was pleasantly surprised that they kept my phone number and only called me to offer me the same service I had already purchase from them before.

So I let them know that I was not interested because we already had plans, and they said they were doing the packages for Christmas dinner too, in case we needed it.

Great service and if you want to skip the cooking, call La Madeline, the food was great!

"Time is more flexible than most of us think" - (37signals)

2007-10-08T22:39:00.000-05:00

In this recent post at the 37signals blog, they have a great excerpt about finding one's own schedule to maximize the creativity flow. Great info, sadly not many have the ability to implement these techniques.

Csikszentmihalyi: "Time is more flexible than most of us think" - (37signals)

Bottle makes dirty water drinkable

2007-09-12T16:40:00.000-05:00

What a great invention:

He said: "Something had to be done. It took me a little while and some very frustrating prototypes but eventually I did it."

Conventional filters can cut out bacteria measuring more than 200 nanometres but not viruses, which typically are 25 nanometres long.

Mr Pritchard's bottle can clean up any water - including faecal matter - using a filter that cuts out anything longer than 15 nanometres, which means that viruses can be filtered out without the use of chemicals.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/12/nwater112.xml

Now if only they could make something similar for adware infested software...

Apple - To all iPhone customers

2007-09-06T16:29:00.000-05:00

Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, wrote an open letter to the early adopters of the iPhone where he defends the recent price-drop but also says they will give these early adopters a $100 store credit "towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store."

So if you bought the iPhone early-on, you only wasted $100 for that "I got it first" feeling and brag-rights (ouch).

Read the letter: Apple - To all iPhone customers

Video: Gmail: Behind the Scenes (Final Cut)

2007-08-31T14:14:00.000-05:00

I have come to realize that I'm a Google fanboy... but there's good reason why I enjoy most if not all of the services and products that Google offers, they're GOOD!

Gmail is by far the best webmail service out there, and not that I've tried them all, but that's the point! It's a good sign that I'm not moved or interested in trying again Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail, etc, because I'm really happy with my Gmail account.

The space and the features that I get are superb for being free, and why would I want to move?

Ok, well without going down a rat hole, here is the final cut video Gmail users submitted to Google for the Gmail: Behind the Scenes collaborative movie.

Getting to Zero

2007-08-29T14:55:00.001-05:00

In case you missed it, like I did, Merlin Mann has an excellent Google Tech Talk presentation about managing your emails: Inbox Zero.

Watch his presentation and grab the slides in PDF format from the site. I'm personally going to try this, although it might be hard with my current Inbox count being 2,177 items.

The Focus Problem

2007-08-24T11:52:00.000-05:00

Some days, it's easy to get into the work I have laid out in front of me. I think of it as interesting or worthwhile and I finish it as fast as I possibly can.

Other days, I have a really hard time getting started. I know I have a pile of work to do, and that it's not going away, but unconsciously I find myself distracted away, looking for a new subject of interest online, or getting caught in the "Option Loop." The loop is simply thinking about all the options, but getting stuck not starting or finishing any of them. It's almost like a mental deadlock.

Most of the times I am able to regain focus and productivity by:

Getting a cup of coffee or a high-caffeine soda
Turning on the lights
Adjusting my chair
Walking around a little bit
Talking to someone else about my projects

Unfortunately, there are times when none of the above works. The biggest problem is I know the best time to start is now, so I have no excuses.

How do you get into your work when you're just not feeling it?

Cheat Sheets

2007-08-24T11:00:00.000-05:00

Cheat in a good way! What if you could have a quick reference for some of the more obscure properties of CSS or a Regular Expression assertion? Yeah, sometimes you just can't remember what property you're supposed to use to show the text font with a hot-pink background.
What if you could have a *gasp* Cheat Sheet!? You can! Dave Child has an excellent website where he has created cheat sheets for the most popular web programming languages, MicroFormats, and even World of Warcraft!

Do yourself a favor and checkout ILoveJackDaniels.com's Cheat Sheets.

How to Report a Software Defect

2007-08-22T17:26:00.000-05:00

As a software engineer, I've had the pleasure of receiving bug reports that make no sense whatsoever, and asking for additional info leads to dead ends and frustration.

I really like what Joel recommends should be on a good bug report:

Steps to reproduce,
What you expected to see, and
What you saw instead.

But I have a couple of points to add, since in my experience people skip the basics:

First and foremost, test it again to make sure that it is a valid bug.
Specify what is not working, and where I can find it in the program.
Avoid non-standard abbreviations.
Proofread the bug report before submitting it to the resolver for any ambiguous information.

As I started to write this post I thought I was very clear on what I was going to write and what I wanted exactly to be in a bug report, but, as I kept typing I started to remember all those pesky bug reports that annoyed me because they take forever to research and solve (especially the ones that end up being no-bugs).

If you think I missed any other required piece of information, comment!

Walk It Off

2007-08-22T10:21:00.000-05:00

Walk everyday for 30 minutes at least. Seriously, if you have a good pace, that should be approximately 2 miles, and by the 3rd day of walking, you will feel a big difference in your body.

Plus, walking around the neighborhood is good to know your surroundings and socialize with your neighbors. Not to mention the health benefits you're getting with at least 30 minutes of daily exercise.

It doesn't sound like much, but it makes a big difference. Try it and tell me how it goes!

Impressed with Blogger

2007-08-21T15:27:00.000-05:00

I must say I am impressed with Blogger. I love being able to customize things, and Blogger seems to give me enough bells and whistles to play around with to make me feel happy and in control.

Thanks Blogger for giving us so many knobs, switches and buttons to tinker with, you've come a long way.

The Evolution of the Personal Web

2007-08-21T15:01:00.000-05:00

One word: Blogging. Is this what is has come to? Not too long ago, one needed to be pretty tech-savvy to install a script on one's own website and after trial-and-error successfully setup the required components to create a "blog" (which back then was known as content management systems -- I guess the CMS initials were not trendy enough).

Now, one can create such a site in a matter of seconds. The biggest timesink is in finding the title and webaddress. Oh, did I mention blogs are free? Well, not free as in posting whatever content you want, but as in you have no financial obligations.

Really, web logs -- sorry, I mean BLOGS -- have filled the internet with a lot of "crap," yes even this blog might be considered crap by some people, but the amount of spam and content cloning has increased significantly, because anyone can make a few dollars by posting the same information, plagiarizing what someone might of taken the time to develop, research and create and claiming it their own.