just my thoughts

So it seems I’m making it a bit of a habit to only post every other week now, let’s just go ahead and say that’s starting fresh and new in The Year of Our Lord 2009. Not sure what that means? Good, because neither am I.

I’ve definitely been busy lately, and it’s a good busy. I’ve not even launched the BETA version of StayValid and I’m already redesigning it. I guess that’s a good thing, get it out of th way ahead of time. It’s definitely a huge step up, and I’m getting pretty excited about where it could lead. If the service is as beneficial to this decently small niche of people I’m targeting as I think it will be, I might eventually get my money back out of the project after what I’m paying the developer who’s working with me on it! No offense Jake, you’re the best and deserve it, but here’s to hoping I’m not in over my head. Besides, Kristi says it’s pretty, and T.J. thinks it looks professional. Then again T.J. says I should try out for American Idol, so I’m not sure his words are worth much more than a bag of magic beans at this point.

I’m starting to lay a bit of groundwork here and there for potential ‘partners’ for the stayvalid product… for example there’s a site called spellr.us that scans your entire site and finds spelling errors, and points them out to you. I figure that goes pretty much perfectly hand-in-hand with stayvalid, which basically is an error-checker for the code-side of your site.

So upon reading a few good web application development articles, I revamped the site and my strategy of releasing stayvalid.

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So as posted by engadget, South Koreans are going to be seeing 1Gbps download speeds in-home. To compare… here at my house I have a 756kb download speed. That’s almost a 1MB line…. which is 1% of a 1Gbps line…. so essentially… the download speed at my house is .076% of the speed of what South Korea will soon have. With those speeds, you could download a feature length film in around 12 seconds. Ridiculous.

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I know you’re all dying to get my racquetball update, so here it is. Robert (my doubles partner) is going to be out of state at the Pro Bowl in Hawaii during this coming weekend for State Doubles… so I had to find myself a new partner. Thanks buddy. We’ve been working all year toward this, and you bail, thanks! No hard feelings… I guess. So yea, this past weekend was the Doubles Shuttle, which is 16 teams on 8 courts, for 2 hours straight of racquetball. Essentially you play 7 minute games, if you win, you move up toward court 1, if you lose, you go down toward court 8.

So back to me needing a partner. I snagged up Steven Stewart, he’s 19 or so, and we played in the shuttle together, and snagged 2nd place. There was a nice surprise as I found out after the shuttle that there were cash prizes! It cost $15.00 each to play in the shuttle, but Steven and I took second and we got to split $100.00. Cool deal! So really that just covered A) my entry fee, B) the gas it cost me to drive in to Anchorage, and C) fast food dinner. But STILL!! $100.00!

So this upcoming weekend is State Doubles, and Steven and I are like the only people under 24 who’d be in Open division, so there probably won’t be an age category. Also he informed me he is supposed to play with his dad in Open (skill division, not age) so he can’t play with me, so I had to find ANOTHER partner just for Open! Lame. We’ll see how it goes… but I doubt it will bode too well.

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GoogleEarth breaking some ground with the release of Google Earth 5, in which they now have the ability to check out what’s under the oceans, in the skies (not new) , and also what’s in our past. As if GoogleEarth wasn’t cool enough before? Come on folks.

With the built in accelerometer on my iPhone, while using the GoogleEarth app, I can tilt my phone up toward the horizon, and the screen adjust like a camera to show me the nearby topography from whatever location I’m at in GoogleEarth. It’s just amazing, certainly a jaw-dropper for nearby friends.

Another new features is the ability to sort of record flight-paths or journeys, and play them back as basically a little movie! There’s no ability to export this yet, but I would bet those computer nerds out there (hah, whoever they are) would flick on their favorite screen-capturing software and… oh nevermind, don’t listen to me.

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And in other news the Pittsburgh Steelers somehow pull it off in the last 30 seconds of the Super Bowl to snag the win. Sadly, I had to leave just as the game was ending, and as I walked out of the room, I watched the Cardinals pull of a last-minute touchdown, so in my head, they pulled it off. Then half an hour later I was informed that somehow, the Steelers had come back just at the very end of the game for a surprise win. Shocking. My standings were as follows: A) I didn’t care who won, B) If I had to choose, I wanted the Cardinals to win for underdogs’ sake, and C) I thought the Steelers would win.

Sadly disappointed *again by this year’s Super Bowl Commercials. I can’t recall in recent years thinking that I was impressed overall by the commercials. It’s sort of a cliche thing for lots of people to ‘watch the game for the commercials’, however, this just hasn’t proved worth anyone’s time over the last few years. I mean it doesn’t apply to me, because I love to watch football, but it sure sucks for all the girlfriends and metro-dudes out there who don’t like football, and want some good commercials.

And what was that horrendous attempt at 3D nonsense at halftime? Shameful!

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So we here in Alaska are soon to be covered in ash. We broke into the National Geographic newsstream today! Apparently Mt. Redoubt is the 9th most dangerous volcano in the United States… and it has been rumbling for some time now, so we must prepare for the consequences. Chances are the magma will have little or no effect, however the ash that partners with an erupting volcano is known to cause a lot of problems, and not only in the air.

Here’s a GoogleDoc link to some volcano eruption preparation tips:

Be Prepared