I’m not really a fan of jumping on the “mock Microsoft” bandwagon, but this is priceless.  I could say something intelligent-sounding about non-Google search engines’ difficult task of changing users’ mentalities about “search = Google”, but I wont.

Even with all its limitations, my iPad hooks into my Windows- and Microsoft-dominated world quite nicely.  I have hundreds of ripped DVDs on my Windows Home Server for viewing on my Xbox 360 through Media Center Extender.  Do I also want to view those videos curled up in bed with my iPad?  To quote Apple’s less-than-meek advertising slogan, “There’s an app for that.”  While I hate, hate, hate Apple’s uncanny ability to command attention, that doesn’t mean they don’t make some pretty nifty products.

Why do I have a picture of my iPad and Zune making hearts to each other?  It just so happens that I want to download an album that isn’t available on the Zune Marketplace.  Checking Amazon MP3, I discovered that the album wasn’t available there either.  What about iTunes?  I tapped open the iTunes app on my iPad, and sure enough there it is.  What’s great about DRM-free music?  I can download a song from iTunes, on my iPad, and sync it over to my Zune.  (I would say this is interoperability at its finest, but I suspect to have a less-than-satisfactory user experience with iTunes on Windows.)

The point, however, is that less and less consumers are having to choose sides.  Mac or PC?  The real issue is AAC or OOG, or why not support both?  The platform is losing significance.  Microsoft Exchange, a protocol for synchronizing email, calendar, and contacts, is available on Windows Phones, Android Phones, and iPhones.  The protocol itself is being served up not just by enterprises in business-type scenaros, but also for consumers.  Gmail, for example, offers Exchange support for free.  When every platform speaks a common set of protocols and file formats, something customers shouldn’t have to bother worrying about anyway, customers can more easily mix-and-match different devices and services.  A year ago got a Windows Mobile phone because it would easily synchronies with my Windows Live Mail.  Now, however, the phone and the email service can easily be interchanged independently, since both pieces can speak Exchange. (side note: yes, yes, IMAP exists blah blah.  That only synchronizes email.)

How long until there’s a Zune app for iOS?  What about a PlayStation Home app for Windows Phone?  Arguably the latter is more likely to happen, but all is possible in the magical world of technology.

This morning RoomieRemake woke me up with two short scripts.  And hey, more news!  I used the recently-updated website (which I’ve apparently never directly blogged about) to write the scripts.  Here’s a screenshot of that.

Here’s the script that ran on Dreaming Nest, my Home Server, which has a ThinkStick USB Z-Wave controller.

<RoomieScript>
  <Timing.WaitUntil Hour="8" Minute="50" />
  <ZWave.PowerOn DeviceName="Coffee Pot" />
  <Timing.WaitUntil Hour="8" Minute="59" />
  <ZWave.PowerOn DeviceName="Monitor and Speakers" />
  <Timing.WaitUntil Hour="9" Minute="15" />
  <ZWave.PowerOff DeviceName="Coffee Pot" />
</RoomieScript>

Here is the script that ran on Rory, the desktop computer in my bedroom.

<RoomieScript>
  <Timing.WaitUntil Hour="9" />
  <Output.OpenFile Path="F:/music/playlists/Driving in Spring.wpl" />
</RoomieScript>

Sure, an extra DVD might not cure cancer or solve world peace, but it sure is a nice gesture from a company that works really hard for customer loyalty.

Today I did some reorganizing and had a chain of really long USB cables to use, so I plugged one end into the back of the Xbox 360 and then wrapped the cable along the baseboards, ending nestled into couch.  Woop!  Now I have a USB port for the Xbox 360 right there.  My inner dork rejoices!

By the way, the Xbox 360 has USB keyboard support.  It’s really handy for typing out messages and such.  Media Center Extender doesn’t work all that great with the keyboard, unfortunately, since the arrow keys inexplicably don’t work in it.

Gross!

I just got a 2TB hard drive for my Windows Home Server.  Swim around in your bigger pool, my precious data!

………………………………………/””~,
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………………../…………………………|
………………./…………………..,„_„…|
………………/…………………,-,-~-,-~’,
……………../……………….,-“ ( . . o)_º)IT’S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!!!!!
……………./………………./ . . .“-~“ . . ¯¯¯¯¯””~-,
……………|………………..| . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,-~“~,
……………|………………..| . . . . . . . . . . . . . /:::::::\
……………|………………..| . . . . . . . . . . . . . |::::::::|
……………|………………..\ . . . ._ . . . . . . . . “-,„„„-”
…………….|………………..”-, . .(..”~,————~”
…………….|._………………..”~,..”~-‘—,………………,–~~-,
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(found here)

Usually now when I get an IM from such an account I just block it.  I figured I’d try to help the other poor victim out, though…

edit:

Whoops!  I should read my own blog.  Here’s all the info on Wikipedia.

(name that sorting algorithm!)

A few days ago I submitted three email addresses for invitations.  I got two invitations last night, and interesting the one that didn’t get the invite was my gmail account.  Everything works the same anyway. Here’s a screenshot walkthrough of the setup experience.

After I clicked the invitation link in my email and signed in with my gmail account.  I was presented with this screen.

I clicked “Choose a number,” and I was presented with the main interface and an overlay with setup options.

Here I fiddled around until I got a good phone number.

The next step was to put in my existing cell phone number so that when people call my Google Voice number they get me.

The next step has Google Voice call my phone.
 

*ring ring* “Verifying your phone…” stayed on until I answered my phone and input the number.  The call was from my Google Voice number.
 

Success!  My impression of Google Voice has been very positive so far.  I’ll post more about it as I discover.

Today I moved my Windows Home Server from the corner of the basement to on top of the basement fridge.  This moves it away from the TV room, where it makes noise and can get bumped around (my precious hard drive enclosures!), and it also moves it off the ground… you know, in case there’s a flood or something.  I also took the UPS off of my desktop computer and put it on the server.  I figure that’s the data I’m really trying to protect anyway, since the Windows Home Server automatically backs up the data on my desktop computer.

Viewing the source of the homepage reveled that there were unexpected linebreaks at the top of the document.

This suggested that there was something wrong with the index.php file or the header.php file of the WordPress theme.  However, viewing the RSS feed gave the following error:
 

And looking at the source…

And finally, when I tried to submit a post through Windows Live Writer, I got the following error:

Navigating to the xmlrpc page…

(Clearly I can’t just look at the page through a browser, but there are those strange linebreaks anyway.)

Here I was left scratching my head wondering what might be inserting these mystery linebreaks.  I even wrote a little test.php file to make sure the server wasn’t doing it.

The problem?  Linebreaks after the closing php tags in included php files.  The main culprit: plugins.

As a test I could type “hello, world” where I have highlighted, and it would appear in every HTML page and RSS feed served by my WordPress blog. >.<  For this to truly make sense, you’d need to know about PHP’s include function.

So I disabled all my pluggins and re-enabled them one-by-one to find the offending pluggins.  Counterize II was the only one.  I used WordPress’s built-in plugin editor to fix Counterize II’s code.

My wp-config.php files was also an offender.

*sigh* problem solved.

echo -e "#include <stdio.h>\nint main(int argc, char ** args){printf(\"%d@facebook.com\\\n\", 0xFACEB00C>>2); return 0;}" > fbmail.c; g++ fbmail.c -o fbmail; ./fbmail; rm fbmail.c fbmail

Submissions should be sent via email to the address: {0xFACEB00C>>2 in decimal}@facebook.com

Since one can easily find the email with a quick Google search, I thought I’d show how to find it. The puzzle page is Unix-centric, so for this task I logged into an Ubuntu virtual machine that lives on my home network.

In ViM, here’s the simple program:

cute.  I have saved the file, and now I write a command to compile and execute the code.

And now we see the output of the email (below “[. . .]vim fbemail.c” and above “Press ENTER [. . .]“)

Yeah, no spoilers here… but if you can’t complete this task you won’t be able to do any of the others anyway.  No doubt the Facebook recruiters will judge me on my performance with these. This is going to be fun.

edit at 4:25pm: update

With Arcadia I have committed to research everything that I suspect will make for a better design. Because of this, Archaida’s backend is shaping up to be elegant and efficient. I researched how to do inheritance in C#, and have used that to save myself from writing a lot of code. This has drastically decreased development and testing time. I learned how to use basic regular expressions over the summer, and have used them in some areas (more on that later). For the frontend I decided to switch from WinForms to WPF. All I can say is that databinding is epic, and I still have a lot more to learn about it.

Here’s a shot of Arcadia in its current form:

I’ll hopefully release an alpha soon.

edit October 12, 2009 at 10:57am:

Also generics. Generics are amazing. (More on that later, too.)