Author: shun

Roomba the Vacuum Robot

I didn’t think I’d ever get one of these things — robotic vacuums. But Woot had them on sale for really cheap, so I looked into it and decided it’d be a great present for Grace (ahem, wedding anniversary coming up).

Our unit came today and we gave it a test drive for 2 minutes (the manual says to give it an initial charge for 16 hours before use), and wow… that thing works great! Grace had this huge smile on her face when she saw the package arrive. Admittedly, it’s pretty hard for surprises when:

a. the package is so freaking huge…
b. both of us are home all day long, and…
c. the name of the damn company is printed visibly on the outside of the packaging…

iRobot Roomba box

iRobot Roomba parts

One of the more interesting things about iRobot “robots” is that they are totally hackable. The unit comes with a serial port that I can hook up to a computer and program it (or even load Linux on it if I wanted to). Some of the more well-known hacks include: bluetooth sensor, wifi-connection, customized routines… etc.

Also worth mentioning is its packaging is very Apple-ish… or as Apple-esque as anybody has come anywhere close to packing a merchandize. Me like it very much.

Save the U.S. Economy. Ruin the World.

The United Nations released a study on climate change a couple of days ago. The paper, an effort by over 2,000 top scientists from all over the world, claims that recent climate change “likely” caused by human activities.

What a shocker.

Unfortunately the Bush Administration is a bit too busy trying to protect its economy than to think about what his policies are doing to the, um, WORLD! So it begs the question, where is the U.S. economy going to be WITHOUT the world?

Damn I can’t stand dumb presidents.

Parenting

People hate to be given parenting advices. But sometimes when you see or hear something not quite right, you just gotta say something about it, right? WRONG!

I’ve tried to offer advice here and there to some friends. But apparently people either get offended or simply ignore what you just said. So I am taking a stance that Brian’s mom taught me long ago: shut up until advice is asked for. But sometimes when I learned something new and it works, my excitment tends to want to break that rule… like what I learned from “The Happiest Toddler on the Block”…

So I guess I’ll just mind my own business…

Toddler Tantrums

Bryan has been showing some pretty “tough” tantrums since he turned 15 months. So like I previously mentioned, I started reading “The Happiest Toddler on the Block”. And yesterday, I was able to pick up the DVD from the library so that we can get a “cram” version of the book to start winning some battles. Much to my surprise, the techniques freaking WORK! It was really crazy to see that look in Bryan’s eyes like, “Wait, you understood me?” And it’s even more amazing when he just puts away his tendrum and starts cooporating (most of the time anyway).

WOW. The techniques from the book plus the sign languages we’ve been teaching him have really saved us a lot of parenting griefs.

Speaking of sign language, Bryan seems to be be talking a lot more than he’s willing to sign. But he still signs anyway because he gets praises whenever he does them. But we are just beginning to realize how much he’s REALLY understanding what we say to him. Sometimes we just babble to Bryan in adult language (you know, complete sentences and all). But as soon as we realized that he understands most of what we say, we were shocked and have since started paying more attention to what we say all the time…

Rebel Forces Have Landed

At long last, the much anticipated Java class I’ve been wanting to take all year in 2006 finally started on Tuesday. After having played with PHP for 4 years, I’ve finally felt the need to pick up something else for a change. Partly, my cousin Alex is to “blame” for pushing me into Java for its enterprise-readiness.

A couple of interesting statistics about this class:

1. A typically uber-geek class has almost 1/2 of the students being women.
2. Everyone else in the class has either an IBM ThinkPad or some sort of loser Dell laptop. I am the lone Mac user in the class with the only Mac laptop (yoohoo!).
3. Everyone else planned on coding Java using Windows; I am the only person using Mac OSX (yoohoo!) while one other guy is using Solaris.

Hopefully this class will worth its weight in tofu. I had the same instructor in a previous database design class, and that class turned out to be very “profitable” for me. So hopefully I’ll be able to make what I learn here equally successful economically. 🙂

Finally, An Apple Phone

It’s been rumored for years. But I am just about sick of hearing about it without seeing the real thing. But I guess all the patents Apple’s been making in the past year on touch-screen technologies have finally come to fruition. Today the Apple iPhone arrived. And as a direct result of it, my Apple stock jumped 7+ points, passing $92 per share… Sweet!

After having seen most of the fake iPhones and rumored features, I didn’t think Apple could surprise me. But what was announced today greatly surpassed my expectations on the GUI and usability. But someone’s got to play the devil’s advocate about the “misses” on this particular phone:

1. Not 3G.
2. I am guessing the battery is NOT removable. Is Apple banking on consumers replacing their phones every 2 years? Though people generally do it anyway, it’s annoying.
3. Storage is not upgradable (not by the user anyway).
4. The phone feature must work in order for the whole dvice to work; the caveat is, you MUST sign up with a network or else the entire device is just another paper weight. So I can’t just buy it for the PDA-ish features! Bastards.
5. What, no iChatAV?
6. No clearly stated standby time.
7. I am assuming no 3rd party developers can install their apps on the phone’s OS without Apple’s blessing.
8. Can’t transfer music/files wirelessly. Not that I care for Zune’s features, but it’d be nice to be able to sync with iTunes wirelessly. Isn’t it about time?
9. The phone surface is going to be all scratched up in the pocket. But then I guess Apple will probably ship it with some kind of sleeve when it’s available in June.

All in all, this is a pretty kick-ass first stab at making something they’ve never made before. Hopefully this will make the other phone makers piss in their pants so badly that it will improve the overall usability of cell phones in time. But Steve Jobs is right when he said today’s phones SUCK!

Happiest Toddler, Hopfully

A while ago, Brian and Birgit recommended “The Happiest Toddler on the Block” as a reading reference for dealing with the infamous “terrible two” tantrums. They said the book will show Grace and I some insight on, not only how to deal with the tantrums, but also reasons why some of those emotional mood swings take place.

Bryan has been showing some classic signs of emotional yo-yos. So I decided it was time to pick up the book and get into it with some substance. Luckily I was able to get a copy from the library. And as my luck would have it, I picked up another one from Craigslist for $4! So now Grace and I can read the same book simultaneously…

Incidently there’s also a DVD for it. Unfortunately the library copy was so scratched up that it was unplayable. And I guess it’s not enough of a money maker that our local Blockbuster stores also don’t carry it… Tough luck…

I also got some audio books that Brian has been trying to get me to read the book versions of, some of which are by Malcolm Gladwell, which have been on my reading list for the longest time. Bless good public libraries.

ReadyBoost Envy

I am rarely envious of anything from the Windows side of the world. And when I say “rarely”, it’s more like NEVER. But in Vista, there’s actually this ONE tiny feature that I hope the next version of Mac OSX would have — ReadyBoost. It’s basically a feature that allows a user to instantly increase the performance of a Vista-driven computer by simply adding flash memory! Sweet!

More features of Leopard (OSX.5) is to be unveiled on Jan. 9th, 2007 with Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at MacWorld Expo. I look forward to seeing what Apple’s been hiding for the past five months…

Thrills

The last time we felt REALLY thrilled about Bryan was when he started using American Sign Language to communicate with us (his first sign was, not surprisingly, “milk” ). But this week we were thrilled again when Bryan was finally able to consistently free-stand for a few seconds at a time. Even though we know this is a sign of more “troubles” to come when he is finally able to walk and roam around on his own with an unprecedented freedom, the very sight of him being able to do it still excites us nonetheless. Even more interesting is that Bryan seems to understand what it means now that he is able to stand up longer than ever without help — he shows off this newfound skill every chance he gets.

I may have mentioned this before, but Grace thinks that kids who are able to speak early seem to walk later. And the opposite seems to be true as well as she observed. We will see if this “theory” continues to hold up with the growth of 5 other kids in our immediate circle of friends — Kevin, Tai, Prestin, Xinee and Ella (pretty international names, huh?).