Juixe Techknow

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe.

Software Development

• Being into computers today is not the same as it was in my day when you had to solder chips into boards, now it means you are on Facebook.
• I don’t know why you would fake such a thing but there are a lot of fake self described geeks.
• This holiday season remember to backup if don’t already have a backup system in place.

Thought Leadership

• Life has a funny way to keep you humble.
• Focus on simplicity, complexity is overrated.
• Whether I see the glass half full or half empty largely depends on what is in the glass to begin with.
• To much of a good thing is a bad thing. Not enough of a good thing is also a bad thing.
• No brain, no gain.
• There is no such thing as cheap thrills, only cheap tricks.

Product Placement

• I just realized that I have five phone numbers connected to my iPhone.
• Not feeling the new Twitter app. It feels like it requires too many clicks to do anything.
• Every parking lot should be covered with an array of solar panels. Some parking lots take more area than the base of the building.
• I hate when sites and apps require Facebook Connect to sign up. #pinterest
• I bet that Taco Bell taco shells are made in China.
• Like a true politician, Go Daddy flip flopped on the issue and now claims it does not support SOPA. #WhoDroppedTheSOPA
• Google Grinch: No Ice Cream Sandwich for Galaxy S, first Galaxy Tab, or original Nexus.
• The one feature that had been overlooked in Android is the ability to take a screenshot of your Android device.

Quote

• I’m putting you on the do not kill list. – Bender Bending RodrÃŒguez
• The truth is often stupid. – Bender Bending RodrÃŒguez
• Follow the fucking money. When a VC tells you what’s good for you, check your wallet, then count your fingers. – jwz
• Let’s go and invent tomorrow. – Steve Jobs

Question

• Who moved my cheese and then cut said cheese?
• Who is doing some last minute shopping?
• How many domains do you own?
• Church’s or Popeyes?
• Ancient Aliens or Modern Morons?
• If you could go back in time and would be stuck in prehistoric time, what skill would you need most to survive?
• If Mr Grinch is so mean what do you think Mrs Grinch is like?
• If the world is flat why aren’t international phone rates flat themselves?
• A touch device is a complicated device with many components, what are the chances that the Galaxy Tab would look identical to the iPad?

Randumb

• Looking forward to the future!
• Old Internet memes don’t die, they go remixed, go viral, and trend.
• It’s rumored that the same maker that built a weight scale with a built it twitter client that tweets your weight is working on a toilet.
• Money can’t buy you love but it can sure buy some lap dances.
• When it comes to teenage love, forever doesn’t last long.
• The surprise is the prize.
• Empty space is the enemy of clutter.
• You are the chaos/cause of you.
• You are the cause of you because you.
• It is what it will be and it will be what has been.
• Happy whatever the fuck you celebrate tonight.
• The Internet was invented for the sharing of funny cat videos and pictures.
• Make a right at the 3rd dimension and you are here.
• The best part of nothing is everything.
• Negative ideas manifest into real feelings
• Gift wrapping ain’t going so merry.
• If there is a way to hurt yourself with a tape dispenser I’ve done it… Why is my lip bleeding!?
• I think that The Terminator is the beginning of a long war against the machines that culminates with The Matrix.

Overheard

• OH: Annoying people are really annoying.
• OH: I would love to enjoy my own depression if I only I didn’t have to deal with other people’s depression.
• OH: I wish my life was an 80’s movie.
• OH: To be honest, I’m not being honest.

A family member received the iPhone 4S for Christmas and the first thing she wanted to try was Siri. She didn’t know how to turn it on so she called me, the local family tech support. To turn on Siri on the iPhone 4S go to the Settings app. Once on the iPhone Settings, drill down on the General option. In the General settings view drill down on the Siri option. Once in the Siri settings view, make sure that the toggle button is turned on. You can also change other Siri settings such as the language.

Siri Settings View

Recently I noticed that I had less than 3GB of free disk pace on my laptop. I have and take a lot of photos, in addition to that I download and install a lot of different development tools and IDEs. I also have a lot of music and listen to a lot of podcasts. In addition to all this, I am a digital hoarder and download and save any PDF or image that I find interesting.

When I discovered that I was running out of disk space I immediately started to look for “disk space” apps on the App Store. I found Spacie to be what the HD DR ordered. With Spacie I found that I had multiple version of NetBeans each taking close to 1GB. I had multiple versions of the Android SDK each taking close to 1GB. Spotify was caching over 2GB of data. I found that iPhoto and iTunes was taking the bulk of the space. I easily had 20GB in iPhoto and 40GB in iTunes. In iPhoto, I started to export and backup photo sets older than a year or two so that I could reclaim more space. In iTunes, I found that I had a hundreds of podcasts taking over 100MB each. I pushed these photo sets and podcasts to an external hard drive and reclaimed over 40GB of disk space. Spacie helped me to identify what files where taking the most space and I systematically addressed each folder as best I could.

Spacie finds large files in your hard drive and helps reclaim disk space.

Spacie is available on the Apple App Store. It is currently priced at $1.99 and it’s well worth it since it saved me from having to upgrade to a new hard drive.

This geek gift guide is not so much for geeks and techies but for those that have geeks and techies in their life and need a little help in finding the right geek gift this holiday season. If you want to wow the geek in your life with the latest technology gadget you need to look no further.

For two years straight the iPad has been the most coveted piece of technology on most self respecting geek. The iPad is great for geeks no matter their expertise, music, photography, gaming, social media, etc. A geek that travels a lot or enjoys reading on their iPad when at a coffee shop would enjoy the 3G iPad so that they can always be connected no mater where they are. Whether you give the geek in your life an iPad or if they already have one, there are a ton of great accessories, such as a envelope iPad cases from Poketo.

Poketo Envelope iPad Case

Over this last year there has been an explosion of tablets come into the market such as the Amazon Kindle Fire, and Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet. The Nook tablet at $249 is a great bargain but so is the Amazon Kindle Fire at $199. The Nook tablet is a bit faster and more powerful than the Kindle Fire, but if you already own a Kindle or have purchase Kindle ebooks then the Kindle Fire would be the obvious choice.

For the financial whiz in the family I would recommend the HP 12c Financial Calculator. The HP 12c Financial Calculator has a retro HP look and over 120 mathematical functions that would be appreciated by any business and finance power user.

Every engineer needs a notebook and there are no better notebooks than Moleskine notebooks. Moleskine has come out with a limited edition Star Wars notebooks perfect for that die hard fan. For the old school video gamer in the family, they also have a limited edition Pac-Man set.

As everyone already knows, the standard geek uniform is jeans and a t-shirt. Any self respecting geek needs to have some ThinkGeek shirts in his wardrobe. ThinkGeek gear is like Armani Exchange for geeks, binary fashionable and geek chic.

If you need more suggestions, take a look at previous years geek gift guides:

The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide 2010, The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide 2009, The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide 2008

I’ve been an Android user since the HTC G1 first came out. Since then, I’ve had and used the Google Nexus, HTC G2, and the Dell Streak 7. I’ve tried to like my Android devices but they lack polish or frustrate me in several other ways. The first annoying lack to details is noticed immediately as soon as you un-box the device. Just turn over the device and you’ll see three or more logos, the maker logo (such as Dell, HTC, or Samsung), the carriers logo (T-Mobile or Verizon), and the product name or other insignia. Apple products just have the Apple logo. On Android devices, you’ll have different logos each placed on the back plate separately, the vendor’s logo will be etched into the back while the carrier’s logo will be some cheap vinyl sticker placed afterward.

My personal pet peeve with Android devices is the craziness with moving apps from the internal device’s memory to the external SD card. Even relatively recent Android devices such as the Google Nexus and Dell Streak 7 have less than 1GB internal memory so if you download a lot of apps you’ll soon need to move apps around to the SD card. But some apps you can’t move to the SD card so that presents a different issue.

Who cares if the phone’s memory can be extended by using higher capacity SD cards if a one year old device can’t even be upgraded to the latest Android version. So the whole thing with extensible SD cards and moving installed apps from the internal memory to the SD card I find completely and frustratingly useless. The whole concept of an Operating Systems is that best manages the resources of the device, the Android OS should best manage installed applications in either the internal memory or SD based on some intelligence. Why am I doing Android’s job?

Another concern I have with Android devices is that they usually come with a lot of pre-installed apps. For example, my Dell Streak 7 came with Kongregate Arcade app which I can’t remove and reclaim the wasted internal memory. Similarly, carriers and vendors add and customize Android so that no two devices have the same user experience.

My last concern with Android’s lack of polish is its dark goth color scheme. Most application’s menu and option screens are as if they were designed by a goth listening to The Cure. The Android UI design is not “Just Like Heaven.”

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe.

Software Development

• Making good UI means making ugly choices.
• There was a time when having a computer made you a nerd. Today, people being “good on Facebook” does not make you a nerd.
• Love working with jQuery Mobile.

Thought Leadership

• Everyone has a vision, the difference is the scope, lens, and filter around the vision.
• Tomorrow is a fresh opportunity to be amazing and amazed.
• You ask stupid questions, you get stupid answers.
• I’m not on StackOverflow, so when people ask for my SO reputation I instead give them the the monthly referrals I get from SO.

Product Placement

• Sweet. Amazon just sent me a $5 credit because of a “technical issue on the Amazon.com website” that I am not even aware I encountered.
• Found my first handheld device… An HP iPaq RX3715 running Pocket PC 2003 Pro w/ Outlook 2002. It’s still in great condition!
• David Pogue wrote his review of the Kindle Fire, sounds like he wrote it from his iPad.

Overheard

• OH: Don’t they have Cliff Notes for the DMV driving manual?
• OH: Your brain cells are sexy!
• OH: Sometimes when you put things in the closet it doesn’t mean you have a clean house.
• OH: don’t do it but it you gonna do it make sure you get paid for doing it.

Thanksgiving

• I’m turkeyed-out. I had all major food groups and at least four different meat groups.
• McDonalds should have a McTurkey with McStuffing.
• Thanksgiving is the time to eat food you don’t like, I mean why do you only have it only for Thanksgiving?
• The holidays forces families to come together because everyone else is with their families.
• I dislike food holidays. Especially when everything is so good.
• Instead of counting sheep, I’ll be counting turkeys tonight.
• Gobble gobble gone.