After several months of tinkering I have finally, successfully, gotten my hackintosh setup complete with working sound. Last night I got home from Food+Tech Hackathon in SoHo and decided that I was going to make it my mission to get this heap in working order. After about an hour, a shower and some Jameson, the bad mamma jamma was running smooth like butter.
Some other not-so-awesome achievements was finally installing Outlook 2011 on my MacBook after being embarrassed because I was unable to open up a spreadsheet while working on Milk Hack. Which, in and of itself, deserves a little bit of explanation. I decided to go to this food hackathon hosted by the great Danielle Gould and one of the ideas that was proposed was her own: to find get some visualizations in pricing information released by the USDA.
Now most of you that know me can attest that I absolutely hate the process of wrapping my head around statistics, but I love information and data hacking. Luckily enough I was joined by the R guru Drew Conway and what he was able to produce was a sweet animation that we threw up on vimeo. After pouring through several spreadsheets of data I then went to work on what is now the design of http://milkhack.com.
All in all it was a great day spent outside of the cold day in New York City. Big props go out to the Gojee team for hosting the event at their offices. I had a blast, met some great people and ate some amazing food. Who could ask for more?
If you are a frequent rider of the PATH system between New Jersey and New York City you may have noticed big brother communicating overhead reminding you that there is no eating or drinking on the PATH. I have been commuting into New York City for three years now and I absolutely understand their point – due to the high volume of people, even if every third person was eating a sandwich the amount of trash left all over the train would be amazing. But only the other day after I had read my complimentary Metro newspaper, dropped it into a puddle of who-the-hell-knows-what, I realized that there are absolutely no trash cans inside of any of the station terminals!
This was a moment I actually had to double take. I looked around the World Trade Center terminal searching for a trash can and I was only able to find some construction worker’s trash bin which should absolutely not need to be used to throw out newspaper. So I walked out of the terminal in search of a trash can on my normal commute on the Lexington avenue line. It was not until the corner of Broadway and Vesey had I actually found a trash can! That is roughly a quarter mile away from the terminal entrance! As you can clearly see below the distance from the World Trade Center, which is not even accurately depicted due to the ongoing construction, is quite surprising. You would think that someone, anyone, might have decided to stick a trash can on one of the busiest commuter walked areas in the city.
I understand the need to enforce physiologically the fact that you do not want trash inside of the terminals. But should you absolutely remove trash cans completely, even outside of the turn stiles before you even get inside of the terminal? Some people are standing around drinking (or eating) the remnants of their breakfast/lunch/dinner before they decide to step through the gates. Although, I have to say, it seems to be working – the PATH commute is by far the less smelly of any of the lines that I have to take. Just some food for thought.
This is for all of you guys out there that bust your ass and are pissed off for those meat heads out in San Francisco getting all of the press.
After attending the Yahoo Open Hack event last October, meeting some amazing individuals, I have decided that the fun needs to happen more often. For those of you that do not know exactly what Yahoo Open Hack was about, essentially you stick a bunch of geeks with computers in a room for twenty-four hours, supply pizza and booze, and see what they produce in the end. I have spoken with some of my local hombres, but I need some more people to make this thing happen. I can provide some networking equipment, a few Unix servers, but I am going to need someone access to some awesome hacking space in New York City for an overnight weekend shindig.
If you are interested, know someone who is willing to provide the space or merely want to weigh in on the subject matter drop a comment. I am looking to hold this event during the summer, with a follow up one right before the Web 2.0 Expo in September. As of right now there is no cost associated with this project other than what it will cost you to live in New York City for a night (which, depending on your lifestyle may be a hell of a lot).
Let’s get this ball rolling people.
Well, well, it has been quite awhile since I have last written a blog post to the masses. Since then there has been some very awesome updates in the world of technology that I have been unable to give my opinion about (not that anyone is actually reading my opinion). The last month has been a busy time in my life. I finally have a change of scenery and have moved across the Passaic river from Newark, NJ to Kearny, NJ in a much better apartment (and area). I cannot even begin to express how great it is to finally have a bed to sleep on. You do not really know how much sleeping on a couch, mattress, in your car, at your friend’s place, really sucks until you have to do it for two months of your life.
My tenure at the New Jersey Institute of Technology is about up. I will be receiving my bachelors degree in December as long as I do not screw up any of my classes. As it looks now the only class that I have to worry about is Physics II, because I absolutely loathe electric circuits and the such, but I have a good feeling about the next exam so I think all will be good. Last week I taught two classes on Linux, Boost, and C/C++ to some capstone students at NJIT. Capstone students are essentially students that are working on their senior project (or thesis) to graduate.
At the beginning of September I made the concise decision to get off my ass and start getting my life in gear. So along with a controversial hair cut (went front long hair to short hair) I went and began putting out my feelers for contract (and consulting) work to pay some bills. I am currently working on a project for a friend of mine, have one or two personal projects in the pipeline, but unfortunately nothing that is paying some green yet. We’ll see how that goes.
That’s about it for the quick read. I am going to make an effort to post some more blog entries when I think about it. Most of my bright moments happen when I am not near a keyboard.