Author: Leon

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News Programming

New MySpace Apps: Random Band Names and Random Advice

I now have two apps live on MySpace, Random Advice and Random Band Names. The core functionality is exactly the same as what’s on Leon’s Random Generators. Both of them place content on your MySpace profile. You can see them in action on my profile page, myspace.com/leonatkinson.

It’s somewhat obtuse to get the apps on your own profile. Visit the app’s profile page (linked above). Click the button to add the app. Then, modify your profile and add the “module”. (I’m hand-waving a bit here). I think you must be upgraded to the 2.0 version of profiles.

Despite my bickering about how I was fighting with the approval process last month, I did get the advice generator active. The band names app was approved within hours. So maybe they like to hassle unproven developers. In any event, the advice generator has been live for less than a month and has 116 “active users”. I’m not clear if that means installs, or if people have activated the module in their profile. I can’t find any examples of profiles with it installed.

Categories
News

My 1&1 Account Has Been Down For Days

I’m now into day 2 of my account over at 1&1 being down. Their estimates for recovery keep going up, from 4 hours, to 12 hours and today they say it will be two more days. Luckily, I don’t trust my main site, www.leonatkinson.com, to them. I leonatkinson.com with he.net and I might have had a couple of hours of downtime in the 10 years I’ve been with them.

I have all my emptyz.com stuff with 1&1, and that means a couple of my Facebook apps are down. Plus, I stuck some client work on the server last week. It’s a huge drag to have that stuff unavailable for two more days.

I suspect this is an isolated event, unlike the widespread outage from a couple of years ago that made it to Digg. I can’t find anyone else talking about it. Anyway, it seems like a good time switch providers.

Categories
News

Google Notebook Going Away

Google announced that they will stop developing Notebook, a tool I use every day. This is downside to using free-as-in-beer tools. They aren’t planning to shut off the service (right away). And it’s easy enough to export the content. There are alternatives that might take me a while to evaluate. Here’s what I’ve found so far.

You can export each notebook directly to Google Docs. I don’t like the interface. I like to switch quickly between notebooks. I don’t want a heavy MS Word replacement loaded on multiple Firefox tabs. This solution doesn’t work for me. Neither do the tasks functionality in gmail or building something custom with Google Sites. The suggestions given on the Notebook blog indicate that the team doesn’t understand how I use their product.

Zoho has their own Notebook. The interface is radically different, but the overall data architecture is the same. I suspect it would take me a while to move the data over given Zoho’s way of implementing pages. I do like how Zoho let’s you make a page be a spreadsheet instead of free text. In my limited playing around with it, though, I found that opening up directly to a saved notebook showed me a twirling progress indicator for longer than I cared to wait.

Evernote offers a Web interface as well as a Windows executable (that I don’t care about). They show one, small screenshot of the Web interface, which looks overly graphical. The big fail for me, though is that after getting through the annoying captcha, I had to wait for an email with a confirmation code. It didn’t come right away, so I moved on.

I won’t bother to look at Microsoft One Note. I assume it won’t work well on Ubuntu. I might go back to writing notes as email drafts. I can’t find an open source project that duplicates Google Notebook, so I might write something myself.

Categories
Programming

Track Your Migraines on Facebook

Many people suffer from migraines, a kind of storm in the brain that causes more than just headaches. I am one of those people. After I’d heard Mark Zuckerberg speak at last year’s Facebook developers conference, it occurred to me that sharing the experience might fit with his vision to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

migraines screenshot

I had an app done in August but got distracted for several months. Over the Christmas break, I found the time to polish it up and release it. The main feature of the app is a personal database of migraine events with the aim to helping you discover patterns or triggers. In the context of Facebook allows you to automatically let your friends know you’ve had a migraine. That could lead to better understanding or just a feeling of comfort.

You can get started using the app by visiting the Migraines About Page on Facebook.

One advantage in waiting was the the new template bundles for the news feed is working flawlessly. In August it was brand new and buggy. I also had more fun with the Google Chart API. Once you get a few migraines recorded, I can generate a pie chart of how severe they are and a line graph of how many you have each month.

Categories
Entertainment

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin is Great

Born Standing Up by Steve MartinI have always been a fan of Steve Martin, even when I was a kid. Maybe it was because he became such a sensation just as I was becoming aware of pop culture. His sense of humor resonates with me. All comedy relies on identifying things that are “wrong” in surprising ways, but unlike the type of comedy that identifies the wrongs of society, Martin tends to stick to fundamentals. His style is to present material that’s wrong on simple logical terms.

I received a copy of Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life as a Christmas present and read it straight through that day. As is typical of Martin’s writing style, it is light and approachable. It isn’t heavy on details, but instead has an introspective style. I can imagine the same subject covered by a fan would detail every appearance, every album, every movie. I’ve read several books in that style that were interesting but left out the emotions and motivations. I appreciated how Martin discusses his struggle with panic attacks and his strained relationship with his father.

One detail that stood out for me is Martin’s love of the Somerset Maugham novel The Razor’s Edge. I really enjoyed that novel when I discovered it in college. I even like Bill Murray’s movie version. So, his mention of it made another point of validation for my admiration of Martin’s work.