Monday, December 25, 2006

What are ShowMeDos and screencasts?

ShowMeDo is a web site that hosts screencasts. A screencast, is simply recordings what you're doing on the screen. This is awesome for training, or for showing someone how to do something. For example, someone asked me how they could save my flickr pictures to their local computer. I tried to explain, but they wouldn't listen, so instead I created a screencast that showed how it is done.

To create the screencast, I use camstudio ( get version 2.0 for windows it's free), and then I upload it to google video so that any one can view it.

The video I need to make is here.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Laptops owners with 2 Gigs of RAM can finally hibernate.

After years of not being able to hibernate, MS finally released a patch that fixed my issue with hibernation.

If you're wondering who needs hibernate? I do, and here's why:
  1. Booting my computer is slow
    • I have corporate software that needs to scan my system on startup. booting up and logging in can take upto 5 minutes
  2. I often don't use my laptop for days.
    • Standby needlessly drains my batteries. Nothing worse than pulling out the laptop only to find standby has reduced my batteries to 10%.
  3. I have multiple batteries
    • Hibernate lets me change batteries without rebooting my system.
Good Sleeping

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

A funny API decription

Maybe I'm weird, but I giggle when people talk about databases crying. The Flickr search api justifies a requirement as follows:

Geo queries require some sort of limiting agent in order to prevent the database from crying.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Flickr: Tags , Sets and Virtual Sets

I'm a big fan of flickr, and have been a little confused between Tags and
Sets. In a nutshell here is the difference:
  • Sets - a container for pictures ( a picture can be in multiple sets)
  • Tags - a property of a picture ( a picture can have multiple tags)

This is a weird model. Ideally, you'd be able to make virtual sets from tag
combinations and date ranges. Unfortunately flickr doesn't have this
ability. But what flicker does have is an external API set.

Using this API set I'm working on a tool to make virtual sets from tags.