Friends

This past month I have been working on work outside of work. We are going to build our own JavaScript map control, we are mapping website developers after all. It's not really to compete with others but to remove a looming dependency on others. So I took a month-long leave of programming for Laser Hockey to do most of the work. It has turned out pretty cool so far but still needs a lot of work. It will be featured in our latest site for Newton, MA later this month. I'll send a link around when a beta is online.

Regarding the question (which has nothing to do with the update), what technology or website can I use to have RSS/ATOM feed updates emailed to me once a day in some sort of digest? It's not actually for me but I'm curious if something exists and have no time to go poking around right now.

If the title didn't warn you, I might as well say this up front...this post is going to sound dirty.

Given the state of my wrists (specifically my right one) I've been giving them special attention with regards to stretching and lifting. The doctor took a look and seems to think that at some point I had some major trauma to my wrist which resulted in a stretched ligament. After that injury, the ligament most likely shrunk back down and is now popping bones out of joint. Enough movement can cause a bit of pain. Is this the right diagnosis? Who knows. Is it prompting me to do something about it? Absolutely. He recommended getting a gyroball and using it once in a while. I took a look around and found Powerballs. After looking at all of the models, I settled on the Signature Series. It seemed to be a good combination of weight and resistance.

I came home from work (and a few drinks) and the package had arrived. After taking it out of the box, I noticed a ton of red strings that came with it. I had no idea what they were for so I (*gasp*) read the manual. What I didn't realize was that these strings were fucking ripcords! I know ripcords are parachute cords, but the directions do refer to them as cords, and they do use the phrase "Really let rip" in reference to pulling on the cord. It took a few tries, but after ripping cord for about 5 minutes I was finally able to sustain the gyration of the ball. I was absolutely amazed at the amount of resistance it generated. I set the mode on the ball to log the highest RPM achieved. The website has a "top 100" list for this, so I wanted to see where I am at when I start. After giving it a few good shots, the best I was able to do was about 7900RPM. I felt pretty good...that is until I saw the top 100 list is actually the 14000RPM+ Club. WTF! I'm pretty sure at that speed it is pushing back on your hand quite a bit.

I'd say I put in about 20 minutes tonight and my wrists are extremely tired. I was looking at the site earlier and noticed the all-metal gyrating ball they have. It's like 120$. I don't think I'd put the money down for something like that, but I'd definitely like to give it a try and see how fast I can get the ball to gyrate.

Diablo 3 was announced a few days ago. I caught it super-early in the morning on the 28th and spent about 10 minutes with my jaw dropped watching the gameplay video. It looks very pretty. From what I can gather, it seems to take everything that was great about Diablo 2 and add so much more. I haven't seen some of the critical stuff like backpack size, stash size, how you control moving around, etc. - although I'm sure they understood how much better D2 got once they released the LOD expansion, so these things are probably fine.

I've had D2 installed for a long time, but I haven't played in ages. It gets boring playing by yourself, but several friends are also stoked about D3 and have reinstalled (or bought) D2 and are ready to play. I don't plan on devoting a ton of time to the game, but if you're interested in playing as well, hit me up and let me know what your character name is.

http://www.brockli.com/2008/06/requiem-for-a-day-off.php

http://www.brockli.com/?p=726

I've always wanted to remotely connect to my PC at home from work so I can check on IMs, documentation, files, etc. The fact that I don't pay for a static IP makes it slightly difficult. Not wanting to deal with dyndns, I decided to write up a quick python script that would grab my IP and then notify me if it changed. Given my needs, I didn't feel like something more than one notification a day would be necessary. My first attempt led me to sending an email about the change. For whatever reason, SSL did not want to cooperate on my XP machine. After a quick chat with lewk he mentioned his use of Twitter to do something similar. Genius!

After creating another twitter account, and a little research, I finished this nifty little script:

1. #!c:\python25\python.exe
2.  
3. import urllib2, urllib, base64
4.  
5. USERNAME = "twitter_username"
6. PASSWORD = "twitter_password"
7.  
8. def tweet(words):
9.         auth = base64.encodestring("%s:%s" % (USERNAME, PASSWORD)).strip()
10.         urllib2.urlopen(urllib2.Request("http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json",
11.                 urllib.urlencode({"status":" ".join(words[0:])}), {"Authorization": "Basic %s" % auth}))
12.  
13. myip = urllib2.urlopen('http://whatismyip.org').read()
14. f = open('ip.txt', 'r')
15. line = f.read()
16. f.close()
17. if line != myip:
18.         f = open('ip.txt', 'w')
19.         f.write(myip)
20.         f.close()
21.         tweet(myip)

Rest well, George.