Two Weeks to Vegas
In exactly two weeks, I’ll be on a plane heading to the National Speech & Debate Tournament in Las Vegas, NV. I have so much work left to do, but I’m excited nonetheless.
Unofficially Official Desert Lights Wallpaper
As I mentioned earlier, I will be attending the NFL National Speech & Debate Tournament in Las Vegas, called Desert Lights 2008. With less than 30 days left, I created a special desktop background for this occasion, which is available to anyone interested in either a widescreen or fullscreen version.
Widescreen version (2560 x 1600)
The World’s Hardest Game…Made Easy
If you’ve ever played “The World’s Hardest Game,” you’ve probably been frustrated by the obvious difficulty of avoiding those little blue dots as you attempt to complete the game with the fewest deaths possible. For some people, simply completing the game at all is a tremendous feat. Well, I got frustrated with the original game (which you can play here), so I decompiled the game and made it a little easier.
See for yourselves here: http://www.mabuhaynet.com/games/easiest-game.php
Macworld Encore DVDs
Just when I thought the experience of Macworld 2008 was well behind me, I get a package from IDG in the mail. Inside were complete DVDs of almost every conference, even more that what is available online. I guess it’s just another one of the perks of winning a platinum pass, and one that I will enjoy looking through for the next few days.
Where did the videos go?
You might have noticed that the videos linked to in the previous post are no longer available. The school had some issue with me posting a video of myself, and they forced me to take it down. Sorry about that.
UPDATE: I have reposted the video with the necessary editing to ease the school’s privacy concerns.
See Me in the Variety Show
I was recently in the ELHS Variety Show 2008, and you can see video of me performing an original piece, entitled “Just Another Infomercial.” Video of other performers will also be available soon, but only on a password-protected site because of privacy reasons. You can see (or email) me personally to get the site and password, but I can’t post it here publicly. Anyway, here are the videos of my performance…
Night 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81A1-G-NZJI
Revisiting SDK Predictions
Before Macworld, I had predicted that Steve would demonstrate during the keynote how the distribution of third party applications would work. Although the SDK was mentioned, it was not specifically explained until a press event on March 6. I thought it would be interesting to compare my predictions to how the distribution will actually work. I first predicted that applications would be distributed through the Wi-Fi Store. This is essentially what happened, with the future addition of the App Store.
I also created an image of one of the menus for the store, which is quite similar to the one previewed.
I touched upon how updating would work. Here’s the prediction…
“With native applications there needs to be a way for applications to be updated automatically. So, we looked at what we’ve done with updating third-party content in the past, and we noticed that this is exactly what we do with podcasts. People can simply submit a URL to iTunes for their podcasts, and podcasts are automatically updated every time an iTunes user syncs their iPod. This is exactly what we’re going to do with applications.”
This is very similar to what will happen with the App Store. Steve explained how updates will occur through the store, over the air and completely automatically.
Overall, I’m very satisfied with how close my predictions were in terms of the SDK. I can’t wait for the June software update and all the great third party applications that will follow in its wake.
Going to Vegas!
I participate in speech tournaments, in which you perform speeches and are ranked by judges based on your performances. In the national qualifier tournament today, I ranked 1st place in a “duo” event with my partner, Kim Tremblay. This is a really big deal. We are going to be going to the national tournament in Las Vegas for the week of June 15-20, 2008. Words cannot describe how exciting this is. It is almost as great as going to Macworld.
Guess I’m gonna have another use for this blog in June.
Welcome Back to Mac OS X
I just tore apart my computer, ripped out my old 160 GB hard drive, and replaced it with a spacious 320 GB hard drive. I formatted it and restored from my latest Time Machine backup (from January 12 at 9:36 PM), and viola! I have escaped from Vista and I’m back in the comforting arms of Mac OS X. I have a lot of work to do to get back up to date, but it’s good to be home.
If I’ve learned anything from this experience, it’s that when my computer warns me that I haven’t backed up in ten days, I should listen.
Hard Drive Failure
I was at a tournament when all of a sudden, I got the spinning wheel. I tried to force quit, but the whole computer seemed to be frozen. When I restarted the computer, it failed to recognize my hard drive as a mountable drive.
My last backup was the last day before I left for San Francisco, so a couple weeks of lost data isn’t as bad as it could have been. I’ve found backups of the pictures and videos I took while in San Francisco, so it seems like I haven’t lost any irreplaceable data. I guess I’ll just have to deal with my workflow being disrupted until I get a new hard drive.
I have three things to be thankful for. First, I’m going to get a larger capacity hard drive to replace the old one. Also, I’m glad I use Time Machine. Most of all, I’m glad this didn’t happen to me in San Francisco.