Blog

  • “Linux Version” of Emergent Task Timer Online

    July 20, 2006

    I had a request last night to modify my Flash Player detection code so it would work on Linux Firefox 1.5, as apparently it doesn’t work. As it turns out, the detection code is probably fine: the problem is that Linux doesn’t support Flash Player 8.

    That said, there’s nothing in the Emergent Task Timer Onlier Prototype that requires Player 8 features (the changes are mainly in video, bitmap, and font rendering), so I have re-exported as Flash Player 7. So Linux Users, please report in and tell me if it works! Even though apparently there is only one of you…let it not be said that Dave Seah doesn’t care about Linux users! :-) I don’t use Linux GUIs personally, I install my distributions text-only.

    » Visit the Emergent Task Timer Online Prototype (Flash Player 7 for Linux Compatibility)

    P.S. If you ARE a Linux user, please let me know in the comments! I’d be curious if this is something I should be supporting more in general.

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    DSri Seah

  • Augment Your Memory

    July 19, 2006

    I have a terrible memory, and now I know that maybe it’s my own darn fault because you can augment the memorization process using some interesting visualization tricks. Cool! The discussion in the comments is also very interesting.

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    DSri Seah

  • Harvard Square Wednesday July 26th

    July 19, 2006

    I have a lunch meeting in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA next week, and have decided to make a long day of it. Hopefully the weather will be nice…I’m thinking of that day as a sort of mini-vacation away from computers and the office, and just try to relax. Curious if there’s anyone out there reading this who is in the area and would like to get together for something and, I dunno, have a conversation. I’m going to blow into Alewife from the north around 9AM and try to get a parking space, then kill time until my lunch meeting. Then, probably just wander…default destinations include a trip to L.A. Burdicks, mandatory window shopping at The MUT, a browse of Bob Slate Stationery for some nice paper for letterhead, because I have crap for letterhead at home, then hitting Million Year Picnic to look for cool zines. There are some museums in the area I haven’t visited before also; checking out even one that seems boring would be good for clearing my head.

    Anyway, if anyone is in the area and wants to meet for a bit, I’m going to be in that area. Should be fun! Hopefully not rainy, though that can be OK if I dress for it.

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    DSri Seah

  • The Math Edification of David Seah

    July 18, 2006

    I’ve been thinking a lot about education lately, as part of my general interest in how people learn to empower themselves. Also, my love-hate relationship with Mathematics has recently been rekindled.

    I’ve taken my fair share of math, but nothing very theoretical. I was in the more advanced math courses in high school, took Calculus / Differential Equations / Linear Algebra in college as part of the engineering requirement, and was exposed to numerical methods in grad school. Throughout the entire experience, I felt like I was missing some point and lacked an intuitive feel for the material…it bothered me. On the other hand, my favorite math class was one taught by an actual Math Department professor, who would get up in front of the class and excitedly derive all the steps for solving a particular type of differential equation. I would get caught up in the excitement of watching the hunt unfold before my eyes, but would invariably bomb the exam when I would try to reproduce his steps. As it turned out, what everyone else was writing down was just the end result: “if the equation matches form A, apply pattern A.”

    Oh.

    (more…)

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    DSri Seah

  • Some Quick Emergent Task Tracker Updates

    July 17, 2006

    I’ve added a few interim debug console commands for the Emergent Task Tracker Online prototype. You will need to pull up the debug console by typing CTRL-SHIFT-TILDE to pull up the console window.

    • Modifiable Alarm Loop Count — You can now use set alarmloop to specify a number between 1 and 12 for the default chime. Currently, the default count is 7, but for those of you who want a shorter reminder chime, you can set it to 1.

    • Modifiable AlarmURL — You can use the set alarmURL command to specify your own custom MP3 file. I’d use something short. You must host the MP3 file on your own web server or page somewhere.

    • Restart Command — This is more for my own testing, but if you want to start with a fresh day, you can issue the command lso clear followed by restart.

    • Yesterday Command — Another testing command, by typing in yesterday, the day counter is decremented by one day. This is sometimes useful if you want to see the previous day’s data, but it does not update the current date display.

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    p>I also added another bubble type: the slash (/). I use this to indicate when I’m doing more than one thing in the same time period as my “main” task. This is just something I was goofing with quickly between projects, so it’s likely to change. However, it does lay in the infrastructure to support multiple bubble types like fractional minutes.

    Known Bugs

    • There is a data-saving bug related to the order in which Flash is firing events, causing saving to occur only on the next modification you do. So I have to rework the event model a bit to capture this better.

    Upcoming Features

    The short-term goal is to get data saving / loading to work from a server, so I can access the same data from any browser. I don’t have an ETA on this.

    I have basic SOAP communication working with a very simple NuSOAP-based webservice, and have been playing with EZ-SQL (the same database wrapper that WordPress uses). I also have to think now about user authentication and account tracking will work. Rather than roll my own, I’m wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a simple-to-use “user administration” library in PHP. I probably just need to make one up, but if anyone has a recommendation for how to approach this, I’m all ears!

    After this are some GUI updates: drag and drop reordering of tasks, easier multi-day navigation of data, adding the “hourly summary” column, and figuring out a way to manage whole classes of tasks. I’ll probably stick with Flash for this in the short term, because the ability to run the Flash projector OUTSIDE of a browser is a capability I’d like to retain.

    So that’s where things are right now. Thanks for using the tool, glad that people are finding it useful.

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    DSri Seah