Monthly Archives

ServeStream for Android

I love listening to podcasts from TWIT. I use Miro on my server and stream the videos to whatever computer I’m using at the time while I’m at home. It’s not a big deal. However, my biggest desire since I bought my lovely little android phone was to be able to stream and audio-only version of the podcasts. I found the application to do it.

ServeStream is a free application in the Android Market.
ServeStream

ServeStream is really simple. It can play streaming media from just about any URL you give it.

- Supports the following media formats:
Audio: mp3/m3u/pls/3gp/mp4/m4a/ogg/wav/mid/xmf/mxmf/rtttl/rtx/ota/imy
Video: 3gp/mp4
- Added support for streaming playlist files (.m3u) and SHOUTcast streaming (.pls)
- Supports multitasking/playing audio in the background
- Repeat and shuffle modes
- Widget support
- Utilizes HTML parsing to allow navigation of HTTP media servers that serve HTML pages

It was kind of sad I couldn’t use the obvious Winamp app to steam from a custom URL. ServeStream saved the day and it’s free. It works fantastically to stream my MP3 stream. I gave it a review and five stars. Great work William Seemann.

HP Pavilion dv7-4170us Review

One of my mother’s friends recently bought a good looking HP Pavilion dv7-4170us laptop from Micro Center. Her friend knew I was a little geeky so he let me optimize his brand new computer for him. Since I didn’t have much time with the laptop, this review will be relatively short. Despite not having much time with the laptop, this review is actually really long.

HP Pavilion dv7-4170ys

The Hardware

The look and feel are great. The aluminium finish looks clean and simple. Since the owner is a truck driver, the aluminium body makes sense because it should be extra-sturdy for on the road conditions. The etching is not districting because it is such a light color compared to the background metal color. The etching however can be felt under the finger easily.

The keyboard is interesting. In my personal opinion, after typing this review on the laptop in question, my hands really hurt. Let’s start with the good though. The keys are finished in matte and the layout is a full size without any key crunching. It’s a MacBook Pro-esque chiclet design, which I think is quite appealing. The downsides is this: the letters are spaced really far a part. Maybe I wasn’t used to typing on the laptop yet, but after ten minutes, my hands were getting achy. You’ll need to practice using the keyboard a while before getting used to having keys spread so far from each other if you’re not used to the chiclet keyboard design. Another observation is that some keys when typing quickly will seem to squeak under the touch. My mother’s friend doesn’t type as fast as I do and probably won’t notice that, but it certainly drove me a little insane.

The screen is bright and vivid just as everyone says it is. Looking at the screen from maybe 30 degrees of center, it still maintains a pretty clear image with modest brightness. Looking from 30 degrees off center from above does reduce the brightness more than from side to side, but really, who does this in the real world? The size is huge and the default resolution is 1600 by 900. That however does mean it is not running at true 1080p. After looking, the default resolution is the max resolution. Not a big problem, really.

The trackpad. What can I say? Someone messed up. It was a mistake to include such a insensitive touchpad. I know what they were going for: MacBook Pro class trackpads. I know that was the goal and it was missed entirely. Tap to click works, but it’s not always picked up the first time. The drivers support two finder scrolling but it is very annoying to use. Perhaps an update will solve that one day, but the lack of responsiveness makes the very useful feature very useless. The click buttons are located on the bottom of the trackpad. I noticed that I tend to leave my thumb hovering over the button and mouse with my other fingers, but sometimes I rest my thumb and I cause the mouse to spasm. The size is great at least.

I have first hand experience with facial recognition built into laptops. This one is better because it has finger print recognition. Why is that better? Lighting conditions don’t matter at all and you rarely loose your finger; a bad hair day won’t thwart your successful login. Jokes aside, the biometric scanner on the right side of the computer is small, out of the way and pretty much just works.

The other goodies spec wise. Starting with 600GB hard drive split two ways between the main drive and a recovery partition, it is rather roomy for movies or pictures or whatever people put on hard drives these days but it is 5400RPM so it is terribly slow. The laptop comes with the industry standard 4GB of DD3 which is excellent. With dedicated graphics in the mid-range in the scheme of things, it’s actually possible to play modest looking games. It is an ATI Mobility Radeon, but I don’t have anymore specific details on that end. Finally, the processor is not the typical i5 Intel I’ve come to expect in HP laptops. It’s actually a AMD Phenom II N850 Triple-core. It felt snappy doing just about everything except when accessing the hard drive, but that’s no surprise. Among the three, a hard drive upgrade would benefit the dv7-4170us the most.

The System & Software

As always when buying a computer from a retail store, there is a load of junky software that nobody wants. This HP Pavilion is no exception to this rule.

The first boot caused the HP registration program to fire up. It wasn’t really annoying but you’d expect it to be just three lines: your name, email address and whether or not you want HP updates. But no, your address, phone number and more other extraneous bits are needed. Also, I don’t quite like that it looks so blurry. On a high definition screen, it’s safe to crank out the graphics, HP.

Upon entering Windows, there was a little top-docked dock. I’m leaving it there since it’s not really bothersome and it does give quick access to the HP-oriented features. The other evil installed program was Norton. I quickly removed that and replaced it with the much better Security Essentials provided by Microsoft.

Microsoft Office was preloaded through a trial program and Micro Center apparently sold my mother’s friend a $119 Office Home & Student key. For the same price on Newegg, he could’ve got a three-pack. Just saying. At least it was easy to enter the serial key and get it installed.

Chrome and Firefox were installed thereafter and loaded with Ad Block Plus for Good Measure™. I was surprised but pleased to find Flash, Silverlight and Java preinstalled. I’m glad too because I doubt a Normal Person™ could install plugins like that. I hid the Internet Explorer icon even though IE9 is pretty good. Just stick with Chrome, kids.

In the scheme of things, the system wasn’t loaded down with too much aside from the general HP sillyness. On my initial inspection before I did anything to the system, it was running with the expected 88 processes, with no visible foreground running programs. After uninstalling some junk and adding some good things like Chrome and Security Essentials, and while running other programs at the same time, I find that it runs at 96 processes. That’s pretty good. Overtime, I find laptops need more and more processes from the manufacture to work properly. It’s a shame but the bitter reality of laptops.

Speaking of which, at 96 processes, the system is only burning through 43% of it’s available memory. I’m guessing it’s split among Windows at 15% and HP 28%.

While the HP laptop does have a huge drive and a clearly marked Recovery partition, I wanted to make recovery discs anyway. Well, it takes five DVDs and about 5 hours. It was a lovely time to do some reading.

The Conclusion

I believe this laptop was purchased for about $800 after tax. It was a good deal considering there is a $50 mail in-rebate and the specs of the system. On Amazon, I’ve seen many five star reviews and a few lower ones based around individual build defects. For me, and my mother’s friend, this computer seems great and is perfectly adequate for just about anyone who wants a fast big-screen decently weighted laptop for under a grand.

I’m looking forward to my college laptop shopping: if HP makes something similar in a 14-inch package, I might consider it. If you want me to review a computer, give it to me for a week and I’ll give you a bittersweet review based on what’s excellent and what sucks.

Have a good one.

Weekly Twitter Chronicles for 2011-03-27

  • Half way to the iPad 2. #
  • Just watched my grandmother use the automated mailing center at Target. She hates the touch screen. #
  • No iPads yet. I can wait. #
  • @thealexluft I'm reinstalling windows tonight. Not on an SSD, unfortunately. #
  • Finished reinstalling. Downloading applications now. #
  • @thealexluft It is. It didn't take very long to install. I can't seem to remember what apps I use other than essentially Chrome anymore. #
  • Don't buy a green drive for anything but huge storage backup. It's just too slow. #
  • @William_Kieser I did. Because it's true. Caviar black is the only drive anyone should buy, unless it's SSD. #
  • @William_Kieser Back in 2009, my dad hadn't thought a drive could that slow. #
  • On my install of Windows, I didn't put TweetDeck back on. Why? I can use TweetDeck's chrome app just as well. #
  • @Matt_Petschl Congratulations. #
  • It seems I cannot use webkit-keyframes to/from with gradients to make a pulsating eye. Would've been cool though. #
  • Can someone make a cartoonized set of Browser icons so Chrome's doesn't so out of place? #
  • I think it's funny that the Android browser isn't called Chrome. #
  • Should Apple update the iPod Classic? Does anyone care still? #
  • Are your bookmarks organized? #
  • @William_Kieser Yes, incredibly scary. #
  • It's sad nobody offers a laptop meeting the same quality as the MacBook Air. #
  • Going to Ocopoco for dinner. #
  • Constructing a backup and ssh triangle. Magical and revolutionary I think so. #
  • I couldn't figure out how to make my wireless card on Ubuntu Server 10.10 work. #
  • "…. is your name Ballmer?" "Yes! … No!" #
  • Apparently GPS lies sometimes. "Go left… go right… [silence]" #
  • "Your ports are forwarded." "Nice." #

“It’s okay, it’s Amazon”

Amazon recently released their own Appstore. On the homepage, there’s a banner selling Angry Birds Rio for free, so I decided to try it out. Well, I was eventually brought to this video and I found it a bit disturbing. Why? You have to turn off unknown sources from being blocked, so Amazon can legally install stuff on the Android device.

The fun starts at 0:24. Get ready for it.

… Don’t worry. Click the “Settings” button when prompted. Tap “Unknown Sources.” It’s okay, it’s Amazon. Tap “OK.” [smile/smirk] …

I love Amazon, but I don’t care if it is Amazon. The “Unknown Sources” block was put there for a reason.

Download 64-bit Java

At home I use only 64-bit versions of Windows 7. At school, my laptop remains the original 32-bit install. Despite that, I use the 32-bit version of Java at home (and everywhere else) because it is just so easy to get.

However, the 64-bit version does offer some enhancements. On every computer I compare with, the x64 Java is always 30% faster. I think everyone agrees that Java needs to be faster. Only the 64-bit version of Java will work with the incredible x64 Eclipse.

Java.com’s explanation of whether or not to download the x64 version is kind of silly as it focuses on if you use Internet Explorer.

If you’re looking for the 64-bit version of the JRE or the 64-bit version of the JDK, you can find those at the Java SE Download page.

Of course, if you download either of the x64 Java packages, you’ll need to update your enviroment variables, probably. You may also want to checkout which version is right for you.

Weekly Twitter Chronicles for 2011-03-20

  • After using Android on the Opitmus for a month, I miss the retnia display on the iPod touch the most. #
  • The Ï€ is a lie… Happy Half Tau Day! http://t.co/YIjs0hN via @tauday #
  • At work. Excel 2 tonight. #
  • Steps to update website: boot linux vm, ssh into dev server at home, checkout files, edit files, ftp finished files to remote server. Done. #
  • @nealyoung I want one for Windows. #
  • I'm looking for a website that used -webkit-mask-image, had changing Studio Ghibli images as the masks with 100 as the foreground. Ideas? #
  • Are there any special text editors for writing short stories or books for Windows that are any good? #
  • How do I install Ruby, Gems and Rails on Ubuntu? Seriously, too many versions and not enough updated information. #
  • This is why an OS should modularized. Apps should not do things that cannot be undone. #
  • I wish there was a news channel designed for smart people. Oh wait… #
  • The final work day. #
  • That is the ends the last day I work until April. #
  • @davidwalshblog Took too long for still too much memory. #
  • I was playing some music through VLC off my internal HDD. The music stopped completely when I opened a tab in Chrome. Something wrong? #
  • @lizettegagne I had a problem with it yesterday with what appeared a delay in updates too when it did come back. #
  • My song on the bus. On and off. That's excellent. #
  • Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is only 892mb. #
  • Why does the windows live installer need to close all my programs to update messenger? #
  • An alternate Facebook. It might just be another clone but let's hope not. http://bit.ly/fzP1ml #
  • Amazon has made the art of spending money effortless. #
  • I know I can expect a new iPhone every year, I know when to expect it too. With others, I don't know anything. I can't plan then. #

Factorial in Java Script

A factorial is a series of integers multiplied together. You might remember 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 * … * (n-1) * n. That’s a factorial. Traditionally, a factorial can be presented in just about any programming language easily with a tiny bit of recursion. The real problem though is the percision at which factorials can be stored. For instance, just 15! (that is 15 factorial) yields a gigantic 1,307,674,368,000. Java Script can certainly store large numbers but even then there is a major limit. Imagine 100!.

In Java Script, you can easily make a factorial function.

  function factorial(n) {
    if ( n <= 1 ) return 1;
    return n * factorial(n-1);
  }

Let’s break down the function. The first line establishes the odd case of zero-factorial, the case where it turns out to be one. Secondly, it accounts for one-factorial which is also one. The second line contains the recursion that everyone is so fond of. You take some value of “n” and multiply it against the value of the value recursed from subsequent factorials.

There’s not really an easier and more meaningful example of recursion than the factorial.

Happy factorialing.

Delete an Element in an ArrayList – Java

Adding elements to ArrayLists is an easy procedure. Assuming you have an ArrayList<Kitten>, adding is as easy as kittens.add(new Kitten("Bob")).

Deleting elements from the list is not quite as simple. For instance, let’s pretend our previously Kitten named Bob needed to removed from the list. How could you remove that object from the list?

There are two methods – a just-okay-way and a clever way. Let’s start with the former.

Basically, you could loop through the list of elements and compare each object to a known property you’re looking for. In your application, probably for displaying the list, you might already have a portion of code dedicated to search and sorting your array of Kittens.

String searchFor = "Bob";
int remove = -1;
for (int i = 0; i < kittens.size(); i++) {
  if ( searchFor.equals(kittens.get(i).getName()) ) {
	remove = i;
	break;
  }
}
if ( remove != -1 ) kittens.remove(i);

This method relies on getting an index by a known property. It works and does it’s job well and of course, it’s implementation is clear.

The other method assumes a different scenario. If you already have a reference to the object in question, you can easily go down the clever route. In what situation do you already have the object? As I mentioned before, you probably already have a method to search your list of objects. I admit, it’s probably very similar to the method presented above as far as searching goes, but if you have the reference to the object, you can do this.

Kitten k = new Kitten("Bob");
kittens.add(k);

// ... later

int index = kittens.indexOf(k);
if (index == -1 || index > kittens.size())
  {/*do nothing in this case; print an error maybe*/}
else
  kittens.remove(index);

Confused? I include the code to create the Kitten called Bob, and to add him to the list. Later, probably in another method somewhere, or maybe in a conditional, with a reference called k, is being removed. Instead of using yet another loop to compare each object to the known property, just the fancy indexOf method to get the index that matches the particular object. A test is there to make sure nobody goes out of bounds and that the element does in fact exist. Otherwise, the element is deleted in the same way.

Deleting elements in ArrayLists isn’t hard but it can be conceptually annoying to have to loop multiple times or to pass around indexes.

Happy deleting.

Prepopulate Data Files – Java

Sometimes an application needs some data to start. Applications written like this often supply some initial data so that it appears seamless to the user. It’s pretty easy to do this in Java.

To get started, make a class called Setup. This name is good because that’s what’s happening – the program data files are being setup. After that, there’s some basic properties that need to be made: a folder location and the initial data.

	public static String location = "app-data";
	
	// files,data
	public static String[][] files = new String[][] {
		{"people.txt",
				"Ryan Rampersad|18|M|Minnesota|55105\n" +
				"Brian Reinhardt|50|M|Minnesota|55104\n" +
				"Gill Bates|55|M|California|90840\n"
		},
		{"gadgets.txt",
				"iPod touch|Google Laptop|HP Laptop|Android Phone|Kindle\n" +
				"iPad 1|MacBook Pro|iMac\n" +
				"Zune HD Ultimate Signature Editon\n"
		}
	};

This sets a specific folder so the data files can be in a safe and separate place from the rest of the application. The 2-dimensional string array is where the magic comes in. While there may be better ways to do this, this method works decently for small applications that depend on some initial data being present upon first run. The first item in each array is a data file’s filename. The second item in each array is a concatenated string contained data to be parsed out and worked with. In this example, I list people in the first data array and then their gadgets in the second data array.

Now a little private method that does some heavy lifting.

	private void create(String path, String data) throws Exception {
		BufferedWriter bw = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(path));
		bw.write(data + "\n");
		bw.close();
	}

Here’s what happens. This method will be called and given as arguments the path of the file to be created and then the concatenated data. All this does is make a file with data. Easy, right?

The next method needs to be broken down into discrete parts. It’s long and arduous but you’ll manage. Try not to get confused between the create method above and this aptly named created method.

	public boolean created() {
		boolean created = false;
		File d = new File(location);
		if (!d.exists()) {
			created = true;
			d.mkdir();
		}
// continues ...

This method will check each file in our files 2D string array and do a couple of other cool things. First, a flag is setup. This glad gets set to true if something is ever created whether that’s the directory where the files are stored or a file itself. Then a File object is constructed. That object is used to see if the location directory exists. If it doesn’t, it’ll be created.

for (String[] file : files) {
			String filename = location + file[0];
			File f = new File(filename);
			if (!f.exists()) {
				created = true;
				try {
					f.createNewFile();
					this.create(filename, file[1].trim());
				} catch (Exception e) {
					// there may be silent errors.
				}
			}
		}
		return created;
} // ... created ends

Long and scary, yes, but powerful. Notice the loop? It’s looping through the 2D array right now! The filename is pieced together by connecting the instance variable location and the first index of the 2D sub-array. Another new File object is created. Its existence is also checked. If it doesn’t exist, it proceeds to be created with the lovely createNewFile method attach to all File objects. Then the data is populated by looking at the second data field and passing the filename and data to the aforementioned create method. If it already exists, we simply move on. File, we return that flag setup at the top of the method: it should be true if anything as been created, at all.

Now what? It’s time to test it out!

public static void main(String[] args) {
	Setup setup = new Setup();
	
	System.out.println("Checking application data...");
	if ( setup.created() )
		System.out.println("Application data initialized...");
	else
		System.out.println("Application data ready...");
}

This is basic. Make a new Setup object. Inside of an if-statement, call created. If everything already exists, the flag from earlier will be false when returned and then the ready alert will come up. If something was created, like the folder or any files, then the initialized alert will come up.

Loading some basic initial data like this is great. It makes your program’s state stay consistent and allows you to focus on more than error handling code for when there are no established files to draw from.

Happy prepopulating!

Red Cross Donations for Japan through Amazon

If you have an Amazon account with either loaded gift-cards or an active credit card, you can very easily donate to American Red Cross for the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami.

Donate to the Red Cross through Amazon

On March 11, an 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan, triggering tsunami waves that affected several countries, including the United States.

While the toll of this disaster is only beginning to be understood, the American Red Cross and its humanitarian partners will work together to meet the needs of earthquake and tsunami survivors. Your financial contribution will support these efforts. On the rare occasions when donations exceed American Red Cross expenses for a specific disaster, contributions are used to prepare for and serve victims of other disasters.

Thank you.

Pi Day – Half Tau Day

Just about nine months ago, on June 28th, the Tau Manifesto, on Tau day, was launched. You may know that it is Pi day and you might have celebrated with some freshly baked Pi. That’s great. However, did you ever stop to wonder: what if radians made more sense? What? Oh yes.
Tau

March 14, or 3/14, is known as “Pi Day” because of its resemblance to the first three digits in the decimal expansion of π (pi), which is defined as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

As “the circle constant”, Ï€ is the object of virtually unlimited adulation, so you are probably under the impression that Ï€ is a particularly important number. I am sorry to report that you have been misinformed.

The true circle constant is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its radius, not to its diameter. This number, called τ (tau), is equal to 2π, so π is 12τ—and March 14 is thus Half Tau Day. (Of course, June 28, or 6/28, is Tau Day itself.) Although it is of great historical importance, the mathematical significance of π is simply that it is one-half τ.

But how can this be? What about trigonometry? What about Euler’s identity? What about πr2? Can π really be wrong? All your questions and more are answered here, in an article called The Tau Manifesto.

– Half Tau Day.

Why is this at all important? I’ve always disliked radians. The biggest problem was their lack of proportion on the unit circle. A single revolution around the circle should be a single unit. In terms of Pi however, it is not. In terms of Tau it is.

I’ve even told my fellow mathematically inclined friends about Tau. After being slightly confused, they saw the revolutionary light. You need to read The Tau Manifesto to truly understand the importance of a logical constant equaling 2Pi.

Next June 28th, won’t you celebrate Tau Day with me?

Text Based Menu in Java

Making a text based menu in Java is pretty easy – it’s easier than learning how to code a graphical menu at least.

First, let’s discuss the nature of a text based menu. You have a menu. It’s comprised of a bunch of choices you could select. Those selections could be numbers or characters or maybe even strings. When a selection is entered, it should decide if it is an acceptable selection and if it is, do something with it, otherwise report that it’s invalid. Finally, when a selection causes an action, the menu must be presented again when the action is finished working it’s magic.

Those are pretty general requirements for a text based menu. Let’s get started. Make a class called Menu and put a private Scanner listening to System.in

private Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);

Now let’s make a method called display.

public void display() {
		System.out.println("-- Actions --");
		System.out.println(
				"Select an option: \n" +
				"  1) Run\n" +
				"  2) Jump\n" +
				"  3) Dodge \n" +
				"  4) Exit\n "
		);
		
		int selection = input.nextInt();
		input.nextLine();
// continues...

First, print out a title and then the possible selections. A call to the scanner’s nextInt will get the integer of the selection the user enters. This could become more involved if some major error handling was needed. There is a special line right after the nextInt: a single non-storing nextLine. Why? To stop input skipping.

Right after the input is stored in selection, use a switch structure to decide what to do.

		switch (selection) {
		case 1:
			this.run();
			break;
		case 2:
			this.jump();
			break;
		case 3:
			this.dodge();
			break;
		case 4:
			this.exit();
			break;
		default:
			System.out.println("Invalid selection.");
			break;
		}

This switch is based on selection and has four cases. Each case will trigger an action that mirrors the list printed out for the user. After each method is run, it will also break out of the switch statement.

Can you believe that’s all you need for the display method? So we can actually get some compilable code, just add these methods in. They don’t really do anything though.

	private void exit() {
                System.out.println("Exiting...");
		System.exit(1); 
	}

	private void dodge() {
	}

	private void jump() {
	}

	private void run() {
	}
} // ... ending display

One thing to notice is System.exit. We’ll need that for later after we setup a little loop. Basically, if the user enters the corresponding selection to exit, the program will terminate regardless. Feel free to add some print out lines to the empty methods so you know they’re actually working when you run it.

Finally, let’s try it out. Add a main method to your Menu class.

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Menu menu = new Menu();
		while (true)
			menu.display();
	}

First, an menu is constructed. Then what may appear to be bizarre is an infinite loop calling menu.display forever. This serves a very important function. When display runs once, it will wait for the user to enter something. If they enter something invalid, it will tell them so (where invalid right now just means not a selection, not bad input). If they enter a valid case in the switch, the actions will be performed. Then what? The loop takes care of it! It starts over again, waiting for input and so on. But how can you exit the program? The reason for the System.exit is to exit the program. In this program, hitting 4 will cause the program to exit despite the loop.

What about multiple menus? It’s pretty much the same, except you have a choice. You can force the user to navigate back down through the previous menu or you can optionally use another loop. Imagine a display2 method.

	public void display2() {
		
		display: while(true) {
			
			System.out.println("-- Secret Actions --");
			System.out.println(
					"Select an option: \n" +
					"  1) Dive\n" +
					"  2) High Jump\n" +
					"  3) Back\n "
			);
			int selection = input.nextInt();
			input.nextLine();
			
			switch (selection) {
			case 1:
				this.run();
				break;
			case 2:
				this.jump();
				break;
			case 3:
				System.out.println("Returning...");
				break display;
			default:
				System.out.println("Invalid action.");
				break;
			}
			
		}
		
	}

Yes, this looks long and complex. In reality much of the code is repeated directly from the first display method. The major difference is the while loop inside. display: while (true { is interesting. The display: is called a label. Labels allow you to break out of code segments easily without complex conditional triggers. In this case, when the user selects case 3, the loop will be broken and thus they will return to their previous menu.

Text based menus can end up being quite interactive despite their appearance.

Happy menu-ing.

Weekly Twitter Chronicles for 2011-03-13

  • Busy tonight. School, might visit Murray and finally work. Oh and studying calculus. #
  • Just learned about mask-image from CSS3. Really nice for making scalable text with a texture. #
  • I want an HTTP header for "Old Content". So search engines will realize that it's old, eventually, and shouldn't be promoted as much. #
  • Launch now, a nap soo and finally work later. #
  • Back from work. On the menu, a pizza. #
  • Lock down. #
  • Quite real too. #
  • @nealyoung. Not sure. Nobody's saying anything. #
  • Lock down over. #
  • Pokemon Black has arrived. http://t.co/C1KNNd3 #
  • There is a wifi network called "FBI SURVEILLANCE VAN2" by my bus stop. Very odd. #
  • @nealyoung Win. #
  • And my song starts playing the radio on the bus the moment I walk on. Fantastic. #
  • "You can Google search on youtube for…" – teacher. #
  • First time that I've ever used a sticky post in WordPress. #
  • On channel 5 news, they did a segment where they showed off this cool new website "stumble upon" that's like "channel surfing". #
  • "A" as in "Palm Tree". #
  • Thesaurus.com suggests words that don't exist in Dictionary.com. Clever. #
  • Laughing. Spectacular laughing. #
  • My blog needs 19 views to break yesterday's traffic record. Seriously. #
  • Sore hands from too much TypeRacer. Lots of fun though. #
  • Quarter of the way to getting that iPad. #
  • @JakeWythers Mostly for development. #
  • "Hey look, grills." "Girls? What kind?" "… hot ones." Dad and I. #
  • @davidwalshblog It's like that but it is encrypted anytime it's being synced. #
  • That just ended 14 hours of quiet. #
  • I'd expect Google Docs spellcheck to follow the same logic Google Search uses for fixing misspelled words. It doesn't. #

CSS Selector for the Last Child Element

Selecting the last child list element used to require a special last class attached to that element. Those days are no more with the very useful last child selector.

The MDC page for the :last-child selector explains it the best.

The :last-child pseudo-class matches any element that is the last child element of its parent.

This can be useful in all sorts of ways. For instance, if you had a bunch of floated elements, you could easily clear the last one so that the page doesn’t go out of crazy. If you had a list and needed to adjust the padding on the last element so that it fits better, you can do that too. You can checkout my example as a jsfiddle too.

However, it should come as no surprise that older browsers don’t support this. No Internet Explorer supports this and other younger browsers like Firefox 2 or Safari 3 may not support it either.

Happy selecting!

Dust Under Screen – LG Optimus V

Just about a week ago, I wrote about the fantastic LG Optimus V on Virgin Mobile. There’s a lot of coverage about the Optimus V – a solid phone and great plan. I’ve had it for three weeks now, and I’m in love with the device itself and the plan too of course.

However, I noticed a problem. I’ve noticed dust under the screen of the phone. It sounds silly, but let me try to explain. The phone’s screen is covered with a generic universal protector cut to just size. That’s great. I clearly failed when putting it on and can tell there is a bit of dust here and there. You can easily see surface level dust and know what it is. The thing is, in the bottom left corner of my Optimus V, next to the memory card slot and above the options button, you can very easily see a small stream of dust under the screen.

A picture might illustrate what I mean better. Sorry for the low quality.

You might notice the short white line emerging from the corner of the screen. That’s the dust line. From there, it quickly fans out in a triangular pattern and becomes very sparse. From what I can tell, there are other people having this problem with other LG Optimus models.

There is a thread about the dust problem on XDA-Developers. The Optimus V is mention at least once specifically in the thread.

Sad to say mine is an optimus V and it is also getting dusty under the screen. So people are saying that LG won’t cover this under warranty? If not I may try and open it and blow it myself. Is there a consensus as to where it’s getting in from? – (xda-developers forum)

This Optimus One video shows my problem (and I suspect many other’s problem as well) very accurately. It would certainly suck to need to switch to a new phone again but I’d rather do that than have dust infiltrating my precious device.

I want to know if other people experiencing this dust under the screen problem? I have my Radio Shack’s warranty and I imagine I have LG’s warranty. The phone works perfectly but it looks bad. I want it to last and if I need to get a new one or get it fixed, I’d prefer to do it sooner than later.

Update (June 2011)

It’s been about a month since I received a new LG Optimus from Radio Shack after returning my old dust filled model. Basically, I was sent a gift certificate via email with the credited price. Then I went into a Radio Shack yet again to re-buy the same phone. That worked out fine but it wasn’t exactly cheap. The credit was for $160.68, so that made me pay $39.31 for the phone itself and another $30 for plan that previously made this all possible. All in all, this came out around $246.08, which means I lost $85.23 in case to replace a phone with a defect that wasn’t my fault. Stay classy LG and you too Radio Shack, stay classy.

Update (May 2011)

On May 8th I brought my Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V into a RadioShack. At first they weren’t sure if I was talking about there being dust under the screen protector, but after explaining and showing them, they thought it was pretty strange too. They said they hadn’t seen it before, ever. Thanks to my $30 replacement plan, I am being credited $160.68 to cover the price of the phone plus tax. Unfortunately, when I bought the phone in February, the national price was only $150 but has since has increased to $199. So I’m still loosing out $75 (extra $30 to buy it again, another $30 for another replacement plan and $15 on tax) on another phone when it wasn’t my fault. I’ll update everyone on the results soon!