A while back I started an article series on a utility named Ripsaw. I have since gotten pretty busy with other projects, and the only extracurricular thing I’ve worked on in the meantime is the lesson series on how to play “Spanish Fly”. I was also waiting for Visual Studio 2010 to hit release, but I haven’t moved up to Professional yet, so I may actually drop the whole project back down to VS 2008 when I start it up again.
On top of all that, Blogger is yanking the rug out from under me with some changes to how it updates certain sites, and I want to get that resolved before I add any significant new content. I just wanted to let everyone know that the project isn’t dead; in fact, there have been several times over the last few weeks when I’ve needed a utility like Ripsaw, so this is definitely going to get done eventually.
I’ve just started creating a series of videos on Youtube on how to play the Eddie Van Halen instrumental “Spanish Fly” from the album Van Halen II. I’ve been promising these videos for about a year, after already having posted three different versions of the tune to Youtube (one at half speed). So far I have an introductory video and a video on the first section of the piece. By the time I’m done, I expect to have well over an hour’s worth of videos spread out over six to eight clips.
I don’t work at home exclusively anymore, which means that at some point during the daylight hours I’m usually at my desk at the office trying to get all the annoying work done so I can focus on the productive work that I still do at home in the early morning or late evening.
Just now I had an idea for how to ward off interruptions when I have to be at my desk. My phone has a headset attached to it so I can write code or respond to e-mails while I’m waiting for my name to be mentioned on conference calls. It occurred to me that I could just leave the headset on all day and occasionally talk to myself. That way people would avoid talking to me because they would assume I was either A.) on the phone, or B.) weird.
Ever since I was in high school, I’ve been drawing this little guy you see pictured here:
Smart Sam
My wife has named him “Smart Sam”. I finally applied for a trademark on the drawing, but the funny thing about trademarks is that you have to actually be involved in some kind of trade. So, now you can own your very own Smart Sam Stuff! I opened up a shop on Cafepress a while back but never bothered to publicize it until now. So, go grab a t-shirt, or a coffee mug, or wall clock, or maybe a onesie for Junior. If there is some other bit of clothing or gadget you’d like to see this beautiful face stamped on, let me know!
I’ve been signed to a new contract with my current client, on a new project working on self-service grocery again. This one should carry me well into next year, but I’m always keeping my eyes open just in case.
The George Walton Academy Bulldogs are GISA state football champions for the 2009 season! They defeated Deerfield-Windsor School in Albany, GA in the class AAA championship game yesterday, with a final score of 42-24. I am so proud of all the parents, grandparents, students, alumni, faculty, and friends who made the trip down to Albany, some of whom (like us) left Thanksgiving vacation early to be there. It felt like a home game: the fans were loud, the cowbells were clanging, the band played, the Dark Army ran up and down by the field, and the cheerleaders nearly fell over from doing high-kicks for every point scored. Hats off to Deerfield-Windsor for playing tough to the very end, and never giving up. Congratulations to both teams for making it to the championship.
Next year George Walton Academy will move to the GHSA, and will be returning most of their current team, so we look forward to more exciting football next season.
Posted by Paul Parks on 25 November 2009, 12:02 am
Talk about a hot sale price! If you’re getting a little tired of waiting around, now might be a good time to act. Of course, you probably won’t care about the price increase when the time comes.
In this installment of the Ripsaw article series we’ll start putting some actual code into an implementation of the COM interfaces that we specified in the last article. For those of you who just joined the series, Ripsaw is a log viewer for Windows, similar to the Unix tail utility. This series of articles details my rewrite of the application from the ground up. Continue reading ‘Ripsaw Library Implementation’ »
This post was created with Android, though not with a phone. I’m planning to upgrade to a Motorola Droid next month, so I’ve been playing with the SDK and getting familiar with the OS using the emulator. It’s pretty nice, except the emulator is painfully slow. I may write a couple of applications for it, since I’ve been needing a good excuse to fiddle with Java again.
To cap off a fantastic competition season, the George Walton AcademyMarching Bulldog Band marched in a parade at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. My elder daughter, Madeline, is a member of the color guard, and my wife and I traveled down to Florida and watched the band march. It was a wonderful experience.
I tried to get some pictures (click the photo below to see them), but they didn’t turn out so well. Fortunately another band dad got some good video of the band (below).
Most of the band parents were running along the parade route, taking pictures and video, and when we ran out of sidewalk we just fell in behind the band. In the second video below you’ll see Jennifer and I sharing a laugh with some other parents about plowing our way through the crowd to keep up with the band. I sure hope Disney lets us come back!
