Not much to say, actually… I was connected to a bunch of wires and went to sleep. Results due next week.
My New Arduino Reminded Me I’m A “High Level” Type
I got myself an Arduino and immediately went on to try the (simplest) “Blink” example. It was very cool to make the LED on the board blink, I admit. But then I went on to find out how to build stuff like a 4x4x4 LED cube or a (relatively) simple universal remote and I realized two things:
- Most of the stuff has already been created by others.
- They already did it much better than I ever would.
I realized that I’m not really into soldering and connecting wires. I’m more of a “high level” kind of guy – I like taking ready-made parts and creating new things with them, not mess with the low level stuff. It’s also true with software – while I enjoy seeing the possibilities of building useful libraries with a language just like the next guy, I still prefer using them over trying to write them.
So I’m still looking for nice (and hopefully new) things to do with the Arduino that will either be fun or useful for me. I might even try some wiring :)
My Next Prodigy Show – Athens In September
The Prodigy just announced a show in Athens, Greece in September 17th. And I already have a ticket!
Anyone wants to join?
In the meantime, here’s some recent good quality recording of Poison (with a new second part) and Omen live:
Knee Pains Update
OK, so I visited an orthopedic doctor and everything is fine. Apparently this isn’t an orthopedic issue at all – I presumably had a local sub-dermal cellulites infection very close to the knee area. It really hurt a few days ago, but now it seems to be passing.
I should be back to regular workouts in a few days. Yes!
Knee Pains
I’m suffering from severe pain in my left knee. It started out as an innocent minor annoyance on Sunday morning. In the past such annoyances hadn’t stopped me from working out and this one didn’t either. I went on to run my usual 11km and when I was done I thought the two following days until my next workout will suffice for my knee to recover, as it always did.
But I was wrong. My left knee is now swollen and inflamed and I’m having trouble walking, let alone running. It looks like I’m suffering from something called “runner’s knee” but I’m not sure. I’m worried about how long it will take before I’m back to running again. I’d hate to lose my aerobic fitness.
Anyway, it’s rest for my knee until further notice.
Dindy Update
It’s been a while since I posted an update regarding Dindy. Dindy has been slowly evolving since its first release 9 months ago. It is now a relatively complete profile management solution for Android-based phones. It can be used for quite a few purposes, including:
- Simple profile manager for profiles like “silent” or “vibrate”.
- Auto-away SMS responder.
- Unique urgent call handling by sending an SMS message to the caller and waking up the phone if the same person calls again.
Other nice features are:
- Profile time limit.
- Profile widgets for one-click activation.
- Profile shortcuts for activation using external apps.
- Locale plugin.
I’m pretty happy with Dindy’s current feature list and it seems as though the users are happy too: Dindy now has a rating of 4.46 out of 5 in the app market. Out of 318 installations, 159 (50%) of them are active. That’s actually a little disappointing but, since people aren’t giving Dindy bad ratings lately, I can only assume that it worked fine but wasn’t what they were looking for.
I dropped Dindy’s price to 0.50 British Pounds. I wanted to see how it would affect sales and I believe what happened as a result was that people who didn’t find Dindy useful didn’t hurry to uninstall it and get the refund. But that’s just a guess.
The most enjoyable part of writing Dindy is the interaction with users. It’s a great feeling to know someone uses Dindy and even has ideas on how to improve it. That’s why I’m still considering making Dindy free. Like I said before, I wish there was a way to do app promotions in the app market and give Dindy away for free just for a week. Until that’s possible I will probably have Dindy priced the same as now.
G3E3 End
I had a hard time deciding what to write in this post. It’s been a little over a week since we broke up and I still have no idea what the right words are.
So I’ll just leave it at that.
G3E3
Girl 3 and I are giving it another go! Happiness reinstated :)
G3E2 End
It was a short yet very intense relationship. It appears as if there was no way to settle some differences of opinions that have crept into what seemed to be a very promising start. I’m finding it hard to describe what happened without getting into the gruesome details. I guess it can be painted as a clash of two stubborn and insistent personalities over an issue we both consider crucial.
I’m very sad about it ending. I had high hopes for this one.
G3E2
I’d like to tell you about the new source of happiness in my life, to be known on this blog as Girl 3, at least for now. Those of you who possess keen observation skills and are also familiar with my naming convention for girls on this blog probably noticed that this is already Episode 2. How is that possible, you ask? Well, let me tell you.
It all started about a year and a half ago. I wrote her on Facebook in one of those dating applications. She didn’t respond until months later, but by then I was on the big trip of 2009 and not really emotionally available to start a relationship. It’s another way of saying I was too stupidly blind to notice that I struck pure gold with this girl. And so it ended shortly after. That was Episode 1.
Fast forward to today (about a year later): Girl 3 writes me and we decide to meet for the first time. It was a great first date. So great, in fact, that I’m writing this only a week after but it feels like we’ve known each other for a very long time. So it’s still a week-old relationship and there’s not much to tell, but you may have noticed that I’m in a very good mood lately.
Now you know why.