Chaos Server

A Mario game lets you pretend to be a middle-aged chubster hopping onto a turtle shell. - Jeff Ryan My nerd podcast (The Incomparable) recently did a video game episode where they talked about the most meaningful video games of their life. What a great idea. As a younger kid, I grew up a gamer - as hardcore of a gamer as my parents would let me be. They bought my brother and me the Atari 2600 and it was fantastic. We probably had a total of thirty games (30 x $50 = $1,500 <shudder>) There were two games on the Atari that really stand out for me. The first should surprise you, Tooth Protectors. It was a rip off of Space Invaders and you had to defend your teeth with toothpaste. The unique thing was that you had both the top teeth and the bottom teeth to defend, so you had to keep moving between the top and bottom. I got really really good at this game, and part of the reason I loved it was that I was so much better than anyone else I knew. I schooled my brother, and he didn...

You don't have time to think up there. If you think, you're dead. - Maverick (Top Gun) I've got a server at home that has my iTunes library on it for Home Sharing to my AppleTVs and it's connected to my AirPort Extreme that has a Drobo hanging off USB 2.0 as an AirDisk. I want this connection to be fast. My speed experiments are really confusing. To test I'm rsync'ing giant files over SMB. ChaosServer is a MacBook Air, so there is no built in ethernet. I have two USB 2.0 to Ethernet adapters - one from Apple and one I bought off eBay for $10 from China. Connection Speed WiFi 802.11n 7.63MB/s Ethernet (Apple) - Left USB 4.27MB/s Ethernet - Thunderbolt 2.10MB/s Ethernet (Apple) - Right USB 1.72MB/s Ethernet (China) - Left USB 307.01kB/s If you're like me - you're wondering if the adapter is busted? That is so slow. And the one from China is laughabl...

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down. - Oprah Winfrey Heading home from work this week, I jumped off BART and went to the Amtrak kiosk. A young lady lurked over me while I was buying the ticket and when I finished she stopped me, "Can I ask where you're going?" She looked nice enough, and I figured she just needed help getting a ticket. "Last station, do you need help getting a ticket?" I asked. "Where do you wait for the train? Down here?" "Up the stairs; I wait on the platform." "Is it safe? This is my first time taking the train and I went up there to wait and it's really dark and it's open to people and it makes me feel really uncomfortable, so I came down here where its lit and there is a station agent." "I do this every week, and aside from being asked for money, it's fine up there. I think it...

I wrote another app. I wanted to get an email every evening that told me tomorrow's weather, and I wanted that e-mail to look good when it arrived on my mobile in all views: alert, notification center, mail preview and the actual mail itself. I tried all the major services out there and they were terrible. The subject and preview text had nothing by pre-roll in it and the message itself was desktop formatted and 50% advertisements. Worthless, right? So welcome to Weather.Next - showing you tomorrow's weather, TODAY! Basically the idea is just to go an request to get the forecast emailed to you sometime in the evening. I'm doing my best to make it super-pretty. It uses Forecast.IO as the weather service. If you're interested, give it shot. If you have problems, shoot me a note. You're welcome internet. http://weathernext.appspot.com

Mini-Chaos made it to three months old. It is hard to believe how quickly time passed; it is hard to believe how long it has taken. When one of my friend's munchkins turned three months, he did an extensive review of all the baby products he liked and didn't like and I found it amazingly helpful. Instead of a writing a Siracusian-length tombe, I figured I would just describe a few things I really appreciated. BabyConnect for iPhone . Having an app that tracks all of your baby needs is awesome. How long has he been sleeping? How much sleep does he get a day? How much time does he nurse? How many diapers does he go through? When did he last eat? This app syncs across devices and that is priceless. Mrs.Chaos can throw him at me on the way out the door and when he cries I can check "when did he last eat or sleep?" It lets us communicate a lot of information to each other without needing to remember or bug the other person. In theory we could get my parents to insta...

I was way behind schedule this year because... ya know... I had a baby. Then Timmy demanded that I do this and helped me find the right music. May I suggest you embiggen it? It's 1080p this year. Why not? Download Video: MP4