Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog… YES!!!!!

July 19th, 2008

I just got done watching all three episodes of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. IT WAS AWESOME! It is a self described “supervillain musical”.

I don’t know too much about how this show came to be, but I was happy it was made. It appears that Joss, Joss Whedon, the creator of the TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer“, was looking to do something different. He was inspired by last year’s writer strike. He set off to create a show without the studios. (The people who the writers were “negotiating” with.) I would say that he achieved his goal of creating a story that was high in quality while independent. I think that what makes the show successful is the story and writing. It doesn’t matter that there aren’t a lot of highly glossy special effects. The writing is so good.

Anyway, go over and see the three acts quickly. They are up until midnight Sunday, July 20, 2008. They have plans to then release the show as a download and eventually a DVD. I definitely plan to purchase the DVD and support everyone responsible for this.

(I was right. The female news caster was Marti Noxon, a producer from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. She was also an actress in the musical episode “Once More, With Feeling” portraying the “Parking Ticket Woman”.)

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »

MouseCal

July 18th, 2008

I have just launched MouseCal. MouseCal is a web application that publishes the operating hours of the Walt Disney World parks in iCalendar format. The iCalendar data can be displayed in online calendars, like Google Calendar. This can be very useful when planning your next trip to Walt Disney World. For instance, after adding a park calendar to Google Calendar, you can visually see when it opens and closes. It will also include any Extra Magic Hours that the park has for the particular day. This information can be useful not only for determining when you plan to visit the parks, but also in planning where you will eat. Dining at Disney has become quite popular. It has become common that you need to make advanced dining reservations for many of the popular locations. For instance, I just made an ADR on Wednesday, July 16, 2008 for January 12, 2009, 180 days away, for breakfast at Cinderella’s Royal Table. This is a “character meal”, where the Disney princesses visit you while you eat, inside Cinderella’s castle. (The icon for the Magic Kingdom.) The calendar information from MouseCal can help you decide when to make your ADR. For instance, you may see that a park is open later with an Extra Magic Hour evening so you plan on a later dinner. Or you see that the Magic Kingdom will be open until 2 am; so don’t make an ADR for breakfast the day after–you’ll probably want to sleep in a bit. (Yeah right! How can anyone sleep at Walt Disney World. I mean, it is too exciting to sleep. 🙂 )

Tags:
Posted in MouseCal | No Comments »

Hello, Android

July 13th, 2008

So, July 11, 2008, came and went. What happened on July 11? The iPhone 3G came out.

But I don’t have an iPhone. The other big thing is that the Apple iPhone App Store opened. But I don’t have a Mac, so I can’t run the emulator or create my own apps for the emulator.

So, I celebrated by creating my first Android app.

Hello, Android

This is the “Hello, World” version of an Android app running in the emulator. It was very easy to make. What made it easier for me is that Android apps are written in Java. (I am a Java developer by day.) The “Getting Started” tutorial even shows you how to use Eclipse.

I have only created the sample app so far, but it looks pretty easy for a Java developer to write an “Activity“. But, of coarse, the apps currently can only run in the emulator. But the emulator can be integrated very easily into Eclipse.

Though, it is not like having real hardware like the Apple iPhone. 🙂

Tags: ,
Posted in Java, Technology | No Comments »

Strange thoughts from CNN: High gas prices anti-terrorist tool

July 7th, 2008

So, this morning I was watching CNN. They had a commercial for an upcoming segment about how “spy” weapons were being used to keep the upcoming presidential nomination conventions safe. And then Ali Velshi did his normal update about the price of oil and new airline fees. So, in the spirit of Bruce Schneier’s Movie-Plot Threat contest, I wondered what would happen if you mash the two together: What if the high gas prices were actually welcomed by some security providers as a terrorist threat deterent. By making the cost of travel in general more expensive, gas prices rise, airline tickets increase, etc. this would reduce travel throughout the US. Thus making it more costly for terrorists to arrive at their target (though, if they are paying in Euro’s it would actually be cheaper as the dollar falls) and filter out normal citizens who give up travel because it is too costly. At some point, normal citizens can longer afford to fly, only terrorists will be flying.

[This is only fiction. It was not meant to be taken seriously. NSA, please do not report me. 🙂 ]

Tags: , ,
Posted in Current Events | 1 Comment »

Disney World’s Pleasure Island sinking

June 28th, 2008

Disney announced yesterday that Pleasure Island in Orlando, FL will be closing by Sept. 28, 2008. The six night clubs, 8 Trax, The Adventurer’s Club, Mannequins Dance Place, BET Sound-Stage Club, Motion, and The Comedy Warehouse. They say that they are going to replace them with dining and shopping. The Disney blogosphere is lit up with posts about this information. I think that this is a good thing for a couple reasons.

In my opinion, Pleasure Island hasn’t been the same since they removed the gates. Originaly, the whole of Pleasure Island was gated. You had to have admitance material to enter. Once inside the gates, you had free reign to visit any of the clubs. This had the effect of allowing only those people who paid admitance to be within the area. Later, the gates were removed, along with Jessica Rabbit. There was still an admittance fee to get into the clubs, but anyone could walk around on Pleasure Island. This meant that those under 21 could wander the Island. You would see teenagers, even parents with yound kids walking around. The exclusive feel was gone.

The other piece of this news that could be good is that Disney says that the clubs would be replaced with more dining options. Dining at Disney has become very difficult, so any more dining establishments would be welcome. Back when Epcot was first opened, they had a video conference kiosk that you could use to get dining reservations FOR THAT DAY. Now, you have to call 180 days, 6 MONTHS, ahead of time for many of the popular options. So any more dining on property would be welcome.

I suspect that The Adventurer’s Club will be resurrected at some time by Disney. It has been a very popular club. It was more theater than club. There were actors who inhabited the club. You would interact with them and they would tell stories. This was different than a dance club like Motion. There have been rumors that there would a bigger and better Adventurer’s Club in the rumored Night Kingdom.

So, over all, I am not that upset by the closing of the clubs at Pleasure Island. In my mind, the best days of Pleasure Island have been gone for along time. And hopefully adding more dining will provide more choices to reduce some pressure on the Disney dining reservation system.

Posted in Disney | No Comments »

Primal Quest – Montana 2008

June 19th, 2008

My brother John is on his way today to Montana to participate in Primal Quest – Montana 2008. He is on team eCountryLifestyle.com, #65. He has done adventure races before, but never a 10 day, 800KM course.

Tags: ,
Posted in Personal | No Comments »

ICON A5

June 16th, 2008

Given the recent flooding here in Cedar Rapids, I think that I may have to get an ICON A5 airplane. It is a Light Sport Aircraft, meaning it can be flown without holding a medical, but it is limited to lower speeds and range. It is amphibious, which would be good for the flood, with retractable landing gear, for when the flood subsides. And the wings fold up, making the aircraft trailerable. It carries two passengers with relatively decent useful load. The estimated price is $139,000. And $5000 will get you a delivery position.

Tags:
Posted in aviation | No Comments »

Arduino ordered

May 19th, 2008

I just ordered an Arduino Diecimila from SparkFun. I am looking forward to playing with this little device.

Tags:
Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

Akount “revision 12” released

April 27th, 2008

This update fixes some security issues related to cross site scripting. User entered data is now escaped with the PHP “htmlspecialchars” function.

Posted in akount | No Comments »

Keeping data secure in Google App Engine

April 10th, 2008

While going through the “Getting Started” documentation provided for Google App Engine, I noticed something interesting in the “Using the Datastore” section. The datastore included in the App Engine is not a relational database, but it has some similarities. When querying the datastore, you can use GQL, which is similar to SQL. For instance:

greetings = Greeting.gql("WHERE author = :1 ORDER BY date DESC", users.get_current_user())

Notice the parameter replacement where “:1” is replaced with the value of “users.get_current_user()“. The documentation states:

Unlike SQL, GQL queries may not contain value constants: Instead, GQL uses parameter binding for all values in queries.

As Wikipedia points out, using a parameterized statement like this GQL parameter binding is one way to mitigate an SQL injection attack. The SQL injection is mitigated because the parameter value can consistently be properly escaped within the execution of the parameter binding. I find it very interesting that Google decided, in implementing GQL, to enforce the use of parameter binding. This must have been a conscious decision to help App Engine developers to make their apps more secure. I think that this is a good decision.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Software, Technology | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »