Algolia is Back

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A while back, I wrote about a super-powered cloud-based search, Algolia. I loved it while I was able to use it, but my trial expired and the price tag was abit steep for a personal blog. I reverted to Dave's Wordpress Live Search, which did a great job, but didn't have all the bells and whistles of Algolia. Today, I received an email from the Algolia team announcing Algolia … [Read more...]

Update: MagiQuest Wand Code

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Apologies for the delay. I've been meaning to update the original post talking about Magiquest wands and home makerness, but haven't had time until now. I did manage to find an improved tactic to the statistical confidence path I went down using only a Raspberry Pi and LIRC to decode. The hero of this story is really Michael Flaga, who extended Arduino-IRRemote to include … [Read more...]

Wearality: High Quality VR In Your Pocket

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Back before I started at Megacorp What Counts Things, I worked for a smaller consulting firm. Back at that firm, we had a fellowship program. What that means is that there was a group of really freaking smart people we paid to say they were our friends. One of those really freaking smart guys was Alan Kay. If you're not familiar with him, he's the guy who invented the laptop … [Read more...]

Putting The “Person” Back In Personalization

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I spent this past week in Las Vegas at the Adobe Summit. I would summarize it like this: "mobile, mobile, mobile, stories, mobile, then that guy who was the handyman on Facts of Life spoke." I kid. It was actually a great event. My company had a booth on the floor of the Community Pavillion and people would stop by to discuss their concerns or just see why a company like … [Read more...]

Algolia: Super-powered Search In The Cloud Made Simple

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The other day, a colleague alerted me to an article on techcrunch about a new cloud-based search service, Algolia. Algolia will index your site and then provide an API to integrate search into your site with millisecond response times. The promised effect is not unlike OS X's Spotlight, including thumbnails and categorized results. I decided to check it out on this blog. I … [Read more...]

Crystal Knows (Me, Apparently)

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So, I was alerted to Crystal (https://www.crystalknows.com/) by a coworker. I'm always interested in where machine learning is headed. I'll admit, I was a little skeptical at first and the app kind of makes me sound like a jerk, but the more I read it, the more I think it's pretty accurate. The value that Crystal promises is insight into an individual's communication style … [Read more...]

Magic Just Means You’re Not Seeing The Source Code

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Warning: This post gets pretty detailed and bit-twiddly. So, if your eyes glaze over at the site of code, you may want to read my post about good things going on in comics, instead.  Spoiler Alert: My Kids Are Nerds There used to be a place called Magiquest at the local mall here in the Western Suburbs of Chicago. It was, basically, a LARP for kids - think Harry Potter meets … [Read more...]

Geektool And Wunderlist: Parsing JSON For The Desktop

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I am a big fan of GeekTool. For those not familiar, GeekTool is an OS X application that allows you to place "Geeklets" on your desktop. Geeklets come in 3 flavors: a file plugin to track the contents of a file, a shell plugin to run shell scripts and get the output, and an image plugin to load images. Each plugin has customization and layout options to allow you to create a … [Read more...]

The Coolest Stuff In Comics Right Now

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  I thought I'd take a break from the norm here and spend some time talking about another passion of mine: comics. If you like comics (or even if you don't, if you're into great story telling), there are a few runs going on right now that are some of the best I've ever encountered. Saga Brian K. Vaughan authored another great comic, "Y: The Last Man" a while back. I'd … [Read more...]