Tech Talk is Back!

Ok Tech Talk is Back! Click the tech talk link on the right and start participating. If your confused about something technical or you have a burning computer or software question, feel free to ask it in the Tech Talk forum. There are no stupid questions! Ask Away!

Forum, oh Forum where art thou?

Well, it seems that the wonderfully awesome forum Tech Talk that I setup is having major issues. The Posts keep disappearing from the forum. I think it's a glitch in how 1and1.com run their software. So in the meantime I'll be looking for another forum software. If any of you have suggestions let me know. Once I have it all back up and running again, I'll post the link and we can get setup again.

Sorry to all those who got inconvienced by this, I know I did.

Interactive Cube

The Latest edition of the Cube I working on. Thought you all might want to see what I've been up to.

www.totalimagematrix.com/cubeMC.html

Give Away of the Day

So my friend Nate put me onto this fun website that has a give away of the day. Everyday they pick a different software to give away. The great thing is that it's all done by individual programmers, so sometimes the products are great and other times not so great, but often times you can find a gem among the programs that are offered.

If you'd like to check it out just go to http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/


Everyday is a new software and some of them are great little programs.

Enjoy!

When Technology lets you down

We've all had those time when the computer just stops working or the printer gives out. And hopefully not to many of us have had to endure the "Blue Screen of Death". But what do these technologies have in store for us. I think the technological revolution has taken a bit of a pause.
Where are the breakthroughs of yesteryear? It's seems that all we get are tiny pieces of much bigger projects that could propel our society into the future. It's like we're sitting at a table for a huge feast with our hands tied behind our backs and the people feeding us are giving one crumb at a time. It's frustrating! And they feed us one crumb at a time because they make more money off the dinner that way.

There has been a swing towards open source or "publicly available" software's, but they can't progress as quickly as one funded by a major corporation. The proverbial throat of technology is being choked out by commercialism. What happened to the days of building a computer or a software just to see what we could do with it. Now we have to have a demographic to market to and a goal for market shares and profits. We need more individuals taking the lead and weening us off of the corporate sludge we've been slurping down for so long. We're all victims of it. You go to the store and the choice is Windows or Apple, sure some people use Linux but "What is That?" I thought that was only for programmers, and big companies know that there is not a big market for linux so they make their software for the big names. What would the world be like it there wasn't a microsoft giant or an apple giant?

As you look at the technology around you, what purpose does it serve? what amazing things can you do with it? We have come so far so fast that now we're waiting for the rest of our society to catch up, but their having a hard time because we hold back the needed information to help them move forward.

I know I'm in a somber mood, but this was something that I was thinking about and wondering what will the next big technological revolution be. We need to stop wasting time with old technologies and move forward into the unknown.

Brand New Buildings?

So for those of you who don't know, I work at Arizona State University and I work in the architects office. Today we took a tour of the "NEW" GIOS building. GIOS stands for Global Institute of Sustainability. It looks really nice on the inside but the outside, well lets just say it looked dated, and I'll tell you why. It seems that the University loves to save money by taking their old buildings and just gutting them inside and redoing the inside. For the GIOS Building, which used to be the old Nursing building, they gutted the whole inside and spent a little over 9 Million Dollars renovating the inside. You'd think for 9 Million it would be sparkling diamonds inside, well it's not. In fact it looks just like most other buildings on campus inside.


So...Let me get this straight, we take the old building.... gut it...... spend 9 Million.......just so it can look pretty much like it did before we gutted it. Right.

I'm all for progress on campus but when you keep the old outside of a building just to save some cash. I personally think that's a little tacky. The outside of GIOS is old and dated and many of the metal siding and finishes are coming up and falling off. I'm sorry but you just can't have a grand opening for a building that is not new and doesn't even look new on the outside. It would have been great for them to keep all the original brick and sand blast them or paint them to give a nice new finish.

Well needless to say I'm disappointed that the University spends so much, just to have the building pretty much exactly how it was before and then to call it new. Not renovated, New.

Oh well, I suppose when you have that much money to throw around you can pretty much make whatever inane and redundant decisions that you want to.

Tech Talk

So you may have noticed..... maybe not, that I've started a forum called Tech Talk, I envision it to be a place where anyone can ask any type of technical question they want and not have to worry about being laughed at or scorned for asking a dumb question. I'll pretty much cover any topic so if you have a question post it and I'll answer it the best I know how or I'll point you in the direction of someone who can. Tell your friends it's gonna be good.

To get there use the link on the Right "Tech Talk"

Object Dock

So I rediscovered a fun little program for your PC. It's called ObjectDock.

http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/

Basically it's a Mac style replacement for the windows taskbar. I know, I know, your like "but Tim I thought your were against all things MAC", well I am......buuuuuut a few of there programs are really quite fun and interesting and if I can implement them on the PC that's even more fun. So I've been trying out ObjectDock at work and I think I'll implement it at home as well. It's really a fun looking way to navigate through your programs and work on your desktop.

The best part about this program is that the basic package is free and it comes with all the bells and whistles you need to get started. Fun fun fun.

Anyway, enough of that. Today has been so slow. Today has been so slow. Oh did I say that twice, sorry. Well I'm gonna call it quits on this one, until next time.

The Mystery Phone

So I thought I would comment today on the funny thing that my phone does at work. Apparently for some reason unknown to me and possibly the universe, it chooses at random times to ring once and that's it. I'll get to work and start my day, then the phone rings and you know... you go through the whole scenario in your head......."OK, what do I say oh yeah, University services this is Tim and then your start to tell your body to move your hand and your fingers over in that direction to answer the phone". But before you can get the muscle memory twitch of moving your hand the phone stops ringing. It only rang once! Is someone playing a trick? Did they get the wrong number? Does my phone just hang up on people after one ring? I have NO idea. So I just accept it and move on. This happens periodically throughout the day and every time I think it'll be a real call but it just rings once and that's it. I've come to accept it as a daily routine and perhaps I'll never know why it does that, but I've come to terms with the mystery phone. Maybe I could rig up something to give applause each time it rings and then hangs up, at least then I could feel better about it.

Security Policy Issues

So I've been working on this amazing flash project that uses true 3D in Flash.
It's been really fun and a great learning experience...however it's come with many road bumps. The latest seems to be the newest release of Flash Player 9, they change the security setting for URL loaders and forwards, so that means that my links for the 3D planes can't be loading properly because they don't meet security guidelines. So it's been a struggle for me to find a solution and unfortunately what it's come down to is that I just have to wait until Adobe updates their player again or until PaperVision3D updates there code components to meet the new guidelines.

Although it has been really interesting to be immersed in the coding world again I sure could go without the headaches.

ALL SET

Well I did it, I'm all set up like I wanted to be. Totalimagematrix.com is now hosted on a great host site and my blog is running through totalimagematrix.info. It's been a real learning experience to work on this. I have to transfer my DNS information from GoDaddy to 1and1 hosting and then wait untill they transfered everything, then 1and1 had a blog setup which was really bad so I had to figure out a way to get my blogger acount over to them and it just so happened that blogger has some really nice features that made this possible. So needless to say I'm all set and ready to go. I do need to work on updating my website, but I'm very happy with how everything has turned out so far.

I-What?

Whats all the hype about the I-Phone anyway. Where talking about an age old touch screen technology which somebody finally decided to put in a cell phone. Well that's great.....BIG DEAL!
OK so you get this phone then you have to use AT&T because no other carrier is supported unless of course you get it unlocked and then have to go through allot of other technically challenging steps just to use the thing as a phone. I've seen a few of these around and it's fun to watch people struggle to try to use them. They fumble with the phone trying to hold it with one hand and work it with the other, then they touch the wrong part of the screen and they have to start over again from the beginning. I know I'm ranting here, but the I-pod and the I-phone just seem to me to be over expensive solutions for products that can do the same things better. I know, I know most people just want the brand name and in today's society that what most people will pay out the nose for. We need a change in technology, we've plateaued. As we move forward over the next few years what will be the next Tech Revolution? I personally think it will be a change in Personal Computing. Holographic Screens, or Virtual Computing. The Internet in True 3D. We've had the capability for these for years, we've been waiting for the general public to be educated enough for us to implement them. Truth be told that the technology is only as good as the users. You can produce the most tech advanced app or system on the planet and it means nothing if people don't want to use it.
Think about the electronics you have now, do you NEED it, do you thrive on it. What tech will be the next big need for our generation? Well I certainly hope that we don't become the I-Society that only cares for name brand and is afraid to step out of the proverbial box and try something new.

Onward Ever Onward

I made some awesome progress with the flash component I've been working on. I can now attach video to each plane in a cube and have that cube rotate around to see all the videos that are displaying. It's really amazing! I've also be putting out my resume today. www.monster.com is a really great website for putting out resumes, it makes it really easy. I applied to a few places here in AZ and a few in Austin TX and even one in Dallas. It's been fun to see all the possibilites and how many doors are open now that I've graduated. Hopefully, I'll be able to find a job that I enjoy and that pays extremely well. Keep your fingers crossed.