Originally, after seeing the ad, I checked out the website, and put it into my look-at-later pile, until one of my friends posted a twitter update via Path. Once it was back on my radar, I signed up for my account and downloaded the application to my iPhone.

Path is very mobile-centric, which is very relevant today. It’s referred to as a “smart” journal, designed to help you keep track of memorable moments in your life. Once installed on your phone, it can track your day and routine, helping you to capture meaningful events. Accounts are limited to 150 friends, which is explained as limiting the sharing of these moments to the most important people in your life.

The signup process via the browser was still very straightforward, but only your settings are available via the web. The first thing I did, was try to change my profile picture, which I confused with my “Cover” at first. Path actually has TWO images that represent you. A small circular avatar, as well as a more broad “cover”, which serves as a backdrop. It doesn’t appear that there’s any way to change your profile picture from your desktop at this time, however, It is possible to change your vital stats and password. There’s also a section with links to remove any connected services, such as Facebook or Twitter, but again, no links to add them.

Switching to my phone, my first impression is that the application is beautiful. Everything is smooth, fast and good looking. When you create a new post, you’re given 6 options: Photograph, People, Place, Music, Thought and Awake. Each contains a slightly customized screen with information that you’d want to share about a particular media.

I was most impressed by the music post screen. It gives you an option for the song currently playing in the iPod app, or a selection of recommended music, which is probably a feed of other recently posted music by other users.

From many of the post screens, you can select a location as well as the people that you are with. The people appear to be limited by your address book, rather than your Path friends.

I was least impressed with the Awake post type, as it’s only use is to indicate your waking state, which isn’t very applicable for me. I’m going to try out out, but it feels like you’d be spamming the feed, unless you were using it to indicate a nap, or being awake at a strange time, neither of which I really do.

Also available are a series of selectors to syndicate your post to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or Foursquare. I’d like to see WordPress integration, as I don’t have a Tumblr blog and I’d really like to be able to syndicate things like my music posts. I can, however, understand the difficulties of WordPress and self hosted blogs, compared to a pretty Tumblr API.

When it comes to reading updates, the application uses a beautiful timeline. It’s able to display all types of media posted using the application, and has a variety of easy to understand icons while you’re skimming though. Again, the music sharing interface shines though here. When you select a song that’s been shared, a window pops up with links to purchase the song, or display further information. My one gripe is that a preview starts playing immediately, which may be inappropriate for some situations. Largely though, when clicking on a shared song, you’ll want to hear what it sounds like.

The last 4 months have been absolutely insane. I’ve done (and forgot to do) so many things, that I can’t even list them all here. Out of necessity, I’ve been learning how to prioritize and track projects more efficiently. I’ve always seen myself multitasking similarly to computers, each task getting a slice of time before moving on to the next. I find that when I stick to this methodology, time escapes me less; which leads to more productivity. I’m also trying to put more time into enriching myself and posting to this poor abandoned blog before twitter turns me into an illiterate buffoon.

Although, thinking about it, the whole of 2011 was pretty crazy. Here’s my quick list:

• Protospace left a small space downtown, was homeless for the summer, moved into a giant  space in October
• didn’t do much paintball/airsoft
• went to Boston during a hurricane
• went to London to visit friends/family
• worked on some really cool secret R&D projects
• moved to a new job in the same company
• wrote a tonne of code (some of which is in my github)
• sort of re-did my blog theme
• sporadic photography that never got post-processed
• tried to learn how to fish (with comedic results)
• built an artistic technology piece for a charity auction

I was involved with so much at Protospace, it’s hard to believe how many projects I brushed against that aren’t applicable to the list above. It’s really encouraging me to journal more.

As i’m coming into 2012, here’s what’s on my plate:

• finish re-doing my blog
• write some neat wordpress code for said blog
• custom apps for Protospace like a membership management platform
• finish up a bunch of side projects (AND DO NOT START NEW ONES!)
• learn a bit more about using photoshop
• get a Bodhrán (and learn how to play it!)
• be more involved with local programming/design talent
• get back on the fitness bandwagon
• go camping more in the summer
• learn a bunch more about using electronics
• keep a better history of my learnings/doings
• write more code that may be usable by other people
• actually write some unit tests

As time goes on, hopefully I’ll post more about my doings and musings.

I’m also going to try to concentrate on writing smaller, more frequent posts.

Hello,

I’m writing to inform you of a crime against your brand, perpetrated by none other than one of your own shops. Dramatic, I know, but as one of my favourite purveyors of sandwiches in the city, it’s a pretty big deal to me, as I’d hope it would be to you. I narrate my tale to you in the hopes once experiencing my plight, you’ll ensure that the location brings it’s performance up to snuff. I’ll be frequenting the area now, and I’d hate to have to avoid what should be a reliably delicious sandwich.

my Chachi’s experiences thus far have been absolutely grand. I frequent your down town locations, forgoing all other sandwiches for the ones created by your stores. Even the Chinook one is a great place, a respite from the confusion of the mall. Tonight, for dinner, I decided that a sandwich would be quite nice, as it’s been almost a month since I’ve gotten my fix. As I entered the store and started filling out the card with my “usual” order, the lone staffer got ready to create my a masterpiece. Little did I know, that an hour later, when I finally sat down to eat, an abomination awaited me in my wax paper wrapper.

I started with the olives as an appetizer, but found them to be lacking and tasteless. These are not Chachi’s olives I thought with alarm. But alas, everybody has a bad day, and it is the holidays, a slow time for all. I discarded them, willing to move on to the main event. As I unwrapped my sandwich, everything seemed OK, until I took a bite, and realized that there was a lack of the main ingredient. The chicken was missing! I quickly opened the sandwich, figuring some bad placement, or maybe it had been forgotten. But it was WORSE. 5 small bits of chicken sat forlornly on one half of my long sandwich. The other half having a similar lack of protein. I then realized that it was my task, nigh duty, to report this abomination to those who would care the most. Attached is a picture, to convey what my tale cannot.

TL;DR; Bought a sandwich. Didn’t have much chicken on it. I had a sad. Location was South Train Crossing. Letting you know that it sucked. Purchased at around 5:00PM, December 27th, 2011.

You can replace “$LOAD_PATH” with “$:”, but I find the long form more readable.

file_path = __FILE__
while File.symlink?(file_path) do
  file_path = File.dirname(file_path) +'/'+ File.readlink(file_path)
end
#this is your real path. For example only.
puts "resolved path: #{file_path}"

# add your lib directory to the load path.
# Two directories up, as i'm keeping my primary .rb file in project_dir/bin
# search our libraries first to give priority above system installed libs.
$LOAD_PATH.unshift File.expand_path("../../lib/",file_path)
# require something from your lib directory
require 'mylib/lib.rb'

I’m already 100% bought in to the “Apple Way”.

Firstly, i’d like to point to a couple of neat things that people have been saying about the iPad.

Gruber nailed the hardware implications in his post:

Apple now owns and controls their own mobile CPUs. There aren’t many companies in the world that can say that. And from what I saw today, Apple doesn’t just own and control a mobile CPU, they own and control the hands-down best mobile CPU in the world. Software aside (which is a huge thing to put aside), it may well be that no other company could make a device today matching the price, size, and performance of the iPad. They’re not getting into the CPU business for kicks, they’re getting into it to kick ass.

Stephen Fry’s post can be boiled down to:

it’s not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop – it is a whole new kind of device.

Some of my peers have been skeptical on the impact of the tablet; It’s just a big iPod Touch to them. To me, this is another device that fits quite nicely into the way I run my computing experience. Most of them have no idea how the whole package fits together.

I’m already 100% bought in to the “Apple Way”. I’ve got an iPhone and an Apple TV. I’ve got a MacBook. I’ve even got a few Airport Express units. All of this stuff together allows me to have a pretty seamless experience across my home. The iPad will just add another layer to my setup.

Apple’s ecosystem extends beyond the ability to get content or have a snazzy device. It’s about how their whole media experience fits seamlessly into my computing. I can grab music from the store, copy over to my wife’s PC and then control which portions of the house it plays on using my iPhone. It’ll even play on my entertainment centre via my Apple TV.  Even the DRM on TV and Movies is unnoticeable to me, as I only have media devices that support FairPlay. Even my non-DRM cd rips are supported across the entire setup. It’s not even too hard to let my friends play their iTunes music over my speakers, all without cables.

The iPad probably isn’t as compelling a device for somebody that runs a Microsoft household, but even PCs will run iTunes, which gives you a gateway to this awesome way to run your media.

The iPad already has access to many of the applications that I’d like to use in a tablet platform

From a software perspective, I think that the decision to have the device run the iPhone OS rather than full blown OSX is a great move. The tablet is first and foremost a mobile device; by forcing the iPad into the same category as the iPhone and iPod Touch, Apple is ensuring that the expectations for the device remain clear – it’s not a replacement for your laptop and you’re not going to be able to run iMovie on it.

Using the App Store, the iPad already has access to many of the applications that I’d like to use in a tablet platform on the go. SSH, VNC and Remote Desktop clients are already on my iPhone, but will become much more usable on the bigger screen. Software developers will soon start to port applications that were previously impractical on the iPhone – They’ll be geared to run on a multitouch platform and scaled to the computing capacity of the device. I’m looking forward to apps like Coda, which would allow me to be productive without hauling around the MacBook that I use for heavy lifting.

I’ve also seen complaints about the hardware being underpowered. I’d agree if this was a desktop device, but it’s not. It’s got plenty of power for basic apps and browsing the web. I wholeheartedly agree with their decision to use custom silicon, as you get much more efficiency from using hardware designed to do a specific task. While I’m skeptical of their battery claims, there’s absolutely no way you’d get anywhere near those numbers if they’d used an off the shelf solution. The opportunities for power management are also better when you’ve got something that will only operate in spikes.

I’ll be ordering an iPad as soon as they’re available in Canada, and I look forward to the innovative things that the App Store developers will bring.

There were two major issues to overcome in this stage of the project

1. the hose is wider than the clip.
2. the balls won’t feed straight up. They would want to stagger and jam, due to the width of the chamber

I’ve removed portions of the outer wall of the clip to avoid compressing the hose. it will hopefully be held in place at the front and back of the clip, where i’ve left outcroppings to fit in the ribs.

To feed the balls, i’ve destroyed a 10 round tube, which i’ll be gluing in to act as a bumper

The almost final product appears to feed balls ok: