Archive for July, 2006
Born on a Curvy Day
Jul 25th
I was born on a Saturday which is a curvy day in the genius mind of Daniel Tammet. This is one thing we have in common.
Daniel is an extremely rare savant gifted with almost unimaginable mental powers, much like the Rain Man (based on the real-life story of Kim Peek, from Salt Lake City, Utah).
But Daniel is different—he leads a fully independent life, his own company, his own book, and maintains his own blog.
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Loading ...Hand Exercises to Increase Your WPM
Jul 25th
I don’t know how many other people can type 120 wpm; I imagine there are a lot, but I just haven’t ever met any. As a programmer and a guitarist, being able to work quickly and efficiently with my hands is important to me. That’s why these videos demonstrating actual hand exercises are pretty cool.
Besides strengthing the hand, improving dexterity, coordination, and preventing carpel tunnel syndrome, these double as great party tricks. Check it out!
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Learn Ruby on Rails on Windows!
Jul 24th
If you are interested in learning Ruby on a Windows machine I recommend spending a weekend to read the free online book Programming Ruby and downloading InstantRails and RadRails to begin testing the Ruby code snippets it will show you.
After that, I recommend Agile Web Developent with Rails by the-one-and-only David Heinemeier Hansson.
For support while learning hop on freenode.net and join #ruby-lang and #rubyonrails. The crowd is very enthusiastic and willing to answer your questions.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Getting Adobe Reader to Read to You
Jul 23rd
I find myself reading more and more PDF eBooks lately, and I am impressed by the accessibility functionality built into Adobe Reader that lets it read the book to me. Sometimes I listen to it speak while I read; trying to utilize as many learning faculties as possible simultaneously in order to increase retention. Here’s how you can do it too:
View > Read Out Load > Read to End of Document
View > Automatically Scroll
It uses the built-in speech engine in XP which is Microsoft SAM, which is pretty old as many of us techies can recall but you can actually download new SAPI 5 voices that sound great. For example, Cepstral Text-to-Speech has several neat voices like Shouty (Drill Sargeant), Whispery (Scary Movie), and Dog (Animal Translation).
Depending on the kind of reader you are, or your mood, it’s a lot of fun.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...LinkedIn Addiction
Jul 22nd
I have recently found LinkedIn to be strangely addicting. According to Alexa’s Movers & Shakers it is #70 on the web. So the good news is, I’m not alone!
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