dustinblog

"In an increasingly uncertain world, I can see a bully president being attractive to a certain..."

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:17:39 -0700

“In an increasingly uncertain world, I can see a bully president being attractive to a certain segment of the population, especially with all the rest of the bully’s in the world. Those people certainly wouldn’t want the country run by a geek, someone who would get trapped in a bathroom with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il who give him a swirly while Hu Jintao watches the door.”

- Ben Brown

I decided to throw together a lifestreaming app to aggregate all...

Wed, 14 May 2008 20:26:00 -0700

I decided to throw together a lifestreaming app to aggregate all various activity feeds that make up my distributed “web identity”. It’s a rails app living over at lifestream.dustinselman.com. Along the way I ended up modifying the default behavior of the rails method time_ago_in_words to work a little differently. Here’s the code I ended up with:


def time_ago_in_words(time, options = {})
  start_date = options.delete(:start_date) || Time.new
  date_format = options.delete(:date_format) || :default
  delta_minutes = (start_date.to_i - time.to_i).floor / (60)
  distance = distance_of_time_in_words(delta_minutes);
end

def distance_of_time_in_words(minutes)
  hours = minutes.floor/60
  days = hours.floor/24
  today = Time.today.to_date
  startday = today - days
  starttime = Time.today - minutes*60
  startstr = starttime.strftime("%I").to_i.to_s + 
                   starttime.strftime(":%M %p")
  case
    when hours < 1
      "less than 1 hour ago"
    when hours < 24
      pluralize(hours, "hour") + " ago".downcase
    when days < 2
      "yesterday at #{start_time_str}".downcase
    when days < 7
      "#{(startday).strftime('%A')} at #{startstr}".downcase
    when days < 356
      "#{(startday).strftime('%B %d')} at #{startstr}".downcase
    else
      "#{(startday).strftime('%B %d, %Y')} at #{startstr}".downcase
  end
end

Tryon Creek (via dsel) As seen on recent...

Fri, 02 May 2008 14:38:55 -0700

Tryon Creek (via dsel)

As seen on recent hill walk with Ruth

MAKE: Blog: Pixellated water helps conserve real water for Earth...

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:36:54 -0700

MAKE: Blog: Pixellated water helps conserve real water for Earth Day

Science Debate 2008

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:45:47 -0700

Everyone should go check out this out.

From the site:

“Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Medicine and Health, and Science and Technology Policy.”

sciencedebate2008.com

Atari Punk Console (via dsel) Whilst in...

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:48:00 -0700

Atari Punk Console (via dsel)

Whilst in Palo Alto visiting Bronwen & Caleb, Caleb and I decided we needed to make stuff. So we did a Fry’s/Radio Shack run for parts and busted out the soldering iron. And thus was born Caleb’s TV-B-Gone (Much fun was had covertly turning off bar TV’s) and my Atari Punk Console (more photos here).

I pretty much follwed the basic schematics but added an adittional pushbutton tact switch along with the on/off toggle. Will post some audio/video soon. Now we just need to do something with the Arduino boards we also got that week…