AweSync: Bridging the Gap Between Lotus Notes and gCal
Do you use Lotus Notes? Do you use Google Calendar in your web browser or on your phone? I've searched high and low looking for an option to bridge this gap -- luckily AweSync solves that problem. Initially I was hesitant to give new software a shot because I had fears that I'd mess up my work calendar. Fear not! AweSync's software worked splendidly. The software setup could not be simpler -- I selected my Lotus Notes account, provided my Google Calendar authentication information, selected the Google Calendar I wanted to sync with, and clicked sync. That's it! I went from maintaining two calendars to having them completely in sync within 5 minutes of finding out about the application. The only suggestion I have that I hope AweSync eventually moves to use OAuth for the Google authentication instead of using username/password like they currently do. I highly recommend this application for anyone in the situation I was. $20 is a very reasonable price to make my life easier.
Playlist.com – Soon to be popular? Or dead?
A new site called Project Playlist has popped up recently. It lets you create playlists (duh) and listen to music for free. You can then embed these playlists as music players in various web pages, but not Facebook or MySpace for the moment. The record labels are quite obviously not too happy about this considering you can listen to full songs an unlimited number of times effortlessly. We'll see if this site sticks around, but for now try it out and enjoy the player embedded below:
How to download any song from Favtape.com
I've had my doubts about posting this information because quite honestly I'm a big fan of Favtape.com and I don't want to see them get in trouble and/or close. That being said, I suppose it can't hurt that much to put this information out there. Here's a quick and simple way to download any song that you can play on Favtape.com
- Use Firefox (it's not required but we all know that when you use IE god will kill kittens).
- Go to Favtape.com (duh) and find a song that you want.
- Click the name of the song to begin playing it.
- When you hover over the name of the song you should see something like this in the status bar: http://favtape.com/play/**Artist**/**Song**.mp3 (**Artist** and **Song* obviously replaced with the appropriate information). Click on the image to the right if you don't understand what I just said.
- Now you can't simply right click and "Save link as". You actually can't right click at all. So how do you get the MP3 file?
- Method 1 - no tweaking involved:
- Open a new tab in Firefox (control + t).
- Click + hold the Artist - Song Name and drag this onto the new tab you just created.
- That's it! The song should not start to download, but you'll need to rename it because it'll save as "fetch.mp3".
- Method 2 - tweaking the Firefox settings:
- In Firefox goes to Tools --> Options
- Go to the "Content" tab
- Find "Enable Javascript". To the right of this you will see "Advanced" click on this.
- Find "Disable or replace context menus". Uncheck this box.
- Click "OK" and then "OK" again.
- Now you can right click on the Artist - Song Name and select "Save link as".
- That's it! You can now just save the MP3 file we saw in the status bar earlier.
- Important Note: You may want to re-enable the "Disable or replace context menus" option because many web applications use this functionality.
Baby’s First Ruby App
So I've begun to learn Ruby (for work), and I thought I might share a little bit of my progress so far. Progress might be an exaggeration considering how basic this application actually is, but at least I'm slowly but surely moving in the right direction anyway.
So here's the 1st part of it:
1: #GET INPUT
2: puts "Please enter a number"
3: STDOUT.flush
4: num1 = gets.chomp.to_i
5:
6: puts "Please enter another number"
7: STDOUT.flush
8: num2 = gets.chomp.to_i
9:
10: puts "Please pick the type of operation:
11: (A)dd
12: (S)ubtract
13: (M)ultiply
14: (D)ivide)"
15: STDOUT.flush
16: oper = gets.chomp
So here we're asking the user for 2 numbers, cleaning up the input, and then storing it into 2 variables (num1 and num2). We then ask the user to select which type of mathematical operation they'd like to perform (addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division).
The 2nd part:
1: #SELECT THE OPERATION
2: if oper == ("a" or "A")
3: add(num1, num2)
4: elsif oper == ("s" or "S")
5: subtract(num1, num2)
6: elsif oper == ("m" or "M")
7: multiply(num1, num2)
8: elsif oper == ("d" or "D")
9: divide(num1, num2)
10: end
So here we're deciding what we're going to do with our 2 variables (num1 and num2) based on the users selection. If they enter "a" or "A" (for example) we will then execute the method called "add" on line 3. Speaking of these methods...
The 3rd and final part:
1: #DEFINE THE METHODS
2: def add(num1, num2)
3: sum = num1 + num2
4: puts "#{num1} + #{num2} = #{sum}"
5: end
6:
7: def subtract(num1, num2)
8: if num1 > num2
9: diff = num1 - num2
10: puts "#{num1} - #{num2} = #{diff}"
11: else
12: diff = num2 - num1
13: puts "#{num2} - #{num1} = #{diff}"
14: end
15: end
16:
17: def multiply(num1, num2)
18: prod = num1 * num2
19: puts "#{num1} X #{num2} = #{prod}"
20: end
21:
22: def divide(num1, num2)
23: if num1 > num2
24: div = num1 / num2
25: puts "#{num1} / #{num2} = #{div}"
26: else
27: div = num2/num1
28: puts "#{num2} / #{num1} = #{div}"
29: end
30: end
Each one of these methods (starting on lines 2, 7, 17, and 22) perform a particular set of functions based on the variables that are being passed in (num1 and num2). These methods are called based on the earlier code (part 2) that selected which method applied based on which of the mathematical operations the user selected. The 2 numbers that the user entered are passed into that method, some type of calculation is carried out, and then the result is displayed to the user. In the case of subtraction and division, I elected to add an additional step that would determine which of the 2 entered numbers was larger, and then it would order the calculation accordingly so as to not return a negative number (but this is purely optional).
To recap, and provide a plain English flow of how this happen in this simple little application: the user enters 2 numbers, and then they select a mathematical operation. Based on that operation we go through a series of checks to match which operation was selected, the 2 numbers entered by the users are passed to the method, and then we enter the applicable method. The method then performs the necessary calculations and displays the output to the user.
Pretty simple, not exactly rocket science, but it's a start at least. I wanted to play with conditional statements a bit, as well as creating and calling my own methods. Next up will be to continue to experiment with arrays and hashes.
Going to Brooklyn, and the past 2 weeks
I'm taking a break from packing up for my trip to Brooklyn this weekend (to see HER), so I thought I'd briefly summarize the past few weeks of my life. I'm sure I'll forget to include a few things, but here's the short list of everything I'd completed (or things that remain to be completed) recently:
- History and systems -- 6 page thoughtful response to The Metaphysical Club
- History and systems -- 15-20 page research paper discussing the Mind/Body Problem (dualism, materialism, idealism)
- Philosophy -- paper discussing the validity of knowledge, and what we can truly know for certain
- Philosophy -- paper discussing the types (or type, depending on your opinion) of substances in the world.
- Cognitive psychology -- 5 page paper discussing how I would improve the human memory system.
- Cognitive psychology -- test on decision making, creativity, artificial intelligence, general intelligence, and problem solving.
- Math -- investment project examining the effects of initial investment, length of investment, and interest rate as individual factors that effect the final amount of money.
- Math -- 12 page paper briefly discussing the historical foundations of cryptography and it's modern versions (on a very basic level, I didn't get into all the really ugly details).
- Math -- present a brief poster and presentation on what I learned about cryptography. We're talking 2-3 minute presentation; not a big deal.
- Psychology of personality -- 5 page paper relating Alfred Adler to events in my own life. We had to pick a personality theorist that we felt we could relate with.
- Psychology of personality -- test on existential psychology, humanistic psychology, Gestalt psychology, and object relationism.
- Independent research -- running out study looking at evaluative conditioning
- Independent research -- writing a 12 page paper investigating the possibility that the resistance to extinction in evaluative conditioning that has been observed may in fact be due to alternative explanations.
Oh yeah, and I've been crazy busy at work. They essentially gave me a project to complete that involes making significant changes to an application written in Visual Basic 6 (yes, I know it's really old), but the problem is that I don't have any knowledge/experience with Visual Basic 6. This wouldn't be that much of a problem considering that I could probably learn Visual Basic 6, but the really humorous part of this project is that it's supposed to be completed in 10 days. So yeah...learn a new language, make the changes, test the changes, and roll it out to the users in 10 days. Um, no thanks.
Anyways, my point is that virtually everything on that list above is now completed. Perhaps that might explain why I've been absent from writing non-Twitter related blog posts for nearly a month.
Did I mention I'm leaving to go see HER (the infamous her) in just over 3 hours? 