Gray's blog

Alright, I’m fed up with this god damn service!

I have called ‘tech support’ many times and heard all kinds of crazy stories & ideas on how to fix my connection issues including but not limited to:

- Duct tape modem to window
- ‘Your modem is connecting to a tower across the lake when your surrounded by them’..
- ‘We know it’s slow’
- Youtube is not considered ‘normal internet use’

This bullshit is coming from a company that pitches ‘go beyond 3g’ on their billboards. If anyone wants proof t-mobile’s 3g on a wifi tether is faster then this feel free to drop a comment, but rest assured it kills it.

Clearwire reps/tech support also admit that it is slow and much slower then T-Mobile’s 3g. They make claims about Wi-Max but I doubt that service will be better. Not to mention it hasn’t rolled out yet.

Let’s just see the average day on clearwire’s speedtest:

Which is about 1/3 the speed of decent dial up. Ugh.

This is with 5 out of 5 bars on the modem by the way. And this is on a day when the internet service itself actually works, outages are regular occurrences. I’m also on my second modem, due to the other one completely failing to connect _at_all_ after several months of use.

I have NEVER received the ‘1.5′ mbps of speed my service plan dictates. Yesterday, a 10mb download ended up taking 2 hours.

This is, without a doubt, the worst internet service I’ve ever used.

Edit:

So I decided to speedtest T-Mobile’s 3g to compare. A couple things first:

- Contrary to the image, I am not in kansas.
- The ping time went down about 200ms on average after I did this test.
- This is the WORST it has ever been (Tethered 3g), although it still kills clearwire it’s not SUPER fast.

The proof is in the pudding here.

Edit Again:

So about a day after posting this (19 hours), my internet speed suddenly increased beyond anything it has before. Ever in 2 years of having it:

I also noticed the amount of bars went from 5 to 3, and the speed increased significantly. Meaning the tower I was connected to changed, although the positioning of the modem did not. I find it a bit odd that the time I get the fastest internet I have had comes a day after posting this, but that’s a bit I’m not going to touch on.

Ciao,
Gray

From Opensock:

So this is what it’s like to be addicted to hardcore drugs..

So when I wakeup at like 4am after sleeping 3 hours, barely able to get out of bed, I drag myself to the bathroom, start shower and just lay down in it for a bit.

then my brain starts mixing like reality with dream or something, cause I start thinking shit like php can control showers and stuff…

and shit starts going through like:
PHP Code:
function start_shower($water) { $water->start(); }

then it’s like “HEY WAIT A MINUTE, THAT MAKES NO SENSE” and happens a few times until I wakeup fully.

this happen to anyone else? lol

need more sleep man.

edit: to clearup for those who thought I was on drugs. No I said what it must be like.. lol

Yes, today in Seattle felt like Friday.

Warm good weather, bus didn’t smell like shit. Cool stuff mann!

Something ontopic of this blog:

I’ve converted my framework to something based on MVC (yehno, model, viewer, controller), at the moment, it’s all custom written. Goodstuff.

Music search got a bit better, web based.

IgniteM running

 I’m in desperate need of beta testers so if your intrested drop a line at graham.stachowiak@gmail.com

Forward: The following was posted by me on Opensock.com . They are worth reading again to anyone looking at creating a social network and the last bit (about online isometric games) is worth a read before you try to make money on one.

From Opensock:

It’s rarely the features that attract people to social networks, Myspace is incredibly bloated and messy but people use it because all they’re friends are using it.

Facebook is far ahead of Myspace in style, functionality and cleanliness, but the majority of American youth will use Myspace because there friends are using it, and convincing many people to move to a new social network can be hard without OUTSTANDING site features / layout.

I’d suggest a type of ‘Profile Import’ system if you were planning to start this, and a way to email your friends like Bebo does when you sign up (Find your friends, etc).

Most people I know tend to find most ads very intrusive, bloating and annoying. So clip them wherever possible.

Customization is also key, when a user can easily make something they’re own, like Myspace’s so-called ‘ghettofied’ HTML layouts which almost anyone can customize to they’re liking.

Speed and ease of use is something that keeps users coming to Facebook over Myspace, the faster the better. Also, AJAX when used unobtrusively and unbloated Javascript can create a very nice UI, very nice user interface (with as few refreshes as possible) and you can still handle operations requiring the loading of different pages through iFrames.

Applications, while crucial to the growth of most social networks (extendability) should implement a common standard for apps, such as OpenSocial. This will attract developers to your site. Less learning curve = more developers flocking to your site.

Browser compatibility is another big thing, again, most American teenagers do NOT upgrade they’re browsers. IE5 is still scarily common on library computers, schools and homes. American teenagers are a HUGE part of your market on a social network and should not be ignored.

Added later in post (as an edit) :

Forgot to touch on OpenID, a very interesting concept for any upcoming social networking site would be becoming an openID login allowed site, and an openID provider. Lower barrier to entry and more of an incentive to use (don’t need 10 accounts)

Also gonna want to hit mobile devices, most people I know use Myspace mobile.

More friends, more of an interest in coming back (Friend updates, etc).

And the bit about habbo:

Habbo has started to die out as 3D games have gained popularity and most platforms have gained the ability to run them in a browser.

Habbo has also become quite bloated.

Today’s teenagers see little attraction in a game like Habbo, where there is myspace and facebook a mere click away. There is nothing new and innovative about a bloated isometric web game.

Yeah.

I’ll upload this post later but the youtube video says most of it. Audio was dubbed in due to shitty camera not being able to record but atm most of the prototype is done..

About 2.3 weeks to estimated delivery in the store (Android Market).

If you have an android phone and want to test hit up my AIM or MSN (graykicksass, or gray@nati0n.org) and I can get you the apk package.

Youtube video:

Features working:

Downloads about 10% done, still lots to do (PROPER THREADING)

Search (separate thread in next update PLS)

Player (SD Card)

And everything else I forgot to mention.. all done in java with the android SDK.

So a couple of days ago(I’ve been busy), I was working on a WordNET powered dictionary. What a pain in the ass that was :/. But for the first part I think I’ve acomplished what I want.

Basically to get a bunch of synonms from a MYSQL version of the DB and spit them out as xml. I will post the source later.

All this is going toward a challenge one of my teachers gave me, make a computer do the vocab homework. Not difficult

TapShirt.org now has a domain, is setup with hosting / store structure.

Newest core framework is installed on it, but we still need a layout :/. Building shirt search engine / product aggregator work is really just starting. Listing products will probably take a couple days to do, then there’s product display, shopping cart, etc. So lots of work to be done on it.

Interested in joining the small team working on it? Drop me a line at graham.stachowiak (at) gmail.com .

There’s a long story behind this and in the coming days, all will be explained.

But I now present to you the code of a page using the ego framework, when we get it all finished properly it will be awesome:

The internet before ego:

<html>

<head>

<title>The ugly page</title>

</head>

<body>

<h1>The Ugly Page</h1><br />

<div id="bla">This page sucks, loads links normally, and doesn't come out of the browser looking good. Why would a market-demographic like a teenager or somebody want to look at this page? Unless your a coder and it's full of awesome content, you don't.</div>

</body>

</html>

The internet after ego:

<?php

    include('ego_framework.php');

    $ego = new ego();

    $ego->__init();

?>

<html>

<head>

<title>The new hot page</title>

</head>

<body>

<?php echo $ego->WriteHeadBar(); ?>

<h1>The HOT Page</h1><br />

<div id="bla">This page doesn't suck because it used the 'Ego' framework, it looks nice and is auto stylized with the 'ego' template. And don't worry about CSS classes ego's JS system will take care of that.<a href="two.php" type="ajax">Click here</a></div>

<?php echo $ego->WriteFooterBar(); ?>

<div id="extra-footer">And here ego's JS system will automatically stylize this bit. For copyrights and shit</div>

</body>

</html>

two.php:

<div id="bla">This content will be dynamically loaded and replaced! All with a simple link</div>

It’s awesome, make pages look good and enter a network of sites. And use OpenLogin’s existing framework(<< secret) at the same time. Cool.

More news on this and it’s big parent project in a couple days. Expect blog about sushi later.

So I create a lot of internet sites. And I know people that create a lot of internet sites. And I like it this way, I like having 100’s of sites that I visit. But the annoying thing is the globalized login system.

This has actually been in the works for a while, since somewhere near the start of Axcid. It was never fully documented as a login system and got cut out of the latest Axcid API version.

The goal? To create a network of sites. What the plan was?

• Implement a social login system.
• Implement a fully compatible XML login API for it, that also allowed access to some public user data.
• Implement Facebook & Myspace integration applications, aswell as a small social network using the login system.
• Implement an OpenID provider system, allowing you to login on OpenID sites with our details, but not the reverse.

• A global site ‘framework’ allowing for fast creation of new sites, layout generation, site cross-integration and quick ajax frameworks.

So I’d like to hear your thoughts on this idea, as a developer, would you use a freely availible login framework? Would people be open to the idea of a site directory? Would developing this into all products be worthwhile? Leave a comment by going to the full post link or drop me a line @ anon@nati0n.org and tell me your thoughts.