Wasted Youth

This morning I woke up at 5:30am and started my walk around the town of Madison. I do this everymorning now instead of working in our gym here at work as it provides me with a little more time at home. This morning however I desided to sit in the town gazebo and watch the sun come up. I was sitting for no longer than a minute when my whole experience was interupted by this:

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If I had had a Red anything in hand I would have jotted a note to the wasted youth that looked like this:

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But given that it is the digital age I can send my message without ever destroying property. clearly this youth has not recieved a cell phone yet

Rant Out
Thanks for reading
David Bates

Top Ten Single Serving Web Sites

Sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad

Recently I read an article from Wired Magazine on single serving web sites. These sites by definition only serve one purpose and have very few pages, most only have one page, and the website should awnser the question posed by the url. The idea is simple is better and I have to agree.
As shown above sometimes too much of a good thing is bad. but given a good thing in a single serving is just fantastic:

So without delay here are my top ten Single Serving Web Sites:

1. http://www.wheresgeorge.com/
This site tracks your dollar bills to see where they go.
2. http://www.howstuffworks.com/
The only reason this site is not first is because of the large amount of data it has. It gives single servings of information out but it also hordes a lot of servings  It does however have the most traffic and answers the question provided by the url.
3. http://www.whatismyip.com/
Another personal favorite this site is simple and does one task well.
4. http://www.whois.net/
I include this one next because it compliments number 3 someone should make a http://whatsmyipandwhoownsit.com
5. http://www.calculator.com/
While this site does not answer a question it does provide a plethora of online calculators.
6. http://whatshouldmysingleservingsitebeabout.com/
I found this from Wired’s article it provides helpful advice if you are a single serving site beginner.
7. http://whatweekisit.com/
This is an amazing site for seeing what week it is.
8. http://www.simplemailinglabel.com/
While this site does not ask a question with it’s URL it does make the job of mailing lables super easy.
9. http://www.whereami.at/
This site figures out where you are and then shows you on a map… Brilliant!
10. http://doineedpants.com/
This is a question that I mull over from time to time. If you ever find yourself asking do I need pants? Then head over to this site.

Well we’ve hit 10 items but if you have a single serving site to suggest please do so in the comments below. Hate/Love one of my suggestions? Tell me about that too.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Extension of AS3Glue’s Blinky App

Recently I have been playing with the arduino quite a lot.
I have been working towards creating a pc based home security system that I could customize myself.
One of the goals to reaching the security system was to figure out how to get flash or php to talk with the arduino. This weekend I achieved that using Firmatta and AS3Glue. Since my sisters where down this weekend helping me with my water heater install I decided to make it interesting for them too. So below you will find a youtube video of my app. I will post source, and layout hopefully tomorrow.

-Edit:
Now you can download the Sourcecode for the video above.
blink+
You will still need to download AS3Glue in order to load the appropriate Firmata and have Serproxy.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

New Water Heater

Hopefully this post will not re-occur for 20+ years
as the title suggest last weekend I (along with George) installed a new water heater in my home. My previous water heater had gotten what is known as tank rot, or rusty butt. where it spills large amounts of water through the bottom of the tank. Here is a picture of the tank before we took it out:

Once we got the old heater out we applied hardy backer to the floor to provide a water-proof and fire-proof covering for the floor. We also began prepping the water heater in the laundry room and tried to figure out the fittings.

we decided we needed to head back to Lowe’s in order to pick up some plumbing pieces. We did that ate lunch and then put the heater in the room. We then realized that we forgot a piece of pipe that we needed and had to go back to Lowe’s for a third time. So finely we got the heater hooked up and water on. But guess what it leaked… This is the point where I am so glad we put the hardy board down. so water off and re tape all the joints we tried again and voila it all worked.

Enjoy the pictures.

BTW: I bought Lowe’s Item# 89263 and had hot water in 20 minutes of hooking it up. I have had three days to mess with it and it is awesome. Highly Recomend.

Remodel Tragedy

This week we lost our water heater in our new house. It was installed in 86 and was a 50Gal tank heater. I found out it’s fate on Tuesday with a call to my work from the wife. “Hello… do you want the good news or the bad?” me: “Go ahead and give me the bad” wife: ” The water heater is leaking from the bottom…” me: “Ok what is the good news?” wife: “I am still beautiful and I love you” me: “:)”

So this weekend instead of beginning the finishing stages on my remodel I will be buying and installing a water heater.
If you follow me on twitter you would know that I have also been kicking around the idea of a tankless water heater but alas they cost to much for me to implement at this time.

Wish me luck and thanks for reading
David Bates