Archive for Personal
March 24, 2008 at 10:19 pm · Filed under Geek Squad, Personal
Last week one of my CIA’s endured a horrible accident. She was on the way home from the hospital after visiting her older sister, when a pickup truck jumped the median of I-65, striking a semi in front of them. This caused the semi to hit the van that she was in, with her mother and twin sister. Both of her family members were killed in the accident. Her fiance, on the way to the accident, also was involved in a wreck, totaling his car. He survived. They’re due to be married in 3 months, they’ve just purchased their first house. She’s going to be out of work for an indeterminate period of time. Soon medical bills, house payments, and funeral arrangements will need to be paid for. We know she needs help.
My manager and DCI investigated to see what the company could do for her, but as she has not been employed for a year or more, she does not qualify for bereavement time/pay or assistance from the company through the Dick Schulz fund.
This is one of the reasons that I work for the Geek Squad, we’re a family. So we’re pulling together outside of work (this cannot be organized or affiliated with GS or BBY), and we’re going to help. We’re going to scrape together whatever money or assistance that we can to help her. If you would like to help in any way, shape or form, please contact me at mattgolsen@blackheva.com
March 16, 2008 at 12:22 am · Filed under Personal
Ashley and I went out tonight with a few people, and our friend Robby. He’s in town for a little while from LA for his birthday. We went out to dinner, and then hung out at a club for a little while, nothing too crazy.
I’ve been working on a real project these past couple of weeks. I’ve read and learned more about CANBUS and ODBII than any sane person should. I’m pretty sure I won’t have any trouble interfacing it with OS X, dropping the serial data into QC, and building a HUD around it. I’m pretty stoked about it. There is a slight issue of interface control, but we’ll see what we can do about that. I’ve got to prototype a javascript patch that will hopefully double the physical controls that I’m using by detecting a short press, or long press. I’m not sure if I’m technically allowed to post development screen shots, but I will if I’m able. I’d like to turn this into something good. The ‘94 Camry will be the first test subject once I get it fleshed out a bit more, and pick up the appropriate USB adapter for ODBII.
Other than that, things have been pretty quiet. I’ve been having some trouble sleeping at night due to ye olde gallstones. People keep telling me to get it remove but… I dunno. /shrug.
I’d like to buy a new Mac soon, but I just don’t see it in the cards. I was hoping to pick one up from auction, but people don’t seem to understand that the point is to keep the price low. So they bid 10 or 15 times when something is first posted, driving the price up.
Work is going well, trying to drive innovation and productivity. I never thought I’d be where I am today, but I’m happy with it.
Welp, off to bed, and hopefully laundry tomorrow.
March 9, 2008 at 10:16 pm · Filed under Audio, Personal, Projects
There’s a great post that I picked up from Waxy.org from Clapclap.org, with the title of “It Doesn’t Matter Which You Heard”: the Curious Cultural Journey of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. I remember hearing John Cale’s version back in ‘96 when I saw “Basquiat”, and it struck me pretty hard then. It’s an incredibly emotional song. You can listen to even more covers over on My Old Kentucky Blog. Apparently this song is a cultural phenomenon.
This brings me round about to Hype Machine. Hype Machine has been my dirty secret for a pretty long time, it’s fairly popular now I think, but I’ve been using since right after it’s launch in December of ‘06 for finding new and remixed stuff. I highly recommend it.
So I’m working on this project for our PR company, to automatically read email to you in your car. I’m using Quartz Composer to build the interface, and a little bit of programming in Xcode. It’s shaping up nicely. I got the first proof of concept done in about 5 hours using QC, with some help from the super nice guys at Kineme.net. They develop some pretty awesome patches, filling in parts where QC is lacking. Anyways, I’ll post some development screenshots soon, but unfortunately I don’t think I can post the source. /shrug
Next entries »
