http://www.syphen.org/ rui da costa's site and blog, chock full of ... something good en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss syphen@gmail.com (Rui Da Costa) syphen@gmail.com (Rui Da Costa) http://www.syphen.org/2008-07-07_oh_it_burns.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-07-07_oh_it_burns.php Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:57:21 -0500
Anyways, for our fourth, we visited Kendra's uncle, Greg, who was visiting from Arizona. He had rented a cottage on Seneca lake for the week and invited all of Kendra's dad's side down there. We had a good time; met a few more new people including Greg who I hadn't met before. Kendra and Lily left around 6:30/7 ish and I ended up staying to spend some time with the other guys.

We stayed up for a while with some drinks and just talking about a bunch of stuff. It was pretty nice. Next morning we had some breakfast and then headed out on the water. It was a beautiful day. Sun was out, cloud cover was low, and I had made the mistake of not bringing any lotion for myself. 3 and 1/2 hours later we got back to the cottage and Mike (Kendra's dad) and I headed back to East Rochester.

We talked in the car about a bunch of stuff. Gas consumption, alternative fuels, electric lawn-mowers; you know, the usual. Relaxed with Kendra for the rest of the day. Finally watched [url="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800039/"]Forgetting Sarah Marshall[/url] and loved it. Jason Segel is awesome, end o' story.

Slept well after sleeping on the couch the night before. Then I woke up. My arms are red, my legs are red, my face is surprisingly not too bad. Let's just say I was in a little bit of pain. Went to the little farmer's market in East Rochester to grab some bread, cherries, and tomatoes and headed back home. Now it was time for me to put on my electrician's cap.

We had an issue before we left Friday where our entire kitchen circuit and washer circuit stopped working. We had thought it was a faulty breaker so I went out and got a circuit tester, tested all the breakers, replaced the one that wasn't giving me and power and...still broken. I traced the lines from the breaker box (which is a complete mess) around the basement. Finally I reverse traced the line from the washing machine to a junction box. This junction box was actually two junction boxes stacked on-top of each other, not really a smart move. I took the cap off of the box and all of the sudden we had power in the kitchen.

I didn't want this to be a temporary thing, so I killed all the power to the house (didn't want to electrocute myself), removed all the wires from the junction box and proceeded to strip and reconnect all the connections in the box. After it was all said and done I am happy to announce a house with all of it's circuits functioning. The electric system in this house needs to be fixed, pronto. My next course of action is getting some electricians in for estimates on upgrading my panel and getting all my outlets grounded and up to code.]]> family holiday sun electric house lake Our House http://www.syphen.org/2008-07-03_showing_my_boss_sms_posting.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-07-03_showing_my_boss_sms_posting.php Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:10:47 -0500
View attached file]]> email http://www.syphen.org/2008-07-02_new_picture_of_lily.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-07-02_new_picture_of_lily.php Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:55:52 -0500
View attached file]]> email http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-30_quizzes_karaoke_and_drunken_stripping.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-30_quizzes_karaoke_and_drunken_stripping.php Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:46:41 -0500
For a lot of us it was the first time they were seeing each other, which also meant the first time people would be meeting Lily. She was passed around almost like the wine was but she enjoyed herself. Went into the pool there and had a blast splashing around. I haven't had a chance to get any image or video yet from the day but as soon as I do I'll post them up.

After the party we drove back to my parents' house where we stayed for the night. Sunday we stuck around for the morning and Lily met Mike and Donna's little baby girl, Gabby. The interaction between the two of them was adorable. Lily would do something with a toy and Gabby just started giggling.

Anyways, all-in-all the weekend was pretty good. My only quam was that Kendra and I didn't get a chance to see [url=http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/wall-e/]WALL-E[/url] yet. We'll probably try to see it one day this week, if we can get Kendra's parents to watch Lily for us. Alright, for now...peace out.]]> life family drinking baby George's House http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-26_xobni___making_outlook_the_way_it_should_be.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-26_xobni___making_outlook_the_way_it_should_be.php Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:19:08 -0500
The way it works is you install Xobni, restart Outlook and let Xobni index your emails. The plugin goes through and syphons (hehe) discussions based on forwards and replies as well as ripping out files so you can easily find them. It also includes a search function that is infinitely faster than the built-in Outlook one.

All-in-all I highly recommend the plug-in for any/everyone who uses Outlook.]]> tools email 43.159512 -77.583855 http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-26_comments_rss.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-26_comments_rss.php Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:11:29 -0500 web site development 43.159512 -77.583855 http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-25_linkshare.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-25_linkshare.php Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:28:40 -0500 web development tools 43.159512 -77.583855 http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-23_3jam___texting_for_everyone.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-23_3jam___texting_for_everyone.php Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:54:14 -0500
After I set it up and verified my phone and everything I tried sending my first message, from the web interface, to my girlfriend. She got it moments later from a cryptic 'from' address which would scare most people off. The next thing that happened was she got a second text message asking if she wanted to continue the conversation or abandon it completely (and not receive any messages from 3jam). This seems like a problem to me.

The idea of building a system like this is not to limit the ability to send messages to people. I understand that this is put in place to stop people from spamming, but maybe have a more user friendly message. "Mike Smith is using 3jam to send you messages. Do you want to keep receiving messages from him?"

I was even able to keep that message under 120 characters. I think once 3jam does a little bit more user-testing and sifting through feedback, they'll do a bit of a better job in this market.]]> tools web development 43.159512 -77.583855 http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-23_xoopit___media_sorter_extraordinare.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-23_xoopit___media_sorter_extraordinare.php Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:43:28 -0500 tools web 43.159512 -77.583855 http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-13_lots_of_web_tools.php http://www.syphen.org/2008-06-13_lots_of_web_tools.php Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:21:19 -0500
TinEye ([url]http://tineye.com[/url])
This is still in the invite-only stage but signing up never hurts. Update: my invitation came pretty much instantly as of today
The tool basically allows you to upload an image and then find similar images on the web.

YouSendIt ([url]http://www.yousendit.com[/url])
Another document storage site geared towards professional use. It recently released an Outlook plugin that will take large attachments and automatically upload them to your YouSendIt account and create links in your email to the documents.

DocStoc ([url]ttp://www.docstoc.com[/url])
Scribd ([url]http://www.scribd.com[/url])
Both of these sites are aiming to be the 'Youtube of documents'. Scribd is very generic whereas DocStoc is more focused for professional use. DocStoc also has a similar function to YouSendIt where you can create email attachment links from documents.

LiquidPlanner ([url]http://www.liquidplanner.com[/url])
This is basically a Microsoft Project clone, but web-based. It let's you do manage projects, tasks, collaboration, resources. They pride themselves on helping make more accurately timelines for projects.

CrowdScience ([url]http://www.crowdscience.com[/url])
Think of this as Google Analytics...for demographics. When you have CrowdScience activated you can collect demographic information about the users visiting your site and build surfing data off of these demographics.

Dropbox ([url]http://getdropbox.com[/url])
This is still in invite-only stage but I have a bunch of invites I can toss around if anyone is interested.
Dropbox is a cool little tool. Basically you install an app (OSX and Windows) on your machine that creates a folder called 'My Dropbox' in your 'My Documents' folder. Anything that is in this folder is automatically synced to a server which also allows for sharing of folder between groups of people. The other nice thing is it does version control and saves deleted items. So if you accidentally delete a file or overwrite it, you can go back to a previous version.

Evernote ([url]http://www.evernote.com[/url])
This is still in invite-only stage but I have a bunch of invites I can toss around if anyone is interested.
Evernote is an interesting application that scans images and pulls out text. It is hauntingly accurate even with hand-written notes. It's great for scanning say, a business card. Once the program indexes the text in an image, you can do a search on that information. Very cool.

Infinilink ([url]http://www.infinilink.info[/url])
This is actually a tool that I've developed. It's basically a bookmark tool that has a Bookmarklet (a bookmark that runs Javascript code) and allows you to manage bookmarks while maintaining the page you are on. Still needs a lot of work but any feedback is much appreciated.


Now more for the personal and fun stuff.

RepairPal ([url]http://www.repairpal.com[/url])
RepairPal is a site dedicated to helping the guy/girl who doesn't know much about cars and wants to make sure they aren't getting hosed on repairs or maintenance.

CamTrax ([url]http://www.camtraxtechnologies.com[/url])
This is one of the slickest things I've seen in a long time. Basically the software does motion-capture...for anything. It turns these motion-capture actions into joystick/keyboard actions for gaming or whatever you want. Watch the video to get a better idea.

HotPads ([url]http://hotpads.com[/url])
If you're looking for a house or just want to get more information about the area you live in, HotPads is a must. It's breaks down an area by a bunch of different categories: population density, per capita income, household income, age, rent, and lots of others.]]> development design tools web 43.159512 -77.583855