Rollerhome - Where Rollerbladers Live

For years I was the man behind the most popular rollerblading website, Sequencemag. The
background behind the name Sequence was that I was never able to find good sequence shots of tricks in magazines. I wanted to know what the trick was like from start to finish, not just a fool hanging in the air or standing on a rail. This was back in 1995 or so.

Sequence tapered off and I lost the passion. The messageboard continued to thrive but since I was living in Orange County now, it was more difficult to get excited about rollerblading. I mean, clthat’s all I was doing at the time. Skating with the pros, judging competitions and staring as the fifty-50.com website day in and day out. It can really take a toll on you.

A few years ago I moved back to the Bay Area and met up with an old friend Jeff Sawyer. Jeff and I used to skate back when I lived in San Jose in 1997 or so. I think I actually met him through Sequence’s messageboard, believe it or not. Jeff was really into geeky stuff as well so we got along great. So when I moved back to town I looked him up and we started talking again.

By now, Jeff had started his own skating site, havenskate.com. It’s been around for a few years and has a pretty good following of regulars. We had lunch one day and brainstormed some ideas for havenskate, some new ways we could take the site which wasn’t being done anywhere else. Jeff is a badass at php backends and making sites work, and with me being a pretty boy designer we make a great team.

See, I don’t know what it is, but most rollerblading sites are poorly designed. I don’t get it, we have such creative people in the industry making the coolest products, logos, ads etc, but they think it’s good enough to slap some photoshop file online with frames and tables and image text and call it a day. Otherwise, it’s this crazy elaborate Flash website with blinking lights and spaceship sounds. That’s not how it’s done.

I have another good friend named Naoya Wada. He and I were web design buddies back in the days. I think I got him his start, lit the match which got him into the game. Now he’s a crazy web designer doing stuff I could only dream of. Anyway, he and I met up a few years ago and talked about the state of rollerblading websites, and how crap they are. He helped me get back into the game and designed the last fifty-50.com site, quite possibly the first CSS based website in the industry. Sad that it took that long.

The point of this randomness is this. Jeff and I finally decided that after all our brainstorming, there was a need for something new. There’s a lot of crap out there and Rollerhome will bring the pain. Call it Sequence 2.0 if you like. We’re tired of messageboards and blogs getting all the traffic, bringing skaters in for a quick hit and dumping them out. There needs to be a place for skaters to live.

Here’s what we’re bringing to the table:

• RSS feeds for everything imaginable: forum posts, private messages, articles, searches, etc (you know what rss is right?)
• Real articles we actually write ourselves: product reviews, history, video premieres
• Interactive forums that are easy to read: not to mention searchable and subscribable (is that a word?)
• Exclusive video edits from events: hosted on our server, not a link from youtube
• Fully compliant html/css for those who care: works on a mobile phone, try that at other sites
• Clean design so you can actually read the pages: maybe I’m old, but I like to read things
• Live in browser chat pictures and everything: no more irc or laggy java, this actually works
• Integrated skate spot finder for learning where to skate: partnering with fifty-50.com for more spots
• Individual Profiles with private messages, image hosting, friends list etc: a myspace for rolling, without all the crap

That’s just stuff we’ll have at launch. We have a ton of great features coming down the pike I’m sure you’ll like. And of course, we’re listening closely to what you have to say. We don’t have all the answers but we have a good idea what works and what doesn’t. If you want something changed or added, we’re going to listen.

Rollerhome should be online June 1st, unless something happens between now and then. I hope you’ll take a look, sign up for an account and give it a spin. I think you’ll like it.

Coda web dev app from Panic - First Impressions

Was really impressed with this new app and thought I’d share my 2 cents for anyone interested.

Coda was released last week by Panic, makers of killer ftp client Transmit and usenet app Unison. The goal of Coda is to combine your web development workflow into one app; coding your html, designing your CSS, previewing in webkit, bugfixing your javascript and transferring files. It does this quite well with a very polished interface which actually makes me excited to develop.

http://www.panic.com/coda/

You can take a look at the official site to get an overview of the app, I’m not going to go through that there. They explain it much better than I ever could anyway. I will however list a few goods and a few bads for anyone interested.

The goods:
Real pretty interface which is easy to use. to me, having a pretty app makes me enjoy using it. I’ve used BBEdit for years and switched to TextMate just a few months ago for my text editing. They’re both very bland and, well, texty. Coda just looks pretty. Little example, when clicking on the open bracket to some php function, the closing bracket will emit a little blue circle so you know where the function ends. Fun.

Uses webkit to allow live previewing of a page you’re creating. This really helps when in the preliminary page development, tweaking the CSS a bit to make it look right, changing font sizes or margins, etc. Sure you can do this with a web browser side by side with a text editor hitting refresh every time you make a change, but it’s much nicer to see it live. I will still launch Opera and Firefox to test compatability, as well as IE in parallels, but for the first run at development this is great.

Allows you to set up multiple sites with multiple local file locations, server login info, etc. This really helps when you’re managing a few sites at a time on different servers. While you’re working on a site, you can have multiple pages open at once, and when you close Coda for the day then start up again tomorrow, it’ll remember what pages you had open. Little things to help speed up my workflow.

The bads:
Unless I’m not looking hard enough, I can’t figure out a good solution for supporting php files locally. I’d like to preview the changes I make but it always comes up
as text in Preview mode unless I’m editing on the server. That would be fine, but then I need to have the server version of the file automatically sync with the local version of the file after a change is made, which I don’t think is happening now.

Issues with CSS which use @import to link to a master css file, which I believe most designers do. When I try to edit the css of the page selected, I get a “This file does not contain any defined CSS styles” error unless the CSS is actually in the page. Ideally, it would look for the @import on the page and bring up that file for editing.

Uploading files from nested directories always go to the root of the site. For example, I have a Local and Remote connection with matching files and folders. When I upload something from my /img/logo folder on my Local drive, it goes to / on the server. This is a big problem which I’m sure they’ll fix, but it’s been bugging me this weekend.

All in all, I think a great first effort. I paid my $69 just now after a weekend of testing it, though there is a 14 day trial is you’re interested. I’ll still keep using Textmate and Transmit for a few things, but I’m looking forward to using Coda for any web development in the future.

Received My Wii Component Cables Today. What a Difference the Right Cables Make!

I have a Panasonic 42″ Plasma TV and while it’s only EDTV (720 x 480 pixels) it sure looks great when viewing HDTV content or DVDs. When I got my Wii at launch they didn’t have any component cables in stock so I was stuck running it with the ghetto yellow composite video cable with an S Video adapter at Standard Definition (360 x 240 pixels I think). The day I brought the Wii home I went online and ordered the cables from Nintendo.com, but they were backordered until the end of November.

My cables showed up today, UPS Express from NOA in Seattle. The wait is over. Honestly, I can’t believe I put up with the crappy composite video signal for so long. The Wii looks great, all the text is legible and the textures are more detailed than ever. Take a look at some pictures for reference. I used a tripod and shot the screen with a digital camera. The pictures don’t really do it justice, but you’ll get the idea.

Mouseover to change image from Composite to Component. Click to bring up each image side by side in full res.


The main screen is crisp and inviting, rather than blurry and dull.


The background is nice and clear.


The colors on this screen really pop now.


I look a bit jaggy, but it’s better than blurry


The detail in the pins is nice and defined. The wood looks newly waxed!
If you haven’t ordered them already, don’t wait any longer, it’s well worth the $30. I’d go with Nintendo’s online store rather than waiting at shop, they’re shipping now and will get them to you real quick.

Update: In case you’re interested in a good “Got my Wii by getting up at the crack of down” story, check out my post with pictures from that cold morning.

Waiting for the Wii

It almost didn’t happen, and probably shouldn’t have happened, but I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Nintendo Wii the day it came out. There were a very limited quantity shipped to the US, eBay auctions are currently at $500+ for these $250 consoles, so you can see the demand is high.

I planned on getting up early and waiting in line at my local Target. I read that they would be getting 50 or so units and that would probably be enough for the first rush. If not Target, there’s a Best Buy on the way that will probably have even more available. I remember getting in line for the original Xbox and the Gamecube back in 2001. I got there a few hours before the store opened and having no problem getting one, so this shouldn’t be much different.

With that in mind, I set my Nintendo DS to wake me at 5:30 so I could get there at 6:00. Unfortunately, I forgot to change the time on my DS when it changed last month, so 5:30 turned into 4:30. Of course I didn’t realize this until that morning, so I figured it’s best I just start lining up early rather than trying to go back to sleep. I’m so glad I did.

Drove past the Best Buy around 4:45 and there was a good line or 40 or so people and a few tents near the front. I expected that, Best Buy is more of a specialized store and probably will have more units available. Pulled up to the Target and I see a similar scene, 40 or so people as well as few tents. I wasn’t expecting that many people here. Best Buy is looking more attractive, so I head back.

Arrived at Best Buy at 5:00 on the dot. The guy in front of me had been there since 4:30 and said he was the 38th in line. Someone in the front of the line had started a list to avoid people sneaking in and taking people’s spots. Was a great idea considering the debacle that was the PS3 launch. I put my name on the list and it turns out I’m number 44, there were some people who were missed on the original list. No problem though, if Target is getting 50+, I should have no problem at a Best Buy, right?

People kept trickling in all morning and we got to meet our neighbors in line. Standing in line in the cold fog before dawn brings out some random conversations. We talked about everything from finance to college, even some gaming, imagine that. Around 6:00 we made a Starbucks run and kept our spaces in line for multiple bathroom trips to the Safeway across the street. That was a fun experience. It really helped to have people to talk with when the fog rolled in and made things extra cold.

The rumor was that Best Buy was getting at least 70 consoles. This came from a guy behind us who called the day before and spoke with an employee, pretty realistic I’d think. We wouldn’t know until 8:00 though when they handed out numbered vouchers which guaranteed you would get one at 9:00 when they opened. I had actually thought they were opening at 8:00, so another lucky messup on my part.

So 7:45 rolled around and the line got condenced. Tents were removed and chairs were put in cars. The moment we were waiting for has almost arrived. There were a good 100+ people in line by now, some of which will be going home empty handed. But they’ve got to have more than Target right?

At 8:00 a Best Buy representative came out with team to announce the tickets would be issued. There were only 45 consoles, 45!! Seeing that I was 44th in line, and had no visibility to the front of the store and any “inflation” that might have happened to the list, things weren’t looking good for me. Things definitely weren’t looking good for the people behind me.

As the tickets were being handed out, we walked toward the front of the line in anticipation. Trying to count the number of tickets in hand as they were distributed one by one. Please, I hope I didn’t stand outside a Best Buy for 3 hours at 5am for nothing.

I got lucky. I was ticket number 43. I guess someone dropped out or maybe the list was wrong. My whole group got ours, all the way up to the guy who said there would be 70. Finally I can go to the car and warm up, get some breakfast, and relax. the wait was over.

They let us into the store at 9:00 and had an area set up for us to pick up accessories and our console. While this was a bit of a cluster, I got everything I came for; the console, a second controller and a copy of Zelda. I’ll still need the component cable to hook it up to my plasma, but I knew that wasn’t available at launch.

I stumbled home at 9:40 and dropped off everything in the living room. I heard my wife say “What the hell happened to you” from the bedroom and proceded to give her to full rundown from DS alarm mishap to number 43. We had breakfast then set up the system, and proceeded to have a blast playing it. Well worth the adventure it took.

Update: Went by Target today and found that they received 51 consoles. Who would have thought Target would get more than Best Buy?

Use an Apple Remote on non-IR macs!

I was planning to get into more detail of my setup, but I came across this great looking app called Mira. It enables the great Apple Remote to be used with any Mac, not just the ones it came with. I have an Apple Remote laying around, it came with my MacBook, and I’d love to make good use of it. Mira also provides an on screen menu for switching applications with the remote,very cool.

Unfortunately, there’s no support for Keyspan IR receivers as of this posting only their proprietary IR receiver (price unknown) or a Media Center Edition receiver. I don’t know why anyone with a Mac would have an MCE IR Receiver, but oh well. The developer says there’s something in the works to support Keyspan remotes at a future date.

The app is shareware with a 30 day trial, then $16 after the trial period is over. Looks to be a winner if they can expand the compatability.

http://twistedmelon.com/

The Mac Mini. Jack of All Trades

With the exception of the display and the amplifier/speakers, my Mac Mini is running the show. It’s got a built in DVD player, connects to the network to stream media from my office and connects to the Internet for downloading podcasts and video. The only thing it doesn’t do out of the box is live television, but my wife insists on her Tivo with DirecTV so I haven’t crossed that bridge. However, there are some great options in that area if I ever needed it.

Here’s a list of the software I’ve installed that help things work smoothly.

VLC
The best video player in the world. VLC is awesome. It supports just about every codec you can think of, plays in full screen and best of all it’s free. This is what I use for all video files that aren’t iTunes protected or are DVD rips in Video TS folders. Although I don’t use it, it also supports control over http, so you can run an app or a widget on your laptop that controls it. I’m sure there’s a ton of features I don’t even know about. I don’t have anything negative to say about this, except there are some WMV files that won’t open sometimes.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Transmission
There isn’t a perfect Bit Torrent app for OSX yet, but Transmission is by far the best I’ve found. It’s made by the same guy that wrote HandBrake, the excellent DVD rip to DivX/H.264 convertor. Transmission leaves a small footprint and gets great speed downloading torrents. What I like best is the ability to cap upload speeds so I can still use the internet while seeding and the way it deletes torrent files after they’re done and seeded. I wish speeds were improved though, I’ve found I get better speed with uTorrent on my PC. Would also be nice if it supported RSS. It’s also free.
http://transmission.m0k.org/

Chicken of the VNC
While I usually control the system with a wireless keyboard or the Keyspan Remote, sometimes I need to get in there and do maintanence. CotV is by far the best VNC client I’ve used, and I’ve used a bunch. For those of you not familiar, VNC stands for Virtual Network Computer and allows you to control your computer from across the network. I have it installed on my G4 tower in the office as well as my wife’s MacBook that lives on the couch. I usually just fire up the MacBook and pop up a VNC window of the Mac Mini. All the keys work fine including key combinations and two finger scrolling. Open source, free, awesome.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/

SwitchRes
I’m connected to my display through a VGA cable. Sure I could have gone with DVI, but it would require an additional module installed in the plasma which runs a few hundred bucks. Plus, since the display maxes out at 848×480, I can’t display HD and didn’t see the point in spending the money. SwitchRes is a great little utility which sets the resolution of the Mini to the perfect 848×480 pixels and 60Hz required by my display. I don’t think this was an option with the Displays : System Preference when I bought the Mini, it might be now. The only bad part of SwitchRes is that it doesn’t remember my resolution, so every time I have to restart it goes back to some random resolution I don’t want. There might be an update for it that allows this, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it on my version. $17
http://www.madrau.com/

Front Row
Yes, I know, Front Row isn’t supposed to come on a G4 Mac Mini. Since the day it was cracked I’ve been running Front Row on my Mini. It’s just such a great app, I really don’t understand why Apple hasn’t released it. Granted it’s a bit slow on my G4, the video previews really slow down my system, but I’m fine with that if I get a great user interface from the couch. I’d no doubt pay up to $40 for this app if Apple would let me, but since they won’t, I’ll continue to run the cracked, sketchy version.
http://www.apple.com/imac/frontrow.html

what it took to get my mac mini running my home theatre

My setup has improved and evolved over the last year. Here’s a list of what hardware I’m running.

Mac Mini - G4 1.25 ghz
I bought my Mac Mini a few weeks after they came out. It’s the 512mb one, 40 gig HDD I think. I’m also running a 120gig external drive through Firewire for short term storage. Then the media is stored on my G4 tower in the office, all running over ethernet. I’d like to upgrade to an Intel based one but this is working fine for now. I’ll get into more details on the apps I use and how I optimized it at a later date.

Panasonic Plasma Display - TH42PD60U 42″ EDTV
EDTV is really all I needed, and the Panny gave the best picture for the money. I’ve had an old oshiba HDTV for years and almost never used it any higher than DVDs. Sure, times have changed and now there’s more HD content, and in a year I might change my tune, but 480p is good enough for me.

Keyspan Express Remote
I’d love to grab one of those Apple Remotes, but since my Mac Mini doesn’t have that option, this is the best I can do. The software that comes with it is really easy to customize and I’ve never had a problem with responsiveness. I don’t like the way the remote feels in my hand though, the commonly used buttons are near the bottom half giving you very little room to hold the thing.

BTC 9019URF Wireless Keyboard
I searched for months to find a good wireless keyboard. Not only keyboard, but it needed to have a built-in trackpad or joystick. Either they didn’t work well on the Mac or the range was crappy and wouldn’t reach my couch. This one is great and only cost me $40 from Fry’s. Uses RF so there’s no line of sight issues. Even better, most of the buttons work with a Mac, including the Eject button and Volume buttons. I’ll get into more detail on this a little later, it’s that good.

Amphony 1520 Wireless Audio Transmitter
This was more of a locational requirement than anything else. My place has cement slab and tile for the floor and the roof is a little precarious to go crawling around in. The wife wouldn’t let me run speaker cable all over the place so I lived without surround speakers until a few months ago. For $99 at thinkgeek.com I got this two piece transmitter/receiver package which transmits the audio from my receiver 10 feet away to the couch. They use the 5.8 ghz band for uninterrupted signal. It needs line of sight, which took a little experimenting, but they work great now.

Harmon Kardon Receiver and Polk Audio Speakers
These don’t really matter to me anymore. They’re good enough to make things loud, they support DTS, DD5.1 and DPLII. I got them back when I first started getting into home theatre and upgraded the receiver when I bought my Gamecube. It can input a few different optical cables and that’s all I really need.

M-Audio Transit USB to Optical
The new Minis come with optical audio out, but since I have the original G4 style, I had to get creative. This M-Audio version isn’t the cheapest, but it workes great. Every now and then it’ll stop working requiring me to unplug and replug it in. That really pisses off the wife who cries “why can’t we have a normal DVD player like everyone else,” but it doesn’t happen that often. It works good, outputs AC-3 audio, just wish it were built in the the new ones.

My Mac Home Theatre

I was watching the Apple Special Presentation today where they announced the new iPods and the cool looking iTV and figured now is as good as ever to write about my home theatre setup. My first real push into home theatre was in 2002 with a Toshiba 34″ CRT HDTV and using an old Xbox modded with Xbox Media Center, then Player, and playing videos I’d downloaded from Usenet. Legality aside, I knew the future of home theatre was in digital content, pushing my video through the network rather than with a DVD or grabbing a satellite feed.

When I got married and moved into a small space, 950 sq ft to be exact, I had a great opportunity to upgrade my system. My wife has always been supportive, read patient, with my geekyness and was actually the driver for the purchase of a new Panasonic plasma. Then when the mac mini was released, I knew I had to get one and make it my all in one media player.

Over the next few posts, I’m going to walk you through what I’ve got running in my system and how it all works. I’ve done a ton of research and found some great resources for making your home theatre expeirience as enjoyable as possible.

Act1DanceStudio.com finally up and running

I’m really happy with the way the site came out. My mom has had her dance studio since 1964, 42 years if you can believe that. In all those years, she’s done everything “analog” with drawings, notebooks and xerox machines. Her first tech she ever got was using the old Apple IIe for her class directory. Then she jumped to an iMac in the late 90’s I think, one of the first slot loading ones, blue gumdrop style. Still, she used Appleworks as a spreadsheet and that’s about it.

She’s never had a website in her life. I mean, she still ahd her AOL account until, well I bet she still has it. At least she is running DSL at her house now, and using her gmail account we set up for her. So I really wanted to make this site easy for her to understand and to use. Really, she’s the target market, if she gets the site then the rest of the visitors will.

I wrote everything in TextMate, a great text editor that has now replaced BBedit on my G4. I was listening to the Inside the Net podcast with the guy who developed Ruby on Rails and he made a great comparison of BBedit to OS 9, whereas TextMate is OS X. Makes sense to me, I’m loving TextMate and I probably don’t even know half of the stuff it can do yet.

Anyway, the point was, this is the first full site I’ve done in a long time. Wrote it all in TextMate and used some javascript with a xhtml/css layout and a little php/mysql for the database. I really pushed for it to be bulletproof, you never know what the viewers will look at it with. It should look good from 800×600 all the way up to 1600×1200, though it’s designed for 1024×768 ideally.

Take a look if you have some time. I really like the way it flows, easy to navigate with everything you need at your fingertips. Be sure to check out the gallery where you’ll find some pics of me back in the days in my dancing outfit.

Act 1 Dance Studio website now up

Been a while since I posted here. My Mom’s dance studio
is opening in Campbell, CA in September and she asked me to put together a website for it. I registered the domain act1dancestudio.com for her and put together a quick splash screen and a blog she can use to write news. The site is at act1dancestudio.com and should be fully up and running on August 1st. I’ll have some cool web stuff up there, some Google Maps incorporation, php calendar for classes and the like. It’s a fun project, I hope my Mom likes it.