What it do, world.

Oh man, oh man. My Kanye shades arrived!!

Driving with these on is not a crime because looking fly and committing a crime can never occur in conjunction with one another.*

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*ArcStone Technologies, Inc. and the author are not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any information, data, opinions, advice or statements made in this post. Word.

I had the pleasure of hearing a talk by Jillian Perez recently. The subject was “thinking wrong”, a thought process that forces the mind out of cookie-cutter style problem solving and unlocks your creative potential.

Surprising, Innovative, And Down Right Brilliant Solutions
Although Jillian discussed thinking wrong mostly in the terms of graphic design, the techniques can be applied to many situations. Most projects tackled at work or home will require a problem solving thought process. When this process is gone about the “wrong” way, it can yield surprising, innovative, and down right brilliant solutions.

Keep reading for more insight on thinking wrong and my personal take on thinking wrong techniques.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was rummaging around my files and found this old (but still useful) Flash program from days gone by. It has been noted in the past that ArcStone is a hotbed of tea consumption.

Since we are so busy it’s often hard to time the perfect steep, resulting in a bitter and undrinkable liquid. My solution was to create the Steep Master 1000, an interactive steep timing system.

Keep reading for detailed operating instruction for the Steep Master 1000 and tips on creating the perfect steep.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gizmodo had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Microsoft himself (Bill Gates) at the CES trade show. In this clip Bill discusses the strengths, weaknesses, and general differences between Microsoft and Apple.

Raving fanboys of either company may be taken slightly off guard by the clip. Bill gives props to both his own company and bitter rival Apple.

In truth, both companies are responsible for some amazing products, and any true nerd knows this, including Mr. Gates.

Adobe’s new suite of design tools is fantastic, if you can get it installed. As I discovered today, if you have any CS3 trial software installed prior to doing your real installation there can be a few bumps in the road.

On my first attempt I was offered a rather puzzling reason for the software’s failure to install, as you can see from the picture above. It turns out the transition from trial to licensed software is so arduous Adobe has gone as far as to release tools to aid you in the process.

Perhaps I am too optimistic in thinking Adobe’s latest cutting edge software offerings would come equipped with equally impressive installers.

Oh well, maybe in CS4.

A new study proves what I have known for a long time: a fun office environment is a productive one. At ArcStone we believe in this so much, it is even part of our core values.

The basic idea is that as people form tighter bonds through fun shared experiences they open up more, trust each other more, and can generally work better as a team.

To all my past bosses who frowned on my antics: I told you so.

With so many to choose from, it’s getting harder to settle down with just one social networking site. Most of us are SNS polygamists, spreading the love around to a few.

The first one is always special though, and says something about who you are. For instance:

LiveJournal
You are old school and were blogging before there was even a name for it. A select number of friends read your long thoughtful posts over warm spiced chi.

Twitter
You have way tOo many friends, and they have tOo many friends. The constant beeping of your cell phone keeps you in the loop to what your friends are up to when you should be concentrating on the road.

LinkedIn
You are power-lunching outgoing socialite with a resume as long as my arm. Your friends (connections) keep you abreast of their upcoming IPOs.

FaceBook
You are well-educated and have multiple Gmail accounts. When bored in company meetings, you update your status from a Blackberry Perl.

Strong gusting winds blew over huge sections of my six foot privacy fence a couple days ago. Like an idiot, I decided to undertake the repairs myself, relying only on the occasional tip from a neighbor and my wits.

Now my wits may be sharp when it comes to web services or programming languages, but like most geeks, I am not mechanically inclined when it comes to construction.

Nevertheless, last night I stood in my front yard, surveying the materials needed to fix my fence: pressure treated 4×4s, 2×4s, shovel, hammer, nails, and 800 pounds of concrete.

After four arduous hours of work I was fifteen percent done with the repairs, and I still had all my fingers. Although I consider the first phase of the project a success, the difficulty involved in fence repair deserves a nod on my list of the top ten things a computer geek should never do.

If you’re a computer geek, I would also recommend steering clear of any project involving large amounts of concrete.

Part blog, part polling system, Oobject picks topics of interest and lets users submit their top picks, sort of like a pageant of gadgets. Sometimes the lists are full of beautiful things, old things, or just supremely weird things.

Each day a new topic is highlighted for users to peruse. I urge you to take a look, there is a good chance you’ll see something you never knew existed.

Want to work at Amazon? Now you can, answering incredibly mundane questions that computers aren’t generally very good at. I decided to try out Amazon Mechanical Turk, a service which allows programmers or others with hard questions for computers but easy questions for the human mind to interact with anonymous humans. This is a cool idea, but the implementation of it is a little unfair; now I know how HAL felt. Read the rest of this entry »