Apparently, without regard for our personal health and safety, Ryan has signed us (Rengel, the Hoff, Thundercat, and I) up for summer basketball.  So, we need a team name.  Here are the suggestions that have been thrown out there:

From Eric:
We Got Thabeet
Tips and Drills
Intentional Foulers (reference to Rengel)
Super Heroes in Training
Basketball Brawlers
Boom Boom Pao (updated)

From Matt (me):
Bricklayer’s Union
Rengel’s Glass Ankle
Three’s Company
Tropics
Spartans
Xerxes’s Hordes
Nihilists
Urban Achievers

If you have any ideas, add names in the comments below.

Man, it was a hot one this weekend. Every day the temperature was over 95 in St. Louis.  This made any activity outside unbearable.  I found myself running from one air conditioned spot to the next.  On Friday, I attended a wedding and had a late night (for me) at Talaynas.  I hadn’t been there in about 2 years.  But, it looks like they really made some improvements.  They added about 20 more disco balls then I remembered and a new bar.  If their goal was to be the tackiest bar in St. Louis, they are pretty close to achieving that.  On Saturday, I attended the post-wedding barbecue.  Despite the heat, I was able to get a few good cuts in with the Wiffleball bat.  Now that the wind is dying down, it is starting to feel more-and-more like Wiffleball season.  On Sunday, I spent the day hopping between Father’s day parties.  When, I got home that night I found my computer locked up.  Apparently, some time over the weekend my primary hard drive had a meltdown.  It looks like the root cause of the issue was two of my fans shutting down.  I spent part of Sunday and most of Monday night fixing it up.  After I installed a temporary fan (pictured above), I upgraded the system to Windows 7 RC.  I had been meaning to do this for a long time, but this was the motivation I needed.

Anyways, that was about it.  It was an extremely busy weekend.  I am putting some thoughts together on Windows 7 RC.  So, check back in a couple days if you are interested.

To start, I am a big fan of the Zune.  The Zune hardware is definitely on par with (and arguably better than) its iPod and creative rivals.  And, it looks like the Zune HD will be a nice continuation of this product line.  But, the power of the Zune ecosystem is the marketplace.  For me, this was the biggest differentiator.  The Zune software is quite unique.  I find music to be one of the most creative and passionate mediums.  And, I think the marketplace reflects this with its unique while playing backgrounds, colorful player themes, and mixview (see more in the Gizmodo review).  You can really tell that the group that created it was really into music.  It really is a stark contrast when you compare it to other media players (most notably iTunes).

But, I think it is time for a change.  Recently, Palm announced the Pre.  And with the device, it announced a hack for it to support iTunes.  This got me thinking.  The first thought I had was (1) why would someone want to sync with iTunes when there were obviously better options out there, and (2) why are iTunes competitors not taking advantage of this growing problem.  The Pre is not alone.  I have an e71.  And while I can sync it to Windows Media player or Nokia’s own suite, I think it would be nice to sync it to my Zune marketplace.  I understand the DRM limitations, but I do not purchase DRM media.  So, I think for 90% of the users this would not be a problem.  With the growing number of smartphones and feature phones, I think it would be a no brainer for Zune to be the goto marketplace.  And, all Microsoft would have to do is provide an open-source (I know this would be tough) way to communicate between the two mediums (drivers, or whatnot).  And I guarantee that whether it was via enthusiasts or third-party manufacturers, the connection piece would be built without much effort from Microsoft.

Not possible?  Mozilla is already doing it with Songbird.  And, honestly, I am going to give it a shot.  But, it would be nice to see options.  And, allowing the Zune marketplace to sync with other third party devices would be my immediate choice.

I have been doing low-carb dieting on-and-off for about 3 months now. To be specific, I have been really doing a combination of low-carb and low-gi diets combined with a large increase in running. I have had a lot of success with this combination. When I started, I weighed in at 205 pounds and could run probably a half a mile without getting extremely fatigued. Now, I weigh between 180 and 185 and run 2 miles around 3 times a week.  Because I have had some success at losing weight, I get questions every once and a while and so I will try to answer them here.

What is a low carb diet?

Low carb diets go by a number of names—Atkins, Southbeach, Diabetic, etc. Overall, a low carb diet is a diet where you simply reduce your intake of carbohydrates. Usually, the goal of the diet is to eat anywhere between 20 and 30 carbohydrates in a day. The end goal of the diet is to simply eliminate the spike in blood sugar that causes excess production of insulin.  Apparently, this spike makes it difficult for your body to burn fat.  I am no scientist, so you can read a more in depth explanation here.  There are two ways to eliminate this spike—(1) cut out carbs, and (2) cut out bad carbs.

Cutting carbs is pretty easy, just look at the nutritional information on food, and keep the total under 30 for the day. It is actually more difficult than it sounds, because a lot of our favorite foods have tons of carbs. For example, a 20oz of Moutain Dew has 77 carbs. Cutting bad carbs is a little more difficult.   Bad carbs are those that have a high GI.  Carbs with a high GI break down faster than low GI carbs and cause an insulin spike.  Finding out this information is a little more difficult because it is not included in the nutritional information on the back of most packages.  But a good rule is to avoid white bread or anything sugary.  And, instead opt to get your carbs from whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

How do I implement the low carb diet?

Basically, I do my diet in phases.  The first phase (usually 2 weeks) I am very strict about what I eat.  I focus on keeping my carb count low.  I primarily eat meat, cheese, vegetables, and nuts.  And, I avoid anything with sugar or potatoes.  I eat a lot of salads and I opt to make wraps rather than sandwiches.  I eat some fruits, but mainly low sugar fruits like raspberries and blackberries.  I really don’t think that this phase is that healthy, so I try to limit it to just two weeks.  It does seem to be extremely effective in cutting weight.  After that phase, I then shift to primarily a low-gi phase.  In this phase, I add in whole grain bread, whole grain pastas, and all fruits.  This is actually pretty maintainable long term.  And, to my knowledge, is a very healthy diet.

What about fast food, etc?

On both diets, you really cannot eat fast food.  On my first phase, I do not eat at fast food restaurants at all.  It is completely counter-productive to losing weight.  But on my low GI track, I will treat myself to fast food.  I usually just try to make an effort to run that night.  On a side note, once you go low carb, you will realize how much harder it is to get up off the couch once you have eaten a high carb meal.  Also, I will occasionally go to sandwich shops.  But, I try to eat  their wheat bread when available.  I do realize, of course, that wheat does not equal whole grain.  But with that said, it is still a little better for you.

The most important part…

Personally, I think the most important part to this diet (and any diet) is exercise.  When I started this diet, I set exercise goals.  For me, I focused on running because I had done this in the past and actually really enjoy it in short intervals.  But, I think anything that gets the heart rate up would work.  I believe you are able to lose weight just eating lower carbs (or lower gi carbs), but I think it is a lot more effective when you exercise.

Basically that is all I have on this topic.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask them below.

At the end of April, I posted about my first month with my new mackbook.  I figured I would take a little time to put together a follow-up on what I like and what I dislike and add some new thoughts and a final wrap-up.

What I Like

I still like the hardware of the Macbook, the simplicity of bootcamp, the fonts, and the keyboard. The construction of the Macbook is stellar. Like I said before, this notebook was $1200 and it feels like it is worth every penny. I still dig the multi-touch pad…well, most of the time. I have an ongoing problem of accidentally zooming in when using Safari. I think 60% of this problem can be contributed to user error, and about 40% to the system. The fonts are great. And, the OS is still smooth. In the previous post, I said that I liked Safari 4. Well, that love affair quickly ended. While for the most part it does the job, I did notice that I got that little spinning rainbow icon when loading complex pages. This is the Mac’s version of locking up. So, I have switched primarily to Firefox. And, I am really looking forward to the beach ball (Google Chrome) coming to the Macbook.

What I dislike

I really still do not like the OSX dock. Yes it is pretty, but it has a lot of usability issues. Minimizing windows has a completely different action than switching windows (changing focus). And, I find it extremely difficult to manage multiple windows of the same app. I am told expose is good for this, but honestly, you should be able to do this with both the dock and expose. I hear that Apple may have taken a page out of the Windows 7 book by given the dock a Windows peek like feature, so I definitely look forward to this.

And, some new thoughts

I am currently building a PHP app. And, have been using Aptana and subversion to sync my work across my Windows machine and my Macbook. So far, development for PHP on the Mac has been a breeze. There was definitely a lot more setting up I had to do to get OSX’s Apache server properly configured. But once that was out of the way, programming on the Macbook has been a pleasurable experience. I think the biggest difference for me (versus Windows) was the fonts on the Macbook. They are just so smooth, and are definitely nice to look at when pounding at the keys for two hours.

A final wrap-up

There are a lot of things people tell you about the Mac experience: the OS is beautiful, it is just easier to use, it doesn’t crash, you don’t have to worry about viruses, etc, etc. In the end, I would probably only agree with the first one. I think that OSX is definitely better looking than Vista and XP (maybe not so much when compared to Windows 7). But, I do not think it is easier to use. For me, the taskbar and most of the windows management is counter-intuitive. And, as far as viruses and crashing…I have not experienced either on my Macbook nor my Vista machine. So, that is a wash. I guess that brings me to the final question…would I recommend getting a Macbook? This is a pretty difficult question. The premium hardware definitely sets it apart from its competitors. But, overall, I really prefer Windows 7 (even in its beta form) to OSX. I think for people that are die-hard OSX fans, it is a no-brainer. But, if you are on the ledge, I probably would recommend waiting around until Windows 7 comes out and make a decision then.

There has been so much going on in tech the last couple weeks, that I feel I would be a bit remiss in blogging if I didn’t at least mention it. So, here are a few thoughts I have about the mobile, gaming, desktop, and search spaces (as these are were the majority of announcements have come).

Mobile—The last week has been all about the pre and iPhone.  The pre looks like to be a truly awesome platform.  I love the idea of cards as a way to switch between apps.  Like windows revolutionized the desktop space, I think cards will do the same for the mobile space.  I think multi-tasking is core to the future of mobile OS.  My e71 has multi-tasking (albeit in a totally less attrative form) and I could not imagine having a phone without it.  If you watch McNamee’s pitch on the pre he sells the device as essentially a phone for power users.  He says that its main competitive advantages are the immediacy of information, multi-tasking, and a nice keyboard.  For me, these all ring true.  Honestly, these are the same reasons I went with the e71 over other devices.  The phone seems to do everything that my e71 does, but with an iPhone-like interface.

With that mention, lets transition to a quick discussion on the new iPhone.  Like its predecessor, the 3GS features the same killer interface and design.  And lets be honest, it is because Apple did very little in its 3.0 update to change how the device works.  Honestly, I can’t really fault them for that.  At this point, they have the best phone in the segment.  It is easy to use and has great app support.  And, the $99 price point is extremely interesting.  I think that is going to pull a lot of late adopters out of hiding.  It will be interesting to see if the low price point on the phone will make up for the high contract costs, because I know a lot of current dumb phone users still look at the reoccuring costs (or total cost of ownership) as a main reason not to get into the segment. Overall though, the iPhone launch was a little lackluster.  I thought we were going to see the true third generation of the phone with a killer OLED screen and a smaller footprint.  I guess we will have to wait another 6mos to a year to see what they have in store for the next generation. With that said, I think the 3GS will more than keep the iPhone faithful happy.

So, which would I chose?  If I was buying today, I would get the pre.  After watching the videos on the engadget review, I was astounded by how the interface works.  My first impression was that this was how a phone should work.  But, I am not going to go out and buy one today.  I just got my e71 and it still does 95% of what I want.  And, buying first gen hardware is always a crap shoot.  Regardless of my opinion, the space is getting interesting.  It is the first time in 2 years that a strong argument can be made for a competitor having not just a competitive (ahem, Android and Blackberry) OS, but a truly better OS than the iPhone.  And, I think the next couple months will be crazy for mobile as the rush of Android and Windows Mobile devices start flooding in.

Gaming—Honestly, I haven’t picked up a controller in a long time on either my Wii or 360. I kind of feel bad, but that is not where my interest lies currently.  What I am excited about is the future of the Xbox 360.  To say they were the best of show at E3 was an understatement.  With Natal, Zune support, Twitter, Facebook, and (what I am really looking forward to) Last.FM support, the system has moved out of the realm of game console to entertainment console.  I hope they take all this a step further and begin to offer an open marketplace for apps (ala the iphone).  As far as the other two big players go, I was completely disappointed with their E3 performance.  Sony had a couple cool games but nothing compelling enough to make me want to buy their console.  And, Nintendo really is starting to get old fast.  Yes, the motion controllers are fun, but there are not a lot of compelling uses for the console outside of parties.  I am glad I own one, but I would like to see something a little new and exciting from the company.  Because as it stands right now, if Natal can do half of what is advertised, I will not being buying a Wii HD (or whatever comes next).

Desktop—At the WWDC, we finally got to finally see the details of Snow Leopard.  And man, I wish I wouldn’t have sat through the announcement.  It looks to be an extremely boring release for the company.  The performance tweaks are nice, but it looks like the company is content to put OSX in its current form up against Windows 7.  And, I think that is a losing proposition.  But hey, for $29, I am more than willing to upgrade my Macbook.  On the flip side, Windows 7 is looking better-and-better.  If they hit the rumoured $49 upgrade, it will be a good fall for Microsoft.  I just hope that they have a family pack or allow users of the RC to upgrade to 7 for the same cost.  I really do not want to shell out $99-150 to put Windows 7 on my Macbook.

Search—I am currently testing Bing out and I kind of dig it.  I really agree with a lot of people that search has become a commodity.  You get pretty much the same results out of the three major services.  What I like about Bing is that I can filter down ambiguous searches and also get a quick preview with the little ajaxy thing they have to the right of the results.  Also, it looks way better than Google.  And, I do put some value into that.  The problem with both Bing and Google is that I don’t think that either of them are as good as Twitter Search for a lot of my searches.  So, I am still divided.  For opinions I go to Twitter, for questions I go to Bing, for programming queries I go to Stack Overflow, and on my mobile I use Google.  And, maybe that is a good thing.  But, honestly both Google and Bing really should get on the Twitter band wagon.  Because, a real-time search inclusion on either of their sites would be a killer feature.

So, there you have it—my insights on mobile, gaming, desktop, and search.  I know a lot of you will not agree.  So, feel free to express your opinion below.

I had an old website layout laying around that never quite fit any of my personal projects. So, I thought I would apply it to my friend’s site and see how it looks. The result is shown above. What do you all think? Personally, I like it. The St. Louis skyline seems to go along with the theme of his blog (minus the hot tub, RBV, bums, Mizzou, and NBA talk).  Anyways, he gave me the go-ahead to put it up.  So, watch for to land on his blog soon.

I currently support IE6, but not well. Above is a screenshot of my site in the browser that everyone loves to hate. Its actually not too bad. All the images are messed up, but that is because IE6 never really supported PNGs well, and I am not interesting in writing a hack to fix it. Also, the header seems too big. I am not going to speculate on why that is. Should I be embarrassed to be a web developer and have my site look this messed up in a browser that still garners around 14% market share and approximately 9% of my page views? Nah.

Ugh, if it was that easy to get back to the weekend.  This weekend was fun, but extremely short.  Friday, I hung out with my girlfriend and checked out the best South City has to offer.  I am really starting to dig the Macklind area.  They have a number of good restaurants including the Macklind Avenue Deli—a little deli with a huge beer selection.  On Saturday, I met up with Dozier and visited the Post Sports Bar on Manchester for lunch.  I had a delicious Philly steak sandwich and a couple of good beers.  Overall, it was a pretty good bar.  After that, we hit up the taste of Maplewood. There was not much doing there, so I headed up to the Hoff’s house to do a little swimming and watch the NBA.  To my dismay, the big O beat my Cavs.  We ended the night at Harry’s and an all night music listening event at Hoffs.  It was definitely a fun night.  Although, the lack of sleep made my Sunday seem really short.  I definitely want to take it easy next weekend, but that is going to be tough with the Heritage Festival on Friday night and John’s bachelor party on Saturday.  I need a weekend from the weekend.

Looking forward, I am starting to get excited for the NBA finals.  I actually like both teams.  But, I am a huge Kobe fan, so I will be leaning that way.  I think the Lakeshow is going to be tough to beat.  But, if Orlando gets hot from three it will be a good series.  I am guessing Hoff, Ted, and the Wrangler will be pulling for O-town.  And, Eric and I will be pulling for the Lakeshow.  I think we definitely need to get a watch party together for a couple of the games.

I think that is all I have got for now.

For the past couple weeks I have been working on a new blog design, and I am pleased to finally get it up on the site. I am calling this new design New Leaf, because for me, the design also brings with it a number of new sections to the site, notably a portfolio and an academics section.  These new sections mark a small shift in the purpose of the site.  In the past, it was just a simple blog, but now it is more of a combination of a blog and personal portfolio.  The portfolio section is a small collection and description of work I have done in over the past seven years of my career.  This will definitely continue to grow in the next couple years.  And, the academics section is a collection of work I did to earn my MBA.  After graduating with my undergraduate degree, I lost (and, honestly forgot about) just about everything that I had produced when in school.  So, this is kind of way to make sure that doesn’t happen again.  Right now, I have just a few papers and presentations up, but over time, I will try to update the site with anything that I produced that I thought would be somewhat interesting.

Anyways, I hope you all like the redesign.  And, if you find any bugs (I am sure there are a ton), let me know.