December 2010
13 posts
3 tags
Understanding Your Battery →
Things I learned: keeping the battery plugged in once it’s fully charged isn’t as bad since it stops pulling power between 100%-90%. And, thanks to Battery University:
Several partial discharges with frequent recharges are better for lithium-ion than one deep one. Recharging a partially charged lithium-ion does not cause harm because there is no memory.
4 tags
Chrome OS for Personal Use
First off, Engadget’s observations are very much in line with my own. Reading that should give you a good overview of the device. However, I want to explore the effectiveness of Chrome OS for my own personal uses1.
Non-work related things I use the computer for:
Email
Social Networks
Blog
Video
Chat
Starcraft 2
The super rare document or spreadsheet
Successes (and not) on the...
3 tags
Android doesn't need the best UI →
People make statements like this all the time and assume that’s the end of the argument right there:
[Android is] never going to be Apple-like in user experience, polish, or design.
I agree that the iPhone is a great product. However, I can also conclude that Android phones are great as well. There are pros and cons to both devices1. Yes, generally, the Apple UI is more pleasing to...
2 tags
Gingerbread Keyboard without Rooting →
The wonderful developers at XDA have packaged the Gingerbread keyboard into an APK that you can download on any phone running 2.1 or higher.
2 tags
Fixing Lag: Drakes of Destiny →
I recently found the Eve Online developer blog, and find it super interesting.
This series of articles is about them dealing with the massive load they have to handle in huge fleet battles. Some pretty graphs, and some algorithm analysis. Oh, and they use Python!
3 tags
1 tag
A table that should exist in all projects with a... →
create table schema_version (
`when` timestamp not null default CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
`key` varchar(256) not null,
`extra` varchar(256),
primary key (`key`)
)
3 tags
Android 2.3 Gingerbread →
A native copy/paste/selection implementation. Improved power management. Near field communication. Gyroscope API.
3 tags
TechCrunch Likes Nexus S →
They like it:
The bottom line is this. If you are an iPhone user this isn’t going to make you switch. If you’re an Android user you will want this phone more than any other. If you’re currently neither, we recommend that you go with the Nexus S. It is better than the iPhone in most ways.
3 tags
Chrome Crankshaft →
Chrome’s JavaScript engine, V8, just got even faster:
Overall, Crankshaft boosts V8’s performance by 50% on the V8 benchmark suite. This is the biggest performance improvement since we launched Chrome in 2008.
4 tags
3 tags
Pac-Man Ghost Behavior →
A super interesting write-up from Chad Birch.
A hint: each ghost’s behavior makes much more sense in Japanese.
Blinky - “chaser”
Pinky - “ambusher”
Inky - “whimsical”
Clyde - “feigning ignorance”
2 tags
Google Reader for Android →
Very nicely designed. Looks great, and behaves well too. It doesn’t have offline reading ability, but then, that’s what Instapaper is for.