Garden planted!

Looking forward to late summer veggies!

Happy Mothers Day

Well, mom, as the first person to usually read my blog you probably have some time to have me remove anything you don't want posted forever...

This year we had a nice sunny May day, nothing like the flood-waters and downpours of last years weather... Unfortunately with my final presentation/project for my ASP.NET 2.0 class due tomorrow, I wasn't able to spend a whole lot of the day with the fam, but we still got in a brief trip to the beach and had dinner together...

My mom absolutely loves it when all her kids are in the same room, car, house or really anywhere.. I think if she had a big enough nest she would sit on top of us all and keep us warm. She's done a pretty fine job raising us, along with dad's help of course.. They both played very good role models for me growing up, and I think we all turned out thoughtful, caring, honest and with good heads on our shoulders...

Thanks mom for all your time and work, I owe a lot to you.
Love you!!

-Michael

Big dig

There used to be an ugly green freeway here. As a kid I remember family trips to Boston's northend, parking the car here beneath the highway...

Lunch on the harba

May is here, time to start enjoying lunch outside more often!

Geotag your Photos, Youtube videos and more!

Check this out, mountains where I've ski'd or snowboarded over the last few years... Viewable in Google Maps or if you have Google Earth you can check it out using that by downloading this KML file and opening it up(right click, save as.... IE saves it as an XML file so you may have to rename the file extension to .KML).

I added some YouTube clips to some locations, and some photo's to some others... It's a pretty nice way to document your trips.. The easiest way to create these files is with Google Maps - My Maps feature, which just requires a Google account to use.. The other way is through Google Earth, and even another way to do this is with a GPS device and some software --

I've been working with the Google Map API a lot recently, and you can now also use these files with KML/GeoRSS Overlays

What is my ip address? And why would I care?

Some of you may know what an IP address is, and some may not have any idea... or care. But after enough friends have asked me about it, I figured it's time to write something up on the subject. It stands for Internet Protocol address, and if you prefer to read the wiki article, go for it...

Before I explain it, I'll offer some reasons as why you would want to know about it.
-Do you ever wish you could get to your home computer's desktop when you are not at home?
-Do you ever wish you could get to some files on your computer at home?
-Do you want to setup your own web-server, file-server, internet-radio station, email-server or game-server?
-Have you ever tried to do something like play a video-game, send a file over instant messenger, or used a p2p file sharing application and have gotten an error message saying your firewall has blocked you?

My way of explaining it to people best is, it is like your 'phone-number' for your computer using the internet. Although you may rarely care which number you are 'called or make calls with' , behind the scenes your ISP is using it to let you use their services... It is pretty easy to figure out your external IP address on the internet, www.whatismyip.com is one of my quick ways to identify it. If you hooked your computer directly up to the Cable/DSL modem this would truly be your IP.


Now for the tricky part, home routers, wireless access points, and hardware firewalls.... Your home access point is the device that is directly connected to your Cable/DSL modem and it gets your external IP assigned to it. Every computer/laptop that connects to your access point gets a different 'phone number extension'.. To make things confusing, this extension is usually an internal IP address... but the good news is they are in a range specifically designed for home/private use, 192.168.x.x being the most popular range for home use..

So great, my router has an external IP address, for example: 55.44.33.123 it also has an internal IP address, for example 192.168.1.1, and my computer plugged into my wireless router has an IP address too 192.168.1.123, given to me by my router.

Ok I get it.
What about Port Forwarding? What if my external IP address from my ISP changes? What if my internal IP address from my wireless router changes?

ASP.NET 2.0 - Sending Email with your application

This is a very simplistic example of how to send an email within your ASP.NET 2.0 application. This example uses Google's gmail service, although it should work with any SMTP email server as long as you have the correct server settings (Host, Port, SSL) Good luck with your application!


public bool SendEmail(string strTo, string strSubject, string strBody)
{
bool bReturn=false;

System.Net.Mail.MailMessage mail = new System.Net.Mail.MailMessage();
System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient smtp = new System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient();

mail.From = new MailAddress("sender@gmail.com", "Senders Name");
mail.ReplyTo = new MailAddress("sender@gmail.com"); // optional
mail.To.Add(strTo);
mail.Subject = strSubject;
mail.Body = strBody;
mail.IsBodyHtml = true;

smtp.Host = "smtp.gmail.com";
smtp.Port = 25;
smtp.EnableSsl = true;
smtp.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("sender@gmail.com", "password");
smtp.Send(mail);

bReturn = true;
return bReturn;
}

Wireless Photo Printing with Kodak Kiosk and Sony Ericsson k790a

So I walk into CVS yesterday with Melissa.. She had a few things to get, and I didn't really need anything. I walked up to a Kodak Kiosk and notice a Bluetooth icon on the machine.. and think, cool...

So I hit a few buttons on the screen, select a picture out of my phone, and beam it over to the machine.. I make a few 29 cent prints, and am on my way...

Good stuff! Nice work Kodak and Sony Ericsson for making it that easy....

Heres the picture of Nibbles I printed!!

Power Use - Advanced features of k790a

After playing around with my new phone for a few weeks, I've explored some of the advanced features of the phone.

Java Applications
Google Maps(traffic updates!!)
Salling Clicker - Use your cellphone as a remote control for iTunes, PowerPoint, etc.
MFRadio - Wirelessly stream music from my collection at home
vNes Nintendo Emulator - Playing classic Mario and Zelda is great!
Opera Mini browser!

Calendar Sync - SyncML
Using GooSync's free service to sync my Google Calendars with my phones Calendar automatically.

Rss News Reader
Gloucester daily times, Google News, Weather and Forecast
Animated Radar images

Bluetooth
A2DP - Wireless tunes! You can now have headphones with no wires, no cables between your home stereo and your tunes...
Modem - Using my laptop to surf the internet is always easier than viewing on a small screen, and typing on a small keyboard.. EDGE Is a bit slow(20-50k/s), but still usable in a pinch. And a data plan for 6$ per month fits the bill. Thanks for the setup scripts Ross Barkman.
File Transfer - A breeze with OS X, just drag and drop the files to/from the mounted drives.. Adding mp3 ringtones, wallpapers, taking pictures/videos off of the camera is a breeze..

State house @ night

cell phones - New phone! K790a

So back in the day(2005), I wasn't able to take a picture with my phone. I wasn't able to instantly upload it to my blog. I didn't always carry around a 3-megapixel camera.

This photo was uploaded directly from my phone to the web, know what that means? You'll probably start seeing less text and more pictures! I'll try to add text and stories after the fact, cause you know how much fun it is to T9 or type text message style --

Check out technical specs...

This post, really one up's my first mobile blog-post... I guess my ole t68i can now retire after 4 great years of usage...

Subject: Email pet peeves

I think my number one pet peeve with email is the subject line... when the subject line has nothing to do with the message or reply below or is missing entirely... I understand sometimes a thread changes over time, but when digging(searching/sorting) through email months/years later, you really appreciate accurate subject lines....

So pretty please, with sugar on top, clean up your subject lines...
no subject is better than an off-base one...

What do you dislike about emails?

Cannon Mountain got some snow!

Colorado Trip

Back from Colorado!!



Vail, A-basin, and Breckenridge were my favorite mountains we went to, but they were all great. We had mostly perfect blue-sky days with temperatures perfect for being outdoors in January... Wish we got a bit more snow while I was out there, maybe next time if we are lucky!

I have a photo album on Flickr, let me know if you'd like to see some more shots from our trip!

Linux on PSP

Here's a post about my friend Chris' latest project, I tried posting it to Slashdot to help him get some other developers to help him with the project --

Check out:

uClinux ported to Playstation Portable (PSP)

Maybe it's to prove a point that some variant of Linux can run on any digi device....
Maybe he didn't want to play games on his PSP, but instead take it apart..
Maybe he wanted to bite down on a kernel without cracking his teeth at the movies...

Well anyways, that crazy mofo named chris is at it again, this time booting his PSP device up with uClinux.. Sure if you want wifi, video, or keypad input you'll have to write the drivers... don't even think about fireing up Mame and launching your fav old skool game yet... as this project needs some basic drivers first... but writing device drivers for your fav unsupported hardware/software hasn't stopped you in the past, has it?"

GIS - a hobby or career?

GIS - Geographic Information Systems is an emerging field which I have taken interest to, spawned by great applications such as Google Earth and Google Maps, there have also been sites of value such as HousingMaps.com, CheapGas.com, Zillow.com all which present valuable data to you based upon what you are looking for overlayed onto a geographic map. Flickr now also allows you to tag where a picture was shot --

I've been thinking about taking a few courses in GIS to become more familiar with the field and concepts used in developing GIS solutions.

New Years resolutions

-Focus

With many hobbies and talents, life is a challenging balancing act of when and where to do the things that I want to do. This year, I want to focus my efforts more.. Instead of working on too many things, to work on only a few and see them to completion or the next milestone before focusing my efforts on something new.

-Challenge myself

The world is as easy or as hard as you make it... I want to be challenged. I want my work to be meaningful and valueable. I want to be busy, but not with busy work. Think of and develop solutions that work. I want to continously learn, be it at work, at school, at home or outside travelling the world.

-Minimize environmental impact:

The population rate of humans alone will inenvitably cause the consumption of finite resources of our planet to become extinct. There should be two bins in your house that go out on your street each week, trash, or things that disintegrate naturally and everything else which should be recycled... If your town doesn't recycle, someone has to start it. If your town doesn't recycle plastic #10, ask them why not..
Use less energy, or put the energy you use into the grid cleanly.

delicous bookmarks!

Do you use more than one computer frequently? One at work? one at home? A few at work or home? Ok... admit it, you have a computer in every room of the house, don't you? or maybe you are viewing web content on devices besides computers?

Well the problem here is your favorites/bookmarks... You saved that link somewhere, but when? on which computer? how do you try to remember what you called the bookmark and where you may have left it? Maybe you want to share a bookmark with a friend or two....

A solution to this problem was developed over at this delicious website, i mean del.icio.us a nice clever use of the added US domain space.....

Check out my bookmarks, and get an account for yourself!

http://del.icio.us/gmamante

Oh, and if you use Firefox as your browser, there is a nice plugin/extension that adds delicous bookmark buttons to your toolbar!

all i want for x-mas

Is SNOW.

Santa Monday @ Sunday River

Check out my trip in 3d with Google Earth by
right-clicking, saving as... on the link/image below, and opening the formatted KML file within Google Earth [here]

or as [gpx]

data recorded by a Garmin Forerunner 201
uploaded to and generated by MotionBased.com

bright idea's

I remember back when I was a young kid, playing with magnets for the first time. Wow, I just made that other magnet move without even touching it! I thought of the possibility of using that same principle on some kind of transportation, most likely a train...

Over the course of your life, you'll come up with plenty of ideas, some very bright, some as good as a 'Jump to conclusions mat'... The reality is, that you are not the only one who has thought of the idea. Someone is working on possibily proving that concept, or bringing that idea to market already. So, occasionally you find yourself annoyed by some things you do often and think to yourself there has to be a better way. An example of this is 'Wireless Power', almost everyone has been annoyed by the fact of modern life that our devices need to always be recharged. Half the problem is our battery technologies, while the other half is the charging process... One idea is to have a universal way of charging devices, as simple as placing your devices on a 'charging area' another is a recently researched idea of using physics and electromagnetic principles to wirelessly charge devices within a proximity.

So when a bright idea hits you, what do you usually do about it? Keep it to yourself? Find out if it exists? Share the idea with others who may like it? Wait until someone else brings it to market? Or get your hands dirty, bring the right people together, and go for it....

Get out and Vote

Election day...

Vote! Even though it may seem that your one vote will not make a difference, that kind of attitude is as contagious as a yawn. Find out about the REAL issues, make your own informed opinions, and voice them and discuss them with others.

Do you let others make major life impacting decisions for you and your future?

Calendar Sync (syncML)

So my cellphone has a calendar feature, which I've practically never used... Why? Because it is a pain to manually enter in my calendar items, or to bluetooth sync with my computer often....

I've now had the same cell phone for almost 3 years, and by now pretty much have gone into every possible menu and setting for it... but just the other day discovered something new... Under my Connect menu, there is a Syncronization menu, and under that 'Remote Sync'. Sounded interesting, so I wanted to see what I could do with that --

It turns out I can Sync my Calendar and Addressbook on my phone with any web-based Calendar/Addressbook that support a standard called SyncML. Pretty cool, a good way to back up all your numbers and keep your online Addressbook up to date.. Also it's pretty handy to be able to wirelessly sync your Calendar without entering any appointments in manually.. Yahoo Calendar/Addressbook seem to support it for some phones, but not all yet.... Hopefully my t68i is on their list of phones to soon support, since I like to primarily use Yahoo Calendar and Addressbook.... For now, I'm giving this free Mobical service a try--

So, if you think this sounds pretty interesting, check it out and see if your phone is SyncML compatible.. And if not, try to get that feature in your next phone!

Kitchen Kiosk

Why would anyone ever want a computer in their kitchen? As computers have started to expand out of the home-office and into our living rooms, I start to wonder... is the kitchen next?

Ever look up a recipe on-line? Have you given on-line grocery shopping a try yet? Ever looked at your calendar to see when you could maybe cook that great recipe your friend made for you a few months ago? What about shopping lists? Wing-it, pencil and paper? or write/print out a few needed things on the computer?

Of course there is also a quick check of the news, weather, email or web search as well...

But what I'm getting at here, is a suite of kitchen applications designed for a kitchen kiosk.. a web browser app used within your kitchen...

#1) Recipebook (Add recipes, Find new ones, Share ones with friends/family)
#2) Grocery List creator
#3) Meal scheduler
#4) Food DB

The recipebook is the primary application of the kitchen... but as you can probably see, it's value can be extended if it can work with other external applications... For example, I want to cook sara's vegatable lasagna on Wednesday, my grandmas meatsauce on Thursday, and work on some fresh pizza dough for Pizza on Friday... if my kitchen application somehow knows all the food in my home (from shopping receipts/stores database info) and that I'd like to cook these meals this week, a grocery list can be generated of the things I don't have already...

Access the grocery list from my phone? See something on sale in the market and want to change your plans for Tuesdays meal? Don't want to go to the market but want to lookup which recipes you can make with things at home? Want to share a recipe with a friend? Want to convert your grocery list into an order to your supermarket? As you can see, applications within the realm of food are almost endless -- is one of the XML standards (RecipeML vs RecipebookXML?) being developed robust enough to support these kind of applications? This project (phpRecipeBook) looks like the start of what I'm talking about...

what do you want to be when you grow up?

I remember the first time I was asked this question in school, in first grade --
What do you want to be when you grow up? with the following trailing statement... YOU can be ANYTHING.

I'm not sure how the rest of the class answered, but I remember my own answer... I want to be an astronaut and go to space! As a kid, I often dreamed of flying.. of being able to walk on ceilings, of being on top of the world higher than the highest mountaintop--

Anousheh Ansari took it to the next level. She is the first non-astronaut to say, "I'm going to space". Opening the doors for future people to say, my dream is to one day go to space, and it is possible, and has been done.

I recommend reading her blog, hear some of her stories and insights -- She's inspiring us, our youth to dream bigger -- our leaders to think globally, to understand that borders although real in our world, from space do not exist.

We are one earth, one people, under a sun. Enjoy life, and be who you want to be.