Archive for the 'fun' Category

Gravatar Created

I just set up a profile on Gravatar, which was easy since it made use of my existing WordPress.com account.

Gravatar is a service that automatically adds a profile photo any time you comment or post on a blog/website/forum that supports it. You create an account, register your e-mail address (or multiple addresses), and upload a photo. After that, your photo will appear whenever you use your e-mail address when commenting/posting. This includes sites (like mine) that require commenters to provide an e-mail address, but do not display it to the public.

Pretty cool!

July 14 2010 | fun | 1 Comment »

My First Android App

I recently published my first app for the Android platform. My main goal was to get my feet wet with Android development, and the Assistant Coach app seemed like a fairly simple idea that, as far as I could tell, hadn’t been done before.

The whole process took me about a month, working part-time. I really enjoyed the process; the Android documentation is excellent, and the architecture is designed well. It had been a while since I did any Java development, but I fell back into it pretty easily (esp. thanks to Eclipse). I had a blast and am thinking about what to make next. Let me know if you have any ideas!

July 07 2010 | assistant-coach and fun | 1 Comment »

Fun With Linguistics

Been going through a great series of linguistics lectures by John McWhorter and I came across a pretty interesting tidbit about how we pronounce the letter ‘l’ differently, depending on whether it’s at the start of a word or not.

Here is a recording of me saying the word “oil” …

rob_saying_the_word_oil

… and here is that same recording played backwards …

backwards_version_of_rob_saying_the_word_oil

Incidentally, I recorded & saved both versions using the built-in Windows accessory called “Sound Recorder” and I converted the resulting WAV files to mp3 with a program called CDex.

May 02 2010 | fun | No Comments »