I typed Donner, as in Donner Pass.  The iPhone “corrected” that to Dinner.

Um, yeah, that’s appropriate.

(I’m also sick of the iPhone changing its to it’s.  Its spell checker doesn’t know what it’s doing!)

Any other funny ones?

Wheeeeeee *owwww*. Catching a fly ball (at least I caught it), I jammed my finger. Turned out I fractured the fifth metacarpal bone in my hand, and will be wearing a brace and/or cast for four to six weeks.

This is making it ridiculously hard to type. I don’t really want to take any time off work, because I just got back from a nice long sabbatical and am eager to get back to Flex Builder features. So I’m just going to keep plugging away, albeit a lot more slowly than usual.

Voice recognition software helps with email and the like, but not with coding. I even had another weird but creative idea that didn’t quite pan out: one funny thing about this is that with the brace on my hand, it is actually easier to type on my iPhone than on a computer keyboard. (I am writing this blog post on the iPhone.) So, I installed VNC software on my computer, and then installed Mocha VNC Lite on my iPhone. That way, I can use the iPhone got typing on my computer!  But alas, when you do that, you don’t get the iPhone’s auto-correct capabilities, and without that, the iPhone was too tedious to type on.

Anyway, I am plugging away on lots of really cool debugger features for Flex Builder 4. I can’t tell you what they are, but I just can’t resist mentioning that our awesome summer intern, Sedat Akkus, has implemented one of the most-requested debugger features. So what is the feature?  Well, that’s a secret, but it rhymes with “fronditional schmakepoints.”

The PCMWave file for Alex is much bigger than the PCMWave file for any other voice, so I wasn’t surprised to find that Alex sounds far more realistic than any other voice.  Nonetheless, I’m gonna kill him, because he is taking too much of my disk space.

In any case, I amused myself by listening to all the voices. Try clicking “Show More Voices” — the “Deranged” voice made me laugh out loud.

• Install Greasemonkey
• Restart Firefox
• Install Netflix Notes

Description:

This happens to me all the time: I decide to add a movie to my Netflix queue — perhaps because it was recommended by a friend, perhaps because I saw a good review, perhaps for some other reason.

Then, months later, I can’t remember why I put it in my queue! To address this problem, I wrote a little Firefox Greasemonkey script called Netflix Notes.

Netflix Notes changes your Netflix queue so that you can add a private “note to self” on each movie in your queue. The main point of this is to remind yourself why you added a particular movie — e.g. because a friend recommended it, you read a good review, and so on.

It only works with the Firefox web browser. If you are using another browser, such as Internet Explorer or Safari, Netflix Notes won’t work for you.

I would love it if Netflix obsoleted my work by integrating this functionality natively into their website! But in the meantime, you can use my program.

30-second demo:

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Can other people see my notes?
A: No. The notes are stored on your computer, not out on the Internet. Only someone using your computer can see your notes.

Q: Where, exactly, are the notes stored?
A: They are stored in your Firefox profile. To see them, navigate to about:config, and then type “netflix” into the filter box.

Q: You should store the notes on the Internet! I want to be able to see them from every computer I use.
A: Yes, I would love to add that capability; but I haven’t had a chance to do so yet.

Regarding motivation to get started implementing a product idea once you have one:

Whatever you do, do something.

Us programmers, we tend to overanalyze things. Lots of up-front design, trying to decide if it’s the right thing to do, not sure if we have enough education yet, etc. But from what I’ve read about successful entrepreneurs, they are DOERS. They’re Action-Oriented.

So I’m inventing a new term:

Action-Oriented Programming: writing the damn program instead of thinking about writing it.

But dragdropupload is a slick little Firefox extension that addresses this problem. Once you install it, you can drag and drop any file from your computer on top of the words “Attach a file” in Gmail. Sweet! (You can also drag and drop onto any other website that does file upload, but Gmail is where I find it most useful.)

What the?!?

So of course I clicked ‘em all. “Wikipedia:Hauptseite” and “Accueil” take you to the home pages of the German and French versions of Wikipedia, respectively. “Tirol” takes you to the German-language page describing Tirol, which is apparently “a historical region of Western Central Europe” (according to the corresponding English-language page). The last three links take you to the English-language pages for the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Denzel Washington, and commodity markets.

While listening to podcasts:

• “back up” or “repeat” to back up a few seconds
• “pause,” “play,” etc.
• “faster,” “slower,” “normal speed”

Email:

• iPhone reads the email to me
• “next message,” “delete message,” etc.
• Dictation, a la Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  Okay, I know that’s way too much to ask from such a small device, but maybe someday…

When using as a phone: “call Tom” (standard voice dialing, as some other phones already have).

What else?

When you run it, it displays a full-screen rendering of the sky, and in a very cool and realistic way: In the foreground you can see the ground, e.g. grass, trees, etc.; and the sky is beautifully rendered with colors appropriate to the current time of day where you are, e.g. dark blue with a pink horizon at sunset (the sky is always beautiful in Stellarium-land; be sure to check out the screenshots on the website).

But hey, you want to see what stars would be visible if it weren’t daytime? Click a button, and the atmosphere disappears. You want to see what stars are currently hidden below the horizon? Click another button, and the ground disappears. You want to see the sun and stars move in fast motion? Want to see how the sky looked in 1966 during the heaviest meteor shower ever seen? Want help learning where the constellations are? Where the planets are? Click click click. Want to see close-up photos of all the planets? Of a number of interesting nebulae? They’re all there. Want to see how high the sun is right now in Alaska? Change your location to Alaska. Want to see how the sun never sets when it’s summer at one of the poles? Change your location, and accelerate time, and watch the sun move across the sky without setting.

When you start the program, it defaults to a viewpoint from Paris; to change that, click configuration (the wrench icon at the bottom of the screen), go to Location, and click the map. Also, to zoom in on your general area so it’s easier to click the right spot, hold the mouse over your part of the world and rotate the mouse wheel.

I’ve burned it onto a CD, and I’m going to give it to my uncle. Yes it’s free, but he never would have found it on his own, and also I’m gonna give him a hand with it since he is only moderately computer-savvy.

Merry Christmas!