Working with Adobe Illustrator Files (.ai)
Lemonade stand
I don’t always eat breakfast but when I do
Mac startup problems
Mywork MacBook Pro wouldn’t boot up. It was hung on the gray screen with the apple logo and the spinner spinning. THIS article told me what to try and fortunately, the save-boot did the trick. However the safeboot booted into the blue screen and I had a mouse cursor I could move but Finder did not appear. I turned it off and back on and it came up all the way. This article has more details on the problem.
Update: Next day wouldn’t boot up at all. Was stuck on blue screen. I took the following steps to backup files:
- Reboot and hold down <Command> S to boot into Single User Mode shell
- /sbin/fsck -fy
- mount -uw / ; Make drive writeable
- mkdir /Volumes/usb
- ls /dev/disk* ; Locate usb drive, should be last one listed
- /sbin/mount_msdos /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/usb
- cp -r srcFolderName /Volumes/usb
- /sbin/umount /dev/disk2s1 ; !!! Important. Unmount before removing drive
USTA 4.5 2011

I had a great season of USTA 4.5 tennis this year. Counting the three matches I played this weekend in Houston (Little State) I went 10-1 ! Not bad for the last year as a junior. Next year I qualify for senior leagues!
Thanks to my tennis partners: Clay Johnson, Steve Gilmer (we went 3-0 in Little State), Russ Needler and James Bronson.
And thanks to Gentry Sparling for captaining our team and to Darrell Breeden for all his help this season and for scheduling most of my practice matches.
Android Development
I’m sticking my toe into Android Development
Here are some reference links
How to install non-market apps
What version of Android should you develop for? Many say develop to the oldest version that you can in order to support the biggest market share. However the older versions are only in a small % of the phones. The newest versions of Android are not supported in many phones yet. The sweet spot in my opinion starts at 10% coverage which today is 2.1. Visit this site for the latest stats.
Tutorials
Setting up application with multiple tabs
Confluence for collaboration
My company is standardizing on Atlassian products such as Jira (for issue tracking), and Confluence for Wikis and collaboration. I have yet to use a system that works better than a simple blog with categories, pages and RSS feeds. I mean what is better than subscribing to a Page, Category (or tag) and contributing to the comment thread of a post you are interested in.
So far, I’m finding Confluence’s support for blogs leaving much to be desired. Starting with the fact you can’t subscribe to feeds with many readers since they require authentication and many (such as Google Reader) don’t support authenticated feeds.
Here is one option that uses a proxy
I tend to agree with Scott that a wiki without RSS feeds is a non starter. Email notifications? I find it funny that Confluence promotes itself as a solution for email chaos but then offer it as the primary mechanism for notifications.
You should completely drain your battery once a month
“For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).”
“Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.” It adds that, if you don’t drain and recharge your Mac laptop in the course of normal usage, “Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.”
Of course, many iPhone users find that it’s easy to completely run the battery down…
WordPress Notes
Recommended settings:
Settings…Media… Uncheck Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders.
Always obfuscate email addresses. Create images of the address or use javascript email obfuscator
Recommended Plugins
Members highly recommended for collaboration.
AWPCP for Classified Ads
iFrame. WordPress doesn’t allow iFrames for security reasons. This plugin supports iFrames which are necessary for embedding things such as a Google Form or PayPal buttons.
NextGen Gallary for simple photo management. Can be used to rotate through images. I use it to highlight VIP sponsors.

