Preston Lee's Blog

Category: personal

  • Mass Effect: Holy Freaking Crap

    I figured I’d have some “me” time this weekend, so I picked up a copy of the highly praised Mass Effect. Saying it’s good is obvious; awesome is an understatement. Groin-grabbingly enthralling, genre-shattering entertainment is somewhere in the neighborhood. We’re talking a contender for best video game ever here. So if you’re last minute Christmas…

  • Penguin Pimp

    I Celebrated my friend Gilraen’s birthday by molding figurines out of Sculpey, which turned out to be an excellent party activity. Karen started off with a cute penguin body, but somehow we ended up with a pimp: complete with hat, cane and technicolor dream coat. There are.. hmm.. “other” complementary figurines, but I’ll refrain from…

  • Invited To The Pentagon

    Mugr.com was recently invited to the Pentagon to demo our facial recognition voodoo as a potential biometric component to TIDES: Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support. It was a very last minute trip with very little instruction and direction regarding what to prepare, so we packed up our Mactops and hopped on a plane.…

  • 6 Things I'm Thankful For

    An awesome first business year for OpenRain. The constant stress of context switching between software projects has become more managable, making weekend relaxation slightly more frequent. Marc has been a geeky Asian version of Superman, and our part-time office manager Gracie has been a godsend. Business has been great, and 2008 should be an exciting…

  • Switching To Dvorak

    After years of deliberation, I’m finally taking this Thanksgiving break to switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout. It’s been frustrating, yes, but I believe my wrists will be much better off with the change. Within a couple hours of switching I’m probably crawling at ~15 words per minute, which is faster than I expected. Stuff…

  • Rails Presentation: attachment_fu, Kropper and Mugr.com face-based services preview.

    I’m giving a brief talk at tonight’s Rails meeting in Chandler at 7:00pm on what we’re doing with attachment_fu and Kropper for upcoming face-based search service mugr.com. I’ll post the slides afterwards for those who can’t make it, but you won’t get to see the Über-secret developer build unless you come 🙂 Slides: Keynote PDF

  • Lala.com Review: Legal Web 2.0 Music Trading

    Lala.com is an online service for trading physical discs. After entering information on your current CD collection, what CDs you want, and receiving a free shipping kit of envelops and plastic disc carriers via postal mail, you simply start sending discs out as they are requested. Other users do the same, and the system handles…

  • SRP Time-of-Use Plan Hourly Price Change Reminder

    To those on SRP’s time-of-use plan, reprogram your thermostats! On May 1st we’ll be entering into the expensive months. 1pm – 8pm weekdays are “on-peak”: 17.83¢/kWh. All other hours and holidays are “off-peak”: 4.88¢/kWh. From here. If you live in a hot area and do not have a programmable thermostat, you absolutely must get one.…

  • Marvels of the Human Eye

    Being creatures limited by our instruments of perception, the behavior of the human eye and related processing systems never ceases to amaze me. Last year was particularly enlightening, as I hadn’t previously realized we effectively cannot see color in low light situations. I honestly never noticed until I woke up one morning and realized that…

  • For Geeks w/Allergies: The Air Purifier To Buy

    I am deathly allergic to the blooms of the Sweet Acacia tree, which happens to be a popular choice of landscapers in Phoenix. I can physical sense the presence of Sweet Acacia from a good 20 meters, and the mere thought gives me a Pavlovian response. The blooms are my kryptonite. My allergies hit so…