http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/37762.aspx

http://www.o2slim.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5&sid=d8577b23875ffd449bc8ffb65e75eb77

Thanks!

EX1: Europe Earthquake Map with High Decay. (Decay spreads the map out over a smaller area)

EX2: Japan Earthquake Map with +25 threshold(The more +threshold the less the value has to be to reach the top of your heatmap coloring scale. Meaning if you have data on a scale from 1 – 10, 1 being blue and 10 being red and you set your threshold to +100, this will make 1 be red as well as 10 and everything in between. The threshold is a percentage based modifier)

EX3: USA – Alaska Earthquake Map – High Decay

EX4: USA – California Earthquake Map

EX5: USA – Ann Arbor Michigan crime data

Download KMZ Examples Zip

Enjoy!

Check out the page here: http://www.o2slim.com/?page_id=158

I wanted to give another working example of the Heatmap Studio / Google Earth implementation. This is a KMZ file for Google Earth (you must have Google Earth Installed to use it!). Simply download this kmz file, open the file with Google Earth and observe the heatmap!

Download KMZ

-o2Slim

1. Enabling large scale decay and dot sizes for large drawn heatmaps (although it will take a ton of time to do these maps, but I’ve gotten some feedback for this so it’s going in! )

2. Option to draw a legend on the map with the range

3. And finally Thanks for doner and feedback giver Amanda for this great idea! An option to export Google Maps heatmaps as KML files for Google earth These files will be used overlayed on the globe in Google Earth, looks like this could work REALLY well! THanks again Amanda!

-o2Slim

http://www.slimapps.com/forums/

This forum can be used for general discussions and feedback/help with all SlipApps!

Enjoy!

Some updates:

- I’m still working on the new version of bead helper
- Not really working on heatmap studio all that much right now as it really hasn’t been used that much
- THings are still going okay with the new mac but I gotta tell ya, I still find myself using windows a lot more often, but I’ll bitch about that in another post!

Yeah, turns out I was plugging away on my dell last night instead of my new mac. I told myself it was only to purge it and clean it up before I sold it off but I found myself doing my normal routine well past the cleanup process. Surfing the web, checking my eve training, checking the wow world, etc. I was actually questioning why I was sitting here doing this when the brand new $1600 piece of mac equipment was sitting in my lap bag next to me.

I wasn’t sure why, but one thing I was getting more sure of was the dependency on a multi-touch trackpad with gesture capability . As I used what now feels like an archaic form of trackpad interface I found myself struggiling. At risk of rambiling on about this I’ll just stop here and say I really enjoy multi-touch!

Either way, I was still on my pc and not my mac, so what gives? Yesterday as I sat at worked I began to realize I don’t have the slightest bit of knowledge of cool mac utilities or gadets etc. It seemded the only place I had searched for them was at apple.com’s osx software page. It became aparent it was one of those situations like at a fast food drivethru window. THe question why do people prefer going to places like burgar kind and mcdonalds over other places like Arbys? Well my thought is because I don’t know what the hell to order when I get up to the window, so I’ll stick with what I know. Same applies here. I find myself knowing where to look for pc software, gadgets, etc and not where to look for the mac equivelents. I suppose that will just take some time

On a brighter not, iMovie has proved to be an amazing little product for something that’s included with the purchase of the notebook. For $3.50 I was able to run to RiteAid and pick up a few project style poster boards, tape them together, and in 5 minutes has a amatuer greenscreen setup. It turned out that it’s not too shabby either! I was actually creating greenscreen effects with my iSight camera and 3 dolars worth of drugstore cardboard! Nice.

So one of the things I’m noticing about using Macs is the metric ass ton of documentation, which is good….and bad. My problem is that although detailed and thorough the documentation is also lacking in an executive summary / quick ref sections. What I mean is that it seems everytime I go looking for an answer to a quick question, for what seems like a small problem, I’m faced with a 300 page help doc. Usually I can pinpoint a quick paragraph and find the answer but it turns out with a lot of the mac stuff I’m finding the answer spread out across 3-5 paragraphs and pages, etc. That can make me a bit sad.

Another problem I ran into with the documentation (and a bit of a setup problem) was with the iPhone SDK. I have a 1st gen iPod touch that I needed to get up and running with the SDK.  I figured this wouldn’t be a problem but 45 minutes into it I realized I was quite wrong. After nuking the ipod 3-4 times and having it once in what I thought was an unrecoverable state I finally got it working with the new OS version. THe next step was to get it working with the security certificates that are required when developing with the SDK. All in all this was a long drawn out process which I can tell Apple has tried to make simple and painless but in the end it turned out to be a HUGE time sink to do something that dare I say… would have been much easier in a windows dev enviornement.

One of the things I’m continuously longing for is more in-depth detail and configurations options.  Although I know about the terminal and console I need to dig deeper into figuring out the commands etc as I’m sure there’s equivalents for most of the things I want to do. 

One of the things I note about some of the OSX apps is the startup time. I’m not sure why but it seems that sometimes they don’t start up so quick at all. THey run smooth but start slow, not sure what that’s all bout but whatever it’s not too horrible. 

I’m still really enjoying the OSX experience. But of course being the tech nerd and programmer that I am I’m finding some drawbacks here and there. Lets start with the good though. Installs and DMG files. 

I’m loving the install process for most of the packages that I’m finding for the operating system. I installed some games, some apps, and some SDKs. It seems everything is quite automatic and painless. However, that  does leave a bad feeling sometimes as I don’t have much control over options outside of which location to install in. But in the end when I look at windows apps I guess you don’t get much more than that, it just feels that way. 

DMG files are turning out to be an outstanding file type. These files are disc images that seems to be able to be created out of anything including folders, cds, entire drives, etc. Whats especially nice about them is that they can be mounted and resemble another drive on the machine allowing for quick no losing your place access. 

Bootcamp is also up ad running. THis is the Mac standard for dual booting the mac directly into a Windows operating system. The setup and process of “bootcamping” the mac is quite seemless and impressive s its built into the operating system and fully supported! Once I installed the RC1 of Windows 7 I was able to pop in my Leopard cd and install the windows drivers for the mac! One problem I do have with this though is that apple does NOT (or that I’ve found) provide a download location for these drivers, not sure why, but if you don’t have your leopard cd handy you won’t be running with all the hardware features you could be.  

Of course being the tinkerer I am one of the problems I’m really having a hard time getting used to is the inability to tweak certain settings. For example, I installed World of Warcraft to give it a run. Once playing I really wasn’t enjoying have no anti-aliasing so I retreated to the OSX prefs menu in search for an nVidia control panel…… damn no luck. Turns out there isn’t one!! So that leaves me with a sadness feeling, I can’t even control my 3d settings (easily that is, maybe theres a way to do it via command line). This seems to actually be a common theme across the OS, if you really want to edit in-depth details forget about it. It seems the way the OS is setup is to specifically protect you from yourself. Windows is incorporating some of this but you’re still given the opportunity to change what you want easily.

Beginning the first day at work with the mac was quite smooth sailing, I setup the system and registered it normally which is a smooth and painless process from what it seemed. I’ll get more into how cool this process can actually be in a bit. Once setup the the machine was off and running smoothly. THe first point of interest for me was the Spaces system, which divides your desktop into multiple virtual desktops. These virtual desktops allow you to move your running programs or windows seamlessly through each desktop and quickly switch between them. I started with 2, but quickly moved to a quad setup. THinking it was more of a novelty at first I was quite happy to find myself actively using the desktops and surprisingly increasing my productivity slightly.

The next major feature that I noticed right off the bat is the multitouch trackpad. This trackpad allows for various “gestures” including switching between applications, and “fanning” out running applications to get a quick view of what’s going on where. You’ll be sure to get use out of this trust me!

The Time Machine! AN excellent, and I bet underused feature of OSX. This application allows you to hook up and USB harddrive and use it as an automatic backup device. To my amazement running the incremental backups did not seriously takeaway from performance.   This system keeps your system and all settings fully backed up at all times (when the drive is connected). I did this for more of a testing / novelty sake, but as I found out it turned out to be outstanding. 

This leads me back to the hardware problem I mentioned earlier. So after contacting Apple support I was instructed I would have to take the machine to an apple store and have the run diagnostics. One of the odd things was that I had to actually schedule and appointment with the support desk at the store, not exactly awesome but whatever. Once in the store I find out they’re “running behind”. After waiting around 15 minutes after my “appointment” time I was called up. THe tech actually stumbled a good bit around trying to determine what he would do next. This didn’t instill a ton of confidence but whatever. After 35 minutes (no kidding) he finally got somewhere with one of his diagnostics apps and determined the board was bad on the laptop and not the battery. He put the macbok back together and told me he’d be right back to “discuss the options”. Heh, options? No see this is where a piece of hardware less than 24hours old isn’t undergoing “options” but being replaced. THank god he returned to let me know they would replace it with a brand new one on the spot. 

When I got home the coolness factor of time machine really shined through. I turned the new macbook on and began the registration process all over selecting English as the language and then … wait what ohh “Restore settings from a time machine disk” No way it couldn’t be that easy? Well it turned out it was! I plugged in the drive selected it and bam! It began restoring my macbook from the morning settings. Once complete everything was there and setup just as it was before my trip to the apple store, AWESOME!

Using it for a night it bacame aparentt I was really beginning to feel more productive in my workspace. However, I was being held back by the minis mini 9 inch display! Especially when I installed and began working with the iPhone SDK did I realize I couldn’t really work well with that small of a screen.  SOOOO after realizing I have my other Dell to sell, I began contiplating the purchase of a MacBook. THe next day I was introduced to BootCamp by a co-worker…it seemed that this was truely the nail in the coffin of any doubt of the purchase.

Well I picked it up yesterday and now I’m beginning my adventures of Pc to Mac! I’ll keep you all posted!

I being by asking if anyone is running OSX on a netbook (specifically a dell mini9) to which I get the response:

[14:19] <o2Slim> Hi all! Haven’t used a mac in years! I’m thinking of picking up a copy of Leopard tonight and giving it a shot on my mini9, anyone here running that enjoy it?
[14:20] <@krunk-> o2Slim: that would be osx86, which is not acceptable topic here
[14:20] <@krunk-> o2Slim: only non-hacked osx here
[14:21] <@krunk-> thus the ‘mac’ in #macosx
[14:21] <o2Slim> Ohh I’m not planning on hacking anything Just isntalling from disc
[14:21] <@krunk-> o2Slim: you can’t without hacking, osx only installs onto mac hardware without hacking

(Don’t you love elitist asshats who think they know everything about their worshipped OS?)

[14:22] <o2Slim> Well hacking for me is going as far as running a boot loader, no changes to OSX this is a straight retail box I’m purchasing

So at this point he’s pretty much ignoring me and others are starting to be curious as to why he’s acting so hostile towards me (as my scentences above are direct logs) so I throw this out:

[14:26] <o2Slim> So I’m guessing no one running on any netbooks in here that can give me a rundown of how it runs?
[14:26] <@krunk-> o2Slim: as stated, no discussion of pirating here
[14:26] <@krunk-> o2Slim: if you want to use osx and wish to get an accurate assessment of the full experience you should buy a mac
[14:26] <o2Slim> I just told ya lol I’m not pirating anything I’ll  have a shrink wrapped box from Bestbuy sitting nexst to me

That’s when the reminder kicks in

[14:27] <@krunk-> o2Slim: read the EULA, running on none mac hardware is against the terms. so it’s off topic here.
[14:27] <@krunk-> next person to mention hackintosh or link to it gets kicked

That’s why I end with:

[14:28] <o2Slim> Wahh now I know why I stuck away from macs lol elitist asshats
Session Close: Fri May 01 14:28:42 2009

And that’s where I end my trip down reminder lane It amazes me how some people think the best way to welcome new people to the crowd is by criticizing them for the way they want to get into the crowd lol. I mean for christs sake I could have been like “WTF Buy a mac?!? Are you nutts and pay a mac tax out the ass” But No I didn’t, I was nice about it and made it clear I intended to purchase OSX this evening from Bestbuy and install it with out the l33t h4×0r skills breaking up his beloved operating system. The bottom line is you essentially just pissed me off at the mac community, what could have been another mac purchaser in the coming months (I”m always looking at new laptops) you have essentially turned me into someone who will not look at a macbook ever, and not only that I’m sure I’m not wasting my time to purchase and install leopard now, I guess I’ll wait until I stumble upon a copy somewhere along the line.

-o2

The Good:

So to start with I’m quite impressed with memory usage, as I always am when it comes to linux. This has always been an important area for me when it comes to netbooks due to their limited memory campacity. After initial boot and run I’m sitting at only 17% usage of physical vs a 57% usage in Win7!

The initial desktop layout for the netbook edition is quite cool. You control groups located on the left hand side of the screen which contain all shortcuts and programs which you control as well in the main desktop area. So clicking through various groups will show various shortcuts and icons, etc. THis allows for a major amount of accessability in quick fashion, assuming you take the time to customize it.

Install capabilities turned out to be quite simple to what I’m used to on a netbook. The netbook edition download included links to an app that allows you to image a usb thumb drive as a boot and install device. Once booting from that device the setup and install process was setup very well and ran smoothly for this tiny piece of hardware!

The Eh

I still feel like Linux is lacking in a lot of respects for end-user friendliness. What I mean is if you run into any problems or issues or want to do something that’s off the beaten path be prepared for a headache if you’re not familiar with Linux. I’ll get more into that at some other point!

The Bad is Still Bad

Like always, I like to bitch a bit about linux. (Like that sentence?) After the bliss of install and initial mem usage I was off to install some after install applications. Things were going well until…….the damn thing ran out of harddrive space. Now of course I would normally kick my own ass for this BUT the install (which I was so happy with) defaulted to allocating only 2.5 gigs for itself by default. THis doesn’t allow a lot! So what happend? Of course I got an eronious error message. Upon investigation of a bunch of log spew (remember not end-user friendly) I was able to figure out the lack of space being the problem. Well this is simple I thought right? Not so fast, it’s not that simple! I wanted to go uninstall some applications that I installed already to make room for a parition manager, in hopes of resolving the problem. Go figure… can’t uninstall the apps. WHy? “No Space Available” WTF?!?! TO UNINSTALL SOMETHING?!?!? THis is getting a bit nutts. So I try a few other odds and ends to no avail. Eventually I just jump directly into the filesystem in a desperately frustrated attempt at manually deleting junk. Whatdya know, the same problem. “Not Enough Space for File operation”. So let me get this straight, I don’t even have enough space to delete files to free up space. At this point I figured I has slipped into a paradox and was eargerly awaiting the implosion of the universe. Wel you’re still reading this so that didnt’ happen now did it? Anyways…. I attempted a reboot in recovery mode and ran the “Try to Free Up Space” option (yes I’m not joking that’s the option). It didnt’ seem to do anythign so I jumped back into a normal reboot to find it had actually freed up a whopping 4.8 megs. At this point I figure I can go back into the software package manager and try again. At this point though the software package manager is throwing a “major” error and won’t start anymore, again, no reason given. However, it was kind enough to give me some console commands to run in an attempt to fix the problem (end user damnit, end user!! WHy can’t the dialog error run this command?).

A couple more steps here and there and a few more details that I left out cause I frankly didn’t feel like ranting and writing that much detail, but in the end I gave up and reinstalled the netbook edition. But on the install I made sure to do a much larger parition

-o2

If all goes well I might have something by the beginning of next week! At that point I’m going to also submit to download.com and a few other sites which should boost visibility on the app!  

-o2

What I’m talking about here is linux and it’s jump through x amount of hoops to do somehting simple. Seriously, there’s no arguing here linux fans it’s plain and simple to see the issue I’m ranting about. For example I updated to Ubuntu 9.04 last night, what did I get for my troubles? A nice new install of linux and and everything else was okay I guess (Thought I was going to swing that different eh?) Anyways… The problems began when I went to re-enable desktop effects. A simple non-needed feature I know but that’s not the point or the problem. What began as a simple switch on of a feature turned into a long drawn out thorn in the ass. let’s begin…

So I attempt to turn on desktop effects. The message I get instead is “Cannot Enable Desktop Effects”…. …    …   …   . hmm okie dokie. Well that’s a helpful message. So after some poking I realize that I need to install the nVidia display driver (not sure why I never had to before, but I suppose I do now).  Okay simple enough right? Let’s download the driver. Okay downloaded. So instead of just running the .run file like an EXE on windows you have to run it as a script in the terminal (cause it is a script). For those who don’t know the terminal program is a the command line interface. SOOO I go out to the command line and run the various commands to navigate to the directory where the driver install is stored, then I run the command to begin the script. Almost done right? Well not so fast I get an error telling me I have a graphical interface running which needs to be shut down, this would be my desktop enviornment, Gnome. Well I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to shut Gnome down and there doesn’t seem to be any help or docs to tell me how to! So it’s off to the interwebs. After some good amount of searching through elitest ass remarks and comments about how easy this is and I hsould just “know how” (another problem with linux here) I found a post informing me of some command line options to help me out. Ready for this?

1. su (Change to root)
2. /etc/init.d/gdm stop
3. sh nvidiadriver.run
4. /etc/init.d/gdm restart

Although that seems simple if you’re an end user who’s not looking to be a linux guru then you would have zero, and I mean 0, nadda, zip, ideas on how to do that.

All of that to install a simple driver. And yet I still see a selling point from linux fan boys of “linux doesn’t need drivers” Well I’ll be damned….

Go to the page!

Changes:

v0.8

- Added New palettes for Hamma and Nabbi bead types
- Added combined palettes of Hamma, Nabbi, and Perler beads
- Added read out of bead color to pegboard view when mouse is hovering over the pegboard image
- Added ability to change palettes from the main screen and rescan image, without having to reload image
- Added Copy and Paste ability to palette editor (speeds up custom palette creation)
- Fixed a few crashes, possibly introduced a few as well  Be sure to report em if ya find em! 

I’ll hope to have something up before I leave for my trip on Friday. If not it will have to wait a week. I don’t think many people are eagerly awaiting its arrival anyways .

Also on another exciting not, turns out that intergrating this with google maps and address geocoding isn’t all that difficult so look for that in the coming month or so.

So of course as I mentioned I went to the Motley Crue concert last night. This is the 3rd to last stop on the Saints of Los ANgeles tour, and hopefully the other shows closer to the start of the tour were better. The night started out quite good with a round of some of the Crue on Rock Band 2 followed up by sme beers and onto the show!

Got downtown 10 moinutes before the door open time at 6:30.  Made another stop for a beer or two at the bars then it was off to find our seats. Some band (”THe last Las Vegas”, I believe) was on stage performing early, seems like they were the sound check band .  Pic of them to the right.                                             (The Last Las Vegas)

 Once The last las vegas completed their set things were prepped for Theory of A Dead Mn. Not sure who they are either, but oh well. I wasn’t really paying much attention to their set as well, more wrapped up in people watching and beer drinking. 

(Thoery of A Dead Man)   

                                             (Hinder)

Hinder was now up, wasn’t thrilled to see them either, don’t care for them much. So once again it was time to grab another beer and pay more attention to people watching then Hinders performance.

Now it was Motley Crues turn to take stage. Things were getting setup and I couldn’t help but notice the arena was not really filling up. Seemed some of the posts I red from the motleycrue.com forums about the shows being half empty had some validity to their claims.  Oh well, I was still gettin pumped for them to come on stage, the last show I saw with them was the Red WHite And Crue tour which rocked the feaking house down. Loved the show and was hoping to get something similar.

Music started to fade up, lights dropped out and the show began! Opening up was the unusual choice of Kickstart My Heart. The curtains on the stage dropped to reveal quite a simple and bland stage setup, it wasn’t nearly as in-depth and detailed as it had been in their last tour. I was actually surprised that Hinders stage setup actually closely rivaled the Crues. As the song got into it I was deeply saddned when Vince Neil attempted to belt out the first couple of lines, skipping ever other word (literally, I’m not kidding almost every other word of the song was dropped out). Then the next blow to my excitement surfaced, as the song closed out, without hardly skipping a beat the blew right into the next song. It was painfuly obvious their goal was to roll through these songs quickly. 

As in previous shows I was expecting some time in between songs and for band members to have their own performances. It would have brought a lot more to last nights show. For the most part the show continued on exactly as described above, Vince Neil skipped most words and attempted to let the audience sing more of the songs then they needed to.

Overall the show was fairly uneventful. If future shows continue like this, I think it’s time for the crue to hang it up and part ways with the outstanding crareer they rode for the past 29 years. 

Application Monitoring Setup.

The Heatmap Preview (Mouse activity over internet Explorer)

HEatMap options:

Week 3 with my Dell Mini9 rocking windows 7 and things are still going well! Looks like Microsoft just released the first patch for 7’s beta that fixes the first critical! I’d say that’s a pretty good staqrt, eh? I’ll be posting some benchmarks of my own soon on by day to day routines with Wndows 7 and my mini 9 (maybe, if there’s time ).

I’m really enjoying the speed and memory footprint so far. I have the 1gig mini and with 5 desktop widgets the full gfx desktop theme running and I’m sitting at 56% ram usage. THe atom processor actually kicks out HD streaming from netflix just fine and runs dvds from mem cards flawlessly.

My setup with microSD cards has been working really well. I rip my DVDs to microSD as well as my application CDs to ISOs which I can mount on the mini with virutal cd.  Effectively this allows me to have all my apps, dvds etc on a collection of microSD cards with me almost all the time. check out NewEgg for great prices on the cards, as a matter of fact I got a bunch of 4gig micros for 7.00 shipped when they were running a sale!

I’m thinking about adding a few more features to it as well so if you have suggestions please let me know!

Anyyyyywayy, enough about me lets take a look at the patch shall we! Here’s the patch notes. Well I’m defeintely happy with the updates to the smoker, the tank, and the boomer! I guess I can be happy for the update to the hunter, but not really.  I still see the constant shoving ability of the non-infected as a major drawback to the hunters primary attack. Granted if you take your time as hunter and creep creep creep all around and whatnot you can get some good jumps. But, in the end anyone with talent to set a spark with the right mouse button (and that’s damn near anyone) can shove the hunter away! I know it was said to have been fixed in the last patch, but i didn’t notice much of a difference!

Sooo, the tank changes. I’m extremely pleased about the fix for the slow down of the tank through small spaces. You all know the spot I’m talking about on no mercy at the top of the elevator, yeahhh that spot, you know the one. It’s not to fun to be a tank there is it? Well now, hehe NOWWW , we’re going to see a difference in that spot! Also, another thing to be thankful for is the smacking around more than 1 player at once. I know some whiners who are going to be pissed about this one but hey, l2nothideinthecorner.

Smoker is gonna be smokin it up! Let’s get this straight, I *HATE* the damn smoker tounge (or is it intestines?), I can’t ever seem to shoot that dman thing properly and on target all the time. It seems my luck is changing for the better, not only can I now shoot through normal zomboids, the cone of hit detection it seems has been increased!

And finally the boomer, it gives me great pleasure to think when I hurl my fat burping ass off a building onto a pile of unsuspecting players that a random stray bullet fired into the air amist a momentary celebration won’t cause my exploding excrements to burn up harmlessly in the increasing density of the atmosphere ten feet above.

Did that seem like a run on sentence?

So NOW the BeadHelper page is back online in good form! I’ll add a bit more updates toit thorughout the evening, I think. But I’ll also be bringing up a lot more pages online and redoing a few new things. 

And now that I know that the WYSIWYG editor ISN’T really WYSIWYG I can go about my editing business and look forward to some sexier pages!