Jan 16

Boardwalk Empire is an Emmy nominated HBO show about the life and times of Nucky Thompson, a fictional Atlantic City gangster. Watching the show, you don’t realize just how much of it is computer generated special effects. The people at Brainstorm Digital have a reel of before and after footage from the show that will blow your mind when you see how much of 1920s Atlantic City is all in the computer.

Boardwalk Empire VFX Breakdowns of Season 2 from Brainstorm Digital on Vimeo.

Tip: The Loop

Dec 08

[If the headline above sounds like gibberish to you, you have my permission to skip this post.]

I received today one of the first Simple Shields (left) that are prewired for Cool Neon’s wickedly-cool Total Control Lighting — which is my new favorite thing. At right is Seeeduino (a super charged Arduino).

More on my stealth holiday project soon…

Big ups to everyone that’s been helping me: Josh and Karen at Cool Neon, Tully, and of course Chris DeVries!

Nov 26

Amelia (

Millie Messina is a committeewoman in Weymouth Township, New Jersey and she’s a perfect example of a career politician that plays dirty and will stop at nothing to get elected. Don’t let her serene, grandmotherly smile fool you, she’s got a mean streak a mile wide.

Case in point: A few days before the November 8, 2011 election Millie wrote a five-page political tirade filled with vitriol, hatred and more concerning, lies and mailed it to all of the registered voters in Weymouth Township. The first part isn’t illegal of course, it’s well known that Millie is a hateful and vengeful person, so that’s par for the course. In my opinion, the real issue is her lies — and their timing.

You see, Millie’s no stranger to the political ropes, she’s been collecting a salary and padding her pension on the backs of taxpayers for over 30 years. She’s seen it all — including her share of dirty political tricks. For this year’s election she pulled out one of the dirties tricks in the book: an 11th hour letter to voters that twists and distorts facts about her opponents in order to further her political agenda.

Anyone could tell that her little “love letter” was obviously full of lies.

How? It’s easy really. If her claims were truthful she would have distributed the letter in advance of the election. That way voters could digest the information and make up their own minds. Some lead time would also allow the victims of her smear campaign to respond to her allegations well in advance of the election.

But did she do that?  Of course not.

She timed it so that voters would receive her letter on the day before the election

Millie knew that her letter was filled with distortions designed to discredit her political opponents. She also knew that her letter wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. That’s why she mailed it on the eve of the election. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the dirty political playbook, and Millie executed it perfectly, like the seasoned politician that she is.

In fact, her desperate political rant reads more like a dossier of someone planning an attack, rather than an innocent letter. This is also troubling because rather than discussing issues that she has with Township Committee (and perhaps, get them resolved?) she suppressed the information and kept a secret journal of other’s perceived shortcomings. Why did Millie intentionally cover up issues with the Township Committee? So she could “use” the information on election eve in a desperate attempt to mislead her constituents.

Anyone with a shred of fairness would smell a rat here. Why didn’t she schedule a debate? Why didn’t she send a letter to the editor of the newspaper? Because the newspaper wouldn’t print an obvious political attack on the eve of the election without giving the victims a chance to respond. In fact, newspapers have a strict policy about being fair and balanced in their reporting. 

Millie must have missed the class on ethics. And she must have cut the class on morals. Instead it looks like she was teaching the class on how to run a dirty, smear campaign.

Millie will stop at nothing to further her political agenda and her ”friends” should step in line and do as she says, because if you think independently or, heaven help you, have an opinion of your own, you too could find yourself the victim of Millie’s next attack.

[Aside: If Millie made the thousands of copies of her five page manifesto at the Township municipal building, she effectively underwrote her political attack with taxpayer dollars. Millie needs to produce a receipt for the copies she made or promptly reimburse the Township for her late-night use of the Township copier for political slander.]

Aug 20

The following items were stolen from my car today:

 Panasonic Lumix LX5 digital camera – SN: FL0HA001868
 Garmin nüvi 3790T automotive GPS – SN: 1W6024141
 Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset – SN: 1220109CAF

If you find a hit, please report it to me and the Philadelphia 9th District Police Department: (215) 686-3091, refer to report# 1109-0396-35

Please CHECK SERIAL NUMBERS before you things on Craigslist and eBay.
Anyone know of any lost/stolen serial number databases out there?

😥

May 13

Just a quick heads-up that I’m presenting my favorite iPad apps tonight, Friday, May 13, live in the meatspace at the Atlantic City Mac Users Group (@ACAMUG) at 7:30 p.m. If you’re going to be in the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware area please stop by.

ACAMUG meets at the Mays Landing, NJ campus of Atlantic Cape Community College located on Route 322, aka the “Black Horse Pike”, about two miles west of the Hamilton Mall (directions, campus map.) Head to Building M, room M129 — across from Careme’s restaurant.

I’ll be giving away retro PowerPage t-shirts and copies of my book, The Droid Pocket Guide (2nd Ed.). I look forward to meeting you there.

Mar 27

I remember when these chips came out in the 80s and were heavily advertised on television and kids at school would always ask me if I was related to the O’Grady’s. Naturally I’d say that I was and weave some sort of creative tale :)

Tip: Ryan Kaplan

Mar 02

Getting rid of your Droid Pro? Here’s how to do a factory reset (a.k.a. “hard reset) of that device so that your personal information is removed.

Connect your Droid Pro to your computer (via USB) and mount and format the microSD card. If using Apple’s Disk Utility, simply re-partition the card as 1 partition as MS-DOS and you’re all set.

To wipe the phone itself:

  1. Power off the device. If it’s frozen, pull the battery
  2. Press and hold the R and M keys and the Power button until you see a screen with a yellow exclamation mark
  3. Once the yellow exclamation mark appears, release the keys and press the @ key
  4. Use the Volume Up and Volume down buttons to select “wipe data/factory reset”
  5. Choose Yes “delete all user data” press the Return key on the keyboard
  6. On the confirm screen, arrow down to “Yes — delete all user data” – Press the Return key on the keyboard
  7. You’ll see the Wiping Data screem (usually formatting data, then cache
  8. On the third and final Android system recovery screen select “reboot system now” (should be the default)
  9. Your Droid Pro should now go through the process of a hard reset.