Kim Heintz
designer + coder, with an evil laugh
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Posts
- May 14, 12
My instructor, Christine asked what I wanted to work on today. I told her I wanted to not only work on the breast stroke, but also the deep end as well. She was excited and was happy that I said that.
She had me practice my strokes for the first part of class. I totally suck at the front stroke. Towards the end of class, she asked if I was ready. She wanted me to swim the breast stroke from one end to the other and that she would be right by myside.
And so I began. Kick and breath. As I started to swim closer to the line that marked the deep end, I kept mentally telling myself that I can do this. A few strokes passed the deep end, the fear slowly started to settle in. My heart started to pump a little quicker, and the adrenaline was kicking in. I kept telling myself to breath bubbles and kick, doing my best to push the fear aside. When I finally got to the wall, I grabbed the wall and took a deep breath.
“You did it!” says my instructor and reaches over for a high five.
I told her that I started to get nervous after I passed the line and that I kept telling myself to stay calm. She told me that I was doing good and that my breathing was good and that I did a good job. I asked her if I was supposed to tread now.
She said “Well class is almost over, how about you do the back stroke back?”
And so I swam.
- Apr 23, 12
Look at your toes, blow bubbles, kick with your hip, turn and breathe.
Damn I suck at this. I forgot everything. But it’s okay. I’m learning and will get better. I WILL CONQUER my fear of the deep end. - Apr 08, 12
I’m either active or passive. Ever so often I will chime in, but most of the time I prefer to be passive. Just simply sitting there and observing. Soaking in the conversation and reflecting.
- Apr 08, 12
Easter has always been a strange holiday for me. I don’t recall any memories with my family. Easter for Vietnamese people, well at least in my family was going to church. I only learned about decorating the eggs from school – I think from ESL.
It wasn’t till middle school and later on in life, that I found that there are other parts to Easter. There’s the egg hunt and the food. I remember going to a sleepover during Easter – and that was when I was introduced to hunting for Easter eggs. It wasn’t until I met my husband and started to spend Easter meals where I discovered, hey there is ham and Easter baskets!
Today , I celebrate Easter with my in laws and my later on my friends. Oh, the things I will learn.
- Apr 02, 12
I turn 30 this year and there is so much stuff that I want and need to do. It’s all about the priorities.
- Mar 28, 12
My mission was to make my own white board complete with framing and coming up with the best solution to hang it up with out causing too much damage to the wall as well as the white board.
Materials:
- The thing to write on:
- Whiteboard – can use: Tileboard, Melamine or Showerboard
- I went to Lowe’s and picked up Wainscott’s Mark-R-Board (1/8″ x 48″ x 32″). Costs: $9.56 (w/o tax). I don’t know the type of abuse this can take, but we will see…
- Glass – hit up an art store and they can actually cut glass to suit your needs.
- Whiteboard – can use: Tileboard, Melamine or Showerboard
- Frame/trim:
- Tileboard Moulding (plastic) (cheapest)
- How this works: You just slide it on the edge of the board. I found these (they fit 1/8″) because it fits the Mark-R-Board easily and was super cheap. Just cut it to size with corners and bamn! Because it’s plastic, the best way I found to cut these is by scoring it and then snapping it. You can also see if Lowe’s can cut it. Once it’s cut and fits the frame, you will need to put glue on and slide it on the frame so that the trim will stay on.
- Cost: At Lowe’s it cost $2.28 a piece and you will need 2 per board.
- U-frame kits/Sectional kits/Frame kits (metal) (expensive) – These are used to make your own picture frame.
- How this works: These come in pairs. You just buy it to fit the size and put it together. You will be essentially framing the whiteboard. You can then put backing on it to make your your white board stiffer (but this may make it weigh more). Put in spacers (which comes with the kit) and it will essentially hold it in place. Then you will need to get some picture hanging supplies. Even though this can get expensive (especially if it’s a big piece of white board), hanging these up and taking it down is a breeze.
- Cost: For the 48″ x 32″ Mark-R-Board, it will cost about $30 for the frame.
- Wiremold (plastic) – these are used to hide cables along the wall. Not to bad.
After making a frame – had my husband drill a couple of holes. I also attached velcro to the markers and the trim so it would just stick there. Looks pretty good.Note: Started this post on 9/12/09 – and now just published it. Yowser. - The thing to write on:
- Mar 28, 12
What club is this? It’s the I-lost-a-baby/miscarriage club. Did you know this is common for first time pregnancy? October of 2011, I was pregnant. I was around 5/6 weeks. My original thoughts were to wait till after my first trimester to tell people but we ended up telling my family and close friends. It was really hard to keep a secret!
A week or so after we told people, my husband and I went for another ultrasound. It is Wednesday, November 9. I was so excited. Maybe we can see what Peanut looks like now! Peanut is what we nicknamed the baby. I originally came up with the idea of Alien but my husband gave me a funny look.
Our original doctor that we were seeing was out of town, so we met with someone else along with a couple of students in who were in their doing their residencies. And that’s when the fucking bomb was dropped.
My husband and I were in shocked and I started to cry. We got fucking blindsided.
The doctor that we met was under the impression that we knew…it would seem our original doctor had left notes that mentioned that there was a good chance that my pregnancy was false. Why didn’t he tell us this so that we were better prepared? The last time I saw him he was optimistic and it didn’t seem like we had anything to worry about. It turned out I had a blighted ovum. Think of an egg that had no yolk. I had the sac that was growing but no baby inside.
The doctor gave us our options. We could: wait it out and eventually miscarry, take a pill, or have a D&C. I couldn’t think. I was devastated. The doctor said he would have someone call the next day and if anything get bloodwork done now in case I wanted to have the procedure.
I sat in the room crying waiting for the nurse, and people are walking by me. I told my husband to go the desk and pay our co-pay. The nurse came in after I sat there for 10 minutes. She asked what was wrong. How did she not know? Did she not know why I was there? I said “I’m not pregnant anymore.” Damn, did that hurt to say that out loud. My husband was standing there and getting upset and frustate on how long it was taking. Finally, she got started. But then ended up having trouble and she started to poke around with the needle looking for a vein. She does this as I continue to cry. She finally gives up and goes for the other arm. Finally, it’s done and my husband and I head out. We originally drove separately. He called into work and I told him to call my friend Matt to inform my work. (It’s nice having a friend that works where you do).
I managed to drive myself home. I went upstairs to the bedroom and crawled under the covers and continue to cry. My husband comes upstairs and holds me. After a couple of hours, we talk. He would be the one to tell people what happened. What an awesome husband I have. We decided to have the procedure. There’s no way I could wait and I hear the pill can be traumatic.
Having something like this happen…well it fucked with my mind. My emotions were overboard. Although, it probably didn’t help that I was hormonal. I felt helpless and that it was my fault cause I didn’t do something. One of the things that irked me was the responses. There are some things that I didn’t need to hear, such as “Oh, it will be okay.”, “Technically, you weren’t pregnant cause there was no baby” or “You will get pregnant next time.”
Hearing all of this put me into a rage. I was so fucking sad and mad. How do you fucking know if I will be pregnant next time? And what do you mean it will be okay? It’s not like I fucking lost at poker. And what happens if I do miscarry again? Then what? Why would I want to go through that again?
I hate being so sensitive. I know people mean well, but still. Now when I hear the phrase “Don’t be so sensitive,” I get sad and angry.
Two days later after we found out about the blighted ovum, I had my D&C procedure. Friday, November 11 – A day that I won’t forget. A few days later I ended up back in the hospital due to stomach pains. Not because of the procedure, but because of the pain meds they gave me.
I wasn’t able to talk about what happened for a two months. It is only now that I am able to write this and not get upset. Funny thing, I started to write this post on 1/3/12 and it is only now that I was able to finish and publish this.
- Mar 01, 12
I’m currently using 5 different websites to bookmark stuff. They are:
- Delicious (me) - been using since April 2006 (Note: I changed from iciskaye to isallcaps and deleted my iciskaye account)
- Tumblr (me) - been using since December 2007
- Zooltool (me) - joined April 2009
- Pinterest (me) - joined October 2011
- Pinboard (me) - joined December 2011
So how the hell did this happen? How did I end up with 5?
I was introduced to Delicious during Graduate school (from Elizabeth Lawley). It was a good way at that time to keep track of my bookmarks. Later on, I started to use Tumblr as a way to post things that I found amusing but didn’t necessarily wanted to bookmark. In addition, the visual layout was much more appealing to me than a straight up list with a bunch of text. (I’m a visual person).
Eventually, I stumbled upon Zooltool and Pinterest and signed up (once I got my invite). These two are very similar to each other…although Zooltool is more of a Pinterest + Pinboard.
Delicious has changed. It’s now starting to look a little like Zooltool.
I signed up for Pinboard because of the whole hoopla with Delicious.
My head hurts. I need to cut down and stick with one or two. So I’ve come up with a set of things that I need and will be doing some investigative work. They are:
- UI
- Easy to bookmark – I don’t like to click a lot
- Easy to search
- Visual appeal (I find things a lot quicker by looking at images)
- Export
- How it works with any other apps that I use
- Link back to the original
The one thing I need to pin down for myself is how I use/view bookmarking (ex the Tumblr blog). Are there things I want to keep so I can remember? I don’t know.
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Posts
I’ll be at Stumptown Comics Fest this weekend! There will be conversations, comradery and cartooning capers. I hope some of you will stop by and say ‘hello’.
Photo documentary series.
There are growing number of people
who have decided to live light on the earth
to not be a part of problem anymore
I spent the last few years with four of them
striving for harmony with nature
in the most pristine corners of United States.Will Smith and Gary Barlow Do ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ Rap - The Graham Norton Show - BBC One (by BBC)
Film: Prometheus Trailer
Title: Out of Darkness
Composer: Dean Valentine
Artist: Judge and Jury - Audiomachine - Deus Ex Machina & Original 1979 ALIEN trailer music (the howls)
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Posts
- May 22, 12
I don’t know why, but ever so often when I am in an xml layout and tried to set a drawable (whether it’s png, .9.png, or even an xml file that contains a selector which has a .9.png) – the width and height of the image gets all out of wack.
For example, I have a test.png and use it in the following code:
I haven’t delved into trying to reproduce it, but I’ve come across it twice when I was working on the project.
The scenarios:
- Using ImageView – setting the android:src – there were some nesting of some components
- Skinning a List Item Row and setting the android:background to an xml that used a selector and the image was .0.png
In both cases, I set the width/height to “wrap_content”.
Solution:
In the java code, I did something like this:
BitmapDrawable bg = new BitmapDrawable(getResources(), BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.test.png));
setBackgroundDrawable(bg);The most important part is the BitmapFactory. Somehow the
getResourcesget messed up. Simply usingsetBackgroundResourcedoesn’t work. All I know is that the BitmapFactory and passing in the first argument correctly is important (ex.context.getResources()). - Mar 28, 12
When you start building custom components in Android, it’s useful to peek around source code. There are three ways to do this:
- Install a Chrome plugin. When you view the Reference doc, you can click a link which will take you to the code.
- Download the source from: http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html. Haven’t tried this cause I have no idea how to use repo.
- View the source files in Eclipse:
- Android 4.0 and up. As long as you have downloaded through the Android SDK Manager – “Sources for SDK”, all you have to do is this: In your project, right click on the android.jar -> Properties -> External Folder -> path_to_android/android-sdk/sources/android-15. Note: android-15 is Android 4.0.3 version.
- Prior to Android 4.0
- There is this plugin – Android Sources (http://code.google.com/p/adt-addons) but I could not get this working with Indigo.
- Go here and download the appropriate source file for the sdk that you need. Using Gingerbread as an example:
- Click: Version 2.3.3 r1 (this is on the right view)
- Click Source Download: android-2.3.3 r1-sources.jar
- Save this file in your: path_to_android/android-sdk/sources/
- Once you finish downloading, go to your project (which you should be using Gingerbread/ 2.3.3)
- Right click on the android.jar -> Properties -> External File -> point to the jar. Note: you can try the External Folder option if that doesn’t work.
- Mar 28, 12
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been learning to program natively in Android. It’s hard transitioning from Flex to Android. The syntax, the development environment, pretty much everything is so new. Did I mention I haven’t touched Java since … Continue reading
- Mar 05, 12Was on a project that was using the Flex SDK 3.2. Unfortunately, I was getting the lovely Flex Data Visualization Trail Watermark even though I have a license. After hitting up Google, I found this. So for those running Flash Builder 4.5.1 and have installed the 3.2 sdk (with data vis tools) running on Windows 7, you need to go open up your license.properties file which can be found: C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Flex And then add this line of code:
flexbuilder3=00000000000000000000 where the zeros are your license. Note: I put in my flex 3 license, not sure if it would work with my flex 4 license. - Feb 27, 12
I’m currently using 5 different websites to bookmark stuff. They are:
- Delicious (me) - been using since April 2006 (Note: I changed from iciskaye to isallcaps and deleted my iciskaye account)
- Tumblr (me) - been using since December 2007
- Zooltool (me) - joined April 2009
- Pinterest (me) - joined October 2011
- Pinboard (me) - joined December 2011
So how the hell did this happen? How did I end up with 5?
I was introduced to Delicious during Graduate school (from Elizabeth Lawley). It was a good way at that time to keep track of my bookmarks. Later on, I started to use Tumblr as a way to post things that I found amusing but didn’t necessarily wanted to bookmark. In addition, the visual layout was much more appealing to me than a straight up list with a bunch of text. (I’m a visual person).
Eventually, I stumbled upon Zooltool and Pinterest and signed up (once I got my invite). These two are very similar to each other…although Zooltool is more of a Pinterest + Pinboard.
Delicious has changed. It’s now starting to look a little like Zooltool.
I signed up for Pinboard because of the whole hoopla with Delicious.
My head hurts. I need to cut down and stick with one or two. So I’ve come up with a set of things that I need and will be doing some investigative work. They are:
- UI
- Easy to bookmark – I don’t like to click a lot
- Easy to search
- Visual appeal (I find things a lot quicker by looking at images)
- Export
- How it works with any other apps that I use
- Link back to the original
The one thing I need to pin down for myself is how I use/view bookmarking (ex the Tumblr blog). Are there things I want to keep so I can remember? I don’t know.
- Feb 27, 12
I’ve been getting back into HTML during my bench time at work. The last time I really touched HTML was back in 2007/2008. I’ve been in Flex land since then. There is so much information and resources available that I found it to be overwhelming. After going through a bunch of resources, I found that I needed to draw up a lesson plan for myself that I can follow, and at least start doing something. Here is the outline that I made for myself:
- Development Tools
- Editors
- Debug Tools
- HTML/CSS
- Read
- Code
- References/Resources
- Javascript
- Read
- Code
- References/Resources
- HTML, CSS & Javascript
- Read
- Code
- References/Resources
Will post the final lesson plan.
- Oct 15, 11
I like Cloud Computing. It makes life easier. The problem with it is being able to access it. Face it, cellular companies are putting a cap on usage. Connection speeds varies. Therefore, whatever I put on the Cloud, I have … Continue reading
- Oct 15, 11
I just received a beta invite to Small Demons. As I was perusing, it reminded me of an idea that I had during my graduate days. As I was looking through the site, I noticed in the footer, there was a link to Freebase.
“Freebase is an open, Creative Commons licensed repository of structured data of almost 22 million entities.”
As I started to go through the Freebase site, I got excited. This is something that I need to make my idea happen.
- Jan 17, 11
I have data all over the place and I generate data on a daily basis. I’m fascinated and scared of my data that is out there in the world.
For the past few years, I have been playing close attention to anything that is related to visualizing data. I’ve come across various terms such as quantified self, lifestreaming, personal data logging, etc.
Regardless of the differences in terminology, I found that each term had a core meaning, which is keeping track of your data and then doing something with it.
I often browse through the many applications/websites that are available to keep track of my data. But I can never jump the hurdle of actually doing it. Why? Privacy. Data portability. I saw on my Google menu there was a tab for Health. Do I really want Google having that information? And what about that whole Delicious bookmarking scare? Everyone (including me) were freaking out because we didn’t know what other app or what to do with our bookmarks if Delicious got shut down.
There are people who could benefit from my data.
Seriously, think about it.
Facebook and Twitter alone carries a lot of information. Imagine if someone wrote a program to log all status/tweets when people are sick. Correlate that data with the weather and reported illnesses from hospitals and doctors. Then cross reference with major events that have happened in the past year. (This is what some will call “Data Mining“).
Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
As I ponder this more and more, I see where the future is heading with this type of personal data logging. There will be more applications in regards to your health. Advertisers, healthcare, and researchers are going to be using this data. Privacy and data portability will still be a relevalent issue and will be of utmost concern.
So what to do?
- Oct 28, 10
LastHistory » Visualizing Last.fm Listening Histories and Personal Streams.
The personal mode looks interesting.
