claudio rivera

in case you missed it, i added some videos and music samples to my demo reel page. also, i set up my comments to accept gravatars. it’s pretty neat and works across multiple sites, linked by your email address. neat!

oh yeah, i finally started my blogroll. it’s not much now, but they are quality people that you should definitely know.

in more laptop news, the fan is definitely fine. it starts and stops (at both speeds) without a problem, even without i8kfangui. however, everything changes when i run on battery. for some reason, running on batteries causes the fan to never kick on, and the cpu overheats and shuts down. wtf?

and, in other news, i’m really excited about the stuff me and jordan came up with a while back for my lady four. i think the end product is gonna be really good, and i’m glad to hear that the band is stoked on it. as soon as i get something, i’ll throw up some samples.

my laptop has been going strong for almost 2 years now. in terms of technology obsolescence, it’s doing quite well. i was actually thinking about it, the other day. my computer runs just as fast today as it did when i bought it. this is partly due to the memory and hard drive upgrades i’ve done.

anyway, it looks like i jinxed it, because just today, the fan decided to crap out. it went out with a beautiful plume of dust, too. my first thought was that it was smoke, which really made me panic. i immediately hit the power button and sat and pondered it for a while.

i came to the conclusion that the fan was spinning and then abruptly stopped, and the stopping made the dust kick out, much like you would fly out of a car’s windshield, if you weren’t wearing your seatbelt and your car abruptly met a brick wall.

i guess the part that is bugging me the most is that i paid an extra $200 for a year of accident protection (spills, drops, etc.), thinking that it would be good for a guy like me, who is on tour a lot. well, of course, a year went by, and nothing bad happened. it came time to renew my warranty and i thought “you know, i’ve gone this long without any problems, i think i’ll be alright.”

i should’ve just held onto that $200. because, guess what? to get my laptop fixed out of warranty by dell is gonna be $159+. awesome.

on a side note, carla’s hp is also sick. it was randomly turning off. and, just yesterday, it crapped out completely. what are the odds of that? hah.

update: i downloaded i8kfangui and set it the fan to high, manually. it worked just fine. wtf? so, i’m using this program’s automatic fan settings, and we’ll see how things go from here on out. maybe my fan was just dirty and needed to cough up all that dirt? heh.

i’ve been looking online, and there are a few people talking about it, but i thought i’d give my ideas on what is missing from the g1′s maps application.

• the ability for the compass to orient the map, so that you’re viewing it as it is in real life. this is possible with the andnav application, already. why can’t the native app do it?
• the ability to move your current location. when in gps mode, this is irrelevant. but, i’m looking at the 90% of the time, when i don’t want to waste battery, and so i have gps disabled. with gps disabled, my location on the map is usually in the right ballpark, but can sometimes be far off enough to give you inaccurate search results.
• public transit! specifically, here is a very common scenario, and how i’d like it to play out:
  • open up the maps app and find my location
  • click on directions and enter my destination address
  • click on find route
  • now, i should be presented with options: car, walking, or bus
  • i should be able to click bus and have it give me both a map overview and detailed walking and bus schedule information
  • in addition, i should be able to click on the bus stop/station icon on the map and have it pull up schedules for all buses/trains serving that stop. these schedules will also include real-time data that nextrip currently offers.
  • once i’m in transit, the app should pull real-time data for my connecting buses and warn me if i won’t make my connection. it should, then, re-calculate your route and perhaps suggest an alternate route, if there is one.
  • on top of all of that, there should be some way to easily view a system map overlay, which includes scheduled departures and such. in other words, digitized version of the pdf’s that metro transit already offers.

so, that’s it. easy, right? haha.

i wish i knew even a tiny bit of programming, so that i could make these things happen. i’m so jealous of people that know enough to just say “i need xyz feature to work on this” and then just do it. that’s one of the reasons why i was so excited for an open source platform. cause, even though i won’t be (and probably never will be) the one to plug a hole or add a feature, i know that there’s others out there with the talent and time to do it. and for that, i’m thankful.