sean, Author at Scrollin' On Dubs

Jun 20

What does the ocean sound like 100ft below the surface?

Sport & Health 3 Comments »

dive flag.jpg The bubbles cascading past your mask at that depth sound like glass beads clinking together. My friend and I just got back from San Carlos Mexico where we just completed our open water scuba certifications. I posted pics and two videos. The night dive and swimming with sea lions were the two highlights for me. A couple things that would have been good to know in hindsight for anyone who’s considering doing it:

Contrary to what the study book says, decongestants are apparently no longer contra-indicated before diving. I didn’t have ear troubles but my buddy had problems clearing the first day and she took a decongestant the second day and had zero trouble after that.

They make water-tight plastic cases for most digital cameras that let you take your existing digital camera underwater to great depths (~130ft). I have the Canon SD 550 and I could get one of these and take it under water. The disposable underwater cameras you buy at the drug store take fair pics but are only rated to about 30ft, can’t do video and after you pay developing charges end up costing about $30. If you plan to dive a lot, you don’t need to buy a fancy underwater camera- just one of those cases for your digital camera.

A hammock would be money the boat. SCUBA is an extremely mellow experience underwater and then you come back up and it’s equally relaxing hanging out on the boat in between dives. The only thing that would have made the boat time even better would be to get one of those cheap nylon hammocks and string it up. Granted, it totally depends on the boat and the size of the group but this is something that would have made an awesome addition.

If you’re in AZ and thinking about learning to dive, I highly recommend the good folks at Ocean Planet SCUBA– they were extremely knowledgeable in the water and fun people to hang out with on the surface.

Jun 12

How to produce a screencast in iMovie that doesn't look like crap

Apple, Tutorials 7 Comments »

I had a terrible time trying to get a high-quality movie produced from a simple screen capture yesterday. After much googling it seemed there was no consensus on how to produce a quality screencast using iMovie. I solicited the advice of the helpful Refresh Phx people and after some tinkering found the export settings that produce an acceptable result. I captured the screen video using a neat little app called iShowU (which is like a shareware Camtasia for the Mac). I then brought the clips into iMovie. The first attempt at exporting produced this which was unacceptable quality. The key to getting the quality result involved these things:

Make sure you start the new project as HDV 720p

When you’re ready to publish choose File > Export > Quicktime > Expert Settings

Choose Options and set the size to match the original resolution of the captured video and adjust quality using the following:

The final result ended up like which is not perfect but looks WAY better than the default output.

Jun 08

JumpBox demo at Refresh Phoenix

Arizona, Nerd, Speaking No Comments »

We had the chance Tuesday night to demo the Trac JumpBox we just released to a small crowd at Refresh Phoenix. It was a decent showing with about forty people and six demos from local AZ companies that were all doing interesting things. The Trac JumpBox was well-received and a few developers who had set it up previously remarked that it would indeed save them days of tedious work. Erica Lucci did a fantastic summary of the demos and a few others have posted their thoughts. Thanks to Acme Photography for permission to republish the photo below. AZ is still relatively fragmented with pockets of smart people creating innovations in isolation. It’s great to see groups like Refresh bringing together the people that are working on interesting projects. The next demo night is scheduled for October. If you’re in the Phoenix Metro area and have something neat to show off, get in touch with Erica.

Jun 05

Trac integrated with Subversion – now installable on any OS in 30sec

Nerd 3 Comments »

We just released the Trac/SVN Development JumpBox. This is a virtual appliance that integrates the popular SVN source control system with Trac for documentation and issue tracking. We’re excited about this JumpBox because it’s the first one that takes a massively complicated install (a process which can take the experienced developer two days) and reduces it to a 30sec task.

If you don’t know what source control is or why you should use it, read this.

If you know what source control is but don’t know why you should use Subversion, read this.

If you use Subversion currently but don’t see why you should integrate Trac,

And if you already use Trac/SVN and don’t understand why you should use JumpBox to skip setup, read this and then read this.

As with all JumpBoxes, you can use it perpetually for free if you don’t mind having our navigation and don’t need access to the premium features. During the remainder of the release candidate phase (approx 3wks) you can still unlock the premium features and get shell access and automated backups without paying. With today’s other releases of Drupal and Dokuwiki this brings the total to 9 Open Source applications currently available. If you’re in Phoenix, we’ll be at Refresh Phoenix tonight demo’ing the Trac JumpBox. We’ll be shipping production releases of all applications July 1st. Get ’em while you’re still able to unlock them for free!

Tagged with: suppressrevivepost

Jun 04

Plums get no love

Ponderings 13 Comments »

I was just thinking plums are completely under-rated. I just had one and it was delicious. But when was the last time you heard of a dessert with a plum in the name? Think about it:

Strawberries get shortcake

Bananas get splits

Blueberries get muffins

Lemons get meringe

Apples get fritters (whatever those are)

Cherries get pie and to be on top of a lot of other desserts

Peaches get cobbler

Oranges get juice

Even limes get keylime pie (i would never think to make a pie with limes)

The list goes on but plums get zero. They’re like the ostracized fruit of the produce section. If anyone has connections at a supermarket we should seriously try to hook plums up with some affirmative action. Or at least lobby to get them featured on the Iron Chef or something – I bet those guys could make a kickass pie with plums if we just gave ’em a chance. Buy a plum next time you shop and throw it on some ice cream, you will be amazed.

What other fruit do you know of that’s neglected?

Jun 01

Founders At Work Digest complete

Entrepreneur, JumpBox 3 Comments »

Well May is over and I finished yesterday the last of the posts on the Founders At Work Digest. The book by Y Combinator co-founder Jessica Livingston was dense with practical advice from people who had built and sold successful startup technology companies. I started taking notes and had originally intended to write-up a single post summarizing my thoughts but I ended up with way too many thoughts and decided to do the “post a day for the month of May” series instead.

So what is the secret sauce that freed these founders from the laws of physics that bind the rest of us and allowed them to create amazing companies that changed the world? While there is no single “success chromosome” that can be identified, there were definite themes and character traits that became apparent across all the stories. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a startup. If you’re thinking about buying it, scan the digest first for the major takeaways and decide if it’s worth it. I summarized each story and peppered the commentary with anecdotes from our own founder perspective having built JumpBox from scratch over the past year. I hope you find it useful. Enjoy!