Drew Marsh: Drew's Blog::Personal

Vegas Baby!

Thu, 30 Jan 2003 17:28:46 GMT

So, I went out to Vegas last weekend for the Super Bowl. It's somewhat of a new ritual that my buddies and I go out there. I took the Bucs on the money line and won myself a decent amount. I was soooo close to winning a hefty prop bet too. I had placed $50 on the fact that there would be a 2pt conversion. Three friggin' tries the Raiders had!!! They missed them all. I held my breath while they reviewed the third to see if the guy would have landed in bounds, but alas there was no irrefutable evidence to overturn the call. It would have paid +300. *sigh*

Unfortunately, I gave over half of it back on the damn Craps tables. We just couldn't get a break this weekend when it came to the tables. For anyone who plays, it was basically the annoying pattern of the shooter getting a point, you putting up your odds, place bets, etc. and then the next roll the shooter would seven out. There were only two streaks the entire weekend where more than two points were made by the same shooter. You just can't win under those conditions, unless you're a "Don't" player, but then everyone else at the table hates you. ;) I think I made the most money playing Carribean Stud Poker this weekend, which is ironic because it's got some of the, if not the, worst odds in the house.

As long as you go out there realizing that the odds are against you and you don't have any silly superstitions, you can always have a good time... and that's exactly what we did.

Bloggers XBox Live Competition?

Thu, 23 Jan 2003 16:43:26 GMT

xbox. Looks like a few people liked the bloggers xbox session idea, but I need some practice, I just got a schoolin' from James. My gamertag is zak42. [Simon Fell]

Ooooh... I missed the original post, but I'd love to get in on the action. My XBL gamertag is drub0y. I'm big on MechAssault and MotoGP. I was a beta tester for the service and while I think it's great and has an insane amount of potential, I'm still waiting for the breakthrough game that keeps me online for days at a time. I'm a big fan of racing games, so I'm looking forward to PGR2. I'm also a big fan of fighting games, but for some reason the recently released and soon to be released fighters don't seem to think there's much value in online play. Capcom vs. SNK EO, which is supposedly due out early next month, is the only fighting game I know of that's got XBL support. Of course, what we're all really waiting for is... Halo2! :)

NFL: Niners should have been flagged for interference

Mon, 06 Jan 2003 21:57:38 GMT

So, FWIW, I feel somewhat better about the debacle that happened yesterday. I couldn't figure out why the PI didn't offset the illegal man downfield, but now I know... the refs screwed up. I guess none of that crew will be making it to the Super Bowl.

NOTE: I'm not using this as an excuse as to why the Giants lost. They certainly blew a huge lead and made enough mistakes that they deserved for it all to come down to that kick.

Giants Defeat Themselves Again

Mon, 06 Jan 2003 01:08:37 GMT

They were winning by 24 points, they blew that. They had the field goal to win, they bached the snap and hold. Giants close out their season the way they started it: defeating themselves. Un-f'n-believable.

Happy New Year (I Finally Fixed Radio)

Thu, 02 Jan 2003 20:52:24 GMT

Happy New Year!!!

Well... I thought for sure I was permanently screwed, but I managed to get this thing back up and running. I had some problems with Radio complaining about corrupt databases, but I've managed to get a "last known good" situation working thanks to some aggressive backing up.

I'm somewhat po'd that I've missed out on some really good discussions over the past few months, but at least I'm back up and running (for now).

I spent my new year's eve with friends in a room in the Marriott Marquis overlooking Times Square. We were on the 38th floor, just about level with the ball itself. It was an awesome experience. Here's a couple photos of the ball dropping: during and after. Disclaimer: camera operator was under the influence at the time and cannot be held responsible for poor angle and/or focus. ;)

Congratulation To Peter Drayton

Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:54:05 GMT

A belated congratulations going out to Peter Drayton who has landed his "dream job": working as a Program Manager for the .NET CLR team. Awesome! I hope to join the MS legion some day, but not until I collect on my current venture. ;)

Bird of Prey Unleashed

Fri, 18 Oct 2002 21:50:30 GMT

Boeing Bird of Prey Stealth Fighter [Slashdot]

Two words: bad ass. If this was designed in the 90's and is just being announced publicly now, can you imagine what kind of technology they have under top secret wraps these days?

Roomba Floor Vacuum Robot

Fri, 18 Oct 2002 20:33:25 GMT

Floor Vacuum Robot for $200 [Slashdot]

Alright, this thing totally rules. Call me lazy, but I really hate sweeping. I have two cats, one of which is a Persian (long hair!), and you can't even begin to imagine how much hair ends up on the floor in a one week timespan. Not to mention my floors are all wooden, so I end up with the cat hair equivalent of tumble weeds blowing across the room if I open a window. I actually wonder if this thing could even handle it. :)

Is This Thing On?

Thu, 17 Oct 2002 01:49:42 GMT

Hi all, sorry I've been offline, but I bought this wicked new laptop last month (a Toshiba Satellite 5105-S701) and have been doing all my work from it instead of my desktop. I've been meaning to transfer Radio over, but wasn't sure what was involved. Then, Sam contacted me today wondering why I haven't been updating so that was enough motivation for me to do a little research. As it turns out, as long as you copy it to another machine with the exact same OS and file path, you can just do a straight deep folder copy and everything will "just work". So assuming this post makes it, that's all it takes. :)

A Little More About Mimeo

Thu, 15 Aug 2002 05:52:47 GMT

Drew asks that you use Mimeo if you want to print out the Wrox ASP.NET Web Matrix book.

If you've never used Mimeo. It is awesome. It is easy to install and use. It works from any application that has a printer selection dialog[1]. I've used them a couple of times. I printed out Roy Thomas Fielding thesis on Representational State Transfer (a.k.a. REST). And I've printed out Geological findings for the Arizona area. Everytime I get an awesome bound notebook delivered via FedEx.

[1] In all honesty, I've only tried Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word. I've only done black and white printings with no complex graphics. :-) [News from the Forest]

First off, thanks for the kind review Justin!

The beauty of our client software, other than the fact that it's free, is that it really does accept print jobs from any program in Windows. You do have to be concious when printing graphics however due to DPI issues. For example, if you're printing web sites, which usually use 72dpi images geared towards monitor output only, you can't expect those images to come out looking stellar when printed as even the average home user's printer prints at 600dpi+ these days. However, this is usually not a problem since most end users who print on a regular basis are aware of DPI issues already.

The truth is, the success of our company can mainly be attributed to our client software. If you look at the online printing sector, most companies that exist[ed] (most have died) allow print files to be uploaded via the web browser. This seems like a great idea, right?? I remember the marketing cries that went something like:

"No software to install! Runs from any OS that has a web browser!"

Yeah... right. Now, consider these little factoids:

They can only support a finite set of file formats.
For every file format they support, they have to have a licence for the applications which print those formats.
They have to write an entire architecture for actually loading the uploaded file on the OS from which the application that handles the file format came and actually print the file (hint: doesn't scale well at all). Yes, some files formats have applications on multiple platforms, like Office, but it's rare.
They have to have every font that a person could possibly use licensed and installed, which is basically impossible since I could be using a font Joe Artist created and put online in my file.

The list actually goes on, but it's late so I'll stop there since I think I've illustrated my point.

Another major factor in Mimeo's success is that every single document is printed out of the same facility off of the same set of super high-performance printers which are calibrated and constantly monitored by our in-house printer technicians. Other companies will print your document in their branch office closest to you off a printer that is essentially no better than the one in your home or office. This can lead to quality defects such as color differences, alignment issues, etc. This doesn't seem too bad until you consider the scenario where you ship the same document to more than one recipient and those recipients live near two totally separate branch offices. Those recipients may get documents that look completely different from one another. Mimeo sacrifices same day delivery, essentially what you gain from branch offices, for quality control. As an added bonus, we also don't incur any of the expenses associated with running all those branch offices*.

Mimeo is about as "brick and mortar" as a company can get. We essentialy have no costs unless an order is placed, since everything in our inventory, which consists mainly of paper stock and bindings, never goes bad or out of date. A user places the order, we fulfill the order... it's just that simple. ;)

* Nor did we have to shell out who knows how much for stupid little volkswagon beetles which were used for same day delivery. Ahh... remember the Internet boom? And to think, they received way more funding than we ever have. They're dead; our sales are constantly rising. Victory sure tastes sweet! :)

He's Alive!

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 02:41:59 GMT

Thought you got rid of me, eh?! ;) Heheh, sorry for the silence for the past two or so weeks. We've been working pretty hard on reaching code-freeze for the next version of the Mimeo web site. I'm happy to say we reached that milestone last night and we're going to deliver this weekend.

This is the third major upgrade to the site since we launched in '99, so we're pretty much keeping in line with the yearly upgrade schedule most products seem to have. We've of course had minor upgrades in between, but those are never as radical as the major versions.

We've done many practice runs at converting our database schemas and releasing the code is a simple xcopy. We had three Murphy's law encounters last week as we were driving for code complete! Hopefully we can avoid any such encounters release night.

A Replacement for WTC

Sat, 13 Jul 2002 02:20:25 GMT

WTC 2002. Very ambitious and great looking plans for the replacement for the World Trade Center towers, dubbed The World Trace Center 2002. Requires Flash 6 (and it didn't seem happy to work with Mozilla here, so you may need to revert to IE). [The .NET Guy]

Very, very ambitious. It certainly is a beautiful structure and the idea for the memorial sounds really nice. The voting system currently shows 89% of the votes in favor of the concept. Have a look for yourselves.

Mimeo lands $6.5 million financing

Fri, 28 Jun 2002 18:30:34 GMT

Here's a link to some quick coverage. Guess this means investors feel we've got ourselves a good product here. I know I certainly do! ;) Congratulations to my fellow employees who have worked hard and sacrificed during these tough times.

We're currently putting the finishing touches on our next-generation offering. I can't actually discuss the details yet, but suffice to say that we listened to what our users wanted, picked a few of the most requested features and that's what we're delivering (soon).

Tag's Trance No More

Sat, 22 Jun 2002 22:58:19 GMT

Damn it, this really sucks. Tag's Trance was one of my favorite streams. RIP. :(

Sun, 09 Jun 2002 21:27:24 GMT

I just joined NYC Bloggers. I'm off the 8th street stop on the N/R line. Speaking of which, time to venture outdoors to enjoy some of this fine city. I just bought a new pair of Salomon TR blades at the Blades shop down the street, so I'm psyched to try them out!