Monday, June 21, 2010

Airbnb sounds cool, but I really want Walk-in-closet-to-go

I don't like packing.

When I look around my house, I see the progress I've made towards living a less-stuff lifestyle, such as advocated by Paul Graham, among many others, (see Stuff.) Still, I don't think I'll reach the point where I can comfortably live out of a suitcase or a backpack without significantly reducing the quality of my life.

So what about a service more like AirBnB + PODS + A Closet organizer something like this + Robotic movers similar to these = Easy, comfortable, continuous travel.

Just playing with numbers on the back of an envelope, I think this would be both possible and cheap, in the near future.


Monday, June 7, 2010

Using Apache Camel from Clojure

I've been looking at Apache Camel for a project at work, and had a bit of trouble getting it working from Clojure, so I wrote this up in case anyone has the same issues.

The first example in Camel in Action watches a directory for new files, and copies them to an output directory. Here are the steps to get that running in Clojure, using leiningen.

  • Create your input and output directories
  • Create a new leiningen project
  • Add the following to the project.clj

  • run lein deps
  • Add the following to your src/org/whitlark/fc.clj (or whatever your last name is ;-)

Part of what screwed me up was the fact that you need to include spring in the project in order to get camel to work properly.

You can also use a macro to make the code even cleaner, like this:

Which I think compares nicely to the original Java:

I'm sure there are more improvements possible, but this got me started.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Extending the range of a PS3 controller.

Just plug a short usb cable (I use 12"), and leave the other end unplugged. The cable seems to act like an antenna, giving you a better connection. I've not done any tests to see exactly how much you can get, but I get at least another 10'.

I'm thinking about opening up the controller and soldering an antenna to the usb enclosure. If I do that, I'll post instructions/video.