Daniel Farrell » technology

Another big change, taking a full-time job!

Daniel — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:40:56 +0000

Another big change in life! In a rapid series of events at the end of last week I talked to a recruiter, interviewed for a job, and was offered the job. After a weekend to think about it and “count the cost” of giving up working for myself I have decided to accept the job. In two weeks time I’ll be working for Weinstein Properties doing web application development. I’m excited about this change and look forward to seeing what this next step in my career will hold. Since I’ve now communicated to my clients about it I can tell all of you lovely people about it.

Nerdy stuff: The work will be maintaining/updating some PHP web applications, transitioning some of those to Ruby on Rails, and creating new applications in Ruby on Rails. I’ve got a lot to learn and explore and I’m very excited about it!

Look for some posts about going back into a 9-5 after being self-employed for a few years, I’m sure there will be some transitions!

RVA all atwitter

Daniel — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:45:35 +0000

For those of your not on twitter(or Facebook) you will not have seen that we(Farrell IT and PharrOut) launched a new site today: rvatweets!

Yes, it’s pink. Get over it.

The point of the site is to allow community conversation and reporting over twitter and flickr. Anytime any major event happens in RVA we’ll have a tag on there for it. Tag your content with that tag and your tweets/photos will end up on the site. We hope it will be a great way for people to stay up to date on things and just be a good general resource for RVA. Enjoy!

Richmond Public Radio Stations on your iPhone

Daniel — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:20:08 +0000

Update 2: WNRIR is now on the Public Radio Tuner as well! Now we just need WCVE and we’ll be all set!

Update: WNRN is now on the Public Radio Tuner app as seen in the comments and used by me this morning. Go WNRN!

This weekend I found out about the Public Radio Tuner app for the iPhone. It’s a very cool app and will get some use here. Unfortunately it doesn’t have any of the local public radio stations on it. So I took it upon myself to figure out how to listen to them and here is what I came up with:

Install the free FStream app from the App Store. Setup the following stations in your favorites:

Name: WRIR
URL: http://wrir.serverroom.us:7722/wrir

Name: WCVE
~~URL: http://208.80.52.126/WCVE~~
URL: http://amber.streamguys.com:4500/wcvehd1

Name: WCVE2
URL: http://amber.streamguys.com:4500/wcve

Name: WNRN
~~URL: mms://audio.musictoday.com/wnrn~~
URL: http://broadcast.wnrn.org:8000/wnrn.mp3

They all seem to work pretty well and it’s nice to be able to stream them from anywhere. Just thought I’d share that with anyone else who may care.

Blogging and my twitter love

Daniel — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:51:52 +0000

I haven’t really been blogging much, nor do I really feel compelled to write a lot. I’ll probably still post something occasionally when I want to rant about something or really explore something, but for the most part if you want to follow me you should follow my twitter or become my friend on facebook. I’m even working on getting a lifestream setup here for your convenience. It still needs to be themed, but once it is done I’ll be simplifying this blog some and encouraging that to be my public face. Just FYI.

On a side note, I’ve been really impressed with all the applications that have sprung up around twitter. It’s amazing what an ecosystem such a simple service has inspired. Besides the million clients there are services like tinyurl.com, twitpic.com, twiddeo.com, twtpoll.com and a million more like it. I do kind of wish they would get on the ball and get OAuth working so I wouldn’t have to put my twitter user account info into any of these sites. Oh well… still fun.

Vimeo Rocks!

Daniel — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:30:13 +0000

Just wanted to take a second and give a shoutout to the amazing video website Vimeo. It does a fantastic job of making it very easy to share videos online. The site is very easy to use, the community is thriving, the video quality is fantastic(better than my camcorder does with their HD support) and they allow you to customize the colors of your embedded video to fit your site as well. I have nothing but the utmost praise to give them! Way to go Connected Ventures on a fantastic site!

My profile page is here on vimeo if you sign up add me as a friend.

Sports Highlights 2.0

Daniel — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:27:43 +0000

As a sports fan and a non-cable tv subscriber I’m left with fewer options for keeping up with sports. ESPN has done a good job with their site and using video but they don’t cover just what I want and I get annoyed wading through baseball stuff that I don’t care about. So, being a computer geek I’ve figured out a better setup for myself and I thought I would share it with you.

My setup starts with Miro which is a free internet tv/video player. It lets you subscribe to video rss feeds and it will download the videos as they come out. The sports leagues I am into(NBA, Euroleague and MLS) have YouTube channels(NBA, Euroleague and MLS) so I subscribed to the feeds for them(NBA, Euroleague and MLS) and presto, I get video highlights of just the stuff I want to see. Enjoy

The Age of Less has started

Daniel — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:33:29 +0000

Over at Organic Jesus awhile ago(site is now dormant) Brandon Rhodes did a series talking about The Age of Less(here, here, here and here). The basic idea is that shifting forces in the global economy and us hitting peak oil will bring to an end our current age of prosperity. No more will we be able to purchase all kinds of cheap stuff. It will be an Age of Less. His focus is on christians and the church(which is a worthwhile focus), but the principle applies throughout our country. Our current way of life is not sustainable.

World crude oil production has been slowly falling and unless it turns around 2005 will go down in history as the peak year. Besides oil, issues with the US dollar, the sub-prime housing crisis and the subsequent slowing US economy have kicked off the age for many in the US already. Welcome to the Age of Less.

Webshows picking up steam

Daniel — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:32:02 +0000

With the hollywood writers striking and most TV shows about to cut their seasons short(or end prematurely, sorry Scrubs) you are probably needing some more entertainment options. Luckily for us groups of creative people want to fill that gap. Technology has gotten to the point where you can create quality content and distribute it on the web for pennies to the dollar of what it used to cost to create a TV show. A certain smart person has already mused about how this(combined with strikes) could put a hurting on the studios. Although some of the bigger networks are getting into the mix themselves. So, when you are tired of watching re-runs and want to check out some new entertainment options, check out these webshows:

Quarterlife – By the producers of the shows thirtysomething and My So-Called Life and recently picked up by NBC
Sanctuary – Sci Fi
Clark and Michael – Starring Michael Cera of Superbad
Roommates – Babes in LA
Break a Leg – A sitcom
Murder Town – A mixed real/animation series
Mr Robinson’s Driving School – Starring Craig Robinson of The Office and put out by msn.com
Prom Queen – High School drama by Michael Eisner
Coastal Dreams – Beach drama by NBC
Derek and Simon – Comedy, one of the 70+ shows on Super Deluxe
Lonelygirl15 – A setup to a horror movie?
KateModern – I don’t really know
Butterknife – Detective series
Pink – Assassin drama

If you know of other good ones leave a comment and let everyone know.

Update: Found a high quality show called Life From The Inside. Check it out.