3D three.js Experiment
3D Experiment
Over the last couple weeks I’ve been playing with three.js, a javascript-based 3D engine that can render using <canvas>, <svg> and WebGL. It’s pretty amazing what it can do.
Only the Chrome browser seems to render my experiment fast enough to be usable. Check it out (using Chrome):
http://www.jeffslutz.com/three/
If you liked that, check out check out the examples on the three.js site as well as Mr.doob’s work.
BubbleBreaker Released
My version of the classic game BubbleBreaker is done and ready to play!
BubbleBreaker
http://games.jeffslutz.com/bubblebreaker/
It was a great project and a lot of fun to code.
therapyhourstracker.com adds official support for 4 states (and unofficial support for the other 46)
A great project I work on, therapyhourstracker.com, just added official support for therapists in Connecticut, Illinois, New York and Ohio. Â Also added: support for therapists in the other 46 states to enter their own requirements and track those. Â THT will be adding support for even more states as we grow, come join the community!
If you are a therapist working toward graduation or licensure and would like your school’s or states requirements to be officially supported send an email to support[at]therapyhourstracker.com and let us know.
Print PDFs
Just added the ability to print PDF reports to www.therapyhourstracker.com. I chose to use DOMpdf because it’s free, open-source, and fairly light-weight. Pretty much the only downside I ran into is that styling the PDF is a real b!t$&. Theoretically it supports CSS2 selectors and most of the style components but I ended up having to do some really non-standard wrangling to get it to look pretty. What does it take to get a better option? Sounds like a couple-thousand dollar license. I’ll stick with a little extra work, thank you.
Announcing Therapy Hours Tracker
Just released a website that I’ve been working on for a number of months now. It’s a site for therapists-in-training to use to track their client-contact and supervision hours (for those not in the know, these are hours they have to accumulate to graduate and then get their license). The student enters her hours week-by-week and the site generates a timeline with averages for how many hours of each kind (individual, relational, video supervision, etc.) she needs to be earning in order to graduate and get her license on time. It also has a section that allows her to generate reports for any time range. Many sites and schools require monthly hours reports and THT generates these very quickly and easily (and by site too!). In the next update we plan to roll-out printing of hours reports forms that will be acceptable at most internship sites and university/college programs.
Right now Therapy Hours Tracker is geared mainly toward MFT (marriage and family therapy) students/associated in NY state though it is flexible enough to work for many other states as well. In the near future we’ll be expanding the format to be customizable for MSW (masters in social work) and others.
It’s getting a really great response in the therapy community. I’m glad it’s going to be helpful.
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Cronjob backup of database
I’ve been working on ways to automatically backup the database for the website I’m currently developing (therapyhourstracker.com (set to be released in May or June 2010)). After hunting around for useful ideas (including some great help from SHELLdorado) this is what I came up with:
mysqldump -u username -ppassword -h www.databasehost.com --all-databases | gzip > /home/user/backups/mysql_`date +"%Y-%m-%d"`.sql.gz echo | mutt -a backups/mysql_`date +"%Y-%m-%d"`.sql.gz -- email@address.com
You’ll need to replace the generic names with your specifics (In the first line: username, password, www.databasehost.com with the login information for your mysql database. Â /home/user/backups should become an existing directory on your server where you want to store the dumped files. In the second line backups/ should be the same directory on your server that you saved the dumped file to and email@address.com should be replaced with your email address).
The first line dumps and gzips the database into a file with today’s date in the name (line ends with the first ‘.sql.gz’ and a carriage return). The second line uses mutt to send me an email with the dumped file as an attachment.
Doesn’t get much cooler than that.
Clipx: Great donationware clipboard manager
Just started using clipx and I love it. If you have a task where you need to copy and paste a number of different text or image selections repetitively you need a copy of this program. It stores your copies into a list and you can paste from any one of the items in the list whenever you want. The best thing is that it seems to be stable. I’ve used a couple other programs that are supposed to do this but they have been very unweildy.
It’s donationware so send them some beer money if it’s useful to you.
Slick shell Script for automatically svn adding and deleting files
I’m working on a job that recently required adding a large number of new animated banners to the filestructure as part of an update. Scoured the web for a good trick and BANG, found it. This script comes from Kathleen Murtagh’s blog with a slight edit from one of her readers, perusio.
#!/bin/bash
svn status | grep '^?' | sed -e 's/^? /svn add "/g' -e 's/$/"/g' | sh
svn status | grep '^!' | sed -e 's/^! /svn delete "/g' -e 's/$/"/g' | sh
Truly a timesaver.
If you’re going to choose United Healthcare, don’t.
I’ve had healthcare coverage with Blue Cross / Blue Shield and United Healthcare. Genna has had Aetna and United. 2 of 2 agree, United is the worst.
With BC/BS and Aetna we never had any trouble with claims. Any needed procedure was reimbursed, virtually no questions asked. With United, Every. Single. Thing. Has been like pulling teeth. Even worse, like pulling teeth and finding out tooth-pulling is not reimbursable, even though the plan says it’s covered. It only gets worse when you take in to account the fact that the company the rely on to establish standards such as “reasonable and customary rates” is a company they own. The New York Times estimates United has “…systematically underpaid New Yorkers for medical services by 10 percent to 28 percent…“.
Obviously, it would be oversimplifying to say United is the worst healthcare insurance ever. All I’m saying is choose Blue Cross / Blue Shield or Aetna first if you have any choice in the matter.
Most Annoying Commercial Ever
I spend the majority of my waking life at work in my recording studio. Which is fine with me. Usually.
But sometimes I feel I was meant for much more than this. I long to serve a higher cause. To make a meaningful contribution to the global community that has already given me so much. To unite humanity by creating a work of such genius that every soldier would put down his weapons and embrace his brothers and sisters.
And then I remember. I have. But don’t take my word for it:
Time and time and time again this masterpiece has been referred to as, “…obviously inspired by…”, “wow, that was pretty…”, and “most annoying commercial ever.”
However, I cannot take full credit for the brilliance of this work. I merely wrote the song that drives it and recorded and edited James’ brilliant voiceover performance. The original idea wasn’t even mine, it was the creative guys over at Euro that dreamt up this bad boy. World peace, after all, sometimes takes a group effort.
So if you are ever feeling depressed and hopeless, just remember you have the power to remove limescale.