Jul 8, 2011

Away for the Weekend

Jon Lim Canon T2i, electronics, iPhone, Kindle, weekend getaway Blog, Life, Technology 2 Comments

Tomorrow morning, my friends and I depart for a weekend getaway to a cottage for the weekend. I am excited and I cannot wait to eat, drink, and be merry with fantastic company.

I am trying to minimize the amount of electronics I bring along (since I always seem to bring the entire store) and I am only bringing the following:

My iPhone: Not so much for making calls or tweets, but just to be able to stay in contact if necessary and to play all of the music that I have downloaded in preparation.
My Kindle: I am going to spend a lot of time sitting around and relaxing with a cool drink during the day, and what better way to relax than to read my many books?
My SLR: I’m going north to beautiful scenery over a lake with friends. Do I really need to say more?

So it’s still a lot more than most people ever bring along, but I’m a digital native, sue me.

Have a great weekend, folks!

Jul 4, 2011

Handing off the SLR

Jon Lim Blog, Photography 0 Comment

While away on vacation, I would love nothing more than to have more pictures of myself actually enjoying the change in location and scenery. I bring a rather nice camera along with me (Canon T2i with an 18-55mm and a 55-250mm lens) that take wonderful pictures… in the right hands. I always hesitate to hand off the camera to a stranger (or even friends!) because the picture that they will take will (usually) not look the way I would have imagined it.

Is that a douchey way to think? Of course! But what do you expect? They aren’t me and they won’t know what sort of shot I am looking for.

What is a guy to do?

While on vacation in Miami, I could only think of one solution: eliminate any variables that you can control before giving up control of your camera.

Before handing off my camera to the waiter to get him to take my picture, I did several several things:

Switch the lens to “Manual Focus”
Set the right shutter speed
Set the right aperture
Set the right ISO
Turn on the LCD viewfinder

My trick was to make it as simple as a point and shoot camera is to use, without having to have them fiddle with any of the settings.

Once you get used to asking people to take pictures of you with your SLR, you will be able to finally have pictures of yourself in front of the camera for once!

Jun 6, 2011

I Came for the Post-Apocalyptic Setting, I Stayed for the Nerdiness

Jon Lim Amazon, books, Kindle, Marcus Alexander Hart, The Oblivion Society Blog, Books 0 Comment

I finished reading The Oblivion Society by Marcus Alexander Hart on Friday. I enjoyed reading it, especially when you have gems like this:

“I’m with you,” Bobby agreed. “Let’s eat already. I feel like somebody did an ‘rm star’ on my stomach.”

It makes me sad that I read that, understood it, and laughed so hard that my fellow subway riders probably thought I was crazy.

Of course, there was this as well:

“We should all find souvenirs,” she said. “Look around. There’s probably some stuff we can use in here. At the very least we should all find something to wear to keep warm.” “Hell yeah,” Sherri said, loosening the belt on her coat. “I call dibs on the first thing anyone finds that’s black and encrusted in metal studs!” “Fine,” Bobby said. “I’ll let you know if I find Dennis Rodman.”

And don’t even get me started on all of the Canada-related puns on the billboards they kept running into. Oh boy.

Great read.

Jun 1, 2011

Tracking Ye Olde Expenses Using Google Chart Tools

Jon Lim expenses, Google Chart Tools, Javascript Blog, Coding, Life 2 Comments

Since I’ve started my hunt for a proper place to live downtown, another activity I’ve proactively started is to be a lot more careful about where and how I spend my money, in an effort to be able to afford rent and have enough money to continue to save.

Bob Newhart, why am I so broke?!

As a way of making myself accountable, I have created an expenses page that tracks my month to month expenses, which I track through Quicken Essentials.

I create the chart using Google Chart Tools, which is a pretty nifty way to display all your data using JavaScript. Though it’s a bit difficult to integrate it into WordPress posts, I took the simplest solution (NOT having to pull and parse data from custom fields) and just passed the data into the header manually.

Here’s the code I used:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
	google.load("visualization", "1", {packages:["corechart"]});
	google.setOnLoadCallback(drawChart);
	function drawChart() {
		var data = new google.visualization.DataTable();
		data.addColumn('string', 'Month');
		data.addColumn('number', '2011');
		data.addRows(12);
		data.setValue(0, 0, 'Jan');
		data.setValue(0, 1, 2610.62);
		data.setValue(1, 0, 'Feb');
		data.setValue(1, 1, 1973.72);
		data.setValue(2, 0, 'Mar');
		data.setValue(2, 1, 3303.36);
		data.setValue(3, 0, 'Apr');
		data.setValue(3, 1, 2836.86);
		data.setValue(4, 0, 'May');
		//data.setValue(4, 1, 882.64);
		data.setValue(5, 0, 'Jun');
		//data.setValue(5, 1, 882.64);
		data.setValue(6, 0, 'Jul');
		//data.setValue(6, 1, 882.64);
		data.setValue(7, 0, 'Aug');
		//data.setValue(7, 1, 882.64);
		data.setValue(8, 0, 'Sep');
		//data.setValue(8, 1, 882.64);
		data.setValue(9, 0, 'Oct');
		//data.setValue(9, 1, 882.64);
		data.setValue(10, 0, 'Nov');
		//data.setValue(10, 1, 882.64);
		data.setValue(11, 0, 'Dec');
		//data.setValue(11, 1, 882.64);
 
		var chart = new google.visualization.ColumnChart(document.getElementById('chart_div'));
		chart.draw(data, {width: 920, height: 240, title: 'Monthly Expenses',
		                  vAxis: {format:'$#,###', minValue: 0, maxValue: 5000}
		                 });
	}
</script>

Just drop that into your header file (copy and paste the header from header.php and drop it into your template file to isolate it to particular pages) and create a div with the id that matches whatever you put into this line:

35	var chart = new google.visualization.ColumnChart(document.getElementById('chart_div'));

And if we used that, you would use this to place your chart anywhere on the page like so:

1	<div id="chart_div"></div>

Ta daaa!

My eventual goal is to be spending less than $1500 a month, before rent, which ensures that I am saving at least SOME money. Well, here goes nothing.

Enjoy watching me waste my money, thanks for reading!

May 1, 2010

Happy One Year Anniversary Jet Cooper!

Jon Lim Jet Cooper, one year, web design Blog, News 0 Comment

Jet Cooper, you guys are the reason why I keep wanting to do better than I already am, and I can’t wait to see where you guys take it. Congrats on one year!