Hotchkiss Consulting

Becky got me a 3g iPod shuffle back when they first came out, and it’s been great.  It’s TINY, super light, battery lasts all day… etc etc etc.  It also has no buttons, so you use a little block in the headphone cable by your right cheek to control it.  Apple tells you you can use this to skip tracks forward, skip tracks backward, pause, play, change the volume, and change playlists.  But there are a couple of hidden features, too!

Skip forward within a song: Click the button once, then hold it.  This will fastforward within the song or podcast.

Skip backwards within a song: Click the button twice, then hold it (you have to do this quickly).   This will rewind within the song or podcast.

Skip through songs while hearing the name of every song.  Hold the button until it starts reading the name of the song to you, then double-click the button.  It will speak the name of the new songs as you get to them.

Skip through playlists: Once you hold the button long enough that it starts reading back your playlists, release the button and you can use the volume up and down buttons to quickly scroll through your playlists.

Anybody know any other neat tricks?  Let me know in the comments!

Update: I guess the fast forward/rewind tricks ARE in the online manual… but I could have sworn they’re not in the little booklet. I’ll have to check tonight.

Hello everyone… sorry for the delay since my last update, Becky and I are both working on fighting off this killer cold that’s working its way through Colorado!

Last night, I cooked up a new service to allow you to manage notes via email. It’s free, and is really aimed at mobile email users (and, in particular, Peek users). It’s really easy to use, it doesn’t require signup, and I think it’s pretty cool.

To get started, all you have to do is pick a secret email box. The harder to guess, the better, because if anyone guesses it, they can get into your notes! This can be any sort of string you want, like “dahsgdjhab1234″. Then, after this string, add “@hdev2.com”. So your note email box would be dahsgdjhab1234@hdev2.com. Don’t tell anyone what it is! Not even me! Just start sending notes to it. When you send the first note, you’ll automatically get a message back with instructions on how to use the service. Here’s what that message might say, if you’re curious:

Hi! Either you just signed up, or you want some help, right? Well, you came to the right place! First things first, you should probably write down your notes email address. This is really important, as I can’t communicate with you without it! Always send your requests to:

THE SUPER SECRET ADDRESS YOU CHOSE!

Now, if you want to store a note, just send it to that address. It’s that easy! I’ll put it into my database and keep it safe for you. If you want to do stuff with your notes, just put one of the following basic commands at either the beginning or end of the subject line of your email, and I’ll act on it!

!a – All Notes. If you use this, I will send you the title and body of all of your notes. If you are a heavy user, this could be a big email!
!l – List of Notes. If you use this command, I will send you a list of the titles all of your notes (even the ones you deleted!)
!h – HELP!!! If you use this command, I’ll send you this email again

There are some advanced commands, too. For these, you have to put the Note ID of the note you’re talking about as the first thing in the body of your email. If you don’t know the Note ID, ask for the list of notes first, and that will have the IDs of all your notes!

!s – Single Note. If you use this, I’ll just send you the note you ask for.
!d – Delete Note. If you use this, I’ll delete the note you tell me to. (Actually, I won’t really delete it, cause I think you might want it back some day, but I will make it inactive so it doesn’t clutter up your workflow!)
!r – Restore Note. If you use this command, I’ll undelete your note. (See, I knew you’d want it back!)

And that’s that!

Questions, comments? Post em below…

I know I’ve been promising these for a while, but here are the three PHP scripts that make up my PHP -> Email integration.  I’m still working on converting this to a full multi-user system.  You can see I already started with the conversion on the schedule dispatch email.  Full scripts after the jump!

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This weekend, we launched Becky’s new photo blog, http://sureshotphoto.net/.  This was a quick launch, and Becky hasn’t started posting yet, but we got the gorgeous slideshow of her photos going, and man oh man, does it look good.

The WordPress theme is from http://graphpaperpress.com/.  We are big, big fans of WordPress for a lot of simple to moderately complex sites (like this one you’re on right now).  Wordpress allows a lot of flexibility and customizability, and a well developed CMS backend.

What are the upsides of developing with WordPress?

1. Quick development.  With WordPress you’re building your site on top of a solid base that takes care of a lot of the basic stuff, which means less testing is necessary, and less new code is necessary.
2. Less expensive.  This ties into number 1– as it takes less time for us to develop your site on top of Wordpress, you pay less.
3. Easily extensible.  Because WordPress has such a large user base, there are thousands of extensions available.

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Well, I’ve been making good progress on the PHP Class for RTM, and I hope to have it available within the week (if all goes according to plan).  I’m also thinking about making a “notes” style email app (primarily for use with the peek)…. This would be really straightforward… you email in notes, it logs them, and you can recall them (and maybe search?).  With push email on to the peek, this could be pretty cool, but I’d need to figure out a fast trigger mechanism.  My current RTM script uses a regular cronjob to do everything, but for something where you’re actually interacting via email, we need to be faster.  I’m thinking I’ll need to use procmail, which will be new for me, but I’m up for a challenge.

I’m taking this weekend “off” which means I’m going to sit in my PJ’s and geek out all weekend.  Maybe this project will get some attention.

Are there any email-based apps you’d like to see?  Let me know!  And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter!

Hey guys– I’ve decided that instead of just posting some convoluted RTM email scripts, I’m going to put together an RTM API PHP Class (wow, that’s a lot of acronyms), then, once this is done, I’ll be building an RTM->Email gateway for everyone to use.

Huzzahs all around?

I’m always interested in what setups other people use, so I thought I’d give you guys a peek at how I work…

MacBook Air

As a developer, I’m pretty demanding when it comes to my computers.  I type hard and fast, I run a ton of programs simultaneously, and I work from just about everywhere.  Not just my desk or my couch or my bed, but from coffee shops, airports, the library, with clients, in cars, on trains…

For the last three years I’ve worked on a trusty 15″ MacBook Pro which had been a great machine, although with its quirks.  It made a number of trips to the repair shop, but never left me in a pinch.  Finally, this winder, I decided it was time to upgrade, and picked up a MacBook Air, with which I have been nothing but impressed.  I opted for the solid state drive, so there is no spinning drive, and this machine is sweet.  Fast, tiny, and light.  And I haven’t missed having an internal CD/DVD drive for a second!  The backlit keyboard is a major improvement over the MacBook Pro, and it’s great to type on, too.

The MacBook Air gets an A+ from me! (more…)