Nick Projects

I’ve been meaning to make my own dry erase board for a while.  I like using white boards for laying out websites, making todo lists and things like that.  My goal was to make something that was functional but also something that looked nice.  I decided that when I used large white boards I found myself sectioning off areas for different projects.  Iwould line off one area to make a todo list, another for a site and then another for a different site.  I thought it would be a good idea if the board was just sectioned for me.  I sort of modeled my sections off of 11 x 17 paper.  I have 4  11 x 18 sections and the section in the middle is 18 x 16.  Each section has two pieces of panel board on it and the original magnetic / dry erase surface is behind that,  so I have 3 layers if I need them.   The other cool thing about this white board is that I can move the sections and take them to different areas of my home.  I can grab a panel from the center and go work in my living room or kitchen if I need to.

Construction Process:

My first draft started with joining 2 pieces of pine board in the garage to give me a nice looking surface that was about 2ft by 6ft.  I only decided to join pine because I had some,  I would recommend starting with a nice piece of plywood.  It will save time and money.  After the join was completed I decided to stain the pine to give it a darker color.

After reading several posts on lifehacker about magnetic paint and dry erase paint I decided this would be the way to go.

Magnetic Primer:

Rustoleum makes a magnetic primer available from Home Depot for about $20 per pint.  When you pick up the can you realize that their is a ton of metal in it because the can is really heavy.  You then have to mix this metalish tar from the bottom into the paint solution to get something about the consistency of hot tar.  All this was ok,   but when I put the tar on my board it wound up adding quite a bit of texture to the surface.  This is really not optimal for dry erase boards.  I tried to sand down the texture to get a smoother surface but the other problem is that you need a pretty thick coat of this primer built up before you get any magnetic surface.  The instructions on the can say you need at least 3 coats before it will work.  I wound up putting on 4 or 5.  The other thing you find once you are finished with this is that you don’t get a strong magnetic surface,  the strength is about like sticking a refrigerator magnet to your fridge through a legal pad;  it will hold the magnet in place, but not much else.

Dry erase Paint:

Dry erase paint is actually pretty cool,  also about $20 at home depot.  With Dry Erase paint you need to work quickly.  The paint is like a 2 part epoxy,  once mixed you get around 2 hours of useful paint.  The paint also advises that you use 3 coats for a good surface.  My project didn’t require all of the paint to get done,  so I painted the inside of a few doors in the garage.  These surfaces turned out great,  my magnetic primered board…. less great.

Plan B:

The resulting surface would have worked for a board that was lightly used,  the surface allows for writing and erasing fairly well,  but it would have become pretty crappy pretty quickly.  The smooth doors in the garage will be good for quite a while.  Instead of throwing away my work so far,  I decided to buy panel board to use as a dry erase surface.

Panel Board:

Panel board is dirt cheap $11 for a 4ft by 8ft sheet,  and makes an excellent dry erase surface.  I cut out sections of panel board to match the areas I painted on originally. Then I cut some dowel to use as hangers.  If you skip all of the misc painting steps and just stain a piece of cabinet grade plywood this white board could probably be produced for under $60 (depending on the plywood)

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I’ve been making a cool custom whiteboard for my home office,  but keep thinking.  I wish it was more simple to digitize what I write on the board.  Using evernote and a digital camera works well,  but its not the same as a digital surface.  I have been thinking about a children s toy called a magna doodle and wondering if there is any way to digitally manipulate or scan weather each cell is filled or unfilled in an efficient way.  If this were possible then it would be really simple to digitize large surfaces that don’t require superfine resolution.  I think of white boards,  classrooms,  architectural plans and things of that nature.

This video on How Stuff Works explains how the Magna Doodle operates,  it seems earily digital already:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/howstuffworks/4658-how-magna-doodles-work-video.htm

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In a previous post I mentioned using desktop stickey notes for all kinds of temporary sort of issues.  I have pretty much stopped this process.  The problem I found with the system was… that it was way too easy to create 50 or 60 minimized stickey notes that became out of site and out of mind.  I liked the ability to click a button and have a place to copy and paste a phone number or jot down a quick note,  but I wasn’t disciplined enough to manage that information so it just hung around until I got sick of looking at it.   I was sort of inspired by this 18 minutes to keep your schedule on track article and started messing with paper todo list templates. My default paradigm is “paper sucks” so I replaced the process with the tools below.

Texter:

Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting a lot of millage out of a LifeHacker program called texter ( Texter).  Texter gives you hot keys to write repetitive text quickly.  The tool is great for programming,  but also for things like email signatures or your mailing address if it isn’t part of your existing signature.  I have been using texter to pre-format text documents for todo list items.   Simply typing .todo gives me a prompt for a new todo list item.

DropBox:

Since Note Pad takes up almost no memory and launches super quickly I have been keeping my ToDo lists inside of a simple text file.   To facilitate synchronization I have been using the before mentioned drop box to keep files in sync between my desktop, laptop, and work computers during the day.  I’ve come to like drop box because it keeps local copies of files rather than using the net to access everything.  This makes launching files much faster.

Samurize:

Finally I missed the ability to have information omnipresent on my desktop, but have been able to  set up a sweet program called Samurize to keep my text files open and in my face.  Samurize is described in more detail on lifehacker ( Samurize Info)  I also made a 2 minute video on how to set up a config file for samurize.  The program isn’t super user friendly,  but it doesn’t seem to suck up much processing power and it works well.  I think the coolest thing I’ve been able to set up with this is the ability to right click and edit the original notepad file.  This is shown in my video here:  http://screencast.com/t/zCVgjSnS8

The Future:

The only thing I don’t really have is mobile synchronization or alerts.  I didn’t have all of this with stickey notes, but it isn’t quite as cool as remember the milk either.  I’m thinking about making a web page that emails me my todo list every few hours during the day.  This would push it to my mobile phone pretty easily.  I would still have to cross things off the list from a computer because drop box doesn’t allow editing from a web page yet,  but I can live with that.

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A while back in my post about collaboration while working in a group over the internet;  I mentioned Meebo and that I hate meebo.  This is still true,  but I have found a replacement for the ad-bloated POS.  It is called Chatterous and it makes it easy to have many people on the same conversation.  Chatterouse provides the typical chat interface via their website,  but they also integrate with jabber or G-chat so that you can add a chat room to your instant message utility (digsby).  This eliminates all of the annoying adds from meebo,  but also makes it super easy to make sure you are logged into your chatroom each morning.  There is no browser to close, nothing to open each day.  You just fire up the IM and your golden.  I stongly recomend this format if you work with a few people at once and need a quick way to stay in touch.

Good Job Chatterous!!

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Feed My Inbox is a cool service that alows you to subscribe to blogs for email updates.  We have added their subscription box in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.  Another cool use I have discovered for their service is the ability to monitor craigslist categories via email.  This makes it easy to stay on top of all kinds of potential summer steals.  All you have to do is add the craigslist RSS URL to the feed my inbox page and your set.

Check out the video tutorial

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Sometimes its difficult to follow a blog. Especially one that posts irregularly (like this one). FeedMyInbox makes it easy to stay on top of different blogs. To subscribe to the nickprojects feed just use the form at the bottom of my right menu.

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Somethings just aren’t good for powerpoint.  Powerpoint is great for giving presentations and using as a tool for speeking,  but watching a powerpoint without a speeker leaves alot of holes.  Prezi is cool because it is good for showing large concepts with relationships between them.  You can construct large diagrams and walk people through what is going on without loosing the concept of the relationship as a whole.  

Also the resulting presentatins are really cool.  Prezi is fun to play around with and it makes pubishing very simple.  I would urge any powerpoint user to take a look at prezi as an alternative or just to spice things up once in a while.    

As an example I made a really quick prezi of how NickProjects.com works.  Check it out at this URL: 
 http://prezi.com/64602/

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Kindle DX

The new Kindle device from amazon is completely amazing looking.  I presently own the sony PRS-505 and can justify that device vs a kindle because of the price and pdf functionality in exchange for not having the integrated 3g provided with the Kindle.  The DX, however, is a completely different story.  Amazon now has the best device hands down as well as the most access to content and best delivery method. This is the trifecta of death for anyone entering this space. Not to mention being first to market.

I think best case scenario for any new entries would be that they get to pay amazon to license their kindle software on the devices.  This would prevent them from being completely left on the sidelines.  

Good Job Amazon, if you want to send me a device I would be happy to give it a hands on review!!

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Screen recording is an incredibly useful invention.  It allows you to show people what’s going on in your PC record tutorials of how to perform functions and document errors in software when they come up.  In this article I am going to talk about a few screen recording tools that I use and why I use them for different purposes.  

My Primary high quality screen recording tool is Camtasia (www.camtasia.com).  Camtasia has great quality screen and audio recording capacities.  It has a killer noise reduction function for  using mediocre computer microphones in noisy areas.  Camtasia also has a great editing wizard that allows you to quickly fix your recordings without having to start over again.  The downside is,  the system isn’t cheap.  It’s a completely worthwhile expense if you are running a training group or find yourself making screen recordings all the time,  but for a casual user it’s not economical.  

Jing (  http://www.jingproject.com ) is a great tool for casual screen recording and image grabbing. It doesn’t have as many cool features as camtasia for editing or noise reduction, but it does have a super simple interface and very easy file uploading capacity.  You can upload to a few services and also your own ftp location with the push of a button.  This is great for those ” the button is here” conversations over the phone.  

BB Flashback (http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/Home.aspx) is another cool screen recorder that has a very unique feature,  it lets you run rolling recordings that don’t exceed a certain file size or recording length.  This allows it to run like a tivo on your pc giving you time shift power over what you have done.   I will often find myself hitting buttons in software to get something done and then forgetting what series of steps I went through to get something done.  With bb flashback you can just rewind and see what you did.  The company sells screen recording software for several specific purposes and has versions at different price points.  Their developer version is designed for testers to produce perfect error reports including all kinds of relevant information.  They also have an express version that is a great free alternative to camtasia.  It provides more functionality than jing but less than the full software suites.

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I have stopped using key lemon,  mostly because my crappy Microsoft web cam often decides it doesn’t want windows to detect it anymore,  which sort of messes up key lemon.  The technology isn’t perfect,  this product won’t be used by the NSA or any high security entity to keep out spies,  but… it has a ton of potential from a convenience perspective.   In this post I’m going to talk about some of the ways facial recognition could be integrated into different devices to make the world a better place.  

Message Status:

Some people are great at updating their status on messenger,  most people aren’t.  If a simple web cam could let my computer know when I was at my desk and when I wasn’t that would be awesome.  Of course blue tooth proximity or GPS aware cell phones may be a more logical solution for this type of thing.  

Personal Portal Sign In:  

Since I just made up the concept of a personal portal lets start with that idea.  A personal portal would be something like net-vibes or yahoo when it was cutting edge,  that aggregated information into one place online.  In theory this could be your calendar, to do list, email, and relevant news.  I would have a significantly different personal portal than my wife or brother etc.  If there were a system that could automatically load content like this based on facial recognition that would be really cool.  This would allow you to put a computer in the kitchen or corner of your bedroom to check the world when you woke up or had your coffee. Each member of a household would be able to have their own profiles and effortlessly switch between them.  

Adaptive Art:

A long time ago people used to talk about how in Bill Gates home you could carry a chip around and art would change to your preferences.  Now days most people can afford digital picture frames and LCD televisions are significantly less expensive than high end paintings.  There is really no reason that these settings couldn’t change based on the person looking at the picture.  

Automotive Preferences:

High end vehicles already can remember settings based on the key that the driver puts into the ignition.  With facial recognition this would be even more powerful because it wouldn’t be linked to a key.  Also beyond seat settings if cars could remember preset stations and play lists for music based on the driver’s face.  That would be killer.  

Comments:

I’m sure there are a million ideas I haven’t thought of,  have fun with the comments.

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