johnhforrest.com

Going redditless for a day

John — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:30:02 +0000

Ironically, part of what inspired this post was Hacker News discussion ABOUT a post on reddit. See the original thread here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3555237. The other part, an argument I had with my wife about how much clutter is in our apartment, which I believe is mainly due to the fact that both of us tend to procrastinate (by browsing reddit and Facebook) when it comes to chores such as cleaning the dishes and doing the laundry.

What is redditless?

Going redditless is about trimming some of the excess fat in my day to day activities. It doesn’t necessarily refer to reddit, but any mindless consumption of content that doesn’t really matter on a day-to-day basis.

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My advice for undergraduate CS majors

John — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:00:19 +0000

This won’t be a story about how I had a great idea and became the next Mark Zuckerberg, because frankly—I didn’t. By no means do I consider myself, or my current position extraordinary. I see myself as an average person with a passion for software development, who used this passion to succeed in university, something that anybody can do if they try. Sure, this path may be more difficult depending on what school you go to, what people you know, or what opportunities you were given, but I believe anyone who puts in the time and effort can excel in the software industry.…

Windows Phone Marketplace

John — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:08:21 +0000

Marketplace & Mango

With the recent release of the Windows Phone 7.5 update, code named Mango, Microsoft also released the Windows Phone Marketplace (http://www.windowsphone.com/marketplace). This is pretty big news for all of the WP7 users out there–although there were some 3rd party sites that would host some basic information about the available marketplace apps, none of them were full featured and didn’t really allow you to discover any great apps through their interface. The official WP7 marketplace provides all of the same information that was previously available only from Zune or WP7 marketplace app, and really makes the experience of looking for interesting apps much more useful.…

d3, wow Forum Readers Currently Bugged

John — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:24:29 +0000

Blizzard recently updated the HTML of the pagination so the threads are currently only able to download the first page. I have posted a fix to the App Hub and the update should be available in the next few days. I apologize for the inconvenience!

I am working on a change in the underlying engine so that the HTML configuration can be downloaded on the fly from my server rather than being hard-coded in the app. Additionally, I plan on adding functionality to allow you to directly access the URL of each forum and thread, so if this happens in the future you will be able to copy and paste the value into the web browser and view it manually.…

Diablo 3 Forum Reader Certified!

John — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 04:53:13 +0000

The WoW Forum Reader has finally for Diablo 3! Now, you are able to follow all of the latest updates of the recently started Closed Beta right on your Windows Phone! Tomorrow morning the app will be released on the marketplace, so give it a shot and download it for FREE.

See more at the full project page: here.…

WoW Forum Reader 2.0

John — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:45:33 +0000

See the project page for all of the screen shots and information on the app.

Last week I released a new version of my app, WoW Forum Reader. I spent a lot of time overhauling the main UI to make interacting with the app more straight forward and fun. Here’s a list of features added in 2.0:

Blue post tracker
Realm forums added
Favorites list for forums
Context menus on forums and threads (hold down on an item for it to pop up)
A brand new UI for the front page

See the screenshots below for the latest changes.

The opening screen now consists of 3 panorama items.…

Why are sundials so interesting?

John — Tue, 10 May 2011 03:12:04 +0000

“Heavenly radiance fills the aether, its rays parallel and straight and, so long as nothing is there to interrupt them, invisible. The secrets of God’s creation are all told by those rays, but told in a language we do not understand, or even hear–the direction from which they shine, the spectrum of colors concealed within the light, these are all characters in a cryptogram. The gnomon—look at our shadows on the Green! We are the gnomon. We interrupt that light and we are warmed and illuminated by it. By stopping the light, we destroy part of the message without understanding it.…

WoW Forum Reader

John — Thu, 05 May 2011 03:05:23 +0000

I’ve just recently released another app for the Windows Phone 7: WoW Forum Reader. There are two versions, a paid version with no advertisements, and a free version with advertisements (although the description says otherwise at the moment). The Zune links are below:

Full: http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=f4a94251-2874-e011-81d2-78e7d1fa76f8
Lite: http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=94dd91a5-2974-e011-81d2-78e7d1fa76f8

Although I haven’t actually played any Blizzard games for some time now, I do occasionally check the forums to see what’s going on in Azeroth. Having tried to do this in the Windows Phone browser made me wonder why no one has made any client apps to read Blizzard forums–the task isn’t impossibly difficult and a lot of people read the forums on a daily basis.…