Imapenguin Blog

When installing rubygems from the source on a fresh CentOS install, don’t forget that:

yum install zlib-devel

command.

We have several VOIP phones around here with a common annoyance, the call degrades on the receiver side first. Most of the time if we have a bad connection, we don’t know it because we receive the calls just fine.

Does this seem intuitive at all? Not to me. I’m the one with the semi-reliable but cheap and cool phone system (that I’m starting to regret), shouldn’t the call get choppy for me first? I wonder if there is a technical reason for this. I’d be willing to bet there isn’t, at least not a good one.

We have several VOIP phones around here with a common annoyance, the call degrades on the receiver side first. Most of the time if we have a bad connection, we don’t know it because we receive the calls just fine.

Does this seem intuitive at all? Not to me. I’m the one with the semi-reliable but cheap and cool phone system (that I’m starting to regret), shouldn’t the call get choppy for me first? I wonder if there is a technical reason for this. I’d be willing to bet there isn’t, at least not a good one.

We have several VOIP phones around here with a common annoyance, the call degrades on the receiver side first. Most of the time if we have a bad connection, we don’t know it because we receive the calls just fine.

Does this seem intuitive at all? Not to me. I’m the one with the semi-reliable but cheap and cool phone system (that I’m starting to regret), shouldn’t the call get choppy for me first? I wonder if there is a technical reason for this. I’d be willing to bet there isn’t, at least not a good one.

Wow:

Sun to Release Java Source Code: “pete314 writes ‘After resisting for years, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz at JavaOne this morning said that he will release the source code for Java. The company is asking developers to provide feedback on how to best get there and prevent forking and fragmentation.’

(Via Slashdot.)

Dynamic Drive has a new CSS library up on their site. It’s very cool. Kinda like a CSS cookbook.

Word of caution, it’s on Digg, so it may be very sllloooowww for a few days.

You’ll need Darwin Ports installed.

Then do:

sudo /opt/local/bin/port install imagemagick

Take a nap while this all compiles.

Then just install rmagick via gem.

sudo gem install rmagick

as root:

yum install ImageMagick-devel

Then install rmagick via gems

gem install rmagick

Ever buy a product because you read a good case study?

Yep, me too.

Case studies are an interesting thing. It shouldn’t be a surprise that vendor sponsored case studies are largely bogus. You know the ones where they gave the customer the software at 80% off to get them to do the case study and then turn around and said things like:

• It was easy to install (there were actually 50 bugs that the vendor needed secure shell access to fix)
• The setup was a snap (see point 1)
• The ROI was 300x my original investment (read the part above about the 80% off)
• They had great service (duh, it’s a case study, of course you had great service)

It’s bogus. You know it, I know it.

Your products or services should be so good that every customer should be a referenceable customer. Sure they might have a company policy that prevents you from calling on them as a reference.

Here’s the best way to make a sale:

(riiinnggggggg)

“Good morning, Imapenguin, how can I help you today?”

“I was having lunch with an old friend of mine who you helped last month and he had great things to say about you. I was telling him about this problem we we’re having and he said that YOU were THE people to help me…”

We are currently looking for a MIDP developer for some location based mobile phone applications. Please drop us a line at mike@imapenguin.com if you are interested.

Serious inquiries only.

All non serious, half hearted inquiries will be squished into a little ball and fed to the bit demons.

That being said, we didn’t describe it much. Remote working is fine (preferred really), probably some profit sharing. You must have at least coded an example of something cool.