I have no problem power napping… but for those of you who can’t, you might find this useful…

I am the kind of person who takes 30 minutes to an hour to fall asleep, most nights. Falling asleep is an ordeal for me (unless I’m completely exhausted). Don’t get me wrong—it’s not an unpleasant ordeal… there are worse things in life than lying in bed. But I truly envy those people who can just put their head on a pillow and drift off within moments. Oh, such bliss… not for me. I will lie in bed, awake, forever thinking and rethinking whatever happens to be on my mind at the time.

Because of this, I always thought that power napping was not for me. After all, power naps are supposed to last about 20 minutes, and you don’t need to be a maths genius to realise that if it takes you at least half an hour to fall asleep, 20 minutes won’t be enough. So, therefore, I thought, since I can’t fall asleep quickly, I can’t nap.

Fortunately for me, I was completely wrong about this.

How I Mastered the Power Nap

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Posted on Natuba

I can’t believe its finally here… this is so awesome! 😀

We’ll enable this for other browsers as soon as they support this feature. For now, you can drag and drop attachments in Chrome and Firefox only.

Drag and drop attachments onto messages

Check out this demo of the new Photoshop… it amazing what it can do!

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

OMG! There’s a LEGO store in houston! woohoo!

5015 Westheimer Road
Houston, TX 77056
(713) 439-0773

Store Hours:
Monday – Saturday: 10:00am – 9:00pm
Sunday: 11:00am – 7:00pm

Opened March 2010!

The LEGO Store raises the bar in kid-chic design, innovative displays, in-store family events and consumer-friendly play areas to deliver an engaging, entertaining and fun experience for families.

Our Pick A Brick wall features LEGO elements in a variety of colors & shapes in bulk.

The “Living Room” is an interactive play area positioned in the center of the store designed for hands-on, minds-on play.

Our “Brand Ribbon” runs the circumference of the store, featuring LEGO model displays, company history & fun facts to entertain guests.

The LEGO® Store Houston Galleria Houston, TX, USA

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Evidentally, I’m on a maker’s schedule…

Business people in Silicon Valley (and the whole world, for that matter) have speculative meetings all the time. They’re effectively free if you’re on the manager’s schedule. They’re so common that there’s distinctive language for proposing them: saying that you want to “grab coffee,” for example.

Speculative meetings are terribly costly if you’re on the maker’s schedule, though. Which puts us in something of a bind. Everyone assumes that, like other investors, we run on the manager’s schedule. So they introduce us to someone they think we ought to meet, or send us an email proposing we grab coffee. At this point we have two options, neither of them good: we can meet with them, and lose half a day’s work; or we can try to avoid meeting them, and probably offend them.

Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

To me, the iPad is a giant iTouch – and thats great for some… but for me, I’d rather have a shrunken PC… At the same price point as the iPad, I can get an HP Slate which has tons of hardware including USB, an SD card slot, TWIN cameras, and a full load of Win7 to run whatever I want… including FLASH!:

HP’s 30sec commerical:

Adobe demo’s Flash and AIR on HP’s Slate:

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

NPR did a segment on Ham Radio yesterday… its a quick listen at 4mins long…

Lets bring back handsome!

My ham-radio side found this article fascinating…

In this short paper I will attempt to take a practical approach to demonstrate the problems associated with non constant impedance RF connectors. Of particular interest is the now inappropriately named UHF type connector, known more commonly as the PL-259 (Male) and SO-239 (Female). The results gained here are primarily aimed at supplying fellow radio amateurs with information that is not readily available. Characterisation will take place at frequencies around 146 MHz and the at UHF frequency of 438 MHz, where in actual fact this type of connector is not recommended for use.

The UHF type connector under network analysis

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UPDATE: Yes, it was a april fool’s joke… thanks to those who figured it out and didn’t ruin the fun 😀

Now from China – lock pick kits made from foil!

Apparently it’s been around for fifteen years but using foil impressions to pick locks is new to us. This is similar to using bump keys but it works on locks that are supposedly much more secure. This method uses a heavy gauge aluminum foil to grab and hold the pins in the correct place for the lock to be turned. The foil is folded over and slits are cut where each pin will fall. It is then inserted into a lock on a tool shaped like a key blank. Jiggle the tool for a bit and the cylinder will turn. This just reminds us that we’re much more dependent on the good will of our fellow citizens to not steal our stuff, rather than the deterrent that a lock provides.

Foil impressioning defeats security locks

I just went thru’ this process to wipe a stack of drives before I dropped them off at the local Goodwill Computerworks…

With stories abounding of identity theft aided by information lifted from discarded storage devices, you want devices you no longer plan to use to have no usable information when they head out the door. Here’s how to wipe them clean.

Leave No Trace: How to Completely Erase Your Hard Drives, SSDs and Thumb Drives

This is good stuff when choosing colors for designs…

Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in somone else. Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself. Studying how colors affect different people, either individually or as a group, is something some people build their careers on. And there’s a lot to it. Something as simple as changing the exact hue or saturation of a color can evoke a completely different feeling. Cultural differences mean that something that’s happy and uplifting in one country can be depressing in another.

Color Theory for Designers, Part 1: The Meaning of Color

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Someday, when I run out of projects… maybe I’ll build one of these… 🙂

After visiting some web pages about 2.4 GHz ISM band spectrum analyzers based on the CYWM6935 module, I tried to build my own analyzer, but with some improvements. The references I found on the net used the parallel port or a serial link to a host computer. I want the analyzer to be portable, and easy to transport, so I will use a microcontroller and a graphical LCD.

Handheld 2.4 GHz Spectrum Analyzer

-Richard

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Antenna party

-Richard

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Antenna party – quad on the ground

-Richard

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