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Thomas Ross Hallock

Open for business: PHP + MySQL (LAMP)

10-February 2009

Just FYI: I offer website repair, customization, integration, and anything else that doesn’t involve graphic design work. Rate is $60 / hr. I am best working with PHP + MySQL, but can adapt as needed. Please send me a note if you have a project you would like me to tackle. Please see my resume for links to websites I have worked on in the past.

Plans for my 15.4″ 1200p LCD DIY projector

9-June 2009

I designed and partially built a projector about a year ago. I found these plans in my files and thought I’d post them. Download the full plans in Google Sketchup format here.
projector-design_with_top

Moving to New York City

7-June 2009

I’m moving on June 8th. My new address will be:

Thomas Hallock
471 Malcolm X Blvd
Apartment 2N
New York, NY 10037

link to Google Map

I’l depart Austin at 1:05PM CT on 8-June and arrive at JFK Airport at 5:57PM ET – JetBlue flight 1062

Don’t worry, I’m not disappearing from Austin completely; I plan to be in Austin every three months for maintenance / inspection of The Sellery, which will continue to operate despite my physical absence.

Extreme downsizing: up for grabs: my plant

19-May 2009

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This is a really nice little plant. Just give it about 2 cups of water every other day and it’s happy. I’ll probably give it to my mom, but you want it, let me know and you can pick it up today.

Update: This plant is now happily living at The Sellery

extreme downsizing : it’s a new breadmaker

11-May 2009

Here’s an unused bread maker that’s been hanging out in my closet. It’s free for the taking, so let me know if you want it.
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update: The Veev has already taken this

extreme downsizing: raving and caving

10-May 2009

Here are my unused glowsticks and accessories, and some old pads I used to use for caving. All are still fully functional, clean, and in pretty good condition.
The glowsticks are super-bright and last for about 15 minutes. Great for putting on a good lightshow. I never honed my glowsticking skills to the point where I thought that I deserved to light them up.
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Extreme downsizing: couch and bed

9-May 2009

Here are the big ones: my couch and bed are up on craigslist, ready to be haggled over.

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Update: these have both been sold to patrons of Craisglist.

extreme downsizing : cool shoes are up for grabs

8-May 2009

Let me know if you want these for free…. ’cause I don’t need them anymore. All will fit size 12US + / 0.5.
The trippy ones on the left have been know to garner comments such as “wow,” and “you win” from close friends.
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moving and extreme downsizing

7-May 2009

My lease is up on 8-June. By this time, I plan to have whittled down my immediate possessions to only include what is on the list at the bottom of this post.

In preparation for the move-out date, I will be getting rid of one significant thing per day. Today, I cleaned out my kitchen shelves and will be getting rid of most of my cookware and serving dishes. Make me an offer because they are going to goodwill by the end of Friday.

So blog, I am making a commitment to you right now that each day, I will make a post about at least one of my significant possessions (over $50 in value) that I am going to get rid of by the end of the day. If I don’t get any offers, I’m going to take it to Goodwill, or to consign on eBay through The Sellery, depending on how much I think it’s worth.

To keep score, this is what I plan to keep after I get rid of everything else:

  • bicycle
  • bike lock
  • laptop
  • laptop power supply
  • 7 changes of clothes
  • 2 pairs of footwear (leather shoes and sandals)
  • toothbrush
  • inflatable bed
  • sheets
  • plastic water bottle
  • phone and charging cable
  • digital camera and charger

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using HTML + CSS for print-based layout

3-May 2009

I was charged with making an advertisement for my eBay consignment shop for the 2009 O.Henry Pun-off. Half as an experiment, and half out of necessity, I decided to see what I could come up using HTML + CSS to make halfway decent-looking advertisement for print.

The result uses SVG, so the only browser that renders it properly right now is Safari, but since it was being printed, all that mattered was that I could get a PDF from it at the end of the day.

The only real problem was Safari’s lack of honesty when interperiting units in millimeters for printing to PDF; 1mm in Safari v.3.2.1 actually means 1.125mm when printed.

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Playing with GE’s augmented reality

15-April 2009

I find it a bit ironic that this green-themed marketing campaign instructs people print a sheet of paper for personal amusement. It’s still pretty cool. See my solution to the paper problem below.
ge_reality

eBay radio interview

3-April 2009

eBay radio interviewed me about The Sellery and our tips and tools on last Tuesday. You can listen at either of these sites:

http://podcast.thesellery.com/
http://www.wsradio.com/player/wsradio-player2.cfm/type/windows/show/eBay-Radio/segment/24363.html

It’s about 12 minutes long.

refracting magnifying glass effect with nothing but Javascript

20-March 2009

After playing with this code and this demo of a javascript mouseover zoom effect, I decided to take the magnifying glass effect one step further and add come refraction:

It uses concentric images placed on top of each other to achieve the illusion. Paste in a URL to any image you want and you can play with it. It’s in an iframe, so you’ll have to dig a little if you want the source; it’s pretty ugly right now.

Beautiful: GMail’s filters and lack of folders

17-March 2009

picture-31I was setting up a GMail filter today and noticed something unique about the way the filters are designed: it’s impossible to create one filter that conflicts with another. This allows the user to not have to worry about the order of application of the filters. Beautiful!

This is mostly thanks to GMail’s use of labels instead of folders. Every other e-mail client that I’ve used: Mail.app, Eudora, Outlook, Zimbra, and Thunderbird, all (or need to have) a way to assign a priority to filters to specify which filter has the last say with your messages. For example, one filter might move a message to folder A, but if the message is also matched by a filter that moves messages to folder B, then the first filter’s action is undone. When filters move messages to folders, it becomes important which filter was applied last. Using labels instead of folders, each filter just adds to the message’s list of labels, so it does not matter which order they were applied in.

The rest of the actions, like “Forward it to:”, “Never send it to Spam”, “Mark as read”, “Archive it”, and “Star it” all have this same property; they can all be done without undoing the effects of the previously applied filter. The only action that kind of breaks this rule is “Delete it”, which gives some insight into GMail’s initial hesitation to allow users to delete messages when GMail first rolled out.

Google Voice!

Google just finished converting my GrandCentral account to their new Google Voice service. Try calling me with this nifty widget:

Photosynth of Zilker Kite Festival 2009

3-March 2009

I took 249 photos last Sunday at the Zilker Kite Festival and ran them through Photosynth for an interesting composition.
(If you don’t have Microsoft Silverlight installed, you’ll have to follow the installation instructions before you will be able to view it.)

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PhotoSynth from my Balcony

27-January 2009

Now that PhotoSynth has been ported to Silverlight and Silverlight works on Macs, I thought I’d share a cool photosynth that I made from my balcony at A02.

Mad photoshop skills

5-January 2009

Here’s a quick little job I did because it needed to be done.

Before:
big-ride-logo
After:
big_ride_2008_cleaned

Consignment 2.0 - a podcast for eBay consignment sellers

I would like to make a special mention of my new podcast, Consignment 2.0, dedicated to improving the practice of eBay consignment shops by sharing information from the guys at The Sellery, as well as others in the eBay consignment community. Our first episode is up, and we are aiming for a bi-monthly release schedule.

Expiration date decoder

3-January 2009

This page explains how to decipher many of the cryptic expiration dates found on food containers. This is very useful, but it occured to me that it would be even more useful if this could be implemented in a script that could be accessed from something portable like an iPhone. Enjoy!

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