so i took a few minutes and created a yahoo pipe which returns search results for any given search string.

enjoy!

Y! Live basically allows you to have your own internet TV channel, where you can also interact with your audience via real-time chat and being able to see them if they also have their camera on while watching you. the really cool part is that since this is web-based, you don’t have to install anything. (except for Flash, but i’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you already have that installed :])

we think that musicians will really dig this b/c it would allow them to perform live online whenever they want. the example i give when explaining it, is that a band could bring their laptop to practice in the garage and let the world watch. they could probably get alot more fans that way. (since you can also easily embed the video into your myspace page, for example.)

this was also my first launch at Yahoo! since starting in June. I joined the team right when this project was kicking off, so it has been really cool to see how it evolved over time. the plan now is to keep the site running full steam, and then start working on making it cooler. we have alot of plans for new features, but decided that getting it public sooner was better. we have a blog setup at yliveblog.com so if you do the RSS thing, feel free to subscribe b/c i’m sure any new features will be posted there. (we also have a twitter, but does anybody back home even know what twitter is?)

launch day was pretty crazy too. thursday started off interestingly, b/c we found out that my manager was in the ER all nite. we were all freaked out by that, and then he shows up to work with a broken arm! (long story, lol) but luckily we had the site ready to go and were just waiting on final approval from teams like Customer Care, Legal and Paranoids (security group). after some last minute tinkering to get them to sign off, we open the site up around 5pm. we popped open the champagne and beer and started using the site with the public.

the response was overwhelming! we got posted on some tech news sites, and digg. (at one point kevin rose’s channel was full of diggers) unfortunately we hit some “technical difficulties” and i spent from about midnight to 5AM trying to figure out what was misconfigured and how with my superhero coworker, premshree. we turned the site back on, played the inaugural game of ping-pong in our break room and then spent the rest of the morning watching the site. luckily i was able to sneak in a nap today from 9am-2pm! :]

all in all, i’m extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished in this short period of time (the site was made by 6 people, in 6 months) and i hope everybody at least tries it out once. :P

here are my channels. when you go, i may or may not be live.

http://live.yahoo.com/afex
http://live.yahoo.com/guitarzero

and of course, any feedback is welcome. ping me on facebook or leave a comment.

Ended up paying $1500 to visit home for christmas. I guess all that extra money is to pay them to cancel my flight a few hours before I was supposed to leave, put me in coach when I bought a business class ticket and then lose our luggage. Thanks American Airlines! (?)

New language of the year: Objective-C.

With the iPhone SDK coming out soon, I’ll probably want to play around with building some apps for it, so I think it’s time to dive into mac development. I wonder if my knowledge of Visual Studio is going to taint my progress. Along that vein, I also want to make an iPhone-friendly version of my diet plugin. I haven’t made any web apps using the iUI library, but have been meaning to.

Get my apartment awesome by the summer.

I still have stuff in boxes and the place doesn’t feel finished yet.

Lose my christmas weight.

Weighed in this morning at almost 7 pounds over my target. How can I say no to fudge at christmas?? (Plus gumbo, etouffee, jambalaya, fried alligator, shrimp poboys, oh shi- [food coma]) Well that was easy, just get food poisoning! I also caved in and bought a gym membership, but since Yahoo! reimburses me for it I break even which is pretty good.

so guess what: i’ve got the itch again. but this time it’s different. maybe it’s b/c i have more time to think about it, or maybe it’s b/c i’m older, but i think i figured out why i go on these art tangents. i’m a maker. i have this natural need to create. it’s one of the reasons i became a programmer, so that i could literally make something out of nothing. but while programming is definitely creative, it doesn’t really tweak the same nerve-endings as something like art and music do. and i know that if i actually get good at drawing it will make me better at my job, and break me out of my focused, analytical, logical rut.

so instead of just buying some supplies (well, i did that too) i went to a bookstore on my way home from work and bought The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. (aside: being able to just hop off your bike and walk it around the store rocks!) from what i can tell so far (i’m on chapter 4), this book is to drawing like Good Eats is to food. rather than just show you the steps and the results, it gets down into the science. the author spends alot of time talking how the brain works and the real physiological reasons why some people can’t draw what they see. (mainly due to the left brain dominating over the right brain)

so hopefully whenever i get through this thing i suck a little less, and maybe i’ll post a few pictures. i had to draw a “before” self-portrait, but i’ll wait to share that one until i have an “after”. :]

i brought my camera and had a really good time taking pictures (of the cheerleaders). unfortunately, it made me realize that while my 18-135 lens is great for general use, i really should get something with more zoom if i want to make a habit of taking sports photos. but honestly, i just put my camera on ’sport’ mode and pressed the button. i let it do all the rest! here are some of the ones i really like.

what i really wanted was a Wii, but since they are still impossible to find (and all i really wanted was wii sports which would get old after awhile) i decided on the 360. the ps3 wasn’t even on the list since it costs too much just isn’t worth it. now i am worried about getting the “red ring of death” but since i won’t have to pay to get it fixed, and since i’m just buying it now, the newer hardware is out which hopefully helps out a bit. i made sure to get the HDMI version also.

so now i have this new toy, and all the time in the world to play with it. there’s the obvious omg buy halo 3 but other than when we used to have those halo parties on pecan tree, i didn’t really play that game. and now that i’d have to rely on playing online to get some multiplayer action, it just wouldn’t be the same. :[ so i decided to buy skate. and holy crap, this game is awesome. part of it is just getting used to playing games in HD, since i’ve never done it before. but after i got used to the awesome graphics, i realized that this game is way better than the Tony Hawk games from PS1/PS2. and if you know me, you know how much i played those games.

one of the cool things about this game is how you can upload video to their site directly from the game. check out me getting hit by a car.

do any of ya’ll back home have a 360? add me as a friend, my name is ‘afexTW’.

http://maps.yahoo.com/mapmixer

mapmixer lets you take a 3rd party map (such as… a map of the LSU campus? :]) and overlay it on top of the global map. but in order to do this, the map needs to be a 2D, top-down view otherwise it doesn’t make much sense. all the campus maps of LSU i can find either have an angled view, or are too ugly to use. ideally it would have all the buildings labeled, since that is kinda the point. this is the best i could find, but the building names are un-readable :[

if you find one, you can post here or if you want, just post it yourself to mapmixer.

here’s an example: (don’t forget to play with the opacity)

if you can’t see anything, stop reading this from facebook and come to my site! :P

i’ve been checking craigslist for awhile now, but most of the stuff there are mountain bikes. i guess the fact that mountain biking started around here skews the market a bit. so after some yelping for bike shop reviews, i headed over to pedal revolution and saw just the bike i was looking for. not a mountain bike but also not a lance armstrong racer. i think the technical description is “performance hybrid”. basically it’s meant for people riding around on city streets. hey sounds useful!

after riding around for fun on sunday, and to work and back today all i can say is… my ass hurts. it’s been like 10 years since i’ve ridden a bike regularly. maybe i just need a squishier seat.

work is rockin. we are looking to launch the internal alpha for our product next week, so i’m in deploy mode. releasing used to mean “upload to a server” to me, so working at this scale is pretty cool. automated processes are your friend. learn to love the shell.

in other news, pepper attempted to travel to the moon, but was unsuccessful.

maybe it’s the lack of stellar titles out right now (currently waiting for quake wars beta 2) or the fact that i’ve kinda plateaued with guitar hero. whatever it is, i am totally addicted to the old school again. i picked up nestopia, zsnes, and gens along with a “few” roms to play. it’s amazing how much an 8-bit theme song can stick with you. i was geeking out, big time.

yesterday’s playlist includes:

• excitebike (NES)
• california games (NES)
• chrono trigger (SNES)
• sonic spinball (Genesis)
• phantasy star 4 (Genesis)

soon a nice playstation-to-USB converter from ebay will be making its way to my door and i’ll be playing in style. playing with a keyboard just doesn’t cut it for me. you’re supposed to play with your thumbs! now i just have to think of a more permanent way to play all this on my tv instead of my computer and i’ll be set. it’s a shame my xbox bit the dust on pecan tree, since i know you can use it to do a similar setup.

this has even spilled over into the physical realm. i’m seriously thinking about doing some apartment decorating with pixelblocks and taking one of these big, empty walls and turning it into space invaders. terri isn’t too keen on the latter, but she’ll come around. :]

so what is everybody’s retro “must play” games? i’m looking for suggestions for tonite. :]

but to be honest, i’d rather have a roman candle duel with tyler. there’s no danger just watching them :[

full set here on flickr