Justin Goeres

I'm generally pretty satisfied with the SNR of most threads around here (although I say that knowing that I certainly fall on the noise side pretty often). I think it's pretty rare that we toddle off into truly off-topic territory without first answering the question at hand.

I also read almost all the threads on LAVA even if they don't immediately interest me, because I expect the discussion itself to be entertaining.

QUOTE (crelf @ Jul 1 2008, 05:19 AM)

The first company I remember that had innovation time off (ITO) was 3M (years before google even existed). Rumour has it that post-it notes were an ITO project.

I've heard the same thing, but the Wikipedia page has no direct mention of it.

QUOTE (crelf @ Jun 30 2008, 08:53 AM)

Sheepish voice "It is very safe to operate" Poor guy - looks like he did a face plant...

Reminds me of some software demos I've done .

QUOTE (crelf @ Jun 30 2008, 07:51 AM)

Reminds me of this classic:

Well, if it's Shopping Channel Blooper Time, then I've always been a big fan of Ladder Mishaps.

Favorite: :thumbup: :thumbup:

2nd Favorite: :thumbup:

QUOTE (Norm Kirchner @ Jun 30 2008, 08:12 AM)

no but there isn't a case where I need to use the transparency either.

It's like nipple tassels. Sure they can go on a guy, but they make a lot more sense on a woman. More visually appealing too.

Good point :thumbup: . The only thing I've used the FP transparency for is to write a subVI that fades a window in or out over a defined time interval. I assume we've all done that. Has anyone used it for anything else? I guess I could maybe see using it to make a window throb when it wants attention, or recede to semi-transparent when it's not frontmost....

I think your point extends to nipples in general, does it not?

From his younger days, Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs explains

QUOTE (Norm Kirchner @ Jun 30 2008, 05:19 AM)

Anyone ever think that they'll make the FP transparency mask-able as to only make certain colors transparent?

I'm not a big fan of non-standard window shapes & behaviors, so if I understand what you're talking about the concept kinda makes me shudder. I'm curious -- is there something in particular you would do with mask transparency for FP windows? Aside from making a fancy left-to-right-wipe fade in/fade out , or a donut-shaped window with a hole in the middle , I'm having trouble visualizing the use case.

However, I do wish for the following things:

• I wish it was easier to manipulate decorations on the FP.
  
• I wish it was possible to dynamically create & destroy front panel controls and indicators. I know this has severe implications for LabVIEW's dataflow paradigm (every FP control has a BD terminal), but if I could create/destroy FP controls & indicators and at least receive events from them in an Event Structure and interact with their references, I would be a bit happier.
  

QUOTE

...same model (991) of gray New Balance sneakers...

Ha! I just found the best photo of all:

I'm even way cooler than I thought I was. :thumbup:

Wikipedia says those are New Balance 992s. So while you may be cooler than you thought you were, you must always remember that Steve Jobs is still slightly cooler than you.

QUOTE (nhollenback @ Jun 24 2008, 11:57 AM)

Which shade? ImageMagick knows 5 different ones .

QUOTE (tcplomp @ Jun 24 2008, 11:39 AM)

While deftly avoiding the bait :ninja:, I would point out that being able to import my entire previous Windows laptop into a virtual machine strikes me as the ultimate in the backward compatibility that means the most to me :thumbup:.

QUOTE (boone_93 @ Jun 24 2008, 07:16 AM)

Doesn't the 1680x1050 screen give you enough room for the 1280x1024 window? Also, I agree that you can run at a lower resolution but flatscreens always look there best when run at their native resolution, one of the few drawbacks compared to CRTs that could run any resolution and look good.

Once you include the menu bar, 1050 is barely big enough. But yes, technically it's just enough. Michael made a point in another thread about it being nice to have your laptop be capable of the same resolution as your external monitor, so that played into my decision, as well.

QUOTE

I was just talking to Steve Jobs the other day (he and I are close personal friends ) and he said he doesn't care what Windows users think .

I understand what you're saying about the little missing bits, but I've never been happy with their implementation on Windows, either. My old Dell has a numeric keypad integrated into the built-in keyboard, but it sucks because the rows are all offset from each other and it's not in a natural place anyway. And I've never used the card reader on it, in spite of the fact that I have several gadgets that use cards. I just plug the gadgets in directly. That having been said, if you're really used to working with those things I can see where giving them up would be a hassle.

There are http://www.bookendzdocks.com/Docking_Stations-Docking_Station_for_17_MacBook_Pro.html' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">docks available for MacBook Pros, although I'll be the first to admit they're a bit clunky. That owes to the fact that Apple puts all their ports on the side of the machine (which means you can see them and plug/unplug stuff without climbing to the back of the machine). I have a friend who docks his machine in one of them, and he's pretty happy with it.

QUOTE (Eugen Graf @ Jun 24 2008, 06:39 AM)

Ok, thank you, I just made it.

In my experience, things like this are really tough to implement because there are lots of weird things that can happen after you display the ring control.

The first one off the top of my head is what happens when the user pulls down the ring control, but instead of clicking inside it to select something, they click outside it? Normally, that's the behavior when the user wants to cancel what they were doing and exit the item selection without changing the current value of the selector. How do you handle that case?

I'm asking not because I have an answer, and not because I think there's not an answer -- I just mean that the answer isn't obvious to me right now, but your users will expect it to work that way. I've historically found that replicating all the expected behaviors in a LabVIEW control is really hard if not impossible. If you've got a solution, I'd be really interested to hear it.

QUOTE (boone_93 @ Jun 24 2008, 05:06 AM)

As for resolution, don't you guys find it a little hard to see and works with items on the screen with those high res 1920x1200 screens, especially with LabVIEW since everything is pixel based and you can't enlarge the environment. Maybe I'm getting a little old (35 and counting)

Sometimes I do, yeah. I may end up running mine at a lower resolution when possible, but I needed the hi-res screen because it's the only Mac that will accommodate a 1280x1024 window (the bounds of most of my deployment machines). There are several Windows machines with better resolution options than Apple offers, but then again they're not Macintoshes .

I hold out hope that someday NI will give us some ability to enlarge the workspace in LabVIEW. Remember that LabVIEW debuted when screens were in the 640x480 range, making common screens today six to eight times larger . It's partially offset by the physical growth in our monitors, but the fact is that the icons are getting smaller and we're getting older, and that's starting to be a problem. Maybe NI's engineers are all just too young .

(And after I get a zoomable editing environment, I want larger VI icons, too, with 24-bits of color and an 8-bit alpha channel. I can dream.)

QUOTE (jjylf @ Jun 24 2008, 04:30 AM)

Is it possible to send data of type Integer or double over TCP/IP in LV?

The TCP Write can only send string, or?

TCP Write uses a string for its datatype, but remember that a string is really just an array of bytes. So anything you want to send will have to be packed into a byte array for transmission (it's like serial in that respect).

A straightforward way to pack the data is by using the Flatten To String and Unflatten From String functions in your palettes. You could also just format the numeric data into a human-readable string and decode it at the other end.

QUOTE (Chris Davis @ Jun 23 2008, 06:43 PM)

BTW, Justin, do you have the mac version of 8.5 and windows version of 8.5 running on your new MacBook Pro? Is the volume licensing agreement still such that you have to purchase both copies separately?

Yes, I have both versions. That's what you see in the screenshot above. I haven't had a chance to really exercise either installation yet, but obviously that will come soon enough.

My licensing arrangement is such that I did not have to pay for a whole separate copy of Mac LabVIEW. If you think you need a Mac LabVIEW license or need a set of install disks, I would start by contacting your local field sales person and explaining your use case to them.

QUOTE (Jim Kring @ Jun 23 2008, 06:54 PM)

It damb well better .

QUOTE (ChrisClark @ Jun 23 2008, 05:03 PM)

Whoa, I assumed I could run XP (Fusion or Bootcamp) with two monitors, better check that. I'm watching the Macrumors.com buyers guide for next rev news. And it seems like XP should be good for the next couple of years.

I haven't tried it fullscreen with both my monitors yet (Fusion was suspended when I connected the monitor), but I have discovered that you can run it fullscreen on a single monitor and still get to the second monitor (which is still living in Mac-OS-X-world) by just slinging the mouse over there and doing your thing. This will become an issue if I'm running fullscreen and need to move VI windows over to the second monitor, but my hope is that I'll be able to work mostly in Unity mode. At some point I'll also move to the newer Fusion beta.

I'm glad to hear other people have also made the transition. This is really an exciting time .

QUOTE (Jim Kring @ Jun 23 2008, 02:21 PM)

One more note on this: I'm not entirely convinced that's true. I think that the glossy might seem brighter just because the image is slightly crisper, but when I forced myself to squint at them in the store (so all the subjects were blurry ) I came away suspicious that the perceived brightness difference might be an optical illusion. Another thing to note is that, trust me, both screens are more than bright enough. Mine (matte) hurts my eyes, even from 2-3 feet away, on 100% brightness. I'm finding that I generally run it at 75-80%.

QUOTE (Jim Kring @ Jun 23 2008, 02:21 PM)

but matte has more accurate color and is better suited for graphics professionals.

Haven't read the link you posted yet, but one of the Apple Store employees who claimed to be a graphic designer (although who knows what that means -- he's working in an Apple Store, after all ) told me the exact opposite of that. He likes his glossy screen because he thinks it has better color reproduction than the matte.

EDIT: OK, I read the link. I would say that I went through almost the exact same comparison the other blogger did, but I just came to a different conclusion. The one difference I would note is that the lighting in the Apple Store I was in was most assuredly not all that bright. For me, I actually like the fact that as I look at my machine I can barely even see the covering on the screen. With the glossy, there was always some reflection on it from somewhere. But again, the decision was maybe 55/45 for me, and I actually changed my mind twice while I was looking.

I think people make a bigger deal out of the screen differences than they should. Both screens are really very good, and at the end of the day it's just personal preference.

QUOTE (Omar Mussa @ Jun 23 2008, 01:02 PM)

Is there a reason you chose VMWare Fusion over Parallels?

I've heard (and I stress that I have no direct evidence for this) that Fusion's USB bridging system is better (i.e. it's more stable and works with a wider variety of hardware).

In an informal test a year ago, I played with a friend's MacBook Pro and a beta of Parallels for about a month (back before either Parallels or Fusion had their rootless ("Unity") modes). At the time, the virtualization in Parallels was fine but the USB side of things was really unstable. It would be unfair, however, to judge Parallels based on that now.

The real reason I picked Fusion was because NI's virtualization demo at NIWeek last year used Fusion. That's about it. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?

For what it's worth, imaging my old laptop into VMWare using the VMWare Converter was a minor nightmare for a couple of reasons that I would be glad to discuss privately (they're a little hard to explain), but the bottom line is that eventually everything sorted itself out and my virtual machine is a duplicate of my old Dell, which is a big bonus continuity-wise. The only major problem right now is that the VM Windows doesn't want to talk to the samba server on my network, which is going to make generating invoices impossible until it's fixed.

QUOTE (Jim Kring @ Jun 23 2008, 01:04 PM)

I bought mine at a Apple Retail Store in Oregon (to save on tax). That has the slightly irritating effect of reducing the number of options, because not all build-to-order configurations are offered in the stores.

Essential details:

• 2.6 GHz CPU (would've gotten 2.5 GHz, but it was tied to screen size)
  
• 200GB/7200rpm hard drive (would've gotten the standard 250/5400 but it was tied to screen size)
  
• 2 GB RAM (but a 4 GB upgrade is in the mail; I just didn't want to pay Apple's extortionate price for it)
  
• Hi-res screen (1920x1200)
  
• Non-glossy (matte) screen finish
  

CPU

The difference in benchmarks between 2.5 GHz and 2.6 GHz is basically linear (only 4%), but the difference in price is closer to 10%. So the extra 100 MHz struck me as not very good bang-for-buck. But being forced to get the fastest laptop available isn't the worst thing I've ever faced .

Hard Drive

Basically the same argument as the CPU. The 7200 drive is measurably faster (something like 10%) depending on the application. But since I plan to run Windows & Mac OS X next to each other a lot, I would've wanted the extra 50 GB of disk space (in the standard 250 GB drive). But at the Apple Store, if you want the fancy screen, you have to get the fancy (but smaller) hard drive. This, too, is not the end of the world, as the 7200rpm drive is faster and 200 GB total space will probably be enough for me for a while.

Screen

For the screen size, it was Michael's comment about screen resolution in the linked thread above that convinced me to get the 17" Hi-Res. As for screen finish, I compared several machines in the store and the decision was about 55%/45% in favor of the matte screen. I work fairly frequently under harsh fluorescent (cleanroom) lights, and I expect the matte finish to help with that. Also, the lights in Apple Stores are surprisingly dim, so it's hard to really see much difference between the screens. But overall (and after asking a half-dozen Apple Store employees what their personal machines are) it was apparent to me that either screen would probably be fine for software development. My basic advice re: screen finish is that unless you've already deluded yourself into believing you absolutely need a specific kind, you should go to an Apple Store and just compare a whole bunch of them and then go for the one that feels better, even if you can't explain it .

As hinted at in this thread and this thread, I finally upgraded my old work machine.

I'm pleased, therefore, to announce the arrival of my shiny new 17" MacBook Pro. The plan going forward is to do my development under Windows via VMWare Fusion, but to have the door open for forays into the Mac world as opportunities present themselves. I'm also a natural-born Mac user from way back and I've missed my old Power Mac G4 ever since it bit the dust a couple years ago, so it's good to be Back Home.

Of course, the old Dell will hang around in the unpleasant event that I run into hardware that won't talk to VMWare. But aside from that, the plan is All Mac, All The Time.

Screenshot proof.

I still haven't upgraded my Windows LabVIEW to 8.5.1; I assume that's the difference between the Getting Started windows.

All the physicists in the house say Hey!

Hey! :thumbup:

Now raise your arms above your head and move them back and forth as though there were no consequences!

QUOTE (Jim Kring @ Jun 17 2008, 12:42 PM)

What I want is for LabVIEW to know which function I'm thinking about and to put it on my tooltip so that I can drop it. Is that what you're thinking of, too?

How about a Markov-chain based system that would look at the node your tool is currently pointing at and analyze a handful of nodes leading to it to determine the most historically likely function?

It's in my brain because I've been playing with http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">Garkov .

QUOTE (crelf @ Jun 17 2008, 12:01 PM)

Top 10 Kids Who Prove We’re All Pathetic.

Samuel Majors must be #11 .

The servers were pretty swamped at first, but I managed to get through and get the download at about 10:30 AM US Pacific Time (30 minutes after scheduled launch).

So far it seems significantly faster, and only a couple of my favorite Addons (e.g. Mouse Gestures) broke. I never used any of the betas or release candidates, so this is the first I've played with it.

QUOTE (Justin Goeres @ Jun 15 2008, 11:44 AM)

And they raze the downtown area every time their sports teams win . Or, so I'm told.

In the interest of clarity and cultural sensitivity, I'd like to clarify that I totally don't actually mean that Michiganders actually raze downtown Detroit whenever their teams win. That hasn't happened since like the 80s. I apologize in advance to anyone offended.

QUOTE (Yen @ Jun 15 2008, 11:22 AM)

If I should ever get to Detroit (is there any reason to? I got the impression it's mostly a desolate industrial city) I'll be sure to follow up on that invitation.

And they raze the downtown area every time their sports teams win . Or, so I'm told.

QUOTE (crelf @ Jun 15 2008, 07:23 AM)

:!: DO NOT customize the t-shirt at check out - choose Basic Dark T-Shirt - Black only.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Ford' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">Any customer can have a LAVA t-shirt any colour that he wants so long as it is Basic Dark - Black.

QUOTE

Not to mention that it's usually 102 degrees (fahrenheit!) in Austin during NIWeek, so if you order a hooded sweatshirt and try to wear it during the conference you'll just spend the BBQ in the Emergency Room anyway .

QUOTE (Michael_Aivaliotis @ Jun 14 2008, 08:43 PM)

Regardless, I would think that all the people who's avatars are featured on the shirt will buy one... right? :thumbup:

I just counted them up (for the first time ) and I think there are seventy-nine different avatars on the shirt. That should be roughly the top 100 LAVA users (in terms of post count), minus a couple dozen who don't have avatars set, plus Spoolie.

Thanks to Michael for sending me the raw user & avatar information I needed, and special thanks also to my friends awk, grep, wget, and GIMP.

Note, also, that due to Internet Magic, you can customize your shirt on the purchase page at Zazzle! There are several different cuts & colors of shirt available, for various prices.