Category: Uncategorized

  • Solar Thermal rockets instead of chemical rockets

    I recently read about an idea to power rockets with solar energy, also known as “solar sails”. It made me wonder how practical this idea was given that solar thermal energy plants are in the experimental phase in Las Vegas. They basically use thousands of parabolic mirrors to focus sunlight on a central tower, which then runs a rankine power cycle.

    Keplar originally proposed the idea of solar sails to navigate the solar system. In this idea, light from the sun basically propells a object without any need for external power. The math is somewhat theoretical, and with little practical data, but the sun can produce about 1.4 kW of power at a distance of 93 million miles away.

  • Google artificially removing SunSpider Javascript Test from search results

    Ever wanted to test how fast your browser can do JavaScript? The de facto test is the SunSpider test, sponsored by WebKit. Looks like Google is no longer a fan, having manipulated their search results by removing it completely from their index. Try for yourself, or look at the screenshot below: Screen Shot 2013-06-24 at 11.49.14 PM While seemingly random, perhaps the reason SunSpider fell out of Google's favor is because they recently decided to fork WebKit with Blink, set to debut in Chrome 28. The problem isn't just limited to searching for "sunspider", as it also includes "sunspider javascript test", and "sunspider benchmark", as none of the results contain the actual link to the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. Interestingly, Bing isn't censoring the SunSpider JavaScript speed test: Screen Shot 2013-06-24 at 11.53.02 PM   Perhaps it's because Internet Explorer actually surpasses Chrome in the sunspider benchmark because it makes use of hardware acceleration. How embarrassing for the company that says "Do no evil".   By Brian Roizen

  • How to highlight dynamic results from MySQL using PHP

    I recently ran into this problem, and an easy fix was found here! Basically, just use some nice CSS like class=’selected’. I thought there’d be a straight up PHP way to highlight the results, but CSS/HTML isn’t too hard to implement.

  • iOS 7 SunSpider Benchmarks

    I just ran a Sunspider benchmark for an iPhone 5 with iOS 7 and the results are below for both Safari and Chrome.
    photo 2 photo 1   As you can see, Safari on iOS 7 is about 5X faster than chrome for javascript, but this is mostly due to the fact that Apple cripples Chrome by forcing it to use a webview. By Brian Roizen

  • iOS 7 beta screenshots

    Everything looks new and fresh in the iOS 7 beta. Here are some screenshots to show how the new UI and design looks!

    Starting with the homescreen, the signal bars are replaced with circles. Also apparent is the more modern looking font and flat icons.Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and you have quick settings (something I had on my jailbroken iPhone 3GS in 2010) Finally!
    shared_controlcenter_lastframe_2xThe messages app for iOS 7 looks beautiful and modern with a fluid like interface for scrolling. index_messages_posterframe_2x The weather app is just like Yahoo's weather app for iOS, but with different backgrounds. This isn't a bad thing as yahoo's app is one of the best weather apps.index_weather_posterframe_2x The new iOS 7 mail app looks great! Will it beat gmail?index_mail_posterframe_2x Siri looks more useful than ever in iOS 7index_siri_posterframe_2x index_camera_posterframe_2x index_photos_posterframe_2x index_itunesradio_posterframe_2x The new multitasking pane shows all the apps you have open, and to close apps you can simply swipe up. This is a beautiful UI gem taken straight from Palm's WebOS and more recently used by Chrome for iOS. shared_multitasking_posterframe_2x shared_notificationcenter_lastframe_2x shared_controlcenter_lastframe_2x Want to install iOS 7 on your iPhone 5 or 4S? Read this quick guide.   By <a href="https://plus.google.com/116162036529120103602?rel=author">Brian Roizen</a>

  • How to install the iOS 7 beta on your iPhone 5



    Want the latest and greatest iOS that won’t make it into the hands of the masses for a few more months? You’ve come to the right place! First, you must be a member of the iOS developer program ($99/year) to download the beta SDK.

    1. First download the iOS 7 beta https://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action (make sure you get the right version for your phone depending on if you have ATT or Verizon)

    2. Make sure you backup your iPhone files by going to iTunes (just click Backup now)

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    3. After downloading the ios_7_beta__iphone_5_model_a1428__11a4372q.dmg file, double click on it and extract the .ipsw file to your desktop

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    4. In iTunes, hold down the option and click on “Restore iPhone…”

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    5. iTunes will now take care of the rest of the iOS beta installation process! The last thing you should do is click “Restore from this backup” when prompted to keep all your old apps

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    Troubleshooting

    If you get the error “This device is not registered as part of the iphone developer program”, don’t fret, you just have to go to the iOS provisioning portal and add your UDID.

    By Brian Roizen

  • Best minimalist wallet case combo for iPhone 5

    I had the idea to make a phone case that also functioned as a wallet. Turns out this product already exists in the Incipio Stowaway. For only $15-$18 (depending on the color), you can get an elegant phone case that looks just like a normal case, but also has room for 3 credit cards AND a bill. This essentially means you no longer have to carry around a wallet! I highly recommend the Incipio Stowaway.

     

    See a video of how easy it is to use the Stowaway:

     

    By Brian Roizen

  • Cutest 404 page ever!

    Screen Shot 2013-05-31 at 3.44.05 PM

    I wrote an easy to use API for displaying cute animal pictures on any webpage.The API uses my website iGoAww.com, and chooses a random picture from amongst tens of thousands of adorable animal pictures.

    To use this free API, just request http://www.igoaww.com/api.php, and a JSON string will be returned containing the image URL and caption.

    This is an example:

    {“url”:”http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/ElNcPxF.jpg”,”caption”:”My parents got a new dog. We named it Bruce.”}

    You can use the following code to parse the JSON and display the resulting HTML:

    [code lang=’php]
    $jsonString = file_get_contents(“http://www.igoaww.com/api.php”);
    $jsonArray = json_decode($jsonString, true);
    $imageUrl = $jsonArray[‘url’];
    $caption = $jsonArray[‘caption’];
    echo “<br>While we work to fix it, we hope you enjoy this cute animal picture!<br>
    Courtesy of <a href=’http://www.igoaww.com’>iGoAww.com</a><br>
    <img style=’max-height: 700px; max-width: 700px;’ src=’$imageUrl’><br>$caption”;[/code]

  • How to get into any college class you want

     

    Class enrollment can be extremely frustrating! If the class fills up before you get a chance to enroll you are stuck refreshing the page every few minutes until someone decides to drop the class. Now there is a better solution that automates the process for you – Alertification.com. Instead of having to manually refresh the page until a class opens, Alertification does the painstaking task for you, and sends you a text message or email when the class is finally open! Enrolling in classes just got easier! Alertification works at most colleges in the US, especially at large schools like UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UCSB, and even USC!

    By Brian Roizen

  • Calculate your chances of getting into college

    There are countless forums where you can get random people to calculate your chances of getting into certain colleges, but these aren’t accurate at all due to bias and inexperience of the forum members. Not only do you have to wait hours if not days for a response, but you also can’t get estimates at more than a few schools because it’d take too much time for someone to give you a free response.

    To solve these problems, I created CalculateMyChances.  Just enter your new SAT score (out of 2400), and you will instantly get reasonably good feedback on your chances of getting into hundreds of different colleges. Included are your odds of getting into all the Ivys – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, and even schools like Stanford, UCLA, and UC Berkeley! Before I made the site there were a few other services that estimated your chances, but I found their implementation either poor or annoying to use. The frustrating ones asked you to sign up for their service, which simply wasn’t worth the effort. The others were created by those lacking even the most basic understanding of statistics and were completely inaccurate. Try out CalculateMyChances and let me know how you like it in the comments!

    By Brian Roizen