Geeky Yet Waterproof

On Tuesday, July 15th 2008, I officially released the software I’ve been working on by myself for almost two full years. It’s called Sleep Blaster. And what is it? The first-ever Mac alarm clock that really turns off when you yell at it. That’s right. It uses either iTunes or computerized dynamite (you heard me) to wake you up. It will play the sound for a few seconds, then pause to listen for a few seconds, then play the sound for a few seconds, etc. If it hears you shout during the pause, it will stop the alarm!
And it doesn’t just wake you up — it can also put you to sleep either by playing iTunes for a set amount of time, or with its built-in ocean wave generator! (Which, by the way, isn’t a flat recording of ocean waves, but an algorithm for simulating the sound thereof.)
But there’s more still. How many times have you set your alarm for 8am, and at precisely 8pm, your alarm rings? If you’re like me, the answer is “a lot”. But with the advent of Sleep Blaster: no more. Sleep Blaster comes with a revolutionary Stupidity Prevention System (SPS), which warns you if it thinks you’re setting the alarm for an unlikely hour.

So, all this for $8 — roughly the price of a hamburger and fries. And how did the launch go? Well, the first day was pretty unexciting — as I expected. How are you supposed to get the word out to people? Apparently, by submitting it to the Apple downloads page. Because on the second day, it racked in FOURTY FIVE (45) downloads, and its first joyful purchase. And by the third day, I received my 2nd payment of $8, and the downloads count climbed to… 100? Nope. 200? Still nope. 515 downloads.

So as you can imagine, I’m pretty excited right now. If all works as according to my almighty plan, I’ll get enough sales from this to call it a Real Job™. And it will be one I enjoy mightily.

If you have a Mac running Leopard, you can download Sleep Blaster from the website.

On Thursday, my geek life was made anew. In other words, my black MacBook arrived.

With a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor and a 250GB hard drive, I cannot justly describe the difference in speed, power, and sleekness from my old PowerBook G4, so all I will say is this: HOLY AWESOME, BATMAN!

My trusty Powerbook, which has served me well, was diagnosed (by yours truly) with cancer of the hard drive. The data is safe (thanks to Time Machine), but the drive will eventually have to be amputated. Fortunately, being a computer, it’s slightly easier to cure than were it human.

This infirmity can be looked upon in a positive light, however. For one thing, the hard drive can be replaced with a larger one (80GB is much too small these days). But most of all…

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*MAKE A WISH*
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*JUST KIDDING, I REALLY DO DESPISE THOSE EMAILS*
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I ordered a MacBook today. Yes, not only did I empty my bank account, I blew a 20 foot hole into the ground. But for a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB memory, a 250GB hard drive, and an Apple logo in the sleek black polycarbonate shell, it’s worth it.

As a result of my biology experiment which was commenced several weeks ago, I had a face-to-face encounter with some aliens microbes: