websmithing blog

Think And Grow Rich

nicolaspatrickfox@hotmail.com — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 05:28:35 GMT

I want to share this book with you but first I want to tell you a story. When I was about 18 or 19 I was in a lot of trouble. I was involved in a lot of self-destructive activities. I was in Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. and this old man walked up to me and handed me a big book and told me I needed to read it. So I did. And then I forgot about it.

A few years ago, I was with a friend who is wealthy and he told me I needed to read a book called "Think and Grow Rich."

I believe that if you are interested in getting rich then it's a good idea to listen to rich people and take thier advice. So I took his and went to the bookstore. I found the book and then something caught my eye. I looked over and saw a big book on the shelf. It was called "The Law of Success" by Napoleon Hill and I realized that it was the book that was given to me so many years before. I was stunned and amazed that I was once again directed to read a book by Napolean Hill. He is the author of both books. All my life I have felt like I was a successful person and I attribute that feeling to having read that book years ago. Is that merely coincidence that I would find that book and be directed to read Napolean Hill again? I don't think so.

Think and Grow Rich was originally published in 1938 and is freely available. It is considered by most people to be a classic in success literature. Here is my greatest desire, that you download this book, read it and follow and do what Napolean Hill recommends. This book is not just about making money but it's about transforming your life. It teaches you how to become the captain of your own destiny. I've made it available for download here. I'd love to hear your comments about this wonderful book and how the principles within have changed your life.

Google Map GPS Cell Phone Tracker, Version 2

nicolaspatrickfox@hotmail.com — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:27:30 GMT

Version 2 is now available for download! This version has a number of major changes. On the website part of the application, you can view routes that you create with your GPS cell phone. The routes can also be deleted. There is a feature that allows you to automatically refresh the webpage so that you can watch someone move with the cell phone in real time! On the phone, you can now view your location with a Google map. These are major changes that have been requested in version 1 of the app.

The So Generation

nicolaspatrickfox@hotmail.com — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:37:20 GMT

The first time I heard someone begin a conversation with the word "so" was in the year 2000. I was working for a software company in Los Angeles. The person who used the word was a fellow software engineer. Usually it was in the context of explaining something. And it was always with an air of great knowledge as if it were a pronouncement from on high. It always began as a one word sentence. So. It did several things. It got your attention. It let you know that you were about to receive important information. It gave you the feeling that you were listening to someone who was really intelligent. My fellow engineer was very smart and people listened to what he said. I think he was the person who started this movement.

Pretty soon, I began to hear other engineers in the office use the word "so" to start off explanations and conversations. It made them look a little smarter too. You had to say the word "so" just right, as an exclamation. I then began to see the word being used more often. People in academic settings and software circles were using it in online videos. After a few years it was beginning to become mainstream. I would hear if often in the news. I could see it growing. I'm really not sure if people were aware of the word. It's just one of those things that seems to slip into common speech unnoticed.

Recently, I was in the supermarket. I asked one of the clerks there where the soup was and the person looked at me and began "So..."

Across the Universe by the Beatles

nicolaspatrickfox@hotmail.com — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 13:44:24 GMT

All I've been doing lately is sitting in front of my computer writing software. I've been dealing with difficult stressful software problems and I just needed to take a break. Netflix now lets you watch unlimited videos on thier website and slipping into a movie takes me away. I needed to do something a little different for a couple of days so I decided to record a song. Recently NASA transmitted "Across the Universe" by the Beatles into outer space so I decided to record that song. You can see and hear it here on YouTube.

Google Map GPS Cell Phone Tracker

nicolaspatrickfox@hotmail.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:40:22 GMT

This project allows someone to track a GPS enabled cell phone using Google maps. For this project we used a Motorola i355 cell phone on the Sprint/Nextel network. The software will run on any Java Me enabled phone that has GPS. You need to have a data plan so that you can make updates to your website from the cellphone. Please read the ReadMe.txt file in the download for installation instructions. I hope you enjoy the project. If you have any questions, feel free ask them in the forum on sourceforge. Click here to go directly to the tutorial.

100 Views of Edo

nicolaspatrickfox@hotmail.com — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:15:08 GMT

The pictures that are at the top of each page were painted by Utagawa Hiroshige about 200 years ago. I love his art. Especially the way he contrasts his use of blues and reds. Edo was what is now called Tokyo.

You can read more about him at Wikipedia.

Hello World!

nicolaspatrickfox@hotmail.com — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:30:05 GMT

Welcome to websmithing! Here you'll find the most comprehensive tutorials and code samples explaining how to connect real world devices to the internet. There are many books and online tutorials that explain single programming languages and platforms. But to integrate devices like cell phones with websites, it requires the use of many languages and platforms. Here you learn how to put together all those languages to come up with cool applications. Not only will you learn how to put together the software, but you can download proven open source code from sourceforge that we have written. We show you different ways of integrating software, one using Microsoft technologies such as C#, .NET and SQL Server and the other using the LAMP stack, which is Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.