Pew Pew Laser Blog: Meeting New Friends.

Katie Kurkoski — Mon, 14 May 2012

Playing video games is fun, but there's a lot more fun to be had if you can find a way to play with other people. The husband frequently plays online with his Xbox 360 buddies, but I always had a hard time finding people to play Nintendo DS games with. Some Nintendo DS games tried very hard to connect players with each other - Dragon Quest IX, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, and The World Ends with You all allowed you to trade in-game bonuses via Tag Mode - but I never found any other players using Tag Mode in the wild (I found a bounty of DQ IX players at PAX, an annual gaming convention).

A few mobile games (Foursquare, Gowalla) have resolved this "temporal" communication problem by connecting game data to a location. If a player leaves an item or checks in at an office, restaurant or park, the next player will see that interaction whenever they interact with that location - minutes or even weeks later.

With the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo has made it a lot easier for folks to meet up. Instead of having to trade data for one specific game, Nintendo 3DS games can opt into the Street Pass service, which will trade data for all games using Street Pass. So instead of only trading data when two players using the exact same game, players now only need to both be using a Nintendo 3DS. With the 3DS, I manage to meet some new players every week or so - mostly just random folks walking around downtown Seattle.

To encourage Street Pass use, the Nintendo 3DS even included a pair of Street-Pass focused games with the system. With Find Mii, avatars of the real people that you meet will fight monsters to rescue your avatar, and with Puzzle Swap you can exchange puzzle pieces with folks that you meet. I love these little features which make me feel connected, even passively, with other people who are also playing Nintendo 3DS games. Every day when I come home, I check the 3DS to see if I've made any new Street Pass friends.

Pew Pew Laser Blog: Thank You, Stack Exchange.

Katie Kurkoski — Mon, 23 Apr 2012

For the past couple years, I've been participating in an online web-programming question and answer site - Stack Overflow - and various other sites within the Stack Exchange family: Gaming, Cooking, Apple products, and even Board Games. Recently, I've earned the fabulous prizes shown here for creating good site content: an iPod Touch, CookWise by Shirley O. Corriher, and On Food and Cooking - Harold McGee.

Thank you, Stack Exchange.

Pew Pew Laser Blog: What Twitter is Good For.

Katie Kurkoski — Mon, 9 Apr 2012

Apropos of this "explanation" of various social media offerings, I was talking with a friend about what Twitter is good for. Based on my usage, here's what I came up with.

Tracking Seattle food trucks.
To quickly share photos from my iPhone, usually of things I've made and / or will eat.
To read jokes.
To see interesting glass.

Yep - I think that's a pretty accurate summation of what Twitter is good for.

Pew Pew Laser Blog: Tasty, Fast and Cheap.

Katie Kurkoski — Thu, 29 Mar 2012

Since I work in downtown Seattle, and am rarely prepared enough to have made myself a lunch to take to work, I often purchase lunch from one of numerous options near my office. Similar to the cheap-quick-good rule of software development, I aim for my lunches to meet two of these three criteria:

tasty
fast
cheap

If an option is tasty and cheap, I'll probably back. Or fast and tasty. If a restaurant is slow and expensive, I probably won't be back. Of course, tasty, fast and cheap would be great!

Pew Pew Laser Blog: Glassblowing Tools.

Katie Kurkoski — Tue, 20 Mar 2012

In glassblowing, there are some tools are very expensive; jacks - $200, diamond shears - $225, and thousands of dollars for a glory hole.

But there are also some very cheap tools for glassblowing:

Newspaper: Fold up several sheets of newsprint, soak it for 20 minutes, and you've got yourself a tool that will let you shape the glass with your hand.
Plastic bucket full of water with a little baking soda: Dunk a piece in it and gather over to get a ton of tiny bubbles on the surface. Stir this up immediately before dunking.
Nail on the end of a stick: A classic. Used for boxing small things with hooks, like ornaments and pumpkins.
Bonsai shears: At around $20, these thin metal tipped shears are even better at trimming a lip than your shop shears. Try the Kengyu Gardenman KG-4 - they're Boyd Sugiki approved.

Pew Pew Laser Blog: Outlook - Search Inside an Email.

Katie Kurkoski — Sat, 10 Mar 2012

In Outlook (Microsoft's email program), I used to think that there was no way to search the body of a given email, since Control-F (the keyboard shortcut used for "Find" by most applications) started Forwarding an email. However, I've recently discovered that there is a way to search the contents of an email:

Open the email in its own window. (The preview pane is no good for this.)
Hit F4.

Pew Pew Laser Blog: Fused Glass at Glassique.

Katie Kurkoski — Wed, 29 Feb 2012

Last fall I took another fused glass class via a Groupon, this time at Glassique in Seattle. We must have been good students - you can see pictures from our class up on Glassique's site.

I learned some new things at this Glassique class, particularly how to use the circle-cutter. I also got to play with stringers (for the very thin lines), which was fun. But I was a bit dissapointed that all we made was pendants and garden-hangers, since I want to make bigger pieces such as plates and bowls. Let me know if you're interested in any of these pendants - I'll probably be putting them up on Etsy soon.

If you're interested in fusing jewelery, I do recommend this class - the staff was knowledgeable and friendly, and all the tools and materials (large sheets of glass, not just scrap glass) were included.

As always, thanks to the husband for the photography.

Pew Pew Laser Blog: Biz-speak of the Week.

Katie Kurkoski — Mon, 27 Feb 2012

You have all heard "soup to nuts" (beginning to end) and "skin in the game" (investment or stake in a project). Now we have "making sausage", as in "I need to get out of making sausage", which means "I need to stop worrying about the details" (I.E., what's in the sausage).

Pew Pew Laser Blog: The Rules.

Katie Kurkoski — Sun, 5 Feb 2012

I have two simple rules which, as a web developer, I hope not to break:

Never buy registration, hosting or other services for your client. Help them figure out what service they need to buy, but have the client create the accounts and pay for all their services.
Never break rule #1.

This is about "skin in the game"; ensuring that the client has a significant commitment to the project. If you do this yourself, eventually you'll get stuck with the bill, and a client who doesn't care about their website.

Pew Pew Laser Blog: Protip - Kauai Causual Dining.

Katie Kurkoski — Wed, 25 Jan 2012

From a recent vacation to the Poipu area on Hawaii's island of Kauai, I have a few tips for casual dining:

Keoki's Paradise is always delicious. If you don't have have the time or budget for the main dining room, you can ask for bar / cafe seating where they have a simpler menu in the $15 range. If you bring your receipt back on a second visit, you'll get a free Hula Pie dessert - yum!
Merriman's Fishhouse, in the Kukui'ula shopping and dining plaza, has a Downstairs Cafe which is a more casual and cheaper version of the upstairs restaurant. The Downstairs Cafe has a happy hour with $5 mai tais and $3 draft beer.
Brennecke's Beach Broiler has fabulous open air seating right across from Poipu Beach park. The full menu is rather expensive for what you get, but you can use the happy hour (3-5pm) menu for some relaxation after an afternoon at the beach.