Ruminations

Author: Fuad Kamal

  • Hacking the ProForm Tour de France (part 2)

    Hacking the ProForm Tour de France (part 2)

    So tonight I rode Stage One of the 2012 Tour de France on the ProForm TDF bike.  Here’s a link to my ride on iFit.com.   It was a lot easier than I imagined it would be, as it was mostly flat.  I’m sure it will get a lot harder in the next stages as…

  • Adventures in Objective-C: Categories

    Adventures in Objective-C: Categories

    Every year Apple has been making Objective C and Xcode easier and easier to be picked up by developers like me – coming from a background in high-level OO languages (ActionScript, Java) with little to no experience in C – people for whom terms like “memory management” evoke images of creepy dark things crawling from…

  • go wide

    go wide

    Tires: How Wide is too Wide? A placebo effect is very powerful. I know that when I raced, I loved riding my bike with its superlight wheels and hand-glued tires. How much was the wheels, how much the tires, and how much the fact that I rode the race wheels in races, when I had rested…

  • Hacking the ProForm Tour de France (part 1)

    Hacking the ProForm Tour de France (part 1)

    I have the version 2 of ProForm’s Le Tour De France bike trainer.  Unlike a lot of other folks who have been posting about this bike since v1 I haven’t had any mechanical problems with the bike, to date, but then again we’ve only put around 200 miles on this trainer in the two years we’ve…

  • using WPS with Apple AirPort Extreme

    using WPS with Apple AirPort Extreme

    I had no idea until tonight that Apple’s Airport Extreme has built-in support for WPS.  WPS is a service that lets you automatically setup a device such as a printer, or, in my case, a ProForm Le Tour de France exercise bike, automatically with your WiFi network.  On the device you are trying to setup,…

  • Data Storytelling, The Pixar Way

    Data Storytelling, The Pixar Way

    Pixar’s Rules for Storytelling – as shared by Emma Coats, Pixar’s Story Artist – are almost as relevant for communicating with data as they are to filmmaking.

  • The idiocy of technical interviews

    The idiocy of technical interviews

    Some time ago I read this post, “I will not do your tech interview“.  It’s an awesome commentary and I agree with it wholeheartedly.  As a consultant, I have to do a lot of interviews, and many times it’s hard to know a lot about the company who is going to interview me, or their…

  • On building and marketing your application

    On building and marketing your application

    from one of my LinkedIn contacts (re-posted with permission): Hello Mr. Kamal,Thanks for adding me to your professional network. I’m a student at Marymount University, and I’m pursuing my master degree in interior design. I’m taking a course in professional practice this semester, and working on a business plan project! My business plan is about…

  • Scary Movies

    Scary Movies

    A friend of mine recently posted on his Facebook page the following: The Conjuring was an immensely entertaining horror film in the tradition of the flicks from the early 1970s… that my folks used to watch at the time… with me. To the family who brought your FOUR little kids to the screening, I’d ask…

  • driving my dad

    driving my dad

    When I drive with my dad as a passenger, he is typically grabbing the dashboard in fear and repeating the phrase “aram karo!” (Urdu for ‘take it easy!’) over and over. That’s when I’m driving the speed limit or slower, and taking care to shift as gentle as I can, and with the EDFC set…