I don’t know about everyone else, but the main reason I switched to Facebook’s Timeline view was to get the Cover Photo on my profile. I feel like there isn’t as much ability to customize your profile as before (remember when you could reorganize all your app widgets wherever you wanted on your profile?), and the Cover Photo is a great way to personalize your Facebook page. Already, I’ve seen a lot of my friends finding creative uses for their Cover Photos — you probably have, too.

However, I’m not a fan of the two-column layout now. I can’t put my finger on it — I get how it’s supposed to go along with the timeline theme, but it just doesn’t jive with me. I feel like a simple single column layout might be nicer. Apparently others have too, and someone’s gone out and made a script for your browser to view Facebook timelines in a single column. I don’t know how old this trick has been out on the web, I just found out about it. As of now, this method only works for Chrome and Firefox, but I’m sure there are alternatives which work with IE, Safari, Opera, etc. Note that this doesn’t change how other people view your timeline on their computer, it only affects how YOU see Timeline view in your browser. It’s really simple to set up:

1) Install the Stylish Chrome extension and/or Firefox add-on. Stylish lets out view specific webpages with your custom CSS stylesheets

2) Install the Facebook One-Column UserStyle. The whole site is a database of styles people have made to customize popular websites like YouTube, Wikipedia, Google, etc. Feel free to check them out! Another favorite I’ve set up is the iOS/OS X Lion linen pattern background for Google Docs.

3) Have fun! Don’t be afraid to make your own UserStyles for the websites you visit, or even tweak the UserStyles you’ve downloaded. I’m actually considering tweaking the Facebook UserStyle I’ve linked to in this post: it needs a little work. Good luck hacking!

Background on my monitor

Recently I’ve been starting to mess around more with my computer, googling various hacks and scripts to customize my computer to make it unique. I had tried the same thing about 5 years ago, and that resulted in MAJOR viruses and low-level system errors, culminating in multiple trips to the repair shop. Over the years, however, I’ve become more aware of how computers work, how to debug problems that ever arise, and most importantly — how to operate computers securely. I have once again regained the confidence to poke around in the terminal.The first step I took: I enabled debug modes for various applications (Safari/Chrome, iCal) so I can have easier access to hidden developer options.

More recently, I’ve started customizing my desktop with GeekTool, a tool which lets you display all kinds of content on your desktop background. Thanks to the vast GeekTool resources on the web (props to Google), it was actually quite easy to whip up some useful date, time, weather, and music information on my background. Combined with my custom made desktop background (A parody of the Keep Calm Carry On posters), I think it looks pretty sweet. Of course, my mind is swirling with all the possibilities with these tools, and as I learn more about shell scripting, I’m sure many of these possibilities will come to reality. My goal, however, is NOT to throw all kinds of nonsensical stuff on my desktop like many of the examples people have posted online (no offense), but to make a clean interface which can quickly give me the information I need without getting in my way.

Background on my laptop screen (photographed and folded by me)

You’ll notice there aren’t any files on my desktop. No, I don’t spend the time double clicking my way through layers of folders. I now keep all my school-related files in my Dropbox folder, and whenever I need to access a folder, I just use the ‘Find:’ command in Alfred, start typing in the first few letters of the folder or file name, and I instantly get what I need within the first three results (almost always the first choice). I’ve come to rely on Alfred for so much: it’s an amazing application launcher/switcher, and it can also be customized with shell scripts (again, tons of possibilities). I also depend on Cinch, which brings the Windows 7 window snapping to my Mac.

Using Alfred's 'Find' function to get my Cog Psych files

There’s probably a bunch of other customizations I’ve made, but I can’t think of them right now, mostly because they’re s useful to me that they’ve become intuitive.

I love it when the different genres of music I listen to mix together and sound amazing. First, it was John Mayer and Jay-Z for “DOA”, now Logic and Paramore for “Numbers”!

This past weekend, I participated in CMU’s TartanHacks 2012: a hackathon aimed largely toward underclassmen. It was sponsored by ScottyLabs, CMU’s Computer Science Department, and Women@SCS. In addition, big companies like Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Ideeli threw in some prizes for the winners. Together, Austin Davis, Tom Zhang, JP Patrizio, and I worked on BeaconCMU, and extension of Facebook for a college community. You can add yourself to groups on campus and send out ‘beacons’ to groups saying where you are and/or what you are doing. So, for instance, you were looking for classmates to work on a homework assignment with, you could send out a beacon to the class group with your location, and people near you could meet up with you. Check it out here.

Technically, the site has a Microsoft ASP .NET  JSON backend, with jQuery Ajax calls in the front end. Tom was Mr. SQL Schema, Austin was Mr. ASP .NET, I was Mr. Javascript/Ajax, and JP was Mr. Front-End. It took a while to figure out the quirks of putting .NET and jQuery together (read about it here)

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to complete the site with all the functionality we wanted. Admittedly, the app was quite far-reaching for a hackathon, but it is definitely a project that lasts much longer than such a short event. We’re definitely continuing to work on it after the hackathon.

Curiously, four days after we presented our idea at the hackathon, Facebook launched “Groups for Schools” on their site. Very interesting…

This Thanksgiving, I finally purchased my own camera! I had been saving up for a few years, and I ended up purchasing a Canon EOS 60d. Since I bought the new camera, I am now starting a Tumblr blog to track my progress in photography with my new camera, starting from the pictures I will take on Thanksgiving onwards. Check it out at http://kamladi.tumblr.com

//WARNING: random multi-paragraph musings approaching…

As my high school years come to a close and I slowly approach college, I’ve recently felt the need to explore alternative ways to organize my life. It started last week, when I began typing up some study guides to help review for finals. I began to wonder- Would I go all digital with my notes in college? Would I become one of those guys who types up notes during lectures, and organizes them for future reference? Honestly- I hope not. While I am amazed by recent advances in note-taking technology, like syncing with Google Docs, wiki pages for sharing notes, etc., I personally feel like I need that pen/pencil to paper action. It helps me connect with what I’m understanding, in a way that using a computer never will. Even if I got some fancy Wacom tablet and digitally scribbled notes into the computer, staring at the computer to study is not something I look forward to.

Additionally, with all the integrals, modeling sketches, formulas, and symbols I use in my Calculus and Physics notes, I’ve started to get annoyed with the lines on notebook paper. Imagine having to enter all of these into a computer! My Calc teacher found a solution- He works out his problems on blank paper. I’m really tempted to try this out. Not only will I no longer be restricted by such thin lines, but the thickness of blank printer paper, for instance, would prevent ink from pens from bleeding through to the next page. How practical is that!

And what would I do with all these class notes once I have finished a course in college? At home, I currently keep a drawer filled with hanging file folders to organize papers for each class. At the end of each year, I hold on to important pages from each class, and store them in plastic containers. Why do I keep such random items like my second AP Calculus AB test? What might be best solution would be to scan in only the most vital notes as PDFs, and drop them away in some folder on my computer or online.

Ah, well. No need to worry about the details of college academia while I’m still trying to study for High School tests. Wait, don’t I have a final exam to review for…..?

A few weeks ago, I finished the completion of my trash/recycling/composting enclosure for Keys School in Palo Alto, CA. It stores bins for each type of waste, and lists the items that can go in each bin on the doors. I am going to place it in the lunch area of the school, so kids can throw away their foods scraps in the composting bin rather than the ordinary trash cans they used to have.

I started construction early in the summer, getting volunteers from Boy Scouts, school, my friends, and just about anybody who stopped by our home while we were working. We basically built a rectangular frame of 2×4′s, and drilled plywood panels on each side. We put wheels on the bottom, and three rounded rectangle shaped holes as openings for people to dispense things in. It was really cool to be able to put my hands to work, designing and building things. To plan out what my project was going to look like, I made a scale model by folding index cards into mini 2×4′s and plywood. After what seemed like a billion revisions of my project proposal, I began cutting, drilling together, sanding. and painting the wood.

Check out my Project Proposal and Final Write Up for more info!

A lot of people have asked me what gear I use for my mini product shot studio. I don’t have any fancy strobes or other gizmos. I took a long time surfing through home depot and other blogs to find some cheap ways to get some good light on my products. Here’s what it basically looks like so far…

Product Shot Studio

As you can see, *very* low budget. My mom gets annoyed by how cluttered it can get. On the left is a car window reflector. It’s perfect for the job: I can bend it and curve it to reflect light exactly where I need to. On the top and right are Home Depot clamp-able work lights. Not the halogen ones— still wondering if I want to deal with the hassle of a typical halogen-yellowish tint to the light. I screwed in 150-watt equivalent fluorescent light bulbs into the work lights. They are perfectly white light, and they are easily movable to get the light in the right spot. Just these two work lights often do not have enough power to sufficiently light up the box, so I usually just throw in some desk lamps from around the house (like the one I’m holding in the picture above).

To make the light really soft, I used cut rectangles of white trash bags. They seem to do a good job, but they cut out a lot of light. More recently, I got some translucent corrugated plastic from an art store, which is doing a much better job. The box itself is a 20″x20″ cardboard box from the local mailroom. I used an X-Acto knife to cut openings on each side so light can go through. And finally, the background. I got long colored poster paper from Office Depot, and I cut them to fit inside the box. The backgrounds are just long enough that I can curve them from the back face of the box to the bottom face, creating a seamless backdrop. Awesome.

For now, this setup really fits my needs, if not my mom’s needs of a neat house (note that this was all set up on her office desk, oops). I’m probably going to keep improving on it, getting stronger lights, maybe some actual light stands rather than a music stand I found lying around. I might even save up for a flash. We’ll see— as I shoot more with it, I’ll eventually figure out what I want to do to improve it. But in the meantime, it does make some pretty beautiful photographs.

~Kedar

I’m trying out this new service called “Flavors.me”, which lets you create a webpage which gathers all your data from different social media websites, like Facebook, Last.Fm, Digg, Delicious, and more, in a very streamlined, aesthetic way. I really want to figure out how they do it, but it’ll take some time. What’s cool is that in the process of building it, I have found myself signing on to new social networking sites, such as SoundCloud, Delicious, and Last.fm. Don’t know what I’ll do with the last one, since I already use Pandora, but Flavors.me doesn’t have support for Pandora yet. We’ll see.

In the meantime, check out my Flavors.me site!

"Pinstripe" © Leela Amladi

Yeah, you read that right. This is the amazing work my sister does when she is “fooling around”. Isn’t it awesome? She basically took different colors of vinyl tape and stretched them across a small canvas. She’s planning on making one or two more to complement it.
~Kedar