Posted in Blog on July 16, 2010

iOS DRM’d video playback failure

I’ve long been looking for a solution for playing back iTunes movies on my iPad/iPhone without having to sync the content to the device over USB. By luck, a friend tipped me off to the fact that MobileSafari would allow you to playback DRM’d content served over HTTP. From that news, I quickly SSH’d in ... Continue Reading

Posted in Blog on June 13, 2010

When things just go as planned…

One of the several things I love about using Apple computers is the fact in general, when I set out to do some project, things just work as planned (not sure if Apple deserves credit in all cases though). This is definitely not always the case, as evidenced by some of my angry tweets in the past, but in general that ho ... Continue Reading

Posted in Blog on May 29, 2010

Holiday Weekend meal planning

As is typically tradition for me, I’m going to be cooking for some friends again this holiday weekend. Lately that seems to involve me and a grill more often than not and I wanted something a bit healthier than steaks or ribs (despite their tastiness), so I decided to dig through the recipe books and come up with ... Continue Reading

Posted in Blog on April 8, 2010

iPad Geo Location Accuracy

On Monday while riding into the city (the city = San Francisco for those not from this area), I took the opportunity to play with my iPad. Needing an internet connection and not having a 3G model yet, I used my iPhone + MyWi to get online. Randomly, I decided to open up the maps app and hit the location finder button. ... Continue Reading

Posted in Blog on February 1, 2010

Solving exponential distribution probability using ...

Today I was challenged with the following advanced statistics problem: Two variables are exponentially distributed with rate parameters lambda 1 ( λ1 ) and lambda 2 ( λ2 ). What is the probability ( p ) that variable 1 ( X1 ) is less than variable 2 ( X2 ) in ... Continue Reading

Posted in Blog on January 14, 2010

Using git-svn with non-standard subversion reposit ...

Today while working with a 3rd party’s codebase, I ran into a situation which git-svn could not directly handle without pulling in massive amounts of unnecessary repository history. Turns out the solution was much simpler than I anticipated, so I’m sharing here in case it’s useful for somebody else. T ... Continue Reading

Posted in Blog on January 12, 2010

Wind Chill Calculator — In Javascript, Ruby, ...

Since I spent the time to dig up the method of calculating the wind chill given a specific temperature and wind speed, I figured I would go ahead and share it in case someone else finds it useful. Here’s three functions for calculating the wind chill, one each for Javascript, PHP, and Ruby. // Javascript version ... Continue Reading

Posted in Blog on January 6, 2010

Friend’s new blog

A good friend of mine started a new blog on Math and Programming related topics. She has an interest in Ruby development, especially with an abstract algebra / math focus, so if you’re interested in either Ruby or Mathematics, I’m sure there will be posts there which you will find useful. Already she’ ... Continue Reading

Posted in Blog on May 25, 2009

First drawing using Brushes.app on the iPhone

First drawing using Brushes, originally uploaded by Jeremy Johnstone. Today I spent most of the day catching up on my blog reading and I stumbled across an article about a guy using an iPhone app named Brushes to design this month’s cover of The New Yorker. Highly impressed by the output and the video of it ... Continue Reading

Posted in Blog on May 22, 2009

Odd high pitched whistling noise from my Accord

Over the past week or so, I’ve been hearing a faint but very high pitched (>12k hz) whistling like sound coming from my 2006 Honda Accord V6 Coupe. It’s kind of a cross between an air leak type sound and the sound of a metal ball bearing spinning at high speed inside a metallic dish. It usually only happens ... Continue Reading

Welcome to my site!

As you have probably already gathered, my name is Jeremy Johnstone. I live in Silicon Valley, California and work for a tiny web startup you probably never heard of, , working specifically on a widgets platform for televisions which will be on a majority of mid to high end televisions sold in 2009 and beyond.

In my day job I am a software engineer, mainly focusing on web based development. I have experience in most web development languages, but my highest proficiency is in PHP, Ruby, Flex/AS3, and Javascript. I’ve worked on a number of open source projects in the past and have also worked in a wide variety of different fields. Check out my resume for a more detailed overview of my skills and work history.

For fun, I love to travel, take photos, and scuba dive. So far, I’ve traveled all over Western Europe, all over North America, many places in SE Asia, and also have been to the U.A.E. (Abu Dhabi and Dubai specifically). My hope is that I can make it to India or South America before the end of the year, but we will see how that goes. You can view a small sample of the photos I have taken by clicking on the photos tab at the top of any page of this site. More photos are also available on Flickr via the link in the top right corner of the page. Most of my diving so far has been focused in the Caribbean, but I have also dove a couple times off the coast of both the state of California and Virginia as well as many inland US lakes.