facti.net

Grandcentral is an interesting new web service that allows you to have a free phone number that will forward your calls to your actual current phone numbers. This means you can now have one permanent number that is independent of your carrier. Grandcentral lets you select a number from a list of possible numbers in the area code you choose.

Naturally, when selecting a permanent number you want one that is easy to remember, so I wrote a little utility to figure out word patterns based on a given number. The "words" correspond to the words created from the letters in your phone dial pad. For example, one of the numbers I could have chosen (but did not, so don't try calling it) was (626) 467-5337. This number can also be dialed as "mango sleds" - arguably easier to remember than the number. If you have a phone number and are curious if there are some good word patterns in it, try the utility by clicking here.

So much great free software out there it is difficult to categorize it all. I've made many updates to the top free software book and introduced a "Top Software" category to retrieve the whole book at once. If you know about other great free software let me know! 

Testing animation using GIF of a 3D model I created using Wings3D. I
made this animation using layers in The Gimp and saved as GIF file type with layers interpreted as
animation frames.  Each layer became a frame in the animation.

Update: I updated my module for drupal 6.x and provide it here.

I could not find a Drupal weather module that did what I wanted (provided an N-day forecast for my area in small block-form), so I created my first Drupal module: weatherfacti. A small and simple module. It uses the free weather.com XML service to retrieve forecast data. The module is attached to this post or can be accessed by clicking here. Enjoy!

I have installed the OpenID module for Drupal for use at facti.net. The module seems to work well and will keep you from having to remember a new set of credentials if you want to login to facti.net.

If you want to use your OpenID for authentication keep in mind the following facti: