or physically beautiful music? Or perhaps musically physical beauty? Either way, this is awesomely cool. Cooly awesome. thanks to Dave for sharing the link!
"When the rock band OK Go, famous for their viral videos including the spectacular and award winning "treadmills video", wanted to feature a 4-minute long Rube Goldberg Machine in an upcoming video, they tapped Syyn Labs to build it. The requirements were that it had to be interesting, not "overbuilt" or too technology-heavy, and easy to follow. The machine also had to be built on a shoestring budget, synchronize with beats and lyrics in the music and end on time over a 3.5 minute song, play a part of the song, and be filmed in one shot. To make things more challenging still, the space chosen was divided into two floors and the machine would use both.
"We had our work cut out for us; every facet of Syyn Labs' expertise was required to meet this tremendous challenge. See the results of this remarkable effort in the video embedded above."
Bobbin plays with Mommy's new Dell Studio One 19 Multitouch all-in-one, Windows 7 certified home PC, creates and edits her own video with the built in webcam and Dell's TouchCam software, and launches her internet film career with the one-touch upload to YouTube.
I tried Twitter for about a day. I just couldn't get into it. It's too labour intensive...constantly notifying other busy people about what you're busy doing. That's what FaceSpace is for, isn't it?
Tim's working on his resume and wanted a nice HTML version to publish on his professional site (which is still under construction :-)). I did some internet research and found this great template. Simple, elegant, classy. I've never used PHP, but I didn't have to know anything about PHP to just fill in the data in this template, using a simple text editor.
Apparently there is a widespread outage of phone and internet services affecting our neighbourhood and three other neighbourhoods nearby. The phone company's support reps are saying "they hope to have the outage fixed by 6pm tomorrow". As in more than 24 hours from now.
Coincidentally, it seems that wireless service in our area is also disrupted. Tim had to drive to the grocery store to call me at work from his cell phone.
So - if you are trying to call us but can't get through, it's not cause we skipped town or didn't pay our phone bill. We're ok. Just apparently without phone, internet, and cell service along with the rest of our neighbourhood.
Educational software aimed at Preschool, Kindergarten, and elementary school kids. I just download 5 apps for my iPhone - games about colours, ABCs, counting, matching, sorting. books read aloud, etc. $1.00 a pop. Maybe more. When it comes to their kids' education parents are willing to spend far more than a buck on anything they think will give junior an academic up on their pint size competition. The right target isn't the underfunded public school system; or even the private schools. It's mom and dad, and it's also the commercial enterprises that already market to mom and dad educational value-add through after school tutoring programs and special advanced class prep, college exam prep, etc. And of course to the kids themselves if the software you're marketing is only available on an actually socially acceptable status symbol device like the iPhone.
Yeah, there's gotta be money there. I wonder how much?
Well, if Capt Mike and I have kids, they're gonna have to make do with the old fashioned stuff or just be stupid. I ain't buying an iPhone. :-)
I can't remember if it was in Times or MacLeans that I read an article about there being not yet any evidence that exposure to Baby Einstein DVDs as a toddler correlated to improved success or advanced placement in school-aged children. I found that pretty interesting.
The educational software and educational DVD investments parents make for young children are by and large more emotional ones, not logical ones. I'm saying there's an opportunity to exploit that to make money :-)
Oh, I understand, and agree. If you need a partner in said exploitation venture, I'd be willing to invest. I actually have an idea for an educational toy. I call it "BrownBox". Gauranteed to stimulate your child's left AND right brain development through creative cognitive stimulation and illusory environmental manipulation. I have several prototypes in the garage right now.
I refused to do it. Even though it was almost fashionable. Still I resisted. I did not want to become one of them.
But as of July 1st, I could resist no longer. I was forced to surrender. I had to assimilate. I had to get... earbuds.
As of yesterday in Washington State the use of a hands-free device such as a bluetooth headset or wired headset became required for using a cell phone while driving.
I actually think it's a good idea. It probably doesn't really solve the real issue though - which is that people are more dangerous when using cell phones not because they don't have both hands on the wheel, but because they are distracted by the dialing, answering, talking and listening they are doing. If it was simply a matter of not having both hands on the wheel, then the same prohibition should be applied to the consumption of food or beverage while driving, or changing the radio station while driving, or inserting a CD while driving, or flipping off the idiot who just cut in front of you while driving, and to the best of my knowledge it is not even a secondary offense to be doing any of those things and driving at the same time.
At any rate, a hands-free device for cell phone communications while driving is now a requirement here, even though it is a secondary enforcement law. Meaning you only get a ticket for this if you are pulled over for a regular traffic violation. And the violation will not go on your driving record or be reported to insurance.
And so I'm not sure entirely whether it's going to have any significant impact on the problems they are trying to solve with the introduction of this law. I expect people to be just as oblivious to their surroundings while gabbing on a hands-free device as they are when they're talking with a phone held to their ear. They're not going to pay any more attention to the road. They're still going to change lanes without signaling and cut me off, or brake abruptly while I'm behind them, or not brake fast enough when they are behind me.
So yesterday, just to ensure I was in legal compliance on the off chance I had to answer the phone while in the car (there's a whole other story here about me and my answering & lack of answering of my cell phone; I will post it here when emotions around the topic have subsided in this household), I went out and purchased my first blue tooth headset.
So... as far as blue tooth headsets go, it's small, lightweight, comfortable and the receiver and microphone are high quality. It was easy to set up with my iPhone. There's really nothing to complain about.
Except the fact that I look like one of the Borg when I have it on. And that the people that wear one regularly and use it exclusively for all of their voice communications are among the most dorky and annoying on the planet.
You know what I'm talking about. They're the people at work or in the grocery store who are walking towards you with a smile on their face as though they know you, and as they pass you they look you in the eye and open their mouth as if to greet you and as you're getting ready to smile back on the off chance it is actually someone you know but just can't place and you don't want to be rude, they walk right past you saying something like "Oh my GOD that's HILARIOUS! Did she really say that? Holy crap; she's got a lot of nerve" and then you realize that she wasn't smiling at you, and she wasn't talking to you, she was smiling and talking to some equally shallow, gossipy, loser in some completely different location via her humandroid ear piece and now you're standing there with a dorky grin on your face for no reason, and you feel like an idiot.
Or they're the people at the mall walking next to you but alone, carrying on a much too LOUD conversation seemingly with themselves about completely inappropriate topics in way too much detail that makes you blush from head to toe as you pray that 1) no one else thinks they are with you and B) that they will shut up and turn left at the food court intersection as you scurry over to Macy's and try to lose them in the Frango display.
I just don't want to be one of THEM. I think the ear pieces make people look stupid and become rude. Ruder, anyway. Most people in my experience are already rude. (Remind me to post my observations and general philosophy on please & thank you etiquette in America while ordering food or beverage over a counter).
So I have to have this thing but I only have to use it while driving. And so in the car on my dash it sits. I put it on when I am driving and at a time of day when I'm more likely to receive a phone call that I have to answer, and stash it the rest of the time. That is my compromise.
I have been assimilated, but only in part. I retain my oneness, unbeknownst to the powers that be; the enforcers.
Don't get me started on the types in Virginia I always saw with one of those things jammed in their ears. In the Sarahverse, there are very few people in this world who are important enough to have to be contactable 24-7. If you're behind on your trailer payments, you're likely not one of them. But I digress.
I wonder how many people will still think it's okay to txt msg while driving, since they're not technically *talking* on their phone while driving. People who do that need to have their licences revoked.
Texting while driving was made a secondary offense in Washington State as of January 1st 2008, I believe. I doubt it has really changed anyone's behaviour though.
I have been contemplating the impact that the difference in technology and information access in 1973 when I was two, and today when Bobbin is 2, has had on Bobbin's view of the world. Just little things, mind you - not deep philosophical pondering. But it's the little things that are interesting to think about. Like...
Bobbin is convinced that all content that she views on the television is on-demand and completely controllable by a wireless remote control. she cannot grasp the concept that some of the shows she's watching real-time on the actual TV channel, are one-time events that are viewable only at that point in time, only in the order presented and are not repeatable, fast-forwardable, re-windable, or chapter-selectable. One of her favourite TV shows in the morning while we're getting ready for school is "Curious George". We do not have any "Curious George" shows on DVD or recorded to hard disk so her only option for watching it is to tune in at the right time on the right channel. And sometimes she doesn't, and gets disappointed. And it's near impossible to explain to a two-year-old why some stuff on the TV can be seen anytime and other stuff can only be seen at certain times. We've also stopped allowing her to choose the scene she wants to watch in movies - we've instituted the "beginning to end" rule for all recorded or DVD media. If she stops watching before the end, then when she comes back to it we do let her decide whether she wants to watch from the beginning or pick up where she left off. But no more chapter-choosing at whim. It was just getting too out of hand and I wondered about what sorts of neuron connections, associations, and assumptions, were forming in her brain with this ability to seemingly be able to "cut to the chase" or at least the content of interest with everything. I didn't want it to start translating into other aspects of life :-)
By contrast, of course, at the same age Bobbin is now, I was watching a black-and-white television that required you to get up and turn the dials, and the concept of a VCR let alone a DVD player or "TiVo" was still science fiction for most. And we got, maybe, a handful of channels. I didn't know and didn't care, as long as I could watch Polka Dot Door, and the Friendly Giant. And if I didn't happen to tune in, I couldn't ask my parents to call it up from the hard disk to watch it on demand. I had to wait until the next day and even then, it'd be a different episode. I had "missed out". Nor could I skip to my favourite parts (I hated Marigold, and loved Polkaroo. What a difference that functionality would have made. Not ;-)
Side note: Yeah, they had colour TVs back then, but we didn't actually own one until we moved back from Germany in 1979, and at that point I had already spent 3 whole consecutive formative years tv-less - and phone-less, I might add - in a foreign country.
Bobbin has a CD player in her room, and collection of music CDs that she loves to listen to - everything from Sound of Music to Sesame Street Sing-a-longs to Sharon, Lois and Bram, to the lullaby versions of Led Zepplin and Johnny Cash. She knows how to take out and put in the CDs by herself, knows how to start and stop them, and how to adjust the volume. And she does this on a regular basis, choosing the music that suits her mood.
At her age, I was listening to vinyl records, on my parent's record player in our living room at the farm. Sesame Street, Bambi, and countless Christmas Carol records. And of course, my parents' Neil Diamond and Nana Miskouri. Mom and Dad had to put them on because the record player was out of my reach - for good reason. Doesn't take much to damage that little arm or the needle inside it, not to mention the records themselves. Eventually, at the ripe old age of 4, I graduated to having my very own cassette tape player that I could use all by myself, and which I did use to listen to all my stories on tape. It was black and had a big silver switch that you pushed forward to play, and backwards to rewind. It looked like a little mini gear shift. I was always envious of the kids that I knew that had the cassette tape players with the big bulky buttons though because I preferred pushing buttons to moving the switch. I liked the big clicky sound the buttons made.
CDs and DVDs present an interesting challenge in and of themselves. There are some little silver discs that are usable only on the computer. Computer games like her favourite Sesame Street game. There are identical looking little silver discs that contain only audio content and no visual content. You can use them on the computer, or in the DVD player, or the CD player but you only ever hear stuff. You can't see stuff. Then there are the little silver discs that lets you see stuff and hear stuff. But they only work on the Computer or in the DVD player. If you put them into the CD player nothing happens. But damn if you can tell the difference between the three when you're only 2 and haven't learned how to read yet. And it gets downright nutty trying to explain it so she understands. I think she grasps the concept now - they all look the same, but do different things and don't all work in the same machines, and when she has additional context (like if they are in their case and/or are sitting near a particular type of "player") she can figure it out mostly. DVDs mostly come in rectangle cases and we keep them near the TV. Music CDs mostly come in square cases and they hang out near her CD player but also near the computer. Computer games come in both types of cases but you usually only find them on the shelf above our computer.
The computer is something she totally takes for granted at this point. It's just another part of her world - she doesn't give it any thought. It's like the fridge, stove, washer, dryer. You have one, and you play games or look at pictures or watch movies or listen to music, or type stuff and that's just what you do. She knows what we use it for; she asks to play games, look at pictures and movies of herself and Tim and I. She even recently dictated a letter to Aunt Sarah :-) The games are vivid, exciting (note, we're talking pre-schooler exciting. Big Bird, Elmo, and a bit of the Cat in the Hat thrown in for good measure), with full surround sound. My first computer was a commodore Vic 20. I copied lines of code from the manual into my TV screen via the huge klunky keyboard that also housed the actual "computer" to make it turn colours, and thought that was way exciting. The sounds that were emitted from the TV speakers sounded like SOS signals.
If Bobbin wants to see a picture or video of something... anything... from astronauts gliding through space, to the ancient pyramids of Egypt, to a live stream of newly born panda bears frolicking in the zoo to a volcano erupting in a cloud of black ash and rock (we'll stick with educational stuff, thank you) I just pull up my browser and away we go. She thinks it's fabulous. I'll ask her what she wants to see, she'll tell me "Giraffes" and voila - we're at the Woodland Park Zoo web site, or National Geographic, or any other number of places scrolling through countless pictures and videos of Giraffes. On demand. Instant knowledge. Instant gratification. You just gotta have your search safety settings on "high", avoid using image search, and weed out the crap. That's what Mommies are for. Later, Parental Controls will start getting involved as well. And the computer will be staying in the kitchen :-)
The telephone is another interesting piece of technology that has evolved over the years. When I wanted to pretend I was talking on a phone with just my hand as the prop, I would hold out my thumb and pinky finger... cause the receivers were those big bulky ones that curved slightly so your mouth was actually near the mouthpiece. Bobbin pretends she's talking on the phone by holding her hand up to her ear. Like you see people who are talking on cell phones doing. She pretends that the digital timer is a phone because it is the same compact size and has a digital readout and little buttons. She also doesn't think the fact that I take and view pictures on the same apparatus that I use to make phone calls is anything to write home about. It's a phone. It's a camera. It's a photo album. It's the thing mommy uses to read her the email that Aunt Sarah sent her. It's the thing mommy always has in her pocket :-)
The iPhone, which is the kind of phone I have, is likewise seeming to have its own impact on Bobbin's view of the world. She thinks nothing of the fact that when she gently traces her finger over the picture it scrolls to the next picture. Or that she can enlarge and shrink with a pinch of the fingers. It just makes sense to her. Everything should work that way in her view. Everything that looks like that, and can do those things. It's fascinating to watch her interact with it.
All the lights in our house are on dimmer switches, and I've noticed a tendency for Bobbin to use the same phrases as she does with volume to express how bright or dark she would like the room to be. "Turn the light louder, mommy". She likes her lights loud, especially in the bathroom.
Instead of your traditional photo albums, we have printed picture books of Bobbin - the kind you format online with digital photos you upload, and then order in hardbound printed format. The pictures have captions, and are sized and formatted in various ways, and she loves "reading" through these with me. Tim gave me a digital photo frame at Christmas and I loaded it up with pictures of us - the two of us, and then the three of us. Bobbin was mesmerized by it. we have your traditionally framed photos of Bobbin too, but even those were taken by digital cameras (her Santa picture was printed out on the spot and even came with a CD). I remember my first camera. It had a flash cube that turned automatically, and a film cartridge that you popped into the back. I remember taking the film to the drug store to get developed, and getting the pictures back a week later. No instant gratification there. In fact, I still have little tubes of film in various drawers around the house that have to be at least 8 years old, because I started using a digital camera exclusively around then.
Bobbin knows how to unlock and lock my car with a press of a button on my key fob remote. It makes the headlights blink too, and a cool little beep. She likes to do it while standing in the kitchen in front of the french door. She'll hold out her hand, aiming through the glass at the car, and press the button and giggle. She likes to make the car "wink" at her :-)
Banking and money-handling is another aspect of life that has fundamentally changed. Bobbin does have a bank account and we'll make rare visits to the local branch to dump the contents of her piggy bank into the coin sorter, and make a deposit. But even on those visits, we don't interact with the teller in person. I have eto walk up to the video teller, pick up the phone, and talk to someone on a television screen. When we need to exchange actual stuff like deposit slips and cash, I put it into a clear plastic tube, press a button that causes it to get sucked up a pipe into nowhere, and then a few minutes later it comes back down with different stuff in it. Way way different than the visits to the bank that I recall when I was a kid.
Most of our banking, however, is done online so we don't do a lot of actual branch visits. Our bill payments are done online, so rarely will Bobbin ever see us writing a check for something. And our purchases are all done with our debit card so cash rarely changes hands. I remember when ATMs started to make their first appearance, and thought it was cool that you could walk up to a machine, stick a card in, and get money out without having to interact with a person. Toronto Dominion Bank came out with the "green machine" as the nickname for their ATM. When I was old enough to get an ATM card for my savings account (I think you actually had to be 14 to be given an ATM card at our bank) I thought that was way cool and was so proud. I was very careful with it.
When we go grocery shopping together I try and make sure I have some coin or paper bills, even small ones, on hand so I can let Bobbin "pay" for part of the groceries. But sometimes all I scrounge up are some pennies and nickels because I didn't have time to withdraw cash and Bobbin will proudly deposit these on the counter at the grocery store. Luckily the cashiers at our local PCC are happy to humour us, so I'll have a $50 total and then she'll subtract the 17 cents that Bobbin gave her and let me pay for the rest via my debit card.
Right now our primary focus with Bobbin on "Money Management" is saving - putting stuff in her piggy bank and making deposits into her savings account. On occasion I'll give her a little bit of money while we're in a store and ask her if she wants to buy something with it or save it so she can buy something more expensive later when she's saved enough. So despite the fact that almost all of our transactions take place electronically now and a little plastic card seems to magically pay for everything at whim, we are trying to teach her the value of money and making smart decisions, and that money is something you earn, not something you just have in endless supply. eventually when she's capable of grasping the concept, she'll be allowed to check her account balance online with our help but we're a ways out from that. It's definitely different though, because that little plastic debit card does seem so magical (not as magical as a credit card will seem when she understands the difference, but still). So for now we'll stick to cash-on-hand and counting out the stuff in her piggy bank.
Yeah... times, they are a-changin'. I can't wait to see what Bobbin's own blog entry will look like as she contemplates the differences between her childhood and her child's childhood. What will be the "blog" of the future? Maybe she'll just be projecting little 3-D holograms of her memories into a special nook of cyber space, accessible only by wearing the full-body sensation suit and viewing helmet. She'll be able to recall and project smells and tastes of her youth to her cyber-audience - comparing the aroma and palette of her favourite food - those oven-warmed frozen meatballs that were actually still made with meat from real animals - to that of the test-tube grown version of the same in the future. "I remember when they slaughtered animals for meat and the steak-on-a-stick that I used to love so much came from an actual cow" will be the thought that drifts alongside the images, smells, and tastes. Mmmm.
More on the phone (which I have a professional interest in as well). We were over at Zed's house this evening and Bobbin came across a Nokia phone in Zed's collection of toys. The battery had been removed, so it was now a plaything. Bobbin looked at it and pretended to call Grandpa and talked to him for a while. Then she pressed some buttons, got a puzzled expression on her face, and then looked up at Dave and asked "Why I can't see pictures on this phone?"
It did happen to be a camera phone (in its previous life before it became a toy) but Bobbin's question was more... "Hey... this is a phone, right? so why can't I see pictures of me and my friends and stuff" like it is an expected thing that one does with phones. Period. Wait until she's older and I tell her that not only did phones not have pictures when I was a kid, but all they were ever used for was just one thing - talking to other people (one at a time) - and what's more, they had these cords that kept us tethered to a single location when we were talking on it. Boy, talk about living in the stone age!
Two things: I remembered fondly the Fisher-Price Chatter Phone with the eyes and the red receiver and the ROTARY dial the other day. I wanted one for Kip. They actually sell it at Toysrus here...along with a girly pink version. When I had it in my hands I stopped dead: What the heck was he going to do with this? Likely laugh and bring it to Show n' Tell "My mommy is so old this is what her telephone looked like when she was little!" (kids erupt in laughter). I put it back on the shelf promptly.
And about the Green Machine-when I was young my mom used this all the time and I was confused by it. When my nanny refused to take me to the store for candy one day because she "had no money" I said "Sure nan, just go to the green machine! It ALWAYS has money!"
I have discovered a flaw in Galerie. Or perhaps it is just in the way in which I am using it. When I used BreezeBrowser on my PC to generate HTML files, it would generate a name for the HTML files, thumbnails, and converted images that was based on the original image file name. For example
Original image file from my camera: img_1001.jpg
Thumbnail generated by breezebrowser: img_1001_thm.jpg
Converted image generated by breezebrowser: img_1001_std.jpg
HTML page for the converted image: img_1001.htm
This naming convention allowed me to regenerate the photo album, even changing the order of the photos or inserting new ones in the middle instead of at the end, but still maintain the integrity of the links that I had in my blog entries to individual photos.
Galerie does things differently. I didn't even notice until I was scrolling through my recent entries and noticed that Janel had posted a comment that said "Kitty!" in response to a photo that I had published of Bobbin eating a hotdog. Only it wasn't a photo of Bobbin eating a hotdog when I published it. It was a photo of Bobbin holding a kitty. But I had since updated my photo album and moved some pictures around and when I regenerated it in Galerie, Galerie renamed all of the files. So for example where my original album had the following:
L16.jpg = converted image generated by galerie of Bobbin holding a Kitty
When I added new photos into my album and reorganized it, Galerie regenerated all the file names, so
L16.jpg = converted image generated by galerie of Bobbin eating a hotdog.
If I keep adding photos to the end of the album I don't have a problem. But if I do end up inserting some in the middle, this is an issue. Seems a silly way of doing things in my book.
I'll have to see if there is a way to override this in the application preferences or something.
In the meantime, I've updated the entry to which I was referring so it is now correctly showing a photo of Bobbin holding a kitty again.
I think I may have actually fixed up my photo album. I've checked it out in firefox and IE and it seems to render fine... except for a little error icon in the bottom left (which I'll get around to fixing, but not just yet). Not exactly a thorough test matrix, so if you do see some weirdness in my October photo album, I'd appreciate you letting me know so I can fix it.
but at least I can sleep tonight, and tomorrow I can begin uploading new photos! And we do have many ;-)
Videos are going to have to wait for a bit, unfortunately. One step at a time!
Have no idea why the photo in the last post was so stretched. It was taken from my iPhone but I still don't understand why it turned out all wacky. And the photo album, which rendered nicely on my Mac in Firefox does NOT actually look the way I intended when viewing from my PC in Internet Explorer. The format is all wrong. So I gotta figure that out too.
Still - I'm further along than I was without Galerie.
My contingency plan, if I still can't figure out how to easily publish my photo albums from my Mac to this site is to install Parallels so I can run Windows Vista from my mac, but I want to really give it a good go before I just fall back on my old familiar Windows experience. Gotta give apple a fair shot at my usership. But I have limits - one more week :-)
I have finally found the answer to "breezebrowser" for the Mac. It's been my quest for the last week since I first got this thing, and it's the reason for my relative silence and lack of new pictures :-)
After toodling around on the Internet looking for "Breezebrowser for the Mac", knowing full well that is not actually what I would find since I had already read the support pages for Breezebrowser and they said in no uncertain terms they do not now, nor do they have plans, to build a mac version.
But the blogosphere is full of mac users who have had to figure something out. Because iPhoto / iWeb for all the two's relative easiness is rather lacking in sophistication needed to actually produce a custom web site to be published to a custom blog that is not a ",mac" web site. . You just can't get in and modify the templates to the extent that you need to and have them look any halfway decent. And so it is through the mac blogosphere - in particular the subset of mac users who used to use PCs and have found themselves suffering severe withdrawal for lack of breezebrowser, complaining and whining and wheezing to all who will listen (and I will, because I suffer the same trauma) - that I found the closest thing I've come to an answer yet. And it's free. It's called Galerie, and if the name doesn't give it away, the interestingly formal style speak and not quite comfortably english manual , along with the little link at the top right that lets you view the french version of the site should inform you that it is developed by a French company located in Toulouse France. Which is just a cool little side fact, but kinda fun.
What really matters is that I was completely able to build my custom templates for my photo albums in this, and have it publish it into a folder I can then FTP up to my server. My workflow from getting photos off my camera, onto my computer, and into my web is about the same as it was when I was using breezebrowser on my PC. And it's cost me the same amount of money.
To do my HTML editing I use Amaya, which I've found to be suffient for what I need. Not bad.
To FTP I use CuteFTP for the Mac - I was using the PC version prior to my recent technology life shift.
So - I get them off my camera straight into iPhoto where I dump them into Albums. I select the album I want to publish and I open up Galerie, select my template, hit the publish button and poof, it generates everything. Then I upload the entire directory to the web site. Pretty much the same stuff I did before.
But I can't tell you how relieved I am, because I was NOT having a happy time using iWeb and .mac. Even though I got close as you can see from my first test post using that process, it was really really really hard to manipulate all the stuff I needed to and kludge it all together, since I didn't have direct access to the template source to be able to modify it.
I've heard this from Apple users before and I'm starting to feel it myself. It has a great surface - shiney, pretty, fun little apps to do fun little things. But the minute you want to go deeper, you realize there is no deeper. You're in shallow water as far as they eye can see. Total sand bar. Which is comforting in one way - you know you're not going to get in over your head. But frustrating in another, because you also can't really have as much a say in what you do. What if I WANT to go scuba diving? What if I want to explore the coral reef that is HTML and XML and cascading stylesheets? I'm stuck on this sandbar. The view is nice, the temperature is right, it's pleasant and my feet feel nice. But I need more.
Anyway, it appears now with the following additions to my mac mini I've been able to start to get back down to the business of being a semi-creative computer semi-geek.
- Firefox (It's just so much more like IE than Safari. Yes, I hear myself. I know what I sound like.
- CuteFTP
- Amaya for editing web pages
- Galerie for creating web galleries from photos
Of the stuff that came on my mac, I find so far that the main things I use are
- itunes
Uh... and that's about it, actually. I do want to check out iDVD and iMovie - see how creative I can be in there. Those are two places where I'm not as saavy and actually would be the target user for applications - can't get into too much trouble but can still do some pretty fun and cool things. At least, that's what I'm expecting.
Anyway - without any further ado, I proudly announce the first publication of Bobbin's October 2007 photo album. Check it out and let me know what you think. There are a couple of nits I need to work out - like why the center part stays white all the way down to infinity despite the fact I'm using the same stylesheet and much of the same code that I did in the old albums. Wacky. I'll figure it out though. The point is - I CAN POST PHOTOS AGAIN!
Just upgraded to MT4 (my first in a series of steps that I believe will enable me to start publishing photos directly to my blog from my iPhone :-)) so wanted to test the waters and see if everything's working as it should.
I got a new desktop PC at work last week. It runs Windows Vista. I'm still getting accustomed to the quite different UI but so far I think I like it. It's been really stable. I've only ever turned it off by choice.
But when I booted it up this morning, I was immediately greeted by the message
"Follow these steps to solve the problem with Windows Vista!"
Ummmm... the problem? What problem? I didn't know there was a problem. There were no signs. At least I don't think there were. Was I not paying enough attention? Should I have caught the warning signs sooner? But wait... Is it really a problem I really want to know about? I mean, we're still virtually strangers to one another. I'm not sure I am comfortable being my PC's confidant.
Being the girl scout that I am, I of course clicked "ok" and downloaded and installed an update that claims to "improves the compatibility, reliability, and stability of Windows Vista". Sweet. Not that I had been having any such issues, but preventative medicine isn't a bad thing. I'm thinking of this upgrade as extra-strength Zoloft for my PC.
Speaking of which, I need to refill my own perscription. Because if my PC does implode I'm much more likely to handle it calmly under medication.
Posted by Heather on September 30, 2007 at 3:00 PM
Today I am the proud owner of a Mac Mini as my primary home computer. I'm still in the process of playing with it. I'll keep you posted on how this goes. But so far, I'm pretty happy :-)
Posted by Heather on September 27, 2007 at 10:42 PM
iTunes has been one hurdle to the iPhone I've had a difficult time overcoming. I just hate the user experience. It's non-intuitive for me, which seems odd, considering user experience and intuitiveness seems to be what Apple is generally good at.
Anyway... it was a burden I had been willing to bear for the sake of all the other wonderfulness that is the iPhone.
However, here I am, blogging from my COMPUTER instead of my iPhone for the first time in literally days.
Why?
I tried upgrading my iPhone software to the much anticipated "1.1.1" release so that I could get that magic "itunes" button on my screen and download music directly from the iTunes store over wifi (a much needed feature since I'm unable to really get iTunes to play with our multi-gigabyte networked music library and thus have yet to download much less listen to a single song on my iPhone)
The upgrade failed, giving me some useless, non-descript error message and a useless, specific error number.
Since then, iTunes has failed to even recognize my iPhone and my iPhone has failed to move past the "Please Connect to iTunes" screen. In other words, my iTunes and my iPhone are at an impass.
Reinstalling iTunes and rebooting my computer did not resolve the problem. Nor did switching USB ports. Nor did doing a hard reset, and then a hard reboot, of the phone itself. Nor did all of those things repeated in every possible order combination yield any better results.
But the last straw? The last straw, was that calling customer service revealed to me that the iPhone does NOT have 24x7 technical support. AT&T customer service just passes you off to the "iPhone specialists" which happens to be Apple's tech support line, and Apple's tech support line tells you to call back during business hours.
So here I sit, with a useless phone and a lot of pent up anger. Which does not bode well for the customer service person that gets to resolve my issue face-to-face tomorrow during business hours. Add the fact that their business hours also happen to be my business hours so I don't have a whole lotta time to be haggling with customer service repsover the phone or in person, and I'm thinking that by tomorrow I'll probably be so fed up I may just end up chucking my phone at someone's head. And I don't think the warranty covers that.
Posted by Heather on September 13, 2007 at 10:14 PM
My iPhone is awesome. I used it today to surf the web and write a comment on my sister's facebook wall while sitting in the dentist chair with a mouth full of cotton waiting for my gums to stop swelling so they could finish seating my crown. Good grief.
I used it in the... ahem... bathroom earlier today in lieu of my usual magazine. I'll just leave it at that.
I took it with me to the grocery store last night, and I swear I have never seen such a look of pure lust on a teenage girl's face as I did when she glanced down and realized that I had an iPhone sitting on the counter. She looked at me shyly several times between sideways glances at my phone and I was almost certain she was going to ask if she could see it or touch it. But she refrained. However the desire was clear on her face. Pure lust. A teenage girl. For a piece of technology. SWEET.
This is the only device from which I have ever browsed the internet for more than 30 seconds other than my PC. It is just so easy to do.
Today I discovered Facebook's iPhone site. And Amazon.com's beta iPhone site. To be clear, the iPhone browser, Safari, lets you access any web site you can access from your PC and view it in all it's richness and glory with ease, but there is something to be said for web sites that are optimized for the iPhone's physical form factor. And so along those veins, while I already have created and published one blog entry directly from my iPhone, I learned that Movabletype.org, the publishing platform this blog uses, has an iPhone plugin for editing / updating from the iPhone that has compelled me to decide I absolutely must upgrade to MT4. As. Soon. As. Possible. Saturday or Sunday to be sure.
Any complaints I have had about my iPhone experience appear to be en route to swift resolution by end of this month. And the rest have just faded away with increased use and familiarity.
My main complaint at first was the fat fingering. But I have found that the iphone's capability to spell-check / word-complete on the fly real time is actually pretty accurate so I've learned just to let it do its job and stopped backspacing to correct mistakes. And 99% of the time it inserts the word and corrects the spelling appropriately. So that has quickly become a non-issue, and my tapping speed has increased substantially as a result.
My second complaint was that I couldn't download songs and videos directly from my iPhone over the wireless network - I had to connect the phone to my PC and download via PC iTunes. I have since learned that end of this month, I will be able to access the iTunes wifi store online directly from my iPhone browser and download music and videos instantly over the wireless network (for the price of a song... or video, as the case may be :-)). So that is quickly becoming a none-issue as well.
As a bonus, I've also learned that on October 2nd in participating starbucks in select cities/regions (Seattle, of course, being one :-)) I will be able to instantly identify and download whatever music track is playing at the time that I am in Starbucks waiting for my non-fat no-whip peppermint hot chocolate and chonga bagel with 2 cream cheeses. Breakfast time just got a whole lot more expensive; more often than not I find I like the music I'm listening to. Of course, the first 10 or so downloads will be purely in the name of research, of course ;-)
Is there anything my iPhone can't do? Not much. I use it to check traffic, to check weather, to take pictures, to send text messages. It lacks the ability to connect directly to Windows Live Hotmail from within the native email application (yahoo, google, mac and other pop3/IMAP mail access is available - so this is more a shortcoming of Windows Live Hotmail than it is the iPhone's. Yeah yeah yeah. Shut up.). I would also like the ability to choose an alternate search provider for Safari - google and Yahoo are the only choices, and I want my Windows Live Search, dammit. I can get around it by navigating to windows live search myself and having it handy in my bookmarks for one click access, but it is still slightly more effort than just tapping in the search text box at the top of the screen. And so... yes.. I use google when I need to search. Because it's just there.
I miss IM, but I access the web version using the browser so I'm good there. The Windows Live Messenger Beta browse experience is quite good (on any device; not just iPhone :-)) so I don't feel cheated for lack of an IM application on the phone itself.
I haven't had time yet to download any of my music or photos from my PC yet - but plan on doing so this weekend. And then I can ditch my mp3 player (I have no idea where it is anyway) and use my phone on my walks.
I sync my work outlook calendar to it so I always know where I need to be and when.
Oh yeah... and I use it to make and receive phone calls too :-)
By far the best device I've ever owned. and the only one I've ever used and actually become dependant on (and quickly too) for anything other than phone calls, the occasional text message, and IM (my IM usage on my phone has dramatically increased from what it used to be; and it used to be fairly significant).
The only bummer was the amount of money I had to shell out for it, and the loss of my business discount that I had been enjoying on my monthly bill (iPhones are excluded from employee/business discounts) But... I forked over the cash in the end, so clearly that wasn't a deal-breaker for me either :-)
I have only one other frustration with the iPhone, but that's not a topic for discussion here :-)
It is a neat little tool, by all accounts. But I won't get one. I don't think I will ever get another cell phone or cell-phone type device again. There's something to be said for NOT being able to be reached at all hours, you know? I also think that there should be (stiffer) penalties for drivers who use the damned things on the road, hands free or not. Any time I've been in a near-miss down here (cut off, almost sideswiped, cut off AND almost sideswiped, turned into by a driver who thought they had an advanced left-turn when they still had a red), the other driver has been talking on a cell phone or texting. If I hadn't had *my* eyes on the road, and them, these wouldn't have been misses...
My biggest complaint (I got mine first) is that you can not send an image (I got mine first) via SMS .... kinda bugs (I got mine first) me, but I be able to live my life fine under (I got mine first) the circumstances.
Posted by Heather on September 12, 2007 at 8:53 PM
But it is a sound of pure contentment. I bought myself an iPhone today. And i am totally in love. The only thing I don't love is the absence of a stylus when I need to type. Because unless your fingers are the size of matchsticks you'll do a lot of fatfongering. However I am starting to get in the hang of it and the automatic word completion and correction helps. And the rest of it is so cool that the fat finger typing isn't enough to turn me off.
Ok... I found a feature that may have made it worth it
Posted by Heather on March 12, 2007 at 1:59 PM
I still can't figure out how to get my old spreadsheets out of "compatibility mode" in Office 2007 but I did discover the Conditional Formatting feature which lets me automatically colour code a range of cells based on rules I set, so I don't have to do it by hand. A cool feature. Easy to use and so far produces the results I'm looking for. I think this is one new feature I'll be using a lot; most of the spreadsheets I produce end up getting colour coded in some way, shape, or form for a variety of reasons. I guess I'm just really visual when it comes to looking at data (but I prefer looking at tables of data rather than charts or graphs in many cases; hence my colour coding fetish :-))
Posted by Heather on February 21, 2007 at 12:33 PM
After getting tired of waiting 5+ minutes for the file converter to work its magic whenever someone sends me an Office 2007 file, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2007.
And now I spend far more than 5+ minutes in every document trying to figure out where all the menu items are that I was so familiar with and dependant on in all of the previous Office versions.
I used to be an Excel master. In mere seconds, literally, I could whip together a spreadsheet of data with pivot tables, formulas, gorgeous and clear-to-read formatting, and proper page breaks for nice printing. Now I can't even figure out how to bold my text.
The default colours I used to use - the pretty shades of red, orange, yellow and green to highlight and colour code my data - are all slightly DIFFERENT. So when I go to add data to any of my current spreadsheets, I have to cut and paste my colours from my old cells to my new, or redo them all in the new palatte so they all look consistent. And I don't need to tell you how long it took me to even find the cut and paste paintbrush that I used to use without even thinking in earlier versions.
I know with time I'll get used to the new look and feel of Office 2007. I use it enough in my everyday life at work and home that I'll have no choice. I may even end up liking parts of it. But it's DAMN annoying in the meantime having to search for all of my favourite formatting, formula, and editing tools. Not to mention time consuming. And while it's different, and I suppose in some ways pretty, I don't know that the organization and layout of the menus is any BETTER. What problem were they trying to solve and for what audience? Like I said - I had all these documents down cold - I was pro!
Life changes, I can handle. But mess with my application UIs and you're gonna really piss me off.
No kidding...After 1 week of searching, I finally figured out how to "undo" a task, and it has taken about 3 weeks to figure out how to "select all" in Word. Gotta love change!
Windows Vista released today. So, in celebration, I thought I'd upgrade my work PC and give it a try. It's getting rave reviews, I'm really eager to check out the new UI, and, well... it would be the appropriate and responsible thing for me to do at this point for a couple of reasons :-)
So I downloaded the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft's web site so that I could confirm all of my PC hardware was compatible before I actually bit the bullet.
You know those Mac commercials on TV - the ones where the cool guy is "Mac" and the slightly overweight geeky guy with glasses and receding hairline is "PC"? Well then, have you seen the recent ones where "PC" is getting ready to go in for "major surgery" to get upgraded to Vista?
Here's the message that the Upgrade Advisor gave me just now:
"Your current video card will not support the Windows Aero™ user experience. Contact your computer manufacturer or retailer to see if an upgrade is available. Click here for a list of video cards that support Windows Aero. "
Sigh...
Thankfully, it also told me "No issues were detected for these system components:"
CPU - Your computer's CPU is Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 3.00GHz
System memory (RAM) - Your computer has 1.00 GB of RAM.
DVD drive - Your computer can read DVDs.
Well, I guess on the bright side, it's good that all my computer needs is the computer equivalent of Lasik surgery, as opposed to brain or heart surgery. Still... the very first thing I thought of when I got the message was that Mac commercial.
I LOVE those commercials. Not enough to go out and buy a Mac just yet, but they are food for thought. I love the one where PC comes in all harried because he's being used to entertain kids, and he's annoyed because kids don't have accounts to balance, or employees to organise, etc. Ha... it's funny 'cause it's true.
Kudos to Microsoft and the Windows Live (www.live.com)team. Finally a truly personalizable and customizable home page that I find useful and interesting and relevant entertaining and 100% about ME and my interests :-)
I have now made live.com my default home page in IE and customized it to contain all of the content on the internet that I care about. I have my hotmail inbox, all of the blogs that I read (via RSS), my weather and stock quotes and horoscope, I have canadian news that I read from CBC.ca, I have a world clock and calendar, a universal converter, and I even have windows media player embedded and automatically tuned to KEXP's streaming broadcast so I can listen to the music I want while I'm reading the information I care about :-) I can also keep search results here to be accessed over and over again, and a whole host of other stuff that I haven't explored. And it was EASY and FAST to do!
The women's team's performance on last night's apprentice was SOOO disappointing. Last night's task was to put together a technology exposition for a senior's center, and teach the residents how to use the various technologies they selected.
The guys had it right. The right selection of technologies that would appeal to their audience, familiarity with the technology they selected so they could competently and successfully teach others how to use it, the right atmosphere and attention to detail to make the event appealing so people would want to attend. Of course the one guy that asked George for his opinion (and essentially saying with his question that he thought George was part of the "senior citizen" target audience for this exposition) probably should have just kept his mouth shut. But they ended up winning in the end :-).
The women SUCKED. They picked technology that was uninteresting or inappropriate for their audience (High Definition TV with complicated space age remote controls that I wouldn't be able to operate let alone teach someone else to; heart rate monitors for tracking your heart rate during those high intensity cardio workouts that you, as someone over the age of 75, are likely to be engaging in on a daily basis - hey, don't take that the wrong way - I know there are a lot of folks who are still active well into their 80s and I intend to be one of them when I'm that age, but I doubt they'd really find wearing a heart rate monitor that interesting, and the idea was to appeal to the majority of the audience), they didn't bother to become proficient in the technology themselves before having to teach it to others, and right down to the misspelling of "technology" on the cake that they were serving, the event was poorly planned and executed.
So - here's what I think I would have picked as the technologies if I had been project manager of the women's team but first, I would have validated my choices (or changed them if necessary) by interviewing some of the people to find out more about their interests, hobbies, current lifestyle and communication methods and tools. And you can bet I would have made damn sure that each "instructor" on my team had the basics down before turning them loose to teach others:
E-mail - sending and receiving email, attaching photos, viewing, downloading and saving photos received in email
Instant Messaging - text, voice, and video - what better way to communicate with family and friends far away, especially when webcams are so cheap, and video messaging is so easy and a relatively decent experience now?
Digital Photography, picture sharing, basic blogging / online scrapbooking using something easy like MSN Spaces
Computer basics - like surfing and searching the internet, installing applications, changing you desktop picture (who wouldn't want photos of their grandkids instead of the standard Microsoft background - which incidently reminds me of the teletubbies for some reason)
In this day and age, when every business runs on computers and has access to the internet and wonderful little sites like MSN Mappoint, WHY should I have to provide directions to a driver from some place I've never been, in some location I am not familiar with, to my location to pick me up? I'm not talking about just some landmark to help facilitate finding our place. I'm talking about full on directions from Point A (a location unbeknownst to me) to Point B (where I am).
Why?
I don't know where you're starting from. Why are you asking ME for directions? I'm paying YOU to come pick me up!
Me: Hi - I made reservations online and was told to call in the morning to arrange for someone to pick me up.
Car Rental Person: What's your address?
Me: [provided address]
Car Rental person: Ok. And how do we get there?
Me: I don't know. Where are you?
Car Rental person: [provides location]
Me: I have no idea where that is. Never been in that neighbourhood.
About 10 minutes later we figure out what I believe to be a common landmark (I think we were talking about the same intersection), and I think I provide him with directions to our house from there.
I do this with taxis, and pizza delivery people too. Why should I have to? All I have is their phone number. I have no clue where they are at.
The driver should be here in about 15 or 20 minutes. Provided he doesn't get lost.
I think I've mentioned before that I work in the mobile software industry. So I like to keep up on the phones that are out there.
Here's one I came across while blog-surfing (Tim likes to call that "blurfing". I think that works ;-)). Anyway - while blurfing, I came across the PopGadget: Personal Tech for Women site (a cool site btw) which led me to find this:
It is the Samsung SGH-a400. At Samsung, they "acknowledge the unique individuality of every modern woman in this society and have thus created the Egèo that will meet her every needs".
Oh thank goodness.
It doesn't look exceptionally impressive in the photo - although the colour is kinda neat. But many manufacturers sell "skins" that allow you to change phone colours so that's not that big a deal. Not sure I like the square-ness, but Samsung claims that the elegant look of this phone will "make me feel the best" and its small and compact design "adds a warm glow in my hands like a precious gem". Not to mention that "the luxurious appearance engraved with a gold rose is a beautiful symbol of my aristocratic dignity". Just wonderful. But how is this going to meet my every need?
Well, let me tell you! This phone features a number of "Personalized health features" including:
Calories Calculator - to help me calculate the amount of calories I've burned while doing my daily work like cooking and shopping as well as sports activities like aerobics and dancing. Because being a woman, those are the activities that comprise my daily life.
Fatness Calculator (yes, that is what they call it) - which will provide me with a quick and easy check on whether I am within the healthy weight range for my frame. I simply key in my height and weight and the calculator will tell me whether I am "thin", "slight thin", "normal", "slight fat" or "fat". Just what I need.
Bio Rhythm - which lets me check my physical, emotional and intellectual cycles on a daily basis. Wonder what terminology it uses for THAT? "Today you are: Dumb, sluggish, and slightly bitchy" ?
And the killer feature? Why, it's "The Pink schedule". Using this feature I can monitor where I am in my menstrual cycle.
Well Tim - if you're reading this, now you know what I want for Christmas ;-)
Wow. I am sitting here in our division meeting updating my blog from my Nokia 6800 cell phone. Because....I can :-). Not bad... Not bad at all. The 6800 has a foldout QWERTY keyboard that makes it easy to type. And, clearly it has a web browser allowing me to navigate to and sign into my blog. Unfortunately I will need to wait until I get in front of a computer before I know what this entry will look like because the browser on this phone can't handle the size of the web page.
And editing is slightly challenging because the web UI isn't optimally designed for the 6800's web browser. and typing with my thumbs - even on a qwerty keyboard - takes a little longer. Even for me - a typing superhero. But it is still kinda cool that I am able to do it at all!
(blah blah blah - sounds of meeting going on in the background).
Just THINK what i could do if this phone had a camera!
[Edited from the PC]
Now that I am back on my PC I should mention (because I hit the character limit when attempting to type from the phone... plus, it was taking too long) that recently (well - Sept 8th) Six Apart and Nokiaannounced their collaboration to create Nokia Lifeblog - a more powerful mobile logging experience allowing people to publish content on the web using their Nokia mobile devices, using TypePad by Six Apart. I believe specific Nokia devices are being targetted, and I believe you download software to your Nokia device.
Well - I don't use TypePad. I use Movable Type. Which has a web interface so in theory is accessible from any mobile device with a web browser already (although, as someone who works in the Mobile software industry I know it ain't nearly as simple and straightforward as that in actual practice ;-)) But it made me curious... would I be denied moblogging ability because I'm using Movable Type and not TypePad? Well - it all depends on how badly I want to blog, I guess. The Movable Type UI on the Nokia 6800 web browser was really not good. Everything rendered, and I could type and all, but the page layout was intended for something with much more screen real-estate, and having to scroll up/down and left/right just to get to where I wanted to be on the page was a pain and slowed me down. Actual text entry was fine cause that's what's so cool about the 6800. It was the page layout that was challenging to deal with. But it's darn hard to serve up properly formatted pages for every mobile device out there - even if you limit it to just the most popular devices, or just WAP 2.0 devices, or what have you. They are just all different.
I do want to figure out how to make my actual blog mobile-accessible for reading though. Although I'm probably the only one who will actually read it from a cell phone - and how interesting is that, really, since I wrote everything in it? ;-)
What it really all comes down to is - I'm a geek. A mobile one at that. And I love this stuff.
I was reading an article on the www.emedicine.com web site that I had arrived at from an internet search. I had never been to www.emedicine.com before. There was all kinds of the usual medical jargon and physiology gobbledegook strewn about the article, and I was having a hard time following it all, so I was using my mouse to highlight words as I was reading them.
And that's when I discovered that whenever I highlighted anything on the page, a new window would pop up with search results from Stedman's Medical Dictionary for the word(s) that I had highlighted, including definitions (where definitions were found) and other articles that mention the highlighted word(s).
Cool technology. I didn't even have to know the web site did that. and the web site didn't explain (and didn't have to explain) that it could do that. And it worked for all words - not just specially linked words, or words that were underlined, etc. I didn't have to click on the word, or on a link. I just highlighted any word or combination of words I wanted.
I should mention that I've actually implemented a span class=help on my site that
1) gives the word a dotted underline
2) changes the curser to a question mark over the word
those are left as an excercise for the student :-)
