This is a test blog entry via the iPad. I am trying a new blogging app called Blogsy, as recommended by Andy Ihnatko on the latest episode of “MacBreak Weekly” on TWiT. It has pretty cool integration with Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Google Images and the iPad photo library. I must admit that I find the inter fact rather confusing.
I should probably read the tutorial.
I have been determined to get back into a regular cycling routine again this summer. I have slacked off for the last couple of summers, mainly because of work obligations but with some additional contributions of laziness. However, I felt that this was the year that I needed to get back on my bicycle and make some strides in the fitness department doing the one sport that I love the most.
I set some pretty lofty goals for myself this year that I haven’t really discussed all that much. My first goal was to ride a 100 mile route (actually 105 miles) from our lovely little home in the Mohawk Valley to Binghamton. This jaunt would take me from north to south, downward on the map, of course, which in my head means that it’s downhill. Now I don’t really believe that but I like to think that’s the case once in a while.
I can tell you that it is certainly not all downhill.
The 105 mile ride was a lofty goal, and the wet weather we have had this spring didn’t give me many chances to train for this ride, but I figured that I would make a go of it. So with only a few of double digit rides under my belt this season, I set out at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. The goal was Binghamton with an intermediate goal of Sidney (65 miles). I was geared up and ready to go
My plan included tracking my ride using the iMapMyRide app on my iPhone, as I have done earlier this season, because it keeps track of the terrain, my average speed, the actual distance and how many calories I am actually burning during my ride. About two hours into the trek I stopped to take a photo of a road sign that features the new Clearview lettering that’s popping up all over the country (this sign is the first one in this area using it, to the best of my knowledge).
It was then that I realized that while the iMapMyRide app is quite good on the iPhone, it kills the battery dramatically. Taking this photo, 25 miles into the ride, completely killed the battery on my phone, the phone that was fully charged when I left just two hours before.
Sigh.
I turned the phone off so that I would have enough juice in the case of emergency and continued my way down NY Route 8. I said hello to cows, greeted barn cats that stalked me from the ditch (though one was quite friendly and wanted to greet me in a warm, cat-like way) and enjoyed the cloudy but not overly cool weather.
I made a stop in the small village of New Berlin to pick up an extra bottle of Gatorade, as I had gotten through the one I had packed as well as a bunch of the water I had brought along. When I snapped out of my pedals I noticed that my left shoe was loose. I took a look and discovered that I had lost one of the bolts off the clamp and the other two had loosened up. This would explain why my right leg was hurting, it was working hard than my left leg because there was an extra bit of wobble in the left shoe. I tightened up the remaining bolts, rested for a bit and continued on.
Earl and Scott stopped by in the truck shortly afterwards and checked on my progress. This is a tradition with my bike rides. I start out and then Earl leaves three or so hours later, hoping to find me somewhere along the route. He then drives 10 or so miles ahead and we leap frog to the final destination.
All went well with the ride until the stretch between Mount Upton and Sidney. There I ran into some raindrop, which isn’t bad in itself, but that’s when my body started talking to me.
“Daddy”, my body said, “I know you think you’re 25 but you’re 42. 65 miles is very impressive for the first ride of the season and I think we should call it a day when we get to Sidney.”
“But Binghamton awaits!”, was my reply.
“You’ve made really good progress but I really think that we should call it a day so that we can ride again next weekend without having to pass through intensive care on the way.”
The body won. I stopped at Sidney at 65 miles on the nose. It was an excellent ride and I was most pleased with the progress. I plan on doing a 100 mile trek before my birthday in July. I’ll just have to continue to train so that all my parts start working together properly.
My ride was rewarded with a stop at the Neptune Diner in Oneonta and then Earl and Scott drove home while I slept in the back seat.
My body screamed in pain Saturday night but it wasn’t anything that a couple of Advil couldn’t cure. Now I’m ready for the next trek. I’m going to scratch Binghamton off the list and try a different location. Something west to east, perhaps, so that it seems more flat.
I was looking around the iPad app store last night and I saw that Microsoft (actually MSN) has an app called MSNOnIt. It’s an online magazine designed for guys, featuring cars, beautiful women and things that guys care about. It’s free so I decided to download it.
I’m a little surprised to say that I actually like it.
The front page of this electronic magazine features a scantily clad Bridgette Bardot which was alright, but once I started flipping through it I found some other interesting things inside: recipes from Men’s Health (much like the recipes in a book my friend dave gave me for Christmas), dating advice, geek and tech toy reviews and the like. Though I have to admit I don’t ever remember reading a Playboy in my life (I’ve never been interested in anything that tame when I’m looking for that sort of thing), I suppose this is like a PG-13 version of Playboy and that you’re actually encouraged to read it for the articles. The software pulls the information in from the various traditional men’s magazine (Men’s Health, Popular Mechanics, etc) so if you’re so inclined I say give it a try. You can always delete it and as they say, hey it’s free, so what do you got to lose?
It’s rather exciting times for a computer geek. Apple has announced that they will be announcing their new Cloud service next week at their developer’s conference, WWDC. The new cloud service is called iCloud. Some speculate it’s iTunes in the sky mixed in with MobileMe, all in an effort to make your data available everywhere in the world. Great concept and I hope it does what they hope, because the previous incarnations of Apple’s cloud offerings have been lacking in comparison to the rest of their product line. Personally, I love Dropbox because it works across all computing platforms. I love it so much that I pay for premium space on the cloud. I highly recommend it if you have multiple machines.
Apple is also expected to share much more information on OS X Lion. Who knows, they might even release it to the masses at the conference. Lion is going to blur the line between OS X on the desktop and iOS on the iPhone/iPad/iPod so that they’re more like each other. They want you to swipe all sorts of ways on the big glass trackpads built into their MacBooks.
The various Linux folks are trying to find a new paradigm for their desktops to make this year become the Year of the Linux Desktop. I’ve been reading about the Year of the Linux Desktop since 1999 or so and it hasn’t happened yet. We are getting closer to it though, but various flavors of Linux are changing the rules on a periodic basis so who knows what will come to fruition. Unfortunately, the openness of Linux that I love tends to make it fragmented and without focus. This is good for innovation but in the long run I feel it’s not the best thing for the end user. I wouldn’t ever feel comfortable putting Linux on a family member’s desktop. It’s not there yet.
Then we have Windows. A sneak peek at Windows 8 was announced yesterday and it looks like they are radically overhauling the interface in the next incarnation of Windows, making it more like the “Metro” interface found on their Windows Phone 7 smartphones. I haven’t had a chance to play with a Windows 7 Phone yet, but I do find them intriguing if they work as they promise. The Metro interface features tiles of information; you have a “dial” tile which shows the number of missed calls, a “Facebook” tile which shows what your friends are up to, etc. It’s a nifty idea and I’m interested to see how this extends to the Windows desktop. I know that Microsoft is banking on touchscreen monitors for all, which is a natural extension from tablet and iPad like devices, but as an iPad user, I can tell you that the smudges on the screen, especially after enjoying some non-tots (hash browns) from Dunkin’ Donuts, can get old fast. I do think that Microsoft is on to something here, and I wish Linux (particular Ubuntu) would get it’s act together a little faster to go this route, but now it’ll be just a copy.
One of the issues that Microsoft suffers from is the missteps of the past and the bad press it gets from time to time. Actually, most companies suffer from this. If people would just look at a new product with a fresh perspective instead of saying “it’s just like Vista! Gasp! Horror!” when it’s not, the new product just might have a chance. I was speaking with a geek a while back about how much I love using my MacBook and iPad, and he pooh-poohed me, telling me that Macs weren’t even capable of multitasking, which they’ve been able to do for the past decade or so. Old information doesn’t translate to today. More people need to remember that about technology. Even more people need to remember that about life.
So it’s an exciting time in the geek world and I, for one, am looking forward to what everyone has to offer and dabbling in a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Now I just need a finance advisor that can tell me how to accomplish all this.
I decided to install a new theme for the blog to spruce things up a bit. Perhaps the starkness of the original theme was just a little too stark.
I would love to hear your comments on the new digs.
For the past several years I have used the online moniker of “iMachias”. The reasons for the choice of this name are twofold; first of all, since I was always using my Macs and talking about how great all things Apple were, the name ‘iMachias’ was like a formal way of saying that I was a Mac user. After all, when there’s a small ‘i’ at the beginning, one thinks of the iPod, iPad or iPhone first. So iMachias fit.
In addition, the word “Machias” resonates with my soul in a way that I can’t really put into words. It’s a nifty sounding word to me and it is a very natural fit to how I feel on the inside. The word Machias makes me feel connected to a greater experience in this life. There’s a story on how this came about, and I suppose that someday I’ll find the motivation to write the details down. For now, suffice it to say that the word Machias is kind of like a spiritual name, much like “Balding Eagle On The LakeFront” or “Kyan”, if you’re the hairdresser on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”.
I have been drifting in and out of my allegiance to all things Apple again (don’t sweat it, sweetheart, I have no major purchases planned anywhere in the near future) and it seems kind of strange to me to be participating in the online Linux discussions with the name iMachias, so last night I decided to make a change to my online presence name. This decision came about as I was riding my bike last night.
Quick side note – last night I went on my first official bike ride of the season and I was moderately surprised that I was able to ride 15 miles with only the usual amount of effort. 15 miles isn’t bad for the first run; in the past I’ve kept the first ride to 10 miles or so, but I was happy at 15 miles and I was cruising along at an average of 18 miles per hour, so I was quite pleased with the ride last night. Since I haven’t done a lot of riding over the past two years, I was ELATED when I got home from the ride. One of the reasons for this is because riding my bike, especially along the canal trails through the woods where there isn’t vehicle traffic, is my zen. Riding my bike in solitude takes me where I need to regroup my thoughts and relieve a lot of stress. I was positively giddy when I got back to the house and the effects from the ride are lingering into today. This is a beautiful thing.
Back to the online name; while I was on the ride last night I decided that I needed to have an online name that spoke to what made me happy, centered and focused. That’s cycling. I don’t know why I haven’t thought of this before, but I decided on the name of “CycliBear”. The word fits what I love in many ways and in a way it’s a sly tip of the hat to the fact that I oscillate between various computing platforms. My computer usage goes through cycles, just as sure as the fact that when I move the pedals on my bicycle, I’m going to go somewhere.
So CycliBear it is. I debuted the new name on Twitter last night.
Speaking of online presence – I try to keep the geekdom giddiness down to a dull roar here on this blog or else it would be twice as boring as it currently is, but I am excited to share with you that I found an email spam filtering service from mailroute.net that has completely solved my spam issue I had with the mail accounts here on jpnearl.com. I mentioned the other day that I’m trying to get away from the ad supported email accounts, and hosting my own email on jpnearl.com definitely does that. Since my email account has been around for over 10 years (as has Earl’s), we get a LOT of spam. Filtering it through the services offered by mailroute.net fixes that problem and it’s relatively inexpensive at $33/year per account. If you host your own mail and have this issue, I highly recommend their service.
It’s no secret that I am a rabid technology fan. Technology is part of my life experience every step of the way, and has been since I logged onto GEnie back in 1985 and ran up long distance charges to chat and send email with my cousin who was less than 10 miles away. The ability to connect to the others through the technology we have at our fingertips is amazing.
Last autumn I talked about the “It Gets Better” project and even shared my video with my dear readers. If that video made a difference in one person’s life than it was well worth it.
I love it when technology can be used for good and when technology is available to everyone so that they can use their technological powers for good as well. Google enables users to do this. Anyone with any computer, regardless of platform (Mac, Linux, Windows, etc) can use Google’s services to reach out and connect with others. Google gives us the tools, it’s up to us to make the connection.
Google has recently began an ad campaign urging users to use their Google Chrome web browser and the other services that they offer. One of the ads features the “It Gets Better” project. It does what an ad is suppose to do; it tugs at your heartstrings and more importantly, it makes you remember the product. Now the cynic in me says that they have used this topic to advertise their products and that’s why they used this ‘hot topic’, but the truth of the matter is, I don’t really care about that and honestly I don’t think that’s the case at all. Because for every person that sees the message “It Gets Better”, even if it’s wrapped in an ad for Google Services, there may be one or 100 or even 10,000 in the crowd that may not see the ad for an ad, but instead see it for the message the thousands of videos that were made by everyday people and celebrities alike and the message behind those videos, “It Gets Better”.
I applaud Google for their ad. I actually applaud them for their ad campaign because they also have one called “Dear Sophie”, which features a father sending his daughter emails as she’s growing up, and it’s a cool ad as well.
When you use your technological powers for good, it’s a beautiful thing. And Google, and the users that use it’s services, is doing just that.
If you’re interested in using Google Chrome as your browser, follow this link.
A while back I used to share videos on this blog thingee, but time constraints with the new job prevented me from having the time to get these videos of the camera and into a computer and then into a format the most people could see and then uploaded up onto this blog.
Whew.
Enter socialcam.
I discovered this app a couple of days ago and so far I’m liking it, though it doesn’t feel very social because I don’t know many people using it. It’s kind of like Instagram in that it makes it wicked easy to share videos (like Instagram does with photos), but the cool thing is that the app is available for the iPhone/iPod/iPad AND Android devices, so even if I was still a Droid user, I’d be able to enjoy this nifty little app.
It’s free and simple to use: fire up the app, record a video and hit share. You can share the same videos with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and the like. Plus, you can upload videos to your Dropbox, if you have one.
I just posted my first video a little while ago and even over Verizon’s 3G it uploaded fairly quickly. Color me pleased.
Who knows, I might start making little videos again.
Here’s a link to the video I just made: http://socialc.am/j3HJqZ
So they were having this great deal on these little Asus Eee PC netbooks at work and I decided to jump in on the saving. Four weeks later, my new little netbook was sitting on the front porch waiting to be inducted into my little geekdom.
I dubbed it “scout-tux”. All of my Linux machines have tux in their name.
scout-tux came with Windows XP. I found this surprising, because not only is Windows XP 10 years old, but everyone has been telling me how wonderful Windows 7 is for these little machines. I decided not to care and loaded Ubuntu Maverick Netbook Edition on this little guy instead. Everything worked out of the box and he seems to be purring along nicely. Battery life was promised to be around six hours; he’s clock in around 3.5 hours. I can deal with that. He’s going to be a little test machine anyways, I use my iPad when I’m out and about on the road.
The built in webcam worked without any tweaking. I found this to be quite nice. The picture has that grainy quality of 2001, just like Windows XP, but I still like this little guy.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!