Geek

So today Verizon announced that they will be carrying the iPhone 4 beginning in February. Existing Verizon customers will be able to pre-order the phone on the 3rd while new customers can start on the 10th. I like the love that Verizon is giving their existing customers there.

I am excited about this. As I have mentioned on and off, I switched from an iPhone 3G to the original Motorola Droid last spring because AT&T didn’t offer 3G service for most of my commute and in the city I worked in. The Droid initially performed admirably; the screen was gorgeous, it seemed quite responsive and Verizon’s network made me happy. Unfortunately, my Droid is showing some premature signs of wear; the sliding mechanism doesn’t stay closed so I occasionally pocket dial or take photos of my pocket during the workday. In addition, the keypad has the habit of stuttering more than I do, throwing random letters in succession here and there. But the one thing that the Droid lacks, in my opinion, is the fit and finish of the iPhone. The software isn’t as smooth on the Droid and I have to work more to use the device. When I was using Linux full-time I hoped that I could plug my Droid into the computer and have it sync up with my music program in Ubuntu, but no such luck. We already know that the Droid doesn’t sync with iTunes without the help of DoubleTwist, but even with that program it should be easier than it is.

I must be getting old in my geekdom, because I just don’t want to mess with syncing these things anymore, I just want it to work.

One of the perks of the Verizon iPhone is the built in wifi hotspot. This is wonderful and something not available on my Droid. I will be able to ditch the extra MiFi card and just use my iPhone for my portable wifi hotspot. Brilliant.

Needless to say, I will be switching to the Verizon iPhone on February 3. I am looking forward to that familiar “home” feeling in my mobile device of choice.

If you are reading this directly on my blog page, you’ll notice that things look a little different on here. I decided to clean up the look of the blog with something a little more simple and hopefully easier to read.

I hope you enjoy the new digs. Please feel free to comment as much as you’d like because one of my goals of 2010 2011^* is to be more interactive with those that take the time to read the stuff I write.

I have been a hermit for too long.

^* This is the first time I’ve written the date wrong in 2011. Ruined my record!

I had mentioned before that one of my goals for 2011 is to be better organized. Writing things down (electronically) works well for me, and having the information I need synced between my electronic devices (iPod, iPad, Mac, etc) is very important to me.

I have been using Google to synchronize all of this information for me; I maintain my calendar on Google Calendar and I use my Gmail contacts as my main contact list. I have been having a few issues with this as of late. First of all, Gmail mangled my contacts a bit a month or so ago and the discrepancies have been making me crazy. I like each entry to be as complete as possible and all of them to be formatted identically (dashes and spaces in phone numbers, for example). I like every entry to have a little thumbnail of the person the card represents. I’m strange, I know, but seeing a smiling photo of each person in my address book makes me smile. Many use it to associate a name to a face, I don’t need to do that, I just like to have a thumbnail smiling back at me.

Since I intend on being on an Apple calling device of some sort in the relatively near future (either an iPhone or an iPod Touch using Skype and my Verizon WiFi), I decided to rebuild my address book using my MobileMe account. I’m starting to show a glimpse of my tinfoil hat tendencies, but I don’t want to store my personal information with a free service (especially one that is ad-supported) again. I pay for MobileMe, so I figure they owe me something and more importantly, everything is backed up somewhere else.

Also, my jp-at-jpnearl-dot-com e-mail address is hitting unprecedented spam levels as of late. That e-mail address has been automatically forwarding to gmail for the past year or two and gmail has been keeping the account quite clean, but I’m seriously considering getting rid of that e-mail account (I’ve had it for over 10 years) so that the spammers can just give up on trying to sell me everything that is spelled with numb3r5 and $ymb0l$ that I don’t want anyways. I’ll probably use the MobileMe address that is my nickname (without periods) dot last name at me dot com, but I’ll be rude and send out a mass email when I do that. When I make that step, I’ll be deleting all the other extraneous accounts that are living out there.

Another step in my quest for organizational perfection: a single point of contact.

Our friend Iain recently found a bug in the mobile version of this nifty bloggy thing, which made me go into full on geek mode with the maintenance of this site. So I’ve done a little bit of house cleaning and the like around here. If you find any bugs, please don’t hesitate to contact me either through a comment to this blog entry or by sending me e-mail.

If you like the mobile version of the site, which can be seen from just about any mobile device out there, and wish to add this functionality to your WordPress powered site, please click through the button on the right hand side of this page. I really like the software that BraveNewCode develops and I highly recommend them.

I’ll admit that I’m a geek. I want to shop at this Sears just because it has the really retro logo on it. I told Earl that the old Sears logo has a Jackie Kennedy swoop look to it. He agreed.

This store is in Santa Monica.

My smartphone, a Motorola Droid on Verizon (the original Droid), lit up the room like a beacon in the middle of the night. It was 04:51 and I was awoken by the bright light.

“A system update is available for your device.”

Now a normal person would just turn off the phone, throw out a few curse words and get back to sleep. Not me, I wanted to see if I was about to get the latest version of Android operating system. It’s called Gingerbread. This would have been an unexpected surprise.

I tapped the display in all the right places and waited for the obligatory reboot. It turns out that I wasn’t getting some Gingerbread, but just a newer version of Froyo, the current Android operating system on the Motorola Droid. I went from 2.2 to 2.2.1.

Sigh. I knew it was too good to be true.

While I still love using and working with computers very, very much, not much has happened in the technology world lately that has really grabbed my attention and made me feel excited about using computers again. Mac OS X is kind of boring to me lately. I mean, aside from a few tweaks here and there, the big cat is plodding along solidly but it’s essentially the same thing as it was a few years ago. Though I don’t play with Windows that much (I have to use XP at work), Windows 7 is still Windows with pretty decorations. And Linux can make it anything you want it to be I suppose, but who has the time to build your own interface from scratch?

I guess there’s a point where technology moves from being an obsession or a toy to a tool, and this is where my head is at lately.

This morning I discovered MOG, which is a music service that let’s you listen to unlimited amounts of music and download songs to your mobile device for a monthly fee of around US$10. That’s kind of cool. Pandora has become a little repetitive for me lately, probably because I haven’t nursed my playlists along enough and you can’t save the Pandora songs in any manner, so I welcome this new chance to play around with MOG.

I need something new, something fresh in the computing world to grab my attention. I want a new paradigm. Perhaps Google’s Chrome OS, due out in the middle of next year, will excite me a little bit. Portability with access anywhere? That stuff appeals to the network/connected geek in me. I sort of have that stuff with MobileMe and Dropbox (and the like), but Chrome OS could take it to a new level for me.

Maybe that’ll compute in my head and give me something to get excited about.

To make everyone’s life a little bit easier (including my own), I have added the ability for Blogger/Google Friend Connect users to use that account to leave a comment down in the comments section of individual entries. I’ll probably do the same for Facebook users in the very near future, like after I finish this blog entry.

Taking the day off from work has afforded me the opportunity to catch up on my online stuff that I have been neglecting. I feel energized again.

I’m not out to win any blogger popularity contests but I’m very much into using all the tools I can to make everyone’s social networking experience that much more enjoyable. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

As we all know, today is Monday. It is a rather grey day in the Central-Leatherstocking Region of Upstate New York. There was an inch or two of snow at home when we woke up this morning but there’s nothing on the ground at work. I believe I have identified the line that marks the official far end of the Lake Ontario snow belt. The pattern is the same as I observed earlier this year when I first started this new gig.

I find Monday mornings to be the hardest part of the work week because I’m not a morning person and I often feel like I’m not firing on all thrusters when I first get into the office on Monday. I have the best of intentions, but I end up plotting my day to gradually ease into the week by doing many routine tasks on Monday morning. After they were completed, I started playing with my whiteboard and formulating my next addition to one of the web applications I maintain.

My mood is jovial in this picture, but I look serious because I’m at work and I’m doing serious programming.

I said something to Earl a little while ago that caused him to make “that face”. As anyone that’s a little bit off the beam (like me) and has been in a relationship for a while knows, you occasionally have to deal with “that face”, the quick look of fear that morphs into “here we go again” and is punctuated by a slight eye roll. A good partner will then follow-up “that face” with a look of “Yes, dear” and an air of interest in what is about to be said.

All of this takes place within a few seconds. It’s just the way it is.

I have mentioned before that I have a collection school clocks (that kind that clunk ahead once a minute) wired throughout the house. I have a fairly old server running Linux that has the sole responsibility of knowing what time it is and then clicking some relays as commanded by some programming I wrote in BASIC a while back. This arrangement keeps these clocks that are over 80 years old in time with modern technology and up to the second with the atomic clock in Colorado. I’m quite pleased with the way it works.

Before the server arrangement was in place, the clocks were run by a master clock that was built in 1957 and had previously lived in the now abandoned Middleville, N.Y. high school. The clock keeps time but the mechanisms that are suppose to do what the Linux server is doing, albeit in a significantly different way, are shot and replacement parts are very scarce and when they can be found, are quite expensive. There is a reason that educational institutions are replacing these old mechanical master clocks with electronic counterparts. I have kept the old clock around because it keeps time and I like the looks of it.

And “the look” was garnered by the fact that I’m going to bring it into the 21st century. This is going to be my project of 2011.

Since the insides of the old clock are no longer really functioning, I am going to take the best parts of my computerized setup and properly mount it inside of this old clock and make it look like new again and give it new life. It will look good and it will operate the way I want it to and ironically enough, I will be able to access it from anywhere in the world. And I’m going to use a first generation Mac Mini to run the thing. That way the assembly is fairly easy and I can still live up to my reputation as a crazy Mac guy.

I know this project is of a little interest to the majority of people that read this blog, but I am geek through and through and I am really looking forward to busying myself with this little endeavor. It’s a good little brain escape for me and more importantly, I am reminded at how much my partner loves me when he still cares enough to give me “the look”.

I will wait until later to tell him about my idea for the Cat Cam.