Qik & the iPhone Woes

I've been playing around with the iPhone. Um, or rather, it's been playing me with crashing apps. I tried deleting them off the iPhone but these crashing Zombie Apps just wouldn't die. As soon I turned the iPhone off and on again, there they were again, minus one or two. So you can imagine with my addictive collection of nearly 100 apps that it took quite a while to kill all these apps one or two at a time. I tried readding them both from the phone and also all over again from iTunes. No good, still infected with the Zombie DNA. I think there is a problem with the apple DRM on the iPhone not playing nice with the DRM on iTunes. It seems like mixing app downloads and update using both iTunes and the iPhone app stores causes problems. I am pretty sure this has been the source of my problems, with perhaps a bit of operator malfunction. I managed to jailbreak my iPhone using Quickpwn and none of those apps seem to have any problems while ALL of my other apps were crashing second after starting. Anyway, I finally gave up and did a full factory reset, scraped all my apps in iTunes, and started fresh. After everything was working I did another quick jailbreak. Why? The only thing there that I really really want is an app called Qik. It allows streaming video from the iPhone live to the Internet. Apple has said no for some lame reason to video on the iPhone. Come on Apple get your head out... I almost thought Apple understood. Anyway, so now you'll see my Qik videos (and live feed when it's up) at the bottom of my blog. There are a couple of other things that seemed neat but not worth the risk of destabilizing my feeble iPhone again. Most of the cool apps seem to be MIA after the 2.0 update. I guess they are trying to redevelope their apps for the iTunes App Store. Oh dear... I feel another rant coming on about Lamers remaking once free jailbreak apps into for profit apps on iTunes.

Goaltime Rocks and keeps me on task

Every once and a while you come across something that just works for you. Goaltime is one of those things for me. http://ping.fm/52wiK

REVIEW: Garmin Colorado 400T
First the negative, so I can finish on positive note. It's a bit pricey in my opinion for what you get (just under 500 on Amazon). I agree with comments on the chrome-like finish (not impressive). I am not going to test the waterproof claim, as I am skeptical after looking at it (maybe light rain). The built in base map seems incomplete at the street level and they are often not very accurate. Of course the "T" (topo?) model's claim to greatness is the built in DEM (elevations) plus 3d view. Yes, it's interesting when you are around a mountain, but not so much zoomed in on a flat area.
Documentation seems weak in areas. For example, I'm wondering if I can somehow use my own maps on the 4gb external SD card I picked up at costco for 35 bucks. 4GB is really overkill for just storing geocaches as the max the unit can handle at once before droping the rest is 2000 caches (in addition to the 1000 waypoints). I found this out the hard way. I'd like to be able to switch to different directories on the fly from the unit rather than switching the gpx files out at the computer or using different SD cards. What am I going to do with that extra 3.9GBs (unless I buy their routable street maps)? While I'm on that, the base map doesn't seem routable if you want to navigate in a car (unless you make your own route from your own waypoints). I wish I could hook up my iPhone manage and download maps and waypoints/geocaches/POIs out in the wild.
It seems to take forever to load at startup (but maybe that's because I am almost maxing out the number of waypoints/geocaches). Another thing, it sometimes takes a long time to aquire a good signal and the other day it had a hard time giving an accurate/constant fix in some trees on a recent geocache hunt. At other times it seem really steady and spot on. I'm undecided on this point.
That all being said it is still a great GPSr (the best I've had so far). It is small, light, and feels good in the hand. I really love it for paperless geocaching. It is really easy to transfer data to the unit and SD card. I really like the integration to the geocaching website for downloading caches and uploading finds. Having a built in digital compass is really great for geocaching. I just feel silly spining around twice to calibrate it when I want to use it.
I haven't tried the new integrated "WhereIGo" adventures but that seems to have potential. I looked into building an adventure for my area but the current builder software seems really complex to do it right. I think I'll wait until they simplify the process a bit more (more GUI to the GUI).
I don't know anyone else with a Colorado yet but I like the idea of being able to transfer items to another unit wirelessly. I'm sure there are tons more this unit can do that I just haven't had time to get into. Would I buy again? Yes, it is really great for a geocacher or hiker (me). Can they improve it? Yes, hopefully with software updates to come (crossing my fingers)...

Trying out Plaxo. I'm not sure I quite get it yet. Looks Like another Facebook only linking all your web stuff into one place. (copy from Pownce feed)

I survived the Red Ring of Death!

I had a panic attack the other day. I had just come back from Target with two new xBox360 games. After lovingly removing the infernal shrink wrap and security stickers. I hit the power button and was greeted with... nothing! I looked down and to my horror the red ring of death. In a panic I started digging through the documentation I had saved for the receipt and a service phone number.... ok I'll get straight to it. It turns out that my wife had unplugged the power brick for one reason or another (it must retain some power) and upon plugging it back in, I was back in the green. *sigh* So, in conclusion, my brief life and death struggle made me realize that Microsoft has not made it easy to get customer support. I hope it never happens again.

I Digg Firefox 3

I keep on trying to use IE7. I've come to the conclusion that while they have come a long way, they just don't understand. I want my browser to do what I want it to do, not what they think I want it to do. I want to make it look how I want. I want easy add-ons. In fact, since no one who writes good add-ons uses IE7, I want IE7 to be able to use firefox add-ons! I love my ad blocker, script blocker (noscript), and cookie blocker (CS Lite). I tried the IE7pro add-on for IE7. It kind of did some of those things. I ended up uninstalling it because it broke more than it fixed.

Pownce & Click2Voice

There are two really cool things I've stumbled upon recently that I wanted to share.
1st, Pownce.com (goto my public page at http://pownce.com/Gadzooks/) which is similar to twitter if you are familiar with that latest craze, only better. If you've never heard of either, think of it like an instant messenger/bulletin board to the world. Pownce takes it a step further and allows your posts to be sent to the world (those that care to look), to groups of friends, or someone specific (like a IM). Plus it has a variety of posts available (messages, links, files! and events).
2nd, Click2Voice [http://click2voice.com] which acts as an operator for your normal phone calls. you put in two numbers, say your home number and your friends home number, & click the big friendly green call button and the service calls each one (your's first) and connects you. What's cool about that. since both phones calls are incoming, no one gets the charge (say goodbye to long distance bills). There is also a cool script for grease monkey that turn phone numbers you see in your browser into quick click2voice links (really cool for webmail that has signatures that include a phone number).

Firefox 2 - The Return

Ok, I can say I've tried them all now. Well not quite all, but the major players (excluding the Mac one of course). Opera is definately top notch, but I missed the look and feel of firefox and my firefox extensions. I gave IE7 betas, release candidates, and final a fair shake and must say they have come a long way. It still feels clumsy. When are they going to understand that I want an integrated ad blocker or at least integrated 3rd party plugins like firefox. I want to be able to control what I see and do it by clicking on the site I'm on.  I don't want to have to dig around the options and manually add everything to the restricted sites list. I like what they have done with the  custom search engine generator. So, I've come back to firefox and really dig the new on the fly spell checker especially when doing webmail.  I also really like the latest del.icio.us bookmarks plugin and clipmarks looks promising. Tags are definately superior to bookmarks after you get use to them and having them wherever I go using the Delicioius Bookmarks plugin is sweet. I have also recently discovered the Firefox Extension Backup Extension (or FEBE).  Finally my firefox can be exactly the same at home and the office. Some other must haves in my opinion are Adblock Plus and sidekick Adblock Filterset.G Updater, NoScript, Greasemonkey, and IE Tab just for the occasional backward website. Some other optional cool ones that I like are VideoDownloader, Viamatic FoXpose, StumbledUpon, Scrapbook (might be replaced with Clipmarks), Preformancing (for blogging), PDF Downloader, Mouse Gestures, and Download Statusbar.  I hope TorPark updates to v2.0 soon for the extra bit of anonimity.

powered by performancing firefox

Battlefield 2142 - A consolidated BF2 Mod? (3/5 stars until EA gets it together)

My brother told me about this game, saying that he thought it looked like it was going to be cool. I've bought the last two episodes and thought they were pretty cool. So I threw down the cash and happily took it home. All I have to say is BETA at best. Well that's not all I have to say, because I want to rant some more. EA get your QA act together! As far as I can tell this looks like a detailed mod of Battlefield 2 with a whole lot of bugs. I dropped out of servers left and right, experienced weird graphic glitches, and lag died oodles. My biggest complaint is on the most compelling part of game, moving up in rank and getting unlocks. I was moving up in rank and had a couple of locks when out of the blue they were gone! So sadly I started over at recruit... and then a little while later they were back! I got up to 200 points and was waiting for my promotion to gold gunner, and waited, and I'm still waiting at 280+/200 for my promotion and new unlock. Then finally last night after coming home from a 10hr shift at work, I thought I'd play for a half hour. After I find a server that I think looks good and hit connect all I get is a message saying "invalid CD key". I spent my half hour and more trying to get it to work. Finally, in desperation, before taking the game back for an exchange and new key, I reinstalled and re-patched and it worked again. But then sadly it was time to get the kids to bed. Oh, yes, I did say re-patched. Be prepared, the game only recently released and already there is patch you have to download (more waiting, less playing) and I can't say I can tell that it fixed anything. So in conclusion, if your the easily frustrated it might be worth waiting a while for EA to work out the bugs on this one. I wasn't sure I liked the consolidation of soldier types at first but it has grown on me along with some of the other minor changes. I still think Titans suck at the moment but I'll give it some time before I make a final opinion. All in all, when it is working, it is pretty fun (maybe because if nothing else it's something semi-new).

EA, if by some chance anyone reads this, I want to have my unlocks in single player mode! And, I want to be able to move up in rank and have it stay with me even if I don't get credit for it in multiplayer mode. Also, I want to be able to play the larger sized maps with more than 16 bots. If my computer could handle it I want 64 bots. Oh, and I think the command system was easier in battlefield 2 (but maybe I'll get use to that too and love it).

Parrallels Is Amazing

I thought I'd give Parallels a shot. For those of you who don't are completely off the radar, it is the software that everyone is talking about for the new Intel chip based Macs that allows you to run Windows and the Mac OS at the same time (without rebooting). OK, for those of you who know me, you're probably thinking to yourself why does he care he doesn't even have a Mac. Well, I don't care about that exactly, what I care about is there is a Windows version that allows me to run Linux with out doing a stupid (and frankly scary) dual boot system. In fact, I am running both right now and just happen to be in SUSE 10.1 (Linux) writing this blog entry. What is cool about this VM (virtual machine) technology that it is portable. You can throw it on an external HD and take it to any machine running Parallels Workstation.

Another mobile VM type technology I'm testing out is the Mojopac v1.0 that was recently released. It's so new, they don't even have their store open yet. The trial is 30 days or 99 boots and goes for around 30 buck (but supposedly is going up after the first month) You can basically have a windows to go on any removable storage device. Cool idea for an Ipod. Think about putting your Itunes and other music software right on the Ipod and being able to run in on any computer you plug into to charge up. So far I've noticed a few quirks, but it is still an amazing idea.

Recently I bought a new 2Gig thumb drive that had the U3 technology. I thought it was going to be cool but was very disappointed. It is limited to a handful of portable apps that you can download from the u3 website. Also, it failed to boot up every time I inserted the stick. I promptly uninstalled it and luckily heard about Mojopac shortly after, which was everything I thought U3 was going to be.