Computers & Technology
iPad Is Fun--But Not A Must-Have (In My Book)
Submitted by ptemples on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 17:05
I was in the vicinity, so today I stopped by the local Apple store in the Mall at Chestnut Hill to see the new iPad.
As you might imagine, Apple is making a huge production out of their new product. The store associates were all wearing tee-shirts emblazoned with the iPad name. They strategically set up the front two tables--normally loaded down with iPhones--to contain nothing but iPads. Each was available to touch/feel/smell and, I suppose, even to lick--if that's your perticular fettish.
I picked one up, turned it sideways for landscape mode, and immediately started entering URLs in the Safari browser. "Hmm, that's interesting" I thought to myself, almost aloud. They've moved the the big blue "Go" button. It sits on a different row on the keyboard. Also relocated are the "." and "," keys. No biggie. The browser's pages rendered beautifully. I imagined what my MacBook Pro would be like if it had a touch screen.
I fired up a different app at random. It wasn't optimized for the iPad screen. Instead, I saw a rendering of the application in a rectangle in the middle of the screen. It was the size of the iPhone screen. Hmm. i hit a "2x" button to enlarge it, but the resolution seemed poor when doing so. I guess there's a reason why the App Store is carrying separate iPad versions of its applications.
It seemed comfortable to hold, and kinda sexy to boot. And I have to admit it, but I'm bummed that iPad users will have first crack at the new NetFlix app while us old-fashioned iPhone users will have to wait a while. Sigh.
I put the new-fangled contraption down on the table. An Apple associate walked up to me and asked, "So, what do you think of the new iPads?"
I replied, "Not bad. But can you tell me when Apple is coming out with the iRans?"
Found My First Geocache!
Submitted by ptemples on Sun, 04/04/2010 - 11:53
Hazzah! I found my very first geocache this morning.
I had walked over to Panera Bread in Watertown for breakfast, then I took a half-hour walk around the Arsenal complex for some exercise. I noticed that there was a nearby geocache named Row Your Boat (GC1R6ZM) just 0.2 mi. distant, so I decided to give it a try. Ariel walked over to join me, and we were soon homing in on the critter. I needed to consult the "hint" on the web site, but finally I found the prize.
It was only a difficulty level of 1 1/2 out of 5, but still--it was my very first find!
" cat > /dev/null never failed to work for me." -Jon 'Maddog' Hall
Submitted by ptemples on Thu, 04/01/2010 - 17:34
ptemples: "
cat > /dev/null
never failed to work for me." -Jon 'Maddog' Hall
See original: 
" cat > /dev/null never failed to work for me." -Jon 'Maddog' Hall
My First Geocache Hunt!
Submitted by ptemples on Sat, 03/27/2010 - 18:32
Today I went on my first Geocache hunt. (See Geocaching--A Potential New Hobby For Me?.)
Between my recent travel, back problems and miserable weather, I've not taken advantage of the new Geocaching iPhone app I downloaded several weeks ago until this afternoon. I told the program to find nearby Geocaches; it returned one called "Topsy Turvy" just 0.2 mi. from me in Watertown's Filipello Park. In fact, I can see the park outside our hallway window when the foliage isn't blocking the view.
I started out on foot, watching the "pin" icon slowly traverse Coolidge Avenue, then turn onto Grove. Finally, I entered the park, and vectored in on the precise location. The program reported a GPS accuracy of approximately 156 feet. And it showed a difficulty of 1 1/2 stars out of 5. Yes, Topsy Turvy seemed like an ideal beginners cache to try for.
Well, I was a certainly dismayed by the degree of trash and litter scattered about, and the poor condition of the landscape. Not only had someone(s) had been using the area as a dumping ground for their trash, but also, several good-sized tree branches--even whole trees--had come down. One such tree was resting atop one of the old, abandoned park benches.
I assumed the cache--listed in size as a 2 out of 5 on the scale--was either attached to a tree at eye level, or buried on the ground with some telling signal--a flag or colored marker of some kind. But after nearly an hour of traversing the landscape, kicking over trash, checking around various tree branches near ground- and eye-level yielded, I had found no cache. The "hint" from the iPhone app was not particularly helpful, other than to confirm that I was, in fact, in the immediate vicinity.
I have to wonder: did someone come along and tamper with the cache, perhaps even remove it?
Despite my failure on this first attempt at this new hobby, I'm not discouraged. I'll move on to the next cache on the list. Perhaps I'll have better luck.
"I am a rag at your feet, Joanna"
Submitted by ptemples on Thu, 03/25/2010 - 17:10
Say what?
I so rarely see intact spam these days, when I do it catches my attention. Seriously, my ISP does an incredible job of filtering out 99.9 percent of the floatsom and jetsom that kicks around out there in the vast internet sea.
This one managed to get past the anti-spam appliance. It's random phrases masquerading as innocent text. The actual spam message is embedded in the image.
Geocaching--A Potential New Hobby For Me?
Submitted by k9hi on Sat, 03/13/2010 - 11:39
While reviewing some pricey iPhone apps today, I came across one involving called iPhone Geocaching from Groundspeak. I was somewhat familiar with the hobby of Geocaching before now, but had never really paid it any serious attention for the simple fact that I don't own a GPS unit. At least, I thought I didn't. It turns out, the new iPhone 3GS I purchased last month gives me full GPS capability. Coupled with this new app, it would appear that I can get out there and play the game with everyone!
From Wikipedia:
"The first documented placement of a GPS-located cache took place on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, Oregon. The location was posted on the Usenet newsgroup sci.geo.satellite-nav as 45°17.460′N 122°24.800′W / 45.291°N 122.4133°W. By May 6, 2000, it had been found twice and logged once (by Mike Teague of Vancouver, Washington). According to Dave Ulmer's message, the original stash was a black plastic bucket buried most of the way in the ground and contained software, videos, books, food, money, and a slingshot."
The main web site for this past time (is it a hobby or a sport?) is www.geocaching.org. According to this web site, there are, at present "1,004,652 active caches and an estimated 3-4 million geocachers worldwide." Now, that's an impressive amount of activity for a past time that began only ten years ago.
Controversial Church's Next Picketing Project: Twitter HQ
Submitted by ptemples on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 12:29
Reverend Fred Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church plans to picket Twitter’s San Francisco offices tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. PST. The Kansas-based church is picketing because it believes that “the people who run Twitter … don’t use their position & voice to warn a generation of rebels of the consequences of their rebellion.”
See original: 
Controversial Church's Next Picketing Project: Twitter HQ
Photo du Jour: Merry USB Christmas!
Submitted by ptemples on Thu, 01/07/2010 - 15:42
December 4, 2009: Ariel gave me this cute little USB-powered Christmas tree made out of fibre optics. It's sitting atop my iMac at work. The tree changes colors--turquoise; purple; pink; white; red; green; blue--every few seconds. It's something to watch when I get extremely bored.
Icon From The Past
Submitted by ptemples on Sat, 01/02/2010 - 11:17
I watched the movie Autumn the night before last. It was quite entertaining; it highlighted the rise and fall of a fictional Dot Com company called Landshark founded by two brothers--one, a computer techie-genius; the other, a sliver-tongued snake-oil businessman/CEO.
There's one scene from the movie that I especially liked--the business brother arrives at the startup company's offices to find every staff member huddled in the conference room around a laptop. When he enters, they try and hide what they've been looking at. It's the web site, FuckedCompany.com. FC's tagline was, "the official lubricant of the new economy." Anyway, in the movie, Landshark had made it onto FC; it reportedly had only a few weeks of operating capital left. As in the real world of the early 21st century, the report of the fictional company's demise in the movie plot is uncanningly accurate. Reports were more often supplied by insiders who had intimate knowledge of a company's upcoming F-d status.
When I tried calling up this iconic site this morning, I was greeted with a rather humorous statement from FC: "Fuckedcompany is... sorta fucked." Seems the FC is kaput. Sigh. It, along with the other iconic symbol from the movie--Omni Magazine--have been relagated to the /dev/null of history. I did find all the old archives of FC on archive.org. In fact, it appears that FC remained in business up until about August 11, 2008 until it, too became, well, F*cked.
