Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

TiVo (14 of 30/80 of 274)

by

It might come as a surprise to know that we haven’t made the move to HD TV here yet. Our television sets generally die at that inopportune moment when new technology is either too expensive or too rare to consider purchasing. Our current television is still working fine, and was purchased when HD TV was still way overpriced. We may not make the move to HD TV until this set breaks.

So I haven’t had a need to upgrade our TiVo to the HD version. In fact, I really haven’t thought about our TiVo much at all, except to program in our season passes. We have had a TiVo since the Philips Series 1 versions. The lifetime subscription cost only $199 back then, and when we bought a Series 2, they were still offering a one-time subscription transfer at no cost. Since lifetime means the lifetime of the equipment, not the owner, yes, we did pretty much luck out.

But I am not here to brag that I haven’t paid for TiVo service in almost ten years. I’m here to say how silly I feel that I hadn’t looked into, and am not making use of, many of the capabilities of my older TiVo system.

After the hell that was attempting to connect a PS/2 game console to our wireless network, I have never attempted to connect anything else that wasn’t a plain old laptop or desktop computer. That includes the TiVo, and apparently a whole bunch of capabilities such as movie downloads, photo and web video viewing, mobile access, and scheduling from the web will be available to me upon connecting the TiVo to the home network.

So I’ll be shopping around for a network adapter, and getting TiVo on our network this weekend, just out of curiosity if nothing else. Scheduling recordings from the web will be worth it, at least!

Outgrowing my web host (6 of 30/72 of 274)

by

Shopping around for a new web host has been on my list for a while now. I wish it were actually the case that I was outgrowing my current web host’s servers, but even the combined traffic of my personal websites, my company’s website, and my friends’ and clubs’ dog-related websites isn’t a very taxing amount of bandwidth.

Right now I have two different web hosting providers. One provider has very good customer service, and even still has 24/7 toll-free non-outsourced telephone support in addition to email support. Unfortunately, the last change of ownership also brought a move away from the VPS and dedicated servers provided by the previous owners. They still support the existing servers but are not planning any upgrades at all to the older hardware and software. This means that I will not be able to get more recent versions of PHP and MySQL, which is definitely going to be a problem for me very soon.

The other provider also had a recent change of ownership. I was lucky in that I did not experience the technical problems that some other customers were plagued with, some for weeks on end. Customer service went downhill, and then outsourced. I’m not very comfortable with what might lie ahead there.

I’ve put off shopping for the move long enough, so it’s back to the top of my to-do list to complete this month. I’m looking at these providers:

WiredTree
KnownHost
Media Temple

If you have any personal experiences with those hosts, particularly with VPS, please share!

Forced to grow (3 of 30/69 of 274)

by

Sometimes we seek out opportunities for growth, and embrace newfound knowledge gained with open arms. And sometimes we are dragged kicking and screaming toward growth opportunities we aren’t sure we want to take on. That latter scenario would describe me, the reluctant webmaster-by-default, attempting to learn just enough Flash and Javascript to update our company website.

Our company had a small web design and production department during the dot-com boom years. We have long since returned to our original print production roots, and like many other small businesses, we’ve been through some lean times lately. We’re hanging in there, though.

Unfortunately, that left me as the person most likely to be able to update the website, and one of my business partners as the person most likely to be able to design something presentable. He has actual design credentials and experience from his life before our company. I have zero credentials of any sort in web design or production.

The requirements for our design would be minimal for someone who had even a small clue about Flash. It was a little more painful for me, but I finally managed to finish our simple little gallery. I have had a major mental block about learning Flash. I’m usually a pretty quick study when learning new programs, and I’m pretty familiar with many other Adobe and Macromedia programs. Even with the help of well-regarded books and online tutorials, Flash has been kicking my ass. Hard.

The conditions weren’t really optimal for making this a great learning experience. The website redesign wasn’t of the highest priority, so there were many interruptions for other projects, and I found my train of thought getting derailed quite often. Even though the website update is just about ready to go live, and I have no real need to go near Flash again until a future redesign, I’d still like to be able to go back and make a better effort to learn the program. Why, I’m not sure, as I’m definitely not an advocate of Flash-heavy websites. I think I just want to say that I finally defeated Flash!

Again, the kennel website (25 of 31/60 of 274)

by

I know this is a recurring theme, and it really shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be so “stuck” on this, yet here I am, still with a digital stack of comps and photos and not much else. Yes, sad to say, I still don’t have a kennel website.

I guess it’s good then that I also have no breeding plans (not that I would ever breed a dog whose health checks aren’t yet complete, but not all of you know me well enough to take that for granted), because I’d have no place to promote them.

By the way, this is also my proof that having all the whiz-bang digital tools you could ever want at your disposal means nothing if you can’t or don’t use them to best advantage. I upgraded very recently to Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium so I really have no excuse for slacking, do I (well, except for having to learn to use it but as a Photoshop user since v3 and a DreamWeaver user since Studio 8, I guess it won’t be too convincing)? This also reminds me that I haven’t yet talked about that upgrade here, and I’m sure at least a few of you are interested in how I’m liking it. Not to mention that I still need the opportunity to vent about the circumstances that caused me to upgrade this month, rather than at a more financially feasible moment.

Axel wants to be like all the other show dogs and show dog wanna-bes, and have his own page full of brags and plans. All right, fine, Axel doesn’t really care. He doesn’t get online much that I know of. I want him to be like all the other show dogs with pages full of brags and plans and beautiful pictures.

Kick me, hard, so he… umm… I… we? can have this.

Note to self after the fact: No one will see your posts if you do not PUBLISH them and make them PUBLIC. Kick me, harder, for this, too.

Where the f*** am I? (21 of 31/56 of 274)

by

That’s a question I used to ask quite often before services such as MapQuest and Google Maps. My sense of direction is only slightly better than my parallel parking skills. I am probably a person that should have a GPS unit in their vehicle. I had some budget constraints to work with on my recent minivan purchase, and GPS was not one of the included features. Perhaps I will add GPS at a later date or subscribe again to Verizon’s VZ Navigator. For now, it’s MapQuest, Google Maps, BlackBerry Maps and my BlackBerry Curve’s semi-functional GPS (no thanks to Verizon’s limits on GPS service).

Speaking of MapQuest and other online mapping services, I know people often talk about getting routes that, in hindsight, were clearly not the best way to get from here to there. I haven’t had that problem too often. My biggest problem is discovering a few miles into the ride that the printed maps and directions are still sitting in the printer tray at work or home. I overcompensated for my recent trip to Columbia, MO. Not only did I double check to make sure the printed sheets actually made it into the car, I also made sure the directions were loaded into my BlackBerry.

On Verizon’s non-Storm BlackBerrys, GPS works fully only with BlackBerry Maps. This is probably to encourage subscriptions to VZ Navigator, which is a great service, but quite pricey at $9.99 per month (smartphone users are not offered the $2.99 per single use option that is also available for regular cell phones). BlackBerry Maps is pretty basic, but usable, especially in a major urban area like Chicago.

For my Columbia trip, I mapped the routes in both Google Maps and MapQuest on my laptop, printed out the sheets, and also loaded the routes into my BlackBerry.

Unfortunately, there is no way that I could see to sync driving directions created with Google Maps online with Google Maps for BlackBerry, so adding the driving directions to the mobile version required re-entering start and end points. This didn’t take much time and you can save addresses and directions for future use within the mobile version.

from Google Maps for Mobile
from Google Maps for Mobile

If you have created a “My Places” account in MapQuest online, you also have access to your saved maps and directions via MapQuest 4 Mobile, so that was a little easier. Unfortunately, screen capture doesn’t seem to work with this app, so you don’t get to see what I was seeing.

I used both the printed and mobile versions of the directions and maps during the trip. The printed sheets were easier to read during the day, due to the small screen size of the Curve. But when it got dark, the backlight on the Curve allowed me to read the directions without pulling over or turning on interior lights.

One thing that would have been a great help, especially since I was alone in mostly unfamiliar territory, was a mapping program that could speak the directions. None of these free applications offer that feature (nor did I expect it) but it would have been a wonderfully handy addition. After returning home, I thought about using BlackBerry Voice Notes to record the directions myself. I will give that a try for a future trip and report back. Other than the pain of listening to my own recorded voice, I think it should work.

The combination of printed directions with the mapping applications also available on the BlackBerry really worked out well for the Columbia trip. I look forward to further improvements in the mobile mapping applications, and keep hoping that Verizon will fully unlock GPS capabilities for all of its phones. We’ll see what happens before the next road trip!