Computers and Technology

Still frozen (16 of 31/16 of 274)

January 16, 2009 by kathi

I had to work late, and temperatures are still well below zero, so my brain is either fried or frozen. I can’t wait for a change of weather. Don’t expect much tonight.

The entries for Axe’s first shows are now closed. I understand how championship points work, but I’ve never had to worry about them for a dog of my own before. If I correctly read the entry count and the points schedule for the right region, if all the entered dogs show up, he could get 2 points each day if he wins the classes, and 3 if by some stroke of luck he wins Best of Breed, Best of Opposite or Best of Winners. Three points would be a major, which would be more than wonderful if he could get one his first time out. Oh, yes. He could also get nothing. I am trying not to worry about it.

I spent a bit of time today with some new BlackBerry applications which look really good so far.

SocialScope is in alpha testing now and allows you to manage your Twitter feed and your Facebook status updates. The Facebook functionality is very minimal right now, but it truly shines as a Twitter client. Take a look at the review posted on Crackberry.com. SocialScope is really working hard and quickly on improvements. An update done earlier tonight added manual refresh, notifications, retweet and follow/unfollow to the features mentioned in the review. Great customer service/support, too – if you contact them on Twitter you will get very speedy responses to questions and problems.

Bitstream’s Bolt J2ME browser is in beta. I didn’t find it quite as speedy as advertised but it does a great job of rendering PC-style pages on the BlackBerry. Take a look at the review for more information.

I’m going to go and be a good alpha/beta tester now. OK, fine. Yes. That does mean I’m going to go play with my BlackBerry now. Good night, all!

All in one (8 of 31/8 of 274)

January 8, 2009 by kathi

Ever since I outgrew the obligatory “glued to the phone” phase of teenage girlhood about a million years ago, I’ve avoided telephones as much as possible. Voicemail and Caller ID are two of my favorite things.

I also avoided getting a cell phone for longer than many people. When I did get one, it was the one that came cheap or free with the calling plan. I didn’t bother with a cool or trendy or whiz-bang phone until my last one, a Fire Red Motorola KRZR. That color has since become my choice for all of my personal electronics and I have actually traded off other selling points just to get that color. Sad, I know.

I do like gadgets, though, and a Palm PDA was one of my most indispensible items for almost 10 years. I’ve also had an MP3 player, though never an iPod, for just about as long.

When our cell phone contract was up in November, I decided it was finally time to consolidate all my devices and buy a smartphone. After looking at all of the whiz-bang touchscreen phones, I ended up buying neither an iPhone nor a BlackBerry Storm, but a non-touchscreen BlackBerry Curve. Oh, and a red case for it, of course.

In the past two months, I have grown very attached to it. I am not sure how I got along without it. It usually knows what I’m doing, even if I don’t.

All of the data from my Palm transferred over without much pain, and most of my music library has also been transferred over so the BlackBerry can also serve as a music player. Yeah, I know, the sound quality is not quite good enough for a true connoisseur, but it is fine for a regular person.

All this leads up to tonight’s addition of a Slacker internet radio client. I no longer have iPhone envy. Well, not much anyway. It’s a big change for me to like a phone, even a smart one, this much.

I still don’t like talking on the phone though. Some things don’t change!

Send a post to Twitter!

January 8, 2009 by kathi

I love the WpRecipes.com site. The tips are useful, and site owner Jean writes concise and easy-to-follow how-to instructions so you can easily get these features working on your own WordPress blog.

I spotted a tweet about this on the Twitter public timeline today and thought I’d implement it here:

Create a “send this to Twitter” button

Don’t know if I’ll always, or even ever, have stuff worth tweeting about. But hey, just in case!

Change of equipment? (4 of 31/4 of 274)

January 4, 2009 by kathi

Today I was trying to bring some order to my digital photographs, and a favorite photograph from Freya’s puppyhood surfaced.

I'm on your computer, downloading all your private data.

Then it came to me. I am so swift sometimes. That laptop – this laptop that I’m typing on right now – was brand new when Freya was a baby. She is five years old now. Computer years are like dog years, so they are both like… what? 35?

So obviously the laptop (but definitely not Freya!) should be replaced. Technology change time!

All right, extremely lame attempt at justification, I know. I’ve actually considered replacing this laptop several times over the last year, but it keeps coming down to the fact that I don’t really need to replace it.

It’s not really a question of money, although I don’t want to spend a lot of money on nonessential items until after Axel has finished his championship (arguably also a nonessential item, but that’s another argument and another blog post). It’s not a question of this laptop being on its last legs, either. The hard drive is pitifully small, but with frequent CD/DVD archiving and a supply of flash drives, it hasn’t been intolerably inconvenient yet. It’s a bit sluggish compared to newer models, but I can still run Photoshop and InDesign at the same time without melting down. It’s not very good with Flash games, but neither am I.

As much as I would like a speedy new laptop with a gigantic hard drive, the thought of getting everything set up again exactly as I want it is also a little disturbing. It probably took a good half of those five years to get everything set up exactly as I like it. It wouldn’t be that painful, I suppose: all of the commercial software on here not only has a proper license, but I actually know where the original media is (that’s a huge thing for me) and on this go-around I even managed to keep most of the freeware and shareware installers somewhat organized on a flash drive.

So I guess I’m actually considering the change. My shallow side demands some color matching, so I want a red computer, as close as possible in color to my red Motorola KRZR, red Motorola H700 headset, red Nikon Coolpix and red (red-cased, actually) BlackBerry 8330 Curve. I think that limits me to a Dell or Sony.

I have some travel plans at the end of the month, in addition to ongoing Axel expenses for at least another 6 weeks, so this might not happen this month. Or it might. I’ll let you all know!

It’s the 21st century, in case you didn’t notice

December 17, 2008 by kathi

Oh. No, I didn’t do the upgrade to WordPress 2.7 yet. Hopefully I’ll have time to do it this week and hopefully won’t wipe out any of my oh-so-important past posts when I do so!

I doubt my rant today will apply to those reading this, since you’re almost certainly reading it online, via a computer, or maybe a smartphone. But something I heard on the radio yesterday amazed and annoyed me, and I need to rant about it.

I was listening to a talk show on the way in to work. The caller, a woman in her late 40s, was describing her rather lavish outdoor holiday decorations, and the host suggested that she email some photos to the radio station. The caller said she would have her teenaged son do so, because she “doesn’t do that computer stuff.” The host said that was fine, and then suggested that caller not go through the rest of her life without learning how to do it herself.

Well, no shit!

In case caller and anyone else didn’t notice, we are in the 21st century. As far as I’m concerned, it’s no longer cute, or cool, or even acceptable to be totally clueless about “that computer stuff.” It is just plain dumb, and almost bragging about not knowing anything about computers makes you look even dumber.

My mother is in her mid-80s and has a new-ish iMac. She doesn’t use all the bells and whistles (and sadly for me, some of the stuff that I think is most cool about Macs, but hey, that’s between Mom and me) but she can get around the web and we exchange email frequently. I am… ummm…. pretty old… okay, 50, and I would consider myself a power user. I use both PCs and Macs at work and at home, and also run a couple of VPS servers for work, personal and family/friends use. I do use a lot of bells and whistles, but I’m almost never out on the bleeding edge. I’m usually behind the curve when it comes to new products or new releases. Let someone else work out the bugs.

Anyway. If we can embrace or at least call a truce with technology, then so can everyone else. End of story.

Heh, I want to cross-post to my LiveJournal but I guess I haven’t set that up yet ::: adds to to-do list ::: and even worse, I haven’t talked to you all about Axel’s exciting journey towards his American championship that he just started on Sunday.

Back soon!