Archive for the ‘ Years ’ Category

Testing a Change for Podcast Workflow

I listen to quite a few Podcasts, mostly on my phone. (My prefered client is Beyond Pod)

I’ve decided to take a couple of initiatives and combine them.  First, I want to try to stretch my Phone’s battery out a bit longer.  I wake at 6:30 AM and remove my phone from the charger.  I find that around 1:30-2:00 PM I need to start charging it again.  This really isn’t too terrible but I am at work until 7P and get home at 8P.

I’m also trying to use my Nexus 7 for more tasks I’ve been doing on my phone.  I’ve found I don’t use the tablet as much as I had initially now that the "new" has worn off.

One end result is that I’m using my Nexus for podcasts instead of my phone.  This works fine in the car, though I’m starting to wish I had a dashboard mount since the Nexus is a bit more unwieldy when I need to pause for a phone call.  It also tends to be an issue at work when I am listening while working.  Part of my job involves maintaining a small data center, which means some cleaning or taking readings or whatever, generally, being up, on my feet in the room.  The Nexus 7 will fit in my back pocket, but it’s not the most convenient way of using the device.

Then I had a bit of an epiphany.  I have several Bluetooth headsets that I don’t use.  They aren’t the best for music but my Podcasts are all spoken word; the content is the point, not the quality.  While the Bluetooth headset would pair with the tablet, I had to install an extra App to push the audio to the headset.

The end result is that I can drop the Nexus somewhere in the office and just wander around with the headset.  It works great and a general test of walking one direction from the tablet suggests I can get a range of around 70 feet (or a bit more).  Way more than I need.

How Google Taught Me to Hate The Cloud

Well, that was quick.  I guess.

As I tend to ramble on about here, I am a fickle indecisive mess when it comes to how to best manage all of my digital data.  I have been pushing more and more to "The cloud", cloud services, cloud hosting, cloud cloud cloud. 

I secretly hate the phrase "The Cloud" by the way.  I despise it.  It’s "Online" or "The Internet", the cloud is a really annoying buzzword.  I believe it stems somewhat from The internet being depicted as a could on line diagrams.  This comes from drawing network maps and wanting an easy way to represent the World Wide Web.  The Internet isn’t a cloud really at all.  It’s basically a huge clump of fibers and copper hooked between a shitload of routers of various sizes transmitting flashes of light and electricity between each other.  The Web is a better analogy then the Cloud but spiders are creepy.  Hell, calling it "A Series of Tubes" is actually more accurate than a cloud.  Even the RF involved with WiFi isn’t a disperes clump of like molecules floating in space.  Those transmissions are still a "virtual series of imaginary tubes" at their core.

But whatever.

The point is, I have been heavily advocating the use of the Internet for a while.  Maybe I’m just getting tired of it, but I find lately I care less and less about it.  This has permeated all aspects of what I do for my hobbies and non work life.  Despite the best efforts of loads of Internet Citizens, the web is slowly transforming from the crazy fun Wild Wild West into some sort of locked down internment camp.

There are ads everywhere.  i keep getting emails about "leaks" and "hacks" at websites that I’ve used in the past.  There is increasing tension around the idea of corporate and government surveillance of the bits in the name of stopping piracy or terrorism.   It’s just quickly becoming a scary mess.

Then there is the closing of Google Reader.

I’ve experienced sites being closed on me before.  I generally don’t care since it’s a service I never used (most likely because no one else was using it this, why it was closing).  I’ve even experienced this via Google.  I used to use Google Tasks and Google Wave, both have been gone for a while.  But Wave was gimmicky and a limited option and was eventually superseded by Google Docs.  Tasks wasn’t a major loss, there are probably a hundred different Tasks Manager methods and programs out there, many of which are superior to Google Tasks.

There are no good Google Reader alternatives.  Maybe there will be, but there isn’t anything quite as good.  I do not want to use Google Plus or replace my RSS with a bunch of cluttered Twitter and Facebook feeds (which often contain extraneous microblog posts and clutter my own stream). 

I also really like and need RSS.  I like small time blogs.  i don’t have time to regularly check to see if Bob’s Toy Blogger updated it’s once a month update, but I can add it to my RSS feed and wait for an update to slide in.  i feel like Google’s killing of RSS not only hurts the people who rely on it to get news, but it hurts the small time people like myself who rely on it to make it convenient to get their posts out. 

I can see where Google is going here.  It’s all Google+ now.  Reader will be replaced with a cluttered filtered Google Plus stream that is useless.  The real take away I’ve gotten is even Google, whom i relied on above all else, is not reliable to be there.

It makes me question my current online backup strategy completely.  I’ve already consolidated a lot fo my document level data into Evernote.  My Google Docs is empty, I feed news articles I want to keep into Evernote.  I store bits of code for the few times I ever do any coding.  I save stories and my own writing there.  It’s all there.  I realize this is kind of an "all in one basket" mindset that may not be good either.  There are several ways to backup Evernote however and, more importantly, Evernote is in the business of selling note taking software.  They don’t have social ads and email and virtual drives and video hosting and a thousand services, they pretty much just do <hankhill>Evernote and Evernote Accessories<hankhill>.

Also it means less data in the hands of Google, which is becoming increasingly less trustworthy.

There is some residual distrust created as well.  I’m using Skydrive to backup files, but Windows 8 is universally loathed and Office 365 is just as overpriced as normal Office.  I know Microsoft is a huge company that probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but I do foresee them floundering a bit in the coming future as the wheels come off the mistake that was Windows 8.  I can see a service that is probably mostly a money loser like Skydrive hitting the cutting room floor when the shit hits the fan over there.

I’ve been pretty loyal to Flickr for years and I’ve found some tools to automate bulk uploads to use it as a secondary backup but Yahoo is a company that’s more of a mess than any other large tech company I can think of and Flickr is a definitely money loser for them (high bandwidth + dwindling user base is always a problem).

So one additional little bit fueling my Cloud distrust comes from my recent push to get more organized with my data.  I’ve been going through my thousands of book marks, sorting them into an online Delicious clone I set up or clipping them to Evernote for archival.  This of course leads to some dead links.  It’s a subtle reminder that this data will not be there forever.

So, Veronica Mars

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I had pretty much gotten over this…  A few Kristen Bell movies, some House of Lies, I had managed to fill my Kristen Bell/Veronica Mars needs.

This was a show I really loved and enjoyed.  It seems that I am definitely no alone.  Today, the series creator launched a Kickstarter  project to produce the long rumored Veronica Mars Movie.  The Kick starter goal was 2 million dollars, no small amount of change.  The campaign has already met that goal.

Of course, Warner Bros. still owns Veronica Mars and we would need their blessing and cooperation to pull this off. Kristen and I met with the Warner Bros. brass, and they agreed to allow us to take this shot. They were extremely cool about it, as a matter of fact. Their reaction was, if you can show there’s enough fan interest to warrant a movie, we’re on board. So this is it. This is our shot. I believe it’s the only one we’ve got.

Well, I guess they have shown there is interest.

I am a bit curious about the future of the project.  They met the goal, so presumably we will see the goal met.  What if it continues to rake in mountains of cash?  Maybe they do Season 4?  Kristen Bell is older but the old Season 4 pitch put Veronica in the future in the FBI.

What if Warner renegs on their offer?  They see all the support and decide to keep the rights and run with it themselves.  Would Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell be game for this?

Whatever happens, I will definitely be following it.

A Tale of Two Cloud Services

box I’ve been going on and on lately about my "push to the cloud" and all that quite a bit lately.  I have come to a few roadblocks but it’s been going pretty well.  I’ve been adding Dropbox to the mix as well, as a supplement to Skydrive.  Why do I need Dropbox when I’m paying for Skydrive?  Actually there are quite a few good reasons to spread out a bit.

I think my primary reason, I fear being locked out of my Skydrive account over stupidity the way Youtube was trying to do.  I don’t plan to use either for any sort of piracy or illegal file distribution, but I have a fear of the "False Positive".  I don’t know that Microsoft scans files, but I suspect they do.  I only have one article I’m going on but there has been at least one case where a guy got his account suspended because he was storing pornography on his Skydrive.  Not distributing, just storing.  I don’t have any porn to put on Skydrive but I don’t really want the robot scanner to flip through say, my eBooks and say "oh hey, this file may be illegitimately gotten" and lock me out of all of my important files.

I have more confidence that this won’t happen on Dropbox.

I also really like Dropbox’s app compatibility.  For example, i have linked my Dropbox account to my O’Reilly account and now all of my purchases from O’Reilly automatically dump into my Dropbox.  I’ve set up a synced folder on Dropbox that I can dump PDFs into and Evernote will pull them in as new notes.  I’ve got a watch folder going for torrent files.  I have found that if I want to save a photo from Facebook on my phone, the easiest way to do it is to "share to Dropbox".

It’s pretty versatile.  I’m working out a security set up that will toss webcam shots into a Dropbox folder as well. 

Why not just use Dropbox?  I think mostly because I really like the UI of Skydrive.  I also trust Microsoft long term a bit more to last… sort of.  I doubt Microsoft will go away anytime soon, but I’m starting to question their viability with the mess that is Windows 8.  Couple in the crazy madness of making Office a subscription service and it feels like a recipe for disaster.  On the other hand, Skydrive is about half the price of Dropbox.  Dropbox is about a dollar per GB for a year, Skydrive is $.50 per GB for a year.  Dropbox’s cheapest plan is also $100 bucks, which kind of sucks.  If they had a 20 GB plan for $25 a year I’d be all over that.  i don’t need 100 GB nor do I want to spend $100 on the service.

What I’m really in the market for is some basic image hosting.  I have a crapload of random images I’ve saved from years of internet that I like having around but I really would like to put them out somewhere for everyone to find and use.  I’ve looked into Imgur and Photobucket a bit but I think both were a bit cost prohibitive.  Dropbox would be great if I could get that non existent 20GB plan, though I don’t think Dropbox gets indexed by search engines at all. 

I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

On a side note, this isn’t a Dropbox ad but here’s my referral link if anyone wants to sign up through it and get me some free space.

45 Square Inches of Screen Real Estate

IMGP9230 So, I really love my HTC inspire.  It’s a solid little phone, not really top of the line necessarily, though aside from the Atrix, I believe it was the first HSPA+ Android phone in the states.  It was pretty "top of the line" at the time.  The Atrix I believe was slightly better spec wise but it was saddled with the gimmicky keyboard which was killed by crazy tethering plans even though it’s a dock not a tethered laptop.  I really have few complaints about my Inspire.

My two years rolled over on my contract so I’ve replaced that Inspire.  I am now going to complain about the Inspire.

It should be noted that my complaints mostly stem from it being broken.  6 months or so ago, i dropped it and cracked the screen.  The phone still works, the screen still worked, everything worked fine aside from the ugly crack.  Then the sound went out and I was unable to hear people talking on calls, which makes the phone part pretty useless.

Not really a big deal, I carry a work phone and conveniently it was suggested to us (being myself and my boss’ other subordinates) that we needed to use more minutes on our phones.  Two birds, one stone.

Oh yeah, then there was the part where plugging in headphones would often make the thing think it had a headset attacks and it would start phantom dialing.

IMGP9231 Basically, this was much needed.  After checking daily for a week, I finally managed to find a restock of Samsung Galaxy S III phones.  Once again, I’m pretty close to the "best phone at the time".  That tile seems to be between the Galaxy S3 and the HTC One+.  There were no HTC One+ refurbs, only HTC One refurbs, so I waited for the S3.

This is my third Android Device so I’m pretty streamlined on the system.  It’s pretty awesome that I mostly just need to sign in and all my email, calendar and contacts sync.  I spent maybe an hour while watching TV downloading my "core apps" (Note to self, this deserves a post of it’s own).

One slight hang up, I may need to rebuy a few apps.  When I got the Inspire, I didn’t have Android support enabled on my Apps account (@lameazoid.com) and so I used my gmail address.  I eventually added my main email account but this has lead to a bit of a fracturing among which paid apps are associated to which account.  I’ve been fairly good about buying mostly to my main account except that some early purchases, like Beyond Pod (which isn’t a cheap app) are on my @gmail account and I made a few slips during the 10 cent sale a few Christmases ago, which is actually kind of odd because for ten cents I was trying really hard to just buy anything I was interested in twice.

Anyway on the Galaxy S3.  It’s pretty nice.  I still need to do some minor preferences adjustments to behavior and sounds but it’s running great.  Something I REALLY like is the option to hide apps in the apps list, so I can keep those annoying pre installed, un-removable, apps out of sight out of mind even easier.

Probably the most amazing surprise is the sound quality output on the line out jack.  I listened to a few music tracks on the way into work and man, it’s booming.  I was starting to get worried that the stereo was wearing out in my car and I was going to need to get some new speakers.  Apparently it was just the phone.  This is excellent because I use my phone for a media device more than anything.  Music, Podcasts, audio books, steaming radio, you name it, I’m listening to it on the phone.  I had considered using the HTC as a media unit but I’ll pass on that.

I’m not real sure what I’m going to do with the old phone now.  She seems resistant a bit but I may try to pawn it off on my wife.  Not as a phone but it would be great for her to use around the house for Facebook or Words with Friends.

My only real complaint is the battery life, but that is nothing new for smart phones.  They seem to all have equally terribly battery life.  Oh yes, and unlike the Inspire’s on screen keyboard, there are no arrow keys, which I used constantly for spelling correction.  It’s also a complaint I have on the Nexus 7.

IMGP9228

Anyway, as for 45 square inches, I did a little math and came up with that figure between my two Android Phones, my Nexus 7, and my work iPhone 4.  That’s quite a bit of coverage.