Recently in Review Category

Bible

I started using this app a few months ago. It is the best bible on the iPhone that I have found. All the major translations of the bible as well as a lot of lesser ones. Lots of different languages. The text is well displayed and easy to read. The app has day mode and low light mode.

It was actually this app that inspired (or maybe persuaded) me to read through the bible in a year. The app popped up a suggest in the end of December.

"A new year is starting, how about starting a reading plan in the new year," says Bible app.
"OK, what have you got?"

Bible has quite a few plans, divided into five categories; devotional, partial bible, topical, whole bible and youth. I was looking for a plan that would get me through the whole bible. At the head of the list is Bible in 90 Days. Now, while I am quite literate, have a fairly respectable vocabulary, I am not a very fast reader. In fact, I am pretty slow. According to the description, it works out to about 12 pages of Bible a day. Next. A plan titled Chronological. Read through the Bible in the historical order in which events occurred, according to current research.

So far, the reading plan has me going through 3 to 4 chapters a day. I started in Genesis, Adam and Eve, beginning of the world, right? Read in Genesis through Noah's boat ride. I am currently reading Job, apparently he was next.

Bible is made available by LifeChurch.tv for free. I have had no problems with the app. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in a good Bible on the iPhone.

I have used Movable Type installed on my own webhost for 5 years or so. After several false starts on Wordpress I decided to make the switch. Maybe.

For several years I really liked Movable Type. I could manage the design of my web site using html and css. Movable Type took my html and css as templates to produce the final product with all of my blog entries incorporated automagically. Movable Type even permitted text files to be linked so that one could avoid the Movable Type editor altogether. The system was relatively clean and straight forward to use.

Then came Movable Type 4.2. Six Apart made some fairly radical changes to the template structure which broke existing templates during upgrade. The new template structure fragments the html into blocks - header, body, footer, sidebar, etc. It might be possible to work with the new structure in order to implement the old. I have not yet taken the time to sort it all out. 4.2 came just as I was about to head out on a military deployment to Iraq. I didn't have time to figure it all out then. By the time I returned, I'd lost interest.

I've been watching Wordpress for several years. Twice I made attempts to move my blog to Wordpress and then changed my mind. After I returned from deployment, I started looking into what I wanted to do about my blog. For several years I've been watching all kinds of cool widgets and themes coming out for Wordpress. The bit the really got my attention was the iPhone Wordpress client. I figured Six Apart would surely make one as well. Not so far. That finally motivated me to move my blog over to Wordpress and see what it is really like.

Movable Type is definitely an industrial strength weblog content manager. From a single install of MT it is relatively painless and instantaneous to set up multiple blogs with multiple users of varying access privileges. That part did indeed work very well. Up until 4.2, managing the look and feel of the various web sites on which the multiple blogs existed was also fairly simple. There was one html template for each view (main index, archive index, comment input, etc.) associated with the blog. Movable Type included some advanced features that made it really simple to reuse common elements across multiple templates. The style of the entire weblog could be managed from a single style sheet. Multiple style sheets could also be used from within the constructs of CSS. 4.2 made some radical changes to the template structure which complicated the construction and management of the html significantly, at least in my opinion. I'm sure that the folks at Six Apart are convinced that the new architecture is a vast improvement.

What then of Wordpress. Facebook integration is available through a widget. Digg integration into one's blog is available via a widget. Mobile device specific layouts that are triggered automatically are available through a widget. Flickr integration in a manner more meaningful and elegant than the gawd awful Flickr badges is available in the form of a widget. Having watched with envy as my buddies running Wordpress blogs kept getting all the cool gadgets and toys I decided it was time to get it a try.

Wordpress sets up more quickly and easily than Movable Type. The SQL setup is pretty much the same for both but installation of the Wordpress software is easier. Customizing Wordpress is both easier and significantly harder. Simpler because so many things can be customized simply by installing a widget. If the customization you want is available in a widget, adding that customization to your weblog can be done in minutes. Likewise if the customization you want is available as a theme. Most things that can be handled in modifying a style sheet are also fairly easy provided that you have a working knowledge of CSS.

Anything that does not fit into the categories mentioned above falls into the significantly harder class. Customizing the header of you blog, which is a fairly simple html and css task in Movable Type, is more complicated in Wordpress. It requires mucking around with the Wordpress php code. When I'm wearing my web designer hat, I'd really prefer to only have to work with html and css. JavaScript, php, perl and all the other languages of the web are great but it should not be necessary to fiddle with php in order to insert or change a graphic in the page layout. That's crazy. But that is what is required to peak, tweak and/or modify in any significant and meaningful way the page layout of a Wordpress weblog.

I know that there are a lot of business and corporate blogs that run on Wordpress. However, in my mind, Wordpress is excellent weblog software for non-technical to moderately technical non-professionals who want to run their own blog. I honestly believe that most of these people would be a lot happier on Squarespace or similar. But, if you really want to install and maintain your own blog software, Wordpress is a decent choice.

For web world professionals who maintain blog sites for clients I think there are better solutions available. Movable Type is an industrial strength blog engine. Once you get your head around the template architecture that they use the page layout that Movable Type can support is limited more by the skill of the designer than Movable Type.

I'm not yet ready to go back to Movable Type. I like some of the things I've been able to do with Wordpress but I do not like the hurdles involved in customizing a Wordpress layout. So, I'm exploring other weblog management systems looking for something lightweight, easily incorporated into an html CSS web site. MODx maybe. Any suggestions?

In my review of the Remington Shortcut, I mentioned that there's a reason why they won't ship it outside the United States. Well, it is because the power supple is 120 volt and does not work in most of the rest of the world which uses 220 volt electricity. In the room where I stay, we have a converter that drops the 220 to 110. So, I figured I would just make sure I always plugged it in there. Yeah. The second time I went to recharge the Shortcut, I plugged the power supply into the wrong outlet and couldn't figure out why it wasn't charging.

Amazon to the soldier's rescue once again. I found a universal power supply that is very handy for deploying solders and travelers in general. The Velleman Compact Universal AC Adapter Power Supply can be used in place of most power supplies. It can be plugged into 110 volt or 220 volt which is what I needed. It comes with a number of tips that attach to the cord. And, the output voltage is switchable to match the device you are trying to connect it to. It is important to get Velleman part number PSSMV1 and not PSSMV1USA if the 110/220 capability is important to you. PSSMV1USA only does 110.

It sounds confusing, right. It's really not. Use the selector switch on the side to select the output voltage. Check the device you plan to plug it into which should have the input voltage clearly labeled. The Remington Shortcut requires 4.5 volts of DC.

Select the tip that fits into the device. This is pretty straightforward, it either fits or it doesn't. Match the polarity. Check the device you plan to plug in, in the same location where you found the voltage there should be an illustration; a dot, a circle and two lines. This illustration tells you whether the center pin in the plug should carry positive or negative electricity. Each of the tips that comes with the power supply has CEN marked on one side. The output plug on the power supply has a '+' symbol on one side, a '-' symbol on the other. Make sure the CEN is on the side indicated by illustration on your device and you should be good to go.

I currently use the Velleman to charge my phone and the Remington Shortcut. It works great. I think it is important to note that if the device you want to plug into the Velleman power supply requires any kind of special plug, most electric razors and modern cell phones for example, the Velleman will not work. I'm very happy with it at this point. Does exactly what I need it to.

For a long time out here on FOB Hunter, we had no barber. That did not preclude us from adhering to military grooming standards. There are a number of barracks barbers on the FOB with varying degrees of skill. The most common approach is to simply get a “butch” haircut, one in which the hair is a sixteenth of an inch all over. I really hate the way that looks on me but not as much as I hate really bad haircuts. I decided to look at the options out there that would allow me cut my own hair in some reasonable fashion. Amazon to the soldier's rescue.

A search on Amazon turned up a few possibilities but the only one that got decent reviews was the Remington Shortcut. When I tried to purchase it through Amazon and have it shipped to my APO address, Amazon would not allow me to order it using that ship to address. Turns out, there was a reason for that. I had it shipped to the house and asked my wife to forward it to me out here. That made it take a while longer but it did finally arrive.

The Shortcut comes with two comb attachments. One is apparently for doing butch haircuts. The other used in conjunction with the dial on the Shortcut lets you adjust the length to which the hair is cut. This was the feature that I wanted. I like my hair cut nearly skin tight on the sides but I like to have about quarter inch or so on top. Having read the reviews on Amazon which made it very clear that reading the instructions was important, I read the instructions before I used the Shortcut for the first time. Sounded pretty straightforward.

I started on the sides with a setting of 1. The Shortcut does require that you go over an area several times in order to get all the hair cut. It's a lot like brushing your hair. After the sides were done, I set it to 1 1/4 and went over the curve from the side of the head to the top to give a reasonable transition to the longer hair on top. Last, I set the Remington Shortcut to 2 and trimmed the top. Once I was done, I got into the shower to get all the hair clippings off.

I now do this once a week. Friday morning is my haircut, right before I jump in the shower. It works great. My hair always looks decent. It's not the flat top that I where at home but my hair meets Army standards and I don't cringe every time I catch a glance of myself in a mirror. I have to say I'm quite happy with the Remington Shortcut. At less than $40 if it lasts the entire deployment I will have gotten my money's worth out of it. I'll put it in the deployment box when I get home and probably not use it again until my next deployment.

For the complete details of what comes in the box and the specifics on how to use it go to the Remington web site. My only intent here is to let people know how I use it and that it does a great job for what I need.

[Update: 24 Apr]
The Shortcut is a great idea. The implementation, not so much. The device requires approximately 20 hours to charge and then lasts for about 3 to 5 minutes of run time. Long enough to cut my hair but only just. Very disappointing. I am now looking for a similar device from a maker other than Remington.

Technorati Tags: military life, review

We're house hunting. If you've been watching the financial news you know this might be the worst possible time to sell a house. However, it is also a great time to be buying. So, we're house hunting.

The ready accessibility to the MLS for the counties around us makes it a lot easier. We can see what is for sale, how much it is listed for, square footage and all that. So, we've been using mlslistings.com to make a list of houses that we think we're interested in and then, on the weekend, we drive out and do drive-bys of the places on our list. At the same time we drive around the various neighborhoods to get a feel for the community. When we got home, I was had a hard time associating the fliers we picked up with the location from which we got them. I figured this was an excellent justification to learn about geocoding.

I already have a Canon PowerShot Pro 1 camera, which will have to do until I pick up my Canon 5D. I needed a way to embed the latitude and longitude into the EXIF of the image. I was hoping my Garmin StreetPilot i3 would provide the lat/long information I needed but it can not. So, I purchased a Magellan eXplorist 210. I chose this particular device because it was the cheapest handheld GPS device with a display and a USB connection. For those wondering, the eXplorist 210 connects to Mac OS X and appears as a volume and is completely usable with Mac. So, now I have a way to track where I've been.

The trick then, is to use a track file from the GPS device to determine the exact lat/long where the photograph was taken by using the time of the photograph. The EXIF data in the photograph will have the time it was taken. The GPS log file will have a lat/long associated with that same time provided that it is on, logging and with the camera. There are a number of applications that might help us out. I only tried as many as was necessary to accomplish my intended goal. There might be others out there. Here are the applications that I tried.

HoudahGPS

This one did not work for me. No idea why. Might have been me, maybe it's the software. It simply did not work.

LoadMyTracks

This works great for my purposes. Using LoadMyTrack's Translate File from the File menu I translate the Magellan track.log file which is in a proprietary format to GPX which is an XML interchange format. I've never been able to get any of these applications to talk directly to the 210. Not sure why.

Next, I connect my camera to the PowerBook G4 and let iPhoto import them. While iPhoto is importing I'm wondering why iPhoto does not already support geocoding. Because iPhoto does not support geocoding, I have to export the images. So, I now have the pictures I want to geocode and the GPX file from which to get the geocode in a single directory on my desktop.

HoudahGeo

While HoudahGPS did not work for me, HoudahGeo works great. I used it twice and then paid the shareware fee. HoudahGeo first loads the photo images, then the GPX file. It then matches times to determine the lat/long of the photos. HoudahGeo then gives you the option of writing the data to the image files, importing the data and the photos to Google Earth, or exporting the photos to Flickr. I do all three. You can take a look at our house hunt here.

It is a lot of fun to associate the photos you take with the location they were taken. I think all of us have sorted through the family photos and wondered, where was this taken. Additionally, we wonder, who is that person. I'd like as much information as possible embedded in the image file itself so that, when you have the image file, you have the whole story. This is a fundamental reason that I think iPhoto sucks. iPhoto provides things like keywords and description fields but the information is not attached to the image file. It is put into a separate database. Lose that database file, you've lost whatever information was in there. IPTC Core picks up where EXIF leaves off providing metadata fields for keywords, descriptions, photographer, copyright, etc. All of this information is embedded into the image file so that any application that supports this metadata can, at a minimum, diplay it. iPhoto ought to be leading the way. It ought to already support geocoding, IPTC, and it should be using the image file as the storage medium for the information.

aloha

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: commentary, computers, mac os x, review

The word is discipline.
aloha


read more | digg story

I love my iPod. I work on a competing product but the simple fact is the iPod fits my usage model perfectly. Or maybe my usage model has been molded by iPod. One place I like my iPod most is in the car. On my drive to and from work I listen to podcasts of news (podcast), Mr. Osgood, Chip Ingram and Ravi Zacharias. It's like having a radio station that programs especially for me. I love it.

The problem is getting the iPod connected to the car stereo. I've tried all of the methods that I know about. FM modulators, FM transmitters, cassette interface, and stereos with an aux in on the faceplate. An FM Modulator is a device that goes between your radio and the antenna. When turned on, it disconnects the antenna and feeds a signal directly into the radio on a preset frequency. The freq doesn't really matter because the radio effectively has no antenna. You still have to dial in the right freq in order to hear the audio signal from the iPod. FM modulators are pretty good but the solution feels like a hack.

FM transmitters transmit a low power signal like a miniature radio station. Supposedly, if you can find a segment of the FM dial that has no signal, they work pretty well. Here in the Northern California bay area, finding a segment of the FM dial that isn't cluttered is more challenge than I care to face. In my area, FM transmitters always sound like the radio station from the last town you passed on a road trip. Not really the listening experience I'm looking for.

Cassette tape interfaces work well if your car has a cassette tape drive. Mine doesn't.

An auxiliary in on the face plate is what I just replaced. These work pretty well but, it turns out, the stereo manufacturers don't really intend for you to have something plugged in all the time. The eighth inch plug is not designed to stand up to daily use. The Sony unit that I bought gave out after about a year. There are other third party stereos that are designed to integrate an iPod. These systems are beyond my budget for incorporating my iPod into my car audio.

My search for the perfect method of integrating an iPod into the car audio system led me to USA Spec. They make two devices of interest; an auxiliary audio interface and an iPod interface. According to the web site, the iPod interface will connect, control, charge and play an IPOD through a factory radio. This interface also gives you an auxiliary audio in. I chose to install the auxiliary audio interface.

I drive a 2002 Mazda B-3000 truck which is, in most ways, identical to a 2002 Ford Ranger truck. So, with a bit of trepidation, I ordered the DF-Ford20 from Crutchfield. Crutchfield offered instructions and a universal DIN removal tool. I took the instructions and refused the tool. The instructions turned out to be worthless since they did not cover the device I was installing. The instructions were free, no loss.

The device installed in about 30 minutes. There are no installation instructions included in the box but it is very intuitive. Do the obvious. It is that easy. I am currently using an RCA connector to eighth inch stereo plug cable to connect my iPod to the aux audio interface. The radio thinks the iPod is a multi-CD changer. The sound quality is very good. Better than any of the other methods I've tried so far.

To switch to the device connected to the interface, hit the CD button on the car stereo. I'm not sure how you would switch between two devices connected to the interface. I haven't tried that yet. The one problem I've noticed so far. If, while listening to a device connected via the USA Spec interface, you hit the "SCN" button on the radio, you will lose audio. There is no indication as to what happened or what the radio is doing so this can be disconcerting. Hit the SCN button again, maybe twice, and the audio comes back.

Main points for the USA Spec DF-Ford20:

• installs quickly and easily with no special tools
• audio quality is very good to excellent
• works flawlessly in the 2002 Mazda B3000
• hghly recommend the product

aloha

[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: audio, iPod, review

This is a quick test of MacJournal to see what it’s editing capabilities are.
Hum, template based export of journal entries. Not sure I’d like that for blogging.
MacJournal might be pretty cool for journal writing though. We’ll have to play with it a bit and see.
Smittie

My wife and I watched Babel on DVD last night. Both of us thought it was pretty slow, not very good.

Babel tells four stories that are, in varying degrees, interrelated. In my opinion, none of the four stories are very engaging. Much of the camera work was the handheld camcorder shots that are in vogue. I'll be happy when that particular fad falls from grace. They don't look any better when Hollywood does them.

The movie leads off with the Cate Blanchett's character, Susan, asking her husband played by Brad Pitt, "what are we doing here?" They are presumably vacationing in Morocco. The more rural areas of Morocco, from the look of it. I spent the rest of the movie wondering at the answer to Susan's question. Good actors did a reasonable job in delivering a mediocre script. Editing was on par with the writing.

Babel is, in my opinion, very similar to another movie, Mystery Train. Mystery Train is far more interesting. Not quite the star-studded cast but a much better story, told in a very interesting and surprising way.

Technorati Tags: movie, review

This weekend we watched the movie, World Trade Center. This is the story about two Port Authority Police Officers who were trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The two were found and dug out. They survived some 18 to 24 hours buried in the collapse of two 200 story buildings. Their story is an amazing one.

The character I most identified with in the movie was a fairly minor, supporting role in the movie. However, the man was absolutely critical to the story. Without him, the two police officers would be listed among the dead instead of being survivors 18 and 19.

Dave Karnes, upon seeing the collapse of the World Trade Center, walked out of his accounting office, got a haircut, put on his uniform and drove to Ground Zero. He walked into the pile of rubble that other rescue workers were being restricted from and started looking for survivors. In the course of his search, he met up with another Marine, Jason Thomas, and they searched together. They found the two police officers. And then they refused to leave until they saw them pulled from the ground. Lastly, they walked away. No glory, no praise. Mission complete, move on. Staff Sergeant Dave Karnes, having already served 23 years in the Corps, re-enlisted and served two tours in Iraq.

I enjoyed the movie a lot. I can't imagine what it must have felt like to be trapped for so long. The DVD Extras tells the rest of the story. The surgeries and recovery of the two officers. As is often the case, the two got worse before they got better. Both survived.

Great movie. I recommend it. I think it is good to remember that day. We don't want to believe it but that enemy is still out there. Given an opportunity, that enemy will do September 11 again and worse. "You may not realize it but this country is at war."

aloha

Technorati Tags: military, movie, review