17 posts tagged “oregon”

Well, now that I have an iPhone I've been receiving a ton of questions about what I think of the phone. After playing with it for four days, I feel pretty confident I can answer most of the inquiries that have been posed to me.

For those who don't want the novel length explanations, I'm really digging it. The EDGE network  issue isn't one for me because my service area doesn't have 3G access anyway. Plus the wireless more than makes up for it. I'm in a Google town, so there are wireless access points all over the place to cater to their employees.

I've received questions concerning Safari and why there have been so many sites optimized for the iPhone in particular. The question goes, "Does this mean that the Safari browser included doesn't follow current Web Standards?" The iPhone optimized sites are sites where they are taking advantage of your ability to touch the screen, so they are generally optimized for the 320 x 356 screen. This often means larger buttons and links, because you can actually click them, as opposed to tabbing over to one on a non-touch screen phone. They also tend to include all of the bells and whistles of todays modern internet, like pretty AJAX goodness, and because some the sites don't meet normal web standards themselves the iPhone became one more incentive for them to get off their asses and bring their site up to current standards.

In my experience I have not experienced any website incompatibility issues. There is the Flash issue, but I understand why they are going with H.264 Quicktime over the currently more prevalent Flash. It is a superior compression technology that takes up less space with less loss of quality, which of course will mean a better media experience and faster download for us EDGEsters.  Also, now that Adobe has announced that they will include H.264 compatibility with their Flash it should render the whole situation moot in a short while.

The keyboard has worked nicely for me. I can even see myself doing some two thumb typing in the near future. I don't GPS because I am quite capable of knowing where I am on a map, so Google Maps works fine.

The iPod rocks. I am a tad annoyed with having to get the headphone adapter. I expect that eventually third parties will start making plenty of quality headphones with adapters for iPhone included as part their package. I've never been a big fan of earbuds going back to the Walkman day. I must confess though, that phone operation button on the earbuds, is pretty darn cool.

The SMS is great. I love how they included the iChat comic word bubble and colors that they chose for monitoring conversations. I like that you can quickly scroll up the screen through an ongoing conversation. My Gmail works nicely with the phone. I look forward to using their Calendar app in the future with Google Calendar. I also suspect they ran out of time for Notes. It works fine, but I can see where they might want to polish it with added features.  I also like that email deletions on my iPhone are not destructive to the same messages in my Gmail server account. So if there is a problem, I can always go back to my Gmail server archive.

It has also been a great conversation piece. I received a text message while at the bank and I got quite a few inquiries and more than a couple "may I see it for a second" types of communication once they saw that it was an iPhone.

I can also freely agree that it will not be THE phone for everyone. Then again, no phone on the market is. It really comes down to how the phone vibes with your lifestyle.  I find that it suits mine perfectly. I love that with your two year commitment, they've pledged that you will be receiving constant improvements in features and bug fixes, which is not something they always do so frequently at the other mobile OS companies like Microsoft and Palm.

Show us your favorite coffee shop. 
Submitted by Jane. 

Today both Jess and I are feeling a bit under the weather after we learned that our dear friend Mabel Weinrich passed away on Monday.

Mabel was a feisty woman, with a passion for life, who wasn't afraid to speak her mind, and able and willing to formulate a thoughtful response on almost every subject. She was an inspiration to us and will be remembered fondly.

We used to enjoy dining with her on take out Chinese at her home or dining out with her at the Sunflower Cafe in Mosier, Oregon. Regardless of what type of meal she had, she could be counted upon to top it off with a beer before bedtime. She was quite a character and I'm quite confident I could not hope to capture her essence with merely words alone. She lived to the worldly age of 92, and lived each of those years well.

Our sorrow and respect go out to her extended family and friends.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday I have been listening to the This Week in Geek (TWiG) podcast. Episode #009 focused on everything James Bond.

Here is my list of the best actors in order to have portrayed James Bond in the official Bond films.

By Actor:

1) Sir Sean Connery
2) Sir Roger Moore
3) Daniel Craig
4) Pierce Brosnan
5) George Lazenby
6) Timothy Dalton

I was performing a gig with my band Wymsikal Triod at Cloran Aid, on the University of Oregon campus.

The gems featured in our set were a spoken word/jazz interpretation of Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel and a progressive rock cover of Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart", Steve Ray Vaughn's "Crossfire", Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" and a tune that Paul and I had collaborated on called "Discover".

I believe the gig was recorded, but unfortunately I don't have a copy of the performance. I wish I did. Frog and Toad turned out very nice. At the time we had Jason Kamrass on vocals, Paul Walker on bass and myself on drums and percussion. lol. I remember having the Neil Peart setup at the time. There was another guy whose name I cannot seem to recall that we borrowed from another band who used to share our rehearsal space with us. The group he primarily performed with was this Billy Joel and Stryper combination called Without a Prayer. You had to hear it to believe it!

Yep, those certainly were THE days. Raves, concerts, champagne, girls, road trips, hot springs, and a class here and there.

by BadMojo request, a photo of me from high school:

yes, I was a band geek who received letterman jacket pins in four different musical groups.

And another one from the iron age:

Who was your best (or worst) elementary school teacher?
Submitted by Minnow. 

My worst teacher is an easy one: Mrs. Hamm in the sixth grade. She made no effort to hide the fact that she had no passion for teaching. It was pretty clear she was only there for one thing, and one thing only: to collect a paycheck.

My best teacher is much more difficult to determine, I've been fortunate to have had a few really great elementary school teachers. I think it would have to be a coin flip between Mrs. Davido and Mrs. Buchanan, my first and second grade teachers. Both them seemed to love teaching and challenging students. Both also were very skillful about walking that fine line of being encouraging and yet prodding as well.

The worst possible scenario about James Kim has been confirmed. My deepest sympathy goes to the family during this heart wrenching time. :(

Wow. According to CNN and published on the AP wire,  the family of James Kim was found earlier today. His wife and two daughters appear to be healthy. His wife breastfed their children after the family ran out of food and water. It appears that they tracked them to the general vicinity buy tracing their cellphone ping through a cell phone tower radius.Now they are searching for the whereabouts of James Kim the tech journalist, who left the family two days ago in an effort to seek out help for his family.

Reportedly he left them around 7:45 am Saturday morning to explore the region with a promise that he would return by 1 pm if he did not find help. He never returned. They've found his footprints and are tracking him with dogs and more tracking help coming in the morning.

The embers of summer have dimmed and the grip of winter has returned.

Once again comes the suffering. My muscles will be sore, hard, lean and determined.

The biting cold is like an unrelenting monster who plods behind me nipping at my heels.

I fashion a smile to comfort myself. I hold my body to keep my shivering frame warm. I hold my head up, and drive against the cascading frigid flakes.

90 more days until the rebirth of boy inside the man. 90 more days before I can shed this tough, thick winter skin. 90 days before I can bathe anew in the light of the spring.