October, 2003:

I recently bought an LG VX6000 (VX-6000, VX 6000) cellphone from Verizon Wireless. This is the only camera phone they offer. I paid $150. While, in this day and age, $150 isn’t a lot to pay for a phone, there are certainly other phones that are much cheaper. However, a lot of features come with that $150, so let’s consider each of them.

The Camera

First, as I’m sure you, my faithful readers, know by now, this phone has a camera in it. As much fun as having a camera that can send its images to anyone with an email address in a second (or… 60 or so seconds, depending on how fast Verizon Wireless feels like sending my data) it’s, basically, fruitless. The image quality is terrible. So, for anything real and useful, a proper digital or film camera should be used. Now, if I could get my cell phone to send THAT image, that would be a great feature. But it doesn’t.

Internal Display

It has a nice color screen which is great for viewing the pictures that people send me with their camera phones. Only, it seems that Verizon Wireless has a problem getting images from people on T-Mobile. And, aside from my wife, everyone else I know with a camera phone has T-Mobile. Okay, well, the color screen is also nice for seeing the photograph of the person who is calling me flash up on my screen as they are calling. Except the picture only displays on the internal LCD and not on the outside screen. And once I open the phone, the phone answers the call. And once the call is answered, the picture goes away. So I get to see it for all of 2 seconds, tops. But, during those two seconds, it sure is nice. I can also use the nice color screen to set a pretty picture as my background and look at it whenever my phone is open. Well, I could except the phone insists on displaying text over the top of the image that is large and unalterable therefore blocking that pretty wallpaper.

MIDI Support

It has MIDI support for ringtones. This means I can send myself any MIDI file and use it as a ringer for my phone. Being able to customize the ringer of my phone isn’t that important to me. There are only two things that I really care about. First, I’d like to be able to select a ringer that isn’t annoying, yet is still different enough from those around me that I can tell when it is my phone ringing and not someone else’s. And, being able to send a MIDI to the phone is one way to ensure that. However, in order to get the MIDI’s in to the phone, I have to pay for them (at like $1.50 each) through Verizon Wireless’ "Get It Now" service, or send them to myself via email. But sending them to myself requires that I pay for the GetPix service, which is $4.99/mo for unlimited use until January 2004 at which point it will be $4.99/mo for 30 pictures. I could use a data cable to transfer the MIDI files. However, as of right now, an "official" cable is not available, won’t be for a few more months, and will cost about $80. The "alternate" cables don’t really support this phone yet, so lots of hackery has to be done to get what you want out of it. But, once the MIDI is there, it works.

Voice Ringers

It also has Voice ringers. This means that my phone can use any audio sample as a ringtone. It shares the same problems as MIDI in regard to getting the samples on the phone. Additionally, the samples must be in Qualcomm’s QCELP format. This is a proprietary format. There are command-line converters available for Windows, SCO, and Solaris. However, there are no GUI tools available and not even a command line tool for Linux. Supposedly mplayer is capable of playing the audio format, but I couldn’t get it to generate or playback a file appropriate for the phone. This means that I have to have a computer running windows in order to make a Voice ringer. This isn’t too difficult to acquire though, to do so in the most legal of fashions, I would be out about $300. But, if you already had Windows and were familiar with the Windows command line, and were capable of producing a 8hZ Mono sample WAV of the sound you wanted on your phone, this might be a good feature for you.

Address Book

The phone has a well designed contacts list. Multiple numbers and email addresses are allowed for names. Inputting and editing the names and numbers is very easy and intuitive.

Vibrate Feature

The phone has a vibrate feature. However, it only works in two states: 1) with the ringer at HIGH or 2) with the ringer off completely. Many other phones offer features such as "vibrate first then ring" and so on. Additionally, there are no ringer profiles. This means that I can’t simply tell my phone "I’m at work" and let it remember how I like it to be set at work. Instead, I have to change each an every setting appropriately every time I change locations. I’ve found that, more often than not, I just leave it on Vibrate instead of futzing with every setting to get it back the way I want it in each situation. So, because of this, the MIDI ringtones and Voice ringers are even more useless.

Alerts

The phone can alert you to a text message, picture message, web push message, or voice message. However, it can only do this in 2 ways "loud beeps" or "soft beeps". Additionally, you can choose to be told once, or reminded every two minutes. I guess allowing a ringtone or Voice ringer to be used as the alert was too difficult. And it wouldn’t matter anyways since my phone’s always on vibrate.

External Display

The outside of the phone features a very nice blue display that shows the time, the date (if you press a button) and information regarding who’s calling, missed calls, or new voice messages. After a set amount of time (5 secs, 1 minutes, 2 minutes) the display turns off. This means that, if I walk away from my phone and get a new voice mail while I’m away, when I come back, there will be no indication of that fact unless I press a button to activate the front display. Additionally, at any setting other than "5 seconds" after about 5 seconds of displaying the information, it begins to scroll from right to left. This would be useful if the scrolling displayed additional information… but it doesn’t. In fact, in order to make the scrolling look nicer, it inserts some padding between the left and right edges of the data. This means that, when the phone is scrolling, expect for a split second when the image happens to be lined up perfectly, even if you were willing to mentally combine the left and right halves of the picture in order to read what it was saying, there would be portions of the display missing. Above the amazing outside display are 6 lights of 3 colors. These lights blink. You can customize the pattern with which they blink. You can even set different patterns for different phone states (i.e. "call in progress", "standby", "missed call" etc). However, the lights do not provide information that is not available on the outside display and, regardless of timeout setting, only remain active for 5 seconds.

BREW

For those of you that don’t know, BREW is Qualcomm’s alternative to J2ME. Or, maybe it’s its alternative to Symbian OS. Or… something. Regardless of what it supposed to be, this phone has it. It’s an environment for running applications from Games to… Email clients to… More Games. Additionally, it’s a distribution model which allows you to download, try, and purchase various applications through Verizon Wireless’ "Get it Now" service. You can also develop your own BREW applications, if you’re inclined to do so. Unfortunately, you can get BREW applications on your phone without using "Get it Now" or a cable. Additionally, though the literature makes it difficult to be sure, I believe you have to pay to have the application certified before the phone will be willing to execute it and certainly before it is distributable. This runs about $500 per application.

GPSOne

The phone also uses the latest in Mobile Phone GPS technology from Qualcomm, GPSOne. This uses actual GPS information at the phone in addition to GPS information at the cell tower to pinpoint (as precisely as a street corner) your location. There doesn’t seem to be anyway to access this information from the phone. It wont even do as much as show me my longitude and latitude so that I can use that data for my own purposes. This feature is always on for 911 calls, and can also be activated for regular calls as well. What good activating it does, I’m not sure.

Headset

This phone has your standard headset jack allowing the use of "official" and "alternative" headsets. It simply plugs into the side of the phone. The phone will allow the headset volume to be altered when it is in use. However, there are no other headset related settings in the phone. Therefore, you can’t have a special settings take effect only when the headset is in use. But that’s no matter. At least it works. If you have a headset with one of those fancy buttons on the wire that allow you to answer and disconnect a call, don’t bother pressing it — it doesn’t work. Even LGs own headset doesn’t work, though they claim they’ll have one out that does by the end of the year. That’s no big deal though. When a call comes in just press one of the three buttons on the outside of the phone to answer the call. Wait… you can’t do that? Oh. Well, since it has a training mode for the words "Yes" and "No" I’m that means that, when the phone rings, it’ll ask you if you want to answer the call, right? Oh. It doesn’t do that either? So how do you answer the phone? Oh. I see. You pick it up, and open the clam shell. If you have your phone set to answer on flip-open, you can close it now. Otherwise, press the appropriate key to answer the call and then you can close it. Easy enough. Now you’re talking. All done? Okay… just press a button on the… oh… wait. Open the phone and press the "End" key. Now close it again. Easy, right?

Voice Dialing

The phone allows you to have up to 30 numbers on voice dial. You can use this in two ways. If you don’t have a headset, open the phone. Then press the "voice dial" key on the outside of the phone. It’ll ask you to say the name of the person you’d like to call with text on the internal screen. Don’t do it yet. Just wait. After a few seconds it’ll ask you via voice prompt who you’d like to call. Now say the name and your call will be connected. When you’re done, press the "End" key and close the phone. If you do have a headset, with the phone closed, press the voice dial button. A few seconds later a voice prompt will ask you who you’d like to call. Say the name and your call will be connected. If you press the button by accident, don’t worry. Just open the phone, press "End" and close the phone again. No… you can’t just press the button again to make it stop. It’ll keep asking over and over and over and over and over and over again. When you’re finished with your call, just press the outside button to hang up. No… wait.. that doesn’t work. Open the phone, press "End" then close the phone. There. You’re done. Of course you could just wait for the other called to hang up and that’ll end your call. But, if you’re like my wife and I, and you have this phone on both ends of the conversation, you might end up waiting until your battery dies.

Text Messages, Picture Message and Email

The phone will allow you to send 160 character text messages or 1000 character picture messages. There seems to be no difference between a text message and a picture message without text or sound aside from the fact that you can send more characters, and that it costs $0.25 instead of $0.10. Email can be sent as a text message or as a picture message. Just punch in an email address instead of a phone number. Picture messages sent to a phone number appear to only work within the Verizon Wireless network. Text messages, on the other hand, appear to be capable of being sent to any phone number. Text messages are accessed via the messaging section, which also handles your voice-mail messages. Picture messages are sent via the camera section. The two things, though functionally equivalent, work entirely different and are in very different locations on the phone. With picture messaging you can attach a single image or a single sound file. The image will be sent as a JPEG, and the sound file will be sent as either a MIDI or a QCELP, depending on what type of sound file you sent. If you send a picture message to the email address that corresponds to the mobile phone of a T-Mobile subscriber, nothing happens. No warning. No error message. No message received on the other end. Nothing. The same is true if a message is sent from a T-Mobile subscribers phone to the email address of your Verizon Wireless phone. Great!!

Calculator

It works like a calculator… kind of. Instead of typing in numbers, hitting an operation, and then typing in more numbers… you type out the entire equation and then press "=". Okay. At least it works.

EZ Tip Calculator

This computes the amount of tip you should leave. For people who can’t figure out how to move a decimal point or divide numbers by 2. It also allows you to split the check amongst multiple people.

Voice Memo

Record up to 4 minutes of your voice to remind you of things.

Notepad

Type notes to yourself.

Alarm Clock

Set up to three alarms at different times during the day. You can also set an instant alarm to occur in 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or 3 hours. I’m sure it would be more useful if I could set arbitrary quick alarm times but, that’s okay. I’ll cook bake my cookies for 30 minutes instead of 17. It’s close enough.

Scheduler

It works. Nothing special. Nothing horrible.

Analog Network Support

It doesn’t have it. Verizon Wireless is known for its ability to function in even the most remote areas of these United States. You can throw that feature away, too, with this phone.

Conclusion

The camera sucks. The screen looks nice, but you can’t use it for anything. The MIDI ringers work well, though they are difficult and/or expensive to customize. The Voice ringers work will, though they are MORE difficult and still expensive to customize. The external display is flashy yet doesn’t have the same features as your cheapo LCD on your cheapo phone. GPS feature isn’t really a feature. The headset works, but not well. The address book is great. The text messaging is easy to use, although there’s no real reason to distinguish between a text message and a picture message, as best as I can tell. The calculator is weird, but it works. The alarm clock and scheduler work, the rest of the tools are useless.

Final conclusion

If you are forced to use Verizon Wireless, really want a camera phone (regardless of quality or ease of use), don’t live in a rural area, and are unwilling to wait a few months for the others to come out, this phone is for you. Otherwise, you can find cheaper and better alternatives.

Here is this morning’s sunrise. I’m just curious as to how well the camera phone will capture it.

Update: Not very well, it seems.

(click to enlarge)

Saturday night, after a nice round of homemade pizzas at Tony‘s place, he offered to show me the ropes of studio photography. With Sean as our model (since he needed portraits anyway) we went to work in Tony’s dining room converted studio.

I haven’t done much photography work with people in general. And I’ve never done any studio work. Tony was a very big help. It was amazing to watch him direct Sean into position after position. It reminded me of how I write code. I’ve done it so many times that, in most cases, I don’t really have to think about what I’m writing… it just comes out.

The "studio" aspect of things I grasped pretty quickly, I think. I know how to arrange the lights. I know what the basic goal is. I know how to solve problems in the image. I know how to determine proper exposure. I also learned a little about working with people. In the end, grasping that portion of photography seems as though it will be my most difficult task.

This image is one that was taken Saturday night. I think it turned out okay for my first attempt. I know have a huge desire to get all sorts of studio equipment so that I can play around and learn. For my purposes it doesn’t have to be state-of-the-art, or even in good condition. In fact, I’d almost prefer that it wasn’t as it would make learning that much more difficult and that much more rewarding in the end. If you have any leads on where to get used strobes, soft boxes, umbrellas, refectors, backdrops, power sources, and light stands… let me know.

Thanks, Tony, for being a generous host and a good teacher.

The following testimony comes from someone who actually used iTunes and DRM the way it was intended. He purchased music through the system, obeyed all the laws, and did everything the way he was supposed to.

The record companies can be proud that they’ve so thoroughly screwed things up now that there really isn’t even any point in paying for music now. –Inspirational Technology: DRM sucks [via Simon Wilson]

This is what they expect us to do instead of "stealing music"? Why? So we can pay for our music over and over again and lose the flexibility and ease of use that we get when we by plain old CDs? Ha. Right. That’s like putting a giant cage around my library of books with a nice thick lock… and then giving "them" the key.

In an event that has stumped the scientific world, my desk is clean!

Here’s an overly complicated idea. Everytime I sign up for a service, I give a randomly generated ID as my email address. I also register that randomly generated ID with my system and mark who is identified with it. The first time a message comes in to that address, the system takes note of the sender’s domain. Any mail to that address from that domain is authorized. Anything else is marked as SPAM. If this tends to be a problem, this SPAM classification can be removed and instead, the address can be removed as valid when SPAM is received. I have another address that I actually use for personal mail. This address is outfitted with your standard challenge response system and has a huge whitelist. This address is never used to sign up for services. I can proudly display it anywhere I’d like, as the challenge-response system will keep the SPAM out.

That’s it.

Any user that is allowed to send mail to prefixed or suffixed addresses can use it. And, unless spammers somehow get smart enough to respond to the Challenge Response, I don’t get any SPAM. If for some reason, one of the addresses that I’ve registered to use for getting mail from a service is used by a spammer, it must be because the address was GIVEN to them by the place I signed up at. Therefore, not only do I know WHO sold my address, but I can easily remove that ID and, therefore, stop the SPAM.

The only problem is that challenge response systems don’t work very well when the other end is a mobile device. It also doesn’t work very well for misconfigured email clients. Additionally, it could be perceived as unprofessional to send a challenge response to potential customers and/or existing clients. Also, it’s possible that the challenge response could be misunderstood or seen as spam by the recipient, and therefore ignored. And finally, if a spammer got a hold of my whitelist and my REAL email address, they could get SPAM through.

What do you think?

Since yesterday afternoon, I’ve received 127 pieces of SPAM. 115 of them were caught by SpamAssassin. 4 messages were labeled as SPAM, when they actually weren’t. This is getting a bit annoying.

I’ve tried to lessen to blow of dealing with SPAM by dividing my SPAM into two sections. SpamAssassin marks it as SPAM if it scores above 2.8. Then my mail filters sort mail three ways. A) Not SPAM, score lower than 2.8. B) Maybe SPAM, score higher than 2.8 but lower than 5.0. C) SPAM, score higher than 5.0. The supposed benefit of this was that I would have less mail to go through looking for false SPAM identification because, chances are, if it were misclassified HAM, it would make it into the "Maybe SPAM" bucket, and not the "SPAM" bucket. In theory, this is only true about 80% of the time.

The problem is two fold. First, if I’m getting 127 pieces of SPAM in less than one day, that’s pretty excessive. Secondly, the only HAM that is misclassified are automated email messages from various sites (techies.com, slashdot.org, etc). I would consider instigating a "I think you sent me SPAM. If you didn’t, click here and the message will get through" type system for anything that scores over 5.0, but, in those cases, I’d lose the misclassified mail since it comes from automated systems.

I don’t currently use the RBL and other network based features of SpamAssassin, as it takes about 30 seconds per message to run its course, and that’s a bit long, I think. But, perhaps that is the answer to getting less SPAM classified as HAM. Or maybe I just need to lower my SPAM threshold from 2.8 to 2.0.

There has got to be a better way to deal with this. Every morning I spend about 30 minutes getting the SPAM out of my INBOX, getting the HAM out of my SPAM box, sorting through the Maybe SPAM box, training SpamAssassin, and deleting the messages. That’s 30 minutes a day I have to spend because some asshole wants me to buy his dick pills, some Viagra, or some new tool to make her cum juices flow.

The reason this problem exists is simple: PEOPLE CLICK ON, READ, AND ACTUALLY BUY PRODUCTS BASED ON SPAM!!! If we can’t stop the spammers from spamming, maybe we can stop the users from reading it. Did you know that just visiting a spammers site can generate revenue through advertising for its owner? Did you know that, even if all you do is look at the email, there are images in that email message that could possibly trigger a small payment to the spammer? Don’t read SPAM. Don’t click on SPAM, even if it’s funny. Don’t visit the sites of spammers. Don’t reply to spammers. Ignore them. Completely. Pretend you don’t exist. These same rules apply to the ever increasing blog comment SPAM and referrer SPAM. Visiting these sites or even acknowledging their existence generates revenue for them. And, with more revenue, they send more SPAM.

I’m not worried about the impact of receiving SPAM on my servers. I used to care. But, at this point, I’d be happy if I just didn’t have to see it.

Perhaps I need to take a different approach to SPAM. If, through technology, I make it simple enough to do so, I can create a whitelist entry for every new email address I see that isn’t sending me SPAM. This will drastically lessen the amount of misclassified HAM I get. It will also allow me to lower SpamAssassin’s SPAM threshold to almost 0. Hopefully, with this technique, I’ll get less SPAM in my INBOX and less HAM in my SPAM box. It’s a start, anyway.

Another option is to send so much traffic to the sites of spammers, that other people can’t get in. And, if other people can’t get in, the spammer’s site can’t generate revenue. And, if they don’t generate revenue, they’ll stop spamming me. Unfortunately, I don’t have the bandwidth nor the manpower to launch such an attack 127 times a day.

There are several new protocols coming forward for helping to reduce SPAM. One of them, recently announced, requires that all SPAM be PGP/SMIME signed. Another calls for a small fee to be paid per email sent. Another tries to classify which IP addresses are valid for sending mail from which domains. All of them fail in one way or another because they try to classify HAM, and invent ways of keeping spammers from classifying their mail as such. This would be great except it adds complication to the email system for users and administrators. And, in the end, some witty spammer will surely find a way around it.

There’s got to be a better way.

I find myself at odds with my own criticism. I’m critical enough of my own work and abilities to mentally exaggerate my flaws. Yet, at the same time, I realize that my work and my ability to improve is substantially greater than many. This leaves me perpetually in that pivotal position of deciding to try again or give up. As an extension of this same sword I find that, oftentimes, as I learn and relearn in an effort to improve, the end result is only a more learned rendition of my first attempts. My first thought process is usually correct. Yet, my own criticism causes me to rework until I arrive right back where I started. The only difference between the beginning and the end is the knowledge that I can’t do it any better. This is pleasing and empowering in some ways, and very discouraging in others.

It’s interesting, after the fact, to see this play out in the various areas of my life. From my social abilities, to photography, to computer programming it can be seen. Socially, I constantly doubt the validity of the relationships I’ve made and it takes me quite some time to realize that what I was looking for in a particular friendship was actually there long before I realized it. In photography, I’ll take the same type of shot day after day only to find that I prefer one of my first attempts. In programming, I almost always dismiss my initial design as amateur and rework until I end up in the exact same spot.

More often than not, the work that I am most proud of tends to be those things that I created quickly, on a whim, without over thinking — just letting my instincts guide me. Yet, even with this knowledge, in a twisted application of this very principal I continue to doubt my instincts and only rely on them when I’m not thinking about it.

As I get older and the analysis of my own life has more data to work with I realize that a lot of these problems stem from self-esteem issues. There are two ends of the spectrum when it comes to self-esteem. On one side there are those like me who constantly doubt themselves and therefore work towards improvement, even when it isn’t really necessary. Then there are those who believe that everything they do is great. They show off simple, flash-laden shots of their family and praise their own photography. They produce horrible code and refuse to budge from their initial designs because they know how good it is. They make statements like, "my apartment kicks" when, in reality, it’s just a square divided into a few rooms just like most everyone else’s.

The odd thing about people with an over-inflated self-esteem is that their beliefs are sometimes contagious. That confidence and perceived success leads them to bigger and greater things, regardless of how well they can produce what they claim they can. It doesn’t usually lead them to the top because, eventually, the higher they go the more they will find themselves surrounded by people who share the same trade. But these people are actually talented, know their abilities, know their weaknesses, and improve themselves constantly.

Those with the low self-esteem sometimes make it, provided they actually have the required skills. If they get noticed or if, by chance, they are asked to do something that falls into one of these areas that they know very well, yet don’t trust their own abilities, they will sometimes find their way higher.

That’s how I got where I am today. I’ve been programming since age 6. I knew what I was capable of by age 12. But I also assumed that there were people in the world that could do a much better job than I could and that, while my skills were good, they weren’t good enough to take the place of those who have been doing it for years and years. I enjoyed working with computers, so I took an entry level job in a computer related field. Eventually, a task came up that needed to be completed and no one could do it. I knew I could and figured I may as well volunteer since no one else was. I did it. I succeeded. I moved forward slowly. Eventually, I got here.

But even today, I’m reluctant to even attempt to move forward because I assume that I won’t be capable of performing the level and quality of work required in that next stage. I assume that there are already people in those positions that are more proficient than I am and that they would run circles around me.

All of these self-doubts play out in every area of my life. But, even with this knowledge, I’ve never been able to correct my thought process for fear of acquiring too much self-esteem. I don’t want to be proud of a piece of work or of an ability that isn’t as good as I think it is. But doubting my own abilities and forcing myself to work and rework everything I do is really holding me back and leaving me unmotivated and unwilling to take the next big step forward.

They made me leave my camera outside. Im not sure why.