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November, 2008:

Road Trip this weekend?

Nov 13th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
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Who wants to go on a Road Trip this weekend? We’d leave Friday afternoon or early Saturday morning and head back Sunday or Monday evening. Hotel, gas, photography equipment and park admission is already covered.

If you follow me on Twitter (as you very well should) you may have witnessed my consideration of making an impromptu Road Trip last Saturday morning. Well, those thoughts have not subsided. Maybe I’ll have better luck if I start thinking about it now, two days earlier.

I’d like to visit the Lost Maples State Natural Area. I’ve been talking about doing this for several years now and simply never have. The point of the trip is to see and photograph the leaves changing colors as it features a large, isolated stand of uncommon Uvalde Bigtooth Maple. According to the 2008 Foliage Color Change Report, last weekend was probably a better weekend to visit. A lot of the Maples have dropped their leaves thanks to the wind. On the good side, the Red Oaks are starting to change.

Of course that’s only the purpose, because it helps to aim your car in some direction if you have a purpose. The best part about Road Trips is what happens in all the unplanned parts, and how your plans twist into something even better than originally planned. I love Road Trips.

If I leave Friday night I figure I’ll stop off in Austin or San Antonio for the evening then head out again the next morning. If I leave Saturday morning, I’ll just head straight there. If I leave by 6am I should be there in time for a nice look around before sunset. For the return trip I’m planning to leave around noon. Leaving on Monday just gives me one extra day and can always be decided upon at the last minute.

If I do the Saturday through Sunday trip, I’ll have just enough time for a little hike and then a sunset. Then do a sunrise, and then have another little hike. Then head home. From sunset to sunrise I’ll bum around Kerrville, look for diners, decaying buildings, and things that would make for interesting night photography. I might also sleep. Maybe.

Of course if I do the Friday through Monday trip, I’ve got a lot more time. I can goof off in Austin or San Antonio Friday night. Take my time getting out to Lost Maples Saturday morning. And I’ll have a whole extra day for exploring or allowing for alternate impromptu plans.

I will get up pretty damn early regardless of where we are or how our plans change only because I really like sunrises. You’re welcome to sleep in the hotel room, car, field, barn, boat house, or whereever it was we ended up the night before if you’d prefer not to get up early. I won’t let the pigs nibble your ears too much.

So.. who’s in? Three people (plus myself) is about the maximum group size to make it fun and dynamic. I do pretty well by myself, but I’d much rather have someone with me.

Let me know SOON, because I need to book hotels and/or find couches to crash on in Austin/San Antonio and Kerrville.

Nokia E71 Review

Nov 10th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
1 comment

A few months ago, the fine people at WOMWorld lent me a Nokia E71 for review. I’ve been putting off publishing any sort of remarks because my mom always said “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” But, lately, they’ve been insistent. So, here we go.

First the good.

The phone is beautiful. It feels nice in the hand. The included case is attractive, easy to get the phone out of, and provides great protection. The keyboard, though a bit tight at first, is easy to get to. Outside of the case, the phone feels nice though it could do well to have a bit more grip. A silicone case should help. The screen is vibrant and has plenty of resolution. Buttons are well placed and mostly intuitive.

As far as the HARDWARE goes, this phone deserves top ratings. It’s the software that I have big issues with.

Getting the phone setup in the beginning is difficult. There are lots of settings and they are spread out in many non-intuitive locations.

The Active Today screen that provides updates on the status of your email, text messages, and mobile service is cumbersome at best. The directional pad did not operate as expected and I found myself guessing incorrectly regarding what various buttons and menu choices would do.

The way data connections work are plain silly. Ideally, the phone would understand that, in most cases, a WiFi connection is better than a GPRS/EDGE connection. It should at least give me the option of switching seamlessly between the two. Instead, most applications require you to set a connections and your choice is either a WiFi connection or a GPRS connection. Even switching to another WiFi connection requires work. An application called PsilocConnect (which costs extra) is supposed to help with this. You choose the PsilocConnect connection. It then either chooses any available WiFi connection or a GPRS connection when WiFi is unavailable. This makes sense and works pretty well except when you have an application that doesn’t allow you to choose the PsilocConnection. Then the fight with each other and the only real loser is the user.

Messaging is the killer app on Mobile and the Nokia E71 software fails in every possible way.

It supports PUSH email, which is great. But the implementation is limited. The phone will either poll at intervals and download the entire message when it does, or it will support PUSH but only download the headers and fail to reconnect if the data connection is interrupted. I could be wrong here. The settings screen for setting up this part of email was very difficult to understand and the manual shed no additional light. If I over looked something, then it certainly wasn’t because I didn’t try. Using 3rd party email applications didn’t help either. BlueWhaleMail was the closest, but still not quite right. Emoze was buggy. Nokia’s Email Service also didn’t function reliably and seems to have a one email account limitation.

The Nokia also didn’t seem to come with any IM applications. No gTalk, AIM, MSN,Yahoo, Jabber, nothing. There are some 3rd party options available here as well. I tried a few with limited success. None seemed to be really well designed, intuitive, or easy to use. Additionally, most of them required additional purchase.

Even the Nokia PC Suite was buggy. I couldn’t import my Yahoo Address book export no matter how hard I tried. In many cases the PC Suite had trouble realizing the phone was connected. It crashed fairly regularly. The built in messaging applications were very slow if they worked at all.

Even simple things like lighting up and sounding some kind of alert when a Bluetooth device attempts to connect were not implemented. I attempted to use a Bluetooth GPS device but the phone didn’t seem to accept that. It’s own built in GPS application never fully indicated location.

In conclusion, the phone hardware seems outstanding and well built. It’s the Symbian OS that needs to catch up with the iPhones and Blackberrys of the world. When you consider the fact that these phones are not really being subsidized by any US carrier, this means that customers are expected to pay full price as well. This just isn’t going to happen with so many other options available with software that actually works as expected.

I marry Julie. I marry Bob.

Nov 9th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

Meet Julie.
Meet Bob.

I know Julie.
I know Bob.

I work with Julie.
I work with Bob.

I befriended Julie.
I befriended Bob.

I like Julie.
I like Bob.

I trust Julie.
I trust Bob.

I owe Julie.
I owe Bob.

I love Julie.
I love Bob.

I touch Julie.
I touch Bob.

I am committed to Julie.
I am committed to Bob.

I marry Julie.
I marry Bob.

None of the other words we use to describe relationships and feelings between people in the English language require a gender identifier. Why should marriage?

TTOW: Intense Debate

Nov 7th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
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In this Tech Tip of the Week (TTOW, get it, almost seems like a feature, doesn’t it?), I will present, once again, Intense Debate, a centralized commenting system that has benefits for content authors and readers alike.

Earlier this year I looked at both Disqus and Intense Debate. I weighed each of their merits and drawbacks. I even had phone conversations with then CEO of Intense Debate, Tom Keller, in hopes of coming to an agreement about the future of Intense Debate. In the end, I finally decided on Disqus.

And now I’m changing my mind.

Comparison

Both services get the core right. You can leave comments on various blogs. Your reputation and comments are stored centrally (view my profile) and go with you from site to site. Threading is supported as is advanced comment moderation and spam control. The devil is in the details.

In the past 9 months, Disqus has added OpenID support. However, it was hacked on in such a poor fashion that it’s not even worth mentioning. Despite my complaints and the complaints of many others, this has not been fixed. Intense Debate already had working OpenID support that behaves as you’d expect, and that hasn’t changed.

Both Disqus and Intense Debate upped their plugin technology to allow moving from system to system that much easier. This shows great pride in their work on both sides and is commendable.

Intense Debate has added Reply By Email functionality. And, in fact, has done so in a lightly better way than Disqus because of the additional moderation options available directly from email. Disqus already had Reply By Email.

Intense Debate still looks nicer. Of course this is subjective. However, I feel that not only is the interface more attractive, it’s easier to use and easier to find what I’m looking for. Disqus has made some small improvements in this arena over the last 9 months, but it’s nothing drastic.

Intense Debate offers integration with Twitter and some really cool integration features with FriendFeed. The appear to have more integration ideas on the horizon. I notice little tiny things all the time. For instance, if I am logged into my blog but not logged into Intense Debate, some magic happens (is it OpenID based? or just plugin based?) and it automatically logs me in. That’s just smart.

Intense Debate was also recently brought into the Automattic family, the fine folks behind WordPress. This leads me to believe that Intense Debate will be the innovator of the two. Features and flexibility are what make tools like this successful and useful.

Intense Debate allows unregistered users to, not only comment, but receive notification of replies. Disqus claims they are adding this, but I haven’t seen it. Even though registration is a piece of cake and has lots of benefits, users are reluctant to fill out another signup sheet. I get that. So, with Intense Debate, they can still get notification of replies.

Disqus wins in only two areas.

First of all, Disqus has a “claim comments” feature. This is nice for those who have been leaving comments on Intense Debate enabled sites without registering and then finally decide to take the plunge. I’d like to see Intenese Debate enable this using both URLs and EMail addresses (both confirmed first, of course). Then as new sites bring their old comments into Intense Debate, I can claim the comments I’ve left there as well.

Secondly, Disqus seems to have a better uptime record. I’ve seen Disqus go down once. I’ve seen Intense Debate fail several times and, considering that I wasn’t using their service, I would imagine that means it probably happened even more often than I saw. However, their move to Automattic should certainly help this. And everyone has growing pains, I’m certainly not going to spend too much time harping on this unless it becomes a real problem.

So, with all of this considered, Intense Debate is the right tool for me right now. And I think it’s the right tool for you too.

Installation

If you have WordPress, installation could not be easier. You install a plugin, you answer a few questions, you sign up for an Intense Debate account, and you’re done. It automatically syncs all of your old comments into Intense Debate and keeps them synced just in case you decide to stop using it in the future.

Of course, my writing this is coming at a bad time. Because of their move to Automattic, Intense Debate is currently closed for adding new blogs to invite only. You can still sign up for an account, but you can’t install it on your blog without an invite code. I managed to get one from my friend Joel (who happens to run a very funny online comic called Hijinks Ensue) but I don’t think they are all that easy to come by. Worry not. Sign up for an account now and let me know your interest and, as soon as I can find some codes I’ll let you know. UPDATE (2008-11-12): IntenseDebate no longer requires an invite code. GO WILD!

Commenters, read this!

(Those of you reading this in LiveJournal, Facebook, or any of the other millions of places this gets syndicated to, you will of course, have to visit my actual site to see and use these features.)

Intense Debate works for you as much as it does for me. If you like a comment (or don’t) use the up (or down) arrows next to each one to promote them. Additionally, take a few seconds and sign up, or just use your OpenID (any Google, Yahoo, MSN, or LiveJournal account is an OpenID, among many others) and you can sign in to Intense Debate like that. The features is provides are well worth it and it only takes a few seconds. At the very least, be sure to supply your email address when you comment so you can get replies sent to you.

change is coming

Nov 6th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

On November 4th, 2008 a Black man was elected president of the United States of America. While this is an incredible sign of the collapsing walls of racism in America, and a very visible change in these early days, if you think this is the most important thing that happened on that great day, you’ve missed the point.

I truly hope that some day we will see a woman in the oval office, as well as a muslim, a gay person, a disabled person, a blind person, and a person belonging to every other often discriminated against.

But even if Barack Obama had been a white man and even if John McCain had been a blind, black, lesbian woman, of the Muslim faith: my vote would have gone to Barack Obama. Because while there are many other ways to show that the walls of discrimination are crumbling in this country, I do believe that Barack Obama represents the best hope for this nation right now.

Sometime during the Clinton Administration this great country became polarized. Nearly every voting American carries with them an “us or them”, “red or blue” mentality. “You’re either with us or against us”. During the eight long years that George W. Bush was in office, he did nothing to discourage such thought. But we are one nation!

In Obama’s powerful victory speech he said, “to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.” Even if you’re in a “red state”, even if you’re a “republican”, even if you didn’t vote for him — you’re still an American, he’s still your president, and we’re all in this together. Once again our nation will be united.

What’s so incredible about being a citizen of one of the greatest nations on this planet if those citizens do not embrace one another and take care of eachother? Without brotherhood, loyalty, and the support of one another, could not any American be just as happy in England, or Germany, or France, or Canada?

Capitalism means that each and every person has the opportunity to seek his goals and acheive his dreams. But America is about more than just capitalism.

America is the land of the free! Freedom of faith. Freedom of speech. Freedom to love who we choose. Freedom to marry who we choose. Freedom to speak any language. Freedom to observe any culture. Freedom to be filthy rich. Freedom to give it all away. Freedom to be whoever we are. And with these great freedoms there is a price: tolerance.

America is the home of the brave! In January of 2009 one brave man will take the reigns of a nation in financial, economic, and social turmoil and promise to give everything he’s got to turn it around. And he’ll ask every brave American to clench their teeth, sacrifice a little of themselves, and dig in right here on American soil and abroad to help in that effort. It will not be easy, but we will be brave.

America is the land of Opportunity. Written on our statue of liberty, the symbolic gateway to this country, are these words: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Rich or poor, black or white, hungry or fed, young or old, gay or straight, it is the duty of every American to rise up and support his country and his countrymen. This can mean carrying a weapon and defending our borders. It can mean becoming part of the adminstration. It can mean paying a few extra dollars in income tax. It can mean buying American goods created on American soil, even if they cost a little more.

I love this country. And now, after what seems to have been such a long, dark time, we are poised for change. Barack Obama is the right person to lead us where we need to be, but he cannot do it alone. With our help, he can.

Obama closed his victory speech saying, “This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”

YES WE CAN.

future proof

Nov 4th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

A huge chunk of my thought process behind even the smallest of decisions centers around the idea of “future-proof” — the goal to make any plan hatched today even better by ensuring it will still be a valid plan in the future.

This can be an awesome quality. My boss loves me. My customers love me. Anyone who has ever had to coolaborate with me is full of nothing but compliments. My financial planner and I are on board. Any establishment I’ve bought anything from ever thinks I’m one of their best customers. Like I said, it’s an awesome quality.

But, it can also be terrible. In an extreme, imagine the following car buying scenario. I’m 18. I’m buying my first car. I don’t have a lot of money. A used Honda Civic seems to be a good choice. It’s small, great on gas, and dependable. But then I get to thinking, some day I’ll have a family and I might need to move something heavy on a moments notice. Maybe a brand new 9-seater SUV with a towing package would be a better choice? Of course, at 18, I couldn’t even afford the gas for the SUV, let alone the vehicle itself. I would be so stuck in the decision making state that the end result would be buying nothing at all.

Thankfully, I’m not that bad. My first car was a 1980s model Volkswagen Fox named Roxanne. But the point is, I could easily get that bad. And I am that bad when it comes to other decisions, relationships, vacation planning, and the like.

As you can see, this can be both a virtue and a fault. As a virtue, it comes naturally. I have to work at keeping it from being a fault.

It remains a goal of mine to be more impulsive and to seek the company of those who encourage it. I also constantly remind myself that the best choice for right now may not always be the best choice for tomorrow. I regularly have to convince myself that sometimes it’s okay to destroy your work from the past to build something better for now and that planning to destroy what’s been built at some point in the future is an okay thing to do.

you mean, like, every day?!

Nov 3rd, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

I figure, if Kristy can do it then I can because I’m a way better person than her. Ok maybe not.

But I’m going to try anyway. NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month)! Sure, I missed two days this month already, but, at least I’m starting you out with the right expectations.

Every time I look at the “word” NaBloPoMo it makes me think it has something to do with blood. The “Blo” is obvious there. I guess I think the “Po” is some take on Phlebotomy. Who knows.

Last night I saw two amazing artists in concert.

First, there was Kaki King. She’s a brilliant, beautiful woman, with some mean guitar and a voice that is pure magic. She’s got some amazing music videos on YouTube worth checking out. The art of the videos themselves really compliments her talent. And, if you just want to be in awe of her guitarist prowess, check out this live clip of her playing on David Letterman. Simply amazing.

She was followed by The Mountain Goats, a totally different variety of brilliant. With strong lyrics and emotive vocals, John Darnielle leads the audience through an amazing setlist, perforated with Kaki King on guitar playing some of the tracks from their collaborative album, The Black Pear EP, including the amazing Mosquito Repellent (sorry for the bad audio in that link).

Aside from the show being incredible, it was performed at the Granada, in my opinion, one of the bestmusic venues I’ve been to in DFW. Not only is the building interesting well laid out, the sound and light techs there always perform an outstanding job.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, I got to claim the beautiful, amazing, incredible Erica as my date. She was dressed pulling no punches whatsoever. I considered taking a photograph to share with you all and then decided I would just keep this one all to myself. Consider my selfish. I don’t mind.

The only problem with such an amazing yesterday is that today stands such little chance of living up to that standard.

C’est la vie.

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