Jason Colby’s Blog

It’s been a while since my last update on here.  The weather here in the northwest has been cool and wet which I am enjoying.

A couple of months ago as I walked out from the dentist I reached for my cell phone to change the ringer from vibrate to ring.  As I pulled the phone from its holster it began to fumble in my hand and before I could react the phone struck the sidewalk screen first.  Pieces flew and I thought for sure the phone would never work again.  I reached down and found that the pieces I had seen were the battery and removable back cover so everything was looking okay…until I turned the phone itself over.  A crack ran diagonal across the entire touch screen.  A sickness came over me and I felt faint, my G1 which I love is cracked.  To my amazement the touch screen still worked though the crack is all too visible.  As my phone continues to function I will continue using it though I have begun eyeing replacements.  My next phone will also be an android and will preferably have a full keyboard which limits my choices.  So far the likely replacement will be the Motorola CLIQ.

I had wanted to save for the new Barnes and Noble Nook device.  Now I saving and will have to decide which I will purchase the nook is over a hundred dollars cheaper while the phone gets constant use.  These are the kinds of decisions I don’t like to make.  Today I go in for my eye exam and new glasses are not a luxury, they are a necessity and will be purchased no matter what…Thats an easy decision.

It’s hard to believe that Christmas is under two months away!  A month from now I will begin the decorating process which I am looking forward to.  This past weekend I actually watched a couple Christmas movies…guess I am ready for the season.

It has been a while since I posted an update on here and for that I apologize.  One thing I have realized is that the address to this site is linked to my various social media accounts for visibility and that in turn limits what I can freely post on here.  I suppose this is one of those double edged swords I always here so much about. 

I will just say that I have been extremely busy at work with repercussions carrying over to after hours.  Today is Friday and though the weekend is supposed to be much hotter than I like it will be nice to do what I enjoy.

Many months ago (maybe even a year ago) I signed up for a number with what was then grand central and after much waiting and a change in company ownership I am all set up.  A couple of weeks ago I received an email notifying me that I was invited to receive a google voice number which I jumped on.  One nice thing is that an application was created for the Android mobile platform that easily integrates the google voice number with my G1 phone.  Now when I place calls they are directed through my google voice number.  The beauty of this is that by adding my google voice number to my “Fav 5” all outgoing calls do not count toward my anytime minutes.  The same rule applies for anyone calling my google voice number which is automatically forwarded to my G1.  Theoretically this would mean unlimited calling while having the plan with the lowest number of minutes.  Additionally there is a texting feature you could use so eliminating or dropping your texting plan is an option.  There is still some configuration with groups and spam filtering I have to work on but so far I am very happy.

In the next couple of days I am going to imbed a PSA regarding the Lupus Foundation walk that I will be participating in.  As a reminder you can donate to this cause through the link on the right side of the page titled “Support My Walk for Lupus”.

On Friday I received my new hard drive for my Macbook.  Within minutes of walking in the door I was pulling the dead drive out and installing the new one.  After that came the long process of installing the Mac OS X though I have to say that it installs faster than Windows.  It’s great having my Macbook back, Three days seemed an eternity (I may be a little too dependent).  Everyday I add another application that I realize was previously installed and lost when the drive crashed.

The other drive will be sent to a data recovery service to retrieve whatever data possible.  Having learned a painful lesson (that I was all to aware of before this) and will be setting up time machine this week.  In addition to time machine I will backup photos and important documents on DVD’s at regular intervals…I will not go through this again.

This weekend I went to Sorticulture which is a local garden arts event here in Everett.  This is something I have not previously attended and had thought that it would be small with relatively little to see.  After arriving I was surprised to see a large variety of booths with mostly hand crafted garden art and rare plants.  If I had a yard, blasted apartments, I would have purchased numerous items.  Going to events like these inspire the creative side of me which has largely been suppressed for years.  Now I just need to figure out what to make…this is the hard part.

I enjoy and respect the people at these type of events as they tend to be very creative and concerned about the environment.  Most of the items are made in environmentally friendly ways and reflect nature in their form and function.  As we approach the summer solstice I am looking forward to finding similar events and hope that they will help spur some ideas for my own creative outlet.

It’s a sad day as the hard drive in my Macbook has died. Replacing the hard drive is not a problem and in fact could be a good thing as I could use more space. The bad part of this all is that I only recently upgraded to Leopard and have not yet implemented time machine. I will be investigating data recovery services in hopes that I can save some of the hard drives contents, especially family photos.

I am usually good about backups and will admit that I was complacent in this case. After the hard drive is replaced I will be getting an external hard drive and setting up time machine.

For anyone reading this I would urge you to backup your data regularly, seriously don’t wait do it now!

If anyone out there can recommend a reputable and fair data recovery service let me know. One I looked at has a flat rate of $279 for a single hard drive.

Next up is snow leopard with a release date of September and while it doesn’t snow here in September (a very bad snow leopard joke) I do plan on being an early adopter this time around.

On June 1st I read and article on ubergizmo titled “big bellies love the sun”.  The article discusses a solar powered compacting trash can capable of alerting personnel when it is full.  As it turns out I saw one of these units in a local park the day before reading the article.

The trash compacting bins can hold 8 times the waste of an average waste can and are powered entirely by solar energy.  An article in philly.com mentions another pretty cool feature of the bins:

As the bins fill, a sensor will shift from green to yellow to red, and the BigBelly’s wireless device will phone Streets Department headquarters with the news.

I pictured ET phoning home as I read that part.  This is a great feature given the personnel responsible act when the alert is received.

Prior to posting this I read a total of four articles on the BigBelly’s and at least two had several comments challenging the projected savings and the city’s choice in purchasing such devices.  Having seen more than my share of parks with over flowing trash cans I personally welcome such purchases.  While the short term investment is more than the typical trash can the savings in bettering our parks would seem ample ROI in and of itself.  Beyond the aesthetics of a clean park the staff time previously used to empty the bins more frequently can be allocated to other neglected tasks.

As I visit more local parks in the coming months for geocaching I hope to see more and more of these BigBelly’s making an appearance.

So far this has been a busy week at work and otherwise. Production support is ordinarily busy so really this is not surprising although Monday seemed to be exceptionally packed with fires to put out. The fires are mostly out, with the exception of a few hot spots here and there, and now I am concentrating on some product performance enhancements.

The main stream media is buzzing with H1N1 (aka Swine Flu) and what they are billing as “the coming pandemic”. CNN actually had a story talking about Twitter and how it has made public tensions of H1N1 worse while at the same time CNN had at least four separate stories relating to H1N1 on their homepage at the same time. It seems to me the main stream media, which has always sensationalized “bad news”, is far more to blame for public tensions. Online social sources such as blogs, twitter, and Wikipedia are generally understood to be written by the general public and common sense should be used when reading them. The news media is supposed to be a trusted source of reliable information for the public and their word is often taken as fact without a second thought. In reality each news media company has its own agenda (political and financial) which manipulates the facts and promotes only the stories which fit their needs (such as sensationalizing the current public health situation). I apologize for that rant and this ends my commentary on both N1H1 and the main stream news media.

Tech news seems to be abuzz with cloud computing, netbooks, and Windows 7. Cloud computing, while not entirely new, has gained momentum to the degree that it will likely be used not just by corporations seeking to minimize capital expenditures in technology but also by individual users that do not have the need for a powerful stand alone system. One group that would seem to benefit from cloud computing and the economical netbooks is college students who often do not have the spare money for a nice notebook.

Windows 7, the next Microsoft operating system, is chugging along and is being mentioned on an ever increasing basis. There were a couple of resources that came across twitter via @jldavid. First are some sample book chapters from Microsoft on Windows 7 and second is a blog style web page that discusses Windows 7. While my primary home computer is a Macbook I do have one laptop at home that runs Vista and I can say that I am not a fan of the Vista OS. I am hoping that Windows 7 will overcome the shortcomings and annoyances Vista brought to the table.

The other day while browsing in Barnes and Noble (admittedly one of my favorite stores) a magazine caught my eye. This magazine had Google written all over it with their traditionally bright colors which seemingly called my name. Drawn to the magazine I was at once stunned by the words “gOS” which could only mean Google OS. With the tech blogs I read and geeks I follow on Twitter how could I have missed the elusive operating system from Google? Rumors of an operating system being worked on by Google have circulated for a while now and this seemed to be its debut.

After opening the magazine and reading some of what was written it became clear that Google had not in fact released or even planned on releasing an operating system (at least not by this name). gOS did not stand for Google OS but rather “Good OS”. The operating system was Linux with a Google flavor to it (Bright Google like colors and Google related widgets). Android is much more a Google OS than gOS although it should be pointed out that Android is a collaborative work and is also based on a Linux kernel.

While I did not buy the magazine I did download gOS as soon as I got home (I am a Google fan). After burning the ISO to a DVD I installed it to a VM on my Macbook. The icons and various widgets felt a bit like they were meant for a child though the OS itself seemed to be just fine. While the widgets and overall looks could be changed to the user’s desire I think it would be easier to just install Ubuntu which I already like the look and feel of.

A bit sad that I had not found a truly new OS it did reawaken my desire to play with Linux. Linux+ may not be in my immediate future but I will be trying a few distro’s and relearning some of the features they offer. The latest version of Ubuntu (Jaunty Jackelope) is out so that will be the first on my list.

As a person that loves all things technology it is always exciting when I am able to get a new toy. My latest purchase is a T-Mobile (HTC) G1 phone. The phone arrived yesterday and I have barely been able to set it down. Admittedly if I had the spare money to throw around I would buy an iPhone though I can’t see paying nearly $600 for a phone. As a Mac owner and overall Apple fan it’s a tough call but I am also a Google fan so there was some solace in that fact.

The touch screen on the G1 is awesome though lacking multitouch capabilities at this point (I hear it is coming). Applications abound in the Android market place as well as online. Much of the next few days will be spent trying out the various features of the phone. The first app I installed was Twidroid which is a twitter application. In addition to throwing out some tweets from the phone this weekend I plan on making a blog entry from it as well.

And now I am off to various stores for some much needed shopping.