my life, my thoughts, my world.

Chances are if you’re on AT&T and you’ve ever had someone on Verizon try to send you a photo via MMS, you’ve experienced failure. Maybe you’re a Verizon customer and you thought you’d send a photo to someone on AT&T only to find yourself wondering why you never got a response. I could see how, if the ducky-face, a mirror, and your cutest new purchase from Victoria’s Secret was involved, this might cause some self-esteem problems. Worry no more, dear children of the cellpic generation, it isn’t you – it’s your carrier.

What exactly it is about the carrier I’ve not figured out. Chances are I won’t bother figuring it out either. The solution, it seems, is to make sure if you’re on VZW and you’re trying to MMS someone on AT&T that your message includes a subject and some caption text in addition to the picture. My fifty-something message trial today was met with a 100% failure rate on MMS sent from VZW users. When I asked the senders to try again with a subject and text the messages came through as expected.

Don’t you just love easy fixes?

Now, if you’re using an iPhone 4 and your MMS messages are being eaten by the evil data monsters – try resizing the pictures to fit under the 600k limit. Every other phone on the planet it does that automatically, but yours doesn’t.

More than two years ago, I stepped off an airplane at Lawson Army Airfield after 14 months in Iraq. My first destination off post? Anywhere I could find an iPhone. Since I’d just returned from a lengthy deployment, money was no object. Full retail? Not. A. Problem. Two months later the problems started. Regret took a back seat to my out-processing from the Army and my return to civilian life. When that primary objective was complete, I tried to get the iPhone replaced. Luck was not on my side, and neither was Apple. That bad experience came to an end yesterday when I picked up my new phone. Enter the HTC Aria.

HTC Aria and iPhone 2G

The first thing I noticed about this particular phone was the tiny size. In the smartphone arena it certainly won’t be compared to Goliath. It comes in physically smaller, as illustrated above, than the iPhone 2G by around half an inch (on its longest side). If you pop the backing off, which is a little difficult the first time, you gain access to the SIM card, microSD card, and battery of the device. Screen size and resolution are not going to win any contests either, but they’re well balanced and certainly allow for an enjoyable experience with both text and multimedia content. In the upper right side there is a power button, and on the left a volume rocker. The small circle at the bottom of the phone’s face is an optical trackpoint. Touch sensitive regions along the bottom of the screen are present for the home screen, menu, back, and search functions.

Using the phone is quite simple. Anyone who has ever used an iPhone should be able to pickup the use of this Android phone very easily. I spent most of yesterday trying out different apps and reconfiguring my theme. At no point was it ever confusing. Unsurprisingly, the applications from Google work flawlessly on the Android OS. Navigation is awesome. The integration with Google Voice, Gmail, and GTalk is equally excellent. While the Android Marketplace lacks the sheer volume of applications found in Apple’s AppStore, I was able to quickly find applications do to exactly what I wanted to do. Not a single one of them cost me a dime either. To Apple’s credit, I never paid for an iPhone app either.

Battery life is the one negative comment I’ve read. The Aria certainly does not have the largest capacity battery on the market. It does well with the battery it does have though. As of this writing my phone has been on, and active, for more than six hours. It still has more than 70% charge remaining. Now, I’m not one to sit around and use my phone all day to do things for which an actual computer is better suited so perhaps I’m not as picky as others. That said, if I can make it through my time away from home in a any given day while maintaining the means to communicate with others I’m happy. This phone fits the bill.

If you’ve somehow convinced yourself that Apple is some paragon of quality in the computer world you should stop reading now. Back in 2006, I converted to the Apple camp by purchasing a 15″ Core2Duo Macbook Pro. Shortly thereafter, I took that same laptop with me to Iraq. In the event one or more of my soldiers found themselves needing a laptop to borrow, I also brought my trusty old Fujitsu Lifebook P5020D.

Somewhere around two months into that tour, I started noticing hardware problems with the MacBook Pro. The screen was incredibly dark in the middle. This was especially true at startup. My FW800 drive would randomly disconnect. More often than not, the SuperDrive proved it was not so super after all. It lived a sheltered life, given the conditions. My P5020D was subjected to very harsh treatment, just as it had in many training exercises and even my first tour. The MacBook Pro got worse, the Fujitsu kept on ticking.

Apple was kind enough, when I got home, to replace the logic board, the super drive, and the screen. A few months later they got to do it all again. A few months after that I spilled a beer in the machine and finally killed it for good. Truth be told, I was more upset about losing a third-pint of a very excellent Texas-brewed springtime seasonal ale than I was the problem MacBook Pro.

Unfortunately, I had recently photographed a wedding and still needed to process those photos. Given the circumstances, I needed a new machine immediately. Since my Creative Suite 4 license was for Mac, and I had backed my MacBook Pro up a few hours before I killed it, another Mac was the clear choice. A few short days later I took delivery of a shiny new 24″ Core2Duo iMac. I was very impressed with its speed, and the screen.

My love affair with the screen ended after maybe six months. It took several more months for the burn-in problem to get to the point I could no longer tolerate it at any level. Even doing homework was becoming a chore when anything left on the screen longer than two minutes would stay around as an outline even after the window was closed. Thank goodness for AppleCare.

The kind people at the Genius Bar were skeptical of my claim of an LCD with image burn-in. That’s just not supposed to happen. My demonstration took about five minutes, and they agreed I needed a new screen. Fast forward a few days. My screen problems have been replaced with a new problem. Something did not get put back together correctly, as it now sounds like my computer is trying to take flight off my desk. It’s louder now than it was before with all fans at top speed because of heavy use. The noise is there immediately. I am not amused.

Before anyone jumps in with “well PCs fail more often” I’ll remind you of a few things: #1 Macs are PCs. #2 I worked for an AASP, and we had just as many Mac machines dropped off for repairs (hardware) or reconfiguration (software) as we did anything else.

Update: I had the “about to take flight” noises fixed. The Geniuses determined a sensor had broken during the screen replacement. That happened maybe three weeks ago. Burn-in is back in town now. That was a short life for this screen. What’s most annoying about these problems is that I need the screen real-estate for both my studies and my photography. Having downtime is not only killing my ability to effectively get my schoolwork done, it cuts into my ability to process any photoshoots (which happen to be my only source of non-VA income).

Click the above to load the Flickr page, see the notes describing the burn-in patterns – and get a link to the full resolution file. There’s one spot of dust on the sensor for my 5D and the screen’s surface is spotless. Those lines/marks are all inside the panel.

This is getting way ahead of myself, since my first brew is only 46hrs into primary fermentation, but that has never stopped me before. Anyhow, I ultimately want to be able to do all-grain brews. There’s nothing that would keep me from doing extract brews in an all-grain setup, I’d just use less of the equipment on the bench. Sounds like a deal to me.

After reading countless threads over at HomeBrewTalk.com, I came up with an idea or three for my own setup. Gravity is cheapest to construct, since no pumps are involved. Probably easier to sanitize too. The problem I see is vertical height. I’d like to be able to do everything without a ladder, or having several gallons of very hot water above my head. A single tier system looks awesome, but requires a few pumps and valves. These are not cheap, and present some hurdles in the sanitizing realm. I’m sure sanitizing is not all that difficult, since a ton of people brew a ton of beer in their very own single tier systems, so I am not too concerned about introducing a pump, or valves, to my setup. Money is the big issue here.

What I’ve come up with is a two tier system, with the HLT (hot liquor tank) and MLT (Mash/Lauter Tun) on the upper tier, and the brew kettle on the lower tier. I plan to use one pump, with a manifold on the intake and output to let me switch between input/output destinations. One input will pump from the HLT and output to the MLT. I’ll valve the HLT input shut, and open the MLT input to circulate until sparging time. Gravity will feed the post-sparge sweet wort into the brew kettle, which will input into the pump again for a trip through a crossflow cooler and into a carboy for the yeast pitch and primary fermentation.

I’ve not yet made enough progress in Google Sketchup, a few of its features are driving me batty, to show all the components just yet. What I do have, is below.

Rough Draft

Rough Draft

Any feedback from folks that have done this before is definitely welcome.

My friend Colby bought a barely-running EX250 to tinker with, and ultimately turn into a bike for care-free track days. Since I have absolutely nothing else to do right now, I invited him over to spin some wrenches. Spin them we did. For many hours. In vain.

Long story short, something screwy was going on with the spark plugs. They’d been changed already, but apparently they needed to be changed again. A new set I picked up today, fired the bike right up. The noises coming out of the engine are not supposed to come out of an engine, unless you just put a round of .50BMG through it.

Looks to me like Bumblebee needs a new engine.

Since I’d rather be rock climbing right now, this is going to be the short version. Last night I took delivery of one Monoprice-sourced mini-displayport to DVI adapter. This made me happy, as I could now use my external monitor with my 24″ iMac. Two screens are better than one, and such. I plugged in said adapter, and rejoiced. This joy was short-lived, as my internet suddenly stopped working. Given that Comcast is probably the single worst service provider known to man, I did not associate my failed connection with the addition of my second monitor.

For some reason, I could not connect to my wireless network. I could, however, connect to some open AP named “Guest.” I could also connect to my AirPort Express’ WPA2 network. Why, oh why, was my WRT54G’s WPA2 network timing out!? No clue. I tried for hours, resetting routers, nuking .plist files, changing wireless channels, etc. Nothing worked. Of course, every other wireless-enabled device in the house worked just fine and dandy through every single change. Only my iMac refused to play nicely. Finally, I gave up and packed up my iMac and my WRT54G (to recreate the problem) and headed for The Genius Bar.

Everything worked fine there.

What. The. Heck!?

When I returned home, it was right back to being broken again. This prompted me to go through exactly what was different, and the only thing I could point to was my second screen. Upon realizing this, I reached behind the iMac and unplugged the adapter. LET THERE BE WIRELESS! I’m sure, at that moment in time, I had the most bewildered face ever, but I’ll never know.

Now it looked like, despite all rational thought saying this was impossible, somehow my mini-displayport was unhappy with encrypted wireless. I moved the iMac to another screen in the house, and surprisingly enough my wireless still worked. Doublepluspuzzled. The only difference from there was one screen had a USB hub, and the other did not. Unplugging the USB hub on the Dell screen did nothing to resolve my lack of wireless. How very bizarre!

Electromagnetic Interference, I imagined, had to be the source of my problems. This shouldn’t be possible, given industry standards and whatnot. Ignore the fact that this very same screen spent a solid year plugged into my MacBook Pro before that unfortunate beer incident, and wireless worked that entire time. I did the only logical thing, and moved the screen away from the iMac. Specifically, I put it on the floor about three feet from the actual computer. When I plugged it in, my wireless remained. How very surprising. Thinking that moving it back would surely disconnect my wireless, and thus prove my EMI theory, I picked the screen back up and put it right back where it started. Only, nothing happened. In fact, I’m typing this from my iMac, with my browser on my second screen. All connected wirelessly.

If you can make sense of that, please contact some research agency and go figure out cold-fusion or something useful. This just makes no sense at all!

For the next several hours (days) I will pour over hundreds of reviews online seeking the perfect HD camcorder for use by field reporters. If this is sounds like something up your alley, by all means hit me with whatever you know. The best bang for the buck is somewhat crucial, but at this stage it should not require one to break the bank in order to get good quality for on-location reporting.

1080p at 30fps would be nice, and the ability to take external audio is crucial. Suggestions for portable (and wireless) audio solutions to be used during interviews are also highly encouraged.

Another thing that needs to be addressed is backups. Right now we have several hundred gigs of raw HD footage, and none of it is backed up. That is not good. Backup solution of choice for a Mac Pro acting as a video workstation would be a….. ?

My weekend project is now complete, and I now have three “high capacity” battery packs for my Vivitar 285HV speed lights. The project was started mainly in a quest for faster recycle times without resorting to AC power, or the use of the HV port (which is conveniently broken on all three of my 285s). Not having to worry about batteries running too low was a secondary concern. With everything said and done, the secondary is the only thing actually achieved. Recycle time with a 6V 4Ah SLA battery is identical to the recycle time with four 2700mAh AAs at full power. I can, however, fire off full power flashes long after the AAs are dead, and that is certainly useful. At 1/4 or 1/16 power, the recycle is a little faster after maybe 5 or 6 consecutive flashes, but for those first 5 or 6 flashes the AAs keep up just as well.

All in all, it feels like I wasted time and money on this project. Being able to shoot more is useful in limited circumstances, but typically I know what I want to shoot, set up, shoot it, and move on. On the bright side of things, the packs are pretty heavy so at least I can use them to keep my light stands anchored. At some point, I’ll end up buying some AlienBees and everything else required to take them out and about. Until then, I’ll use my power packs with my 285HVs and do what I do.

I’ll start this out with a photo, because we all know a picture is worth a thousand words.

Click Here for size HUGE

The purpose of my trip to Carson NF, on the very same weekend many Texans took to the outdoors for the opening weekend of the general deer season, was to try and fill my antlerless elk tag for Unit 5B in New Mexico. My Dad and I set out a little later than we had planned, but drove straight from San Marcos, TX to Carson NF, NM. Considering the distance we made pretty good time, but that is pretty easy to do when you swap drivers every few hours and only stop to fill up with gas.

When we arrived, the scouting began. Being out in a national forest the day before your season opens does wonders to give a man energy. Armed with a map, binoculars, and a few other odds and ends, we set out in search of elk sign. Unfortunately, I didn’t see, hear, or smell any sign of elk at all. That could have been a result of fairly high temperatures, or I could have just been looking in the wrong places.

At any rate, we identified a watering hole at the end of a draw between two fingers with plenty of trees and figured that was as good a place as any to hunt. Morning on opening day came real early, and real cold. A solid hour and a half before the sun even thought to grace us with its presence, we were in an position to overwatch the watering hole and the surrounding areas. Several hours passed, and the only signs of life were a few pickup trucks heading to their hunting spots, waiting a while, giving up, and leaving. Hunger struck, and I called the hunt’s end. With such total isolation from normal noise, if anyone within several miles had taken a shot at anything, the sound would have made it our way. The only gunshot heard all day, was me shooting a leaking tank so it would vent, and I could safely transport it to a dumpster.

While I did not fill my elk tag, the trip was still fun. I hadn’t been outright camping with my Dad in well over a decade, and as father-son bonding goes, you really can’t beat a hunting trip to the mountains.

Lately my blog has been pretty sparse, to say the least. You might even think I just gave up on the whole thing, but really I’ve just been too busy to bother. To catch up, school has started, as has a new on-campus job. Every once in a while, I even manage to do a little photography here and there. All of that conspires to take up every ounce of free time I have.

Most of you know my policy on homework, or at least my past policy on homework. Things have changed, or at least I am consciously attempting to change them. For the first time in recorded history, I actually have intentions of doing at least most of my homework. I’m not going to sit here and write, as a matter of permanent internet history, that I am going to do each and every homework assignment I receive henceforth. That would just be silly. I will say that I actually intend to not only pay attention to assignments and when they are due, but I will even make an effort to complete them before they are due. Yes, yes, I know – I really shouldn’t try to make too many changes at once, but hey when have I ever done things the easy way? Just to prove I’m serious, I just finished writing a paper that isn’t due until Wednesday. That’s right, I did something two whole days early. Not just something, I wrote a paper, before the due date.

Just to touch my other usual areas briefly, here’s a lovey list.

• My truck’s third door is still broken, and the tailgate doesn’t care to open most of the time.
• The SV gets much better gas mileage now that it has a fresh air filter, and fresh spark plugs. It now also has over 20,000mi on the clock.
• Uncle Sam still owes me around $3000.
• I do not get to play guitar as often as I would like.
• I still love photography, but hate post-processing.
• Hitting a rock with your lower spine while floating down the Guadalupe River, is most unpleasant.
• Whoever invented Cicso Clean Access, deserves to be shot many times at close range with rock salt out of a 12ga shotgun.
• If you thought Windows Vista was terrible, try running it in conjunction with Cisco Clean Access. I take no responsibility for suicidal thoughts which may arise as a result of Vista + CCA.
• I may change my minor from photography, to something that does not require me to spend hundreds of dollars on perishable supplies.

That is all, for now.

ps. given the wonderful “choices” we have, namely Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin, for the upcoming election…. I’m just going to go ahead and continue weeping for America. poor constitution ;_;