land of rubbercake

organize your life

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:57:45 -0400

In today’s digital age, it’s very hard to deny that people are repeatedly and consistently turning to computers and the internet to “help them” better manage themselves. People are no longer simply satisfied with having a little black book of contacts and a planner to keep your days and weeks in control. Life has become so fluid in fact, that those little black books and planners are becoming ever more increasingly tattered with an overwhelming amount of erasure marks or ink spots.

So what’s one to do about this dramatic shift into the digital age? Roll with it. There’s a few things out there that can help you manage yourself better and help prevent an overwhelming potential loss of data. Many people that rely on the digital age to keep their lives in order experience, at one time or another, a catastrophic loss of data. May it just be a contact book or something as precious as thousands of digital images, but it affects all with that dreadful sinking feeling of loss.

Let’s start with simple backing up. The majority of the common “user” doesn’t back up. Ever. I was what the industry considered a “power user” and I never even backed up. About one year ago, my parents’ computer up and fried itself which included the hard drive. Throughout a seven day process at a repair shop, about half of the memories were recovered. Since that day, I’ve had a comprehensive online backup going. Every single night at 11pm, my computer begins updating a 448-bit encrypted server with ANY file that may be different on my computer. The fine folks over at www.mozy.com are what provide this. I have an unlimited amount of backup space and a ridiculous encryption level to help a.) keep my stuff backed up and b.) keep that stuff safe from prying eyes. For a 15% off discount for your signup, enter BESTOFMONTH in the promo box at https://mozy.com/registration. This promo ends July 31st though! That covers backups. Local backups are on you, this method simply keeps your digital life in a remote location to prevent the loss of everything local destroying your digital inventory.

Next up, we’ll go with something simple and quick. Everyone knows with instant messaging is and if you don’t use it, simply skip to the next section! I’ve never given up on instant messaging and I’m still finding ways to improve my experience. I work for the computer labs on campus, have an iMac at home, and am found frequently with my head buried in my iPhone. How am I to keep all of that together? MSN repeatedly kicks me off in other locations because they’re slowing rolling out their multi-logon APT, AIM multiple-logon messages make me want to punch things, and let’s not get into Facebook chat and it’s horrific stability. One company has fixed all this and has prevented me from needing to set up multiple different clients in different places. The fine people at http://www.trillian.im have been coding clients for 10 years now and my satisfaction level is through the roof. Check out that website for detailed info on how well the Windows version, Mac version, and iPhone version all work together. (Guess that wasn’t so quick).

Alright. Google Sync. This is the meat and potatoes of the article. In fact, it’s the whole point I even considered writing something like this. Google Sync is what seals the deal on becoming digitally connected. My wife and I faced a challenge a few years back when we first got into the smartphone market. I have contacts, she has contacts, I have calendars, she has calendars, but we had no idea what the hell the other person was doing and we had to ask each other for different phone numbers if we didn’t have it in our phone.

So let’s think about this. How can I get the contacts and calendars between two separate devices perfectly in sync? Back in the days of just Palm and Windows Mobile, there really were no solid options for that. I found several busted Windows Mobile options that actually did erase our calendars and contacts more than once (fortunately I was paranoid and routinely backed them up via Google export features). Nowadays though, this is a pretty simple task. Regardless of whether or not you have Windows mobile, an iPhone, a BlackBerry, or even a Nokia S60, Google can keep your stuff together.

The wife and I didn’t want to share the same inbox (who would?), so we established a common-ground Google account to establish this on. Before jumping right into the mobile-side of things, you need to establish some ground rules. These pointers apply to both setting up a joint account sharing calendars and contacts and setting this up with just yourself. You need to preplan! The wife and I created individual calendars for the both of us, a bills calendar, a joint calendar (events we’d both be involved in), and a Birthday calendar because our memories are the sharpest. Next, you navigate yourself to http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/ and learn about how to set up this wondrous tool on your device. The reason you establish the calendars first is because you need to setup Sync and checkbox “Calendars to Sync” later. These are pretty much all the basics. As you can see in the picture, things can get a little crazy ;)

Now that you’ve gotten sync working on calendars and contacts, you can rest assured that your digital black book and planner are now backed up if some certain device were to quit on you. To further expand your synchronized life, you can share the calendars with other Gmail addresses to keep them in sync which is good for situations of multiple people. That way, I can log into my personal Gmail account, make a change to a calendar, it will update itself in the joint account, and then on my wife’s phone and my phone all in a matter of seconds.

Moving on! Three things left. Let’s talk about the Firefox “Power User”. Those of you who know about the internets, know NOT to use Internet Explorer. Those of you who know this, have moved to either Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or possible Apple’s Safari. While Internet Explorer and Safari are semi-platform independent, you can look to Firefox or Chrome on ANY platform out there. Linux, Windows, Mac, you got it. You may hear from the Chrome fanboys telling you that it’s the latest and the greatest and the blah blah blah and in some manners they’re right. It is faster, a little more stable, and less of a power hungry beast. But recently Firefox has introduced this product they call Firefox Sync. Located here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/sync/, you can read about how you can now keep your bookmarks, passwords, history, and even tabs all in sync across multiple platforms. I have this tool installed on my iMac, my iPhone, and my Windows roaming network profile at school. I only really wanted this for bookmarks, and now I’m never left without anything (almost literally).

Next up, let’s talk about a to-do list. This is pretty specific to iPhone people, but it actually applies to anyone with a web browser as well. The Getting Things Done based website www.toodledo.com is great for someone looking to get reminded that they have stuff to do. A similar product by the OmniGroup LTD is out there, but is CRAZY expensive for a desktop client and a separately purchased iPhone client. Toodledo cost me $3 on the iPhone and it’s robust web interface is all I’m really looking for. Why on earth would I even want a desktop client when I spend well over half of my time away from my desktop? Check it out if you’re like me and need a reminder on almost anything in life because you’re a.) incredibly forgetful or b.) a vicious procrastinator.

Finally at the end, I wanted to offer you the incredible beast known as Dropbox. Dropbox is a lifesaver more often than not and not to mention it being terrifically convenient for anything file-related. Being in college, I realized that I needed to access files on different machines whether it be referencing the e-textbooks I purchase or slowly writing a paper over the course of a few days. I’ve never been a fan of USB Thumb Drives though. They always seemed a little dodgy and horrendously insecure in the sense that it’s very easily forgotten about and then poof your info is all out there. Burning a CD for just a 200kb paper is just ridiculous, so what do I do? I head to www.dropbox.com.

I have Dropbox installed on my iMac, on my iPhone, and on my netbook. Anything I put into my Dropbox seamlessly syncs across any computer with the client installed. I can access any of the files via the iPhone app and could also if I has an Android phone. I can go to school and pop open the web interface and get my files there too. If you’re someone who relies on a thumb drive to stay mobile and keep your important files with you, Dropbox will change your life. As a self-plug, I would invite you to use this link to sign up: https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTE1NjgzNDY5 It’ll give you an extra 0.25GB of storage space if you sign up for the free account (2.0GB).

Thanks for reading. Please ask questions if you have them. I’m constantly trying to find ways to slipstream my life and make things a little simpler so I don’t have to worry about retarded things like “HOLY CRAP my address book just deleted itself!” :) Cya!

on the order of apps

Sat, 8 May 2010 07:38:01 -0400

As you may or may not realize, I’m the owner of a Twitter account named TodaysFreeApps where I (sometimes painstakingly) post links to iPhone or iPodTouch apps that have gone on sale. Usually this solely includes games as people with productive and meaningful apps don’t put their stuff on sale because, let’s face it, if it’s really that useful, people will keep paying for it. Either way, there’s a really good bit of apps that I use almost every single day that I thought I should share seeing that most of them are in fact NOT games. There you have it.

1-- Trapster (via @Trapster): http://bit.ly/9Ih9zm This app is fantastic, so long as you have a passenger. I admit that I do not even have it installed on my iPhone anymore; but my wife does! I’ve LONG since given up trying to do almost anything on there while even sitting at a red light. So for all the passengers out there, give this a grab. It’s quite accurate and it’s community driven, so without more users, traps won’t be reported!

2-- Shazam (via @ShazamID): http://bit.ly/dwcFLa Shazam is an amazing awesome app. So many times you’re out and you hear something on the elevator, or in the restaurant, or at the club (?), now you can just Shazam the song you’re hearing and it’ll tell you exactly what you’re listening to!It also includes cover art for the album, lyrics, a YouTube link, an iTunes link, and minor social integration.

3-- Words with Friends (via @newtoy): http://bit.ly/bHCgNW If you’re a Scrabble fan, you should already have this and I shouldn’t need to explain. If you DON’T have this, you should go grab it right now. Play as many games as you’d like again real opponents from all over! Beautiful interface and since you can run multiple games at once, you rarely find yourself waiting very long.

4-- Boxcar (via @Boxcar): http://bit.ly/849dlu Apple’s push notification service has been awesome in the iPhone OS 3.0 era. But let’s face it, if you get more than one push, you’ve thereby completely lost a record of the previous however-many pushes that you may have received. For someone like me, I’m on Twitter and Facebook all the time getting pushes. I’m also ‘that guy’ that wants his emails pushed to him too. If all you use Boxcar for is Twitter & Facebook push collection, you’ll soon find you’ll be missing a lot less.

5-- Opera Mini (via @Opera): http://bit.ly/b49rPC Opera Mini isn’t a perfect alternative to Safari on the iDevice market, but that’s not even the point. The point is that it’s an alternative!! In Apple’s god-like domination of their own platform, it’s beyond words how astounding it is to have an alternative web browser. Give Opera a whirl if you’re searching for a different browser.

6-- Facebook (via @facebook): http://bit.ly/bYeqB7 Not really going to write a lot about this except a.) who doesn’t have a Facebook account and b.) this app has it’s shortcomings, but it’s world’s better than the web-interface for the popular social networking site.

7-- TwitBird (via @TwitBird): http://bit.ly/d1Oq6l I’ve tried a lot of Twitter clients throughout the months. A few paid but mostly ones that have gone on sale while they were attempting to gain popularity. Running this free apps account, my personal account, and the two cat accounts (don’t ask, I didn’t start that!), using TwitBird makes things so much easier and does it while looking gorgeous.

8-- MobileRSS (via @mobilerss): http://bit.ly/cEcMo8 Much like TwitBird, I’ve tried a lot of Google Reader clients as well. Mobile RSS is the one I simply kept coming back to because of it’s rock solid functionality. Both TwitBird and MobileRSS are run by the same guys Nibiru Tech and they have provided bug fix updates on a near consistent bi-weekly schedule which shows how dedicated to development these guys really are.

9-- DropBox (via @DropBox): http://bit.ly/bu8T6X Dropbox will solve almost all of your multiple computer and traveling to different locations problems. Simply put, you sign up for a free Dropbox account here: http://bit.ly/cv1q9z and then grab the Dropbox app linked above. The website will walk you through installing the desktop client on your Windows, Mac, or Linux PC and bam, you’ll have everything in sync that you put in there. No more flash drives, no more burning CDs. It’s all free, so give it a whirl!

10-- Photoshop.com Mobile (via @Photoshop): http://bit.ly/c8Zdk8 This completely free mobile photo editor is brought to you from the massive Adobe company. Providing such essential basic features as crop, straighten, rotate, flip, exposure, saturation, tint, b&w, contrast, sketch, soft focus, sharpen, a list of effects, and a list of borders, this is all you’ll need to quickly touch up a photo and then share it via Facebook or TwitPic!

11-- We Rule (via @WeRuleGame): http://bit.ly/9Zslez This game, while somewhat synonymous with that dreaded FarmVille game, is really a beast of it’s own. The game is centered on the plant-harvest crops model, but limits you very heavily to only planting a certain number of these farms. It’s more centered around the social interaction and building shops for other rulers to order stuff from. Besides, the game’s masterminds are in fact the SAME guys behind the Age of Empires 2 saga on the PC from forever ago.

12-- Doodle Bowling (via @GameResort): http://bit.ly/cojTAI True, this is a game. But the constant updates bringing more and more bowling themes and the rapid response I received via customer support remind me that fantastic app developers deserve recognition. Also, you can connect via Facebook and see if you can destroy your friends’ scores too!

13-- AT&T’s Mark the Spot: http://bit.ly/8XW0Tu This last link is simply included so that every single time you find yourself cursing at the service that you’re tied to due to lack of options, you can TELL THEM ABOUT IT. Not sure if they actually care, but that’s definitely not the point!

Thanks for reading!

apple: edit undo yourself

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:57:24 -0500

Apple.

Hypocrisy. I love my Apple crap! But their God-complex is getting rough. I've been patiently awaiting Apple to get their heads straight and either a.) relax on their overly-oppressive app store approvals or b.) get to another carrier because I can't stand AT&T. While these two items are in fact completely unrelated, I feel like them accomplishing just ONE of them would've made me restore faith in them as a "forward thinking" company. But alas, we're coming up on the 3yr mark this coming June and neither of those things have happened.

As a matter of fact, this entire post was inspired by the recent actions that was in direct opposition to what I was hoping would happen. You can read all the articles you want about how Apple removed over 5,000 "overtly sexual" apps (AppleInsider - http://bit.ly/bTsz6C or GeekSugar - http://bit.ly/cXdmVv -- yes, I read GeekSugar :P) and they all say the same thing. Beyond that, I must point out that it's pretty pointless to keep reading because I'm just going to be echoing the same things that everyone else has been. But I felt it necessary because maybe (just maybe) it'll help me feel better about all of this.

Two of the most notable apps that were removed were iWooble Boobs and Baberoo (two of the most notable for me, at least). Pictured in line here with the text, you can see the main loaded screen for both of these apps. I find them to be VERY normal, very simple and wonderfully designed apps. They don't show any nudity at all! iWooble actually doesn't even come with any pictures of any kind, you have to provide them yourself. But alas, these 'small-time’ developers were completely removed from the app store (along with 5,000+ similars). Let's conclude this thought with yet a third article link from AppleInsider - http://bit.ly/9DSN3w. This article shows you that even though the two previously mentioned apps which were purely recreational may have been the target, this app, Simply Beach, actually was designed with the intention of SELLING something! Something wearable! But ... removed.

With that being said, let us take this time to point out some of the things that were in fact NOT removed from the app store. Playboy, Maxim, Sport Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, FHM, and Seduce a SuicideGirl. Don't get me wrong, they're fantastic apps! Most employ a new fantastic idea of using the app store as a delivery method for new issues which was previously destroying multitudes of trees. But what does this say? Is this favoritism? Is this another way of "shitting on the little guy"? What's the FULL story behind all of this?

Lastly, let's point out that Safari STILL exists on the iPhone and the iPodTouch. It's the most WONDERFUL gateway to the internet on the phone and there is no approval process for which website you want to go to! Why is it that "Mom & Dad Apple" won't let me have anything I want in the form of an app on my phone, but will allow me to go to www.pornhub.com or images.google.com on my Safari browser? Why can't I have pictures of mostly naked (if not fully naked) women (or men, for you female readers) delivered to me in app form, but I can buy a song that repeatedly calls women "bitches" or "whores" or very very consistently uses the word "n*gger". Where's the freedom of speech? Where did the idea of net neutrality go? And lastly, why can I go to the iTunes store on my phone, search for "The Hangover" (which offers both male and female nudity), and purchase it on the go but I can't have wobbly boobs??

why we do, what we do

Fri, 5 Feb 2010 06:28:46 -0500

In the past ... and I guess, in the present, Liz and I have been known to get into other people’s business. The time has come for two things to be accomplished now that that’s been said. First off, an apology. Second off, an explanation.

We are sorry. We are sorry for making waves. We are sorry for putting our noses where they sometimes shouldn’t be. We’ve gotten ourselves into business sometimes that makes people particularly uncomfortable and in rare cases, causes us to possible lose a friend. In those cases we reflect and realize that we were just trying to help, even though our help wasn’t asked for, and it back fired on us. It’s THOSE times that warrant an apology. And it’s also those times that warrant the following EXPLANATION.

Liz and I have been married now for FOUR years! Four years! I can hardly believe it’s been this long and this amazingly wonderful. What the masses failed to tell us though is how incredibly rough it was going to be! They all had the most wonderful well wishes and all the good lucks and such, but no one said flat out “This is going to be hard, keep working at it and you guys can get through it!” THAT would’ve been good to know.

In light of that, let’s reflect on the past four years and maybe some light will be brought to you about why our noses end up in everyone else’s business. Liz and I got married in January of 2006, a simple courthouse marriage of signing papers smile at each other and then going out to a small restaurant to say “Yay!” There’s a back-story to that, but it’s irrelevant. In June of the same year, we had our wonderful ceremony wedding and our first cruise (which sparked the addiction to cruises...).

Almost immediately following that, everything seemed to fall apart. Liz had slipped into a depression and I seemed to be unhappy with everything going on. We both seemed to feel overwhelmingly trapped and we couldn’t do anything about it. After a couple of months of this, we finally decided that Liz needed counseling. Liz’s counseling progressed beautifully and it turns out that after we were married, she decided to finally let her guard down and everything took over and virtually incapacitated her. After a few months of individual counseling, I agreed to go with her on a few appointments to have marital counseling. This single point act was probably what saved our marriage and I have Liz to thank for actually getting me to.

During the next two years of marital counseling, worked through SO MUCH. Looking back on things, I find it amazing that there was that much to work through, and I find it amazing that we even had issues. I thought we were perfect! I thought “love would be enough”, you know all that jazz. WAY not enough. Our counselor along with the motivations of our love and the desire to actually work things out are what kept us together to reach this four year point. I guarantee if it weren’t for counseling, I would’ve been long divorced.

The first useful thing to point out is that regardless of the fact that we had been conversing with humans for 20+ years of our lives, it turned out that we had absolutely NO idea how to communicate. What a strange concept! It’s true though, we had no idea how to communicate with each and that’s most important when there’s a disagreement.

Secondly, we needed to let go of things in the past. Regardless of how much you say you’re over something and how much you can convince the other person of that, you actually have to release it. Stifling your problems and hoping that they just “go away” really never works. It’ll come up years later and haunt you. This very closely tied in with the failure to communicate.

Our marriage was spiraling out of control and no one was there to help. We kept talking to our friends, our family, anyone that would listen in fact in hopes for some kind of magical advice or something that would fix everything. Well it turns out, it didn’t exist. Going to the counselor though (one who specialized in military marriage counseling), WAS the magic. She walked us through everything and slowly but surely, we found our way into a wonderfully beautiful marriage.

All these pictures, by the way, have significance to all of this writing. One weekend in South Carolina, while we were on the verge of giving up, we decided to go to Columbia just to get away from our lives and enjoy each other. Our hearts were so heavy that we didn’t know if it would work, but it most certainly did. Getting away from our lives just to spend a few hours with each other (we ended up coming back home early cause we missed the cat...) was a good dose of reminder as to why we fell in love in the first place.

I’m really sorry that turned into a short novel. Our lives are very public because we choose them to be very public. If I can keep my personal business in the public eye that needs it to help out just one person, then it’s worth it. I would hate to see anyone suffer through something just because they didn’t have the right tools. Thank you for reading. And for anyone who we have hurt by being too nosey, we are sorry.