Firestarter

Posted on 9 February 2009 by Terry Chay

Well the Kindle 2 came out today so I preordered it.

This morning two people IM’d me about it so I decided to give the first my Amazon referral bucks. I give Amazon bucks semi-randomly to various friends and he asked me how I do it.

I use a “Buy from Amazon” bookmarklet I wrote to make life easier.

You can drag that into your toolbar if you like. One nice thing is to remove the second prompt and just replace the href with the tag to yourself. I keep it this way so that I remember to put the associate ID of one of my friends since I put them on rotation.

Amazon.com: Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation): Kindle Store

Anyone else wonder why Amazon decided to call it the Kindle? Shouldn’t it be something more akin to Treehugger? I thought Green was in.

My take on the K2 after the jump

Gratitude

Posted on 3 February 2009 by Terry Chay

Even though it’s been a month, I still have yet to write down my New Year’s resolutions. I think that’s because last year I only completed one of four, after being three for three in 2007, I’m demoralized.

If I were to write one, the resolution would center around becoming a person more honest with myself and, by extension, with others. So far, I’ve found it relatively easy to do the physical aspects like “workout” but rather hard to do emotional ones like “letting go.” This is compounded by the fact that it is relatively easy to write achievable goals for the former, but not so easy to for the latter.

I stumbled across an application this morning after working out. It’s selling for 99 cents on iTunes.

The idea is to write five things a day you are thankful for. Every so often (every day?) after writing in the journal it gives you an inspirational quote. I guess the idea is that if you focus on the positive you can create an abundance mindset and thus be happier. As for me, I just think that we don’t focus on our inner selves enough.

We cannot exercise the physical heart directly, so we do so indirectly with large muscles moving. Perhaps we cannot exercise the emotional heart directly, so we do so indirectly with small gratitudes giving.

Maybe it’ll help, and, if you’re in the same boat, maybe it’ll help you too. The nice thing is, you can even do this without an iPhone.

Cubecheater

Posted on 2 February 2009 by Terry Chay

This iPhone application is amazing:

I remember growing up with Rubik’s cubes in grade school. In college, a friend showed me how he came up with his solution at my age simply by inventing algorithms to transpose any two corners or sides. I never managed to get past two rows myself—a shame to my alma mater no doubt.

It goes a long way to show the sort of person I am that as a kid I would love to “solve” cubes by cracking them open and putting it back together delta a single side piece which I would flip. I would then mix the cube up and put it back.

I guess you have to be a geek like me to get the humor in that one.

Features I wish the iPhone had

Posted on 10 June 2008 by Terry Chay

Yesterday, after the iPhone 3G announcement, someone at work made a comment, “For $200, there is no reason not to get an iPhone.”

I thought that shows we engineers have a serious lack of imagination.

The reasons I gave at the time to him are no different that this Gizmodo article.

Still shows a serious lack of imagination.

On my way to work, between swigs from my water bottle and wondering why God turned up the brightness and volume on the world today, I decided that the deal-killing feature the iPhone 3G was missing is a free “booty call” feature.

I wish phones came with that.

iPhoneDevCamp

Last night I met Dom of iPhoneDevCamp. He mentioned that a lot of people are registering for iPhoneDevCamp 2 (August 1-3 in San Francisco) and will likely be filled up before the event. So register now.

My wireless bill

Posted on 20 August 2007 by Terry Chay

For those of you who asked after this appeared, my first AT&T wireless bill was only 66 pages long (33 double sided pages).

Thanks, Justine Ezarik, for reminding me that I’m still as unpopular as I was in high school.

Oh well, I better sign up for online billing.

The Steve and the Al would be happy.

[My iPhone scam after the jump] Continue reading →

Perfect Ringing (This iPhone)

Posted on 24 July 2007 by Terry Chay

At work today Mark Kater and Sarah were joking that I’ve been as sick as long as I’ve had my iPhone. I guess my iPhone has bad Feng Shui.

Then Mark mentioned that the song in the iPhone television commercials, gives him the classically Apple 38 seconds of “all is good in the world” before he wakes up back to reality. I hadn’t heard the song, but when I mentioned this to our graphic designer, he said he hears the song in his sleep. The song is “Perfect Timing (This Morning)” by Orba Squara.

Hmm… that would make an awesome ringtone.

Perfect Ringing North Beach, San Francisco, California Nikon D70, Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D, Canon 500D close up filter 1/45sec @ f/1.4, iso200, 85mm (127mm)

It was indeed “Perfect Timing” because today was also when someone posted a desktop app for customizing the iPhone ringtone.

Some notes:

To get the song, there are a lot of ways. I purchased it in iTunes Music Store, burned to CD, and reimported as MP3
Intel Mac binary only. No PowerPC, No Windows
“There is no Step 1.”
If your unlock fails, you have to click the “skip” button the second time around. Else it will keep playing the pig zapper sound.
The “Put the iPhone into Recovery Mode” means to hold the home and sleep buttons on the iPhone for 25 seconds until you see the recovery mode icon
Just kill “iTunes Helper” so iTunes doesn’t start up on you
Remember to select the ringtone (a green + appears next to the ringtone)
The iPhone speakers have a shitty bass

Have fun! Continue reading →

The iPhone

Posted on 23 June 2007 by Terry Chay

I was talking to Dru about that today. He said he’s not worried. “Apple says it’ll be fine as long as you go to a Cingular store and not Apple Store on the day of launch.”

Web 2.0 Lunch Chinatown, San Francisco, California Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX 1/640sec @ f/2.8, iso100, 16mm (24mm)

“Maybe in podunkville. This is San Francisco, the geeky New York City. I don’t think is enough space in the stores to house all the phones people are going to want to buy. I love it when pundits say that the iPhone is going to bomb. More! More of that! I wish more would say that so I’d actually have a chance at getting one.”

laughter “I have an engineer who said it was too expensive and all that. And then this morning, he downloaded the guided tour. I haven’t seen it yet, but he has—it’s like twenty minutes. After he watched it he said, ‘Blackberry is going to get crushed.’”

:-O

When I got back from lunch, I so had to check out the video. When we were watching, Gerry kept saying, “That’s sick!” The demo of the new earbuds are especially impressive in its cleverness.

When the video got to this fictitious SMS conversation between the speaker and Johnny Appleseed about having a drink before going to Sushi Ran. The place?

“Let‘s meet at Kell’s.”

Coincidentally, my last SMS message reads… 6/21/07 09:51PM. A: “Kels, jackson and montgomery.”

Yes, I just got drunk there yesterday after the RockYou! party.

Morgan and Jia Thristy Bear, SOMA, San Francisco, California Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX, SB-800 1/25sec @ f/3.2, iso2000*, 16mm (24mm)

Maybe God is trying to tell me something…

I read you loud and clear, Steve.

(Speaking about New York and San Francisco, I went to my first baseball game in 18 years and it was between the New York Yankees and the San Francisco Giants. Last time I went, I saw Barry Bonds play also, as my friends heckled him from the corporate boxes. This time, I noticed I had no reception on my cell phone and I thought to myself…hmm, I’m switching to AT&T soon. Bonds hit his 749th home run.)

Got a new iPod for Christmas?

Posted on 25 December 2006 by Terry Chay

iLounge has a great overview of their site’s resources.

Their Free iPod Book and Buyer’s Guide are my favorite because they’re drool-ready and a free download. Remember when this stuff was published in book (and later magazine) and you had to pay for it?

I’ve been using them since I got my first iPod in 2001—they were iPod Lounge before Apple laid down the law(yers)—and they’ve gotten better and better. My only complaint is that I wish their RSS feed had images.

Joining the anti-social

Posted on 11 December 2006 by Terry Chay

Blake Robinson is the lone pro-Zune voice in the CrunchGear wilderness. (Probably because they weren’t bribed like the Gizmodo folks were.) When commenting about their new commercial, I wondered if he’s found any Zune love out there.

He hasn’t.

An interesting thing he mentions in passing: he leaves the WiFi off because of battery drain. Remember five years ago CmdrTaco uttered the fabled words about the iPod release: