Crosley USB Turntable is Amazing!

My mother just bought me a Crosley USB Turntable for $150 and it's definitely worth the money. I have it plugged into an Apple HiFi and the quality is so good you can't tell if it's an iPod or vinyl.

Neglecting the Analog World

On a business trip a few weeks ago I did something I haven't done in years, I actually read a magazine. I've been so in-tune with drowning myself in the internet instead of reading a physical, analog periodical. Information is fed to me by way of videos and interactive media or better yet, cute diagrams that can basically sum up much of todays articles since everything seems to have a flow chart representing the idea which is being conveyed. All of this technology is contributing to rotting the part of my brain that use to take advantage of traditional media.

The magazine in choice was Wired, and like all the other issues, the current one consists of how to improve your life by means of digital technology and interacting with "virtual" friends rather then putting forth the effort of face to face rejection by your peers. A small part of me wants to revive the antique means of information intake while the other part can't wait for the iPad to fuel my digital needs.

iPad + iPhone Matching Wallpapers

If you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know that I'm a huge Apple fan (probably working for them didn't help matters). Almost every time Apple releases a new product, I'll be first in line to get it and the new iPad is no exception. I might not care for the name (altho it's growing on me) or the fact that it doesn't multitask (but that could be changed in an update) but those few downsides don't make up for the fact that it will be an amazing product right out of the gate just like the iPhone was. Lots of people are asking me why someone would even want it, well for me it will be a huge connivence. I usually do my web browsing while laying in bed with my laptop and I'm always worried it's going to slip and fall + this will be a great platform to show my photography on and when not in use it can act as a digital picture frame.

Since the iPad will allow you to actually have wallpaper viewable (unlike the iPhone that only displays it on the front screen) I figured I'd get a head start and create a few iPhone / iPad matching wallpapers. At first when I started making them, I was designing them vertical like the iPhone is laid out, however after watching the demo of how the iPad functions, I noticed by rotating it you will get more of the image on the top (when vertical) or sides (when horizontal). Since the resolution is 1024 x 768 on the device, I just made all the wallpapers 1024 x 1024 to compensate for rotation. Feel free to download the ones you want.

Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman

Blogger vs. Tumblr

Over the past few weeks I've toyed with the idea of switching this blog over to the tumblr platform. Reasons? Tumblr has some very cool templates and it's a breeze to create a post from an iPhone. Tumblr seems to be more about community, where it's encouraged to "repost" from someone else's blog, this in-turn drives more traffic to your blog (which is great when you're trying to promote your photography). However tumblr has some faults, unless you're a html/xml/css coding whiz, adding standard features that are found in blogger, like comments, are a pain in the ass. Tumblr has only been around since 2007 and the features are still in the infancy stages.

Blogger on the other hand has been around since 1999 and is now owned by google which owns the world. (I've always wondered if blogger has precedence in the google search engine over other blogging platforms?) Since the platform is in the mature stages, customization is endless, however most is built on old html code and the "slickness" just doesn't seem to be any comparison to tumblr blogs.

I took a stab at trying to switch over to tumblr but I ran into some snags. First, only a few tumblr templets give you the option for comments, and I NEED to have a comment feature (cuz I love hearing from you guys). There's a free service called Disqus that allows you to add comment options to tumblr providing you are somewhat familiar with coding and that the template you choose doesn't have jacked up code running throughout. Disqus has the option to take all the current comments that people have left in blogger and transfer them over to the Disqus servers which then can be embedded into tumblr. This sounds good in theory, but is complex in practice.

The next dilemma is I wanted to keep the feature "Linkwithin" which is what you see at the bottom of each of my post. This allows you to discover past blog post that are similar in nature to the current post. Linkwithin is not compatible with tumblr, which is a shame because tumblr has a HORRIBLE archiving structure and it makes finding old post very daunting. The last snag was with tags. For each blog post you can "tag" it with key words like "photography" or "design" which makes finding like post easy. Again, depending on which template you choose in tumblr this can be easy or hard. I have yet to find a tumblr template that includes at bare minimum comments and tags (maybe I'm not looking hard enough?)

So with that I decided to stay with blogger and just take some of the design aspects of tumblr and transfer them over which was a lot easier. But I couldn't just give up on tumblr so I created two blogs on their platform.

• I Got Sidetracked, which is just a bunch of random cool images I find on the web, with little or now text.
• iPhone Photography, Since tumblr is very easy to update with the iPhone, I created a gallery of nothing more then my iPhone pics.

I would love to hear your opinions. Do you have a preference of blogger over tumblr? Have you actually tried both platforms? If you're on tumblr, be sure to post a link so I can follow you :)

Awesome iPhone Dock - AirCurve

Over the weekend I upgraded my first generation iPhone to the new 3Gs. The only accessory I have for my iPhone is a dock that I keep on my night stand for when I use my phone as an alarm. Well, like all things Apple, the old accessories aren't compatible and I wasn't about to spend $29 on a stupid piece of plastic just to hold my phone. After some hunting I found the perfect solution, the Griffin AirCurve. Based on the way sound travels through a horn, the AirCurve amplifies the iPhones sound all while looking cool as hell being made out of thick acrylic. I found it on Amazon for $15 and it's worth ever penny.

After experiencing how cool this is, I now need to hunt down an old gramophone to play all the old vinyl I have laying around. I'm all about retro all of a sudden.

Apple's Hyperwall at the 2009 WWDC

At the WWDC (world wide developers conference) on Monday, Apple had a "hyperwall" on display which consisted of twenty 30-inch Apple displays. The screens were loaded with 20,000 of the most popular iPhone apps which would pulsate each time the app was download from the iTunes store via a live feed.

The hyperwall was built using Apples latest technology. It's powered by 20 Mac Pro towers each running the new Mac OS X Snow Lepoard.

If Apple made a tablet computer it should look like this:

This is the prototype for the CrunchPad.

Do you have a slow browser?

Found this interesting... over 65% of people are using Internet Explorer, which is the SLOWEST browser especially if it's IE7. If you're using IE, you should give Safari a try.

Maybe that's why people are always complaining that my websites load too slow....it's not me....IT'S YOU! :)

Pico Pocket Projector

Sick of squinting at your tiny iPhone screen during long flights? Why not just project the movie onto the back of the seat in front of you. The Pico Pocket Projector ($430) is an ultra-portable DLP/LED projector that measures just 2 by 4.1 by 0.7 inches, weighing only 4.2 ounces. It projects a screen size up to 60 inches on nearly any surface.

Methods of communication

Ever since the new iphone software was released in July with the ability to get all kinds of free apps, I've been obsessed with internet gadgets. I'm now on Facebook, Twitter, Loopt, Zintin, not to mention Flickr, AIM & this blog. All of these little apps are on my phone and let me stay connected to my friends in a way that is just absurd. As I was typing this an interesting scenario happened:

Ron messaged me on face book to find out when he worked the next day. He didn't have his phone so he couldn't call work. I texed Jessie (who does the schedule) to find out his shift, so then I could facebook him back the answer.

It amazes me the methods of communication these devices offer.

Laptop has a new brain

I finally got my laptop working again after a hard-drive crash (I take full responsibility for the crash as I was being a dumb ass and pushing the drive way over it's limit). Luckily I had backed everything up a few days earlier so all I really lost was a few Photoshop files and some system settings. If you haven't backed up in a while, don't you think now is as good a time as any?

I use a great little program called ChronoSync for my backups. It synchronizes my files to an external 500GB HD, my G5 and to a 60BG iPod (as I use my iPod as a main backup of my computer). What's really great about ChronoSync is I can make sure the files are actually on the external drive and I'm not relying on an incremental backup like some other utilities.


Here's my old HD. The little needle thing-a-majig got knocked out of whack. My attempts of trying to knock it back into place by slamming it repetitively on the table and manually moving the needle back on to the spinny thing, were unsuccessful. I was contemplating a little WD-40 but the technicians said NO.