Tell me about your smartphone

Thursday, Aug 14th, 2008 by pleia2 | 25 Comments

My cellphone contract runs out in November. I currently have a boring, basic old pink Razr that can make phone calls and do text messaging. My next phone will be smart!

Requirements:

Good broadband
Good SSH application (included or addon)
Good OS (lag and crashes suck)
Physical qwerty keyboard (iPhone need not apply)

Desirables:

Good web browser
3rd party app support (an API for 3rd party app development would be awesome)
Good battery life
Google calendar syncing support
Ability to work/sync/transfer stuff in Linux (Not a requirement because I can install Windows on some machine somewhere if I need, but I really really REALLY don’t want to…)
Pink!

Anyone have a phone that satisfies these requirements and is on the market right now? There is a lot of buzz around future smartphones, open source smartphones, Google smartphones – but I need something serious that works right now, so when November rolls around I know I’m making a solid professional investment and not throwing cash at a lousy first generation toy. Cost isn’t a serious issue, but I’d like to keep the cost of the phone under $400 and the monthly agreement under $100.

Filed under: plug, ubuntu planet

Last month I went to prison

Wednesday, Aug 13th, 2008 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

A few years ago I was watching an episode of History Detectives titled Prison Plaque which researched the history of a discarded plaque found during some restoration of the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Immediately this made it on my mental list of places to check out. Trouble with mental lists is that they are forgettable, and it wasn’t until I was riding down to a PLUG meeting with mukidohime recently that I remembered it, he was picking up a friend of his for the meeting and we passed the Penitentiary. I finally got my opportunity to go last month while my friend MJ was in town, Nita and I headed down there with him on a Sunday evening for a couple tours.

Inside one of the original cells in the facility, and a look down death row

Down the corridor of a 2 story segment of the prison, and a guard tower as seen from the grounds

Cats from the Linda Brenner: Ghost Cats Exhibit, and some a case of home made knives from the prison

Nita with a rock, getting ready to break out and MJ behind bars

I’ll have to go again when I have more time to explore, the museum closes at 5PM and we got there pretty late in the afternoon. It was a lot of fun, and there are all sorts of nooks and crannies to explore, complete with self-guided audio tours you get with the price of your ticket.

Filed under: travel

Current (and I’m so behind w/ blogging…)

Sunday, Aug 10th, 2008 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

So, I still have the following things to blog about: Visiting the museum that is Eastern State Penn in Philly, HOPE (plus meta-data from rfids was released this week!), the Phildelphia Brew at the Zoo, all the minigolfing I’ve done this year. I’ll try to catch up some today. But I want to talk about stuff happening Now for a bit!

My ToDo list is huge. I’m starting to think I should come up with a system of recording all the stuff I do for various volunteer things so I have a better handle on where I’m spending my time – but then I remember that creating such a system would end up on my ToDo list and be more work. Oh well, I’ll just continue working away at it until everything is done.

The plan today is to tackle a bunch of things on said ToDo list. And then this evening I’m going out to finally meet the_karen_show at Sly Fox in Phoenixville!

This week was a long one. A lot of maintenance stuff to handle at work before a herd of new projects comes in. Bright side – by Thursday I was feeling considerably better sinus infection wise, this morning I woke up feeling almost completely normal (cough is lingering, but that’s normal). On Friday I spent my lunch break mowing the lawn – and got stung by a yellow jacket. I’d never been stung by anything before and it was highly unpleasant, I don’t want it to happen again.

Friday evening Michael went out with a couple friends and I got tickets to see The Dark Knight again – but this time in the IMAX with my friend Mike from NJ. Unfortunately on my way out to the theater while driving on 422 my car started bleeding coolant all over the expressway – eek! I didn’t realize until my engine was in the overheat zone (and I got a beep notification from my car). I quickly got to the nearest exit and hit Wawa for some coolant. Unfortunately my car takes special orange coolant, not the green stuff I put in – and mixing the two is bad. Doh. Anyway, the green stuff cooled my engine enough to get me home, and then Mike came to “rescue” me at the house so we could still make it to the movies. We arrived at the theater just in time for the movie to begin – but had to suffer with front row seats in the sold out theater. So we missed dinner, but when coming back to Schwenksville after the movie around 1:30 AM we stopped at the Collegeville Diner for some pancakes. Michael and I have affectionately called that the Zombie Diner, since there is a very good sushi place next door that we frequent which shares a parking lot – and people coming out of the diner tend to look somewhat zombieish. Imagine my surprise when Mike and I pulled into the parking lot and there was an old style HEARSE in the parking lot. For real it’s the zombie diner!

Yesterday morning I called the local Pontiac dealership to see if I could get Blinker in to check out her leak (I don’t know a local mechanic I can trust, so I always go to dealerships for repairs). I ended up spending the whole day there. Luckily they had (crappy) wifi, so I was able to complain on IRC the whole time ;) but there wasn’t bandwidth to do much else. Turns out that the thermostat was going bad, it let my engine overheat and caused all the coolant to boil out. They did a flush of the system and replaced the thermostat. $350 and 5 hours later I finally was able to go home with fixed Blinker. She also needs her breaks looked at and new tires before winter, maybe next month. Ah cars.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Trains w/ Michael

Saturday, Aug 9th, 2008 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

Last month Michael and I headed out to East Stroudsburg for a day trip. We had planned on going to an Amish farm tour, but upon arrival found it to be a bit of a tourist trap (hah!). So we ended up going over to the train museum. I knew about it because I’d been there earlier in the year, but with summertime came the opening of the train yard – which I had yet to see!

We stayed at the museum until it closed, being surprised at how many fatalities befell the early railroad workers, that was a rough time in our history.

Ater the museum we then headed to Isaac’s, a local chain, for a small dinner. What was on the menu? Hot sandwiches on soft pretzel bread. We both ordered the roast beef sandwich and enjoyed immensely. Craving another now.

Following dinner we headed to the East Stroudsburg Railroad for a wine and cheese railroad ride! It was a very nice time, they had a local red and white. I stuck with the red and it was nothing to write home about, but it wasn’t bad. The cheese was a pretty standard assortment of gouda, cheddar, a jalepeno spiced cheese and another mild cheese. There was also fruit, but the hot day made for that being eaten up pretty quickly. The train ride itself was about 45 minutes long, a straight ride through corn fields and the countryside and back. I’d do it again.

On the way out of the area, we took a quick detour to Dutch Haven. Dutch Haven is a pretty campy looking place, and full of touristy knick-knacks – and the “place that made shoo-fly pie famous. Huh, I’ve never had shoo-fly pie before! So we enjoyed the free samples and picked up a pie to bring home. Sooo sugary, but I enjoyed it :) Hurrah for exploring Pennsylvania! I’ve since heard of another cool local thing to do – coal mine tours. Pennsylvania is a huge coal area and there are now whole attractions built around these tours, sounds fun :) Maybe next weekend.

Filed under: travel

New R2D2!

Tuesday, Aug 5th, 2008 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

While at the Trenton Computer Festival this year, my festival-mate and I were snagged by a colo selling off a bunch of old and unused equipment – cheap. It was the last hour of the festival, so they were really trying to unload stuff, I admit to being the one who finally got suckered in. We walked away with quite a catch though, and since then I’ve been building up my new desktop around the motherboard and CPUs I purchased that day.

My new desktop, dare I call it that, is now up and running. It only lacks a graphics card, which I’m getting for free tomorrow night. Specs are as follows…

Intel Server Board SE7525GP2 w/ 2 dual core 2.8ghz Xeon CPUs: $150

2 x 1GB 184-PIN REG DIMM 128MX72 DDR PC2700: $150
(server board, requires registered DIMMs)

Chenbro SR10568-AL Chassis and mounting plates: $100

680 Watt Power Supply: $40

Sony PATA DVDRW: $35

WD 500G PATA drive: $100

Soundblaster Live card: Free, from 2001, snagged from old PC

ATi X300: Free, from a friend.

Total: $575

Sure, I probably could have done better cost-wise if I didn’t go with server-class this and server-class that (certainly my case, power supply and RAM expenses could have been lower), but where’s the fun in that? Plus, I plan on this beast lasting me a long time, it’s replacing a desktop I’ve had since 2002.

Filed under: computers, plug, ubuntu planet

Made the leap to flatpanel

Saturday, Aug 2nd, 2008 by pleia2 | 7 Comments

As seen here, I was one of the last geeky holdouts I know to still have a CRT for daily, normal use. Well I, sorta on a whim, left that camp today and while at Micro Center picked myself up an Acer AL2216W flatpanel monitor.

Boy does it shine! I’m very happy with my purchase.

(Also, Micro Center is a dangerous place – last time I was there I walked out with two new harddrives – now ths! I was only there to grab a cheap OEM dvd-rom drive…)

Filed under: computers, plug, ubuntu planet

Sinus Infection

Saturday, Aug 2nd, 2008 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

OK – a break from pretty photos of my trips for a moment – I have a sinus infection. I’ve never had one before, and I have to say it’s quite unpleasant, mostly due to the length of time it’s had me feeling miserable. Congestion, cough, headaches, exhaustion. I think this started with a cold I had a couple weeks ago that made me miss a couple days of work, it went very bad cold > mild allergies > sinus infection. Even worse, it’s the summer. My body wants to sit in cool, crisp, air-conditioned rooms, but my sinuses want warm and humid. The result? I obey my sinuses, because they give me a headache if I don’t obey. Yuck yuck. And I’m feeling a bit down because of all this, so I want to eat, but food either tastes like nothing or just tastes *weird*. Sigh.

I’ve been on antibiotics since Wednesday night, so hopefully I’ll start feeling better soon.

Filed under: health

Niagara Falls – The Falls and Skylon Tower

Monday, Jul 28th, 2008 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Saturday was the day for the Maid of the Mist and dinner at Skylon Tower.

Maid of the Mist was fun – and wet! We took a late morning ride out.

After that we did some wandering around the strip, relaxed for a while, then for dinner headed up to Skylon Tower.

The food was spectacular.

And the VIEW was to die for!

..and a photo of me on top of the tower :)

Filed under: travel

Niagara Falls – Long walk and finally see the falls!

Sunday, Jul 27th, 2008 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

After the aviary we took a walk with the intention of seeing Simcoe St and then heading out to a brewery I found on one of the tourist maps I picked up.

As we turned onto Simcoe St I saw a black squirrel. I knew about black squirrels but what I didn’t know was that in Canada black squirrels and black cats get along…

OK, so that’s a bit tongue in cheek, but it was funny to see the squirrel, panic about the cat coming toward it, and then watch it walk right past it without a second thought. Huh, guess he wasn’t hungry.

Unfortunately I neglected to inspect the scale on the map and felt quite foolish when I realized how far we had to walk to get to the brewery. And even more foolish when we arrived at the closed brewery! Ack! The address was right, but the building was closed up, apparently that map I picked up was a bit dated. We got a nice walk out of it though, and got to see some amusing Inns on the way, like this one:

Since the brewery was a bust, we walked back toward the main touristy area of Niagara Falls and found a pizzeria to eat at. The beer list was unimpressive, so I just went with a Labatt Blue (Ew? But I was in Canada!)

After food we went walking toward the main “strip” of Niagara Falls, the tourist district full of campy museums of all kinds, haunted houses, mini golf, ice cream, souvenir shops – and I loved all of it. But first it was down to see the falls!

And then, being me, I had to get some fudge and go to one of the campy wax museums – hurrah!

By the time we left the wax museum we were pretty tired. We got some ice cream on the way back to the B&B and then crashed for the night. Plans for the next day? Maid of the Myst! Dinner in Skylon Tower!

Filed under: travel

Niagara Falls – Arrival, Aviary

Sunday, Jul 27th, 2008 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

My friend Stephen and I took a trip up to Niagara Falls, Canada over the 4th of July weekend. We left midday on Thursday, stopped in my old stomping grounds of Seneca Falls to fill up with gas and say hello to an old friend, and arrived around 11PM in Canada. We checked into Ambiance By The Falls then went downtown and found Hard Rock Cafe where we had some late night snacks and drinks before heading back.

Friday started out with a trip to Bird Kingdom. I’m afraid of birds, but have been trying to get over the fear – so, aviary!