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Pocket Universe For the iPhone
I love laying outside and staring at the stars. It’s amazing how small we are, and how minor our problems are when you look at the size of the universe. I use to be real good at spotting a bunch of different constellations. I forgot most of them now. I pretty much can only find Ursa Major in the summer and Orion in the winter. Yesterday I discovered the iPhone app Pocket Universe. It’s pretty much a pocket planetarium, and very cool. It uses your location, time, and date to show you what the sky should look like. For the iPhone 3GS, is uses the compass feature and even adjusts based on what direction you are facing. In town where I am at, it’s hard to see many stars. There is just too much light pollution. At the end of the month we are heading to the lakes camping. I can’t wait to put this app to work then. It will be cool to be able to locate planets, and constellations, and other objects in the solar system.
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10th Anniversary of Napster
I first experienced downloading MP3s back in 1994. Back then it was easy to find copyright infringing MP3s right on the web. The problem was they took forever to download, and took up so much space. Back then a 1 GB hard drive was huge, so 3 and 4 MB files started to add up. I didn’t download too many MP3s back then. CD burners were way to costly, so you pretty much had to sit at your computer to listen to them.
Eventually the RIAA and record companies discovered MP3 and started cracking down on them. When that happened I starting download music from FTP sites. I would sit in IRC rooms that would announce different FTP sites, and I would check to see what they had. It was a long and tedious process to find anything I wanted. That’s when I really started to download music though. It’s not that I wanted to steal it, I just wanted to hear it before I bought it. I discovered many bands that way, which lead me too more CD, concert ticket, and t-shirt purchases.
Then in 1999 Napster came around and changed everything. Suddenly anybody could download music, not just geeks. This month is the 10 year anniversary of Napster. Once Napster came out it was much easier to search for anything you want and find it. It was at that time also that I first got broadband, and a CD burner. It was becoming too easy to steal anything you wanted. I admit I download my fare share. There was no way to purchase song online, so we really had no choice.
Napster was shut down, but many other similar file sharing networks popped up. It was still easier to steal music online than to buy it. iTunes would eventually start selling music, but it contained DRM, so I refused to buy any of it. I don’t want my digital music to be locked down to anything. Once Amazon launched their MP3 store I finally had a place to buy music online, and now that iTunes is DRM free I even buy from there too.
Now days you can check out bands on Myspace, and then buy their music on Amazon or iTunes with just a few clicks. I can finally preview the music before I buy it, and I can buy it in my underwear in the comfort of my own home. Things have sure changed, and I am glad it’s getting easier and easier to support the bands I love. I never wanted to steal, I just wanted the convenience, and now I am getting it.
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iPhone or Palm Pre
Every time Apple announces a new iPhone it pisses me off that AT&T doesn’t have coverage here, so I can’t get one. There is one way I could get one. I can order one and use my home address as the billing address, but then use my Mom’s or Brother’s address as the primary place of use. From what I hear that would work as long as I don’t go over the “off-net usage allowance”, which would be no problem because I really don’t talk on the phone much. The downside is I would have to get a different number, and it would be long distance to anybody local, but I could get around that using my Google Voice account. The main downside though is the price. I would have to pay $70 for the Wife’s phone on Verizon, and then another $70 or so for my phone, and I don’t even know if it would be worth it since I wont be on 3G, so it will be slow. It’s probably always going to be cheaper for us both to be on the same carrier, and she talks a lot more and needs Verizon’s coverage.
I am due for a new phone, and really want one, but I think I am going to wait six months to get one. The Palm Pre is the other phone I am thinking about. Right now I would have to switch to Sprint to get it. There are rumors that Verizon might be getting it which would be cool. If the Pre lives up to it’s hype and gets lots of good apps, it will probably be my next phone. If not, I might have to use the iPhone work around.
I don’t think anybody likes their cell carriers very much. I love Verizon’s coverage, I just wish they would get the phones I want. An iPhone is highly unlikely because I don’t think Apple will make a CDMA phone. A Palm Pre is very likely going to be on Verizon eventually. I just wish I knew what the chances are that AT&T would get coverage here anytime soon.
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Happy π Day
Today is the day we celebrate the the Greek letter that is used as the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Or in other words π.
And another cool coincidence is that it also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday.
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My New Eee PC
So I have wanted a netbook for some time now. I had $70 in Best Buy gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, so I thought I would put them towards a netbook. I pretty much had three options at our Best Buy, the Dell Mini 9, the Asus Eee PC 900, or the HP Mini 1000. Of those three I like the HP the best, but I hate the track pad button placement. The Asus and Dell’s keyboards were really cramped. What I really wanted was the Asus Eee PC 1000H, but they didn’t have it. Or more accurately, they didn’t have one on display. I went online and ordered my Asus Eee PC 1000H and was able to pick in up in store minutes later.I really like this Eee PC. The keyboard is a little cramped, but not nearly as bad as the 900 they had on display at Best Buy. It only took minutes to get use to. My only real complaint about the keyboard is that I wish the bumps on the F and J keys were a little bigger. Sometimes my fingers slip of the home row and I don’t notice it.
With the smaller screen, and lower power, I wouldn’t want this to be my main computer. It wouldn’t be good at photo or video editing, but that’s not really the point and not the reason I bought it. It’s a great little internet machine. I took it to bed last night, and thought it was much easier to use than my MacBook. It’s nice and small and doesn’t generate nearly as much heat.
It came with Windows XP on it. It’s been a long time since I have used XP. XP runs great on it, but I am considering installing either Windows 7 or Ubuntu on it. I hear people have installed OS X on these things, but that seams more of a hassle than it’s worth.
I love gadgets, but I don’t like spending money on things I don’t use. It took me a while to get my first iPod because I wasn’t sure how much I would use it, and I ended up using it constantly. I am not sure how much I am going to use my Eee PC, but it is cheaper than an iPod, so I am sure I will get my money out of it.
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Happy Square Root Day
Today is Square Root Day. Square Root Day is a rare day that occurs when the day and month are both the square root of the last two digits of the year as in, √9=3, or 3²=9, or 3×3=9. Square Root Days only happen nine times a century. The last one was February 2, 2004, and the next is April 4, 2016.
I hear you are suppose to celebrate by eating root vegetables cut into squares.
There is another geeky math holiday coming next Saturday. March 14th is a math holiday that happens every year. It’s Pi day, 3-14 or 3.14.
Then for even more math geekiness I ran across this awesomely funny t-shirt. I want it.
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Palindromes
I love running across palindromes, but I can never remember them. In case you don’t know, a palindrome is a word or phrase that can be read the same forwards and backwards. I always thought the name palindrome should be a palindrome, but it’s not. The two that I always remember are “race car” and “race fast, safe car”. Chris Pirillo recently blogged about his favorite palindrome and asked for everybody’s favorites. Some of them are pretty amazing, but I think Weird Al has some of the best I have ever heard in this video.
Then there is the 224 word palindrome written by Demetri Martin (who is one funny comedian I might add) titled “Dammit I’m Mad“. Amazing stuff.
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Windows 7 Beta Tempting
You know me, I love to play with anything new. I downloaded the beta version of Windows 7 as soon as possible. I installed it in a virtual machine, and have loved it from day one. It is so clean and almost Mac like. I am so tempted to replace my Vista install with it. I am not a Vista hater. It has run fine for me. It’s actually ran pretty good for me. I am still using my original Vista install. I could never last this long on an XP install. I am rough on Windows, always installing and playing with new software, so it gets mucked up pretty easily for me. I was probably installing XP every six months. My Vista install is starting to get the point where it could use a little reinstalling. I am going to try and hold out until the release of Windows 7, but the beta is really tempting me.
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Four More Months to Procrastinate
So now the digital TV transition date has been moved to June 12th. Why? I was really looking forward to February 17th and the end of hearing all about the the digital transition crap. Now all the procrastinators can just put it off for four more months. Sure, all the $40 coupons may be gone, and $50 might be a lot of money for some people, but it’s only TV. People can survive without it you know. If you can’t afford $50 for a converter box that you have had years to save up for, maybe you shouldn’t be watching TV.
I have been using rabbit ears to pick up our locals in HD for a couple years now. For some stupid reason, our locals are on cable in HD but not DirecTV. For the most part they come in good, but there are some days when they don’t. I have heard that once the transition to only digital is complete, the signal might be stronger. If that’s the case then I am cool, if not I plan on investing in a better antenna. Now I will have to wait four more months to find out. I just don’t see the point in putting it off for four more months.
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Celebrities on Twitter
For the most part I couldn’t care less what celebrities do. I despise celebrity gossip shows. I do think it’s cool that celebrities are starting to use Twitter though. Just something about communicating with average people. Not that I put celebrities on a pedestal or anything, I just think it’s cool. I have been following a few for years, but it seems like every day a new celebrity hops on the Twitter bandwagon. Many celebrities are pretty lame on twitter and only tweet to advertise what ever project they are working on. Lately I started following Adam Savage (@donttrythis), Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), Demi Moore (@mrskutcher), Jimmy Fallon (@jimmyfallon), and Soleil Moon Frye (@moonfrye). They are all good twitterers. You can find a list of celebrities on twitter at celebritytweet.com. Most of them are lame, but there are a few good ones in there.