Category Archives: Technology

Music, Site News, Technology

Neglect

Dear Internets, it’s been a one sided relationship for awhile now.  I’ve been taking and not giving much back.  Is that wrong?  Instead of the usual excuses, I’ll just say that I don’t have much I want to write about.  Shall we run down the usual suspects?

Music:  Mumford & Sons concert a month ago was awesome.  Edward Sharpe, not so much.  I haven’t been able to listen to much new music lately.  I only seem to listen to new music while at work and my portable hard drive is broken.  I suppose I could listen to it on my new phone, although I’ve started listening to Pandora a lot more at work.  Here’s something I can give back today: my Mumford & Sons Pandora Radio Station.  Seriously, check it out.  I’ve had everything from Bod Dylan to The Decemberists show up.  Good times.

Phone: Picked up the HTC EVO 4G on launch day.  It’s a welcome replacement for my Instinct.  Now I have a real smart phone, not a “feature” phone posing as one.  As indicated in the name, the EVO has a 4G radio, although it’s really WiMAX and not likely to be the eventual 4G standard.  But I get a good 4G signal at work, not that I can use it much.  Pandora sounds the same and it’s hard to justify watching videos.  Too bad I didn’t know about the 4G availability until after all the World Cup games are over (SprintTV has live ESPN).

WordPress: Updated to the newest WordPress, 3.0.  More of the same?  Perhaps a new theme can kick things up a notch?

Seems like the usual suspects show some promise.  Shall we investigate them some more soon?

Technology

Playtime

I fixed the unordered list issues I mentioned earlier so I won’t get rid of the theme yet. With that out of the way, let us move on to more important things, such as my new toy: the Samsung Instinct.

I’ve had the phone for three weeks now (no, I only got it the day after it came out) and I’m really happy with it. This is only the third phone (my previous were the LG VX4500 and Sanyo Katana) I’ve ever owned and the first where I’ve bought a data plan. I long resisted the idea of having a cell phone but was finally turned to the dark side after we had our first child a few years ago. Since then, I’d long resisted the idea of using a cell phone for anything but talking. But the idea of having GPS on a phone was too tempting to resist. The other features, such as live TV, radio, Internet, and e-mail were all just added bonuses.

I’ve been having a few problems with some of the data services and one of the batteries doesn’t seem to hold as much of a charge as the other. I was told I can just bring the phone in for a new one, so I’m planning on doing that this weekend. I’d also like to get some sort of cover to put over the touch screen to keep it free of scratches. The invisibleSHIELD looks pretty nice (the ALL CAPS makes the shield stronger).

I’m looking forward to third party applications and if I had time, I’d be tempted to write something myself. They seem to have a nice set of developer tools. But I’ve got enough on my plate without adding a time sink like that.