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• Izzy, the gamer
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• On Redbox

Ciri and I said that Izzy gets all the good stickers.  When I play, I get the lame stars or giraffes.  Izzy gets the crazy sun, motorcycles, and the animated ones too.

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• On Redbox
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Couldn’t hurt to try, right?

Genius for the iPhone recommended the Redbox app because I downloaded Phone Flicks, a Netflix browsing app.  For kicks, I downloaded it, found the nearest Redbox, and browsed its selection.  The app is SLOW, but nifty because you can reserve movies straight from your phone.

The next time we were at the grocery store, we decided to rent something from it just to say we tried it out.

We rented Made of Honor. Cool premise, poorly written. It’s getting two stars on Netflix.

The next day I try to return it to the same kiosk but unfortunately, it was under some sort of “Inventory Maintenance,” whatever that meant.

How does it make sense to put their machine in maintenance mode RIGHT BEFORE THE MOVIES ARE DUE?!  If the machine is full or broken, then say so (and why you’re at it, pass that information to the iPhone app too!); if your not full, but getting a software update, TAKE MY MOVIE ANYWAY!

If at first you don’t succeed, try a Walmart.

The movie is late by now.  There is another location down the road at the local WalMart.  All I want to do is return the movie and get out.  I get there and a woman is chatting on her phone staring at the screen.  I think she notices me and starts paging though the catalog.  A couple walks up and gets behind me.  The woman is still on her phone but she looks over to notice a line.  “Oh. I’m sorry ya’ll,” she says and continues her conversation on the phone as she finalizes her choice.  At that point I realize why it’s only a dollar – well, two dollars now.

I quietly turn in my movie and head back home.

I’ll stick with the original red: Netflix.

Once I get home, I get on my computer and send RedBox an angry email. This was almost a week ago and I have yet to receive even an acknowledgment mail.  (As I edited this, Thunderbird alerts me to a new email from, you guessed it, Redbox customer care.  More on that in a bit.)  I also run a quick search for “Red Box sucks” and find that the problems I ran into is fairly common.

Long lines, a crappy app, and kiosks that work sporadically? No thanks.

The email I received contained an apology and two free movie rentals.  Even though I really don’t want them, we’ll end up using the codes just because Redbox can be convenient. I explained how crappy their service/application/kiosk was and told them what I ‘m telling you now: Netflix is still my number one.  Once those two codes are used, though, I don’t think we’ll ever go back.

Related Posts:

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• Online Web Apps for private journaling.

Related Posts:

• On Redbox
• Bike Ride Stats
• Online Web Apps for private journaling.

The first thought I had was to search for some sort of iPhone app that was password protected.  I found a few, some free and some at a small premium.  Writing from the iPhone is convenient when there isn’t a full size keyboard around, but I would rather use a computer when it is available.  So if I was going to buy an app, it would need to sync with some online service or at least sync with my PC.  I couldn’t find any apps that had this functionality so I thought of just using a webapp instead.

Immediately, I found this cool service called Penzu.  It’s a very well thought out service and really simple to use.  It’s completely private and, unlike a public blog, the individual entries don’t have a URL for robots to scan.  Let’s say someone figured out your password, each entrycan be individually locked and would therefore require a second password to view.

It’s also well designed.  When you visit the site you can start writing right away by clicking on the “try it out” link. After you’re done writing, just log in and it will save the entry automatically.  As you’re writing, the text appears on what looks like a sheet of lined paper.  Like I said, really cool site.

Unfortunately, writing on it in Safari on the iPhone is really cumbersome.  I was typing pretty fast and after a while, I had to stop so it would catch up with me.  The site is really good, and adding an iPhone app would make it the best private journaling application I could find.  I ended up not using it because of how the iPhone interacted with it.

This search turned out to be a little more drawn out then I thought it would be.  I thought of  using Evernote or the Notes app, but I thought I would look at Blogger and WordPress first to see if there was a “private” setting.  I created a blog at WordPress.com first and set it to private.  Using the WordPress iPhone app, I was able to log-in to the blog and start writing.  I checked to make sure I couldn’t access the site if I wasn’t logged in and that the RSS feed was not displaying either.  So far, this seems like a pretty good solution.

Evernote could work as well since I have the desktop application and the iPhone application.  It wouldn’t be as  efficient since it’s designed for quick note taking, plus I’m a huge WordPress fan so using the WordPress.com blogs is ideal for me.  Blogger allows for private settings too, but I couldn’t find an iPhone app for it.

I honestly hope that Penzu releases an iPhone app to go with their web application – I’ll switch over if they do. Penzu is designed to be private unlike WordPress which is designed to be public.  Either way, WordPress is a good solution for now and hopefully I’ll keep up with this journal-keeping quest for once.

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• iPhone, A Saga – Day Five

I am still working on turning my old iBook into one, but with my limited experience of Linux and it’s command line interface, it’s taking longer than I thought.

Previous to the GameBoy DSi announcement, I contemplated turning my SP into a digital frame as well.  But the SP is the last gameboy to play original Gameboy games and advance Gameboy games, so that guy is staying in one piece.

While I finish getting the software ready on the iBook, I thought about converting a small frame into a fancy dock for my iPhone.  I was playing a slideshow of Izzy’s antics to Ciri earlier this week on my iPhone when the idea came to me.

As with the iBook, before taking anything apart, I needed to make sure the software would cooperate.  Luckily, the app store has a few choices when it comes to slideshow applications.

The frame itself is pretty straight forward, and cheap.  All I needed was:

• iPhone (or Touch) with PhotoFrame application – there’s a few choices, but PhotoFrame is free
• cardboard (after a trip to Ikea, we have tons)
• school glue
• an unused frame
• paint (if you want to paint it)
• small amount of matting (but I guess you could use construction paper, too)
• a few screws (to screw the back part down, duh.)
• a handy box cutter (a cutting mat would help too, or a lot of scrap cardboard)
• and of course, a screwdriver (a drill is funner, though.)

The first step was to cut the matting to size.  Remember to measure twice and stuff.

The frame I used was a little deep, so I laid some slices of cardboard below the mat.  This way, the mat would get pressed against the glass instead of wiggling around.  Then, I cut more slices of card board in a sort of L shape to fit around the phone.  Next, I glued it all together, making sure that the slices were aligned.

While the glue dried, I took the frame into the garage and gave it a good coat of spray paint.  I wanted to use a black paint to bring out the image, but all I had on hand was primer gray and a hammered finished metallic paint.  I didn’t feel like packing up the kid and drive to Lowe’s, so I used the hammered finish stuff.  Anyway, one good coat, then another a few hours later.  It was dry by the next day and looked pretty good.

The “pocket” should be ready by the next day, too.  Although, the glue I used constricted the cardboard a bit after it dried – I should have left something inside the pocket to push against the cardboard.  Oh well.

I aligned the pocket into the frame and screwed it down with the wood screws, and viola!  iPhone Frame!  Just be careful not to drive the screws all the way through. DOH!  Yea, I thought the screws weren’t long enough, but they were. >:(

The app on the iPhone will download 10 pictures to the phone (I think it’s 10) and then loop between them.  You can set it so it displays photos from either the public photostream or your photostream.  There’s other software on the app store that have more options, but most of them aren’t free (some are just a buck, that’s not too bad.   ) and many don’t support Flickr.

A future upgrade will be to create some sort of ejecting mechanism for it.  As it is, I have to turn the frame upside down or pull on the cord to get it out.  In the near future, I’m going to drill some holes in the back for ventilation – it gets a little warm when connected.

It’s also not very convenient when the phone rings (a bluetooth headset would solve this problem.), but it still looks really cool on my shelf.

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Fully charged and ready to roll.

How many people, when they first receive their iPhones, completely drain the first charge in mere hours?   *Raises hand*   Ok, so I didn’t drain it completely, but it got pretty close.   Probably because I left the bluetooth on all day.   I’m sure configuring the settings, adding my contacts, playing with all the apps, and listening to an entire podcast didn’t really help either.

Yea, the dang thing finally got delivered today.   I really think FedEx is messed up, though.   A truck came by early in the morning and I thought my phone was on it.   The truck didn’t stop here – it just kept going.   About an hour later, another truck delivered the phone.   Crazy right?   It’s like musical chairs but with FedEx trucks.   I’m still confused why it sat in Raleigh for almost three days, though.   Eh.   All’s well that ends well.

I am really loving this thing.   It’s an amazing little device and it’s so much fun to use.   I downloaded a ton of apps for it while it was charging and updating.   My must haves, so far, are the AllRecipes.com app and the Google app.   There were a few apps that sounded really promising, but ended up being a waste of time.   I found one app that would allow the iPhone to send and receive MMS messages, but you have to pay a monthly fee.   I thought it added the functionality, but it turned out it was an actual service.

Speaking of MMS.   I heard the iPhone didn’t have MMS capabilities and I thought that was a real dumb option to leave out.   I figured Apple would include it on some future software update.   No such luck.   If my friends want to send me pictures or video, they need to send it to my email address.   This can be real annoying, but it’s not that big a deal to me, since I don’t get many MMS’s anyway.

The lack of a video recording option, on the other hand, is pretty darn annoying. I downloaded an app that turns my iPhone into a damn lightsaber, but I can’t record video?!   Double ewe tee eff.   The camera takes some real nice photos, but Apple decided it doesn’t want to support the video feature for now.   Fail.

I tried to connect the iPhone to my old Nokia so I can transfer my contacts.   I found out that the iPhone will not tether to other phones.   This is also slightly annoying, but, again, it doesn’t affect me as much, since I only needed to do it once.

I understand that most, if not all, of my issues can be addressed by jailbreaking the phone.   I initially didn’t want to do that because it sounded like more trouble than it was worth.   I now realize how many issues are fixed by jailbreaking the phone so I think I may do it after all.   An added bonus for jailbreaking the phone is I will have access to the NES emulator app.   How cool is that?!

Jailbroken or not, I love my new phone.   I need to go buy a skin for it so I don’t scratch up the cover.   I already bought some screen protectors, but I have to cut them to size.

As much as I still love my Zune, it’s been demoted from “the Precious” status and has been replaced by my new iPhone.   Doesn’t mean the iPhone is replacing my Zune as my media player, it’s just a little more special at the moment.

So that’s the end of the saga.   It was a long weekend.   Stay tuned for a write up on the surprise gift that Ciri is getting from me for her going away party.   She doesn’t know she is getting anything and I don’t think she’ll have time to read this before Thursday.   >:)

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I suspect that I will use this in the future but not for full meaty posts. This app doesn’t support the landscape keyboard. It’s ok though, the iphone has decent presictive text. Hmm. Well, I did say decent.

I’ve also uploaded a plugin that will create a special CSS template for mobile browsers. It’s a text only templete at the moment, although in the future I expect to change the colors and maybe even add a small logo image.

The more I type on this thing, the faster I get. It’s pretty cool, but I wonder about adding images and links into the post. I’ll mess with it some more next time.

Thursday is Ciriana’s going away party. I have something special planned for her and I need to go work on it. I’ll he sending pictures to my Flickr in case you want to see her surprise. Also, if anyone wants to give her some words of encouragement, head over to the contact page and send her a message. I know that she’ll appreciate it. There’s an option to send her the message instead of me.

Wow. Look at all I typed with only my little iPhone! Man, this thing is awesome!

Update: I edited the format a bit.   The paragraph tag doesn’t seem to end with every paragraph when using the app, or I am not doing something right.   I also can’t rotate that image, which is good because now it shows what happens when you upload an image using the app.   This is still a very useful add-on to the WordPress bloggin platform, though.

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Shipping History

I don’t like FedEx.   This morning their truck drove by as I was working at my desk.   I quickly tabbed over to Firefox and refreshed the current tracking status.   “At dest sort facility.”   Still in Raleigh.   Ok, maybe their system is lagging.   My phone has been in Raleigh since Saturday night, it should get here today.   The big white truck continued down our street.   Ok, maybe he’s going to deliver a package up the street and come back around.   The FedEx truck turned around and continued back to the entrance of our division.   Frick…   Frick. Frick. Frick.   I frickin’ knew it.

About thirty minutes later, the UPS guy comes down the street (I’m not sure why AT&T used FedEx for my phone and UPS for Ciri’s phone).   He pulls in our driveway and I hear him toss a package on the front porch.   I went to bring in the box out of the hot sun and placed it on the coffee table.   Izzy was sleeping so I sat down to contemplate my options.   I decided that I would leave the box alone in order to avoid the wrath of an overworked pregnant woman.

Luckily, the day went by pretty quick.   I cleaned a little, worked on a project, and played with Izzy.   By the way, Izzy has discovered that she can hit a note that can almost blow out an eardrum.   And she loves it.   My left ear literally hurt for a good thirty minutes this afternoon.   This just started in the last week and it’s getting really annoying.   I hate telling her “no,” unless she is doing something dangerous like playing with wires or pulling on the cat’s ears.   But my eardrums are dying and she needs to stop the screeching.

So, dealing with Izzy’s phases kept me busy today as well.   Then Ciri came home and she finally tore open the box.   I activated the phone for her so she would be set to use it right away tomorrow morning.   While it was activating, she started to play with some of the settings.   We transferred her contacts and pictures using bluetooth and I gave her my microSD card that was in my Nokia.   I won’t need it after tomorrow anyway.

Brickie the Pantech Matrix

The Pantech Matrix isn’t too bad a phone.   The biggest complaint from me are the small buttons on the face of the phone.   According to Ciri, the buttons are perfect for her small fingers.

Ciri wanted a phone with a full qwerty keyboard for texting.   She is slowly realizing she got a major upgrade from her last phone.   It’s a pretty cool gadget.

Ciri has this thing were she likes to name her gadgets.   Her last phone was that tiny Pantech C3B from a couple years ago.   She said the phone was “My size,” so she called it Mysi.   This phone is a lot bigger than her last one, and a lot heavier too, so she’s calling it Brickie.

Anyway, back to my issues.   It did help that Ciri let me play with her phone a little.   As a matter of fact, I am uploading some music, pictures, and video to the memory card as I type this.

Tomorrow, I expect the FedEx dude to drive by during the morning.   The next post you see from me on The Guamaso will come from the WordPress app.

Freaking Tuesday Tuesday, dammit. Da freaking da.

Related Posts:

• Orozco’s Making Apps
• Izzy, the gamer
• Bike Ride Stats