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Smartphone tinkering
Posted: Sunday, December 04, 2011
A while back, I picked up a smartphone. Namely a Motorola Droid 2. It's been a decent phone so far, despite a few issues, but now that the warranty is basically up, I've decided to do a bit of hacking.
The first thing I did was root the phone (grant myself admin privileges) using a program called SuperOneClick. And it really is an easy, one-click affair. Once that was done, I installed ROM Toolbox which let me do a whole bunch of customizing, and more importantly, it let me freeze (and uninstall) a bunch of bloatware that was slowing the phone down.
With me being Mr. Tinker, I went ahead and installed a new lancher, called Launcher Pro which, after some tweaking, let me really customize the look of the screen.
So far everything is going pretty well on the phone, although I might try a different launcher. The Facebook widget with LP has tiny, tiny text, and there's no way to enlarge it. But all in all, I'm pretty happy with the results.
Here's a screenshot:
Figuring out the JQuery UI plugin
Posted: Friday, June 03, 2011
I've been working on the website for Jessica's new dance company, and I'm at the part where customers register for classes. Since I'm building the site using ColdFusion (otherwise I'd be working on it until the end of time), I had a few options for how to let customers pick their class date.
1. form text field
How lazy can I be, right?
Advantage: Mindlessly easy to set up
Drawbacks: Not very user friendly, not to mention having to deal with typos, formatting (6/3 vs 6-3), and how to block off weekends and holidays
2. ColdFusion datefield
This is the type="datefield" version of cfinput
Advantage: Neat calendar box popup. Easy to force formatting.
Drawbacks: No good way to block off dates, and IE likes to position the clicker around 100 pixels into outer space.
3. ColdFusion's <cfcalendar>
Advantage: Ability to block off dates
Drawback: Couldn't get the silly thing to work at all on my shared host.
So I went with option #4. The JQuery UI Datepicker plugin. This (once I figured out how to set it up, which was like figuring out how trig works by looking at an equation) gave me endless options, like the ability to block off weekends and certain dates (holidays, our vacations, etc) and even set the earliest available booking date. I was even able to integrate some ColdFusion code into it.
Voila! (this is a modified version of Christopher Altman's mod)
$(document).ready(function (){
var d = new Date();
var natDays = [
[7,4,<cfoutput>#year#</cfoutput>]
,[1,1,<cfoutput>#year#</cfoutput>]
,[12,31,<cfoutput>#year#</cfoutput>]
,[1,19,<cfoutput>#year#</cfoutput>]];
function nationalDays(date) {
var m = date.getMonth();
var d = date.getDate();
var y = date.getFullYear();
for (i = 0; i < natDays.length; i++) {
if ((m == natDays[i][0] - 1) && (d == natDays[i][1]) && (y == natDays[i][2]))
{
return [false];
}
}
return [true];
}
function noWeekendsOrHolidays(date) {
var noWeekend = $.datepicker.noWeekends(date);
if (noWeekend[0]) {
return nationalDays(date);
} else {
return noWeekend;
}
}
$(function() {
$("#datepicker").datepicker({
minDate: '<cfoutput>#dateformat(dateadd("d",2,now()),"mm/dd/yyyy")#</cfoutput>',
maxDate: '+2Y',
hideIfNoPrevNext: true,
beforeShowDay: noWeekendsOrHolidays,
});
});
});
Now what could be cooler than that?
First ride of the season
Posted: Monday, April 11, 2011
So I had the afternoon off today to get a new crown on one of my molars, and as luck would have it, it was 80 degrees outside. So I rushed over to get the crown put on, then rushed home and suited up. It was a decent ride, but it's so hard to take it easy my first time out. My body might be 46, but I still have the motivation I did when I was 27, and I want to just get out there and put the hammer down. I put down just under 16 miles at a modest average, which considering the wind was not bad at all. I managed to burn off around 900 calories though, which is probably due to the wind and hills.
My butt is going to pay though. The first ride is always a freebie, but it takes two or three after that for the butt to acclimate to the seat, which is something I always dread. A necessary evil though, and once you're past that stage, it's smooth sailing.
I ran across a C&O trail volunteer rider. Those guys basically ride the C&O canal on mountain bikes and help people out. I like helping people, and I like riding, so I've been thinking about volunteering for some time now. There's only one problem though; the canal is a TOTALLY boring ride. It's completely flat, and double-track pea gravel and dirt. It would actually be the ideal terrain for a cyclo-cross bike, but I don't have one of those. But it would be an excuse to go ride, and I do have two nice mountain bikes.
Jessica is starting her own dance company, and I've been busy working on the website. We've had business cards printed up, and I'll be picking those up either tomorrow or the next day. Should be fun! Maybe if she brings in the big bucks, I can just ride and play with my Mini!
Speaking of my Mini, I put new shocks and struts on it a few weeks ago. Koni Sports, which are adjustable. Sort of. You can adjust the front just fine, but you have to totally remove the back to adjust them due to those lazy bastards at Koni not wanting to come up with a new design for the Mini. It turned out OK though, since I was able to guess the proper adjustment one the first try after doing some spring rate calculations. In Koni's defense, they're awesome units and the Mini is a different car after the install. I should have done this years ago.
This summer should be fun. We're doing a bit more work on the house, going on a cruise on the Queen Mary II, and catching a few more U2 gigs. Hopefully none of them will be like Athens!! If I go the rest of my life without another experience like that, it'll be just fine with me.
Now THIS is fantastic customer service
Posted: Friday, December 10, 2010
I have what most people would call a long-ish commute to work. A 10 minute drive to the train station, followed by an hour long train ride, followed by a 20 minute walk. Add in the 10 minutes spend waiting for the train at the station, and you have a 100-minute door-to-door commute. In each direction. Needless to say, this presents quite the opportunity to listen to music, especially considering that my new phone has Pandora Internet radio. Last.fm, and a Democracy Now news app.
A key ingredient in listening to music is a good set of headphones. I prefer the on-ear designs, as the over-ear models are usually a bit too hot in the summer. I prefer a pleather earpad to a foam one, because I don't want my music leaking out and bothering others, and they're also better at keeping noise out. I can't wear the traditional iPod style earbuds, because my ears oddly lack the little "shelf" that they rest in. And in-ear styles usually fall out to easily. The earbuds that clip around behind your ears are usually the iPod style buds, and with no little "shelf" they tend to swing away from my ears like little barn doors.
So an on-ear design it is, and I've been a long-time user of the Sony MDR-V150 headphone. The sound is good, they stay in place, and they're usually fairly cheap ($20 average). There's only one problem. Like lots of headphones, they break after only a few months of use.
Usually headphones die on me when the cord fails at the jack, and you lose one channel. On the V150s, they've reinforced the jack considerably, so instead the cord just fails right where it connects to the earpiece. I've tried opening them up and soldering it, but either I'm changing the resistance of the wire or screwing something else up, because they sound like CRAP afterwards.
So after my last pair of V150s died, I decided to try a pair of Skullcandy Lowriders. These are similar to the V150s, except they fold up and get really small, so they're a lot easier to stow when you don't need them. They also have cool logos on them that a teenager would like (hah). Unfortunately, they come in a sealed plastic container, so there's no way to try them on before you buy.
On my first day of using them, I noticed that the sound wasn't as good as the V150s, and it's because they don't press to your ear very well. With all the hinges that make them foldable, they really are flimsy to wear, and a stiff breeze (or tree branch, or just the act of looking down) will cause them to fall off. And after around 8 months... you guessed it... the jack failed.
I went online to leave a scathing review, and noticed many of the other reviewers bragging about the warranty, so I decided to check it out. Turns out, if you own a pair of Skullcandy headphones, and they fail due to normal usage, they replace them, FREE. And even better, if you don't want the same ones, you can get the amount in credit toward any new pair from their website. You don't need a receipt, you don't need to know where or exactly when you bought them (a guess will do), and you don't have to wait long.
You basically fill out a form on their website, get an RMA number on the spot, mail them back at the post office, and 7-10 days later you get a credit to your account on the website for full MSRP, plus the $7 you paid to ship the old ones back. On top of this, they were having a 20% off sale on everything on their site, so after I applied my credit and the discount code, I got a better pair of $50 headphones, plus a toque (I needed to order something else to not have a negative total, although I probably could have just left a credit on the site) for $2.59. Yes, two dollars and fifty nine cents. This is especially awesome because I actually paid around $26 for the Lowriders, but they still credited me the $39.99 MSRP.
This is awesome customer service to say the least! You basically buy a pair of headphones and you have them for life! Even if you break them and it's your fault, they'll still give you 50% credit.
I can't wait to get my new headphones! Unlike the old pair, the new ones get great reviews, and they even have a built-in mic so I can talk on my phone. And I needed a new hat for the winter, especially after Jessica shrunk my old one in the dryer. I'll definitely be washing the new one myself!
I've taken the smartphone plunge
Posted: Sunday, November 07, 2010
I've been resisting the temptation to get a smartphone for some time now. After all, I don't really use my cellphone much at all. Apart from around 45 minutes per month of talking, a bit of texting, and the calculator, the only thing I really use it for is to play Scrabble (on a postage stamp sized screen). Our current phones were pretty old, and they had a pretty nice plan that considered calls to Canada (to Jess's family) to be normal air time. One of the reasons I resisted changing phones is because the new phones won't work with this plan, so we were somewhat stuck with our old phones.
As time has worn on, I've sort of changed my mind about what I should, or could be using my phone for. I see people at the train station in the morning checking the status of the train. Sometimes I get to the station and find no one there, because since they get updates to their phones, they know the trains are running late (or canceled) and I don't. For Jessica, she is constantly needing to text, and doing so on the standard phone keypad is... challenging. Also, she's going to be starting her own business soon, and she'll want to be able to check and send email from her phone.
Fortunately, I have a friend who's a Verizon guy, and he's always figuring out ways to get us decent deals. So we went and paid him a visit this weekend. We came away with a pair of Motorola Droid 2 phones, and an unlimited data plan for each. To sweeten the deal, he found out that I get a discount through my agency (15% on all service, 25% on accessories), so the bottom line in the end won't be too horribly much more than we were paying with the old phones (once you consider Jess's texting overages).
I think once we get used to the phones, we'll be able to do a lot with them. I've already signed up for train updates, and I've ordered a 16GB micro SD card so I can load up some tunes. Now I can get busy writing that app I've been thinking about.
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