Much ado about Blah-Blah Blah

I'm sitting here with some time on my hands, so I thought I'd get some typing practice on my lovely ergonomic keyboard, which I have just recently rediscovered at my (gasp!) desk. This won't quite be a freewrite session so much as some of my thoughts of late, and what I would like to do about them. Meanwhile I'll be digesting my tasty turkey salad sandwich.

If I don't think about it, I'm a decent touch typist. I can go on for quite a stretch when I don't think about it. Too bad I am at the moment.

I've always enjoyed watching movies in theaters, so much that even though I have an entirely adequate home theater, I still have a hard time staying away from the local cinema. One of the things I'm preparing to tell you about has to do with my desire to go visit the movie theater. I'm not doing it so much to share my unending combination of lazy bastard and geek, but because I think I should document it somewhere so that when you see it later, you'll know I had the idea first.

My job allows me quite a bit of flexibility, and sometimes I choose to take longer lunch breaks than I might under normal circumstances. I used to comb through the movie listings from Google and Yahoo! to find the best movie to watch at the best time, at the best theater. In rather short order, that became too much like work (hey, does that make you wonder what I do? It sure makes me wonder). I decided it would be better to let someone else take care of this heavy lifting for me. Since one of my children is just beginning to read, I didn't feel comfortable giving this responsibility to them yet. I decided to see if I could get my trusty copy of Microsoft Office to do it for me.

My goal was to assemble a list of movies to wach at lunch, sorted by the approximate time of my return to work. I had used Excel in my search for a new HDTV before by using it to grab prices from one of the popular price-search websites, so I was somewhat familiar with using web queries, and manipulating the data from those queries. I started by looking at the data presented by a number of websites. I have still only found one that consistently differentiates AM times from PM times: Yahoo! was the one, so I set out to customize a query for each area theater to download the movies and showtimes on their own worksheet. This seemed to be working well, so I set out to start manipulating the data to assemble the return-drive offset times.

About halfway through this process I began realizing that Yahoo! was Screwing! With! Me! They were throwing ads and switching up the order of the theaters, so that I was not always getting the showtimes for the theaters I thought I was. I figured I would sort that out later as I was starting to work out a good system for converting a long string containing multiple times into multiple time entries with the correct 24hr time format (so I didn't try to watch an 11pm show at 11am). Next I put together another worksheet which would display all of the results. I decided at this point that it might be handy to filter for just a single movie. Yahoo! also had me covered because they could give me a list of just movies, guaranteed to have the same name as the lists of movies at each theaters. Now I had two sort methods to figure out, and a recurring problem with my movie theaters not staying in the same spot.

I decided to rework the whole thing. If yahoo wasn't going to give me consistent results, I had to make a smarter spreadsheet. Instead of grabbing the same webpage 10 times to get one small table I would download it once, then parse each line to sort each theater's shows into their own worksheet, where my previous technique of pulling out the showtimes could be reused.

This gave me an idea for another "feature". There were some theaters I really didn't care to waste my time on, so I grafted in some more creative math to ignore the ones I didn't have an alias or commute time for (duh, because I wasn't going to go there) once the data got copied to the report worksheet. This way it could all be processed the same way, and would be simply hidden from view in the end, maybe not the most efficient for processing, but much simpler for me to design with Excel. I also threw in an option for a second "base" location, with a second set of drive-times. Now I could find out when I might get back to work OR home after seeing a movie. Nice!

Is the current form we have a fairly large spreadsheet, that can retrieve the first 20 showings of up to 20 movies each at up to 10 theaters closest to (up to) two locations. It sorts ALL of this data by proximity (represented by the number of minutes you think it takes for you to drive between your "base" and each theater) added to the calculated ending time (start time plus end time plus 15 minutes for commercials and previews). Alternatively it can show you a single movie's showtimes, in case you already happen to know what you want to watch, but don't know where to watch it. Two to four clicks is all it takes.

I'm rather proud of it, but I recently decided it wasn't enough. There seems to be a boom in web creativity as more content owners make it easier to play with their information, or to add your own to theirs (Hi, Google). I would love to have something like this on the web to look at from anywhere, but nobody seems to have done it yet. I guess it's gonna be me for now. Man, are you gonna be sorry for not doing all this hard work for me.

I've got another thing I really want this to do. I want it to pick a showing, then add it to my calendar! Why? This started out as an exercise in not missing important things at work. If I can put it on my calendar, it would be eaiser to see where there might be any conflicts with other items on my schedule. Right now I use two calendars: Outlook/Exchange for work, and Google for not-work. I sync my phone with Outlook, and get alerts from Google Calendar via SMS. To begin with I'm going for Outlook "integration" to leverage the work I have already done, and my relative ease with using VBA. The kicker is that I would like to integrate on the Outlook side so that I can preview the movie schedule right next to my current calendar, select the item, and slurp it into my own calendar. I haven't come close to playing on this level before with Outlook. The less elegant method (in my mind, anyway) would be to use Excel to grab the calendar from Outlook and do the picking from Excel, then send it back over to Outlook. It may end up being easier to implement, though.

Once I have the kinks worked out, and a clearer vision of how it works, my goal is to make my own gadget for Google Desktop/Home-Page/Etc. that would look at your location, ask what movie theaters you do or don't like, automatically calculate drive times and store that info for future use, show you the movies coming up (maybe for the next few days) and send the appointment to the mail/calendar app of your choice after you pick the movie.

That would rock.

I think I've exercised the finger enough now. More "free writing" later!

Blogged with Flock

Time to Try New Tools

This entry is again dedicated to the topic of alternative means of working with my blog. I just recently installed Flock, which is a web-community oriented browser based on Firefox that includes built-in support for posting to various blog, batch uploading pictures to your the web, sharing bookmarks, and other forms of on-line collaboration. -I just ran the spell checker and noticed that it didn't recognize the word "blog". How funny!

I've had a bit of a revelation of late. In working to understand all of the features of my new mobile phone, a Sony Ericsson K790a, I have been playing with both this blog and my new mobile blog quite a bit more. I've noticed that there are a lot more resources on the web for earning money by making your own words and pictures available for publishing. I had run across similar ideas in the past, particularly from my father, and had not been very impressed.

My dad is staring down the barrel of retirement, and wondering what he can do to ensure (maybe even grow?) his income once his career as a city employee is over. He has been looking to the Internet for inspiration and ran across a business & advertising scheme called Affiliated Websites. I use the word scheme because I think the purveyors of these prebuilt websites are taking advantage of the common netizen by stealing their money for services that aren't that hard to perform for yourself. For a 3-figure annual fee they set up a domain (which they own), let you choose from a number of content templates to fill in the blanks (including your testimonial as to how effectively it makes money for you), then they sell ads and prominently link to specific businesses selling products related to the main topic of the website (those are the affiliates).

I was initially quite shocked when Dad introduced me to this idea. I wasn't very impressed with the so-called content of these websites. There was a lot of fluff, and not much meat. My impression was that these sites were just search engine traps optimized for funneling eyeballs toward on line vendors, rather than providing any real information about the topic highlighted by the site. I explained my objections to him and tried my best not to sound like a jealous snob. Was I doing anything to try to make money using the Internet? Somewhat, and in a rather lame & half-hearted way. Did I have any better idea? Not really. My only strong objections were that there wasn't much this affiliated business plan did that you couldn't do yourself for a handful of dollars, and that there was nothing to keep people coming back for more after they tripped across the site and made (or didn't make) a purchase at the featured store.

My dad is a great guy, and took my criticism of this plan very well. He still plans to set up a website to attract folks with interests similar to his own, primarily motor homes. He took an HTML course at the local college and is now much better equipped to not only help himself, but he can sell his services to other people wanting to set up a website.

I'm going to try to turn the increased opportunities to be published to my advantage by writing more often, and taking more pictures that can be applied to more than just my own personal use. I'm looking forward to being able to use new tools and features included in products like Flock to make this easier than ever before. I'll be using this forum to let you know how it goes.

Blogged with Flock

Back to my New Toy: Portability of Information

I'm still working out the kinks in my new-found access to information, where my phone has the potential to become a mobile navigation aide, help me keep track of appointments and items on my "To Do" list, and generally make life easier. I would love the Sony Ericsson K800/K790 even if it didn't have the camera. Here are some of the things I found I can do anywhere, rather than being stuck in front of a computer:

• Check my Vonage Voicemail: This one was tricky, but now works great. I love Vonage, but sometimes find their website a little frustrating. Their voicemail page is particularly slow to respond, so I went to some length to make it accessible from elsewhere some time ago. I set up a private Google Group for just Allison and myself, including virtual members like our cell phones' SMS addresses, to which our voicemail alerts are sent, with attached messages in .wav format. I had previously set the voicemail alerts to go to my Gmail account, which then passed them on to my cell, but I wanted Allison to have similar visibility and didn't want to keep cluttering my Gmail Inbox with these messages. The Google Group helps us both keep up to date with our home voicemail by letting us both know when somebody has cared enough to leave a message. I was getting the individual alerts sent to my phone, Allison to her Gmail Inbox, and I would also get a daily summary in my Gmail Inbox. Now that this Google Group contains lots of messages, all with the same information, it in turn has gotten hard to navigate and retrieve messages. This is where my K790 comes in. It supports IMAP "Push" email which, unlike SMS, supports attachments. After months of searching, I finally found a free IMAP mail service that supports this "Push" service. It's from our good old friends at AOL! Their AIM.com email service just happens to do what I need. I managed to dig up my account information (I had put it away after it got me married) and set up the email account. Configuring the phone was fairly easy as well. Sony Ericsson provided the setup for AOL email to my phone via SMS, which I then changed to reflect the AIM.com domain. Now, I get immediate notification that a message was left, I can download it to the phone to listen to, and then delete the message when I'm done with it.
  
• Check News headlines and weather forecasts: The K800/790 has a built in RSS reader, which allows each feed to be individually customized.
• Find lower-priced gas: I've found a number of services offering mobile access to prices at local gas stations. In 5 clicks (browser-down-down-down-select) I can see a list of the lowest gas prices in my area. This service is one linked to by Cingular, but if you want my all around favorite check out www.gasbuddy.com. They support mobile web browsers as well as SMS services. They also allow you to submit updated prices.
• For you Outlook users, there is software available called MobyToday, which taps your phone's PIM attributes (appointments and To Do list) and puts them together on screen like Outlook Today does as well as any Windows Mobile device. It's really handy to see these items on your standby screen if you are the type wanting that information in your face. I discovered I didn't really need it at about the same time I discovered I couldn't get my theme's background to show up as the MobyToday background. Oh well. Reminders are really enough for me.
• Navigation: This is still a work in progress. I've found a few navigation apps that can use a bluetooth connected GPS to show location information. You can find an appropriate GPS for less than $60. My idea is that I can leave the GPS in the car charging until I get in, dock the phone in it's dash holder, which would also charge it, and start the navigation app. Conceivably these devices could also be used as a two-piece bike computer as well. I've got an OLD Garmin GPSII on my bike now, which it is not ideally suited for, as it takes so long to acquire the satellites.

One other feature to note on this phone -and to look for on other phones-, is Bluetooth 2.0. Don't get a phone without it. In this day when hands-free features are becoming not only prevalent, but required by law, being able to maintain simultaneous connections is really handy. My Moto RAZR had decent bluetooth support, but I had to turn off (or tell the phone to disconnect) my headset if I wanted to wirelessly sync calendar/contacts, which then turned into a pain if someone called because it could only maintain one connection at a time, and I still don't like the idea of holding a cell phone up to the side of my head. With Bluetooth 2.0, I can keep the headset connected all the time, no matter what other bluetooth devices may be clamoring for attention.

Soapbox Time!

This one is near and dear to me, and has been for some time. Distracted driving has become more and more of an issue as the number of guests, gadgets, or food items increase in cars these days.

I have a long history of gadget admiration and consider myself to have been a bit of a road warrior in the past (how's Pascagoula, MS to Portland, OR solo in 52 hours?). After acquiring a wife, house, and two small children, the gadgets and road trips are much fewer and far between. I used to have a small, but delightfully overpowered Chevy Corsica that was near to invisible on the road. It was fully outfitted with counter-intelligence equipment for optimal "safe driving", which meant I had a good idea of where I could get away with speeding and where I couldn't. Here's what I had tucked away in there:

• CB radio: After throwing a rod (thanks Jiffy Lube) and getting stuck between Charlottesville, VA and the Blueridge Parkway with two guests, I didn't want to be without some form of emergency communication, should the need arise. The first thing I bought after getting the engine replaced for $95 (thanks Chrysler warranty) was to purchase an under-dash Citizen's Band Radio. The first one I had was a little large for the space available in my car, and was quickly replaced by a Cobra everything-in-the-handset unit once I read about my next "safe driving" aide. I purchased a cell phone mounting kit (for cell phones that had separate handsets, remember?) to keep it beside the center console, where I could hear it clearly and grab it quickly if I had anything to say (which didn't happen often). After getting a free paint job (thanks for the peeling paint, Chevy) I changed from a trunk lid mounted antenna, to an adhesive glass mount antenna on the upper right portion of the rear window. I had read up on how antenna placement can affect the directionality of your reception, so I compromised between ease of installation
  and center placement, with the antenna for the next gadget already being present on the left side of the same window.
• Mobile Police Band Scanning Radio: This was one was the most fun I've ever gotten from a "driving aide". It was my main reason for replacing my first CB radio, as there was no other adequate place to install it than under the dashboard, above my left knee. This was a revolutionary idea in police detection at the time. I had been living in and out of Virginia, where RADAR detectors are illegal, but wanted some fair way to detect the fuzz residing outside my naval. The Uniden Beartracker BCT-2 didn't have more than a two-digit display, but the trick it had was listening for mobile repeaters installed in the vehicles of state and local law enforcement. They have about a 3-mile range to make sure the officer's hip radios work properly. If somebody keyed their microphone on any of those systems and my BearTracker picked it up (with wild beeping and a bright flashing red light), then I knew I was close to old Smokey. I had to look around to finally find a store that had one, and it was at a Truck Stop, no less. A few years later, I replaced it with a BCT-7, which added a real scanner diplay, more monitoring bands (including CB), and fit in the same bracket. Not having seen any active use in a number of years, I recently loaned my BCT-7 to a friend who was in training to become a police officer. I like to think I helped, as he has since graduated from the academy he later attended.
• RADAR detector: I went through two of these too! Both from Uniden. Having been a fan of the Valentine One detectors since their inception, but not wanting to fork over the cash for one (thanks for never dropping the price, Mike!) I found a fairly capable Uniden 4-band detector (how many do they do now? this was back in 1993!) for my car. Having read and re-read any dectector comparison I could get my hands on, I was looking for optimal placement, that would not be too obvious to the casual onlooker as I was all about stealth, and keeping passers-by passing by. My decision was to cut the clutter of detector and power cord that would be found by attaching the detector to the base of the windshield, and put it just below the window tinting, on the right of the rearview mirror. I powered it by tapping the power to the map lights in the mirror, keeping the cord short, and minimizing the visual impact of the detector. Instead of suction cups, I used adhesive lock strips to anchor the mounting bracket of the detector to the windshield. I replaced this detector with a newer model later, featuring Voice Alert to verbally announce alerts.
• Stereo system: Nothing fantastic. No extra amps or processors. Just a Pioneer KEH-P8200 with 12disc CD changer. Before you dismiss this little-known head unit, know that it was the most complicated car stereo I have ever seen. Literally, you could not perform many basic functions, like track/station seek without using the remote control. The state of the world when I bought this "car radio" was such that CDs had not fully displaced tapes, and I was still using tapes on a semi-regular basis. The P8200 had a great tape transport that could actually repeat songs, and had a number of features to make tapes sound their best, including Dolby C Noise Reduction. How was the radio? Amazing! In the early days of RDS, with spotty usage at best, Pioneer came up with something less flexible, but more complete: Attached via fixed umbilical cord was a small box containing the entire list of FCC licensed AM & FM radio station, their format, and approximate location. You could tell the stereo what state it was in, and it could scan the bands to tell you what city you were close to. I could drive across the country listening to only the format of radio station I wanted.
• My last road gadget was not affixed to the car, but was always ready in the center console. It was one of the early pocket-sized highway directories. I could enter the state, interstate highway number, direction, and mile-post to find the closest services or find out how far to specific businesses. It was quite invaluable when used in concert with AAA Trip-Tiks.

My whole point here it that I had a few simple devices, and a few more that were rather complex. Today I was reading some opinions about cell phones, GPS, and other distractions on the road, and which ones should be allowed. One particular opinion struck a chord with me. They said that any driver should wanting do anything else while driving should take driving test doing that same thing, be it eating food, reading a book, fiddling with the stereo, or anything else.

I whole-heartedly agree. I think that anybody performing a task that could have a potential effect on anyone else should have some level of qualification for that task. If you are all alone in an empty parking lot, and can verify nobody else is present, then I say you can take that opportunity to play around. If not, then you had better be practicing your best "all business" driving. The latest benefits of technology can provide such great benefits, PLEASE make sure you are well versed in using them. Look for ways to minimize the requirements for your attention to leave the road, and keep your eyes open for the other folks not doing such a good job.

Thanks!!

kEnny's New Toy

My latest toy is finally almost fully operational. A few months ago I purchased a wireless phone on Ebay, which I had thought I thoroughly researched. I had read that the mechanism required to unlock this phone was rather complicated, and that it would cost a little more than most others. The combination of features offered by this phone seemed to be worth it to me. It’s the Sony Ericsson K790a.

I made the purchase from a Canadian seller who got the phone to me in good time. Being as it was locked to Rogers AT&T, I could not use it yet. When I set out to find the best place to get the phone unlocked, I seemed to be suddenly running across lots of places saying they could no longer unlock any of the Sony Ericsson db2020 phones (that’s the name for the encrypted locking technique or something associated with it). I made an inquiry to a business that had unlocked another phone for me before, and they said they could unlock it with no problem. Right there I was both happy and suspicious. Could they really do it, or did they possibly not know about the recent “Lockdown on unlocking?” It turned out to be the latter. They were able to unbrand (this removes the software limitations and new software installed for Rogers) the phone right away, but unlocking was a different matter entirely. I let them hang onto it for about a month and a half, so they could try new releases of whatever product they are using to unlock phones, with no success. When I asked for the phone back, it was returned promptly and I was refunded most of the money I paid. Half of it had been for the successful unbranding of the phone. I consider this to have been very generous, as I felt like I was taking advantage of their misunderstanding about their being able to unlock the phone in the first place.

Getting the phone unlocked was an interesting adventure. While there are many b&m stores inviting you to mail or carry your db2020 phone to them for unlocking, I could only find one that would perform remote unlocking of db2020 phones. They had all kinds of downloads available for connecting hidden USB devices, flashing, & unlocking phones. I followed their instructions to generate a file to email to them. My first attempt to send this file was thwarted by my choice of email service. I use Earthlink as my email address, but have it set to forward everything to Gmail, which is set to send messages with Earthlink as my return address. It’s great for dropping the spam, but not when the place you need to send a file to is expecting it from the domain you originally gave to them. I logged into Earthlink’s webmail interface to send the file and waited for about 8 hours for the return file to arrive. I was at work when I got it, and of course the unlocking software required access to the internet. My employer uses proxy servers to access the outside world’s internet, and of course the unlocking software did not have options for using proxies, so I drove to a local strip-mall where a number of businesses have free wi-fi. I sat there for almost an hour trying to get it to work. I finally figured out that I didn’t have all of the correct drivers installed, but by the time I got them running, my laptop had decided to turn off it’s wi-fi adapter. Doh!! I at lunch and tried it again. BINGO!!! I made a call, received an SMS message, and went back to work.

That night I spent a good bit of time getting to know the phone, the camera, and many of their various options. The Sony Ericsson website has lots of useful information, including a feature that will send an SMS message to you to automatically configure your phone for MMS, web access, and email. I used them all. Once I had everything working to my satisfaction, I (watch out!!!) changed my data plan from 200 SMS messages per month, to unlimited web/video & 200 messages (SMS/MMS/IM/Email) per month. Immediately, nothing worked. Coincidentally, my wife couldn’t send or receive MMS messages for the rest of the night either.

The next morning, I found I could send SMS messages out, even to email addresses. The return address was rejected when replying from email accounts, however. Using a specific combination of phone number and Cingular email extension, I was finally able to find an address that would get messages from my email account to the phone as well. I called Cingular with my now-specific complaint, and after spending almost an hour and a half explaining that the phone does the job fine, that they needed to fix the way they were handling (or not) messages for me after changing my data plan, I was left with two interesting things: The CSR I was speaking with didn’t really know what was going on as he told me I should not expect the addressing problem to be resolved, and that everything was going to start working okay again. Allison sent a message from her Gmail account, which I replied to, then she replied back and my phone saw it just fine. WOW!!

After some time getting to know how to navigate with the phone’s built in Netfront web browser, and playing with Opera Mobile, I still don’t know which one I like more, but I’m left to use Netfront more in general because the phone’s built in RSS reader opens links with it. I used to get an SMS message every morning to tell me what to expect for weather, but now I don’t have to waste messages on that, because the phone gets RSS feeds for weather and news headlines every day.

I’ll add updates later as I smooth out my day-to-day operations with this phone. For now, I’m gonna say that I love it, and am glad I waited for it.