Tue - December 13, 2005

Wed - October 19, 2005

Wed - September 28, 2005

Tue - September 27, 2005

Don Adams, aka Agent 86, rest in peace 

Many were the half hours of my youth wasted away in front of the TV set and many were the laughs I got from Don Adams, secret agent Maxwell Smart. The Mel Brooks comedy "Get Smart" never failed to amuse my pre-adolescent brain and many of the show's regular bits, like the shoe phone and the malfunctioning cone of silence, became staples of our family's humor. So long and thanks for all the fish, Don.

Subject tags: Culture, Television, Obit, Don Adams 

Posted at 07:55 AM    

Thu - September 22, 2005

Mon - September 19, 2005

Where have you gone Chuckie Weiss - New England turns its lonely eyes to you 

There's a pink elephant in the room, New England Patriots fans, and no one is mentioning it. After two performances that can only be characterized as lackluster or worse, the Pats are sorely missing former offensive coordinator Charlie Weiss, now head coach at Notre Dame.

The evidence is everywhere. Who exactly was calling the plays in Sunday's debacle against the Carolina Panthers? With the opposition defense blitzing everything but the kitchen sink and swarming to attack the line of scrimmage, where were the screen passes, the trick plays, the misdirections for which Master Weiss was so rightly famous? And it used to be the Pats who made smart half time adjustments to get the offense on track. Not this Sunday. In the last 56 odd minutes of the game, the Pats offense scored three points. No running game at all? And unlike the defense, the Pats don't have any player personnel excuses on O. The return of big, fast tight end Ben Watson was supposed to make Tom Brady's life easier. That hasn't happened as Big Ben has a total of 3 catches for 62 yards. Of course, Bill Belichick is a smart guy. Maybe he'll figure all this out -- and quick.

Meanwhile over at Notre Dame, even with Saturday's 3-point overtime loss, Charlie is kicking you know what...

Sports, football, Patriots 

Posted at 07:30 AM    

Tue - September 13, 2005

The future of Microsoft Office is not pretty 

You almost have to laugh when Microsoft unveils screen shots of its next update in the creaky Office franchise. Just wait, just wait one more year, and we'll make Word really great. Really, really great. We promise. Based on the screen shots, it look more likely to cause head aches than upgrades. Somehow this mishmash of tabs and buttons and tool bars is supposed to be an improvement? What happened to simple and intuitive design? What happened to hiding complexity from the user? This just looks like a confusing mess. At least I don't see Clippy, the annoying talking paper clip from a couple of versions back. Oh, and there's no "classic" mode if you prefer the current incarnation, at least so they say now. Maybe a few of these "features" will be dropped before the final product is ready. I'm willing to learn from those who actually attended this unveiling to some degree, but wow - yuck.




Subject tags: Office, Software, Windows, Microsoft, Rants 

Posted at 05:48 PM    

Thu - September 8, 2005

Wed - September 7, 2005

Working with the e815 and photos - oy vey 

After a couple of weeks with my Verizon/Motorola e815, I have a few quirks and quibbles to report. Getting photos off the phone has been a mildly trying exercise since Verizon crippled the Bluetooth profile that would allow one to effortlessly and wirelessly move snapshots into iPhoto. You can upload photos to vzwpix.com, but once there they can be viewed and emailed but not downloaded (dragging and dropping a photo from the web site leaves you with a low resolution version of the image). So, okay, email -- you can email from the phone or the web site a "slide show" containing one to five pictures. I emailed myself a "slideshow" of one picture and was able to save the attached file as a photo and pull it into iPhoto at its full resolution (1280 by 1024 pixels). Given that the phone has no keyboard, typing email addresses is kind of a drag.

So, I bought a 128 mb transflash card for the phone. Actually, I believe it has been officially renamed "microSD." This is a new and teeny-tiny flash memory card format, smaller than your fingernail, that fits in a slot in the top of the e815:



A simple menu setting lets you save photos to the card instead of to the phone's own memory. When you want to move your new masterpieces over to your Mac, turn off the phone, carefully extract the memory card, seat it in its SD card adapter, put the adapter into a card reader, connect to a Mac and - shazam - you can import to iPhoto.

Why so carefully? In my first reaction review of the e815, I wondered why Verizon allowed one to move photos off the phone on a memory card but not with Bluetooth. The answer, it seems, is a warning that accompanies the card -- due to delicate, small form factor the card is not meant to be removed and re-inserted frequently. The manufacturer, SanDisk, refers to the cards as "semi-removable." Makes one wish he had waited for a higher capacity card (transflash cards of 512 mb are listed as "out of stock" at Amazon and other sites). It also makes one wonder how great an MP3 music player the phone would be if you can only change the music on your card infrequently.

Another pet peeve -- while iSync on Tiger will synchronize phone numbers from your address book with the phone, it leaves email addresses off. This is mucho annoying as I just mentioned that typing addresses in with the numerical keypad is a pain. I'll test some of the iSync alternatives and see if any do a better job.


Subject tags: Gadgets, Verizon, Cell Phones, Mac, Review, Photography 

Posted at 08:40 AM    

Wed - August 31, 2005