because somewhere, someone, sucks more than you.

This one took me a while to learn. If I knew this in my 20s or 30s I might have made it where I wanted to be, much faster. Or perhaps I’d have gotten there, got bored and been looking for something else.

Here’s the idea. Do you know what they call the guy who graduates last from medical school? They call him “Doctor.”

What ever you think you’d like to do in life, get yourself as close to it as you can. Do what ever it takes to be a person making money doing that thing. Never worry that you may not be good enough, talented enough or lack in any way, what it takes to do that thing (unless its specific education, no way around that one). Because once you arrive in that job you will find people there that are worse at it then you than you ever feared you could be.

Many people just fall into a field of employment based on family, friends or circumstance. By pursuing your dreams, by being involved with what interests you, your chances of success are already higher than someone who doesn’t take the time get what they want.

I wanted to work in entertainment, (television/movies) since high school. I’m here now, but my journey here was long. I see young people around me working in entertainment, many of whom I’m sure have very bright futures ahead of them. There are also people in entertainment who just “fell into it” based on circumstance or situation. Some of those people are hard workers and do great, but others who lack the drive and initiative to make something of it risk losing their jobs to someone willing to work harder. The entertainment field is special in that a college degree isn’t mandatory. Depending on the job, creative talent or most importantly initiative matters most. Success is nearly guaranteed to those that can see what needs doing and gets it done.

Recently 3 of my friends came into the fold of fellow iPhone owners. Here’s a listing of what apps I currently have on my iphone and why I like then or why I never use them.

Screen one (the left side) has the apps I use most often. The Chronometer app is a collection of watch faces. They’re a mixture of fictional and actual watches. The best of them will tell you the phases of the moon, the time of the three stages of dusk and in what direction the sun is from you and how high it is off the horizon at any time or date. If you’re at all interested in Time and Solar astronomy this app is amazing.

NetNewsWire is an iphone version of an extremely popular RSS reader for the Mac.  This is the app I’m most likely looking at while out at lunch or waiting for a haircut or anytime I’m looking to discover something new. RSS feeds allow you to scan the articles from most any website very quickly and then clicking though to read the entire article if I’m interested.  I found my car via RSS feeds from Craig’s list.

Google app.  Love this one.  I use it  most often when I’m having touble spelling something or when I need to answer some kind of question quickly.  It allows me to say the search terms. It listens and returns the results. It also offers suggested searches as I type (when not using the voice feature) Basically if I’m going to the web in search of an answer, I start here.

AccuFuel.  Gas mileage records that I can email myself as a CSV file. It also shows a graph of your mileage at each fill up. I tried several of these apps before I settled on this one. My only wish for this app would be for a notes field.

GPS MotionX.  The best app on my phone.  Create tracks, waypoints, take geotaged photos that export via email or facebook.  See satillite images of your location or view topographic maps of the trail you’re hiking on.  Can’t say enough about this app.  Turn off your bluetooth and Wifi to conserve batteries while using this one.  www.meritline.com offers cheap car lighter power adapters for the iphone. That’ll help keep this battery hungry app satisfied for long drives.

Facebook.  I use this more than the facebook website.  Easy enough for me.

Tweetdeck and Tweetie.  I’m really liking Twitter the more I understand it. I never have to hear what ice cream flavor someone is, or what cocktail they are while reading twitter. Twitter is more conversational and immeadiate.

Blossom. Is a app for viewing my Smugmug photos and videos. It’s fast easy way to access any photo from my smugmug site on my phone. No need to carry every picture in my phone. If it’s on my smugmug site and can get it. Contact me if your interested in a discount coupon for signing up with Smugmug.com.  As photo hosting sites go this one effcient, pretty, priced right, customizable and offers unlimited storage.

Lose it! So far I’ve lost 21 pounds with this one. It’s basicaly a database of foods that allows you to log what you’re eating. It makes it easy to identify the foods that push you over the daily calorie recommendation it sets for you based on your goals.

iProRecorder. From Bias. A voice recorder that’ll record at any of three quality levels. you can email the files it creates of connect to  your phone via Wifi to access the files.

Jott.  I started using thiss app when Jott was comepletely free. Now I pay a few dollars a year to use this service.  Basically, I speak into my phone and Jott transcribes my voice and sends the text to me in an email along with a link to listen to the original recording. Great when your driving along and you’re thinking about checking out a website, or you want to learn more about somehting you heard on NPR. You “Jott” yourself so that you’ll recieve an email when you’re at your computer later. The perfect reminder.  You can also “Jott” your friends.

AudioBoo.  Still heve to give this a try. this one will record a 3 minute voice clip that get posted to a website where you can link to it.  It also integrates those posts to you Twitter account.

Alright that was page one. I’ll be more brief now. Of note on page 2:

Homedigo, A remote control access to my homes X10 lighting controls. Units. Convert any measurement to any like standard. Very useful. Converts currancies as well.  Shazam. listen to a song via the phones mic and returns the title and album sources. Links you to the itunes store incase you need to buy it right then. Shovel.  a reader for the social news sharing site, digg.com. Remote. This is a must have. It allows you to control your itunes on your PC from anywhere in the house. With an Airport express connected to you stereo you can listen to all your music and control the volumn form your easy chair or the dinner table. Decibel. A sound pressure meter in your pocket. I dig on this.  Gmail. I use the phone Mail app primarily for email. I’ll open this when I want to see messages threaded the way gmail does on the web, or to search all my mail on Gmail.  Craigslist.  This app sucks.

Page 3:

Spreadsheet. This is cool. Create a spreadsheet on your phone or transfer on to your phone from your computer. I’ve written a spreadsheet to manage my times during a rally. Very convienient to have the power of Excel in the palm of my hand. Stopwatch.  Multiple stopwatch timers each with lap timers. The results can be emailed from the phone. Nightcamera. The iphone camera’s before the 3Gs phones are not very good cameras. This app foreces the shutter release to wait until the phone is heald still before releasing. A good idea, but I don’t really use this much. Amazon. You’ll need this. I’ve actually bought stuff through this app.  It works great. Ebay. Same thing.  You need this. Pandora. Based on the Music Genome project. You pick an artist or a song and pandora will stream that music plus others they believe you will like. Cool for discovering new artists. Google Earth.  Yeah that Google Earth, in your pocket. Air Sharing or Datacase. Both are like a thumbdrive on steriods. you can view pdf, jpeg and excel or word documents on your phone, Air Sharing pro will actually print from the phone through a Mac with printer sharing turned on. Autostich.  Take a series of photos on your iphone and this app will stich them togerther and save it.

I’ll post pages 4 -6 later.

From time to time I find myself involved with online retailers that just don’t get it. Companies that can’t follow a protocol of online transactions that I’ve come to expect as a customer. Perhaps I’m spoiled by organizations such as Amazon that seem to do everything right. It just seems to me that online sales can be so easy. Mostly automated the hardest part has to be finding someone to put the item in the box and print the label.  Wait, even that can be automated for a price.

The Santa Barbara Olive Company is this the inspiration for this post. I met these folks April 18th at the Santa Barbara County Vinters association, wine tasting festival in Lompoc. I tasted their Olives, stuffed with Garlic, Jalapenos, Blue cheese etc. They were great.  They offered a 10% discount to buy online so on April 28th I bought 2 jars of olives and 3 bottles of olive oil. On the 6th or 7th of May, oliveless, I gave them a call.  Apparently the warehouse was in the midst of a software renovation or reorganization or some such thing. The young lady on the phone was very nice, She’d confirmed my olive order was there and would ship soon.

Still oliveless on the 12th of May I called again. After being told there was a fire in Santa Barbara (of course I was aware of this, I was also aware the olive company address is far from the fire. I found out they had lost my order completely. I emailed them a copy of my confirmation email they sent me on April 28. I received no reply or acknowledgment of that email and no apology for losing my order either.

Now it’s the 18th of May and I still see no olives. 20 days since my order was placed. I called them today, and was told there having a really tough time there with their new software. This time they took my name and email and promised to get back to me. Later that day she actually did. And they even offered an apology for the poor service and plea for me to not neglect them as a customer. Well see if the olives make there way here.

On the morning of May 19th I received a call from the Santa Barbara Olive company. The young lady apologized from the troubles with their new software and the inconvenience pf the fire on their ability to get there shipments out. But, she had more bad news. On there site I had apparently checked “pay by check”  Or more accurately the site probably defaulted to “pay be check” Now I’m being told that don’t do, checks. Unbelievable. After double checking my Visa and ATM charges, I discovered I had not been charged. I just went stepped through he process of buying something from these folks again, It turns out paying by check isn’t even an option.

I canceled my order.

Here’s the deal. I propose a sort of online customer’s bill of rights.  A list of expectations that online retailers should all meet.

1. Send a confirmation email upon receipt of an order. This may include a receipt upon successfully charging the customers credit card. Otherwise another email should be sent one the card has been charged.
2. Ship the item within 2 business days. It really should be one day. Customer orders something, and the next it’s put in a box.  That’s not to much to ask.
3. Send another email upon shipping. include a tracking number that works. include a link to the shippers website for tacking.
4. Then follow up with a “how’d we do” email.  Sort of like when a waiter checks back in with a table to make sure everyone is happy at the start of their meal.
5. Make sure you have a simple penalty free system for returning items.
6. If you have a link on your web page that says “shipping info” or “Customer tracking” make sure it works.

There is clearly a culture at the Santa Brabara Olive Company that does not value a guy buying $35 worth of olives. Do they not realize that $35 today could be repeated a few times a year and friends of friends would all be enjoying my olives wondering where I got them.  If I were a large grocery chain I suppose they’d listen.  Unfortunately the small time olive buyer is not seen by these people as anything more than a nuisance.  That being the case they really ought to stop selling online. The ill will they’re spreading can’t possibly serve them in the end.

First off, it’s called, “Cooking for Engineers” That appealed to me immediately. It’s full of pictures to help keep a guy on course as he prepares whatever. Someone else has to think this site is as useful as I do.

I am not a religious person. That being said, I do have a fascination for the formation of religions. I’m amazed at the differences and similarities between different faiths. I also find the subject of man’s transition from a polytheistic faith structure to a monotheistic structure to be interesting as well.

Not being religious is of course no reason to deny anyone else their beliefs. I share the site mentioned below as a means of raising awareness of the many different religious possibilities out there. So many find comfort in their religion, most often learned as a result of their parents’ preferences. If I was born in another part of the world where different faiths were predominate, would I be of that faith? Or would I still be a non believer?

I do sometimes object if the religion itself raises the fears that it answers, thereby giving each participant the need for religion along with its rewards. What is it that draws some people towards religion, and what repels others?

The site below could be considered a clearing house of different religions. A place where different faiths can be compared and in some cases put into a nutshell for quick understandings of their differences. I find it interesting.

religionfacts.com

The Hubble Deep Field: The Most Important Image Ever Taken

Click here to view the embedded video.

We live in the Milky Way galaxy. There are an estimated 200 – 600 billion stars here. The Hubble image shows an estimated 10,000 galaxies in that tiny portion of the sky. Phenominal.

Here’s another excellent perspective on the image.

After you watch his video check out his site. deepastronomy.com

Here’s a link to the Ultra Deep Field Image on the Hubble telescope site.

This is very cool. Free lectures on an incredibly wide range of subjects from professors at universities like Purdue and UCLA. Oh boy, I can feel smart again.

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Many of my frinds are aware that I enjoy the challenge of opening a lock without its key. I’ve helped many of them retrieve the hopelessly locked contents of whatever they’ve lost the key to. Here is a very friendly explanation / guide to the principles and techniques of lockpicking.

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“A simple animated geographical visualization that shows the relative impact different countries have on climate change over the timeline of watching the application. Different icons represent the statistical data of countries in the context of its birth & death rate, & its carbon dioxide emission.” Via infosthetics.com. It’s important to realize that the CO2 emissions that cause global warming is from CO2 that was taken out of our present bio-cycle some 65 million years ago. There is a naturally-occuring, and cycling level of CO2 in our environment all the time. It’s the constant release of ancient CO2 that’s a threat.
After following the link below, mouse over the different countries to compare their birth and death rates.

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