Author Archive for J.D.

My Shiny New Toy: The Nokia N800

Published
by
J.D.
on January 2, 2008
in Reviews
. 2 Comments

IMG_0227I got a new toy today: A Nokia N800 Internet Tablet.

So far, I’m impressed with it. It has a lot of features that Nokia doesn’t publicize enough. For example, it has the ability to stream media from any computer that’s sharing media to the tablet, so you can listen to any of your music wherever you have the N800.

What’s more, it can even play media over the internet if you install their server software. So you could listen to music and even watch videos stored on your home PC while you’re in a hotel room far away. At least, that’s the theory; I haven’t tried this yet.

What I have tried is the browser. For a mobile device, the browser is excellent. It can handle Flash and Javascript, unlike most mobile devices (including the lofty iPhone). And since the screen is 800 pixels wide, most websites will fit onto the screen without any awkward zooming in/out functions like the mobile version of Opera.

The screen is beautiful on this thing. And the media player software plays videos very smoothly, even when streaming over the internet. It’s definitely better than my iPod. (I need to figure out how to get iTunes video files to play on the N800….)

It also has a camera that pops out of the left side which can be used for video chatting. At the moment, it works best calling from one N800 to another, but you can get a half-decent video chat to a PC using the Gizmo Project.

But the most exciting feature of the device is that it runs on Linux, and there’s a vibrant community of open-source software developers making some neat stuff for the machine. The weather widget in the photo above is actually an open-source project, not anything developed by Nokia, as is the maps program I’m trying out. The hacker community is having a lot of fun with this device.

My biggest disappointment with it so far is that I can’t get it to dial into the internet over EDGE with my Blackberry on AT&T, after about an hour of struggling with it. And Nokia made a couple of stupid UI design decisions which are a bit annoying. For example, there’s no way to lock those widgets you see in the photo above into place, so if you miss the scroll bar on the RSS reader widget by a pixel or two, you’ll end up dragging the whole box around the screen instead of moving the scroll bar.

But, these minor setbacks aside, I really like the N800. I think I’m going to end up finding a lot of uses for it in my everyday life.

New Theme and Features for JDHarper.com

Published
by
J.D.
on December 28, 2007
in Site Announcements
. 2 Comments

I’ve change the theme for JDHarper.com from Ceruleus, my contest entry for the Sandbox Design Competition, to this one. It’s based on the fabulous K2 theme, which looks great all on its own. I added some missing features (e.g. limiting image sizes to 500px across so they don’t poke into the sidebar if they’re too wide) and tweaked it a little here and there, but for the most part, it’s just the standard K2 theme.

K2 adds some neat features to the blog, most notably the live comment addition. When you add a new comment to a post, it will add your comment to the bottom of the list without reloading the page. It’s really spiffy looking. Try it out!

The “theoretically related posts” part of the individual blog pages has moved into the sidebar, and I’ve moved the archives from sidebar into their own page, linked in the header above. I’ve also switched from using the Google Reader widget in the sidebar to using one from del.icio.us, so that I can post links from sites that I’m not subscribed to.

Anyways, let me know if you find anything that looks broken, and tell me what you think about the new theme.

Family Photo Editing

Published
by
J.D.
on December 27, 2007
in Personal and Personal: Projects
. 0 Comments

Late in 2007, some of my relatives from Texas came up to visit with a huge tub of old family photos. I took a number of those photos, cleaned them up in Photoshop, and made picture CD’s that we sent back to our relatives with their Christmas gifts. (The reception from my extended family has been great, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.)

I’ve uploaded a few of the photos that I think were most improved to Flickr, both before and after shots. If you hover over the word “notes” in the slideshow below, I describe how I used Photoshop to improve the photos.

I may not be the best photo editor out there, but I think these came out pretty well.

Picture CD

I burned them onto LightScribe CD’s using my old LightScribe DVD burner. It took each of these about 40 minutes to burn, but they look really good. (By the way, this is first time I’ve ever used Lightscribe since getting the DVD burner several years ago. Sharpies are just faster.)

I’m just glad everyone in my family likes them! Let me know what you think.

How to tell if you have a drinking problem

Published
by
J.D.
on December 24, 2007
in Asides
. 0 Comments


How to tell if you have a drinking problem, originally uploaded by J. D. Harper.

This man may want to check into AA.

Two letters from cool

Published
by
J.D.
on December 20, 2007
in Asides
. 0 Comments


Two letters from cool, originally uploaded by J. D. Harper.

I thought that this said “Victorian Boxers Revolution.” That would have been *much* more entertaining.

12 Days of Jesus Junk

Published
by
J.D.
on December 18, 2007
in Asides and Just For Fun
. 0 Comments

Dean Peters, author of a blog entitled Heal Your Church Website, sent me a link to his feature 12 Days of Jesus Junk. My favorite so far is the Inflatable Nativity Scene.

Quote of the Day

Published
by
J.D.
on December 18, 2007
in Asides
. 0 Comments

I still find it hard to believe that the invention of the catapult preceded the invention of the computer and all its peripherals; nothing in human history exceeds the ability of the computer to make its user want to construct a device that hurls heavy objects as far away as possible.

-James Lileks

How many five year olds could you take in a fight?

Published
by
J.D.
on December 18, 2007
in Asides and Memes
. 0 Comments

How many five year olds could you take in a fight? I got 21.

Remember Everything with I Want Sandy

Published
by
J.D.
on December 16, 2007
in Lifehacks, Reviews and Software Reviews
. 0 Comments

I Want Sandy is a new web service that helps you keep track of all the details of your life. The software takes on the pesona of an administrative assistant that you contact by email. This makes the service really easy to work with.

For example, lets say you want to remember to get a card for your mom’s birthday. You would write Sandy an email with the message “Remind me to buy a card for Mom on 4/23.” A minute or two later, you’ll get a response from Sandy confirming what you just sent. Then, on April 23rd, she will send you an email reminding you to get the card.

The feature I most use is reminders: it’s really easy to write “remind me to call my insurance guy next monday at 2:00 PM,” as opposed to the fairly clunky process of adding a task with a reminder to my Blackberry. And with Sandy, I don’t see that reminder again until Monday at 2 PM, which means a less cluttered to do list. In GTD terms, I use Sandy as my electronic tickler file.

Plus, I can contact Sandy through direct messages on Twitter. This is best combined with the Twitterbar Firefox extension. Instead of opening up my email, I just type “d s remind me to pay my credit card 12/1 @monthly —post” into my location bar in Firefox. When I type the last “t” in “post,” TwitterBar sends a direct message to Sandy. This way, I don’t even have to open my email to save a reminder.

You can even call Sandy through the Jott speech recognition service. After you get it set up, you call the Jott hotline, ask for Sandy, and then say what you want to remember. Jott will convert it to text and send it to Sandy. It’s really easy.

Sandy’s recognition engine is fairly robust too; there’s a handy cheat sheet that lists most of her vocabulary. You can say abstract things like “r my appointment next monday afternoon” or have repeated items like “r go running @bidaily.”

There are a lot of great features I haven’t even touched on yet, like tagging, list and contact management, and shared reminders with friends. It’s easy to use and it’s free. Check it out at http://iwantsandy.com/.

Where I’ve Been This Time: Starcraft

Published
by
J.D.
on December 13, 2007
in Game Reviews, Just For Fun and Personal
. 0 Comments

I’ve recently discovered an old classic RTS game, StarCraft. I had never played this before I saw the trailers for StarCraft II. Once I saw the trailer, I headed to the video game shop in the mall and bought the StarCraft Battlechest. I’m playing through the first game’s campaign now.

I had heard of people getting addicted to this game and dropping out of college back when it was first released. (Now that title has been passed to World of WarCraft, made by the same publisher, Blizzard.) I know that StarCraft is a huge part of the Korean professional video gaming scene. And I can see why, on both counts. This is an amazingly good game.

Of course, since this is an old game, the graphics are nothing special. But the core of the game is spectacular: the three races look and feel entirely different from each other, but they’re evenly balanced.

And the plus side of it being an old game is that I can play it on my tablet PC, which can’t handle modern games at all.

My only complaint: I can’t zoom in and out. I really want to be able to get a birds-eye view of the battlefield.

The other cool thing is that there’s now a StarCraft board game, which is as good as the video game. A friend of mine has bought it, and so my brother and I have gotten to play the game. Like the video game, it’s well-balanced and challenging. (And I’ve actually managed to win this game a couple of times, unlike most of our previous games.)

Blizzard Entertainment must have made a deal with the devil: everything they touch turns to crack cocaine. And I’m going to enjoy it while I can, the little junkie that I am.