Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Road Trip Technology

We’ve taken a fair number of long, complicated road trips in the last few years. Along the way I’ve worked out some habits for staying organized and minimizing stress. In the past those strategies have involved a lot of toner and paperclips, but now that we’ve each got two mobile devices I figured we can do better. 

I like to plan out our route in advance, and I’m a total sucker for turn by turn directions. I’d love to just use Google Maps on my phone, but I want something that works even in the middle of the mountains where there’s no reception, or the middle of Utah where there are no towers. Besides, I hate trying to type addresses on a phone or tablet while driving. My solution is pre-generating all the directions and saving them to my phones. This takes a few steps, but it isn’t all that difficult. First, sit down at your laptop or desktop and generate your directions with Google Maps as normal. Hit the “Print” button. When you get to the printer selection dialog, instead of choosing a printer choose “Save to PDF” (or whatever your equivalent is). This will, surprise!, save a copy as a PDF file. I used Dropbox to sync the PDFs from my laptop onto my tablet and phones. The only gotcha is that Dropbox won’t automatically download the files to your devices. You have to open up each PDF on your device. That will force Dropbox to download and save them on your device.

I also like to have copies of my itinerary, hotel confirmations, ferry schedules, and anything else I might useful on the road. So I just used the same “Save to PDF” trick on all of them. Usually all those receipts are just overkill. But when you roll into your hotel at 10 PM and the clerk tries to tell you that your reservation is for next week, those hotel confirmations are priceless.

All those directions and itineraries are nice, but if you want to improvise a bit a road atlas is indispensable. Again, Google Maps would work if I could be assured of connectivity. Since I can’t, I needed a different solution. A little searching turned up a free app called Maps With Me that does exactly that. You can download full maps for pretty much anywhere in the world. I spot checked some neighborhoods I’m familiar with, and the maps seem to be about as detailed and accurate as you would get on Google Maps. They weigh in at about 50MB per US state. There are versions for both Android and iOS, which is a nice bonus for those of us with no OS loyalty. Since it’s free and easy to set up, I put it on all four devices, so we don’t have to worry about which one has the maps.

Last up, keeping your homebound family and friends informed. There are plenty of options for letting Mom know you’re not dead, and/or rubbing your friends’ noses in the fact that what you’re doing is more awesome than what they’re doing. Facebook and Twitter are popular for this, but I’ve avoided them ever since burglars started using that info to find empty houses. Instead, we’re setting up a Glassboard for the trip. Glassboard has all that location-photo-messagey goodness of Facebook, but it’s complete private so the nefarious nightcrawlers won’t know we’re gone. Plus, when we get home I can export the entire contents of the board into a zip file. That makes a really easy scrapbook or journal of the trip. You also get copies of all the uploaded photos and videos so you can dump them into Lightroom, iPhoto, Picasa, or wherever you like to keep photos. Copying photos out of a zip file is way easier than trying to coerce them out of Facebook. And yes, it’s true, I’m not exactly impartial on the subject of Glassboard. But it’s still a good tool for the job. Really.

That’s it for my trip tech this time out. Do any of my twelve avid readers have other ideas for travel tools?

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Defending America from Terrorists and Zombies

While we were in Vegas for the aforementioned minor ceremony, we received some disturbing news. It seems that Las Vegas was being invaded! By terrorists and zombies, no less! For some reason these terrorists and zombies had decided to start this invasion from a gun range… and not the part of the range you fire from. More like the part you fire at.

 

Shooting guns at The Gun Store. If I recall correctly I shot a Thompson submachine gun, a semiauto AK-47 with a foregrip and red dot sight, and an M249 SAW with a holo sight and bipod. Matt fired the SAW, an M14, an M9 pistol, and the AK-47. Wendy fired an M4, the SAW, and the M9. Mom fired the M4 and the M9.

You might think that Mom, tender soul that she is, would not partake in such violence. Au contraire, she was right there on the front lines. She showed no mercy, not even for zombie clowns. You can even see a spent shell casing traversing the middle of the photo. Turns out she's a pretty good pistol shot, too. I'll have to keep that in mind before crossing her.

 

Shooting guns at The Gun Store. If I recall correctly I shot a Thompson submachine gun, a semiauto AK-47 with a foregrip and red dot sight, and an M249 SAW with a holo sight and bipod. Matt fired the SAW, an M14, an M9 pistol, and the AK-47. Wendy fired an M4, the SAW, and the M9. Mom fired the M4 and the M9.

Their tactics seem ill-conceived, but then zombies and terrorists are not renowned for their great intelligence. In any event, we headed over there to do our duty and defend America by firing lots of guns.

 

Shooting guns at The Gun Store. If I recall correctly I shot a Thompson submachine gun, a semiauto AK-47 with a foregrip and red dot sight, and an M249 SAW with a holo sight and bipod. Matt fired the SAW, an M14, an M9 pistol, and the AK-47. Wendy fired an M4, the SAW, and the M9. Mom fired the M4 and the M9.

The only thing worse than a zombie is a Nazi zombie. Wendy is preparing to explain the error of his ways. Apparently explaining things makes her very happy.

 

Shooting guns at The Gun Store. If I recall correctly I shot a Thompson submachine gun, a semiauto AK-47 with a foregrip and red dot sight, and an M249 SAW with a holo sight and bipod. Matt fired the SAW, an M14, an M9 pistol, and the AK-47. Wendy fired an M4, the SAW, and the M9. Mom fired the M4 and the M9.

Matt, in a rare moment of uncertainty. It’s not a zombie, it’s not a terrorst. Should I still shoot it? If I recall correctly, he went with “Shoot ‘em all a whole bunch and let God sort it out.”

 

Anyway, it was a great time, if a bit pricey. If you’ve got any interest in firing some fully-automatic weapons while defending our fair nation from not-too-bright zombies, I encourage you to try it out.

There are a few more photos up on my SmugMug, too.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Vegas style

Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

So you may have heard the vicious rumors that I ran off to Vegas and got married to some woman. It’s amazing how these things get started and just take on a life of their own. But I’m here to set it straight. Not only are these rumors vicious, as I previously mentioned, they’re also true. Weird, right? Believe me, I’m just as surprised as you are.

 

Taking a little nip of liquid courage in the limo

Did that flask have something to do with it? Nah, not really. I was already wearing the suit, so it was far too late.

For some reason people get really into pictures of weddings. I still think it’s kind of an odd tradition, since people in suits all look pretty much the same, and especially once you find out what those crazy photographers think they can charge. But since people refuse to be dissuaded, you can see the photos here for a little while. I was a little busy, so I don’t have many photos of my own

 

Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

After the actual ceremony, we took a quick jaunt to the (in)famous Welcome to Las Vegas Sign. For some reason I thought it would be empty out there. Of course I was completely wrong - it’s quite the tourist attraction, with its own parking lot and everything. So we just snapped some photos and headed off for dinneer.

 

They did a much better job of posing than I did.

And there's a photo of my brother and his lovely lady in front of the sign. Why did I include that photo? Well frankly, they hit that pose with a lot more style. So just go ahead and mentally erase them out of it and put Wendy & I in there, okey? Thanks, I appreciate it.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Where’s Beakers Brain Been?

I’m sure my loyal fans (all twelve of you) have noticed that the quantity of posts here has fallen waaay off. It’s probably so concerning that you’ve been losing sleep about it. Well wonder no longer! The reason for the dearth of photos is that I’ve been really damn busy for the last, um, year or two.
icon@2xWhat I’ve mostly been busy with is Glassboard. Glassboard is a piece of software that I’ve been working on with a bunch of great folks in our own little quasi-startup software company. It’s been great fun, but there have been more than a few days involving three meals at my desk and walking home in the dark.

Part of the reason this is so fun for me is that Glassboard is one of the first things I’ve worked on that regular people can actually use. It’s a private group messaging app. So think texting without the ridiculous fees, or Facebook without advertisers watching you, or Twitter without the entire internet reading over your shoulder. It’s a great way to keep up to your family, or coworkers, or school group, or people in your soccer league, or people in your gaming guild. It’s even a great way to keep up with all of them at the same time but not have your Mom seeing you talk to your drunken soccer buddies and your coworkers listen to your kids complain about cleaning their rooms.

Honestly, it is pretty cool, and I’m not just talking it up because I worked on it. Come on, do I ever talk something up just because it’s mine? I’m terrible at that and you know it.

Anyway, you should give it a shot. It’s free. We’ve got Android apps, and iPhone apps, and web apps. No Blackberry app though – you guys are trapped in the wrong decade.
So does this mean I’m going to start posting more photos? Well, if it takes off and sells for a billion dollars then I’ll be sure to post photos of my private island. In the meantime, if you need your photo fix join our photo sharing board. Get the the Glassboard app (or go to the website and register), find the place to enter Invitation Codes and put in “photo”


UPDATE: Nick Bradbury put up a great description of how to enter invitation codes in the Android/iPhone apps. And he's got a board with dog photos, if you're into that sort of thing.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Glass on the Sidewalk

As I was opening my blinds this morning I looked out the window at my front yard. Where else was I going to look, really? On the sidewalk right in front of my house I saw this big red splatter, a puddle really, trailing off into the yard. With glass embedded in it. Broken glass, even. None of which was there when I got home, I'm pretty sure.

So, it looks like somebody got into a midnight disagreement. Words failing them, they resorted to violence. And shortly thereafter the integrity of that glass bottle failed, too. None of which was so good for them, and it leaves me with a mess to clean up. So, I pull on my gloves, grab my trusty dustpan and go out to take care of business.

As I'm sweeping up the debris, trying not to slice myself on anything, I happen upon a label. Presumably it's from the bottle that's now scattered around. "Heinz Original Recipe" it says. Which neatly explains that big red puddle, and means the anonymous denizens of the night are bereft of condiments rather than precious bodily fluids. So that's good all around.

These are the perils of living in walking distance from a grocery store. Especially one that gives out flimsy plastic bags.