May 2009 Archives

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Sun 05.31.09 - After three days of "June Gloom" or maritime inversion layer or clouds that have not evaporated by the afternoon, my sister Allison and I decided to see if we could get out of the dreary clouds near the beach and go east to the desert to find sun. We called Sandra and Justin who live in Ontario (Inland Empire) to see if there was sun at their house and there was, albeit hazy, and by the end of the afternoon the haze had shifted to clear sun.

For a spontaneous Sunday afternoon road trip, it was delightful to not only not only be saved from a May-June case of SAD but also hang out for a few hours with Sandra, Justin and Pogo in their backyard soaking up the sun and laughing.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her HTC Magic camera phone.

Sat 05.30.09 - Even though the Google Android HTC Magic phone only has a 3.2 megapixel camera, HTC and the Android team have put them heavy lifting image algorithms to work, as this mobile device takes the best looking photos daytime and strong light I have seen from a device that is under 5 megapixels. The phone has no flash, so night time or action photos are usually blurred.

The new Google Android phone did a great job on local flowers today even though the daylight was gray from June Gloom cloud cover. I purposely put the camera lens within 4 inches of the big vine flower. The camera auto-focused on the buds behind and to the left of the big flower, as well as distorted the color of the big flower a bit to the orange, but nonetheless, the photo turned out surprisingly nice for a 3.2 mp camera with no close-up function.

The big failing so far with the HTC Magic is that there is not a sharing application, like Shozu, to send the images to places on the web. From the photo gallery one can send the photos to email, messaging, and Picassa, but not to Flickr or to one's blog.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri 05.29.09 - Yesterday, while I was sitting in a session about Android binaries at the Google I/O 2009 conference, I texted Earl, my next door neighbor, to ask if the baby had come yet.

Earl texted me right back to say, "2 min. Ago, big!"

Thus, Baby Callis (name TBA) was the first baby born to our apartment building in a birthing pool in Tammy & Ryan's living room at 3:43pm on Thursday, May 28, 2009! Baby was born 8 lbs, 22 inches long and she is a girl.

When I got home last night around 9:40pm, all was quiet. Around noon today, Bird invited Sharon (Earl's lady) and I over to meet the Baby. Grandma Terri was holding the little one when we arrived and I snapped the above photo.

Congratulations to Family Callis on the safe delivery of Baby Callis!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Here is my transcription of two sessions from Day 2, 05.28.09, of the Google I/O 2009. Per my usual, the following is a combination of live quotes from the speaker, notes off the slides, some paraphrase and a few of my own asides.

So far, Brett Slatkin's Offline Processing on App Engine: A Look Ahead has been my favorite of the day. Lunch conversation with Prashant and Bastian was delightful.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Thur 05.28.09 - Google I/O keynote was Lars Rassmussen, Stephanie Hannon, and Jans Rassmussen giving a demonstration on the new Google Wave that is currently in development and the team is inviting the attendees of Google I/O to participate in developing the product and open source code before public release.

Here is my transcription of two sessions from Day 1, 05.27.09, of the Google I/O 2009. Per my usual, the following is a combination of live quotes from the speaker, notes off the slides, some paraphrase and a few of my own asides.

Chris Nesiadek's presentation on Android's Interaction Design was my favorite of the day.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Wed 05.27.09 - Or how Ernie, Ms. Jen, and hundreds, if not a thousand plus of us were given free Android HTC Magic phones today at Google I/0.

Or how Google quite brilliantly insured that hundreds of developers would write Android apps by making sure that they would have testing devices!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Wed 05.27.08 - Due to my plane being an hour late, I may miss the first session on how to code for Android. Even if late, I am looking forward to the Google App Engine and Android sessions today and tomorrow.

If the folks at Starcut are going to proudly announce that they mobilize brands and media and charge a newspaper to mobilize the said newspaper's website, then they should educate themselves on the standards of the mobile user experience.

Major rule of the mobile web: Give the User a Choice. Don't assume that they want the full website or that they want a reduced site for mobile. Just because a script has detected that the browser coming to the site is a mobile browser, doesn't mean the reader/user wants to be forced into a locked sandbox with no exit. Don't assume that every user wants to reduce their data usage, some of us have unlimited plans. Give the user a choice.

Here are a few examples of Mobile Sites that do the User Experience right by giving the reader/user a choice to either view the mobile version or to switch over to the "classic", "full", "regular" version of the website:

Why does this matter? Well, not every Nokia or Sony Ericsson or Blackberry or insert name of mobile device is a smartphone with Opera Mini or a version of the Webkit or Gecko mobile browsers, but then again, not every Nokia or Sony or Blackberry or other mobile device is a simple device with a simple mobile web browser.

I think it is great that more and more websites offer mobile versions that are stripped down and load fast for mobile devices, but if you are going to strip out choice along with kilobytes, this is not good.

My Nokia N95 has a full featured web browser that renders most websites, except heavily AJAX sites, quite nicely. I have an unlimited data plan. Between my Nokia's browser and my data plan, I want to see the full version of most websites unless I need information quickly and then the mobile version is usually fine.

Not yesterday.

Yesterday, I left the house in a rush to meet up with Lauren Isaacson in Encino so that we could have lunch together before she departs for Vancouver. I was heading north on the 405 and passing the Long Beach Airport when I realized that I left my paper copy of the LA Times Food section. So, I did what I would normally do in this situation, I opened my Nokia's web browser and typed "latimes.com", instead of getting the usual, full web version of the LA Times website, I was forced into the mobile version of the site with no exit out.

No link to the full version. No links to the Food section. No ability to get out of the reduced web version. I then went to Google to search for the article and the Google search took me back to the front page of the mobile site with no link to the full version of the LATimes.com. Here is the mobile site that I saw with no link to the full version of the LATimes.com at either the top of the mobile page nor at the bottom:

I was very frustrated.

I was mad in the immediate situation of trying to locate information that was still live on the full version of the website but I was unable to get to the information because the mobile version of the site did not let me go there. I was mad as a web & mobile user experience designer to experience bad UX design first hand. I was frustrated that Starcut has probably charged the LA Times a lot of money to piss off loyal readers like me.

In the end, I had to use a desktop computer at Lauren's parent's house to search the LA Times' website for the article on the restaurant we were to go to. Itzik Hagadol is excellent, especially their 20 salads for $8.99.

But the lack of ability to exit the LA Times's mobile site from a mobile browser is not excellent. It would be excellent if Starcut would revisit the site and add a simple link at the top or the bottom of each mobile page, giving the reader/user the option to go to the full non-mobile version of the site from their mobile browser.

Sat 05.23.09 - This afternoon, my Mom and I took Scruffy and Magnus down to Dog Beach. It was nice to be back at "our beach", mostly it was nice to walk the length of the beach with Scruffy and Magnus watching them greet all the other dogs and to feel the cooler California ocean water.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri 05.22.09 - Night heron on the pond's edge at the Rainbow Lanai. We are having a last hurrah breakfast before going to the airport.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Sun 05.17.09 - Here are my photos from our first day in Honolulu / Waikiki plus the travel to get there. I am here for Alex Hernandez and Paige McCormick's wedding, when my mom and sister heard I was going they decided to come to Hawaii, too. Family Hernandez plus the wedding party are staying at a rented house on the North Shore of Oahu, and we are in Waikiki.

My favorite moments of the day involve birds: of the feathered and metal varieties. On the flight over, about half way through, I noticed out my window that a United Airlines plane was quite close to us, close enough to get a photo with my camera phone. Of course, I ran the GPS so that I could get an accurate geo-tag on ShoZu and then map it to Flickr. My idea of entertainment mid-flight when there is no wi-fi on board. Once we arrived, my Mom and I took a big walk (probably about 4 miles) down the length and breadth of Waikiki, and I was delighted by the lovely birds and flowers we encountered.

To end our long day of travel, we had an excellent dinner at the Bombay Indian Restaurant on Ala Moana Blvd. I would definitely go back. Tasty!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Thurs 05.14.09 - Now on to color research and comparison, I am trying out different shades of aubergine. To this end, I after I dropped Scruffy McDoglet off at the groomers, I walked into India Sweet & Spices to buy little cute baby eggplants in a range of shades to see what colors of aubergine I could capture for a design I am working on.

Yes, design research with vegetables. They will make a tasty saute or bake later.

Ernest over at Darla Mack's S60 News & Reviews just posted a comparison review of the Nokia N97 vs. LG Viewty Smart: Side By Side Comparison. While Ernest didn't have both devices in his hands to do a review, he did use the Omio Comparison Widget to create a tech spec side by side comparison.

About halfway through reading the side by side tech spec showdown between the Nokia N97 and the LG Viewty Smart, I thought, "Wait a minute, this should be a comparison between the Nokia N86 and the LG Viewty Smart, not the N97!" I followed the link to Omio's site and made my own tech spec showdown between the two upcoming 8 megapixel camera phones to be released this summer from Nokia & LG, see below after the jump / below the fold.

Folks, the Omio Comparison Widget is hours of entertainment if you are a deep mobile tech geek who gets off on which specs are better. For me it was minutes of entertainment and I will be waiting to get the camera phones in my hands to take actual photos and see how the mobiles perform under a mobile blogging geo-tagging photowalk photography test.

Although, I will say from the descriptions in the tech specs in the below comparison of the LG Viewty Smart, Well, hello! The LG Viewty Smart will allow for manual focus as well as automatic? Hello! Now we are starting to talk photography!

The LA Times reports on Venus figurine sheds light on origins of art by early humans : A 40,000-year-old figurine of a voluptuous woman carved from mammoth ivory and excavated from a cave in southwestern Germany is the oldest known example of three-dimensional or figurative representation of humans and sheds new light on the origins of art... The intricately carved headless figure is at least 5,000 years older than previous examples and dates from shortly after modern humans arrived in Europe. But it already exhibits many of the characteristics of fertility figurines carved millenniums later.

Candorville on Torture : Just Following Orders, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and best of all, Comparing Our Torture to Japan's Torture?

The nice folks at Amazon.com have opened up the ability for bloggers to add their blog to the Kindle-world. If you are a regular blogger and would like to have the various Kindle reader folk out there to able to download and read your blog on their Kindle's, then go register at Kindle Publishing.

The nice folk at Six Apart alerted their Twitter followers about the new Kindle Publishing option for bloggers this afternoon:

Our friends at Amazon just launched Kindle Publishing for Blogs -- list your blog in the Kindle store: http://kindlepublishing.amazon.com

Why is this exciting to me? Given that I am a big fan of reading, mobile devices and blogs, this is a perfectly easy way to make sure that one's blog reaches what possibly may be a new audience or at the very least it makes current readers of one's blog be able to read the blog anywhere on a mobile device at their convenience.

I signed up for Kindle Publishing this afternoon and within 20 minutes I had this blog, Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen, and The Happy Tastebud signed up as Kindle subscriptions. And in another 20 minutes after that, I had the links to the Kindle subscriptions added to both blog's sidebar Subscribe area right next to the links to Atom and RSS feeds.

It was easy. Amazon did not require anything of me that I had not already had accomplished (description, keywords, screen shot, masthead, etc). I did not have to recode my blog nor did I have to make a device specific app, like many have done for the iPhone, but all I had to do after filling in basic information was to give an RSS or Atom feed to Amazon.

Amazon allows you to see a preview of your content as the Kindle will display it to the reader and it is not optimized for a photoblog or for the design control addicts amongst us, as the photos are very low resolution and in black & white and the typography is serif and fairly large. Also, there is no control over layout. But all of this adds up to an impetuous for me to make sure that my content is compelling regardless of the device or machine that it is viewed on.

Whether anyone actually subscribes to my blog via the Kindle or not really doesn't matter, what does matter is that Amazon is making a wide variety of publications available to their Kindle readership and Amazon is making it easy for bloggers and other content publishers to distribute their work, which is very exciting for the mobile and handheld device ecosystem.

I spent a good chunk of hours today tinkering with and refining the feeds on most of the blogs I author, administrate, and manage.

I had several goals for the altering of the RSS and Atom templates:

1) To make all public facing feeds be excerpted text with a link to continue reading. Why? I really don't have the time to hunt down the evil sploggers who repost rss and atom feeds as their own with lots of ads help augment their copylifting. Thus, if I set everything to excerpt with a link to the post then if the sploggers reblog the text the link goes to the original post.

2) Per the usual, if you are a regular subscriber and you don't want to deal with the excerpted feeds, send me an email (blackphoebe@gmail.com), introduce yourself, give me your blog or twitter URL so I can put you in my feed reader, and I will send you the link to the whole post private RSS feed.

3) Also, if you are a private whole feed subscriber and your feed reader is not rendering the images, let me know via email (blackphoebe@gmail.com) what feed reader you are using and I will try and solve the problem for you.

Once again, thanks for reading this blog and viewing the photos. Y'all rock.

Notice to all readers: This blog is having May 2009 NaBloPoMo FAIL.

Sorry but it is true.

Sweet.

What in the heck am I supposed to write about sweet that isn't sticky and slightly silly? I am not a big dessert eater, so I don't have 31 posts about sugar or honey or agave syrup in me. I can only make so many puns/badbadbadjokes based off the Northeastern US slang "Sweeeeeeet!", I did it for the first couple of days subtly and felt a bit gross for doing so. Then for a few days, I just posted mobile photos from my camera phone, because I am darned happy to be back on my Nokia N95 that has Nokia's great but now discontinued mobile blog software, Lifeblog, on it.

After a very long week with lots of out of town visitors, I now sit before my laptop burnt out. Not sleepy but at the very end of my energy reserves.

Yes, Mother's Day was nice, but yesterday hanging out all day with my Mom, working on my garden, and going to Dog Beach with Mom & Bird & Scruffy & Magnus was better. Tammy is still very pregnant and the baby has not come. I am still overwhelmed with work and will try to get the two big projects wrapped up before departing for Alex & Paige's wedding in Hawaii next Sunday.

((Is even more burnt out thinking about the next 7 days))

I do have one sweet thing to blog about: The Nokia N79, just sent back to the NYC Nokia folk, really is a sweet little machine.

Other than that, I may not be able to make another 21 days of sweet posts. Gah.

[/anti-sweet-rant]

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Sat 05.09.09 - Bird jumping and Mom spotting at Dog Beach.

[Photos coming to this space tomorrow when I am not so tired.]

Thurs 05.07.09 - Tonight was the first ever Mobile Geeks of LA at the Cat & Fiddle on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. Basically, James has taken the Mobile Geeks of London on tour.

It was good fun. While it was only 73 degrees F when I left Seal Beach, it was 88 F when I arrived in LA at 8pm!!!! Luckily, the courtyard at the Cat & Fiddle is not only beautiful, but has a burbling fountain of which all the mobile folk were gathered around. Somehow the sounds of water falling made it seem cooler.

What was cool and sweet was not only hanging out with friends (Lauren, James, Vikki, Jeb, Geoff & his wife Christine, Amir, Al, Francine, and Matt), but also meeting and talking with new people like the Las Vegas folk who came out for the event and others.

Big Thanks to Whatleydude, Matt Singley, and Jeb Brilliant for putting together a lovely evening.

My Nokia viNe from tonight: http://vine.nokia.com/#/mid=&lc=&vid=965979&cc=&page=home

Photo taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia N95.

Wed 05.06.09 - The Anaheim Bay sand transfer to the beach at Seal Beach dredging project appears to be over as all the oversized Tonka Toys are being packed up to go elsewhere.

The Nokia N95 and her attendant Lifeblog software are back in action.

Photo taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia N95.

Wed 05.06.09 - Today the Nokia N79, that the Nokia folks loaned me at SXSW, was whisked away by FedEx to go home to New York. Farewell to a lovely little mobile.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Tues 05.05.09 - The best part about this morning's walk was seeing the Long Arm of Concrete at work in pouring a foundation in the 1300 block of Seal Way. The even better (perhaps, sweeter) part of the whole concrete extra extension long arm pumping thing was the young man in a hard had with a large-ish remote control pad that controlled the pump arm movement and rate of concrete spewage!

Sorry, I didn't get a photo of him in action, but he looked quite surprised to see me taking photos of his truck & pumping set up. But then again, I should never apologize for taking photos of fun and interesting construction events. Really. ;o)

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Mon 05.04.09 - Late this afternoon, Erika and Erin arrived after body boarding in the choppy surf near the Seal Beach Pier. For the next four hours we had a lovely time: laughing, catching up, making dinner, eating dinner, talking about books, Facebook, hot guys, trying on various shades of red lipstick, and more laughter.

I think Erin needs to move back to LA.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Mon 05.04.09 - One the best parts of the Long Beach Marina Farmer's Market in the spring and early summer is that the flower vendor has sweet peas. Not only are they lovely, but they smell like honey.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Sun 05.03.09 - It has been a birthday weekend for our local community, as yesterday was Earl's birthday and today is Jeremy's birthday! Happy Birthday to both Jeremy and Earl!

May it be a sweet, blessed, and delightful year to both of this weekend's birthday boys!

Photos taken on Sat. 05.02.09 by Jen Hanen with a Nokia N79.

Sat 05.02.09 - Oh Sweet, Young Love. Sometimes when one of your friends is in love, it can be a bit too sweet, a bit sticky; but at other times it can be sweet indeed to know your friend is so happy.

It was good fun to hang out with James Whatley and Vikki Chowney today, and sweet indeed to see them both so happy. I am glad that they decided to take their much needed holiday, or escape from London to SoCal.

We had a good time going to dim sum at the Elite Restaurant in Monterey Park, driving around downtown, stopping to take photos at the Gehry Disney Concert Hall, driving from the start of Sunset Blvd at Main Street all they way to the 405 fwy, and then off to the Getty Center and Museum on the hill for the views and the art. After toddling about the Getty for a few hours Matt Singley and his lady met up with us and I departed for home.

All and all a lovely day.

The NaBloPoMo theme for May 2009 is sweet. Interpret the word sweet as one will.

The month of May is quite full right now and so it makes complete sense for me to sign up for NaBloPoMo when I will be overly busy. (not). But the theme this month intrigued me and I decided to sign myself up. I may be naturally bubbly and happy, but how many sweet things can I write about in 31 one days? We shall find out, won't we?

Our lovely friends over at the Online Etymology Dictionary give the word sweet's history as follows:

sweet (adj.)

O.E. swete "pleasing to the senses, mind or feelings," from P.Gmc. *swotijaz (cf. O.S. swoti, Swed. söt, Dan. sød, M.Du. soete, Du. zoet, O.H.G. swuozi, Ger. süß), from PIE base *swad- (Skt. svadus "sweet;" Gk. hedys "sweet, pleasant, agreeable," hedone "pleasure;" L. suavis "sweet," suadere "to advise," prop. "to make something pleasant to"). Sweetbread "pancreas used as food" is from 1565 (the -bread element may be from O.E. bræd "flesh"). To be sweet on someone is first recorded 1694. Sweet-talk (v.) dates from 1936 (in "Gone With the Wind"). Sweet sixteen first recorded 1826. Sweet dreams as a parting to one going to sleep is attested from 1908. Sweet and sour in cooking is from 1723, not originally of oriental food

Thus, I will spend the month attempting to blog about all things "sweet, pleasant, agreeable, and pleasing to the senses". Since I am already blogging either a photo or a text post every day this year (as with last year), for the NaBloPoMo challenge, I will write a text post everyday with a possible photo each day, too. Possibly.

As for the sweet bit about today, I had a fuzzily delightful dream last night/early this morning, just in time for May Day where I was in a forest (a west side of the Sierra Nevada giant sequoia forest) and I had a mobile, handheld map of the forest made of model sized trees. To navigate you turned the tree model upside down and let your hand feel where to go in the forest.

The May Day 2005 post from this blog.
The May Day 2008 post from this blog about a dream I had May Day morning last year.

Last but not least, I hope you had a delightfully sweet day today, whether it was enjoying spring flowers and maypoles or out marching in the name of Labor. Though celebrating Beltane seems a bit more delightful than a march...