November 2009 Archives

November has been both a good month and a bit of a struggle. The struggle has been family/holiday/death related, as blogged about here, and the Good has been friend/family/art/music/mobile/travel/wedding/baby related.

The three bits about November that were really delightful are as follows:

1) The weather *finally* took a turn for the better. Better in my book is colder. I am happiest when the days are 55-65 F (10-17C) and when the nights are 35-50 F (3-13C). For a lady who loves a good bout of chilly weather, I am not sure why I live in Southern California. The weather here in SoCal will be happy for me through December and then will unfortunately warm up in January. Gah.

I am still interested in working in London if anyone has an opening.

2) Milestones: Lauren and Dave's wedding weekend in Seattle was lovely. I am very glad to see them married. It was also delightful to see Cindy & Matt that weekend as they were fresh of the married dept themselves. And even more delightful is that Seattle's weather was in the 40s F all weekend!

3) November has been a very creative month for me, both in terms of professional web dev/coding bits and in my creative art life of mobile photography, writing, and drawing, as well as day dreaming.

It was also inspirational, funny, and heartening to read/watch my various friends and friends of friends daily blog posts or vlog posts for NaBloPoMo or the other variations on the daily creativity theme thereof.

So all of you who participated in NaBloPoMo or NaNoWriMo or NaVloPoMo officially or unofficially, Bravo! Good job and keep up the good creative work!

NY Times on the NY University exhibition, "The Lost World of Old Europe: the Danube Valley, 5000-3500 B.C.," of in the article, A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity : "Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade. For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be found anywhere in the world."

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Sun 11.29.09 - While it is still Sunday the 29th here in the greater LA area, it is early evening Monday the 30th in Australia and I am done. Thankfully.

This is the second to the last day of NaBloPoMo and various folks have done a wonderful job of blog posting, vlogging, and novel writing. Congrats to everyone who participating in one of the NaCreativeSomethingMo this month!

Wed 11.25.09 - I was attempting to take low light 'night' photos with the Nokia N97 on the edge of the dancer's pit at Royal Crown Revue's show at The Mint, but the still camera kept using the flash and blurring photos even though I had the camera settings on the 'Night' mode with no flash.

As the flash would do its thing, against my will, the photos would have a white out in the left side of the image and the rest of the image would be foggy (example of this here). This was really frustrating.

So, I decided to see if the 'Night' mode on the Nokia N97's video would work better, and it did. After the initial light meter reading, the video's color and lighting to the room is fairly correct and I am glad that the N97 did record video nicely in the 'Night' mode. I am happy with the no flash video capture in terms of light and with the sound quality.

As I have stated a few times the last week or two, the Nokia N97 is much much improved with the Oct. 2009 v.20 firmware update, but there are a few tweaks still to be made to the camera software to make the N97 a real flagship mobile device.

Of which, if the photographer wants the flash to be off and/or use Night mode, please make sure that the mobile's software knows to tell the flash NOT to flash. And it would be nice if the N97 would be more consistent about focusing on the objects in the middle of the focus square when green rather than some where off in the background.

Some how I have hit the Google Wave invite jackpot* and now have 38 invites to give away. If you want one, please comment on this blog post with your email address and I will send you one.

***Update*** : Sun 11.29.09 - Thanks for the folks who have requested an invite by a comment so far. I have two requests before giving out any more invites:

1) Please put your email in the email box in the comment form rather than in the comment itself, this protects your email as only I can see it.

2) Please put the URL of your online space in the URL box, as if I am going to invite folks I want to be able to see your website or twitterstream and say hi.

****UPDATE**** : Mon 12.07.09 - Thanks for your comments and replies, but the invites are now over and done. If you commented here and did not get an invite, it was because you didn't give me your URL after I asked for it above. I hope you enjoy Google Wave.

* T'would be nice to hit the lottery jackpot instead... but one has to work with what one has got... ;o)

Artist Maria Kalman's delightful photo & handwritten essay on food & eating in America - "Back to the Land - And the Pursuit of Happiness"

The Atlantic's Food section on In Italy, Food Gets Graded: "The day my daughter's kindergarten teacher called me into her Italian classroom to tell me my child was failing lunch, I knew I had run up against the great continental culinary divide. As an American married to an Italian, I've lived off and on in Italy for years, in both Bologna and Venice. I'm an adventurous and enthusiastic cook, an impassioned eater, and one of those parents who throw their kids into the deep end of the culinary pool from birth. Sink or swim: eat your fava beans and grilled calamari or starve."

Jamillah Knowles asks "If you could do anything via your mobile - what would it be? beyond Remote control? radar? colour matching? anything sci-fi (no weapons)?"

Cardus on the linguist orgins of Hello, You Had Me At Hello : "The history of hello is long and mired in many vowels. Though it didn't show up in its current form till the mid-19th century, its forbears are many and obvious: hallo, halloo, hillo, holla (a Shakespearean favourite recently returned to slang prominence), hollo, holloa--all generally being a combination get-attention-and-greet, useful for hailing passing boats and that sort of thing.

Drifting beyond the bounds of English, hello's roots diverge: is it from the Old High German ferry-call halâ, an emphatic imperative of "to fetch," from the antiquated French stop-shout holà, roughly "whoa there!" or maybe, as Wikipedia tenderly suggests, from the Old English hœlan (heal, cure, save; greet, salute; gehœl! Hosanna!)?"

Drawing and Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N900.

Fri. 11.27.09 - Different folks will approach the same mobile device from a variety of perspectives, and I am here to tell you as a Professional Art Weirdo, the Nokia N900 exceeds my hopes as an Art Phone.

Yes. People. OMG. Creativity. Not. Consumption. This. Phone. Rocks.

I have spent all evening drawing, taking photos and trying out the browser. Tomorrow, I will get on X-Term and download Maemo Python and try some programming out.

The Nokia N900 has a native phone app called "Sketch", and while other mobiles I have used have had a sketch program, this is the first time that I have found the app to be usable as an actual sketching device. The feel of the N900 in my hand plus the screen ratio, on top of the line control in the sketch app, makes me feel like I am using a wee moleskine notebook. While the N900 is about a centimeter smaller in width & height as my moleskine, it does not need to be opened, instead I can use the stylus to draw with the device comfortably in my hand.

Comfortably after 20 minutes of sketching Scruffy's paw while he slept. The N900 did not feel weighty or get uncomfortable. I was able to switch between drawing with a fine line and then erasing to get the white space back. A true delight for an artist with small hands.

Then I used the camera on the N900 to take a close-up/macro photo with no flash of Scruffy's paw and the camera accurately captured the paw in the low light.

This is the mobile phone that I and other creatives dreamed of when I was doing my interviews in 2005 & 2006 for my master's thesis, 'Moleskine to Mobile: How Creative Professions Are Using Their Mobile Phones', has now arrived in one kick ass device. Multi-faceted creativity has returned to the N-Series.

Bravo!

*******
Related N900 Posts:
Nokia N900 : The Artist Phone
Nokia N900 : The Gold Standard Test
Nokia N900 - Views from the Pundit Analysts, Maemo & Python
The Nokia Flagship Face Off : Nokia N900 vs. Nokia N97 : Part I, Night Video

Photo of a local Nokia N97 as was the closest thing around to take a photo of by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N900.

Fri 11.27.09 - Is the Nokia N900's native web browswer's support of javascript and AJAX good enough to blog directly in the mobile browser to my Moveable Type install that uses Better File Uploader? Every other mobile browser, including the iPhone has failed at the first or second screen.

10 minutes later, of course I didn't read the manual, so after searching on how to zoom out (the volume/photo zoom physical key) and zooming all the way out so the whole page fit in the screen, I was able to go through all four Better Uploader's AJAX powered screens and upload the photo from the device's memory to my own server using my own blog with no third party app or server!

The Nokia N900 wins the Moblogging and Best Mobile Browser Gold Medal!!!

(Typing all of this is giving my hands cramps, but YAY!!!!!)

Dear Santa, Please, pretty please, with sugar on top... a Nokia N900 of my own for Christmas...

*******
Related N900 Posts:
Nokia N900 : The Artist Phone
Nokia N900 : The Gold Standard Test
Nokia N900 - Views from the Pundit Analysts, Maemo & Python
The Nokia Flagship Face Off : Nokia N900 vs. Nokia N97 : Part I, Night Video

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97 of
Royal Crown Revue's Daniel Glass The Mint on Wed 11.25.09

Today I listed the things I am thankful for over on Twitter, of which, I will reproduce here.

First Tweet:

Things I am thankful for: a good year. good friends. a creative year. the web app I just finished. the two marriages of the month (D&L, C&M)

Second Tweet:

Thankful that my grandma requested a cool alterna-thanksgiving meal. I am taking her braised lamb shanks on tuscan beans. Cooking now.

Third Tweet:

I am also very Thankful for the new Little People of the Year: Amelia Hoffman, Amelia Grace Callis, Diego Hernandez, and @baby_flapjack.

A very Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Congrats to a very lovely and intriguing city on the 60th N parallel line.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nikon D70s.

Tues 11.24.09 - How close can I get to my front stoop climbing rose with Thomas's Nikon D70 with a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 lens set at 1.8 f-stop before I loose all focus? That was today's experiment: how to balance up close while keeping a small area of focus and getting a lovely bokeh in the rest of the frame.

Turned out nice and dreamy.

Lane Wallace on Oprah's Chicago School of Economics: "Clearly, Oprah is a missionary entrepreneur. But how do you teach someone to be a successful missionary? Even Polonius' advice to Laertes, "to thine own self be true" is insufficient. If asked, I suspect Oprah would say that first you have to learn who you are, where you came from, how that affects and informs you, and what matters in the world. You also have to care about something bigger than yourself, and imagine a way in which your particular skills could allow you to make a difference in that area. And whether you seek that path out, or stumble upon it along the way, you have to care about making that difference enough that the vision of it keeps you going through the dark, and can act as a compass to steer your decisions along the way."

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Mon 11.23.09 - Who knew that the Nokia N97 would take such great clear high contrast photos without asking on Auto mode? No fiddling, just snapping.

Very happy. The Nokia N97 firmware 20 really does make a difference with photos. The N97 still struggles with a sharp focus in low light with no flash, but the daytime and close-ups have made quite an improvement since July.

Sun 11.22.09 - I am falling down on my own self-imposed NaBloPoMo challenge of just not posting every day, but posting words/text every day for the month of November. Yesterday, I just posted a photo, and no real text.

Gah.

Julie Wanda and I went to Kay's 50th birthday party last night at the Puka Bar and by the time I got home, I was out of words. Today, Scruffy and I went to Dog Beach, the farmer's market, plus other errands and the like to ready up for the work week, and now I am out of words.

The reality is that what is going through my head right now in terms of words is personal processing of family, life, holidays, Grandpa, Grandma, etc etc etc. I have thoughts on the Zeiss app and other mobile related bits but the words that I can write about are escaping me as I attempt to type.

I promise that I will tomorrow wrangle up some thoughts to write some more words for you that aren't meta-words about writing words.

The New York Times on Cleric Wields Religion to Challenge Iran's Theocracy : 'In recent times, Ayatollah Montazeri has kept up the pressure,
taking the unprecedented step of apologizing for his support for the
1979 takeover of the United States Embassy. "Independence," he
said in a recent speech on ethics, "is being free of foreign
intervention, and freedom is giving people the freedom to express their
opinions. Not being put in prison for every protest one utters."'

Steve Lawson on Rethinking Reviews: "So the art of writing reviews was about giving people an insight into something that hadn't yet experienced, and couldn't experience unless you bought them. It was meant to be impartial, educated and the trust was cumulative... That independence of mind is lost if I start writing reviews of things I don't really love as favours. "

Photo of Earl and the wild pig prosciutto taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Fri 11.20.09 - Today, neighbor Earl and I decided it was time to take down one of the two pig legs that have been hanging to cure in his garage to see if they were ready to be eaten yet. Earl was the guinea pig to see if it was good and not moldy/botulism-y/etc and he determined it was ready to be eaten without harm, the point that his sister and friend both had slices.

My brother and his friends went hunting up at Tejon Ranch in February of 2009 and bagged two wild pigs*. I requested and received two of the legs so that I could see if I could make prosciutto.

Wild, organic, slow food experiment = successful.

I plan on taking the other leg down around Christmas time.

*****

* Wild pigs or boars in North America are not native, but are escapees from farms. Most of California's boar / wild pig population are domestic pigs that escaped from Central Valley farms from the 1880s -1920s. Unfortunately, they are a menace to wild landscapes and are environmentally unsound to native ecosystems, so California has a 365 day 24/7 hunting season open on wild pigs to help restore the native wild space and keep the pig population down.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Thurs 11.18.09 - While walking Scruffy in the late afternoon, early evening, aka around 5pm, I spied this lovely crescent moon through the boughs of a eucalyptus tree while waiting for Scruffy to make a deposit.

When we returned home from the walk it was fully dark and I found myself slightly sad. I love this time of year and am not normally affected by SAD, but tonight a weight of the last few weeks piled up on me - Grandpa Bill Hanen's passing, the resulting family stuff, all the activity of the L&D wedding, work projects, and loneliness.

Most of all, what looms like a big 'ole hawk watching a small industrious rodent's hole waiting, just waiting, is The Holidays. If you come from a many times divorced family and further fractured by the years & infighting like both of my family sides, The Holidays get Stressful Fast™. This year doesn't even have to be bad, but all the years of fracture, pressure, and atomization build up and continue to reverberate.

To me, multi-generational intact families are a like a lovely, rare artifact at a museum, and I just spent 3.5 days at a lovely museum watching Families that Actually Like Each Other, Laugh Together, and Do Stuff Together. It was amazing, but even more poignant given the passing of the 10 Second Grandpa™.

Last Wednesday night, the night before leaving for the wedding and the night before Grandpa Bill Hanen died, my Dad called me as I was driving home from an errand to discuss that what the plans would be when Grandpa died. Since the Hanens have all the family togetherness of 3 billion year old Quarks moving away from the Universe and each other at the speed of light or faster, I made sure that my Dad knew that I wanted to make sure if Grandpa passed before I got home from the wedding that they were to make sure that all the family got invited to a memorial and not tell me about it after it happened.

My Dad assured me that after Grandpa was cremated that he would have the funeral folks put some ashes in a small vial to give to me so that I could have my Grandpa stick around for longer than 10 seconds. How did we go from 'Don't forget to invite me to the memorial service' to 'Cool, I get a my very own vial of ashes'?

Six days later, I am tired and sad. Sad for reasons that can't be listed here. Tired for way too many activities packed into too few days. I am going to log off now and read a book for the rest of the evening.

In the meantime, can someone loan me a rifle or bb gun so I can shoot or shoo that evil Holiday Hawk away from the entrance to my lair?

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Thur 11.18.09 - Now that the hot, dry SoCal summer (July - Oct) is behind us, the roses are in full busting out all over bloom. Southern California has two good growing seasons, one from February to June and the other from October to December, and if you are within a few miles of the ocean December and January are very kind to one's plants. Go a few miles inland and there will be the occasional frost in December that will piss off the basil and flowers. Go many miles inland and Nov. 15th to Feb. 15th is frost time.

Here in Seal Beach, where we are on the Pacific Ocean, the local roses, camellias, and other spring flowers like pansies, violets, and snap dragons are having their second big bloom of the year after being seared into non-blooming compliance during the hot, dry months.

From now, mid-late November, until April are my favorite months of the year in SoCal. From late April to early November, I would rather live quite a bit north of here, like the 50-54th parallel line. ;o)

Tiffany B. Brown on On Mobile Context : "When developing mobile applications, we should ask: What do people need to know? What kind of device can they afford? What are the technical limitation of that device (physical size, screen size, input capability, battery life, available memory)? How can we build an application that works well on such a device?"

To Tiffany's list, I add: "What do people need/want to do?"

Blackburnian Warbler, May 2009, Magee Marsh, Ohio. Taken in the wild by g-graphic.

For years I have told friends and family that I really want to visit Central Asia, climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and eat Chinese food in Greenland. I didn't know that this activity was called a 'Life List' or a 'Bucket List', but I had one in my head and most of it revolves around the intersection of my love for nature/mountains, history, culture, and travel.

Given that it is now meme-able to post your life list on your blog, I thought I would write down the list items that have lived in my head for years and will add to this list as I think of more.

Ms. Jen's Life List, in no particular order:

1. Travel to Greenland, eat at the Chinese restaurant.

2. Sit under a wild apple tree in bloom on the foothills of the Tien Shan mountains.

3. Go into space.

4. Travel around the world in less than 4 hours, stopping in London, Mumbai, Sydney, Tokyo, and LA.

5. Hike up Mt. Kilimanjaro before the glacier melts.

6. Travel the Silk Road.

7. Visit Tuvalu

8. Visit Tuva and Mongolia, go see some of the Mongolian carved megaliths.

9. Spot a Blackburnian Warbler in the wild.

10. Learn to fly a plane.

11. Learn to fence properly.

12. Spot a Vermillion Flycatcher in the wild - Fulfilled on March 1, 2009 at Buckskin State Park in Arizona.

13. Live in central London for a couple of years at some point.

14. Live in a loft at some point and actually paint in it.

15. Stay overnight at the Pic du Midi Observatory in th French Pyrénées.

16. Spend a week in a cabin / summer house on a lake in Finland. - Fulfilled June 24, 2012 in Finland. While I was not able to find a summer cottage for rent over Midsummer, I did stay for a week in Hervanta near Tampere within 1/2 a mile of three lakes and then for Midsummer weekend I went to Turku and spent Midsummer's day & evening on the water in the Finnish Archipelago.

17. Visit at least 2 of the Verracos, particularly the Bulls of Guisando.

18. Live in central Helsinki for a couple of months at some point. [Added 06.24.12]

All photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Sat 11.14.09 - Saturday was the big day for Lauren and Dave. It was a long day but a very good day. Lauren, Kimi, and I met Allison the Amazing Hairdresser at the Herban Feast wedding/party venue at 11am and on it went with Felicity Lao doing our makeup, photos mid-afternoon to late afternoon, and then *Magic Time* at 6:30pm, with the Reception all evening long.

Compliments of the antics of the famed and amazing Chris Snook, officiant of the Church of the Latter Day Dude, this wedding was the most fun and humorous that I have ever attended and participated it. The reception was delightful in the mix of good LA area friends in combination with so many lovely web designer friends. Great Party, truly delightful wedding, and a lovely couple.

Congratulations to Lauren and Dave, may your marriage be many times blessed with laughter and love.

Mon 11.16.09 - Today Erika and I met Thomas at the Art Center's Auditorium for Jan Chipchase's new 'Edge. Edgier. Edgiest.' talk for the Designmatters Lecture Series.

I wanted to see Jan Chipcase speak, as I have been reading his blog FuturePerfect ever since various and sundry friends referred to his work and writing in the last four or so years. Much of what he writes about and the photos he posts are fascinating to me as they are about people, culture, technology, and how people interact thereof. As a long time fan of anything Central Asian and former Silk Road territory, I am particularly enthralled by his posts about design research adventures in the 'stans'. I am very jealous that he was in Kabul a few weeks ago.

Though by his own admission, Chipchase is still working on the material he presented today, it was a good fit for a design college crowd as he covered the his approach to design research, the ethics he applies to field work, how one works under a corporate umbrella, and the pure adventure of it all.

Thomas had to leave the presentation a bit early as he had a class to teach upstairs in room 202, but Erika and I stayed through the Q&A before walking up to Thomas' class to see the student work that was being critiqued this afternoon. As we came out of the class, both of us opened our mobiles, Erika to text and me to check my email. As we were both engrossed in tiptapping away, Jan Chipchase passed us in the hallway and with a twinkle in his eye quipped as he passed, "Put down your bloody mobiles."

Photo by Ms. Jen this morning with a Nokia N97 while waiting in the Pioneer Square Bus/Rail station.

Sun 11.15.09 - Much like the bus and train in the Pioneer Square station of Seattle's Sound Transit system, I am not sure right now if I am coming or going. I woke up after far too little sleep to return to SoCal and missed having breakfast with the Shea/Isaacson wedding party or with Cindy Li and Matt Harris (they were also flying Virgin America out of Sea-Tac airport) in the effort to barely make my plane home. After much to do and travel, I am now home, my suitcase has remained untouched and I am exhausted (again). Now time for bed.

Love y'all, but I am going to sleep.

Sat 11.14.09 - Today was a long, intense, and wonderful day. Tomorrow I promise to put up a photo essay of the Lauren and Dave wedding when I am on the fight home.

Right now, I am exhausted and have no more words.

Photos by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Friday 11.13.09 - Today was a mix of phone calls to and fro my family and a whole slew of Rehearsal and bridesmaid activities. We kept very busy all day long with the wedding rehearsal in the late morning, lunch at a middle eastern place that was not expecting a large group, bridal party mani-pedi spa afternoon, and then the rehearsal dinner at a chinese restaurant in the International district of Seattle with wind down drinks at the hotel lounge.

Tomorrow is the big day for Dave and Lauren.

Photo of Bill and Cam Hanen taken by Ms. Jen on Dec. 24, 2004, with her Nokia 7610.

Today as I got out of my sister's car at LAX to go to Lauren & Dave's wedding, my Dad texted me that my Grandpa Bill had passed away around noon. My Dad's text said he would call later.

I checked my baggage in, went down to the gate, looked out the window and cried a bit. Instead of doing the Carl Zeiss mobile application write up that I was planning on writing on the plane, I instead spent my time looking for photos of my Grandpa Hanen on my computer and researching the pilots who flew the Hump during WWII so that I can do a nice blog post on Grandpa Bill.

I will be doing a full post on Grandpa Bill and his WWII pilot experiences when I get a few photos from my Dad and a bit more information on which division he was in (I think it was Div 10 in Assam, India). In his later years, his years in India flying C-46 cargo planes were remembered as the best and most challenging years of his life.

My Grandpa Bill met and married my Grandma in the few months before departing for India in 1942, my Dad was conceived, off Grandpa went to fly the resupply China mission for the duration of the war, and Grandma lived in Iowa with her family.

My favorite photo from this era was my Grandpa, at the barracks in India, in his flight uniform holding a bottle of champagne in one hand and the telegram announcing my Dad's birth. He looked so happy.

Photo and full story coming soon.

Rest In Peace, Captain William J. Hanen: April 17, 1918 - November 12, 2009

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Thurs 11.12.09 - Off to be a bridesmaid in the Sheasaacson Wedding. The hash tag for Twitter is #sheasaacson or thereabouts.

Oh The Glorious or Infamous Internet Black Holes, we have all fallen down one. If you are lucky they only last for 15 - 30 minutes, if you are unlucky or lucky depending on the situation, one can get sucked in for HOURS.

The problem with the internet (or InnerToobz) is that one can start in one place, legitimately, and click on a link or get curious about something mentioned on the original page and then, and then, And Then, AND THEN.... One is many, many, many clicks away from the place you started.

One can see an internet black hole as a voyage of discovery, or surfing the waves of curiosity, or just plain fallen down a hole that not even Alice could have fallen down.

Now, I try to limit my internet black holes to the evening after I have finished work. And I love a good Internet Black Hole*******.

Tonight's Black Hole started by my daily reading of my friends who are participating in NaBloPoMo or NaVloPoMo:

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Tues 11.10.09 - I was playing round with the Night Mode on the Nokia N97's camera to see under what light conditions could I get a bit of blurred movement. While I could have used Auto setting with the flash off and gotten a crisp, sharp image of Grace and Magnus in the bright light of Tammy & Ryan's kitchen, I purposely set the N97's camera to Night to see if I could get a bit of doubling or blur.

I am happy with the way this photo turned out.

Lauren over at The Adnostic is currently blogging unofficially for NaBloPoMo this month. Her last few posts have been on how she is using her iPhone, or more specifically how her iPhone is her wedding planner and organizer.

From HiTech Wedding Planning:

"I'm getting married next week. Holy crap I'm getting married next week! Calm down. It's okay. Everything is in order thanks to a my iPhone.

I was flipping through a Real Simple Weddings magazine and I found their version of the to-do list. It was three pages long, in a small font. THREE pages! That's insane. It's just a freaking party with some paperwork people. There's no need to overdo it.

I didn't get any issues of Modern Bride, Martha Stewart Weddings, or any of any of the other typical wedding magazines. I did get two wedding books, but I only read one of them once and was done. I never opened either of them again. Primarily, I used the internet and my iPhone.

Early on in the planning stages, I found the iWedding iPhone app and relied it almost entirely for the timeline of to-do's and storing all of the budget and vendor contact information. It gave me a good idea of what needs to get done and how many months/weeks/days it needs to get done by."

I like that Lauren is giving us a breakdown of how she is using the apps and how it has both influenced her planning and allowed her to take charge of her own wedding planning. Lauren is the Queen of Planning, so I expected her to not be overwhelmed by the planning of a wedding, but it is also very cool to see how she is taking her natural talent for planning and organizing and refining it with the use of her mobile phone.

Also: Apps I Like - iFitness.

Two blogs I truly enjoy reading, Wordridden and SoF Observed, wrote posts worth reading about their own memories of Germany in the 1980s and what the 20th Anniversary means to each of them.

Go Read.

Wordridden - Then and now.

SoF Observed - The Fall of the Wall, JFK's Assassination, and Two Birthdays

Happy 20th Anniversary to a whole lot of gumption and hope.

1989 - DDR (East Germany)
1994 - South Africa
2009 - Iran ???? - One can only hope.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Lauren and Dave are getting married on Saturady in Seattle and I am a bridesmaid. This afternoon I drove up to Glendale to meet up with Felicity Lao and Kim Ray for a trial wedding day makeup run.

As Felicity was putting makeup on Kim, I was taking photos with the Nokia N97 that I am currently trialing and Felicity - a current iPhone owner - said, "I miss my Nokia." I handed her the N97 and she tested out the touchscreen and qwerty keyboard and again announced that she missed having a Nokia phone.

Kim asked about the camera and said she wanted a phone with a better camera. Felicity then said she didn't like the camera on the iPhone. Then both of them asked me how much the Nokia N97 cost, when I told them $500 they both blanched. Kim then asked which wireless carrier had it for less, I said none in the US.

Both Felicity and Kim were sad that such a nice touchscreen cameraphone was not to be had in the US for under $200. Over the course of the conversation, it became obvious that both of them had been starter Nokia owners in the past but had moved on to other smartphones with their carriers and were unhappy with the phones that they had, mostly due to poor build quality and lack of high quality camera, but were unwilling to spend more than $200 on a mobile phone.

After thinking about it, I realized that if Nokia and the various US mobile carriers/operators can't come to agreements to have good high end Nokias available to folks in the US for a decent subsidized price, then maybe Nokia should take a cue from the Apple online store and sell unlocked Nokia phones for either the straight up price or for a small price per month for 24 months.

If Kim and Felicity are both willing to pay AT&T $200 for the iphone plus >$80 a month for the rate plan, then why should they not pay Nokia $28 a month for the Nokia N97 or N97 mini or N86 or N79 and then get a sim chip / rate plan from whoever they want?

If Nokia charge $28 a month for 24 months and showed it as prominent option next to the phone on their website and advertise their finance plans, then they would not only sell more phones but provide the perception that their high quality mobiles are also a good value for one's dollar.

The Golden Rule requires that we use empathy -- moral imagination -- to put ourselves in others' shoes. We should act toward them as we would want them to act toward us. We should refuse, under any circumstance, to carry out actions which would cause them harm.

If you missed it today, the American Public Media broadcast of Speaking of Faith was Krista Tippett's interview with Karen Armstrong, that reference's Ms. Armstrong's TED 2008 talk which sparked the Charter of Compassion.

I heard the SoF broadcast today on KPCC while driving home from Glendale and by the time I was home, I was determined to find out a bit more about the Charter for Compassion.

It is time to focus on compassion, no war. It is time to focus on justice, not revenge. It is time to work towards making a world that we can all live in, not die in as we kill it and each other.

And that it is time for faith, hope and love to reign over certainty, fundamentalism, and despair.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Sat 11.07.09 - To all of you who know me in person, know that my car's license plate is BLKPHBE and that my Prius' name is 'Black Phoebe'. Not named after this website, but named after the bird that this website is named after.

For those of you who don't know me in person, or who don't know about my lifelong passion for native song birds, here are some reference pages on my all time favorite SoCal bird, the black phoebe:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/black_phoebe/id
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Phoebe
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i4580id.html

Why does this come up today? Because recently I had the third comment where someone who doesn't know me or a neighbor who I only know in passing has said, "Black Phobe? What are you racist?"

The first time someone asked this I was so surprised. Each of the three times it has happened I have said, "No, it is black phoebe, it is a local bird." I then go on to describe a black phoebe and its habits, some of which are very unique to flycatchers. The first two inquirers knew exactly what bird it was and were a more than a bit baffled that I would name my car after a bird. The third one, a retired neighbor, asked a couple of days ago and kept asking me to describe the bird, as it was obvious he didn't believe me.

I find this baffling. Why would I have a license plate named 'black phobe'?

All day today, as I wrapped up working in the PHP Salt Mines, I had tons of ideas for good and scintillating blog posts, but soon as I sat down to blog all of the ideas fled to someone else's brain.

Instead, I will tell you about the new dog religion or ritual practice I have observed lately. For over a month now, whenever I take Scruffy out for a walk, I have noticed that Scruffy always wants to do his dog-ly business in front of someone's door or at the entrance of their walkway. If I drag him off to find another spot, like a lawn, before he makes his deposit he will hold it until we are in front of another doorway or walkway.

I have decided that Scruffy must be participating in some obscure dog cult of the Portal Poopers.

Fast forward to this last week when Belle was visiting, several mornings in a row as we went to leave for our walk a pile of dog poop would be blocking our way. Cold dog poop. Not Belle's. Not Scruffys. Not fresh, but cold.

What other dog had entered the breezeway to participate in the Portal Pooping ritual?

Tonight, I found out who, as he was portal pooping in front of Earl & Sharon's doorway before he came over to visit with Mr. McDoglet...

Yes, Magnus & Scruffy must both belong to the PP dog cult!

I know it is good to be a DRY, Agile programmer and not repeat yourself, but I have a hard time being "lazy" due to a problem with perfectionism.

I have been working on finishing up additions to a web app in PHP that I coded last year and for each day that I *should* wrap up, I find One More Thing that should be polished A Bit More, just One More Thing. Last week, I fell down a hole of internet research about the latest developments in PHP security. This was bad, because there have been new techniques on how to best beat the bad boy hackers, so this week I found myself making a few changes to reflect best, current secure practices of the most recent cutting edge.

This is the right thing to do, right?

Well, bits of the app then needed to be recoded, and then a few more changes, and then test the database, and then some more recoding, and I had a huge refactoring snowball rolling down a hill attacking me. Gah. But in good conscience, I could not leave the client with security holes.

Where do you stop? Right at the letter and law of the contract? A few extra hours of work if you find some new information on the latest and greatest practices? Or do you just do it and refactor the whole app for professional pride and a good job well done?

Let me know where you draw the line.

Photos taken today by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97 camera phone.

Wed 11.04.09 - Today I am combining my photo post with my text post, as I have received a trial Nokia N97 from WOM World to be an alpha tester for the new Carl Zeiss mobile application. Given that there is no Lifeblog on the N97 and I have been working deep in the PHP Salt Mines, I have not had time to set up the trial N97 for moblogging, so today's photos were uploaded from my MT install.

As I stated yesterday, I repent of most of what I said in my March & August reviews of the Nokia n97, as the recent October firmware update has solved about 98% of my complaints. It is now a device that is fun to use and is not a struggle, this is the version that should have been released back in July, not three months later as an update.

Upon receiving the Nokia N97 yesterday, I was able to set it up about 80% to my satisfaction within the first 15 minutes. I did not attempt to set up moblogging or email, as setting up a POP email account is what made my blood pressure raise so high in July. Today, I did install the Gmail app very quickly, but have not installed PixelPipe* to Share Online.

What I am most satisfied with the new N97 firmware is the to the responsiveness of the touchscreen - fast scrolling / flicking - w00t!, and more refined camera functionality. Scrolling/flicking aside, it is the ability of the camera to now get clear, sharp shots, close-ups, and good color that makes me happy.

The last two days the inland parts of the greater LA area have been quite warm but at the beach we have had pea soup fog most of the day. When I went to walk the dogs this morning the fog made visibility low and all surfaces wet. Even though the air was gray & murky with water droplets, the Nokia N97 was able to take a good photo of the building of the annual winter sand berm.

As we ended our walk, I noticed an unusual worm with a flat triangle head crossing the sidewalk, I was able to crouch down, set the Nokia N97 to close-up mode and get the camera lens within 5 inches of the worm and still get a good, clear shot of the worm, its colors, and bizarre head. Before the October firmware update, I would not have been able to get the clarity and sharpness of the worm at 5-6 inches away.

More on the Carl Zeiss app tomorrow.

-----
* PixelPipe, please release a stand-alone app for Symbian that is like your delicious PixelPipe Pro for Android.

Tues 11.03.09 - Regardless of whether you are participating in National ________ Posting/Writing Month or just reading/watching others, I think the best part of the November novel writing, blog posting, vlog posting, drawing, and any other permutation, is that daily practice really does hone one's creative skills and ingrains, in a good way, the habit of the activity.

One of my favorite authors of all time, Madeleine L'Engle, frequently in articles, her books, and in writers workshops would encourage folks to write at least 30 minutes every day. She stated that with the daily habit comes the inspiration, not the other way around.

For a few years after taking the workshop with Ms. L'Engle, I would draw for 30 minutes every day. And then by the late 1990s, it became taking photos for at least a total of 15-20 minutes every day.

Rather than attempt to count up time and compare it to one creative activity, now I make sure that I reserve 30 mins to 1 hour every day for a / some creative activity be it writing, drawing, blogging, photography, or mobile blogging. By doing this regardless or schedule or busy-ness, it means that I carve out time time to slow down, time to create and explore.

Today on Twitter I started asking who of my circle of association is doing one of the Na__ __ Mo's? I found that a good variety of folk were participating in the original NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, NaVloPoMo (video blogging), and NaDrawMo (drawing).

One of my Twitter friends made apologies for his lack of participation saying he was not creative, I replied back that one can blog about whatever, it doesn't have to be a story or long post. I would like to reiterate that this month is not about being the best or most polished or even the most creative, but about clearing a space for yourself to establish a new daily habit or even just to challenge yourself in something that you have always wanted to do but never did. So many of the folk who are writing novels this month have never written fiction but are doing the NaNoWriMo to really let go and loose their inhibitions about the activity.

It is not too late to join us.

Here is a list of the folks that I know in real life or via the Internets who are participating in National DoSomething Everyday Month:

NaNoWriMo:
Kasper Jespersen http://www.theasemicdreamer.com/
Steve Lawson http://www.stevelawson.net/wordpress/2009/11/nanowrimo-steve-writes-a-novel-possibly/
James McNally http://twitter.com/jmcnally/
Sudhamshu Hebbar http://www.sudhamshu.com/
Velvet Verbosity http://velvetverbosity.com/2009/11/02/nanowrimo-insane-fun/

NaBloPoMo:
Mrs. K (of course) http://www.fussy.org/
Me
Jessica Spengler http://www.wordridden.com
Vikki Chowney http://www.vikkichowney.com/
Lauren Isaacson http://www.theadnostic.com/
Laurie White http://lauriewrites.typepad.com/
Mauricio Reyes http://www.reyespowered.com/blog/?p=355
Utku Can http://utku.tumblr.com/
Ann McMeekin http://www.pixeldiva.co.uk/
Mike Maddaloni http://www.thehotiron.com

NaVloPoMo:
James Whatley http://whatleydude.com/2009/11/some-jumbled-letters-here/
Lloyd Davis http://perfectpath.co.uk/
Benny Crime http://www.vimeo.com/user1955506
Rupert Howe http://twittervlog.tv/

NaNoDrawMo:
Shaun Inman http://www.flickr.com/photos/shauninman/sets/72157622711146084/
Trey Piepmeier http://www.flickr.com/photos/trey_piepmeier/sets/72157622719962682/

All photos taken today by Ms. Jen with a Nokia n97.

Tues 11.03.09 - Today a white Euro, Nokia N97 entered my life for a bit, what is the first thing I did after making sure it was charged and had the newest firmware version 20 on it? I took it out for a photo walk.

The big October version 20 firmware update has taken care of about 98% of my previous frustrations and complaints about the N97, it is now a very nice little mobile computing machine of which the touchscreen is more responsive and the camera is taking better photos.

The design world, particularly the web design / user interface folk, have been going through a spasm of minimalism / simplicity lately with many top web folk redesigning their blogs to simple text, plain background (usually white or a light color), and a graphic line or two.

Tim Brown at Design Thinking has decided to plunge into the murky waters of design philosophy and semantics to parse out what the difference is between simplicity and minimalism as it pertains to web design / interface design. The articles does not end with his words, but the real debate begins in the comments as various designers debate what do the words and practices really mean.

Read it.

Now if you need a visual for who is the current king of minimalism, view this photo from 1982 which sums up the future of ID/UX 27 years later in one go.

I don't know about you, but I have had a little list of blog upkeep items that have been on my to do list for ages, but haven't had the time to research and then execute them. After thinking about a few of them for some time, oh like a couple of years, I decided recently to make a real paper list and make it happen.

Here are the things I wanted to do:
1) Figure out how to get thumbnails of images to appear in the excerpted version of this blog's RSS and Atom feeds.
2) Think about how to keep the evil sploggers (spam bloggers who scrape feeds) at bay AND keep my regular feed readers happy with a good feed. I have had my private full feed for at least two years now & announce it frequently but folks who want a full feed didn't know about it.
3) Even though Perl is not really my friend, I have wanted to figure out how to alter the Atom script for this blog so that when I use Lifeblog or PixelPipe to mobile blog from my camera phone to this blog that the photo will be uploaded into the file directory of my choice and not the default main blog directory.

A few weeks ago, I dedicated a few hours to attempting to bending the Atom and RSS feed templates to my will. Unfortunately, Movable Type 4.x is very dependent on the Asset Manager for knowing where the images are, and due to challenge #3, I was not able to fix #1 with any satisfaction, as all the fixes required the Asset Manager to know where all the images are and by default the Atom script uploads all assets/images to the main blog directory, which causes a messy main directory with my daily mobile blogging. To solve this, I have been manually moving images to a proper image directory and then updating the blog post later, thus the Asset Manager can't keep up with me. Poor thing.

Persistent artist vs. computer program. Who is going to lose? In the long run, the program. Until I solved problem #3, problem #1 was a null point.

I solved #2 by resetting my public facing feeds to be a bit bigger excerpts that would show the images but would excerpt any article over a certain length. I use the .htaccess file to stop any lifting of images. And I still have the private complete feed for anyone who emails me and lets me know that they want the url.

Today, I decided to conquer the moblogging directory issue and attempt to make Perl bend to my will.

Update about an hour later: I was able to get the script working and the next post after this will be a tutorial / reminder to me on how I did it.

The Fix: How to Change the Directory that Movable Type Uploads to When Using the Atom Protocol (Lifeblog, PixelPipe, etc)

Updated a few minutes later: Ok, so the path is right, I am just missing one bit in the Atom file to make sure that the photo is being uploaded into the right directory.

The Fix: How to Change the Directory that Movable Type Uploads to When Using the Atom Protocol (Lifeblog, PixelPipe, etc)

Photo of taken by Ms. Jen on 10.31.09 with her Nokia N95.

Sun 11.01.09 - Ruben McChancey in his Dias de Los Muertos outfit last night at Alex's Halloween Party.