May 2010 Archives

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N86 while on the crazy/fun road trip.

Sun 05.30.10 - When someone in Southern California, particularly a native or long-lived migrant, says "The River", they mean the only one in 200 miles that runs all year around - the Colorado River on the border of the California and Arizona. To some tribes and sub-cultures going to The River from Memorial Day to Labor Day is a sacred activity, just like a certain set of East Coast tribes go to Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. Except it is different. Really different, different as in a different nation, different customs, morals, dress, and culture.

Anywhoo, I don't belong to either tribe so the few times that I have ended up at The River on a big holiday weekend or in Nantucket during the summer, it always seems odd. Odd, as in: get in, do what called one to to the locale, and get the heck out real fast.

The last time I was in Nantucket in the summer, I lasted about 38 hours before I hopped on the ferry back to the mainland. Today, I went to The River for less than 3 hours, not including the 3.5 hours each way. I was on a mission and my sister, Allison, was kind enough to come along on the mission.

Mission? Getting my Dad, who is one week out of a major back surgery from Tustin, Calif. to Big River, Calif. so he can go to his surgery follow up appointment with his doctor in Phoenix mid-week.

Allison and I left Seal Beach about 8:15am, we picked up my Dad who was properly pain med-ed up for the long drive, and off we went. Upon arrival at his RV in Big River, we got him set up with food, A/C, and other bits, went to lunch, he off to a big nap, and then we got back on the road to see Quartzite, Arizona, before hopping back on the Interstate 10 to drive back to the LA area.

Once we left the LA area basin and reached the desert, it was Good & Hot all day. The temperatures were between 93 - 101F / 34 - 39C the whole drive. We only left the car's A/C for a few pit stops, to unload my Dad & his stuff, and to walk around T-Rock rock store in Quartzite.

Other than those few pit stops, we arrived back home within 12.5 hours of departure. Now I am ready for bed. ;o)

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nikon D70s camera using a 50mm 1.8f lens.

Fri 05.28.10 - A big happy 1st birthday to Miss Gracie Callis! She has gotten so big compared to last year at this time...

Forgive me for last night's storytelling rant/praise about Over the Air updating of one's mobile / smartphone. But one point that I would like to pick out from the story's threading is that of ease of use for the customer.

Many in the mobile and computer technology space complain about how users do not update their computers, mobiles or software thus making it more complex, difficult, and at times more expensive for creators, designers, and developers to provide great experiences (giving the the stink eye to IE6). But we can't complain if we are part of the problem in making updating difficult or more complex than it needs to be.

Apple has solved the problem of updating by making syncing between one's iPhone/iPod/iPad as close to automatic as possible when you dock or plug it into your computer. But it creates another problem in that one need's to have access to a computer to update or sync one's Apple mobile products and it can also create problems if you don't want a full sync or update. I have heard quite a few friends complain about both, either not having a regular computer or by syncing unique data on the mobile is wiped out by the sync. Apple makes it very easy but they have control over how the update happens.

Google's Android has solved the problem by making all their updates to any Android phone happen over the air. As I detailed out last night, Android puts a little notice up in the top tool bar that updates are available, the user can then click on the tool bar and a drop down menu will give one the alerts as to which software and/or firmware has updates available. Google makes updating very easy and gives the user the control on when and how much they want to update.

My complaint of the last four years about Nokia's Symbian S60 devices and updating is that the updating can only occur when one has the mobile phone attached by USB cable to a Windows PC/laptop. If one does not have access to a PC or one does not wish to find a PC to update one's mobile, then one goes without. Once one gets a PC of which to conduct the update on, it becomes a multiple step update process that usually includes updating the Nokia Updater software and then updating the phone. Most of the time this takes at least 3-5 times longer than an Apple or Android update. Unnecessary kit, steps, and time just to update.

What was so exciting to me and praiseworthy yesterday was that the Nokia N900 with the Maemo linux-based OS uses the Android model of OTA (Over the Air) updates. The user clicks on the alert in the top tool bar, one chooses the updates that one wants to have updated, and as long as one has data connection it will update. As stated last night, this whole process for a major firmware update took less than 10 minutes. It was truly efficient.

From the user experience perspective, we as creators, designers, and developers cannot assume what the user will have for 'kit' or a computer to update with and what access to connection they will have. Thus I suggest the following for updating of software and firmware on mobile phones and computers:

1) Let the device that needs to be updated be the only device involved. If a mobile, don't force the user to find a computer to conduct the update.

2) Make the available updates be readily noticeable to the user on the front or home screen of the device.

3) Allow whatever connection is most convenient for the user to do the updating. If wifi, then let the wifi do the job. If data connection through a mobile carrier, then let the sim chip do the job. Don't force it to be through the mobile carrier as some folks have very spotty 2G& 3G connections. Don't let the user fear that a spotty connection will brick the device. Conversely, if it doesn't work for the user to do the update only through a mobile connection, then give them steps to get around this.

4) Allow the user to choose how little or how much they want to update. If a major firmware update, then say so in plain language, not the internal language of your company or specialty.

By taking these four steps we can encourage users to update and make the update painless. Painless updates that just work make for a good user experience, excitement for new features or bug fixes, and in the end for brand affection and loyalty.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N900.

Thurs 05.27.10 - Compare the above photo with this one taken last week with my Nokia N86 8MP camera phone.

SOF Observed on Being Comfortable with the Presence of Mystery: "Given that title, it is perhaps surprising to learn that Mario Livio is not himself a religious man. But in his science, he is working on frontiers of discovery where questions far outpace answers -- exploring the nature of neutron stars, white dwarfs, dark energy, the search for intelligent life in other galaxies.

In vivid detail and with passionate articulation, he reinforces a sense that has come through in many of my conversations with scientists these past years. That is, in contrast to the 19th- and 20th-century Western cultural confidence that science was on the verge of explaining most everything, our cutting-edge 21st-century discoveries are yielding ever more fantastic mysteries. The real science of the present, Mario Livio says, is far more interesting than science fiction could ever be."

Killing the Buddha on Louisiana Coast: Return to Sender : "Dear France, You've been good friends. Great friends! ..."

Luis on Helsinki for beginners : "If you're a teetotaller, you'll be happy to discover that Finns drink plenty of berry juices. In case you're not, you'll be happy to discover that Finns drink. A lot"

The ability to update one's mobile phone / device is an excellent service that a handset manufacturer or operating system can offer a customer as it not only extends the life of the mobile but it also expands and builds on the array of services and software available on the mobile.

One of the big enticements for me to consistently choose Nokia mobile phones over other manufacturers has been the high quality cameras, the great hardware, and the software/OS updates that are available for your mobile even a year or two after purchase.

Only one not so small, not so wee problem...

Up until the last year, all of the updates have only been available for Nokia customers with access to a PC / Microsoft Windows based computers, as one would have to use a Windows machine to update the Nokia in question.

Now, I don't know about you, but if you are a Nokia Nseries owner in the US, you are possibly not a PC owner. If you prefer to buy hard to find, high end, well designed hardware, then you have been mostly buying Apple for years and used to paying extra premium for great devices. If you are a Nokia Nseries owner in the US, you may be a creative surrounded by other creatives with Macs, not PCs. And on top of all of that, the PC owners around you might be the sort who don't own or ever run anti-virus and so you wouldn't want to hook your precious, expensive Noka up to their virii-addled PCs even for an update that will take 45 minutes to set up.

On top of hunting down a PC to update one's Nokia, there is the added irritation that every time one wants to update on a borrowed or ancient PC, the Nokia Updater software on the PC wants to be updated itself. And given that the lame computer in question is a Windows machine it means a lengthy download, a restart of the machine, plug your Nokia back in via USB cable and START ALL OVER AGAIN. SO ANNOYING.
Can I type it again? SO ANNOYING.

30-45 minutes to just get one f*ing update. UGH.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nikon D70s at Irvine Regional Park.

Updated Wed 05.26.10 - I have been spelling the name of the "Tree Poppies" wrong, it is Matilija poppy. Oops.

Mr. G. on Post I/O Thoughts : "Post-Google I/O, there's not much room left to see iPhone-vs.-Android as anything other than an all-out war. What we've got here is a good old-fashioned epic rivalry."

I wonder if the "Big Rivalry" is more than a bit planned out to benefit both companies and mobile platforms...

Andrew Sullivan on Jesus and Christ, Ctd : "Christianity is in crisis - and in a deeper crisis, in my view, than many Christians are allowing themselves to believe. I start from a simple premise. There can be no conflict between faith and truth. If what we believe in is not true, it is worth nothing. The idea that one should insincerely support religious faith because it is good for others or for society is, for me, a profound blasphemy if you do not share the faith yourself. I respect atheists and agnostics who reject faith; I find it harder to respect fundamentalists - of total papal or Biblical authority - because of the blindness of their sincerity; but I have no respect for those who cynically praise religion for its social uses, while believing in none of it themselves."

Today at Tuttle Club LA, David A. said to David G., "Shabbat Shalom. Can I call you tomorrow or do you not pick up your phone on Shabbat?"

"Yep."

"Ok, I will call you on Sunday then."

I waited for Mr. A to go away and I turned to David G., "That's cool! If you don't pick up your phone on Shabbat, then I take it you don't turn on your computer?"

David G, "Yes, that's right. No computer, no phone, no iPhone, no..."

Me, "How wonderful."

Really, how wonderful. I didn't ask what he and his family did about emergency calls or anything of the like, instead I asked him if he had read a lot of books recently and he had.

Right now, after months of working on one big project and several smaller ones, of which I am tying up the loose ends of all of them, I would *LOVE*LOVE*LOVE* to take one day a week where I did not turn on the computer or phone or whatever, but instead took the whole day off and just rested.

I need it. I don't need a 2 week vacation right now, what I need to do is to carve out one whole day every week that I don't even do a smidgen of work at all. A day where I read or sleep or hang out with friends or walk or whatever but not turn on the computer or phone.

At the end of Tuttle, David G. asked, "Are you Jewish?"

Me, "No, but I really respect it."

Right now more than ever.

Shabbat Shalom.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N86.

Thurs 05.20.10 - Erika and Thomas just got back from three weeks in New Zealand, so Erika and I decided to meet up today to go for a long walk. When I arrived at her house, I suggested that since it was late May and the weather had started to warm up, that we should go to the Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino to see if the Rose Garden was in full bloom.

Oh was it ever in full bloom! We came the very right week to see every rose bush in full, over the top, bloom. It was amazing. The afternoon was warm at 84F/29F, clear, and sunny. We walked purposefully around the Rose Garden, all the while sniffing the roses and taking photos.

Luckily, the Huntington was not very crowded. My suggestion is if you live in the LA area, go the Huntington in the next 3-4 days to see the roses at their first bloom peak. It is truly amazing.

And the lotus flowers in the Japanese, Chinese and North Lawn ponds/fountains are also in bloom.

Do go. It is lovely.

If you don't already read it, I recommend putting Charlie's Diary in your feed / RSS reader, as Mr. Stross is erudite and can pin any bug through the carapace with wit & speed.

Mr. Stross recently tackled "The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash" wherein he talks about how Mr. Job's severe control addiction appears to have several strategic as well as personal reasons:

"It's probably no exaggeration to say that Apple's draconian security policies are among the tightest of any company operating purely in the private sector, with a focus on secrecy that rivals that of military contractors. But even so, the control freak obsessiveness which Steve Jobs is bringing to bear on the iPad -- and the desperate flailing around evident among Apple's competitors -- bears some examination. What's going on?

I've got a theory, and it's this: Steve Jobs believes he's gambling Apple's future -- the future of a corporation with a market cap well over US $200Bn -- on an all-or-nothing push into a new market."

For as much as I enjoy owning a good Apple MacBook Pro computer, as the hardware is so very nicely designed and the OS is not Microsoft (this is a theme for me, not MicroSquash, see other blog posts). But the last few years of watching what had been a potentially interesting mobile platform, the iPhone, turning into a closed cult that now involves cops, I must say I am more than turned off.

As my readers know, for my mobile devices I prefer Nokia (such lovely hardware & great camera phones) and Android (such lovely software) and I am eagerly awaiting the Meego linux based mobile platform that Nokia & Intel are currently working on. I am also excited right now for Nokia's open Maemo and future Meego, as there is plenty of room for a web designer / photographer / developer hybrid, like me, to develop mobile applications in python.

I want great hardware and an open software architecture as well as a whole open ecosystem that welcomes a variety of creative folk to get involved. The future as Mr. Stross envisions where Apple will go in his article makes me sincerely hope that Nokia will make several more iterations of the lovely Booklet with Meego as the linux based OS rather than the current Windows 7, so that I won't have to be stuck in a distopian Job-sian closed cloud-based future for my work and main machine.

As for mobile devices in 2015, I sincerely hope that there will be a diversity of open architectures & ecosystems that inspire creativity, connection and ease of use rather than another great computer world battle that is Apple v. Google or some other such nonsense.

As for other things I hope for in a mobile ecosystem in 2015:

1) I hope that all devices will come with their own solar battery charging array where the solar cells are on the case of the device so that you can flip it over and it will charge while it is not being used.

2) I hope that I will have a small handheld mobile device that will fit in my pocket or hand and it will have a fold out screen that will when full out will be the size of a sheet of office paper be it 8.5x11" or A4.

3) I hope that the OS and software that will run the mobile devices of 2015 will not be a closed system, not just in concept & app store but also not in execution. I hope that Palm's WebOS idea set will be propagated across the mobile landscape so that folks with training in web design & development will be able to code mobile apps and not just C++/Java/Cocoa/Symbian folk.

I hope this because the mobile and telecom worlds have been quite closed due to carrier strangleholds and the high barrier to entry for mobile applications, whereas the web world has had a large flowering of creativity and innovation because the barriers to entry were quite small. If the barriers to creating apps and sites for mobile are low, then in 2015 a 19 year old could create the mobile version of a future Facebook to scratch an itch in his or her community.

4) I hope that carriers will not continue to have such a vise grip on the North American market, but as I suggested in my thesis, that I can buy my mobile device from any number of stores and buy the 'gas' / connectivity from any number of other separate operators/carriers.

5) And then I have a ton of hopes for cameras with complete connectivity in 2015, but I won't go there now... ;o)

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97.

Tues 05.18.10 - I know in other places it rains in May and it is not a Big Deal, but here in Southern California our rainy season, really the only times it rains, is strictly defined as late fall through early spring (Nov to March). To get any rain after April 15th and before October 15th is a rarity that only happens every couple of years.

This El Nino year with the jetstream that has left Canada and remained hovered over San Francisco & Los Angeles has meant rain that just keeps coming. Now here in the LA area, we haven't had a ton of rain, not like in 1998 where we had over 30 inches, and while we have only had 2-3 inches over normal, what has been so surprising is just how often the storms have come through.

I don't mind it at all. We may have a terrible fire season in the late summer and through the autumn with all of the new rain inspired growth, but it has been delightful to have almost Seattle like green and mist. I and most of the local plants will enjoy it while we have it.

I have gotten some requests from a few web designers and developers on what are the best approaches for mobile forms.

My short & sweet answer is to keep it simple and make it flexible. Make sure your forms work with according to web standards best practices: clean code, strip out the extraneous that does not work towards the form's task or goal, and use progressive enhancement when coding the javascript if you use it at all. Resize the screen, are inputs too long or hidden? Test your form: if you turn off your javascript & CSS will the form inputs work? If so, then your forms will work on almost any device out there.

But you argue, "Jen, I am designing for smart phones with good webkit/gecko browsers, so I don't need to worry."

Yes, you do, as you can't guarantee on the mobile web what phone, be it smart or feature phone, what browser, and what screen size will come to visit your mobile or web site and may want to fill out a contact form or purchase something.

Here are some resources to get you started:

Luke W, the king of forms, on mobile forms:
Web Form Innovations on Mobile Devices
Better Mobile Form Design
Forms On Mobile Devices: Modern Solutions

Linda Bustos at Get Elastic on Mobile Commerce Usability: Forms and Checkout

Chris Mills in ThinkVitamin on Coding for the mobile web

WestCiv's Complete CSS Guide, The Mobile Profile

PPK's Mobile with links to his CSS & Javascript mobile tests

If you like the Details & Standards and a different point of view from Luke W, don't miss:
Luca Passini's Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web, under point 3.2 Usability Luca argues that one should Beware of HTML style forms and has a different approach to Managing User Input.

Finally, the W3C recommendation on Mobile User Input

Paul Davies in the NYTimes on The Aliens Among Us

O'Reilly Radar on Mobile operating systems and browsers are headed in opposite directions : "No single operating system has more than 50 percent marketshare. There are seven operating systems being tracked and even within operating systems there are fragmentation concerns. ...By contrast, the mobile web is converging on HTML5 and WebKit."

Bored Panda on the 50 Most Extraordinary Churches. Number 5 is in Huntington Beach, but from a Google Search I just ran, it appears that a fight between the church and the City in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has landed the church over at a Christian school rather than in the old Shell building.

Back in April, Cindy Li & I spoke at the UX Summit on Mobile UX (aka Mobile User Experience), a subject very near & dear to me. Cindy took the first bit of the slides and concentrated on her experience in mobile app design as well as mobile web, I took the second part of the slides and focused on the principles of Mobile UX and the concepts that we need to be thinking about as we start design a mobile app or mobile web site/app.

It was surprisingly fun to sit at Cindy's and have us both get to speak into her MacBook Pro and have the magic of Adobe Connect (or something like it) project our slides, our video and the chat area of the attendees from all over the world on one computer screen. By seeing the chat as we spoke, we were able to answer questions as they were asked or reasonably soon thereafter. Later on Twitter, we received quite a few thank yous.

Now in return, Cindy & I present to you all our slides on Mobile UX. Enjoy. And thank you!

Sat. 05.15.10 - The Just for Fun camera phone / DSLR comparison is back. Given that the Camera Phone Fairy showed up this week with a Nokia N900 under my pillow, I decided today to shoot a local gerba daily with a water droplet in the sun, as well as Scruffy and Magnus playing with the Nokia N97, Nokia N86, Nokia N900, and Nikon D70s with a 50mm f1.8 lens.

Remember all the above photo comparisons are for fun on a lovely Saturday afternoon, and if you came over from a serious DSLR forum, please read the title, enjoy the images, and then when you go to rant about this back at the forum, the photographer & site owner here at Black Phoebe is a woman not a guy. A cheeky one at that. Just sayin'...

;o)

Until yesterday the only thing that has been intriguing to me about the iPad is the ability to create drawings and digital paintings mostly due to James's posts on iPad Creative, so screen size would be paramount.

After watching Valdis Krebs and Shawn Joyner use their iPads this week at the Nokia workshop event, I must say that I am not that intrigued.

For some reason, it must have been the angles of Apple's adverts, I thought that the actual screen size would be larger more like a sheet of 8.5x11 / A4 paper and not the size of a medium-ish moleskine or my current small-ish Wacom tablet. Why pay $499 for an animated version of my 7 year old Wacom tablet?

I would be much more intrigued by a mobile device the size of a Nokia N97/N900 or an iPhone that had a 8.5x11/A4 sized screen that folded out, so that it could both fit in one's pocket and also fold out to a full paper sheet size for drawing, writing, multiple apps open at once, plus a larger viewing area.

Mother Jones on Why Is Population Control Such a Radioactive Topic?

I particularly recommend Julia Whitty's article The Last Taboo : "The plunge in Iran's birth rates has been swift, uniform, and voluntary--engineered via a media blitz, access to free birth control, and education for girls."

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97 and her N86.

Wed 05.12.10 - Day 3: The Last Day of the Big Adventure. Today we worked in small groups and pairs on the various bits. The best part is towards the end when we were sent out in our pair groups for 20 minutes outside of the Hotel Kabuki to take funny/fun/silly photos for a prize. My photo of Petri on a concrete pedestal was the winner, Petri won a large bottle of good sake. Go Petri, Go!

I would like to extend an big thanks to the Firefish folk for putting on a well-organized workshop and to the Nokia folk for coming a long way to workshop with North American tech folk. While at times it was hard, by the end of today much had been gathered and gained.

Thanks all.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97 and her N86.

Tues 05.11.10 - Day two: the day we workshopped in a conference room at the Kabuki Hotel from 9:30am until 7pm discussing a wide variety of topics around smart phones, until we were all sapped. Then we took cabs down to Farallon for a delightful and reviving dinner in the 4th floor submarine themed ballroom at the Kensington Park Hotel.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N86.

Mon 05.10.10 - Rather than go into a big explanation about the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and why I am in San Francisco until Wednesday evening, let's just say that I am in San Francisco for a mobile device related event and I am having a good, stimulating adventure. Here are some photos of various bits, Japantown, and an amazing meal at SPQR on Filmore.

In 2001, the Barflies.net fielded, or laned, our first bowling team(s) at Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas. PRB was only a year or two old at that point, was held at the Gold Coast Hotel which was just off strip. In the years since we have moved all over the place from the Gold Coast to downtown, to the Boulder Hwy, to Sam's Town, back to the Gold Coast, back to Sam's Town, etc.

In the years since, Punk Rock Bowling was really the highlight of the whole year not just for me but for many of my friends, next to SXSW. The only year in the last 10 years that I missed bowling at PRB was in 2006 when I was at grad school in Dublin, Ireland. I had a good excuse as I was on an island a whole ocean and continent away.

This year, PRB was moved from January to May and by the time the email came from BYO Records to register, it was only a few weeks before SXSW. And I just was not interested. I had a deep down feeling that May would have other things in store for me, as well as the weekend picked was Mother's Day weekend (?!?!?!??!?), and I couldn't afford to shell out a couple of hundred bucks just before SXSW.

In late February/early March, I decided that I wouldn't go this year. I told my team. Julie Wanda also wasn't feeling it, Tink was, and so there it went.

As things have unfolded in the 2.5 months since, I am very glad that I didn't go this weekend to Las Vegas. I am glad that I stayed home this weekend for Mother's Day, as I had a lovely time with my Mom.

And my hunch was right, there have been other things in store for May. Tomorrow I get on a plane to go to a very cool event that I would not have had energy for if I had gone to bowling.

I hope everyone who did go had a wonderful time. As for me, my big adventure starts tomorrow. Wish me well.

Fri. 05.07.10 - Today at Tuttle Club LA, Vaughan Risher (@vardenrhode) started asking the mobile folk in the group some questions about the upcoming Nokia N8's HD video recording capabilities.

He had three questions, of which he wrote down for me to ask around about, but then I decided I should video him fleshing out what he was really thinking.

Here are his questions about the Nokia N8:

1) Is there a button to upload full HD, not low res compressed, recorded video directly to YouTube, Vimeo, etc?

2) How does the interface stack up with iPhone or the Nexus One.

3) Can you see a complete video novice being able to use advanced video features.

Vaughan is an iPhone 3G owner who is ready to upgrade and if the Nokia N8 has the ability to upload full resolution HD recorded video directly to YouTube or Vimeo he may be tempted.

Video recorded by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N97 at Toorak Cafe, Long Beach, Calif.

Ms. Jen, @msjen, blackphoebe.com
Vaughan Risher, @vardenrhode, vaughanrisher.com

Today, after much thought, I decided to experiment with redesigning the front page of blackphoebe.com. Previous to today, it was a shorter variation of the Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen blog theme, as of today, it is now one large background photo with a semi-transparent left sidebar with various navigation bits to get around.

I have been wanting for at least the last four years to find a way to feature my mobile phone photography without giving up the usual blog front page of chronological ordering of at least eight blog posts, as I like readers to see the choices available and not to pigeon hole Black Phoebe as only a photo blog. About four years ago, I solved the problem by making the blackphoebe.com entry page be the most recent post from this blog plus a set of the most important links to this blog, recent entries links, the about page, and my master's thesis on Mobile.

Many photo blogs have one big photo with a few links to recent posts or possibly a short set of excerpts in the footer. I love this layout style, but I don't want to prioritize image over text. This point of this blog since its inception in April of 2003 was to feature image and text equally. How to manage this goal structurally and visually?

I want to feature my passion for mobile phone & (D)SLR photography with at least one showcase for my favorite photo of the week or day or whatever. And I want to feature the text-based articles, reviews, and humorous pieces that I write. One of the things that I like about the Movable Type software is that the templating system is very robust and allows me to set up a template where just one post from a certain author with a certain tag is shown.

Today I changed around the templates for the blackphoebe.com entry page to have the most recent moblogged (mobile blogged) photo to this blog be the feature photo as the whole 100% of the page background photo. I also took out the blog post area, footer, and reduced the left hand sidebar down to the bare essentials.

I am going to try this out for awhile. I may also try adding a footer with a few recent entries summaries as well to balance out the big image, but for now I will try out image only.

Please let me know how it looks on your mobile or iPhone and if you are using an older version of IE, such as IE6, as my IE testing machine is currently out on loan.

Let me know what you think.

****

p.s. For the 100% background image, I tried a CSS only solution with no javascript for better cross-browser/cross-device rendering. Please do report how it works on your mobile and any older browser versions.

John Hawks on NEANDERTALS LIVE! : "I, for one, welcome my Neandertal ancestry.

It may not sound like a lot -- between 1 and 4 percent. But that's the equivalent of one great-great-great grandparent's DNA contribution. In the case of the Neandertal contribution, more than 1500 generations ago, it's an enduring legacy of an ancient group of people, spread across many lines of the genealogies of living people. Beyond their genealogical interest, Neandertal genes might have made a big difference to our evolutionary potential."

Tues 05.04.10 - This video would only be funnier if Mr. Kankkunen had driven circles around one the BMW driving clamshell phone talking idiots from my neighborhood.

One of the things that continually baffles me about the wealthy in SoCal is how they can afford the latest & greatest BMW, Mercedes, Range Rover, etc, but all seem to talk on clamshell phones with no bluetooth headset.

¿What?

How in the heck can one afford a $50-80K car but one's mobile is the cheap/free clamshell from _____ [insert name of carrier here] with no bluetooth or headset?

My mom posits that these folks don't care if they get pulled over for talking on their phones with no hands free because they can afford to pay the ticket. I still wonder why not spend an extra $300 and get a phone with bluetooth or a headset in the box. Idiots.

Now for me, I would spend the $$ for a real mobile and then get the Nokia Car Kit CK-200. But I am also not spending $50-80k on my car, or even a leased one.

I took yesterday off from blogging, working, and all the like.

Instead I read a novel that Erika loaned me, Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate) by Gail Carriger.

Soulless was an amusing mashup of regency romance genre tropes with Steampunk Victoriana plus vampires & werewolves set in an 1870s alterna-London. A very good romp. The kind of book that once one starts reading it, one keeps reading it, even when one has other things to do.

Reading an actual book broke my 2 years + daily blogging streak.

And I don't regret it.

;oD