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Life Pictures, Part 5

Here are some pictures capture by my phone.  It’s been awhile since my last life pictures post, so these go back alittle bit.  Enjoy the sometimes randomness of our lives.  Keep in mind Parker and Carson sometimes take these pictures…

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Sleep Cycle App

I found and downloaded a new app last night.  It’s an alarm clock that uses the iPhone’s acceleromator to sense movement. Basically, you put start the app and then lay the iPhone on the corner of your matress nearest your head.  As you move in the night the phone registers it and analyzes the movement patterns to determine how “deep” in sleep you are.  It seemed to work pretty well.  The point…  To wake you up during the lightest period of sleep nearest your set alarm time.  This is suppossed to wake you up easier and more pleasantly.  We’ll see.  It didn’t work last night, due partly to the boys both ending up in the bed with us.  That’s alot of extra tossing and turning.  Anyway.  Here is my sleep cycles from last night.  You’ll notice about 4am I appear to be awake.  That’s right, Kayce and I woke up to see if school was closed (it was).  So, it registered that pretty well.  If you have an iPhone, its a 0.99 cent app.  Here’s a link to check it out, it’s called Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock.

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Parker the Cartoonist…

Parker has taken in the past few weeks to drawing charaters and then wanting us to cut them out.  Basically, he is making his own action figures in the form of paper dolls.  It’s pretty funny. With all the toys that this boys has, he would rather make his own.  So, I guess for his birthday, we’re just going to get him a few reams of paper.  He spent most of yestarday drawing the characters from Larry Boy, a character created by the Veggie Tales folks.  He then had Kayce and I cut them all out.  Today, Kayce and Parker spent some time water coloring them.  I have to say he did a great job drawing and coloring them.  Especially, when you consider that he didn’t have anything in front of him at the time.  He drew and colored them all from memory.  Pretty good, I think, but I’m partial, of course.

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ExoPC on Video…

If you read my previous post about the ExoPC (The iPad Killer, well kind of…) you know that even though I’m an ocean away from the nearest prototype of this device, I’m already in love with it.  It has all the makings of a great mobile computer…  At least for me.  It appears to do everything I need it to do very well.  I love all the I/O ports that are available on it most of all.  Very handy indeed.  So, I get most of my daily tech news via the folks over at Engadget.com.  They have a great pulse on technology, but don’t take it too seriously, which I appreciate.  They also have a great snarky sense of humor when writing about things that might not otherwise be so interesting.  Ok, enough for the engadget commercial…  Here’s a video they posted recently of the ExoPC (Looks like they have a English version of the site now) in action.

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Susong Cam is Live…

I did a ridiculous amount of code editing tonight and finally have the webcam page working the way I want it to.  I’ve managed to embed the feed directly from our wireless webcam into the page (Susong Cam – See Link in Nav Bar above). Sounds easy, but in order to get it to stream with video and not just static images, I had to get the page to load a custom viewer from the webcam into the page.  I’m not even sure exactly what I just did, but after a few long hours editing the css and creating a new page template, I’ve managed to get it running correctly.  I think…  Let me know how it works.

If you check it out today, you should be able to see all the snow on the ground in front of our house.  I’ve got it pointed towards the road. 

Enjoy!

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The iPad Killer! Well, kind of…

With all this talk about the iPad, I thought I might as well chime in with my two cents worth.  I, along with most folks, were eagerly awaiting the reveal of the iPad.  And for those of us who aren’t Apple Fanboys, the iPad is alittle bit of a let down.  I was expecting a very useful and user friendly tablet.  That not exactly what we got.  The iPad has several pros, don’t get me wrong.  Let me run through my list very quickly:

PROS:
1) Size-It’s extremely compact and light.
2) Display-Very bright, good resolution, responsive.
3) Interface-The iPhone OS is a great platform for mobile computing.

CONS:
1) No Front Facing Camera-Having the ability to do video calls seems like an obvious use.
2) Alternate Input Methods-As a tablet, Apple really needs to have some sort of Pen accessory that can write on the capacitive touch screen for quick note taking, etc…
3) I/O Ports-Pushing the 30Pin iPod connector only is not a good idea.  I really need a USB port for jump drives, an SD card slot, an HDMI port for video output and possibly a 4pin Firewire port.  These would open up worlds of usefulness.

Those are my three major gripes.  Without those, this device is not much different than my iPhone (oh, wait, my phone has a CAMERA!!!).  So if Apple just wants us to use this for entertainment and reading (I don’t read, by the way, and if I do read long manuals, white papers, etc… I print them), then they have cut their market way down, and I’ll stick with my iPhone only. 

Now, several of you are saying, “Oh, he’s a PC guys… Blah, Blah, Blah…”.  Yes, I work in a PC environment, but I’m open to whatever hardware/software gets the job done best.  And quite frankly, the iPad doesn’t fulfill any need for me. 

My Needs:
1) Tablet for note taking, basic word processing, spreadsheets, remote desktop, FULL web (including flash)
2) Must be able to store files, and be transferred via USB drive
3) RJ-45 ethernet jack would be great for troubleshooting networks
4) Good battery life (5 Hours Minimum)

So, is there a PC alternative, and iPad killer, so to speak?
Not yet, but a company called ExoPC has a good start.  The ExoPC has your standard netbook specs (Even though Steve Jobs hates netbooks, he seems to have made a pretty lame one…), runs Windows 7, and has all the I/O ports you could want, plus a very similar display to the iPad.  It will cost around $799 when it is released.  Their website is in french, but here is a link to the google translated version.  If you speak French… I apologize.

The ExoPC – Google Translated Version

Will I get an iPad?
Probably not.  My cardinal rule of technology is, “NEVER BUY FIRST GENERATION!”.  There will be a ton of bugs worked out in this version.  Perhaps they might even listen to some of us who want the Front Facing Camera added, along with the HDMI, etc…  Whatever they do.  The next version will be a better product.  I doubt it will get any cheaper.  The price points for the iPad are very good, even if it isn’t the product I was hoping for. 

In closing.  iPad=Big (Not as great) iPhone.  ExoPC=More what I’m looking for in a tablet.

Oh, and I’m not even going to touch the whole Adobe Flash thing.  We all know the iPhone and iPad should support it, one day Apple will wake up and listen… Then again, they never listened to us before, so why start now. 

There is a side by side comparison on ExoPc’s website as well.  You can get the translated version here.

The ExoPC compared to iPad and Archos 6
(translated)

And to be fair…  Here is the link to all thing Apple iPad.  I guess you could say this is the iPad’s pad…  Maybe not.

The Apple iPad, everything you need to know.

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