its easier for me to microblog lately than it is to sit down and spend time actually blogging. so you can find me on twitter as @imaje or on brightkite as imaje as well.

ive also slowed down on the posting because of the ambivalence of posting about my personal life on something that can be viewed by the world. so, if you’re wondering where a lot of posts have gone, they’re password protected and you should know the password.

shameless plug no doubt, but i’m allowed to plug my own work!  launch 10 has launched its first interactive multi-player facebook game today.

pirate ships is a game that allows you to battle against friends or with strangers on the high seas as pirates!  place, plot and fire to see who can sink who first.  you can play multiple games simultaneously and choose your pace.

join our pirate ships facebook group to help us spread the word and discuss any topics related to pirate ships the game.

so aside from all the self promoting, the game is quick and fun and we would love your support!

i use to use zempt then i switched to wb editor. i still like wb editor but i decided to try out adobe’s new web/blog tool editor program. whereas wb editor is pretty much a desktop blog tool contribute is a lot more than that.

so far the UI is pretty simple and i like it. there is a lot of WYSIWYG stuff that i dont need/want but it doesnt really get int he way.  not really sure which one ill use or which one i like better just yet.  ive never really liked the native wordpress web based controls.  i always preferred something more sophisticated.

wb editor is up to version 3.  i’m still using 2.  to think there was a time when i thought all you needed was notepad.. pico.. joe.. vi?? i guess thats still all you need but i like technology.  hot dog pro anyone? haha!

i have been a sidekick user since the first version. chad and bryan had actually bought them on initial release and after playing with theirs i knew i had to have it. after i got mine i did my best to encourage others to buy it. the phone had so much promise. it was a great geek toy and the potential for development by its users was limitless, or so we thought.

we quickly realized that there just wasn’t going to be any real development for this phone without either signing away your warranty rights or just sitting and waiting forever for any kind of over the air update. however tmobile was really good about replacing the b&w and color versions of the original sidekick as they were prone to hardware malfunction quite frequently.

i have owned a b&w sidekick and upgraded to a color. i gave my b&w to joel who got a free upgrade to color after the b&w broke a few times. that jerk. i had to pay for both! i eventually upgraded to a sidekick 2 and yes, i upgraded to a sidekick 3.

i have investigated a lot of phones through the years. i’ve always wanted something better, something new, something cooler but nothing ever really rose to the occasion. i accepted the fate of the sidekick; it would become a trendy celebrity hip hop toy, and while im sure it was a good move for danger and tmobile it still fucking sucks.

im not a heavy phone user in itself, but i rely heavily on email, aim, and sms (from my phone). I also play the shit out of it (tetris and bust a move). i have one of the original plans that has been grandfathered every time i renew contract. its a 39.99 a month plan for unlimited data, 200 anytime minutes and 1000 weekend minutes. a lot of ppl say “oh those minutes are trash” but as i said before i don’t rely heavily on the phone. however i started to use the phone more and more and occasionally would suffer a .35 penalty on extra minutes which sucked ass. i eventually upgraded and added on unlimited mobile to mobile minutes for 7 bux. one of the major reasons i’ve never left behind the sidekick and/or tmobile was simply because, my plan rules.

here are the specs on the phone. some of the upgrades are a 1.3 mexapixel camera, expandable memory (miniSD), lighter, slightly slimmer frame. mp3 player. improved battery life, bluetooth, usb, added email protocols imap4 (they had pop3), they now offer msn along with aim and yahoo. you can also read the manual online on dangers site.

Specifications:

Battery Life Talk time (hours): 5 hours

Standby time (days): 60 hours

Talk and standby times and other specifications are provided by the manufacturer and are approximate. Actual performance varies based upon features or services used, network configuration, signal strength, operating temperature, customer use, and other factors.

Battery Type is listed here

Changeable Faceplates No

Codecs AMR

EFR

FR

HR

Dimensions Height 1.26 width 1.90 thickness in inches

Display Type: SXVGA

Colors: (16-bit) 65K

Size: (pixels) 240 x 160

Mini Display N/A

Memory Memory listed in KB, MB, GB

Expandable Memory: Yes

Type: miniSD

Frequency Bands GSM 850

GSM 1800

GSM 1900

Phone Style Flip screen

Phone book Capacity 2000 in device memory, 650 on SIM Card

Operating System Proprietary

Weight Weight (in ounces): 6.7

Call Management

Picture Caller ID Yes

Ringer Caller ID Yes

Speed Dial / One-Touch Dial Yes

Maximum Amount of Speed Dial Entries: 9

Speakerphone Yes

Type: Full-Duplex

Vibrate Yes

Voice Dialing No

Camera

Modes Yes – Airplane mode, maximum. Loud, normal, soft, buzz, and silent

Megapixel(s) Yes

Megapixels: 1.3

Resolution In pixels: 38,400

Video Capture No

Zoom No

Connectivity

Bluetooth Yes

Bluetooth Profile: 1.2

Browser Type:

Type Version:

Supports: WAP (1.0, 1.2.1, 2.0), HTML, XHTML, XML

EDGE Yes

Class: E2

GPRS Yes

Class: Rel 0.4

Infrared (IR) Port No

Synchronization Yes, No

SyncML Yes, No

UMA No

USB Support Yes

USB Mass Storage Yes

Wi-Fi No

Messaging

E-mail Client Yes

Protocols Supported: IMAP4, POP3

Instant Messaging Client Yes – AIM®, Yahoo!®, and MSN® Messenger

MMS / Picture Messaging No

SMS / Text Messaging Yes

Concatenation Support: Yes

Digital TTY/TDD Support: Yes – two apps available for download through the PDM catalog that support TTY: “IP Relay” and “Sprint Wireless Relay”

Predictive Text: Yes

Predictive Text Technology: User configurable Auto Text

Organization

Alarm No

Calculator No

Calendar Yes

Currency converter No

Dictionary No

Memo / Notepad Yes, No

To-do List Yes, No

Phone book Multiple numbers per name: Yes

Address Field: Yes

E-mail Field: Yes

Caller Groups: Yes

Voice Memo No

Personalization & Fun

FM Radio No

Games Embedded: Yes

Games installed: listing of games: Rock and Rocket

Downloadable: Yes

Music Player Yes

Type of Player: SonicBOOM

Supported file formats: MP3

Ringtones Yes

Types Supported: Polyphonic (# of chords), HiFi – t-zones not supported, but there is a Danger download catalog

Themes Yes

Themes Provided: Liquid, Madison, Rodeo, and Surface

Wallpaper Yes

Types Supported: Static

WHATS IN THE BOX:

PV200 Main Unit / With Screen Cling

PV-BL11 1500MAh Battery

PV-AC11 Battery Charger / AC Adaptor

PV-HS11 Stereo Headset

PV-CA11 Carrying Case

PV-LN11 Lanyard / Wrist Strap

PV-SD64M 64 MB Mini-SD Card

PV-UC11 USB Cable

TM0607 Gift Box

TRAY200UP Upper Gift Box Tray

TRAY200BOT Lower Gift Box Tray

TM1352 Start Guide

TM1353 Reference Guide

TM1350 Terms & Conditions Guide

ZZZ260R010 SIM Card

TM1024 Legal Sticker

TM1351 Accessory Guide (will not be in initial BOM)

if you’re wondering what it looks like, it hasn’t changed that much. like i said before they made it a bit slimmer, they also added in a trackball instead of a wheel.

so two time a charm right? if you remember, about a year and a half ago i did a reinstall on my laptop. i had backed everything off the main partition to my second “storage” partition. and through years of evolution and progress of human intellectual development, i promptly

• Reformatted the ENTIRE HARD DRIVE
• RESIZED both partitions
• did a full and complete install

And of course, its only after i log back in and go “okay lets copy my backup over….” i realize exactly what I did.

Lucky me, Joel had asked me a few weeks prior if i had any NTFS recovery tools because his other friend needed it. I fished up
Bitmart Restorer200 Professional.

It saved my ass. It completely recovered the entire hard drive. It recovered the main partition and the backup partition with all of my files intact. It had everything.

Yesterday, in the morning, i was copying over a massive amount of files over to my Micro Vault Pro usb drive. I walked away not really thinking about it. When i was in the kitchen i thought to myself, “you know thats probably a bad idea.. theres no heat sink.. it probably doesn’t handle having over a gig of files transfered to it.”

As i’m clicking “cancel” to end the transfer because i can FEEL the heat being generated on the drive, explorer stops responding.. then i get this wonderful error “File path too deep” and the drive just crashes.

The hardware itself was fine. However the file system completely corrupted and nuked itself. After attempts to even mount the drive in linux i came to the ultimate and sad conclusion that i had lost all my work… A HA! But I remembered restorer2k!!

I loaded this sucker up again and tada! it restored all the content of my micro drive.

If you *EVER* need to recover files you have lost.. this tool really does work. Aah how precarious my life seems as so much of the things i need are comprised of 1’s and 0’s. Its a good thing i can recover it.. I cant say the same about a lot of the other bullshit!

today, technology is cool

okay so not really, but it does make my life so much easier when i move from place to place. previously in my blog i introduced all of you to a small utility i recently purchased, mobile net switch. it has proved to be quiet useful and im extremely happy with the product this far.

while in the office i can easily log into the domain, auto map the necessary drives i want access to while here, auto change my smtp server, make any necessary host file changes, run any scripts i really want to, change almost every single internet setting..

i never realized just how useful this utility was until i actually started using it. it has definitely made my mobile computing life so much easier than i had ever expected.

now when i go to joels, work, or home; with a single click all the appropriate network settings are modified and everything works smoothly.

i love my crt. i have a sony 21″ atm and its a wonderful monitor. however, after we had moved from marina del rey, i think the movers “dropped” my monitor or something. i never had problems till our new place. the colors aren’t as vibrant, and the clarity has dulled. the monitor itself is still a great monitor but it wasn’t what it once was.

admittedly, anytime i look at colors or movies or even video games, i realize how many colors and depths i lose on an LCD. but alas. sony no longer produces 21″ aside form their very high end one that costs $1500.00. Ive looked at other CRT’s but none have matched the image quality that I had with my Sony. Ive looked on ebay for used monitors and they only seem to be selling the lower end models and or refurbs.

Yesterday, Bryan showed me a really great deal. Dell was running a special and i had a coupon code for an additional $75.00 off. After talking to a few friends and doing my own reading, i decided to take the plunge and get the Dell UltraSharp 2001FP 20.1-inch FPLCD.

This monitor has been available since 2003. And to this day it is still considered one of the best lcd monitors in its class. Though with time, it suffers only in the contrast ratio and brightness area vs new models. Though none of those models match in native resolution or price. It’s listed price is $749.00. They usually have daily sales, but yesterday i got it for $534.91

I’m pretty excited. It has been a long time since i bought myself a new “toy”. Ive been looking at the ones in the office and at Bryan’s and I think I’m going to be pretty happy with the purchase.