Proud Geek

It seemed too good to be true.

One of my favorite Treo applications developer, Hobbyist Software, announced two nights ago that he has developed Bar Booster, a new Treo application (still in beta) that would increase my signal strength by one or two bars - at the expense of a slightly increased battery drain.

Since I take a commuter train through farmland and then the subway through underground tunnels, the signal strength of my Verizon Palm Treo 755p can go from 4 to just one or none in a matter of seconds. I’d wished that I could boost my signal strength. And so, Bar Booster seemed to be a godsend!

So, yesterday, I installed Bar Booster. Just 11k, which I thought was very small — yet I knew also that this is typical of Hobbyist Software’s other applications - they all have small “footprints” as well.

Maybe it was my imagination, but I could see a slightly better signal strength as my train choo-choo’ed across pastoral farmland. Emails continued to arrive, signal strength continued to fluctuate, I continued to browse the web. All was normal, yet I thought I saw a bit better signal strength.

When I changed trains and took the subway, I felt that signal strength was about the same as my train went thru the various underground tunnels. What a disappointment.

So, this morning, April 2nd, I got on the commuter train once again and opened Bar Booster to see if I could configure some settings. And what did I see but this message:

Ok folks, you probably guessed it. This was pure April Fool.

I hope you enjoyed it, you should probably disable it now!

Rob, the Hobbyist developer, certainly got me! Grumble grumble laugh. It certainly was too good to be true. Good one, Rob.

(I currently use several Hobbyist Software’s more legit offerings - Butler, Power Hero, Initiate, and Genius!, and have written about Genius! in the past.)

In proud observance of April Fool’s Day, I posted a blog onto DeafDC listing all the various Internet hoaxes being perpetuated upon unwary (or wary?) folks today.  Go read and contribute and spread the pranks!

If you understand even half of what Weird Al is talking about, you’re a fellow Proud Geek!

For the record, I understood EVERYTHING. Yes, honey, you have reason to worry.

This video was subtitled for us fellow deafies and posted onto Overstream. Thanks, grwebguy! And thanks, Bill, for pointing me toward this terrific video.

I know I’m a Proud Geek, and I love geeky gadgets. But this is one gadget I do NOT want. A video player on my tombstone that shows a video scrapbook of memories about me.

I’m proud of telling people that I do not want my tombstone to say, “Here lies Josh / He was a good employee.” Rather, I want it to read, “Here lies Josh / He was a wonderful father.” But I don’t want that to be said in videos! I’d stick with a simple etching / carving of these words, thank you very much.

Ok, what is this gadget?

It’s the Serenity Panel, a video scrapbook made by Vidstone LLC that is buried into, ahem, built into your tombstone. It is powered by solar, and so the solar panels have to be faced in the right direction and the beloved can’t be buried under a thick tree. Pressing some control will show a 5-8 minute video of the dearly departed. I believe it would be built solid enough to last at least 15 years. There’s even a plan that ensures / insures replacement in case of vandalism (but not theft). There’s even a VidPet Memorial Panel to go on tombstones of cherished family pets. I kid thee not.

I do not mean to poke fun at what is surely a serious product for a serious time. But I just feel that this is a bit extravagent. Even normally somber CNN had a tongue-in-cheek article about this.

If anyone buries me with one of those on my tombstone, I’ll … I’ll … I’ll come back to life and chase you around and beat you silly!

A week ago, I travelled to a strange land for several business meetings. And people there had strange customs and attire. And as I was leaving my last meeting, I took the elevator up (yes, up) to get out of the building. But as the elevator doors were closing, a swarm of strangers came in. And I was terrified, but I bravely asked them if I could take a picture of them. And they said “heeeyy!” and they preened and they gyrated and they posed. Here’s the picture.

I love gadgets. But sometimes we can have too many gadgets. Take bag clips — they can be cool, but somehow they feel … excessive. Yes, it feels a bit too much to have bag clips. But don’t we need them to keep our chips from going stale?

Turns out we don’t need bag clips. Check out this video. (Thanks, Staz!)

I use Google several times every day.  Its standard home page is quite plain, and that’s actually the way it ought to be.  It loads easily and quickly, and is easy on the eyes.  (If you’re using iGoogle, sometimes it can take a few seconds to load — that’s why I still use the original, plain Google website.)

But there are times when I want this Google page to be somewhat jazzed up, yet load as quickly.  And by jazzed up, I don’t mean dressed up with widgets and useful information.  I meant, dressed up with someone I’d like to, ahem, drool over.

And then I tried Groovle.

Ah, now there’s a great idea that actually pretty much signifies nothing!  Groovle presents a search field and page much like Google’s, and in fact it brings you to Google for its search results.  But where Groovle truly glows is the fact that it uses a large photo of someone or something of your choice on its homepage.  It could be your favorite celebrity, animal, nature scene, or even a photo you upload.  I quickly found a page featuring a large photo of Nick Lachey, one of my favorite celebrities next to the search box.  I’m going to use this page as my search page from now on!

I wonder what my partner will pick as his favorite search page.  I hope it’s not something corny like a chihuahua next to the search box …

What would YOU pick as your favorite search picture / page on Groovle?

(Thanks, TechCrunch!)

Check out my new DeafDC post about something that gives me heebie-jeebies in the underbelly of the Nation’s Capital!

Got a few moments to kill? Is it the end of the day, and you gotta get off the computer yet you want to do one last fun thing before you go?

Spend a few minutes and play Dicewars.

Dicewars is a much simpler version of the board game Risk, where you begin by controlling several territories and have various numbers of armies in each of your territories. You fight your neighbors to expand your territories, and at the end of each round your armies grow by a certain number. At the beginning of the game you’re asked how many electronic players you want to play against, from two to eight. I usually pick five - a nice number of players, a good challenge.

Have fun!

(Click for a larger version)

This one is for you, Alli.

Starting in 2009, Mercedes Benz cars will have communication, navigation, and in-car maintenance systems designed by Apple Computer. Yes, Apple. Perhaps Mercedes Benz cars would run on Mac OS X (or whatever the operating system’d be called in two years)!

Brings to mind an old joke I heard several years ago, back when most computers were still running Windows 98. Some choice lines (thanks to Performant Systems for the joke):

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

• Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
• The airbag system would ask, “Are you sure?” before deploying.
• Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the antenna.
• Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
• You’d have to press the “start” button to turn the engine off.
• Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive — but it would only run on five percent of the roads.

Thanks, Techcrunch and FourSprung!