Smoking Ban

Michigan is going Smoke Free may 1st, 2010. meaning that no longer will people be allowed to smoke in public places. personally i hate smoking. it is one of those things that i simply do not understand. let me breath smoke into my lungs so it makes me happy? doesn't make any sense to me. but i digress, so i am happy the ban is going into affect. however if we look at this from another direction it is really dumb. it is just another case of government taking rights away from people. if anything now it will cause that rebellious behavior and push the use of tobacco up. it boggles my mind that people cant smoke a cigarette outside of their house now but yet drinking is still allowed just about anywhere. even though smoking only effects the person ingesting it, but drinking can cause horrible destruction when people under the influence decide to go get some TB.

iPhone App List?

Facebook - Free - Essential app.

Twitterrific - Free - My favorite FREE twitter app.

Tweetie 2 - $2.99 - My Favorite Twitter app.

Tweetmusic - $.99 - Tweet current song playing on the device.

Slacker Radio - Free - Free internet radio, type in any song or artist.

Pandora - Free - Free internet radio, type in any song or artist.

Midomi - $4.99 - Detects any audio it hears from the speaker. identify songs with iphone speaker. There are other cheaper and possibly free versions of this but this is my favorite.

Urbanspoon - Free - Locates restaurants surrounding the devices location according to price and type of food.

Sketches - $4.99 - Drawing app.

Snaptell - Free - Identifies books, movies, video games, and so on with just a picture of their covers, and finds prices on amazon. great for school books.

Bump - Free - Great device-to-device transfer app.

The Weather Channel - Free - Best weather application.

IMDB - Free - Internet Movie Database. search for anything video related.

Games

Fieldrunners - $2.99 - Simply the best iphone/ipod touch tower defense game.

Blocks Classic - Free trial $.99 Full Version - My favorite block breaker game.

Line Rider - $1.99 - Classic line rider flash game ported onto the iphone/ipod touch. very well done.

Lux Touch - Free - Mobile version of the classic board game Risk. also there is a $4.99 version of the game.

Blocked - $.99 - Mobile version of the board game Traffic.

Peggle - $4.99 - Peg-busting game.

Doodle jump - $.99 - move the phone to guide a jumping doodle upwards.

Minigore - $1.99 - Fun time waster. kill as many enemies as possible for an infinite amount of time.

Earthworm Jim - Free Trial $4.99 Full Version - Classic SNES video game ported.

Mega Man 2 - Free Trial $4.99 Full Version - Classic Mega Man game ported.

Simcity - $2.99 - Basically the game Simcity 2000.

CES 2010

So did anyone besides me think CES sucked this year. I was not able to go because of obvious reasons, however i did follow Engadgets feed of information. all that i kept seeing every time i checked their iphone app was another company releasing an Ebook, or another TV with 3D playback ability. first off, ebook readers are nice but seriously does every single company have to release one. the electronics market is officially flooded with these products now. i would not be surprised if Cnet has to add a whole new section to their review site just for ebook readers. and 3D televisions....rly? until we have holograms i am sticking with two dimensions.

Apple has their event on the 27th of this month. the rumor is that they will also be releasing some kind of tablet. being Apple i hope they come out and blow everyone away. i hope they release a product that radically changes how we interact with computers. much like what they did with the iphone in 2007.

How hot is 8?

Why don't stoves have a temperature display? I asked this about toasters a while back to my dad on why they have numbers ranging from 1-10 instead of a temperature gage. He responded “it is because the filament wears out over time so what used to be 6 is now 8”. It makes sense, however on a stove it does not. The part of the stove that heats up shouldn't wear out like a toaster filament. Even if it does wear out over time that still doesn't explain why they don't put a thermometer of some sort in the unit that heats up and will read the temperature back. So instead of deciding whether 6 is hot enough to boil water, one can actually punch in the number 100. Showers suffer from the same problem. I spend the first 2 minutes of any shower just trying to figure out the right temperature. Why not put in some kind of system so when I turn on the shower I turn it to 55 degrees, or whatever temperature I want. Instead of having to figure out how much of the cold handle should be on and how much of the hot handle should be on.

Transfer Rates

In a world where we have hard drives that can hold up to 4 TB’s. We have SSD drives that are reaching equivalent capacities. We have transfer rates in I/O coming out next year of up to 5 GB/S with USB 3.0, and up to 10 GB/S with the new Light Peak cable designed by apple and intel. SDHC cards transfer at 6 MByte/s right now. It is not very fast but next year the SDXC has potential of reaching 300 MByte/s. But it is still nearly impossible to send a file larger than 100 MB file to anyone over the internet. Outside of owning a server or knowing someone that can host a large file it is nearly impossible to send “large” files to people. For instance if I take a 2 minute video of christmas. I struggle trying to find ways to send the video to my grandma and grandpa. I would think I could email the file but most email clients don't even support emailing files as large as 100 MB and even if they do it takes 2 hours just to send the file. What about sending it over aim? It takes 25 minutes to transfer 100 MB’s. Why are transfer rates so insanely low on the internet. Why is email not able to be used as a method for sending files such as my christmas video.

Back again maybe?

I am not a very consistent blogger. going to try and get back in the blogging vibe.

Bad Apple?

Why does apple hate .avi's?

Air Strike?

Anyone who has played Call of Duty 4 will attest to the tense action of calling in an airstrike and trying not to die in the process. as a player when that person works their way up to 5 kills and is awarded an airstike only two additional kills are required for a helicopter. so when they get the airstike and find safe place to place it, the game displays a flat map screen. the airstrike goes in a line in one direction throwing bombs down at the surface.

the problem here is if you want the airstrike to come in north to south, well you better hope it does cause it probably wont. they do what they want. it can come in east to west and hit nothing but buildings. it is absolutely stupid. who in the design team stood up and said, "I know lets not let the player control the direction of the airstrikes!", "BRILLIANT!". i just do not understand why i cannot control the direction of the airstike.

Year Metadata?

Why does Apple/iTunes hate year metadata? no year views on ipods or iphones. why?

Update:
In the new iOS 4.0 my dream came true. inside album view they added the album art and some metadata at the top. I am a happy person now. :)

Toledo Hospital

I started working at Toledo Hospital 4 days ago. it is astounding how much trash that place produces. anything the patients touch needs to be thrown away. it is completely understandable, but most of the stuff is plastic. wouldn't it be smart to collect all the plastic somehow, sell it to a recycling factory. melt it all back down, and than the hospital purchases the re-fabricated plastics from the company at a lower price. i am amazed at some of the stuff i am forced to toss. heavy plastic measuring cups. heavy plastic sports bottles too. when i say heavy plastic i mean the kind of plastic ya feel bad throwing away, not the flimsy dollar store stuff. un-opened food, all kinds of plastic tubing. the hospital used to recycle cans and bottles in the cafeteria, but it got to expensive so they stopped. they tell us consumers to recycle to save the environment. crock of shit that is. hospitals generate more trash than any consumer could even dream of.