How much does it cost to wash your hands?

As much as I appreciate the concern for the public to maintain cleanliness, seeing printouts and plaques like this just makes me shudder - and it should do that to you, too. In the same way that we don't think about how many plastic bottles the world goes through every time we crack open a new Evian, we don't consider how much society pays for little (oft-ignored!) messages like this.

Read more...

Business Expense Tracking with Android (um, for free)

I just tested / established a convenient way for tracking business expenses and keeping receipts digitally. For free. There's a for-pay option for Android which is even easier called ProOnGo, but you'd have to pay $5 per month (or more) for a useable plan on it.

Anyway, this is what's needed:

Sign up for an account at www.xpenser.com - this is free for now and will eventually have pro features for pay.
Install PixelPipe Uploader (not just the Picasa one) on your phone. Then set up a pipe to email r@xpenser.com and make sure the email's coming from you, not PixelPipe. (this is all specified when defining the pipe) If this is all you're going to use Pixelpipe for, then you can set this pipe as default - but I wouldn't, because PixelPipe can be used for sooooo much more.
Finally, when you get a receipt, take a picture of it with your regular phone camera. Pixelpipe will pop up, and you set the title to "{category} {price} {notes}" and send.

Pretty slick.

Read more...

Net Neutrality: MORE regulation?

Image via Wikipedia
A good idea, such as freedom of speech, is not made better when codified into legalese. We already have in existence the established right to net neutrality in our First Amendment. When you consider the already-proven, criminal ineptitude of government agencies such as the FDA (see: Monsanto, aspartame, hydrogenation, et al), or ICC*, one should seriously consider the act of giving specified powers of regulation to agencies that quite likely will be influenced by major ISPs, once passed.

Read more...

Voting Stickers

I usually have these ready to go first thing in the morning and normally I just print them out and distribute them around the office, but here are my collected / best of / since 2006 alternate voting stickers.  NEW this year is the Facebook Vote version! Please reply if you have any suggestions for new stickers :) 

Read more...

Moving the base site.

This is the second time someone's tried to upload a virus through the system I have (had) going here (previously a combo of DotNetNuke + Blogger), so I'm disabling it and reverting to just Blogger. Not a big loss, but it'd be nice if people out there wouldn't go hunting for innocent sites to hack.

Here's a collection of stuff from the DotNetNuke pages, for posterity:

Thumbnails of my UT99 maps:



Thumbnails of my UT2004 maps:



The Vehicle Index.
The files you find here are for UT2004 and they MAY or MAY NOT work. Winkyboy no longer has time to test them all, as he's barely found time to even index them any more. But most of them work, and some of those that do are really worth downloading. Winkyboy would like to convert HIS creations to UT3, but currently hopes to find time to implement a much grander-scale vision that is currently beyond his abilities.

Other Winkyboy Files:

Read more...

Vacation Recap, Sept. 09 20th-ish

Image by yasmapaz & ace_heart via Flickr

The flight over to Ukraine was rather disappointing, to say the least. We arrived at the airport only to discover that the itinerary that had been mailed to us just the day before was actually wrong. Aerosvit, the Ukrainian airline that managed the international stretch of our flight, had changed the outbound domestic stretch and didn't relay it to the company that handled our tickets. So, we missed our flight to begin with. Some calls to CheapTickets, where we purchased the tickets, provided no help whatsoever and the only option remaining was for Delta to reroute us to Laguardia in New York. From there we had to catch a taxi over to JFK international. It cost an extra $35, and we had to haul our luggage from one airport to the other - oh, that cost an extra $10 for the luggage carts - but it wasn't horribly intolerable, and we got to see a little bit more of New York than we would have had we been confined to JFK.

Once we got on the Aerosvit flight to Ukraine, things were a little bit better because at least they went according to schedule and at least we were sitting next to one another. However those seats were about as close to the bathrooms as you could get. The planes that Aerosvit uses are old and comfort is understandably lacking; sleep was hard to come by and what sleep you got really wasn't worth it.

When we arrived in Ukraine I was reminded why I haven't been here in four years. Don't get me wrong; it's worth travelling to Ukraine and seeing what there is to see, but there's really a limit to the amount of time you'd want to be over here.

Some thoughts about what Ukraine is, good and bad:

Worn out
Unkempt
dangerously broken roads
open orloose manholes
last year's leaves piled everywhere
polluted
lots of exercise; walking!
Men standing around drinking beer
large, wooded parks
convenient public travel
Not too many people overweight
women who are beautiful without even trying (my wife is from Ukraine)
dusty, dangerous playgrounds
confusing city layouts
the good people here are very good
plastic is abused and/or wasted perhaps even moreso than in America

When we arrived in Kiev, a friend of my wife's picked us up and helped us throughout the day, which really was very kind of him. I think we'll certainly have compensated him enough when it's all through, however, since we also decided to give his daughter the car seat stroller that Digory has about outgrown. I had wanted to give it to my brother for his upcoming child, but perhaps it would be even better to give them a new one.

The first day after we got here, and admittedly the second as well, really consisted of hanging around grandma's new apartment and recovering from the travel. There was more to it than just sleeping, of course. I played outside on the typically-dangerous playground with Leilani for a while, and we bought some things in the local stores. We also went to the evening church service at my wife's old church. I don't know what was going on but it seemed like it was Guest Mike night for the service as everyone and their grandmother was getting up to give some lengthy talk on some point or another. We gave up when the kids were either asleep or too rambuctious to keep in the church, and some friends who were there gave us a lift home on their minivan.

We had/have an offer to stay in the apartment of a friend of ours instead of at grandma's. I'm a bit torn; he DOES have internet there, which would be really nice, but then there's the matter of making the trip to grandma's every single day, too. It's fine, either way. We've decided to just stay with grandma, and if we were at Sasha's, I'm sure I'd just be on the internet too often anyway.

Read more...

Android Apps Review

Image by netzkobold via Flickr

Here's a quick run-down Android applications I've tried and mostly use right now. After the name of each app, I've rated each one from 1-5, described what each does, and usually given an opinion of the app.

1 = Nice, but I could uninstall
2 = I've used it a couple of times
3 = I quite like it, but it might not be truly USEFUL
4 = Great value in this!
5 = Install it now.

Updates as of Jan 2010 are in bold

• ACV (4) (now 3; I haven't used it as much and it's often slow due to size of comic images) Android Comics Viewer, for reading CBR/CBZ files. If you know what these files are, install this program.
• PrinterShare (1) Print from your Android phone, from anywhere. Nice, but haven't really used it.
• TouchPal (5) Alternative keyboard. Awesome. (sadly unavailable AFAIK)
  
• Books WordPlayer (3) Browse & install free books. Nice, but to install your own files from SD must install some other file browser.
• Qik (5) Stream and record video LIVE to the internet. A must. (I still love this)
  
• ASTRO File Manager (5) The best file manager - also includes a task killer and more.
• Barcode Scanner (5) reads barcodes, including QR codes
• King Ring Reward Cards (2) is supposed to be able to replace all the plastic reward cards from coffee shops, etc. Haven't gotten it to work so much. (Now used more just to read the number back to the clerk; it just doesn't scan!)
  
• Last.fm (4) Stream channels of music, like Pandora
• Foursquare (3) (Now 4 with potential for 5) Social location-based game and recommendation system. It's cool.
• NewsRob (5) Auto-syncs with Google Reader. Does not do Starred items well.
• Greed (Lite) (4) Reads Google Reader feeds - no auto-sync, but does Starred items.
• Voice Recorder (4) Record voice notes and share them.
• Meebo IM (2) Hooks into all the major chat networks, including Facebook chat (I won't uninstall this, since it's nice to have)
  
• Babbler (5) $ Facebook app. The official FB app (free) might be good enough now, but I'd already bought this. It's cheap and awesome. (This is still awesome, but I haven't checked the official FB app in a while...)
  
• Twidroid (5) Twitter app. Awesome. There's a $ version that has more features, but... I don't notice anything missing from the free version. (I have since bought the full version for multiple Twitter account handling)
  
• Locale (5) Changes settings on your phone based on time and GPS location. (Sometimes I think that this causes slowdown on the phone, sometimes I don't think that. still loving it, though.)
  
• Locale Shortcut Plugin - allows Locale to launch apps as a result of time/location change (I use this to auto-launch the Weather app in the morning! hehe)
  
• Contact Owner (5) Shows your contact info on the lock screen. (crucial)
  
• OI Safe (4) (now 3; I prefer KeePass and DropBox on a PC to this) A password safe with encryption. Free, but doesn't sync to any desktop version. (Those cost $30.)
• Pixelpipe Post & Upload (2) (I have to try this again since I got an email saying auto-uploading has been added...)Easy-share of files (audio, video, text, etc.) I like iTook better.
• iTookThisOnMyPhone (5) AUTO-uploads photos (or videos, if you like) that you take to a location you specify. (not sure if it's my phone, but ever since upgrading to Android 1.6, it doesn't work as well)
  
• The Weather Channel (5) Weather. Duh. Really hard to decide between this & WeatherBug.
• Robotic Guitarist (3) Lots of fun. Try it, if you like or play guitar (still on my phone - still a fun diversion)
  
• Google Voice (5) If you have a Google Voice account, install this.
• Google Listen (5) Podcast app. Free and great.
• DoggCatcher (5) $ Good, but uninstalled; Google Listen became better
• Retro Clock Widget (4) I use this instead of the default desktop clock widget mostly because touching the widget brings your right to the alarm settings page. (I will probably never uninstall this)
  
• ShopSavvy (4) Instantly search for better prices for any product with a barcode. Great for comparison-shopping in a brick-n-mortar store.
• OpenTable (2) Make dinner reservations with your phone. Nice, I've used it.
• CadreBible LE (5) The Bible, best one I've found for Android.
• DailyStrip (3) Comics reader, shows mostly mainstream comics (has THE MOST comics now)
  
• Katawa! (3) Comics reader, shows mostly alternatives.
• KeepScreen (3) Lock your screen ON when certain apps are running.
  
• White Noise Lite (5) Soothing Sound generator (with an auto-shutoff timer)
• Buddy Runner (5) Records your jogging/running via GPS. I like the results of this better than Google Tracks
• Google MyTracks (5) Records your GPS activities; jogging, running, cycling, skating, whatever. If you compare with Buddy Runner, you'll see it's missing some really convenient features plus front-end niceties. (BuddyRunner IS still better, but I still have both)
  
• Places Directory (or Sherpa or Aloqa) (5) I like Places Directory and Aloqa the best, but they're all similar. Shows what's near you, separated in categories.
• Astrid Task/Todo List (5) syncs with RememberTheMilk (which then can plug into your Gmail page!) and is a GREAT task manager. (Yeah, still loving this, esp. since embedding RememberTheMilk into my Gmail page)
  
• My Maps Editor (Google Maps) (5) Views and edits your saved Google Maps
• auduaReader (5) Book reader. Really simple interface but if you have your own book files in TXT (and perhaps epub) format, this is the best reader for it.
• Mobile Defense (5) Remote tracking and control of your phone, if you lose it.
• FlashCup (5) Just a flashlight. SOoooo nice. (Now 4; see Color Flashlight)
  
• Color Flashlight (5) Better than FlashCup
  
• Rings Extended (4) Lets you use any audio file as a ringtone/alarm/etc.

Games:

• Friction Mobile (4) action puzzler. won't give it up.
• WordUp (4) like Boggle
• Abduction! (4) Awesome. Cow bouncing, uses accelerometer.
• Touch! 4Kids (4) This is for toddler-age kids, keeps 'em busy for about 10 minutes.
• Zebra Paint (4) For 5-8 year olds, easy coloring book app.
• SpecTrek Light (?) A GPS/ augmented reality game. Haven't tried it yet. (Tried it, and it's fun, but would be MUCH better if I bought the full version, I can tell.)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Google to unveil Nexus One(Google's own Android Phone) at press conference (the-web-tech.blogspot.com)
• The Best Android Apps of 2009 (blogs.wsj.com)
• Android Market Passes 10K Apps; Here's My Five Favorites (With QR Codes) (readwriteweb.com)

Read more...