resistance to persistence

Energizer’s Energi To Go

Disclaimer: I was given this product for free to try but that does not mean my opinion is being “bought”.

I received a nice bundle of free product in the mail to try out and review. I qualified since I’m a heavy iPod user and take it everywhere with me.

Energizer created a Energi To Go product for people on the go with their iPods. If you’re away from your charger or forgot to pack it on a trip, you can recharge it using battery power.

The box was filled with a bunch of goodies, including a giant stuffed Energizer bunny. A couple of the new Lithium batteries, a mini speaker, a bunch of $3-off coupons towards the purchase of an Energi To Go charger (give me a shout if you want one) and most importantly, 2 Energi To Go chargers (one for me, one to share with a friend).

So the concept is this…you’re travelling and realized you’ve forgotten your charger. You’re about to board a plane and realize if you had your iPod charged you wouldn’t have to listen to the screaming kids you see will be on the flight with you. Rather than face that nightmare, you can purchase a power source to keep you rocking on the long flight.

The Energi To Go adapts to a lot of different iPod models and allows you charge your iPod or listen to it as needed. Once the batteries die, put in some new ones and you’re still in business. I think a set of batteries gets you 2 charges of your iPod or about 20 hours of listening.

My honest thoughts on the product - I think I’d only buy this product in the case I mention above for the traveller facing a long period of time without music. In that case, I would gladly pay for one if I saw it at the airport. But for daily travels, I could deal with a couple hours without music. I usually drop my iPod in the cradle at the end of the day to make sure it’s ready to go the next morning.

At Christmas, I was looking at buying a cigarette lighter charger for the car as there’s been some times when I’m driving out of town for the weekend and I’ve got a low charge but now I don’t have to thanks to the Energi To Go. I’ll leave it in the glovebox for just those occasions.

But now you know for the next time you’re travelling over to Australia without your charger to check the airport shops so you can keep your sanity on the long flights.

earth hour is this saturday at 8pm. register online at wwf.ca/earthhour or earthhour.org to let them know you’re participating so estimates can be kept for those involved.

i plan on turning out the lights, lighting some candles and relaxing. i’m going to try turning off as much electronics as possible, even turning off the computers. maybe i’ll do some battery-powered PSP gaming.

I bought a MacBook Pro on the weekend (post to follow soon) and I’m moving my life from my PC to Mac. Previously, I did everything on my Mac Mini, except for all my email and surfing which I did on my PC laptop. Now that I’ve got a portable Mac, all of my life is going on there.

I use Thunderbird for email on multiple accounts (blainekendall.com, Gmail, a few Yahoo accounts, a few other domains,etc). I managed to find some tutorials on easily moving mail accounts from the PC to Mac. But there was just one problem…Yahoo POP access. A few years ago, Yahoo started charging for POP email checking. They want you to go through their web pages (for advertising revenues). Thus YPops was created to continue giving POP access by running a small server on your local machine and screen scraping your email out of Yahoo. Sadly, it was Windows-only although the source was available for those who wanted to try to convert it to Mac/Unix/Linux,etc. Not being able to check my Yahoo mail except for on a webpage was just a hardship I’d have to deal with.

Until today. I did another search and found something that claims to solve the problem. MacFreePops looks to do the same thing as YPops, yet runs on the Mac. I’ll definitely be giving it a shot tonight. It’s the one remaining thorn in my side keeping me from a complete transition.

my baby is my newest gadget

so it’s been an exciting February and an exhausing March. our little baby arrived at the end of Feb. as we both suspected, we had a baby girl. we decided to keep it a surprise for ourselves but we both had a dream that we were having a girl. very strange but i had a strong feeling.

i foolishly stayed up until 1:30am and had just drifted off to sleep when J woke me up and told me her water broke. labour isn’t like it is in the movies…you don’t have to jump in a cab and speed off to the hospital immediately…unless if you’ve had a couple kids it might happen very fast. but the next few hours consisted of getting the bags ready, last minute packing, laying around, dozing between contractions. I fell asleep for an hour at 5am and J continued on impressively without waking me. at 8:30, we got a bit anxious and headed to the hospital. inspection and monitoring for a couple hours and we were given the option to go home for a few hours to rest while J continued with contractions and dilating. we drove home again to relax in a more comfortable environment and for me to catch a bit of sleep. J’s mom came over to help with the painful contractions and I caught an hour of sleep.

we quickly drove back to the hospital an hour later…J’s contractions were intense and she wanted an epidural pronto. we got checked into a large birthing suite and started the process. hours of contractions and breathing exercises. J finally got an epidural a couple hours later and made things much more bearable for her. i caught another hour of partial sleep when i could. around 1:30am, we finally reached 10 cms dilated…the key point to start pushing. an hour of pushing later, our baby girl arrived looking beautiful and with all the required toes and fingers.

a few more adrenaline filled hours spent with the baby and we finally tried to get some sleep at 6am but it wasn’t possible…every 15 minutes a nurse came in to check J or check the baby. exhausting. no sleep for 2 days. time to wake up and get the day started with the baby. we learned all the stuff needed…washing, feeding, etc. we coasted on a lack of sleep and lack of food for a long time. exhausting, but it was a good preview into what the following weeks would be like.

2 weeks later, the baby is doing great. she’s gained a ton of weight, faster than most babies the doctor said so we’re feeding her well. every 3-4 hours, round the clock, it’s feeding time. 8 feeds a day minimum. by the time you change her, feed her, dress her and get her to sleep you have about 1-1.5 hours of time until you do it all again. sleep comes in small intervals and you try to nap when she does.

sadly, i have to go back to work in a couple days and i’ll miss the daily interaction with her. she’s changed so much already and each day is a new adventure. she’s definitely the best thing to happen in our lives.

yvonne of longoverdew.com just pointed me at a new online music listening service. i’ve seen a lot of these, but this one’s different.

listen to music and see graphical relationships at musicovery.com

you can select your musical genres, what kind of mood you’re in (energetic, calm, dark, etc) and the service will select music related to that. it also shows songs related to the song playing. you can narrow the music to a time period when it was released and even discover new music you hadn’t heard before. i’ve had it going for the past half hour and keep hearing new songs or old songs i’ve forgotten about.

i’ll keep this service in mind if i’ve forgotten my ipod or want to find some new tunes.

i’ve been checking out a lot of inspring photographers lately since i haven’t had much time to actually do any shooting. jill greenberg (manipulator.com) has a very specific look and i really like it. i’m going to try to shoot some work like this. lighting isn’t cheap, so i might have to be very creative instead. check out some of jill’s great work. you’ve likely seen some of her commercial work already.

jason lee, shot by jill greenberg.

i noticed this watching Reggie Miller at the NBA All-Star Weekend events. He looks a lot like Barack Obama. I’m obviously not the only one who thinks so as a quick google turned up some results.

the wardrobe becomes a desk

with the recent clearing of the home office to make way for the baby nursery, i had to find a spot to put the couple computers, photo gear, and store all the normal paperwork, magazines, bills, etc that are necessary in life. but i wanted to do it in a slightly clever way and keep the future home in the basement clutter free and organized.

i spent an afternoon wandering Ikea, looking for the largest storage possibilities i could find. in the end, i found my solution…a wardrobe closet, Pax. The closet is very deep and wide with lots of possibilities for customization. When I saw the possibilities for rolling drawers, I knew I had a winner. This would allow for a pullout keyboard drawer and other drawers for each of the computer components.

i dedicated half of the 2m (6.5 feet) wide closet to being a working desk area and photography storage. the other have would be storage for paperwork, bins with electronics gear, etc. this would keep the clutter away from the daily working area.

it definitely wasn’t the cheapest solution as it rang up about $850 for everything but at least it’s clean and clutterfree. this way my basement den doesn’t look like an office and i can close the sliding doors and hide everything.

view a slideshow of the building process

A cool way to view your Flickr photos

I came across an interesting Flickr viewer today. Airtight Interactive has created a Flickr TiltViewer. You can spin the plane of photos around, click an image to zoom and view it, move them around. It’s brings a 3D dimension to a 2D world of photography.

Try it out… view my Flickr portfolio in the Tilt Viewer

Control with the Mouse:
* Click images to zoom-in, click again to zoom-out.
* Click the background to zoom-out.
* Click the ‘reload’ button (below the image grid) to load a new set of images.
* Click the ‘flip’ button (bottom-right of a zoomed-in image) to see image details.

Hack the URL to view your own images if you want to try it out.

I think it’s safe for me to finally get rid of this old computer

with all the changes and preparation for the baby on the way, i’ve really been focused on downsizing my life. very critical about sorting out the stuff i need to keep and get rid of. minimizing anything i don’t need. i’ve become much more pragmatic about things i own as well and questioning new purchases if i really need them. in the past 10 years since graduation, i’ve never really had to worry about impulse purchases and restricting my spending on the latest gadgets. the new baby has a big effect on the budget and financial planning.

but mostly i’ve been cleaning out my existing goods. ever since i was a little kid, i’ve always formed an emotional attachment to goods. i treated my toys like gold and would never scratch them. i placed a lot of value in them and wouldn’t part with them until long after they worth anything to me or anyone else. looking at anything, i could still find value it it somehow. for example, when recycling a plastic bin that something comes in, i would think to myself…”I can keep some stuff in that. i’m not sure what, but at some point i’ll need to store something and that bin will be perfect”. there’s also an environmental aspect to it - i hate to throw things out when they can be repurposed. everything has value, just maybe not to you at this moment. if only there was an efficient way to find someone who absolutely needed that bin at that moment in time.

so we’ve sorted a lot of electronics, books, clothes, etc and tried to find new owners for things. donated computer gear to friends and family. selling stuff on ebay/craigslist. clothing has been donated. books given to friends to read. i even gave away a very old Playstation and all my original games to goodwill. I wish I could have found some young kids to give it to directly to brighten up their holidays.

when making decisions on whether to keep or get rid of things in my life, I think about what my friend Ben would do. he’s always been very free about getting rid of everything. very minimalist. even when packing for trips, he has very little to lug around. whereas I’ll pack a laptop, my ipod, magazines, a book, portable game system, portable dvd system. i fear boredom. other than furniture, if you asked him (before he was married and had a kid) to pack his life in a box it would contain a laptop, a camera and some books. oh, and of course a snowboard. everything could fit in a carload.

so in this paring down of my life, it’s being done to lower the maintenance and overhead of all the gadgets and “stuff” that takes time out of living your life. this was very reminiscent of when i moved from a PC to a Mac. I found I no longer had the overhead of maintaining a PC. I could just get on doing what I wanted to and not have a burden of maintenance and upkeep. that’s what i’m looking for in my life. less maintenance, more time for doing things and less things to distract from living.

in new purchases and anything around the house now, I question if I really need one more thing in my life. knick-knacks and toys that clutter the shelves and closets are no longer kept. presents that i can’t use will be returned. excess gifts for the sake of giving are not needed. there are only a few things i truly want and outside of those things, i do not need. global society is consuming too much and it needs to slow down. my brother in law made a good point on the weekend as we were wandering through a store. “do there really need to be more candles made? can’t we stop making candles and just buy up the existing ones?” I laughed and it made sense. every big and little store sells candles yet only a small percentage buys them. there’s probably 4.62 candles per person in the world, i think we can cut back on the candle store stockpiles until someone starts buying these things. and if you get candles this year for christmas, it’s likely the person who gave you the candles probably got them as a gift from somebody else the year before.

so next time you’re out wandering the stores ask yourself if you really need more in your life. and can you share the things you already have with someone who might need it more. then you can focus on the more important things like friends and family.