Well, as most of you know, I'm getting married this week to my fiance Andrea and we are taking a road trip / honeymoon to Washington DC and Philly. So I wanted to share with you guys some essential gadgets and geek gear that I will be taking along with me to stay connected during the trip. Most of these involve my laptops and staying connected to the Internet and Wi-Fi while we're on the road. So essential #1 is:
The Laptop
This is probably the most obvious essential for any trip. A wi-fi enabled laptop can be used at a hotel, coffee shop, and even in the car on the freeway (more on this in a minute). Most hotels offer free wi-fi on the property with a log in password that they give you when you check in. Also while you're out and about, most coffee shops, airports and some restaurants now even offer free wi-fi to their patrons. Some great businesses offering free wi-fi nation wide are:
- Panera Bread Company
- McDonalds (not all locations)
- Starbucks (must have an AT&T account)
- Buffalo Wild Wings Grill and Bar
- Hooters
- Whole Foods Markets
- Krystal Restaurants has free Wi-Fi in 253 locations.
- Speedway Gas Stations
- McAlister's Deli has many locations nationwide with Free WiFi, use their location finder to check for access.
Power Inverter
This is an essential survival tool for any geek on the road. A power inverter converts your DC power coming out of your car's battery and electrical system to AC power so you can plug in household devices. Some of the things it allows you to do on the road:
- use your laptop for an unlimited time
- recharge your batteries
- power a small TV and DVD player or gaming system on the go
- power a small refrigeration device for cold drinks and food on the go
- plug in lighting for camping or emergencies
Smart Phone
To me this is an essential for the road warrior. The new iPhone 3Gs would be the ideal, but any phone with unlimited Internet access will work. You want to have a backup to get your email or access any emergency contact information that you might need over the net. I personally use the Blackberry Curve 8330. Some essential aps that a road warrior should look into:
- Google Mobile Ap - available for almost any brand of smart phone out right now. Check all of your Google "stuff" from the road!
- Viggo - available for Blackberry and HTC. Best RSS and news reader for mobile.
- Pandora (Mobile) - Pandora is exploding right now. A virtual streaming jukebox for Blackberry, iPhone, PalmPre and WinMo (be sure you have unlimited minutes!)
- Google Sync - sync your Google calendar and Gmail address book with your phone. Work in the cloud!
- Facebook Ap - receive and update your status and upload mobile pics from the road... uh yes! essential!
- Twitterberry (or other Twitter ap) - I would consider this an essential (even though my fiance wouldn't) - tweet from the road, plus upload pics and other Twitter essentials.
Flip Video Camera
(or other sub-compact HD video camera)
This is another essential for on the go video of your trip that can be easily uploaded to YouTube, your blog or web page so you can easily share your trip with family and friends during and after the trip. See my blog GetAFlip for more info.
A Good Book
After being geeky non-stop, take a second to just chill out with a good book, turn a page, stop worrying about where you can connect and just disconnect. Leave the laptop in the hotel room and turn the smart phone off (but keep it in your pocket for emergencies right?)
Spend time with your family / fiance
Especially if its your honeymoon... nuff said ;-)
I'll see you guys after I get back! Thanks for reading.
Photo by Major Clanger / Flickr
Last week Google previewed the next step in interactive social media communication called Google Wave. Wave will be a combination of:
- - cloud document and media sharing
- - email / threaded email (like Gmail)
- - instant messaging
But what Wave will add to the mix will be features like:
- Twitter / social media site search and posting collaboration
- real time media insertion into blogs and web pages
- real time typing for all those on a Wave
- "playback" feature to rewind or forward to see what changes or comments were added in the past.
- live collaboration wiki style
- drag and drop files and media into a wave
- open source API
- Wave applications like Twave (for integration with Twitter) and other apps being developed later
- real time spell and grammar checker using the context of the sentence
Old technologies that required us to use multiple steps and to switch between a myriad of different programs are being combined into one with new platforms like Wave. For example:
The old way:
- You want to share a picture with your friends
- you email you picture as an attachment to your friend
- they decide to post the picture on Facebook
- your friend Tweets about the picture
- another friend emails you asking if they can post the picture to their blog
- you email them back telling them its fine...
- the picture has to be manually uploaded to the blog and formatted
- someone wants to comment on the blog picture but isn't registered with the blog
- that someone flame spams your comments because he is the ex-boyfriend of the girl in the picture
- etc...
- You decide to share a picture with your friends
- You start a Wave with any friend that has a Google account and post the picture for everyone's approval
- You add Twave, Facebook app, and the Bloggy apps to the wave.
- people on the Wave comment, delete, or add information in real time
- you post the Wave to the Internet (which gets posted to Twitter, FB and your Blog all at the same time in real time.
- The other people on the wave can keep the wave moving on by adding more people to the Wave and encouraging more interactivity.
The only problem I see with it is that Wave will make the tsunami (pun intended) of information overload that RSS and Twitter have brought to us look a ripple in the pond. Get your surf board waxed up, its gonna be a gnarly ride dude!
Some of you may have been wondering why its been so quiet this month. Well, I don't want to give you some lame excuses, but there have been some other things on my plate this month, the biggest one being my soon to be up and coming wedding on June 27th 2009 to my best friend Andrea. I'll refer you to my earlier post about us if you want to read up a little.
So, I've been working on wedding stuff with her. I designed my own wedding invitations, RSVP's (see above) and programs, planned and booked our honeymoon roadtrip and helped her in any way I could (without getting in the way). So, we're in the last stages of doing that stuff and trying to finish up the little things that are left.
Things we still need to do:
new springy looking engagement pics (this Sunday)- final catering order
get fitted for tuxget a haircutget marriage license
I've gotta say, Andrea has done a great job organizing and putting together this wedding. We sent out over 150 invites and have gotten almost 90 RSVPs back. Right now we are looking at a little over 100 peeps coming to our little shindig and we are still waiting on about 50 RSVPs.
Its just been exhausting emotionally, worrying about all these little things we need to do. We both can't wait until June 28th and we head out on our roadtrip to have some fun. Oh, yea, and I know your curious about our honeymoon plans so here's where we are going:
- Tutwieler Hotel (Birmingham, AL): historic hotel in Birmingham, on wedding night (I don't know whats going to be happening then... probably watch some TV and order room service ;-)
- Outer Banks / Nags Head (North Carolina): Checking out the Wright Brothers memorial and the best beaches on the East Coast.
- Washington DC: staying in Arlington, VA actually, which is right across the river, I want to see the National Archives and Library of Congress, she wants to see the boring monuments (JK!)
- Philadelphia, PA: staying in another historic hotel in Center City (about 5 blocks from Independence Hall), checking out the Franklin Institute, Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, eating some Geno's cheese steaks, fancy dinners and doing our own M. Night Shyamalan film location tour (a film geek idea I came up with that she reluctantly agreed to). Then we're gonna go see a Phillies game. The grand finale will be our last day (July 4th), so we'll be downtown for the festivals, parades and fireworks over the museum and then head out at about 8 or 9pm and drive till we're tired back to Bama.
My friend Natalie provided me with the title to my blog today (and got that dang song stuck in my head! Thanks Natalie!)
The Horse has been following rumors of the new Dan Brown book since The Da Vinci Code
What is the book going to be about?
According to early rumors from Brown's website, the new book (now The Lost Symbol) will be about Freemasonry and the way it influenced the founding fathers, the Revolutionary War and the founding and layout of Washington DC.
There was also an alleged plot leak that has been confirmed by Doubleday Publishing. The plot leak concerns George Washington and the secret reason for the American reverses (?) early in the Revolutionary War. Also a scholar discovers a secret in Washington's tomb and is murdered by the CIA.
"Brown's promotional website states that puzzles hidden in the book jacket of The Da Vinci Code, including two references to the Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, give hints about the novel's story. This repeats a theme from some of Brown's earlier work. For example, a puzzle at the end of the book Deception Point decrypts to the message, "The Da Vinci Code will surface."
(from Wikipedia)
. This book goes into the complex layout and symbology of Washington DC and details the early American Freemason practices from founding father's like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.Leave me a comment here if you hear any more plot leaks or rumors about The Lost Symbol and give us a quick review of your thoughts on the book after you read it. (If you can read it quicker than I will be reading it!)
If you haven't heard about the new Lord of the Rings "fan fic" film, The Hunt For Gollum, then you've been out of the loop. This was me Sunday when my sister-in law Hannah told me about it. (Thanks Hannah!) I felt kind of out of the geek loop. But I'm back!
Apparently it has been in production for almost 2 years and was created on a budget of $3000 by writer-director Chris Bouchard with all crew and cast working for free! The film is 40 minutes long and made its debut at SCI-FI-LONDON film festival this past Saturday. As of today the owners have released the film to the public on Dailymotion.com as a free view in HD! I haven't had a chance to watch it all the way through but the trailers are VERY well done, and rival anything that Peter Jackson has done in my opinion. The story from the official website is:The script is adapted from elements of the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. The story follows the Heir of Isildur; the "greatest huntsman and traveller in Middle Earth" as he sets out to find the creature Gollum. The creature must be found to discover the truth about the Ring, and to protect the future Ringbearer.
The official website has all the great interactive content that a big name film would have plus "making of" and deleted scenes, downloads, stills, banners, etc.
Go right now and watch it! Leave me a comment or review here so everyone can see how awesome it is.
Here's the link to the Dailymotion The Hunt For Gollum channel
Full review of the film coming soon from The Horse (after I get a chance to watch it!)...
You may have heard about the embarrassing photo op FAIL yesterday put on by our pals in the US government. Yes a 747 (now reported to be Air Force One or a replica) escorted by two F-16 was flown at a very low altitude over lower Manhattan, sending New Yorkers into a panic and causing evacuations in many Manhattan buildings.
So, I would like to offer my services to the US Government and the White House to be the official government Photoshop dude. I propose cutting the spending budget of all Federal photo ops by using stock photos and a little of my Photoshop skillz to make some pretty darn believable looking photo ops. This could work with locations as well as pretty much any person that wants to have a photo op with the president or any member of congress.
As the first example of my Federal Photo Op Portfolio, I present to you the Air Force One / Statue of Liberty archival photo of 2009!:
I literally created this manipulation in about 5 minutes with some help from Google Images and Photoshop CS3's Magic Wand to show everyone how easy this would have been for a "real" Photoshop expert to create. No one could ever tell the difference! Notice, I didn't even white balance or correct the exposure or shadows on the little Air Force One. But if I had not have pointed that out, 99% of people looking at this wouldn't have cared. The light source on the F-16s was pretty spot on! I should have played with it more but I wanted to show what 5 minutes of my intermediate Photoshop skills could do.
Come on! Lets stop being wasteful with our money, AND lets keep our population informed. People get freaked out when they are not informed. And that's how the blanket of socialism takes over... just a thought... from The Horse's mouth.
(Disclaimer: I do not own these original photos. They have been combined together for parody purposes. This is a derivative work which I have reason to believe may be protected by parody laws. If the owner of these photos decides to come forward, I will gladly remove them from this site.)
This work by Joshua Self is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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