reZire

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Based on popular demand [1, 2], I was just about ready to crack open my Palm and clean out the camera lens fuzz — if only lens fuzz had been the only problem to deal with. Now my Palm Zire 71 has fallen prey to a far more serious camera-related design flaw, detailed in this 1src.com discussion thread: frequent camera usage causes fraying of the internal sync/charge cable, so that with repeated movement of the Z71’s camera slider, the unit gradually loses its ability to Hotsync and charge from the Palm Universal Connector.

This, plus the lens fuzz issue, and a persistent, high-pitched whine from the color screen, have prompted me to abandon the Z71 for a much cheaper, simpler unit. My new Zire 31 arrived this week, and I’ve been up late gradually transferring data to it.

So how much do you think the old Zire 71 will go for, sold with its original CD-ROM and cradle, a free sync/charge cable, and a 32MB SD card? Aside from camera lens fuzz, broken HotSync, and a small speck of debris stuck under the righthand side of the screen, it’s fully functional, and can still take decent pictures if you “tap” the fuzz out of the way. Someone with hardware experience, some precision screwdrivers, a soldering iron, and a steady hand could even bring it back to youthful vibrancy.

More on the new Zire 31 soon.

God and Juice

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Last night, as Amy and I conversed about 1 Samuel, Sabbaths, and Old and New Covenants, she expressed mild bewilderment at the fact that, if God doesn’t change, why does he swing from ordering a Sabbath-breaker’s stoning to sanctioning Sabbath wheat-picking? Likewise, could it be the same God who said “no pork” and “kill and eat?”

My response was an analogy: mixing powdered juice. First, I pour the water, then I stir in the Tang. Between pouring the water and stirring in the powder, have I turned into a different person?

More on CARM.

Feel the Vitality!

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My highest-received SpamAssassin score thus far has just arrived in my inbox: 31.55, with subject line: “hi there brother – feel the vitality!” The message tells me to “BE A MAN,” and promises three extra inches in length, 20% additional girth, and rock-hard “Eerect1ons.” Funniest choice bits from the SpamAssassin content analysis: "0.1 - HTML_FONTCOLOR_RED - HTML font color is red," and "1.0 - BANG_GUARANTEE - Something is emphatically guaranteed."

Still, 31.55 is a paltry score beside Project Spamchart’s highest rating of 156.10. Also see this Wired story for more on competitive SpamAssassin scoring.

(It is also my humble opinion that SA people have no idea at all about what makes a good logo. None whatsoever. ;)

Lessons from Spiderman 2

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Things I learned from watching Spiderman 2: [SPOILERS!]

  • Columbia University students sure are mean. Whap. Whap whap. (Sound of schoolbags hitting head.)
  • A nuclear fusion reaction looks just like the sun.
  • When nuclear power is at stake, no one will really care that the complex artificial intelligence behind your robotic arms is probably even more revolutionary than your fusion breakthrough.
  • Metal fusing with your spine won’t kill you after all; it just makes you more susceptible to said artificial intelligence.
  • The happy music and freeze frame mean that things have changed, it’s all fine, and the hardship is ended.
  • In a world where the man on the street can sell a Spiderman outfit on eBay, the Daily Bugle still does its front-page layout by non-computer-assisted paste-up. And no one has a mobile phone.
  • It’s probably not a good idea to be involved with the grumpy landlord’s daughter.
  • You can always trust a subway car full of New Yorkers to keep your secret identity.
  • All you need to stop a runaway fusion reaction is fresh, cool, clear water from the Hudson River.
  • You can run away from the wedding ceremony right on the day itself, and accountability is not a problem, any more than it was in The Graduate.
  • The Asian busker lady at the corner sure knows her Marvel Saturday morning cartoons.

Overall, an excellent film, quite effective at portraying the overwhelming burden of humanness lying beneath the superhero’s costume. Spiderman 2 was, in some ways, quite reminiscent of that other comic book adaptation where the hero’s internal conflict leads to him giving up his powers for love and humanity: Superman II, still one of the best superhero movies ever made.

MoWary

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As earlier mentioned, I got my mobile blog, MoBrownpau, back up, with help from a Communicam and Flickr’s mail-to-blog features. One shortcoming of this go-between method, however, is that Flickr only publishes the photo and title to your blog, with no caption or description; you must click on the link back to the Flickr photo page to see any other text you sent along with the photo.

This isn’t Flickr’s fault: they block the text because of the unsolicited advertising that US mobile companies insert into every MMS message sent. Witness, for example, this Flickr help thread on T-Mobile’s latest attempt to capitalize on their customer base with large, obnoxious, bandwidth-consuming image ads in MMS footers, thus breaking Flickr photo submissions. (That’s right: we’re already paying them monthly and per-message fees for the service, and still they insert invasive advertising. If we’re paying telecom companies to send our messages they shouldn’t be using our messages for their marketing.) For considering such an annoying factor and compensating for it by keeping the telecom marketing gunk out of our blogs, I suppose Flickr should be thanked.

I’ve decided to keep MoBrownpau on Blogger for now, rather than integrate the blogs as I did with BPBP; just to avoid potential clutter and cruft to the main journal. No that I mistrust Flickr, no, but it’s still a good idea to have a care with any output remotely generated by a third party. Moreso when two third parties are involved, and one of them is a US telecom company.

For future pondering: integration of output from different weblogs and feeds into a single stream.

Odd Eyes

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IMG_3856

Pandora is what Persian breeders call an “odd-eyed white,” with one blue eye and one green eye. One result of this genetic quirk is that odd-eyed whites have super-sensitive hearing. (As opposed to blue-eyed white Persians, which tend to be deaf.) Some days she can hear me coming out of the elevator down the hall, and is meowing before I’ve even pulled out my keys.

Pandora

Pandora