iPad Apps – January 15th 2011

Posted on January 15, 2011 by bluedepth

Here’s a quick list of all the apps on my iPad. Enjoy!

Front Page
1. Calendar
2. Contacts
3. Evernote
4. Wx
5. Flipboard
6. WordPress
7. Reeder
8. Instapaper
9. Wikipanion+
10. Twitter
11. Facepad
12. GetGlue
13. QRANK
14. Checkbook
15. 1Password
16. News
  1. NPR
  2. ABC News
  3. NASA
  4. Mashable
  5. NYTimes
  6. NewsRack
  7. MacLife
  8. Huff Post
  9. BBC News
  10. River of News
  11. 3D Sun
  12. USA TODAY
  13. Sandpit
  14. CNN
17. Social
  1. foursquare
  2. Wikihood
  3. BirdEye
  4. FBF_Albums
  5. IM+
  6. VisibleVote
  7. Tumblr
  8. HootSuite
  9. Kik
  10. Tree To Go
  11. Twitteriffic
  12. Friendly
18. Books
  1. nook
  2. Kindle
  3. Discover
  4. Dictionary
  5. GoodReader
  6. Google Translation
  7. Google Books
19. iLife
  1. Pages
  2. Numbers
  3. Dictation
  4. Notes
  5. iThoughtsHD
  6. PlainText
20. Settings
21. Home Row
  1. Safari
  2. Mail
  3. Photos
  4. iBooks
  5. Toodledo
  6. ComicZeal4
Second Page
1. App Store
2. Food
  1. Epicurious
  2. Lose It!
  3. ShopShop
  4. UrbanSpoon
  5. Cookbook
  6. Supercook
  7. Yelp
  8. GoMealsHD
  9. ConvertUnits
  10. Meijer Find-It
  11. AllRecipes
3. Comics
  1. DC Comics
  2. Marvel
4. Arcade
  1. Pinball HD
  2. Labyrinth 2 HD
  3. Sudoku Tablet
  4. Bubbles
  5. Pocket Pond
  6. Words HD
  7. Words
  8. Game Table
  9. Dice HD
  10. iMahjong
  11. Osmos HD
  12. JirboBreak
  13. uzu
  14. UNO
  15. Clinometer
  16. MagnetMeter
  17. WordSearch
  18. Planets
  19. Mixology
  20. Solitaire HD
5. Streaming Media
  1. YouTube
  2. StreamToMe
  3. ZumoCast
  4. Pandora
  5. Boxee
  6. Netflix
  7. TuneIn Radio
6. Time
  1. Night Stand
  2. ZazenLite
  3. WhiteNoisePro
  4. Chronology
  5. Observatory
  6. Clock Radio
7. Cloud Services
  1. Box.net
  2. Dropbox
  3. Air Sharing
  4. VNC
  5. Offline Pages
  6. Speed Test
  7. Transfer
  8. Shazam
  9. Boxcar
  10. Google Earth
  11. Find iPhone
  12. Junos Pulse
  13. StumbleUpon
8. Arts
  1. Brushes
  2. iDraft
  3. Comic-Con
  4. Voice Memos
  5. Eyewitness
  6. Galleries
9. Entertainment
  1. iTunes
  2. ABC Player
  3. Flixster
  4. Phases
  5. VLC
  6. U-Verse
  7. Choices
  8. Compass
  9. Tally Counter
  10. Game Center
  11. iTranslate
  12. IMDb
  13. iPod
  14. Videos
  15. Brain Wave
  16. BinauralBeat
10. Finance
  1. eBay
  2. PayPal
  3. Calculator
  4. Windowshop
  5. Bloomberg
  6. Deliveries
  7. Calculator XL
  8. PNC Mobile
  9. CheckPlease
  10. Alice
  11. VirtualWallet
11. Telephone
  1. Gizmo
  2. GV Mobile +
12. Education
  1. Michigan
  2. Purdue
  3. iNKU
  4. Laker Mobile
  5. CMU
  6. iRockets
  7. SouthCarolina
  8. iFullerton
  9. CSU Vikings
  10. Seton Hill
  11. MobileCSU
  12. UMUC
  13. iStanford
  14. DukeMobile
  15. Texas
13. Weather
  1. TWC MAX+
  2. WeatherStation
14. Navigation
  1. Maps
  2. Trapster
  3. Glympse

Proof of Life

Posted on January 13, 2011 by bluedepth

Here is some email back and forth between me and a fellow at Google Apps who doesn’t believe that I’m who I say I am. Oh how to prove WMU.

***

Email From Google:
On Jan 13, 2011, at 6:26 PM, The Google Team wrote:

Hello Andy,

Thanks for your message.

Before we can continue processing your application for an Apps for
Education Upgrade, please clarify the purpose of the specific domain you
have requested for upgrade.

In addition, can you please provide the following information:

What are the ages of the students you teach?
Do you offer degrees to students who complete the program?
Have you received accreditation from an accepted accrediting body?

Please reply to this email with your responses so we may continue to
process your request. If you are a certified 501(c)(3) non-profit
organization please send us your EIN, as you may qualify for an upgrade to
Education Edition for non-profits.

If you do not feel you meet these requirements, we invite you to continue
to manage your account with our free Google Apps, which offers many of the
same features and services.

Sincerely,

Suchit
The Google Apps Team

My Response:

Hello,

We teach students from 18 to in their 80’s… This might help:

Western Michigan University (WMU) is a public universityestablished in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo. When the school first opened, it was known as the Western State Normal School, but was renamed Western State Teachers College in 1927 and Western Michigan College of Education in 1941. On February 26, 1957 Governor G. Mennen Williams signed into law a bill making Western Michigan College the state’s fourth public university. In its annual ranking of the nation’s 4,000 colleges and universities, U.S. News & World Report consistently lists WMU as one of the nation’s top 100 public universities. (Hooray Wikipedia!)

We offer many degrees, Everything from Bachelors all the way up to PhD’s. We’ve got about 117,000 alumni who we’ve graced with degrees. We’ve got 278,000 living constituents… I’m just saying.

And once again…

Western Michigan University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, 30 North LaSalle Street, Suite 2400, Chicago, Illinois 60602-2504; Web site www.ncahigherlearningcommission.org.

Feel free to give me a call, 269-387-8719 and we can discuss Western Michigan University in detail. I’m the system administrator for WMU Development and Alumni Relations, my office is in Walwood Hall room 133E. I’m sure we could likely also find a few of our graduates who WORK AT GOOGLE and have degrees from our COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING. Oye!

Thanks for the laughs, I hope some of this works for you guys…

Andy McHugh
269-216-4597

Moving to Verizon iPhone

Posted on January 10, 2011 by bluedepth

So I have done it. I have sent an email to my Verizon representative, Mr. Steven Miller with a letter expressing extreme interest in transferring our mobile infrastructure away from Sprint and towards Verizon on the iPhone device. We’re going to move 5 connection cards and 17 phone lines from Sprint to Verizon.

Now I wait with bated breath for the quote! Light I’m on pins and needles! To be free of this abominable Blackberry, I hardly know what to do with myself!

Literary Cupboard

Posted on January 10, 2011 by bluedepth

As I sit here contemplating how to properly murder and dispose of a hated literary character, Karrin Murphy in the Jim Butcher series “The Dresden Files” it struck me how comic it would be if there was a funky bedroom cupboard or closet that had an odd Poltergeist/Neverending Story spatial rift in it connecting the fantastical worlds the central character reads with the real space in his room. So when he’s reading a book and hates a particular character, he gets to read about all the ways he’s tried to attack her in the book series. “Oh Harry, every time I open that closet I get attacked! First it was knives, then what had to be the business end of a flamethrower. Just last week I narrowly missed a bucket of bleach followed by a bucket of ammonia – I had to evacuate the house for three days to let the Chlorine gas escape. Harry, I think someone is trying to kill me.”

Yes Karrin, someone is. Next I’ll move on to rusty farm implements that I’ve stolen from the local Cracker Barrel. Try to escape those bits of flair ye harridan!

It’s not all the time that I’m so suffused with the raw urge to root for the monster to eat what I’m sure was originally planned to be one of the protagonists. But Light, what I wouldn’t give to watch Godzilla pop up out of Lake Michigan (the book setting is Chicago) rampage through the city, tear the roof off Karrin Murphys home and eat her, then burn the house to the ground and then stomp on it until it was flat.

All I can hope for is she develops some sort of new thing that puts her back in a coma. She was a much more pleasant character when she was in a coma.

The Kings Speech

Posted on January 9, 2011 by bluedepth

Two days ago I went to Rave Theaters with Scott and Miah and we saw “The Kings Speech” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504320/). This movie was fantastic. I was drawn in by Colin Firth’s portrayal of King George VI and Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue. There were quite a number of supporting cast members that were very welcome on the silver screen, most notably for me is Derek Jacobi, who played the Archbishop of Canterbury. Helena Bonham Carter played Queen Elizabeth but unfortunately for her I was constantly expecting her to either scream like Mrs. Lovett in Sweeny Todd or as Bellatrix Lestrange in the HP movies. I fear she may always be tainted by the image of her being a raving lunatic. Each time she came on-screen I half expected her to either be playing around with razors or screaming curses with a wand.

The movie itself is well constructed, the score was wonderful and the acting was top-notch. If it is playing near you, and you enjoy some seriously good cinema I highly recommend it. I give it a 5 out of 5 stars, and I could not put my finger on anything that I found wrong or troubling. I think it may win Colin Firth an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Role.

Security Theater

Posted on January 5, 2011 by bluedepth

Just passed through the TSA checkpoint about ten minutes
ago and went through with flying colors. MSP didn’t stop and ask a
batch of impertinent questions and poke around my bag-o-tech one
little bit. Of course I am fully aware that the TSA is purely
“Security Theater” evidenced by me forgetting to take off my belt
which has a big fat stainless steel buckle. The magnetometer didn’t
even flinch at that. I suspect that it’s all smoke and mirrors,
that the theater is totally fake and transparent and that we’re
flying just as insecure as we were back in 2000 except now we’ve
spent an intolerable amount of money on shazam security that
doesn’t really protect us at all. We can thank the GOP for the
massive expansion of government in our lives thanks to Homeland
Security. That’s a government program that if it was devoted to
healthcare instead of campy theater would make every
dyed-in-the-wool liberal wet their pants. Technology of course is
facilitated by Delta, who saw fit to grace the local waiting area
with easy to reach electrical sockets. It’s an olive branch to
offset the notion that they are raping us over bag fees. So Scott
and I are plugged in, and because MSP’s wireless infrastructure is
pay-as-you-go, I’ve got my handy-dandy Zoom travel router happily
blinking away, converting my 3G access card into a WiFi hotspot.
I’m happily slurping down electricity charging my iPad, which I’m
using to write this blog entry, and my iPod Nano. The Zoom router
and its battery are happily soaking up the free juice as well. So,
for personal liberty 2011 is rather sucky, but for technology,
especially bullshit technological barriers, it’s pretty good so
far. Being able to establish my own WiFi hotspot at-will is a
really neat “sticking-it-to-the-man” kind of feeling. Now on with
the waiting!

New Years Resolutions

Posted on January 3, 2011 by bluedepth

Everyone makes them and everyone breaks them. The classic ones over the year have been to lose weight or get out of debt, these aren’t things I can simply check-off my list in a year, they are long-term things. So I have to start small. One thing that I can definitely get a handle on and work on is to not be so very angry in the coming new year.

To cease being so angry I also have to bury a lot of zombies that are shambling about. The zombies take the form of the past. Previous coworkers, previous problems, previous angers. I visualize that I’ve got them in a giant earthen pit and I’m laughing with a shovel in one hand and a molotov cocktail in the other hand, looking at the zombies shambling around the pit sloshing around in gasoline. I light the cocktail, lob it in, and watch as all the past issues and annoyances and bugbears burn like so much straw men. Once the screaming and shuffling is over I get down off the tower platform I’m standing on and get busy shoveling all this nasty into the shallow grave it so richly deserves.

So my goal for 2011 is to not let the past bother me, to not get so angry, and to not let myself get caught up in vortexes of rage so that all I can think about is revenge and destruction. The shortcut is with psychotropic medications, I think the more honest path is with plain old willpower and determination. We’ll see how 2011 stacks up.

2010 in review

Posted on January 2, 2011 by bluedepth

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 113 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 2 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 520kb.

The busiest day of the year was August 12th with 109 views. The most popular post that day was SmashBurger – Kalamazoo, MI.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com, alphainventions.com, mail.yahoo.com, and myearthgarden.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for blackberry vs iphone vs droid, blackberry vs droid, smashburger kalamazoo, blackberry vs droid vs iphone, and bluedepth.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

SmashBurger – Kalamazoo, MI August 2010
4 comments

Blackberry vs. iPhone vs. DROID May 2010
1 comment

Droid vs. iPhone September 2010

Apple iPad April 2010

Solving Comic-Con Ticketing Issue (#SDCC) November 2010

Harry Dresden Files: Grave Peril

Posted on January 1, 2011 by bluedepth

Yesterday I finished reading “Grave Peril” by Jim Butcher. For the entire book series so far I’ve expressed one central yearning, and that was for one of the characters, Karrin Murphy to die a slow and agonizing death. Everyone who I know who is further ahead in the series promises me that things will get better, and now that I’m reading Thea next book, Summer Knight my response to them is “We Shall See” 😉

The story so far is very formulaic and about 65% organized like a Stephen King story, with a beeping truckload of detail and action way at the end. Scott has promised me that stating with book 4, Butcher gets something he didn’t have before, and that is a Tor editor. I’m only in the first few pages, but it does look promising. I’m hoping that the subsequent books are quicker reads than the first three, but only time will tell.

Harry Dresden Files: Grave Peril

Posted on January 1, 2011 by bluedepth

Bluedepth's Journal

Thoughts & Opinions

Author Archives: bluedepth

iPad Apps – January 15th 2011

Moving to Verizon iPhone

Literary Cupboard

The Kings Speech

Security Theater

New Years Resolutions

2010 in review

Crunchy numbers

Where did they come from?

Attractions in 2010

Harry Dresden Files: Grave Peril

Harry Dresden Files: Grave Peril