Washing machine verses a Palm Pre wired headset
Posted By RichC on September 20, 2009
What happens when you leave a wired Palm Pre headset in the pocket of you pants as they head for the washing machine? Yikes!
Smaller Cincinnati Homearoma for 2009, but enjoyable
Posted By RichC on September 19, 2009
We stopped over at the Cincinnati area Homearoma this year in Mason, Ohio even though it was smaller … five homes between $550K to 850K as I recall, compared to the 18 homes mostly over a million or so dollars in previous years. Brenda and I still had a good time and enjoyed check on several of the extra decorative features and designer touches.
I’ve been thinking about redesigning my ‘ugly’ pond behind our house and took note of those being displayed (click photo for larger Palm Pre photo).
The 47th annual edition of HOMEARAMA® is being held at Long Cove, a popular and growing neighborhood in Mason – and a third time host for the prestigious HOMEARAMA® home show!
Smartphone Experts Palm Pre skins leave much to be desired
Posted By RichC on September 18, 2009
I’ve used the cellphone screen protection from Smartphone Experts on the displays of my Palm Treo and Centro PDA phones for years and have always been please with how they have performed. The same company makes full face coverings the Palm Pre, but the Smartphone Experts product I ordered (and had replaced at no charge) have not worked well. The company was gracious enough to hear my initial complaint and sent a new 3-pack of protectors, but unfortunately it didn’t improve the look, ease of use or installation.
Opinion: I have found the initial bubbling that appears on the protector distracting (photo below), although after a few weeks of use this does improve a bit — but the bubbling never completely disappears. Although not recommended, I’ve tried squeegeeing with isopropyl alcohol and even a bit of heat. to no avail.Besides the tacky and distracting look, the edges often peel loose during regular handling, particularly when sliding in a dash mounting device. Besides looking bad, I have found the surface is no long as smooth; my fingers skid with a sticky feel rather than slide on the touchscreen surface.
I’m open for suggestions, but for now I’d rather risk the surface of my Palm Pre than used this particular screen protection.
Smartphone Experts screen protector on the Palm Pre
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BMW displays new biodiesel compatible vehicles at Frankfurt
Posted By RichC on September 17, 2009
The 2009 X5 35d and 2009 335d
The Frankfurt Automotive show is one of the biggest in the world and is a good place for diesel vehicle makers to show their new ideas. BMW is no exception, having debuted a couple new and very impressive twin-turbo diesel in the U.S. this year — my comments. One of the pluses is that according to Biodiesel Magazine, their new models are ready for biodiesel, such as the concept diesel-plugin-hybrid below.
Receiving a lot of attention is the Vision Efficient Dynamics concept car. This futuristic vehicle is a diesel hybrid plug-in, but costs a fortune to make. The powertrain provides acceleration to 100 kilometers per hour in 4.8 seconds, and its average fuel consumption is near 62.6 miles per gallon, BMW reported. “This is a very far look into the future,” [Dirk Arnold, BMW product communications manager] said. “Maybe this would be possible for production with some completely new diesel engine or other new technology, but for the next five years the advantage of combining diesel and electric systems is relatively low compared to the tremendous cost.”
One of BMW’s brands, the popular sports hatchback Mini, is entering the diesel market with a new model being presented in Frankfurt. “The broad range of new models is being rounded off by the world debut of the Mini One D, a new entry-level diesel consistently upgrading the Mini portfolio of particularly economical and efficient models,” BMW said.
“Engineers have been working continuously with the technical aspects of biodiesel, and blends of seven percent to 12 percent work in our motors with no problem at all,” Arnold told Biodiesel Magazine on the opening morning of the show.
Although BMW is putting advertising dollars into their premium priced ‘select’ U.S. available diesel models, I’d like to see a few mid-priced options available in diesel too. It’s hard to convince the average U.S. consumer to spend $50-60K for the BMW X5 35d SUV when they can buy a new gasoline powered Domestic or Asian SUV for $30K. For diesel vehicle to win over middle America, there will need to be more modestly priced mid-sized cars and utilitarian diesel vehicles.
Cruising World magazine celebrates 35th anniversary issue
Posted By RichC on September 17, 2009
Since my mind in on planning our trip to Annapolis and sailing, it seem fitting to tie today’s post to Tuesday’s when I mentioned my favorite periodical Cruising World. My collection of that magazine is similar to may who have a collection of back issues of National Geographic magazine. Anyway, it’s a good time to mention the 35th anniversary issue due out on September 29th:
Cruising World Celebrates Milestone 35th Anniversary
Middletown, R.I. — Bonnier Corp.’s Cruising World magazine kicks off its yearlong 35th anniversary celebration with the publication’s October 2009 issue. The October issue — which hits newsstands Sept. 29 — marks the launch of a boatload of activities that celebrate the milestone anniversary of the very first Cruising World edition, called The Sailboat Show Annual, which was released during the 1974 Annapolis Sailboat Show held in October of that year.
The commemorative issue of Cruising World will include not only its regular features, but also a number of articles by longtime friends and readers of the publication, including a special Mailbag section with “Letters to Murray” — a tribute to Cruising World’s founder, Murray Davis, in which sailors tell the stories of how they got hooked on sailing.
Regular columnist Cap’n Fatty Goodlander recounts what cruising was like in 1974, and Melanie Neale, author of Short Story, describes growing up on a boat while her father, Tom Neale, used to come to Newport, R.I., each year to write articles.
In an excerpt from his upcoming book, legendary yacht designer Chuck Paine talks about his early years, when articles in Cruising World helped him gain traction.
The feature section leads off with a Herb McCormick story on Reid Stowe, the man who vowed to spend 700 continuous days at sea, with a sidebar on other notable yachtsmen and their voyages over the years.
Rounding out Cruising World’s special coverage is an essay by longtime editor Bernadette Bernon, in which she describes her encounters with some of the well-known authors who’ve visited the magazine’s offices, along with a special People and Food that features Cruising World co-founder Barbara Davis’ favorite recipes.
For more information about Cruising World, visit www.cruisingworld.com.
Cruising World is based in Middletown, R.I., and published monthly by Bonnier Corp. Cruising World addresses the dedicated sailor with a keen interest in exploring the world’s coastlines and oceans while cruising under sail. Cruising World aims to inspire and entertain through stories and pictures that underscore the beauty, fun and adventure of sailing, while providing practical information on the disciplines of seamanship, navigation and boat handling.
Bonnier Corp. (www.bonniercorp.com) is one of the largest consumer-publishing groups in America and is the leading media company serving passionate, highly engaged audiences, through 49 special-interest magazines and related multimedia projects and events. Bonnier Corp. is the U.S. division of the Bonnier Group (www.bonnier.com), a 200-year-old family-owned media group based in Sweden with business operations in 25 countries.
Diesel 170mpg VW L1 takes the stage in Frankfurt
Posted By RichC on September 16, 2009
At the Frankfurt Motor Show, Volkswagen debuted its ultra-efficient L1 Concept, which follows in the footstep of the 
One-Liter Concept from 2002. The L1 derives its name from the fact it takes around one liter of diesel fuel to propel the car 100 kilometers (62 miles). According to press reports, the car is said to consume closer to 1.38 liters of gas to travel 100 km which works out to 170 mpg. The L1 is extremely lightweight at 1,100 lbs, and it has space for just two occupants. The passenger sits behind the driver, and storage is limited. The non-hybrid econo car is powered by a 36 horsepower two-liter diesel motor coupled to a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. It may be available in 2013, although most see its initial release in Europe only.
Sugarsync disappointment – deleting files not permitted
Posted By RichC on September 16, 2009
After attempting to delete photos from the Sugarsync gallery on my own and finding I could not recover several of my paid for and lost gigabytes, I contacted tech support — and have lodged a complaint to no avail. I’m eliminating my use of the backup software and switching to Dropbox.— Tech Support response below:
Hello Rich,
Thank you for contacting SugarSync Technical Support.
We understand that you’d like to remove Albums from your Photo Gallery.
Any image file placed in your account shows as a picture in your Photo Gallery. As of now, it is not possible to delete pictures from the Photo Gallery directly. You’ll have to delete the images from your account in order to remove them from the Photo Gallery. The pictures that are in the deleted files folder will also be shown as albums in your Photo Gallery.
Our Engineers are working on providing extended functionality in this area. However, you can hide a particular album from view by clicking on “Show/hide Albums” in the control panel of the Photo Gallery.
We are very sorry for the current limitation.
Please feel free to email us with any other questions or comments you may have, we’re always looking for ways to make the SugarSync experience sweeter for you.
Have a great day!
Regards,
Madhu,
SugarSync Technical Support.
Preparing for 40th Annual Annapolis Sailboat Show
Posted By RichC on September 15, 2009
I realize that the post title could be a bit misleading as I’m not “preparing as a presenter” at the 40th Annual Annapolis Sailboat Show, but “visiting” the show. Traditionally my wife and I would take a yearly trip to Annapolis toward end sailing season and enjoy the ambiance of the old city. We’ve detoured to take in the Naval Academy, Washington DC and Baltimore, but for the most part just enjoyed a ‘cheap flight’ to BWI, nice dinner and bouncing around on new boats. As our lives got more complex with teenage children, sailing and the trip to Annapolis dropped from priority. This year we’ve decided to revive the trip and maybe even rekindle the sailing dream?
Our “Brenich” in 1986 … me on the bow and Brenda at the helm
Our first visit to Annapolis started even before our first sailboat … when we (well … “I“) was still dreaming about owning an ocean crossing sailboat. My 
bookshelf reveals the aspiration as well, as it is full of nautical books; even my office closet is full of back issues of Cruising World magazines that I can’t bare to part with. Thankfully for us, the stars aligned and we bought our first true cruising sailboat early in our married life at the sacrifice of a better home. What a great time we had living and commuting from the boat each summer … I have zero regrets.
Then the responsibility of family, as well as careers, bills and high cost of long winters took their toll on our sailing; we adjusted our priorities finding it challenging with a baby. Our family grew older and we took a couple trips to boatshows, briefly return to sailing again … but never with the dedication that seems to be required with this costly investment. The interests of suburban teenagers were of figure skating, sports and friends … not of weekends and vacation trekking to the boat, so our second boat was reluctantly sold only a couple years after buying it. Oh, we still had a 18′ Thistle, our sailing dink (the Trinka — for sale if interested) and an inflatable tender for hauling on vacation, but that’s hardly the ‘cruising life.’
So I’ve booked our flight, purchased the online pre-paid tickets, rented a car and started (continued) to peruse the yacht brokerage ads preparing to rekindle the memories we enjoyed years ago. With kids in college and a decade or so before I can seriously consider an early retirement, dreaming is a satisfactory way to satisfy my mid-life urge. It will be interesting to see what has change and what has stayed the same … stay tuned.
Palm Pre stumps me with a Messaging app problem
Posted By RichC on September 14, 2009
I have found that the Palm Pre works well for email and both MMS and SMS messaging on Sprint, but I’ve run into a glitch where my incoming messages will not show up in the messaging app unless I search for them, see screen capture (usually the conversations list unless I delete them).
So here’s the situation for those with WebOS and Palm Pre knowledge:
A few contacts that I’ve SMS messaged will appear in the list of messages when I open the Messaging app, but others will not. I can see them IF I open from the notification area as they arrive at the bottom of the screen by tapping, but as soon as I swipe backspace to return to the Messaging app they are gone. I can type the beginning of the contact name in the Messaging app and they will show up and then tap the conversation to view the string of messages. This works if we are talking about a Contact that starts with a letter, but for messages that have been initiated with a 5-digit number the ‘orange’ opt key needs to be held firmly down when the number is selected in order to ‘find’ the conversation. (This is used for news services, voting, gas price updates, Twitter by SMS, etc)
When I do locate the message conversation and swipe to right or left and tap Delete, the message conversation returns in its entire string the next time another message arrives — could it be a sync problem? The only way I have found around this (I think) is to open the entire message conversation and swipe/delete each individual message in the conversation until they are all gone. This is currently the way email works and a pain to clear email off the Pre — a delete all or checkmarking system would be appreciated.
Let me know if you have this problem or have solved it.
Aviation History: The Origin of Squawk
Posted By RichC on September 13, 2009
I learned a new historical aviation tidbit on the origination of the word “squawk” this weekend in a recent EAA magazine article. During World War II, we, the allies, used an electronic device called IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) which would transmit a secret code if hit by a radar signal. This code would tell this friendly radar which planes were ours since the IFF would “talk back” or “squawk” like a parrot.
The terminology from this day is still used today by those in the aviation world and transponders on airplanes send code back to airspace controllers in order to identify individual airplanes and helicopters. Nowadays we can set different identifiers controlled with the assistance of computers and imaging on the controllers screens, but in the early days too many transponder equipped planes could cause confusion. According to the author, controllers would sometimes ask pilots to turn off their transponders to reduce clutter and commented, “one time … said to me, “Strangle your parrot.” I new what he meant.” Very interesting!
Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee
- lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
- digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.