Essential iPhone Apps (‘Cause Everyone Else is Doing It)

It’s June. That means I’ve had my iPhone for about four months and it has already become extremely hard to live without. In fact, I have no intention of trying to live without it. Not only does it sit in my pocket for most of the day, it recharges right next to [...]

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha has been around for a few weeks now, having debuted to a squawking chorus of voices. The initial reports from Mashable and Lifehacker sounded intriguing and promising but the talk on podcasts like TWiT and the virtual water cooler that is Twitter was more confused than relevatory. The single most coherent [...]

Mario and His Stars

I am the proud creator / owner of a Super Mario Galaxy save-file in which the full complement of 241 stars have been collected. And when I say proud, I mean bring it up in conversations at cocktail parties and show strangers my photos of it because I’m so proud.
Now, as to why I [...]

Resting Places

Trying another post from the iPhone, this time with photos.
Yesterday, my wife and I went to put flowers on her dad’s grave. He’s interred at a beautiful temple / cemetary near our house. We took a quiet walk around the grounds and I took a few photos, keeping others privacy foremost in mind [...]

Songbird

While it isn’t quite ready for prime time, Songbird is an excellent music player with the potential to be a one stop music application.
The biggest thing that differentiates Songbird from other library managers like iTunes is the built in browser. Based on the Mozilla engine, the browser works just like any other, only that [...]

Crayon Physics Deluxe

Crayon Physics Deluxe is an innovative and charming game that uses the iPhone’s touch screen to demonstrate a new way to game.

The premise is simple: On each screen there is a ball and a few simple elements, like a box or a ledge drawn. The user must draw new [...]

Pocket Cocktails

Back in university, my roommates and I had a poster on the wall that gave the recipes for a few dozen different shooters. 44 Shooters or something like that. Dan’s favorite was one called Nutty Irishman. Anyway, in college, we made most of these things, as well as a lot of conventional [...]

The New York Times Crossword for iPhone / iPod Touch

There is something compelling, even obsessive about a good crossword puzzle. And the New York Times is one of the best crosswords around. So finding out that they had put together an app for the iPhone was fantastic news. However, the price tag, a hefty $10, left a me little cautious. [...]

Switches

I have to get used to having a video camera. Having a camera, and taking pictures is second nature. After all, I’ve been doing that since high school. Having a video camera, however, well, I’m still learning when it’s going to be better to have video than stills.
And essentially, it [...]

Muxtape

This morning, while browsing Twitter, I noticed that both Warren Ellis and Casey McKinnon posted links to Muxtape, which I had never heard of.
Being the social media junkie that I am, I immediately dropped everything and rushed over to make a new account. Muxtape is…well, it’s got potential. A lot of potential. [...]

Sculpey

Several weeks (months?) ago I picked up a brick of Sculpey at the art supply store. I had no real ideas for using it in mind, it just seemed like something fun to play with. (Yeah, I know, I can justify expensive polymer clay, but not Legos. It just…well, it makes sense [...]

Legos

Last weekend, my friend’s little boy came around for an afternoon while my friend played rugby. The boy and I played Nintendo for a while (Super Mario Galaxy, MarioKart 64, and Pokemon Snap for those who care) and then we started in on the Legos.
We were soon joined by my friend and the three [...]

Searching for Reasons

Several people seem to have followed the move to Tumblr as a single place in which to read all my collected postings and doings around the internet.  However, there have been some complaints as to the dual nature of the posts:  the actual posts and essays vs. the one line tweets and links.  So, I [...]

Keep Up

Just a quick note:  I have a new site up at smiley.tumblr.com.  This new site is a Tumble Log, which means, basically, that almost everything I do on the web, whether it is photos, an essay, random links, whatever, is sent to and re-posted on my tumble log.
The site is hosted by Tumblr.com; from the [...]

Flash Post 5

The Democracy Internet TV player is extremely cool.  It lets you subscribe to and watch video feeds on and offline.  Lots of nice features like sharing options and how long you wish to save which videos.  Very cool.  New web tech at its best.

Super Action Figure

Way back in the day, Groove Neuter and I used to sit around and joke about the action figures we could make out of the people in our lives.  There was the two of us, obviously, and our nemises (nemisi?), the Engineer, the Home-Wrecker, the Oddball, the Con-Artist, and the gods only know what all [...]

House Hunting

M and I have been spending our weekends house hunting.
Well, just last weekend, and it was only two model homes, but still, we have been looking at houses, with the idea that we ought to buy one.  We decided that we need one big enough for the two of us, at least one, if not [...]

Wii Sports

All the rumors are true.  This game, on this system, rocks.
M and I are both finding that Wii Sports is a fantastic game for us to play together.  It brings out a lot of the competitiveness that could show up in negative ways otherwise.  After all, being able to box each other without doing any [...]

RPG

Yesterday, while I was out photographing and meeting friends, I ended up in the big electronics store that I like to go to.  I had been there first thing in the morning to try to buy a Nintendo Wii and was told that they were sold out.  When I walked back in, later in the [...]

Street Photos

JPG has put out the first theme for their next issue – Street.  The editors have put in a clause mentioning that this is meant to be examples of Street Photography, not photos of streets; Street Photography is candid, natural photography, usually done with a minimum of set-up or apparatus.  The goal is to capture [...]

600

Kinda hard to believe, but it’s true.  This post, this post right heah, that you is now perusing, is number 600 on Left From Seattle.
I should get some kind of award for that, right?  I mean, do you have 600 posts on your blog?  Are they as pointless as mine?  Full of a lack of [...]

Turning Off the TV

This morning I deleted several hours worth of programming that I hadn’t gotten around to watching yet.  A lot of other things got deleted as well.  A lot of projects got taken off the back burner and just filed away to be dealt with or not dealt with well at some other date.
I had been [...]

Storage Problems

I find that the programs I use the most these days are either specialized word processors, like Copywrite, or, more usually, collection management software like iTunes or Comic Book Lover.
The trouble is, my collections are housed on an external harddrive that I do not carry with me.  My laptop, much as I love it, has [...]

One Game At a Time

This month’s time waster is the new port of Lode Runner to the DS.
I picked this up cheap from the used game store down the street and have been having a ball.  The flash backs to eighth grade started as soon as I turned the game on and have not stopped yet.  The game is [...]

Another Day Off

 M and I both had the day off today.  I spent most of it working on my Nanowrimo project or studying or yelling at the gods for creating such an infuriating language as well as giving me a creative drive.  In fact, I believe the majority of my time was spent on that last one.
Anyway, [...]

The Couple that Geeks Together…

M has been playing Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS for a week straight now, while I maintain with Starfox and Mario Kart. There are worse hobbies.
Word count – 4,000.

iPod Linux

Out of sheer curiosity, I installed iPod Linux on my iPod this morning.  It’s an interesting concept, and I hope this doesn’t over-geek some of you, in that the software opens up a lot of options that the iPod hardware is capable of, yet the built in Mac software does not utilize.
For example, I can [...]

Freakin’ Kanji Game

I bought a game for the Nintendo DS the other day.  It’s a kanji game, where the player needs to read a word in katakana or hiragana and then write it in kanji.  In the correct stroke order.  In the time alloted.
I set it up at the lowest level and still got my ass [...]

Classics

I came home and found my wife watching Casablanca today.
It may not sound like much, but it made me pretty happy. I’ve been picking up a lot of the classics recently, as a company here in Japan has been producing good quality DVDs of a lot of the old black and whites for about [...]

TV Is My Only Friend

Well, ok, that’s so far from being true that it shouln’t be made into a joke. However. Something occured to me last night while my wife was watching tv. It’s no secret that I get most of my tv from the interwebnets or DVD, but my wife still watches, mainly, broadcast tv [...]

Left From Seattle

Left From Seattle
Originally uploaded by SunToad.

The official seal of Left From Seattle! Feel free to copy it from here and proclaim your allegiance!
Or, go make your own: http://www.says-it.com/seal/

Ubuntu on You

Argh. I have spent way too much time and effort this week trying to get Ubuntu Linux installed on M’s old laptop.
M bought a new computer last fall, and since then her old Fujitsu Lifebook has been sitting in the closet, unused. It is a nice computer, even if not the most recent. [...]

Music, eMusic

A couple of weeks ago, a couple of friends told me about a new(ish) music download service they were using called eMusic. I took their advice and signed up for the trial version and then immediately upgraded to a full account, which gives me 90 tracks per month for $20 per month. (Do [...]

Continuing Edjamakation

Four of my friends are currently back in school, through various ways and means, and studying various things.  One is studying the very practical field of accounting, another is working on a masters in applied economics, one is studying something with computers and information architecture, and one is studying applied linguistics.  Another friend recently graduated [...]

The Last Final Frontier, Finally

The One Man has an interesting post (titled “Faustian Gore” in case the link breaks) on the nature of science up on his blog.  He points out what he feels are some of the problems with today’s science and highlights what he thinks science should be focusing on.  His list includes medicines and alternative fuels [...]

The End of the World, Again

Well, if there is one thing you can always trust the media to do, it is ruin my good mood.  I have been pretty happy lately, even feeling optimistic, which, in retrospect I can admit was extremely foolish.  However, the fact remains, I have been in a good mood.
Then, this morning, while catching up on [...]

Random Thought About Google Video

Google Video is hosting the new Paris Hilton video for her single, “Stars Are Blind”. 
What I find interesting is how Google Video and YouTube are replacing MTV.  Everyone complains that MTV no longer hosts videos, and yet, the reason they do not is because their audience wants to see programing.  For MTV it is [...]

The DVD Habit, Part II

This is part two of a post talking about the new DVD formats, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD, and a few reasons why I think they are completely unnecessary.
The main reason I do not think the new formats will take off, at least with me, is that I do not buy that many DVDs anymore.  I [...]

The DVD Habit

For those who may not know, I spend the majority of my working hours at either the Sharp or Toshiba campuses. The two companies have found themselves on opposite sides of the forthcoming format war. Toshiba has created, with its partners, HD-DVD, while Sharp has joined Sony’s Blu-Ray DVD camp. Now, while [...]

CSS

I’m thinking about building my own website again, just so I can have a little more control (yes, it’s all about control) over the layout and design. However, to do this, I need to learn CSS and Javascript. That’s a serious investment of time on my part with no real payout other than [...]

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Cory Doctorow is one of those people you can’t help but hear about if you spend as much time on the web as I do.  He’s a copyright activist and lecturer as well as being one of the co-editors of boing boing.  And he’s a science fiction writer.
Mr. Docotorow has a very interesting premise behind [...]

Speakeriffic

By the way, I picked up one of the Logitech mm50 Portable Speaker for iPod last weekend. It’s fantastic. If you have an iPod and want a cheap, easy way to get some good sound, this is it. It’s small enough that I can carry it all over the house and strong [...]

Flocking

Some of the more observant among you may have noticed a new tagline appearing at the end of recent posts, “Blogged with Flock”. All this means is that I am now using the browser Flock to create my posts.
Flock is a new browser (still in beta) built on the mozilla open-source platform that allows [...]

eBible.com Invitation

My invitation to join eBible.com was in my gmail when I got home from soccer tonight, so I went over to check it out.
My first impression, after about five minutes of playing is that this is a great service for scholars and devotees alike. I ran my first search on "Moses" and spent a [...]

Hanging Out by the Pool

Hanging
Originally uploaded by SunToad.
The One Man and I met for coffee this morning and I tried to explain my growing fascination with the virtual world of Second Life.  Our exchange went something like this:
The One Man:  So, what's up with you and this Second Life thing.
Me:  Dude, it totally rocks.  
TOM:  How so?
Me:  It just [...]

Blogged Out

At last count I have something like 12 blogs. I’m not using them all, by any means, but they’re all there, available to me should I want them. Hell, some of them (Bloglines) are available to me whether I want them or not. Add in the various social bookmarking and networking [...]

eBook

Currently, sitting in several boxes, in several locations, are the approximately 300 books that I just do not want to give up. This is a problem. We have a good sized apartment, but, nothing compared to a house or, well, really the U.S. style apartments I was used to before coming to Japan. [...]

iTunes

I blew off Saturday and Sunday this weekend and just watched Battlestar Galactica.  Fantastic show.  Love it.  Great stuff.
But that’s not what I want to write about.  What I want to talk about is iTunes.
I bought the BG miniseries off of iTunes for about $15 US and really enjoyed it.  But.  I’m a little dissapointed [...]

I Should Be Writing

Mur Lafferty has a couple of great Podcasts.  I had been listening to Geek-Fu Action Grip for a while but only started listening to I Should be Writing recently.
She’s got a lot of great advice for writers and wanna-be writers. Some of it I even intend to follow.  For example, write a thousand words a [...]

Gadgets that Don’t Exist but that I Want to Have

In lieu of a real post today, I thought I’d put up a list of what I’m currently jonesing for, tech-wise.
First, a Bluetooth enabled iPod – I love my iPod, as does everyone I know who has one. However, I get really tired of the mess of cables protruding from the left hand [...]