Lucas the rock star
fresh out of music appreciation class. Processed on the Pre with Photo Effects Plus.
Lucas on the Pre and iPhone 4
Checking out this so-called retina display. Colors, contrast better on the Pre, seems the iPhone is a bit blue and cranks the contrast to make photos pop. Taken with the iPhone 4.
Location Alert: Lance Held was nearby!
Just got the below item after I installed a new, working, Google Latitude app on the Pre so I could keep tabs on Kelvin. Interesting feature… or creepy? You decide.
Google Location Alert
Lance Held was within 31 km of you in Long Beach, CA at 9:22 PM. Lance is usually 112 km away in San Marcos, CA on this day and time. Check Google Latitude to see where Lance is now.
You received this alert because you’ve shared your location with Lance using Google Latitude, and they have chosen to send Location Alerts when Latitude friends are nearby. Location Alerts are only sent when your friend is at an unusual place during a given time of the week based on their location history, filtering out routine locations such as a daily commute. Lance also received this alert. Learn more in the help center:
http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=163844.
Enabling:
Enable Location Alerts for your Latitude account to receive and send alerts when friends are nearby. Go to http://www.google.com/latitude/apps/alerts.
Disabling:
You may choose to not receive future Location Alerts from any Latitude friends by changing your settings at http://www.google.com/latitude/apps/alerts.
A day at the beach
Well, an afternoon really. Romyar was in town for a conference, and had a free afternoon. After we watched the 2nd half of the Brazil-Ivory Coast contest, we rode my two bikes (one just recently repaired) to Hermosa Beach for lunch. Kept going to Redondo/Torrance, then biked back to Manhattan Beach where Rom decided to jump in the water. I did, too. The water was surprisingly warm, felt close to 70 degrees. Made me wonder why I don’t do that more often!
A summer afternoon biking/ rollerblading/ running down the strand with old friends is always a guaranteed winner. Great day.
Where are all the Android Killer Apps?
So Apple has been beat up extensively in the press and in these quarters for their closed, sometimes developer-hostile, rules for their application platform. A new story every week about this rejected app or that one. And always the pundits & myself there to proclaim that this will be Apple’s doom, for the open platforms will win because the apps will be better. And here we are, closing in on 2 years of Android, and we have to ask: where are the killer apps? Sure, Google itself has turned out some stellar applications (Google Maps, GMail), but then it’s their platform and it matters not if the platform is open for them. And there are great apps for Android & the Pre, surely many that top what’s available for iOS or at least match it– FlickrAddict, Dr. Podder & Twee among them– but nothing so earth shattering that it’s given anyone reason to ditch Apple. Now, there’s some multitasking uses where Apple lags, but even with that handicap the Killer App has not arisen.
Then I look at the C|Net list of the top Android apps. And, well, it’s underwhelming. And in games, Android is now far behind webOS, which has used some jujitsu to capitalize on the popularity of the iPhone. Now, you can get apps for just about anything on all 3 modern smartphone operating systems. But where are the killer apps for Android that will make people throw their iPhone away? When will developers take advantage of the freedom afforded by Palm & Google to make truly amazing apps that are better than anything on the iPhone?
WeatherIcon
The App Doctor’s App of the Week is WeatherIcon (free), the latest in a long line of weather-related programs for webOS. This particular app is intended to unobtrusively display your current weather by altering its icon to reflect the temperature and conditions. In this respect, its raison d’être is similar to SimpleWeather ($1) and Weather Dashboard Lite (free), both of which also attempt to serve as weather "widgets" that serve up data at a glance. Weather Dashboard runs constantly in the Notification Area, but that gets in the way if you like to clear your notifications often, as I do. SimpleWeather, of course, is not free, but it does seem comparable to WeatherIcon in both conception and implementation.
San Diego Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon: 2010
Or as I titled it on Runner’s World forums, the good, bad & ugly of the new SD RnR Marathon course. First, I’ll get it out of the way: I was way off my predicted time, finishing 15 minutes slow in 4:25. Ooph. Knew it was gonna be tough by mile 3. The hard marathon I ran 3 weeks earlier certainly didn’t help, and probably hurt. My 9th time running the original Rock ‘n Roll Marathon, this would rank as one of the lesser performances. For the first time, there was also a half marathon. Huge mistake in my book, as the marathon was a massive success with upwards of 15,000 finishers most years. This year, with more folks attracted to the half, the event sold out for the first time, and the number of marathon finishers reached an all-time low of 10,000. The finish area moved from the grassy areas of MCRD to the Sea World Parking Lot. And the event lost some charm for me as a result. And that was before I got started.
As can be expected, dragged a camera out, this time the new Pentax K-x w/ the 50mm f/1.4. For an inexpensive camera, five hundredish bucks, it takes great low light photos and the f/1.4 lets in a lot of light. Here’s another shot at 5 AM.
Now, as for the event itself: better than I expected, not as good as I hoped. Lemme explain.
The good: Well, the start area was more sane than I expected, as long as you were happy with the naturally provided porta-potties. Ditto the Expo, provided you went late Saturday. Little hint: NEVER go the the Expo around noon on Saturday. Total disaster. The first 8 or so miles of the course were great, running through Balboa Park for the first time was fun. The downtoop loop was improved, and the halfathoners blended in just fine. Finish area seemed good, I just kinda wandered off. Skipped all the official transport, so I’ll let others rate that.
The bad: The merge of the half & full at mile 9 was a mess, with absolutely nothing preventing the merge. Really annoying for everyone, as the walkers were going much slower than the jogging marathoners in the 4:15 crowd. Also, the hello-goodbye-hello-goodbye split & merge were annoying. In RnR’s defense, once we went from the 163 to Friar’s Road the events were separated.
The ugly: I ran RnR #2, when there was effectively no crowd support. By RnR #5 or 6, it really became a community event, especially running through the neighborhoods on PB. But also downtown, Friar’s Road and even Pacific Highway headed to the finish. Well, now the last 10 miles were run with effectively zero crowd support, as there was little access for supporters to reach that part of the course. Scenic, sure, but I didn’t need 3 miles running on concrete paths in Mission Bay park. Even worse was the 5 long miles on Fiesta Island. For being right on the water, it’s shockingly unscenic, and even less crowd support than in MBP. The last 3/4 mile was OK, I suppose, but really that bit on Fiesta Island sucked the wind out of a lot of people’s sails. I hope RnR Inc. does what it takes to return the course to it’s traditional loop of Mission Bay. I’d gladly add a few hills in exchange for thousands of fans.
Overall, the first half of the course gets an A- (for the awkward merge), and the second half gets a C-. Add the Mission Bay loop back, and I’ll be back for sure.
Also, 4 marathons in 5 months is far too many. Wasn’t really my plan, just the way it worked out. Happy to take 6-8 months away from marathons. Sad part is, I gained 5 pounds with all that pavement pounding. Here’s a photo from me on the course— I can only guess that I saw the camera here and put my game face on.
Indigo (The Bait Shop)
Would you believe that this is my 500th solid square? I know fans of The O.C. will appreciate this photo, although the paint job may be of more recent vintage.
There are Trains Everywhere in Lucas’ World
iPhone 4
Just got caught up on the SteveNote. iPhone 4 looks good, ditto the iOS. But man, the contrast of networks between the Evo and iPhone is stunning… video chat over WiFi only kinda misses the point, needs to ask attendees to shut off WiFi for some demos since the AT&T network is too slow in SF. Also, kinda funny how the 3GS display is now portrayed as crappy & he’s made up some malarkey called RD to demonstrate it. I mean, if you have to magnify your image size by 1000% to show the problems with limited resolution, well, that doesn’t seem like such a problem! Undoubtedly the new display is nicer, but will be interesting to see if the tech media disseminates Steve’s marketing pitch as effectively as he did.
Exactly what we expected for the iPhone 4. Worth picking up to replace a 3G? Probably. Doesn’t really seem to be a game changer vs. the 3GS until they go 4G.
From the liveblogs.