My Little Corner of the Net

New Toy: Motorola Razr V3c

Written by Kodiak on 07/05/2006 — Leave a Comment

Razr PhoneI’ve been using my newest toy, a Motorola Razr V3c cell phone (in hot pink—yeah, right), for about a month.  So far I love the phone.  Its ultra-thin design makes it easy to slip in my pocket, so easy that I often forget that its there!  It has a large, easy to read screen, and a 1.3 megapixel camera.  Sound quality is very good, and it comes with all of the features I need (such as a calculator, calendar, etc.).

I got the phone despite RIT’s Verizon rep’s opinion of it.  His opinion was that it was too fat.  I kind of agree, although I’m willing to trade width for depth–the thinness of the phone is what really sold me on it.  I switched to Verizon because I was sick of the lousy service I was getting from Sprint.  Working at RIT, I am also elligible for a 10% service discout and discouts on accessories, so that helped sweeten the deal.  Since most everyone I know has Verizon service as well, the free IN calling will save me lots of minutes, too.

I also purchased software that lets me connect the phone’s USB port to a computer.  With this software I can backup my contacts (which is worth the $30 price tag, IMHO) and sync my Outlook calendar to the phone.  I should be able to download my pictures and upload MP3 files as ringtones as well, but Verizon has conveniently blocked those features on the phone, forcing customers to use their service to send pictures (for a price, of course) and to buy
their ringtones.  I’ve heard there are hacks that you can do to the phone to get around this, but I haven’t tried.

My only complaint about the Razr is that the small batter doesn’t have a long standby life.  If I forget to plug the phone in, I’ll loose about half of my battery charge overnight.  With my past phones I’d lose 25% at the most.  So far service has been much imporoved over Sprint.  I don’t think I’ve seen my phone go out of range once (compared to Sprint, where I’d lose service in certain parts of my apartment).

The true test of the phone will come in about two weeks when I verture up to the Adirondacks for the weekend.  Up there, saying service is spotty is an overstatement, and I’ve noticed that only Verizon customers seem to be able to get anything.  We’ll see how this phone does then.

Posted in Cool, General

Email Cleaning

Written by Kodiak on 07/05/2006 — Leave a Comment

Woo hoo!  I just cleaned out my email accounts after getting “your mailbox is over its limit” messages on my account at work for about two weeks.  Now I’m down to just 74 messages in my work account and only eight in my Interbrite account!  (From about 300 messages each before the cleaning).  I did move several messages to a new folder so that I can easily off load them to a local folder on my computer at home tonight, and I moved a lot of work stuff to off-line storage at work, so I didn’t actually purge all that much stuff, but I’m still proud of myself.

Posted in General

Performacing Blog Editor for Firefox

Written by Kodiak on 06/30/2006 — Leave a Comment

I’ve just installed an extension to Firefox that I’ve wanted for a log time: the Performancing Blog Editor.  Now, there have been several blog editor extension published for Firefox already, but most of them have been developed for specific blogging platforms, and until now I haven’t found one that works with my WordPress blogs.  A couple months ago I wrote about a FireFox spin-off browser called Flock that is specifically designed to edit blogs.  Flock works with WordPress, but it is still in beta and it still requires me to open a separate program when I want to blog something.

The Performancing editor, published by Performancing.com, the world’s largest organization of professional bloggers (whoda thunk there was such an organization), is activated by the click of a button in my Firefox status bar.  When clicked a simple WYSIWYG editot pops up.  I simply type my entry, choose my blog, and click the publish button.  I can also add the post to categories and even edit previous entries.  I can set up multiple blogs to edit and the extension’s clear labeling makes it nearly impossible to accidentally post to the wrong blog.  I can also upload images directly through the editor via FTP or HTTP.

I’ve only used Performancing to post two entries so far, but so far I’m quite impressed.  The only feature that appears to be missing is a spelling checker.

Posted in Cool, General, Websites

HighEdWebDev 2006: Introduction to PEAR

Written by Kodiak on 06/30/2006 — Leave a Comment

I am happy to announce that my workshop proposal for this year’s HighEdWebDev conference has been accepted. This year I will be presenting on PEAR, the PHP Extension and Application Repository. PEAR is a collection of PHP classes that form a framework to help developers create applications more efficiently. I’ve been using PEAR for a couple of years now, but when I mentioned it in a session at last year’s conference, no one else in the room had heard of it.

In my session I will first present the PEAR Package Manager, demonstrating how to install it and use it to install and upgrade PEAR packages on both Windows and Unix machines. I’ll also cover how to set up a local PEAR repository in your Unix user account for when you don’t ahve root access to the server. Then I will demonstrate several useful packages, including packages that abstract database calls, create forms and manage submissions, create and connect to web services, manage unit testing of PHP code, and more.

My session will be on Sunday, October 22, 2006 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. This is a workshop, so there is an additional cost to attend, but I promise it will be worth the money!

HighEdWebDev is a conference by and for web professionals working in higher education. This year’s conference will run from Sunday, October 22 through Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Rochester, NY.

Below is the “official” abstract for my workshop:

As a Higher Ed web developer you’re short on time, short on resources, but definitely not short on projects. Every department wants the latest and greatest features added to their website, but web applications take time to build and maintain. Imagine abstracting your database calls, easily controlling your web forms, and effortlessly connecting to (or even providing) web services from your PHP applications. Or maybe you’d like to simplify data reporting, perform unit testing, manage files, or even manipulate images. The PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) is a structured PHP code library that offers many packages that can save you time and that help eliminate many of the common frustrations of web application development. PEAR packages make it easy for you to do all these things and more. This workshop will introduce you to PEAR and the many useful resources you can find in it. We’ll learn what PEAR is all about and how to install and use the PEAR Package Manager in both Windows and Unix environments (including how to install a local PEAR library in your own account when you don’t have root access to the server). Finally, we’ll look at several of the most popular and most useful PEAR packages and see how to make the most out of them. Intermediate experience with PHP is recommended.

Posted in Current Events, General, Websites

Back In Business

Written by Kodiak on 05/09/2006 — Leave a Comment

After an upgrade from an ancient (1.something) version of WordPress to the latest, there were a few issues with the display and functionality of this site. I’m glad to report that they are now fixed. Kodiak’s Korner is back in business.

Posted in General
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