Saturday, October 05, 2002
All Hiptop, All the Time
Some people have questioned the usefulness of the hiptop, but if you're ever out and about, trust me, it's indispensible. Remember the last time you had to meet up with someone and they didn't have a cell phone on them and you didn't know if you had missed them, or they had missed you? Yeah, having the hiptop around is as big of a leap as when cell phones became consumer devices. It's the first (acceptably usable) generation of the communications devices that will truly change how we interact. Here's a real listing of how it came in handy the other night night:
- I was sitting in the theater and realized I didn't remember where the afterparty was. Checked my mail (the find feature is sorely missing, although the sorting worked OK) only to find the message wasn't POPed, so I used mail2web (hmm, mail2pda is slightly more optimized, but POP only)
- After finding the name of the place, I went to Citysearch, found the location, and got walking directions
- In the morning, while we were discussing the movie, I did an IMDB search and got the cast info. Also in discussion, I looked up how many IP addresses are available under IPv6 (340 trillion trillion trillion addresses)
Now, while that last thing (and all the aiming, emailing, and boingboing surfing in between) was mostly for entertainment, those first two things were pretty majorly useful, and saved a lot of headache. With a hiptop, you can check traffic reports online (color really would be useful in this case, though), if you're in a club or other noisy environment (or a quiet environment where talking is a no-no, or where synchronous communication is otherwise impossible), you can still exchange time-dependent messages either via IM or email. Plus, just think about all the useful information online, and all those times where "if you only had access to a web you could."
So finally, here it is, easy to use and unmetered (no worries of counting cents/kb). Now, if this thing had ssh...
Great googly moogly, Alan's Pocket Portal is great. It's my new hiptop homepage until I make my own.
Speaking of sites made for the hiptop, try: http://www.dangerporn.com/. Oh my sides. Isn't technology wonderful?
dpr publishes a short article on:Making (some) sense out of sensor sizes
Whoa, the Japanese Casio Exilim site has a weird (but neat) synthespian commercial online.
The new version of Kazaa (Lite of course) is pretty great. Pick it up from k-lite.tk. Lots of neat other tools in the d/l section.
Friday, October 04, 2002
Is it just me or does hiptop411 already do everything that the official, soon to be launching, official hiptop.com site?
Michale Reichmann has posted the first part of his Canon EOS 1Ds Preliminary Field Report on Luminous Landscape. Definitely interested in seeing how it compares to the upcoming Kodak DCS-14n.
I'm pretty close to just giving in and buying a D60, though. I also am need of a carry around everywhere camera. Unfortunately, the current hiptop camera just doesn't cut it. The SmaL isn't bad, but the resolutoin is still pretty low and I have concerns about its speed and low-light performance. The Casio Exilim looks promising... high res, fast shot time and has a good review from Steve. And there's the Dimage Xi, which is almost as fast as the Casio, has an extra megapixel of resolution, and supports up to ISO 400 pushed and a slightly faster lens at full wide.
Here's the hiptop HTTP Header Information. Some interesting stuff:
| HTTP Request | GET ... HTTP/1.0 |
| Accept | text/*, image/png, image/gif, image/jpeg |
| Accept-Language | en-us |
| Cache-Control | max-age=259200 |
| Connection | keep-alive |
| Host | randomfoo.net |
| User-Agent | Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AvantGo 3.2; ProxiNet; Danger hiptop 1.0) |
| Via | 1.0 w29.dngr.org:3128 (Squid/2.4.STABLE6) |
| X-AvantGo-Screensize | MjQweDmyMABQ |
| X-Dangerous-Stuff | Totally |
| X-Fowarded-For | 63.241.65.15 |
Note, that while there's the X-AvantGo-Screensize, it's definitely not standard (maybe my base64 decode is wrong, but it says 240x960?). I'm guessing it's a custom backend. If it were really an AvantGo backend, it should be sending all the AvantGo headers, and same support, right? Also, AvantGo doesn't support LINK or STYLE at all according to this table.
My blog now works in the hiptop. Since I had styleswitching already built in, I just added a switch to search for 'danger hiptop' in the UA string and set the style to none. It should ignore it anyway since it says that it's a f'in screen media-type in the link, but pragmatism wins this round.
Another friend picked up a hiptop. They have them in stock at CompUSA in Culver City. Yes boys and girls, until tomorrow, you can pick up a hiptop for $100+taxes after rebates. Talk about some hot shit.
Last one before I go back to posting about the hiptop again ;)
Some pictures from the Rules of Attraction premiere / after-party. If I had known I could have extracted some almost intelligible images from the darks, I might have taken more pictures. But, there was nothing particularly exciting anyway. The blue channel is worthless on the bottom end.
Anyway, short summary, Victor style (well, without the drugs and debauchery):
drove down to campus. picked up gabe. drove to the mall. exchanged my broken hiptop. got a new one. fought traffic up la cienega. burnt some clutch at the very top pulling into the parking lot. get a cab. traffic sucks. get dropped off near mann's chinese. pass the scientologist building, laugh about xenu. get through security. pick up my pass. take a picture. go into the theater. take a piss. buy a $3 water. look up where the after party is and map it on mapquest. kill some time. listen to roger avary talk up front. join in singing happy birthday to shannyn sossamon. watched rules of attraction. it kicked ass. walked 4 blocks to the nacional. stand in line for almost an hour until security tells everyone the fire marshall won't let anyone in. call bullshit and talk to russell from lions gate before we bounce. get let in. rum and coke. spot dawson. write on shannon's wall-sized birthday card. walk around the slightly crowded rooms. red bull and vodka. watch a guy throwing ice in the fireplace. take a picture upstairs. gabe compliments some girl's boa [ah, this is her]. eat some cake. wish shannon happy birthday. screwdriver. grab some hors douvres. talk to roger avary. pick up some schwag. pass by starlets. fuzzy navel. dance in a corner with gabe and 2 other people. go to the bathroom. pass by marilyn manson upstairs. go upstairs. gin and tonic. learn that open bar is closing in 5 minutes. melon ball, use it as chaser for the disgustingly strong gin and tonic. drink sitting across from marilyn manson and his goth crew. chat with dancing girl, larisa. sit around feeling tipsy and decide to leave as the place clears out. walk out and see security yelling as photographers swarm around kate bosworth leaving. take a cab to the mondrian. pick up a key and a card. go to the sky bar. it's a patio with a not so great view. pay $30 for 2 weak red bull and vodkas. I manage to convince the bartender to top off the glasses with some more vodka. pick up some extremely salty pretzels. listen to gabe rap. talk to some girls until i realize they don't speak english. drink some water, chat with gabe. go up to the room. comment on the gap girl on the side of the window being pretty hot. give gabe water while he heaves. notice that the toilet is leaking and think about the implications. set some alarms. go to sleep. wake up freezing at 8:30 in the morning as the cleaning maid rings the doorbell and then apologizes when i stumble to the door. jesus christ that's early. rinse my mouth. do some blogging and read some mail. realize that the gap girl isn't that hot, although yes, i certainly would. notice that the mondrian hat and note i had from the previous night were gone when we got in last night. fill out the comment form. clean up my stuff. get my car, i can still smell the clutch. check out and let them know that they have some issues to take care of. the receptionist agrees and writes down that she's glad i didn't pay for my stay. she tells me that normally they charge $310/night for that room. we go to norm's and order bacon and eggs and chat while the people at the table behind us plot a star tour to see the sites and visit celebrities' homes.
Bloggerrhea
Hmm, Danger needs to install a spell-checking option in for their email client. Speaking of which [bad pun alert], blogging with thumb boards while drunk is dangerous. (kids, take Chris' advice)
Here's a run down of the current top issues on the wishlist, from a user's perspective:
- There need to be some mail filters. Really really really. (to be able to route different messages in different folders or to dump them)
- There needs to be find functionality, at least in email, preferably system-wide, like the Palm
- Address book lookups should be possible from anywhere, also like the Palm
- You know, those Palm guys were pretty smart. OS adjustable font-sizes (or better yet, dynamic zooming) would be good. While digging through Palm's bag of tricks, a clipboard wouldn't be too bad of an idea either
- There should be a central alert panel to set the alerts for all the apps. These alerts should be fully configurable and interchange between the Calendar apps, etc.
- Being able to set real Alarms would be nice. You know, like Big Clock or something.
- AIM client needs to be able to go into auto-away mode automatically when the keys are locked (timestamps would also be nice)
- The browser needs to support sideway scrolling (see below)
- The browser should respect CSS media types, render better, or allow a 'text only' render mode (and store it as a preference for each site, if that's the case). There are too many sites that just don't work.
Those are my big annoyances right now. The hiptop does so much right though. Overall, it's excellent. I haven't been this impressed with a gadget/tool since the original Pilot came out.
a slightly extended rumination
this needs to wait until after breakfast. Oh, the Sky Bar is surprisingly unimpressive. See here.
the mondrian sucks ass
You might be wondering by I'm posting at 8:45 in the morning. So am I. But, the reason I'm up is because the f'in maid rang the door bell and woke me up 20 minutes ago. Who the hell does that?!
While Gabe was heaving last night, we noticed that the toilet was leaking pretty badly. Hmm... someone took my Mondrian hat and invitation from the room. Not impressive for $250/night.
kwyjibo
drunk gabe whee the letters are blurring, o guess that's okj, I can't really type, ok that's enuf yay no more backspaces I can type sure im toastie ciao
I, by the way, after 7 drinks and perfectly fine...
I'm blogging this while I'm sitting across from marilyn manson (I was wondering about the goth contingent...). no, ther is nothing of value here. move along now. drink #5, #6 in the pipe.
Thursday, October 03, 2002
thanks to some assertiveness, we got scooted in, half hour in, drink #3. who knows, I may even get drunk tonight. wished shannon happy bday.
Weeeee!
Hmm, the camera attachment doesn't do low light as well as I originally thought. I'm standing in line here in front of the Nacional. Everyone of course is on the list or has a pass, but here we wait regardless.
Oh hey, they're letting people not in line in before us poor line schlubs. how wonderful. how hollywood.
OK, in the egyptian. I'm sure the novelty of this will wear off soon.
They charged me $3 for my water.
No pictures tonight unfortunately, since I didnt't expect to have a working hiptop I went to sleep instead of coding my MIME decoder.
weee
ok, going to the egyptian, running a bit late, but we should be ok... got a new hiptop if you couldn't tell.
[We, btw were waaaay early. This is Hollywood, baby.]
Whoa, if you're using public transportation in certain areas (NW, NorCal, some SoCal locations, etc.), you can get GPS based bus-tracking data on your hiptop. Cool.
Sadly, this makes way more sense than what Bush wants: Bush vs. Saddam: Iraqi VP suggests a duel
For those interested in some more hiptop / browser info, here's some stuff I posted up on DangerInfo earlier. Anil sums it up. I think that a lot of us would be much happier if it at least respected CSS media types. If it doesn't specify, sure try to render it, but if the f'in stylesheet says media="screen", the hiptop should have a more realistic self-assessment.
Not that I'll be doing any hiptop browsing anytime soon. My hiptop is KIA. It went into it's buzzing state again around 8PM and hasn't recovered since. Shitty, eh?
Went and heard some good techno (and made up for some missed work outs :). Some DJs spinning some great sets, including Crystal Method's Scott Kirkland, at a club in Echo Park for $10. Good deal.
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
Jeez
Hiptop just crashed again. It did it an hour ago; went into a fugue state after rebooting and vibrated/blinkered for half-an-hour. This time at least it just rebooted. The touter is down so I'm on the bloggerpro gateway and hiptop email until I get mine up (need cpan access thoguh for mime decoding...
.lTest
--==DNGR-1033575737== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" Content-Description: message body text Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bitTesting blogger pro's email feed from hiptop
.l --==DNGR-1033575737== Content-Type: image/jpeg Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Photo 2.jpg" [crap cut out] --==DNGR-1033575737==--
Wow, not only do attachments not work, but they screw up bigtime. Well, if you have base64 decoder...
Tuesday, October 01, 2002
Checklist of how blogs look on the T-Mobile Sidekick
- randomfoo.net - only renders the first column, overlapping boxes. boo. - awholelottanothing.org - renders the text, but in a 20px column - disastro.com - same - fibiger.org - same - waxy.org - whoa, messed up ~ torrez.org - topheavy on nav, but legible + massless - centered, but otherwise good ~ lyd - could be worse - glish - haha - scottandrew - ditto ~ surfmind.com - hey, could be worse + sylloge - stylin + plasticbag.org - looks good + megnut - looks good - anildash - no ~ peterme - topheavy nav, but otherwise fine - SvN - denied - aaronsw - sorry + zeldman - not bad ~ doc - topheavy on nav, some rendering errors, but legible ~ camworld - topheavy on the nav, but the rest looks good ~ xblog - ditto - w3future.com - did you think it would? + youngpup - I'm as surprised as you are - whatdoiknow.org - not good - web-graphics - nope - eleganthack - nope + kottke.org - centered, otherwise fine ~ eatonweb - funky top, rest ok + rc3.org - looks good + slashdot.org - actually not bad, /. lite has less nav to scroll through + k5 - not bad ~ mefi - sideblog sorta shows up, but main stories render fine - bud.com - topheavy on the nav, then 20 pixel column of text + boingboing.net - looks good
Sorta disappointing. Simpler blog designs fared better than more complex ones. Surprisingly, CSS styled pages do not linearize as they should. Positioning/styling is done somewhat haphazardly. For tabled designs, images are split up and resized somewhat arbitrarily. There's no horizontal scrolling or zooming in the current revision of the browser.
It's too bad that the preprocessor doesn't go further and just strip all the css (or give that as an option), most of these sites would look better that way. Also too bad there's no RSS aggregator for the hiptop. It might be more useful.
I've been following the forums at DangerInfo for the past week or so. Now that I have an actual hiptop device to play with, I'm trying to figure out what the browser supports. It seems to be some strange custom renderer. I'm posting my observations here.
Hmmm... Need add either shortcuts for tags or some wrapper code to bloggerbot...
The hiptop AIM escapes out the >... Guess I'll need to write some wrapper code to add P's for general cases, and something for other cases (either use []'s for tags or dynamically unconvert <>'s back...
Blogging from hiptop. Nice.
Well, this could make one extremely chatty...
OK, trying about Phil's BloggerBot.
If you use windows and need to use SCP (or have no decent SFTP client), WinSCP i the shiz.
I picked up my sidekick, $273 out the door, $50 MIR. For those of you with CompUSAs that are carrying Sidekicks, apparently there is $150 worth of rebates available...
I've taken my hiptop obsession to the next obvious level by bookmarking the hiptop related sites and forums in one convenient tab. Yay Mozilla. It's officially out today. I'm going to call around to some local stores at 10am. If I don't get a positive response by then, I'll probably just order it w/ overnight shipping from the T-Mobile site...
Monday, September 30, 2002
http://www.yourethemannowdog.com/
Sunday, September 29, 2002
If you have any attachment whatsoever to Superman, you might not want to read what Warner Brothers is going to do to him.