Light at the end of the tunnel...?

'Tunnel Oberkirchen' by GDelhey on Wikimedia Commons

Dear Diary,
What a frustrating couple of days!  Monday evening I took my laptop to a developer event and was frustrated at every turn by its refusal to connect via WiFi, it's inability to keep up even with my typing, battery that wont hold a charge and Hippo-like bulk.  I have tried my best to overcome these inadequacies but enough was enough: after being totally unable to follow along with the presenter's code changes I finally decided to throw in the towel.

On Tuesday things actually got worse.  My router, which has been giving me trouble for a while despite my best efforts to diagnose and fix it, now locks up every 20 minutes or so forcing me to pull the plug and reset it for another 20 minutes.  I have checked every configuration option multiple times and Googled to the ends of the Internet, all to no avail.

So here I am with a shiny new laptop and an old network hub in place of my router - it was the easiest way to re-wire my setup.  I have stable Internet access now but that doesn't help me to connect my wireless devices.  Time for a new router also?

Right now, time for sleep...

Reflections on Chrome

Dear Diary,
When is Chrome not a browser?
When it's an operating system... one that isn't much more than a browser.

It's all a bit confusing to be honest but here's the rub:

(Not quite) Live Blog: Google Chrome O/S presentations

Dear Diary,
Here I am at Bellevue City Hall, in a very modern-looking little auditorium. WiFi is up and connected and Bluetooth is working fine.

I was a little late for the opening networking session but I managed to sign on to help demo a web-based team whiteboard tool with my wedding plans! I'm still not sure what my fiance is going to make of that. :)

After an introductory presentation by hosts Wicresoft: IT consulting & outsourcing company, we got to the meat of the evening...

Blogger-droid you are failing me miserably!

Dear Diary,
Here I am trying to live-blog... WiFi is working, Bluetooth file transfer is working, even my makeshift tablet-stand is working. The only thing that is not working is Blogger-droid! I have a lenghty post replete with snapshots and it's stuck in draft - I cannot publish it. No matter how many times I click [Publish blog post], Blogger-droid will not publish anything other than an empty post. Aaaargh!!! :(

At least I didn't lose my post entirely as I thought had happened at one point.

Let's see if I can at least publish this...

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Excited!!!

Dear Diary,
This evening I am attending a presentation & networking event for Google's Chrome O/S.  I will attempt something I have only done once before: a live blog post.

As of this morning my HTC myTouch phone is up and running with T-Mobile so I will have not one but two Android devices with me: phone and tablet.  According to hotspotr.com there is a free municipal WiFi network in downtown Bellevue called 'Bellevue Connect'.  If I cannot connect to that for some reason, I will tether the tablet to my phone and buy a T-Mobile 'Web Daypass' to get my connection.

I can also take pictures with the phone and copy them to the tablet via Bluetooth file transfer.

Nerdvana!  :)

Wetware: A different kind of programming

Dear Diary,
No, this isn’t going to be an entry about neural jacks and CyberPunk.  The “programming” in question is teaching: I am learning to teach Yoga.  Yes, this Codemonkey is also a budding Yogi!

As I have learned before, teaching can be a lot of work but also a lot of fun and a great learning experience to boot.  This teacher training is no exception.  We are entering the second weekend – Friday evening, all day Saturday and all day Sunday – and already I have learned a lot about what I don’t know and quite a bit more about some of the things I thought I did.

There is a lot of information you need to know in order to be able to keep your students safe and help them to achieve the correct alignment in the poses… “Activate the feet by pressing the toe mounds, outer edges of the feet and heels into the floor; lift the arches.  Contract the quadriceps.  Lift the pit of the abdomen.”  Who knew that standing still – Tadasana – was so complicated?  And those are just the basic instructions…

For four years Yoga has helped me to improve my physical and mental fitness and to undo the negative effects of living in ignorance of my body for three decades.  Soon I will be able to offer the same opportunity to others.  It is a heart-warming thought.

Namaste.

Danger! Danger Will Robinson!

Dear Diary,
'Robo Defense' was the first game I ever saw (and played) on Android.  It was the first thing that really made me go "oooh, I want that!" at a time when I was otherwise content with my Symbian-based Sony-Ericsson P1.

So of course a year later when I got my tablet, the first game I went looking for in the Marketplace was... Robo Defense.  Sure enough I downloaded the trial, got hooked and bought the pay version. (Amid much eye rolling from my then girlfriend who just could not understand the appeal of trying over and over again to place the towers in precisely the right configuration to take out every single enemy before they could escape!)

I didn't realize it at the time but I was pampered: I could view the whole map on a single screen with room to spare.

'Robo Defense' on a tablet

It came as quite a shock to (re-)discover that on a phone you have to scroll around to see everything.  It was a bit like being handed a big juicy banana that someone else had already taken a big bite out of.

'Robo Defense' on a phone

Happily the Robo Defense development folks have now upgraded the game's graphics to High Definition and added a zoom slider so that you can view almost the whole map on a phone screen, albeit with teeny tiny towers.

Now with added zoooom

Now if only they would do something about the sound effects: just thinking about that cacophony of bad noise makes my ears ring.

PS Three or possibly four fixed zoom levels would be even more useful than the variable slider

PPS Please re-size the tower purchase icons when I zoom out, otherwise they look ridiculously large. Thanks!