iPhone Photo Phun: The Boys at Baseball Practice

Just a quickie this evening.

Thursdays this month (and much of last month) have been very busy, between the boys each having baseball practice one after another. First Timmy has practice from 5:30-7:30pm, then Jacob's is one field over from 7:30-8:30pm.

It's become a tradition -- about 8-10 "little siblings" get together to play catch, tag, hide and seek, or some other classic game while the older brothers are practicing.  It's really cute.

After about a half hour of hide and seek, I looked over and saw a scene that seemed fitting for my Hipstamatic iPhone app...

The Hipstamatic app is like Instagram -- it filters your digital pictures to look old-school :-)  It seemed to work out in this scene, so long as you don't know what the kids are doing.

So...what are they doing????

The boys are watching the 2nd kid from the left play an iPhone app.  Three of the four of them (including Timmy) are on the same baseball team and they were all hanging out while their big brothers had baseball practice.  I believe Timmy told me he was playing a game called Where's My Water.

I tried to cram my iPhone lens through a fence link to get pictures of Jacob at bat, but it didn't work so well.

A Geeky Experiment: Converting Mowing the Huge Lawn into Mileage and Calories

This is about 1/2 of the backyard in view here.  You can also see our backyard on our weather webcam here.  For some reason the homeowner removed every...single...tree...and...shrub from his lawn.  On Google maps you could see an area of pine trees in the middle of the backyard, but no longer.  More for me to mow.

I'd been wanting to do this for months, and it wasn't till just before Labor Day that I finally did it!

I measured the distance covered mowing our big backyard.  I also measured the time and the calories expended doing it.  Remember, I'm a numbers girl!

It wasn't hard -- I guess anyone could do it with a pedometer, right?  But of course I had to get all techie!

We have an enormous lawn, and because we won't be living here that long, we chose not to invest in a riding mower, and just tough out using our 11-year-old 21" wide push-mower.  When we first moved here in the cooler season, this wasn't so bad.  I didn't have to mow at all for the first 3 months, and then it wasn't often.

Note: Many of you know that I'm the one who mows the lawn in the family.  I don't mind at all.  Until we moved into this particular house, doing this chore wasn't a big deal.  In fact, if I mow on weekends, it's a nice break from the kids!  Dave has horrible grass allergies, and I'd rather take on this chore than deal with his nose-blowing after he does it.

But by Memorial Day, in order to mulch the grass I was cutting (I can't stand bagging/dumping grass), I had to mow no more than weekly, preferably every 5 days to minimize clumps of dead grass among the mulching.  It got really old really fast.  I need about 2 hours to do the entire lawn, but not while the sprinklers are running, or first thing in the morning when the lawn is covered with dew.  So I'd usually wait until as late in the evening as possible, and mow mow mow until I couldn't walk in a straight line anymore because it was so hot.  And I'd still be soaked in sweat.

Between the sweating, sore arms and all the walking I was doing, I figured I'd regard this as a real workout.

There's an app for that!

I attached my Nike+ sensor to my old running shoes that I wear to mow the lawn, fired up the Nike+ app on my iPhone and I got going with the lawn.  Here are the results:

Ignore the fact this is being called a "run".  Obviously it isn't, as seen by the 22:23/mile pace.  This is the front yard only.  It's about 1/2 the size of the back.  The thin line is a micro-measurement of my pace, and it makes me wonder if there's a slope to our yard.  I was mowing in rows parallel to the front of the house.  The deep plunges in the pace graphs are water breaks.

The backyard.  Almost double the distance and a slightly faster pace, which I can attribute to much much longer rows.

So I now know that cutting my yard takes about 1:15 hours (with no breaks, but I take 15-20 minutes worth of breaks), is 3.48 miles, and expends 420 calories (which for me is the same as a 3.5 mile run).

Want more geeky information regarding mowing the lawn?  Here's some for you:

Earlier this year (in the middle of their summer lawn-mowing season I assume), two Australian mathematicians calculated the ideal pattern to mow your lawn with minimal mileage.

This past spring, Wired.com posted this How-to Wiki with ideas on how to make the dreaded lawn-mowing chore more tolerable.  From getting rid of grass in favor of flowers, trees and shrubs...to robotic lawn mowers (i.e. Roombas for your yard!).

Playable Angry Birds Birthday Cake

I will admit I don't play the game (yet), but this is an AMAZING cake! Enjoy!

Let me know when you see a playable Bejeweled Blitz cake!

This Morning's Run

We'll see how long this takes me....

Timmy's Flower Pot -- Repurposed!

To follow up on yesterday's panicked posting...

I went to the Apple Store today and came out of there with a new replacement iPhone. Apple has a program where wet iPhones can be replaced for $199. This is FAR cheaper than walking into the store in the middle of a two-year contract and buying a new phone: $500.

But far more expensive than if I hadn't dropped the phone into the toilet to begin with.

Anyway, to get on with my life and put this sadness behind me...

Timmy came across an empty flower pot in our garage, where I've stored all of our flowerpots. It was one that he made for me at preschool in 2009 for Mother's Day. It had a potted petunia in it. Once the petunia finished up for the season, I put away the flowerpot.

This upset Timmy. He asked this week "Can we buy some more flowers to plant in it?"

I told him "No", but I did have a good idea...

You've all seen them at the doctor's office or anywhere else where you're having to sign paperwork and they're attempting for you to not steal pens. The flower pot full of pens.

So that's what I did this morning. I ran over to Michael's and picked up a few fall-inspired flowers and some floral binding tape. I had everything else I needed in the house: the pot, the beans as filler for the pot, and plenty of pens and pencils.

I whipped this together in under 10 minutes. Cute, isn't it?

From 2010 09 06 Timmy's Flower Pot

And here's the back:

From 2010 09 06 Timmy's Flower Pot

Timmy was thrilled to see this come to life, and is happy his flowerpot is now a centerpiece at the kitchen table. And maybe now I won't leave a trail of pens and pencils all over the house.

Although I have to say...the floral binding tape leaves a sticky residue that I hope goes away over time...

iPhone and Potties Don't Mix!

Right after I hit "Publish Post" on that Labor Day blog post below, something dreadful happened.

I got up from my spot on the couch where I do my blogging, walked to the half bath just outside the family room, and prepared to go to the bathroom. Before I could get started (thankfully!) my iPhone fell out of the front pocket of my shorts and I heard the "Plop!".

Oh F-U-D-G-E.

As quickly as humanly possible, I fished my phone out of the bowl, wiped it with a towel and ran back to the laptop by the couch to Google "wet iphone".

Go ahead, Google it yourselves and see what you get...

Mostly blog posts about (a) how to dry off a wet iPhone and (b) how to scam the Apple Store into pretending your phone didn't get wet to get a free replacement.

The phone was still on while I was reading all this...but the screen had become VERY dark.  Not off, but really dark.  I tried to make a phone call, but the phone was indicating that the SIM card was missing.

Quick!  Remove the SIM card!

I found my can of compressed air and blasted some of the moisture out of the bottom port, the top headphones and SIM port and around the home button.

The next step was to store the phone in a container filled with uncooked rice.  Just immerse the phone into the rice.  You have to be disciplined to not turn on the phone (and risk shorting out the circuits) and let the rice do its work drawing the moisture out of the interior of the phone.

So that's where we stand right now.  I made an appointment at the Apple Store for tomorrow afternoon to investigate a replacement just in case the rice doesn't work out...

UPDATE: The phone has been sitting in the rice for 9 hours.  I misbehaved and turned on the phone just now and Dave and I made a test call.  It all seemed to work.  Whoo hoo, right?

No...the home button still doesn't work.  In order to attempt another App, I had to power off the phone, then power it back on to return to the home screen.  Then I could check out the iPod feature (which worked) and a couple of the apps.

It's back in the rice for the night.  It has 12 more hours before I have to decide on attempting to replace it altogether.

Major Mom the Geek Strikes Again...

Just showing off one of the gizmo gadgets I'm trying out here. This software is in my iPhone.  It ties into the GPS in the phone and records location, distance, speed and time.  I've downloaded the free version, which has some sort of screen saver glitch that prevents me from stopping the runs in time, so it isn't 100% accurate, but it's good enough for me.  In fact, in this case, the GPS didn't kick on until I was about 6 houses down from where I started running, so this route is about .1 miles short.

I love that it's translating into route information and elevation data.  You can even see that I run opposing traffic if you zoom in enough :-)

For more oohs...and aaahhhhs....click on "Show Elevation" towards the bottom. This is one of the hillier runs I do, and my knees usually pay me back for about 24 hours after this run.

All I Needed Was a Little Fine Tuning...

Today at "The Bra", I saw someone typing away on his iPhone. So I stopped and asked, "Excuse me, are you paying for the websurfing?"

(You know me, I'm not going to sugar coat my question!)

Anyway, this guy (a pilot, actually) showed me how to fine tune the settings on the phone so that my data tranissions never ride on the local cell phone network here. So if I'm kicked off the wireless here, I won't get charged for data transmissions on the Q-Tel network.

Since I have my phone with me all the time as my music, this makes it much easier than lugging my laptop to the Bra area everytime I might have a hankering to get on Blogger or Facebook.

In other good news, my laptop batteries arrived today and they seem to be in good working order. They're charging as we speak. I'm so glad I won't be tethered to these outlets so much now.

My final note: went to the base theater to see "Nights in Rodanthe". It's okay. Sadder than I thought, but definitely not "Marley and Me". I guess I should read the Nicholas Sparks book (I think that's who authored it). The scenery (story is set on the NC Outer Banks) is stunning and I started missing the beaches of North Carolina, where our family spent quite a bit of time when Dave was in school. I've read a couple of his books and have enjoyed them.


Until next time!

No more iPhone transmissions from Southwest Asia!

I used my iPhone a few times since I’ve been here.  I used it quite a bit en route, uploading pictures and chatting on Facebook from Italy.  My phone will officially stay in “airplane mode” for the rest of my time here! 

So it’s essentially an iPod touch, still quite useful to me.  I can still access my tunes, my one movie (Star Wars the Clone Wars), and my notes, contact lists and games.  

I just checked my AT&T bill and did the math:  I’ve done 5.07MB (5070KB) of data transmission via the iPhone on this trip, at $0.0195 per KB = $98.87!!!!

I knew this was coming…I received a text message in Germany, Italy and my location here, each from the respective cell phone companies (Vodaphone, Voda-It, the one here) telling me the data transmission charges.  My phone can hop on wireless here when it can find it, but as soon as the wireless drops, the cell phone network picks up the slack and suddenly the charges accrue.

Can’t wait for that first paycheck from this trip to cover those charges!

-Patricia

One More

Another emailed beach pic

Testing a new capability

This is an emailed blog posting from my phone on the beach in Va Beach!

Let's see if it works!

Techno-Addicto-Lady II: The Auxiliary Cable

So one of the things I was looking forward to with my new iPhone was plugging it into our car's auxiliary port and letting the tunes fly through our car's stereo speakers.

We had issues with our Motorola Rokrs before because our aux cables were for 3.5 mm jacks, Rokrs needed 2.5 mm jacks. Of course.

I was told iPhones use 3.5mm headphone jacks and there should be no problem plugging it into my vehicle. Yay!

But when I tried to plug in our cable, it turned out the port on the top of the iPhone was "recessed" and the cable wouldn't plug in all the way.



Isn't that the way it always goes? You think you've got it covered, and then Apple pulls some sort of proprietary trick to make you have to run out and buy a "special" product.

Well I wasn't going to let Apple get the better of me on this one!

I was at Radio Shack, where I was able to find the iPhone's iGo tip I needed for my car charger (yay!) and I explained my frustration with the recessed audio-out port. The gentlemen pondered whether I might like to "whittle down" the rubber casing on one end of one of the cables I already have. Heck, what do I have to lose, right?

So last night I gave it a go, and it worked!

Before:


After:


Success!

Techno-Addicto-Lady: NOW WITH PHOTOS!

I'm sure that's what Dave's going to be calling me for the next few days.

First of all, I want to share this hilarious blog entry that Dave showed me. I've felt this mother's pain, hm, EIGHT times and counting! And we'll be going through it again in June in Strasburg, PA.

Anyway...

I GOT MY iPHONE! I'm SO excited! Our economic stimulus money is scheduled to deposit on the 16th, but I just received a reserve drill weekend paycheck so I figured I'd do some money magic and get the phone a bit ahead of time. Despite reports that Apple is planning a shortage of iPhones this month in anticipation of some new released, our local AT&T Wireless retailer had plenty of both the 8 GB and 16 GB models in stock.

So, as advertised, it was very simple to bring it home, break it out of the package, and plug it into the computer once you have the latest version of iTunes up and running on your desktop/laptop. It's pretty straight-forward.

I have only two concerns:

1.) Since I don't use Outlook to manage my contact information, I wasn't able to smoothly migrate contacts. I had to manually input phone numbers, e-mail addresses and even several physical addresses into the phone.
2.) I bought a super-fancy iGo car phone charger, which allows you to change out tips only for much less than buying a whole new charger. The iPhone tips are pretty hard to find, so I'll have to find it online.

As Wendy, Julie, Gloria and Rick will all tell you this afternoon at the park, I was glued to the thing all afternoon while the kids played. Mainly I was showing it off to friends, but I was also feverishly transfering the contacts from my old phone to the new phone.

I got that done tonight. Phew!

So this contact list, once transfered, turned out pretty cool! You can put under one name the cell phone, home phone, work phone, home and work e-mail addresses, physical addresses and even homepages! All in one place. Here's a demo for you, I'll pay homage to the guy who provided me the money this week to buy my new toy!



Touch the phone number and you place a call:


Touch the e-mail address and start drafting an e-mail:


Touch the homepage address, and the web browser appears with the web site:


And get this:

Touch the address and Google Maps comes up with the location of the address.



How about a satellite shot?

Then, "Would you like directions here from your current location?"

WOULD I???

(For those who don't know me, I'm such a map geek!).

I was able to upload almost my entire iTunes music library without putting hardly a dent in the phone storage capacity.

Time to reply to some e-mails...not with the iPhone, though. It's cool, but I still need to practice typing with that little thing.