Chilled Out Bearded Man

Don't bee caught unprepared

This is in response to a post by Meg Pickard and will make more sense if you read her article first.

I actually had a similar experience a few years back when I was staying in downtown Chicago at a cheap ($100 per night) hotel. The place was not shiny new, but it also was not a dirty old dump. It just looked like an older place that had been kept up well.

I foolishly went to bed wearing only my boxer shorts and a t-shirt. I awoke to find a bite in a place you don’t want to be bitten. My first instinct was that it was a spider or mosquito, but there was a lingering thought that maybe it was something else. When I returned to my hotel room later in the day, I discovered the red brown bug on the edge of my bed.

Based on where I had been bitten, I jumped to the conclusion that it was crabs – not knowing that crabs were way way smaller. I actually looked up crabs on the internet and they look just like the bug that was on my bed. Now I know that they could not have been crabs for many obvious reasons. And I think Meg finally solved my pickle as to what it was. Luckily, I don’t think I brought any of the bugs back home with me.

I want to recommend a tool for traveling. My hostel jumping friend told me about it.

Fold a bed sheet in half the long way. Stitch the long end and one short end closed. Now you have a lightweight protective sleeping bag. For extra credit you can get a longer bedsheet and add a place to put your pillow, so that you don’t need to carry a pillow case with you when you travel.

Thanks to Meg Pickard for reminding me about this. I hope our experiences can be a lesson to you other travelers out there.

I just read a short article on The Next Web (http://thenextweb.com/europe/2009/10/18/pirate-party-leader-threatened-burnt-stake/)about Sweden’s Pirate Party in the European Union. Here were a few very interesting points they summarized which made a lot of sense to me:

* Deep Packet Inspection and any other methods of ‘looking inside’ the data being transmitted by individuals is wrong, just like it’s illegal to intercept mail in the postal service.
* ISPs should be immune from prosecution for what’s sent through their networks, just like the postal service isn’t prosecuted for moving illegal drugs.
* Individuals have a right to privacy online and offline
* Copyright should only apply to commercial work – bedroom remixers and mashup artists shouldn’t have to ask permission to release their work unless they want to charge for it.
* Finally, and most controversially, copyright on any song, film or any other creative work should be just five years. That would mean artists would only be able to earn a living from their music for five years before the song became public property.

I definitely agree that the last one is controversial, but I have heard similar points from GNU creator, Richard Stallman: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html. His point is that a copyright is a monopoly given to a writer,etc with the intent of promoting innovation. Having long copyrights is counter to the purpose of the law, and he claims, counter to the constitution. I still do not have enough knowledge about this subject to form a strong opinion, so I will leave it at that.

As everyone has probably already heard today, Google placed a big eclair on their lawn next to the giant cupcake and donut. Cupcake was the first platform fix of Google’s Android and donut was second recently released update. The big eclair is a sign that the third update must be coming out into the dev world in the near future:

It troubles me a little to say such a thing about men, especially beardless ones, but this video is true beauty. I imagine this must have been the sort of thing that Greek nobility were accustomed to viewing on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I cannot embed the video as Youtube does not allow embedding this first video.

You can view it, by visiting this link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SPRtIImYJg

And if that wasn’t impressive enough, check out this less exacting, though more animated show:

This would be such an incredible feat if only they had beards. Maybe next time they will grow out some facial hair and make a truly beautiful performance…

This is so wild. Knox and a troop of men carried about 120,000 pounds of cannons 300 miles from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston in 2 months. Because of this amazing feat, the American troops had cannons to surprise attack the British.
The map below isn’t the exact course, but follows the approximate path of Knox and his troops. They carried the cannons over Lake George on boats. Then, they pulled the cannons on sleds over snow and over frozen rivers. There is a lot more to this. Read “1776″ by David McCullough for more details. (I haven’t finished the book, but McCullough is an awesome storyteller.)

Here’s the link in case the route doesn’t show on the map below:
Map

View Larger Map

Is it finally here? Yes it is. Well… Almost… And what is it? Only the greatest thing since smart phones, that’s what. Its gonna turn your smart phone into a true full fledged wireless mobile media device.

Its flash video for smart phones – its the Adobe Flash Player 10.1.

And  just like last November, its almost ready, but not quite. (http://www.chilledoutbeardedman.com/2009/01/25/g1-android-and-adobe-flash-player/) But its definitely sounding a lot more realistic this time around.

It was announced earlier today on October 5, 2009 at Adobe MAX as a part of the Open Screen Project, an initiative to “Enable consumers to engage with rich Internet experiences seamlessly across any device, anywhere.” (www.openscreenproject.org)

A beta version of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is expected to be available for some devices by the end of 2009. You can sign up to be notified about this release here: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_flashplayer10_signup

The Flash Player is expected to be fully available for the first half of 2010, whatever that means.

You can read all of the technical details about the new Flash Player here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/features.html

I couldn’t be more excited for this.

I guess 3G service providers will have to start instituting policies for bandwidth usage, as bandwidth is already being strained without mobile devices having easy access to streaming video content.  Apple users have been complaining about bad and slow connections for quite some time now on the AT&T coverage they are required to use.

The big question for me, though, is how’s this all gonna work on T-Mobile’s Android phones?

Not surprisingly, the day before Adobe’s big announcement Google made a little announcement of their own. Google announced that they are joining Adobe on the Open Screen Project. (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/teaming-up-with-adobe-and-open-screen.html)

I’ve been wondering for quite some time what the hang up is with getting the Flash Player to run on a wireless mobile device seeing as us Android users have had Youtube accessibility for quite some time now.

It will also be interesting to see how this affect’s the smart phone market as this version of Flash Player is not expected to run on the iPhone.  Adobe is giving developers tools in CS5 for developing iPhone video applications in ActionScript3. CS5 will be available by the end of this year. (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/)

Perhaps Apple is planning to come out with some new device that outshines all smart phones including the iPhone and if they can get it onto Verizon’s awesome network maybe they would be in business. But for now, I’m gonna stick with my T-Mobile G1… (Although, the up-and-coming Android based Motorola Cliq sure is sounding tempting. http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/Motorola-CLIQ-US-EN)

Go Adobe! We’ve been ready. We’re ready now. And when you put it out there, we’ll all be there ready with big smiles and glassed over eyes (from watching too many videos, of course).