Monday, December 29, 2008

It is raining / snow is melting

Well, it looks like all that is over with ... just a couple more pictures of the bogster to remember it by....



This is one of those green "caution children playing" dudes that stand about 3 feet tall, snow has just about covered him up!

Friday, December 26, 2008

Best Snow Frolic


Here is the best snow frolic of bogie thus far. Reminds me of a dolphin making its way through some surf.

Here is my truck and I removed some of the snow off of it already.

Here is my mailbox and you can see that the entire foot of snow on it is frozen at the bottom and gravity is sliding it off in one big piece.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Mac vs PC Transformers

A new YouTube Mac vs PC advertisement in the Transformers look and feel. I'm sure this is a portfolio piece for some very talented people.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Mrs Butterworth Makes An Appearance



It has been a couple days since my last post and yes, we still have more snow. Yesterday was the first day without any real accumulation but the entire Clearview area, in which I live, is pretty much shut down. The wonder dog continues to love it but even he is getting a “are you kidding me” look on his face as he tries to make it up the hill with its 18+ inches of snow.


As you can see, the roads are pretty packed with snow but absolutely beautiful in their blanket of snow.



Now my landlord and neighbor in the two unit town home I live in is a very creative fellow. He and his girlfriend were struggling to make a traditional snow man in this type of snow and have to resolve to using the bucket full of snow technique. Their creative urges blossomed and turned into a Mrs Butterworth sculpture in the back yard.




Oh and here is another video of Bogie totally getting into our morning walk. Now I have to say the camera I’m putting the camera right in front of my mouth as I’m filming. So I don’t really sound like Darth Vader breathing in real life ... or ... do I?

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Caught Bogie Peeing On Santa Clause

Well, not really! In fact, I had to get him to come over and pose with inflata santa.

The above picture was taken yesterday because today we got ... yet another ... six inches of snow or more. Getting semi serious out there these days. Bogie absolutely loves it and today he met his occasional neighborhood buddy.



Two snow dogs meet after a fresh layer of snow on top of an already healthy amount of snow ... what did you think would happen? I wish I would have taken bogie off of his leach and let them play. Couldn’t get the camera on them early enough and I was a bit worried about my 9 year old puppy and his occasional bad back. Both are obviously snow dogs, both are over 7 years old and both were prancing around like puppies.



Friday, December 19, 2008

Mo Mo Snow



Yet more snow came down in Snohomish but that didn’t dampen the desire of the wonder dog for a morning walk!


Thursday, December 18, 2008

Mo Snow In Snohomish



Well, the power flickered off for an instant last night as we were getting some sleet that later became heavy snow. Because of this, what I thought was an early morning rise of 4:30 AM was actually a 1:30 AM trip to the coffee pot. It was about 3 hours later before I noticed that time difference on the computer. So it was a bit dark as bogie and I started off on our morning walk.





I was experimenting with the different settings on my camera and still cannot get any good dusk pictures. The close ups are pretty suspect as well but had fun trying to snap some pics along the way.


Part of my experiment was using the movie portion of the camera and seeing if I could get bogie to prance a little bit. I’ll try and include the video below. I’ve had mixed results when uploading movies to blogger.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Snow Comes To Snohomish



Well, Saturday the snow flurries started to look substantial and I thought it had a good chance at sticking. Took the above pictures during the very start and the snow doesn’t seem to show up in the pictures at all. Went out for a few drinks downtown and it add accumulated quite a bit in the few hours I was out.

Here you can see an early Sunday morning picture as Bogie prepares to take me for a morning walk. It was very pretty outside and I wish my camera could do it justice.


Later on, I let Bogie hang out and left the door cracked open, so he could come in on his own when ready.

Ten minutes later, he gives me a look as if to say ... “Oh, no ... I’m good right here!”.


Another early morning picture a day later on Monday.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

10 Great iPhone Tips

Came across this posting from taptaptap and ended up subscribing to this blog. Just like I mentioned in my book review, I simply love technical information that comes across to simple and clean! The number one tip of how to scroll to the top of a list via a tap is my favorite. Here is the link to the posting (click here)

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

The iPhone Book , Second Edition

The iPhone and the AppleTV products were introduced to the public at the same time. I was a bit disappointed because I selfishly wanted the attention to be switched. I wanted a jaw dropping feature rich Apple based media entertainment center and a basic phone with some Apple related features. I’m not much of a phone guy.

My Motorola phone was on its last leg about the time the 3G iPhone came out. Actually, it had no legs or arms and reminded me of the scene in Monty Pythons movie The Holy Grail. I kept trying to use it, although the battery would die within 5 minutes of a call. I waited a month after the 3G phone became available. First because I wanted to see what the feedback from new users would turn out to be and because I’m not the kind of guy to stand in line for practically anything.

I went into the Apple store with a 70% chance of purchasing one and forcing down the minimum $70 a month AT&T connection charges. As it turned out, the darn nice and helpful Apple Store employees were way too charming for my reservations to stand. Opening the graceful packaging of my 3G iPhone, I was a bit stunned there wasn’t any real documentation on how to use the product. Online, there is a little bit more but it is scattered pieces of information here and there.

So about the same time I began considering joining the army of iPhone owners, I stumbled upon Terry Whites technical blog. I quickly added it to my google reader and enjoyed both his writing style and choice of content to cover. It was there that I discovered he had produced a 3G iPhone book with coauthor Scott Kelly. I immediately placed an order for it on Amazon.com and have been tip toeing through its content every since. During a recent morning stay at my automobile dealership for an oil change, I finished it and found it a delightful book. Delightful isn’t something you normally associate with a review of a technical resource and that is simply too bad.

The book covers quite a bit of content in a very friendly and open manner. Each topic is covered on a single page and includes a very helpful picture to cover that topic. It is akin to the Visual QuickStart guides of old but much more elegant. Some topics includes a bonus tip at the bottom of the page and some of them are real gems! Now many of the tips are evident with the user friendly interface of the iPhone but I simply missed them. One of these is on page 27, which shows how easy it is to add a dialed number to your contacts module or the bonus tip on page 26 that shows how easy it is to hit redial. Here is a quick listing of my favorites ...

Page 30 - Seeing a persons photo when they call
Page 33 - Assigning a ring tone to a caller
Page 77 - Filing an email into a folder
(and why I cannot with my POP account)
Page 117 - iPhone as an alarm clock
Pages 123 to 129 - all map related
Page 131 - Adding weather for other cities
Page 188 - Syncing your iPhone on another computer
Page 201 - Adding music to your photo slideshow
(although it is bit lame)
Page 206 - Making a photo your wallpaper
Page 201 to 261 - The entire chapter on Killer Tips and Tricks

So the book is about $20.00 and well worth it for the new iPhone user. I can see this be a volume on my shelf for many years for a couple reasons. First will be to quickly look something up or thumb through it from time to time. Second, as an example of how a technical book should be written in regards of tone and content!
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More info about the author and FileMaker in general, contact me at info@dwaynewright.com.

© 2008 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com

Monday, December 8, 2008

Save Dollhouse Video Campaign

I’m a big fan of Joss Whedon but have to admit that I never watched Firefly until it came out on DVD (and had been canceled months before). I just wasn’t up to being disappointed when Fox canceled the show, which of course they did. Plus, I don’t watch much network television anyway because I like to view the DVDs on my project screen. Any hoo ... I feel Fox is probably going to cancel this one also and I’m not alone. This youtube video shows a campaign to save a show that hasn’t even aired on TV yet ... cause ... well, it is on the Fox network. Pretty funny in a terribly sad geek way ...

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Odd December Gaunt Down Centennial Trail



I needed to go downtown to deposit a client check and that was reason enough to take the wonder dog on a quick little gaunt down Centennial Trail. I almost forgot to grab my camera and that would have been a bit of a shame.


Starting off, the peacocks were out. One of the houses at the beginning of the trail has a couple peacocks, or they used to have a couple. Now it looks like the peacocks might have got a little busy and there are more of them than I remembered. Perhaps that is why so many of them were out of their pens and on the trail. Totally weird, but when Bogie was ignoring them, they seemed to be coming over to check him out. As soon as he turned towards them, they would scuttle away. I can only assume they were girl peacocks, probably teenagers.



I noticed shortly after the 2 mile mark, that a couple horses were down close to the fence. Once earlier in the year, we had done this and bogie touched noses with one of the horses. Didn’t have a camera that time around but thought I’d give it a go today.

Almost nose touchage ... and ... I’m pretty happy with this shot today.

Monday, December 1, 2008

NeXT demonstration video

Found this link from Alfred TV for a NeXT demonstration video. I worked for BusinessLand at the time this cube was originally released and we sold them ... well we kinda tried selling them but no one would really buy one.