I love geocaching with my G1 using GeoBeagle. It is a great phone with GPS abilities, and of course GeoBeagle is the best program out there for the Android platform for geocaching (plus, it’s free). However, there are times when you exceed the ability to use the program, especially if you need a map to find where to drive to and you are in an area not serviced by T-Mobile. Such was the case the other day when at the family reunion in Minerva.
There was an additional problem, I loaded my G1 up with the 500 caches nearest me, and they stopped just outside of Minerva. This was no fault of the phone, the program or anything other than there being too many caches close to me to include Minerva. I have since ran a search for Minerva and will add those to the list soon.
The big issue while there was the lack of a signal. I couldn’t find places on Google Maps as it requires a good signal, and I couldn’t find new caches in the area to add manually as I didn’t have a signal. At the moment, GeoBeagle doesn’t support offline maps, though it is on the feature request list. Of course even if it did, my lack of foresight wouldn’t have solved the problem of not having caches for the area loaded up. Once again we see the value of the lesson of what happens when you assume something. I assumed that the area would be covered in my 100 mile search radius, but it is just the first 500 in that 100 miles that the query pulls, and in this case I wasn’t loaded in from my full database, which probably includes Minerva already.
Anyhow, the offline maps issue and some others show the value of still needing a good handled unit.
To that end here is the list of handheld units I want…

I am constantly confused when Republicans and those on the right talk about how they are the ones for individual liberty. Are they not the ones who oppose legalizing marijuana? Are they not the ones opposed to gay marriage? Was it not a Republican that proposed to have the Pentagon ban Wicca from our armed forces? It was the lack of individual liberty that made me move from the Republicans to the Libertarians long ago.
Of course now I have problems with free market capitalism as well as it suffers the same problem socialism (at least as a form of government economic policy which to me isn’t really socialism but) does, greed. If everyone played fair, true socialism would probably be the best route. It is the means that is most fair to the most number of people, everyone. My problem with it is then where is the motivation to do better? Of course perhaps that gets back to the playing fair part. If everyone played fair under a capitalist situation, then you add the motivation to do better, but then you create castes, and that by itself isn’t fair to the workers. So where I stand on economics is still in the air.
I’ve done lots of those “What kind of…yada yada… are you?” quizzes. I generally end up being an anarchist. This is perhaps true, Libertarians are basically anarchist with a capitalist lean rather than the default socialist lean. I am certainly not a socialist, at least not as it is traditionally practiced. So I find myself drifting without political or economic ties. When I find the near perfect system, I’ll let you know.

Later today, more details about the torture the US did on detainees will be released. Those on the right are upset. They think that if the world knows what we did in detail it will threaten our national security. They believe that the release of any photos would do the same thing.
They are missing the point. If we never did those despicable things, there would never be anything to leak out and threaten our national security. We are, at least according to those on the right, the supposed moral leader of the world. Yet we committed immoral acts.
We are the most “Christian” nation in the world and yet we freely engaged in the torture of humans and think we are justified in doing so… the Nazis thought they were justified as well. That is not to say that the torture of those people is anything like the Holocaust. Obviously the murder of millions of people is far worse, but the point is that in both cases the people in power, felt justified in doing what they did.
We are the only industrialized nation not to provide affordable health care. The right can talk how nobody is denied health care all they want, but they again miss the point. Yes you can get health care, but can you afford it afterwords. Nobody is saying the poor can’t get the health care, they are saying people can’t afford to get it so they ignore it.
The US is the only advanced economy in the world that doesn’t guarantee workers get paid vacation time. New Zealand, Australia and much of Europe grantee workers at least 20 days, with some demanding 25 to 30 days, and those don’t count mandatory paid holidays. I get 5 days, and a couple holidays, and I am doing better than 1 in 4 Americans.
I could go on and on, and initially did, but I’ve touched on those subjects before, so I’ll leave them be for this post. How can we be upset the information is coming out? If we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t have anything to be ashamed of. If we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t have a threat to our national security. I think it would be better for our national security to let it all come out, and to swiftly prosecute those responsible. But Bush, Chaney and the rest of those responsible up for war crimes. What puts us at risk is not dealing with the issue honestly and punishing those responsible. If we investigated and punished all those responsible for these reprehensible acts, then we would in fact be more secure, as the world would see us as dealing with it and not willing to put up with it, even when it was us who did it.

I made my first Wiki entry/edit today over at Cacheopedia. I made an entry on how to use GeoBeagle. Hopefully others will come along and help fill in what I left out.

If you were checking the site all day today you would notice that we kept updating with what was going on with our Zoo trip today. On the top right corner is my Twitter feed… though I am having troubles formatting it correctly.

I have now found a total of 11 caches, 6 of which have been using my T-Mobile G1, and GeoBeagle that I downloaded off the Android Market. I have to say I find that the G1 does really well in the cover of woods. Far better than I expected. GeoBeagle is my favorite Android app so far, and its free, unlike some of the other geocaching apps for Android devices. GeoBeagle is still fairly early in the beta cycle, but there are no real bugs. A few features would be nice to have, and I put a request for those on the forums for it, and the UI could be made a little easier, but all in all a very good app with a very bright future. I am at a loss as to if features should be added/and current features tweaked first, or upgrade UI. With C#, you start with the UI and work on the back end after. This isn’t so much the case with Java, or so I’ve seen so far from what little I have done with Java. I am going to skip listing all my finds this time, if you want to know, the geocaching icon to the side of the page should take you to my geocaching profile. There are two Did Not Finds on that list, none could be blamed on the G1 or GeoBeagle. The one I got a hint for and forgot one of the obvious things about geocaching, the caches are not always on the ground, as for the other, nobody has found it and logged it yet, so it may be MIA.

I got a G1 recently. Great phone with a built in GPS. So now I can go geocaching.
First I got GeoBeagle (available on the Android Market) and it’s required application Radar. Then I had a moment to run accross the street from work… well okay, I drived across the bridge to the other side of the freeway… and went looking for the 77 Cemetery cache. I found it all right. Along the way I saw a baby bunny right next to the cache location, but I didn’t change to camera mode quick enough before he scampered off.
I have to say GeoBeagle works really well. Can’t compare it to the paid apps, but it does the job admirable.
Now to take Sara out with me soon.

In a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Obama, standing in front of the Constitution of the United States, rightfully attacked Bush for his policies regrading detainees. Bush and Cheney and all the others should be prosecuted for war crimes. No doubt they overstep the rule of law, no doubt they tortured, or at least ordered the torture of detainees. Unfortunately, Obama hasn’t had the courage to order a full commission into those war crimes. During this speech, in front of the Constitution, Obama laid out a new plan. A plan that includes putting people in jail because they might commit a crime. It is, as the video below points out, something out of Minority Report (good movie by the way).
Here is Rachel Maddow, one of the more liberal reporters out there, on the most liberal media outlet out there, attacking Obama for it:

Of course this is what separates the liberal media from the conservative media. Hanity, Rush, Beck, O’Reilly and their ilk would just as well such Bush’ and Chaney’s dicks before admitting that they were wrong on Iraq and torture.

Either I deleted them, which I don’t recall, or they got deleted somehow. I’ll have to look over old tables to make sure…

Well, I finally upgraded the site. I have to say I like where WordPress is going with things. I don’t think there are too many changes so far as you the reader goes, but there are lots of changes to the admin areas. If you are running a blog, then I suggest WordPress without reservation.

There are some really cool Android phones coming out soon. The HTC Magic, the Samsung i7500 which has tons of onboard storage and a really cool screen, but both of those lack one key thing, a physical keyboard, with which you could use:

Okay before people get too excited, per the guy’s website, you will need a rooted G1 and have installed Debain on it. So it isn’t running through the Android SDK. Still very impressive.

There are a few things I need to do now before they will think about promoting me to Jr. Copywriter… it seemed like such a sure thing the way my boss and her boss were talking… Anyhow, I first need to find a product we can sell at $100 to $200 profit. This is a bit tricky since I don’t think any of my ideas would sell for that much over cost. There were lots of other reasonable requirements, then it hit to one where I have to be willing to buy the ad space. The question there is, are they saying that I need to actually pay for it, or just something I believe is good enough that if in some fantasy world I had enough to place a full page ad, I would? As it stands there is no way I could afford a full page ad, even in something like the Canton Repository, let alone a major market newspaper. Needless to say, I was sad to get that news… not that it is so bad, at least if I don’t have to pay for the ad. I may never get a job that will let me take care of my family…

Right now, until May 26th, Wal-Mart is giving a $50 gift card for signing a new 2 year agreement with T-Mobile. Sara and I use T-Mobile. Mobile to mobile is free, so you could call us for free, and we could receive your call for free. So if you get a phone that would be free normally with 2 year contract, it comes out like they are paying you to get the phone from them. If you get a G1 like I want to get, it is normally $98.88, but after getting the $50 card, it is basically like getting the phone for only $48.88, which is nearly a steal. Remember, your number is likely to be portable, so you probably don’t need a new number, just a new T-Mobile contract.

As you may have noticed, I am using a new theme. I really dig the theme. It gives lots of cool options on the front that I seemed to be missing in other themes…
You will notice the featured stories. These are not the newest stories all the time, but just posts I figured were worthy of that space.
There are a lot more ad spaces in this theme. Remember, those are here to help me pay the hosting costs, so please follow them. Same thing with the Amazon links. If you want to buy something from Amazon, click one of the Amazon links first, then find your item and buy it.
There is a bug in the comments, but it isn’t from the theme itselffixed. I hope to have that issue fixed this weekend.

That is a screenshot of a basic Hello World application I did for Android… Well, I followed the lesson to make it so it isn’t an original… Anyhow, this is what it would look like on a G1, or other Android based phone.
I thought I would see if I could get into Android development again, and the Hello World application is where you typically start all programming lessons.

Android, is a cool mobile phone (and laptop, etc.) platform. T-Mobile has the G1 out right now, and there are a couple more phones coming out soon from them, and we should see some coming from other carriers this year as well (probably not AT&T and Verizon as they don’t like not controlling the market, and Android opens things up too much, but they will support it if their customers demand it enough). Anyhow, I want one to do geocaching with… and add to the fact that my phone is 4 or so years old, it all adds to the fact it is time to start looking at a new phone.
I learned about a new application for the G1 and other Android devices. It is called SkyMap and you point you phone at a star and it will tell you what it is and more about it. If you want to find a star/planet it will tell you where to look for it. Video demo:

The other day was the National Day of Prayer, and those on the far right violated the commandment of judge not, and bashed Obama’s faith because he didn’t make a big deal out of it… of course the fact that nobody prior to W made a big deal out of it didn’t bother them. As we can see by the purposeful disinformation given to members of the church about cosmology/ambiogenesis/evolution, one can count on the far right to bear false witness.
The National Day of Prayer sort of… okay no sort of about it… violates the separation between church and state. Of course the far right say that was about keeping government out of the affairs of the church, and while that is partially true, they are wrong to suggest that it wasn’t about keeping the church out of government affairs. If one reads the letters to and from Jefferson about it, it was clear the Founding Fathers intended to keep the church out of the state.
Modern day Christians seem to forget the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims came to the Americas to escape, now pay attention, the Christian ran government and the actions of the Church itself. Modern day Christians recall the Pilgrims came for religious freedom, but forget that the ones who persecuting and repressing them were Christians. Heck, it wasn’t too long ago that people were being burned at the stake for being the wrong kind of Christian. A church in power of the state is a dangerous thing, and this is why the Founding Fathers erected the wall of separation between church and state.
Of course all the commentators had to bear false witness and make the claim that the US was founded on Christian principles. Which is odd, since the idea of a republic is Pagan, the idea of Democracy is Pagan and our system of laws is based on English Common Law, which was around long before Christians were in Europe… yes when it was Pagan. So it seems we were founded on principals of the Druids and those worshiping the Greek Pantheon. Most of the Founding Fathers were Deist, not Theist.

I think Ari and I, and perhaps some friends of ours if I can get them to go, will go to a football… err soccer to us… game this year. That’s right, I am thinking of going down to watch the 2008 MLS Champions, The Columbus Crew. I think in the day we’ll go down early, go to the Zoo or COSI, then head to the game. The original plan is to then head back at night.

Some vids:

A great video from many talented people explaining why radio and music suck so much these days. The Beatles came out over 40 years ago and are still influential, still getting radio play, still selling records and in a while will be selling a The Beatles: Rock Band video game. 40 years from now how well will Britney, the Jonas Brothers or any other pop icon be remembered? Will they sell as much music as The Beatles sell now, or heck even then? I would wager that 40 years from now The Beatles, Pink Floyd and lots of other big bands who were around before the 80’s will outsell 98% of the music that is popular today. From the mid 70’s on, music has been largely dead. Internet didn’t kill the music industry. Illegal downloads didn’t kill the music industry. The music industry killed itself by producing a product instead of letting artists create art. To heck with it. Here’s the video:

I should supplement my rant by saying that I am not saying there hasn’t been any good music since the mid 70’s. Lord knows I have liked or loved plenty of music since those days. And there are breakthrough artists that I think will be remembered, loved, respected and influential 40, 50, 100 years after they came out or were popular (if they ever got popular). But 98% of the music produced today is just to make a quick buck for the label. The music industry is no longer interested in fostering talent, they removed the talent from the executive ranks a long time ago and filled it with business people who only care about impressing the shareholders. Shareholders don’t care about fostering talent either, they don’t care if the label is here 10, 50 years from now, they want a quick return on their investment.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop my rant…
The great movie, Almost Famous, touches on how music died in the mid 70’s and became more of a product.

This doesn’t discount my last post regarding what I want for my birthday, just this time I am going to arrange things differently.
$50:

This gives us 13 months of XBox Live Gold membership. After using a trial of XBox Live Gold, it seems this is the new most wanted… well most wanted reasonably priced item anyhow.
For $10 more, one can get Xbox 360 Live 12 Month Messenger Gold Pack, which includes a headset for talking during games, a chat pad and a game. The headset would be kind of nice…

Other items in the $50 range on the Wish List (see the bar on the side) include Seasons 3 and 4 of Battlestar Galactica. Seasons 2 through 4 (season 5 is available for pre-order). Of those BSG is a bit cheaper per season. I still want Whale Rider (that’s about $11). Also on the wishlist is some other games, though the XBox live would be preferred.