A new project and a rant.
So over the past year I have been trying to bridge the gap between my family and technology. I can hardly get my family to do a thing in regards to technology. Send them an e-mail I never get a response. They seem to want to use technology but don’t want to put the effort into learning how to use it. The other day I got a call from my mother saying “I lost everything on your stepdad’s user on Windows Vista! HELP!” I don’t know anything about Windows Vista. It’s the operating system I totally skipped over. I could probably do some navigating and figure it out. She hadn’t backed anything up but luckily a reboot solved her problem.
This prompted me to write up a long detailed e-mail on good backup tips and some free tools and general good advice about saving data. I didn’t get a thank you. I didn’t get one response.
E-Mail is my thing. I love e-mail I find it 100x easier to solve problems with an e-mail then a phone call. I am always on e-mail. You send me an e-mail it gets forwarded to my Mobile Me account which instantly puts it on my iPhone and boom I know you sent something and i will get back to you ASAP. To make things easier for my family I setup a Google Group so that you can just send an e-mail to 1 address and everyone gets it. But people seem afraid to use it.
Here are the current stats on the group.
185 Tristan
118 Mom
49 Aunt
31 Grandpa
31 Uncle
27 Cousin
20 Family Friend
20 Alex
15 Family Friend Old Account
14 Grandma
This has been up for over 2 years and doesn’t seem like it’s getting that much use. Getting people involved in the discussion on things like planning birthday’s is near impossible. My girlfriend her family seems to have e-mail and planning family events in the digital realm down. I don’t get why it’s so hard to reply to an e-mail or click a link and fill out a form.
I finally got my grandma hooked up with a Jitterbug cell phone. That is the oddest phone I have ever seen. Only cell phone I had ever used that has a dialtone when you flip it open. And that everything on the phone is either “Yes” or “No” Do you want to call Tristan?
My family has a ton of videotape so I got the means necessary to work on converting them to the digital format. My desk is kinda loaded at the moment. Two Apple laptops got some VCR’s going here and just piles of technology at the beck and call to get all this done. Here is an picture of my desk at the moment.
Sent out an e-mail for that no response not a person in the world seems to care. I tested out the technology with my High School Senior Slideshow. I wasn’t in it but it was the only video tape I had around the house.
You can view that at the following link North Kitsap High School Graduating Class of 2001 But I would be careful. It’s 46 minutes of a slideshow of people you probably have no clue about. It was really just a visual test to see how well it worked. I also changed the audio to be a bit better quality.
But I hope to get on this project there are tons of funny. (Well I would find funny) videos that we recorded over our childhood years. That I would like to convert to a digital format. I don’t think I would want to convert them to DVD. Since would be easier to grab a video file and make a DVD if you so choose.
But anyways I guess I just wanted to rant that my family doesn’t use technology in a way that seems to be the most productive. Or seem to care about any of the efforts that I put forth into helping them. But what do I know. It’s late I am going to bed thanks for reading.
Where the Hell is Rachel (2009)
Hey Everyone! If you follow my twitter you probably saw me make notes about the “Secret Christmas Project” well I thought I would show it to you now.
Some Tech Specs : We captured this on December 14th 2009 at various locations around my hometown of Kitsap County, WA. I used a Flip Ultra HD camera for all of the video and we went to various locations and I would capture my sister dancing from 15-30 seconds depending on the location. The video was inspired by the “Where the Hell is Matt” video which you can see here.
The music is Praan and you can grab it off iTunes at the following location : http://bit.ly/91XPu4
I edited the movie on my MacBook Pro using iMovie 2009. Which made it incredibly easy to do. I captured about 58 minutes of video in various locations and had to cut it down to 4 minutes and 29 seconds to match the other video. If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them leave them in a comment below. I am not sure if we will do this again next year but who knows what the future holds.
iPhone Thoughts
I have been using the iPhone 3G since I got it in July of 2008 and it’s been a great phone. I loved the iPhone from the moment I got to play with one. Which was at Seattle International Beerfest June 29th 2007. I befriended some dude while waiting in line for a pint of Pilsner. He busted out his iPhone and it made my Motorola Q look like a garbage dump. I wrote out a note to try the keyboard but I was so drunk at that point I didn’t get much out of the experience.
Later went to the Apple Store and played with one and just couldn’t justify the switch to AT&T at the time and the $499 & $599 price tag. When the iPhone 3G came out just over a year later I had to have it. Then a year later the iPhone 3GS came out. Getting video and a compass didn’t seem worth the upgrade to me at the time.
So iPhone released OS 3.0 and now 3.1. Tomorrow we get MMS which I have had on my phone for a while now but the copy and paste has been awesome. Especially when adding all of my shipments to my Delivery App. I highly recommend Delivery Status Touch. But I do have some complaints about the iPhone.
If I get a text message my phone alerts me and shows the name and says “Text Message” seems like it gets angry sometimes and I never get the text message but that doesn’t really concern me. What I don’t like is how I get notice that I get a new e-mail but I don’t get any notice on the lock screen when I get an e-mail. I need to unlock my phone. Tap the mail app and then I get to see who sent the mail. I would rather have a notification like the SMS alert for e-mail as well. I understand not everyone would want this so it would nice if you could shut that off as well. It would also be cool if I could have an updated weather forecast on the locked home screen.
Other then that the iPhone has been evolving rather nicely and I have been pretty happy with all the updates. Picture messaging comes out tomorrow. I have had it on my iPhone for 10 days or so now. I have enjoyed it so far. I have tried every hack on my iPhone. I have Jailbroken, Unlocked, MMS, Tethering if there has been a guide for it I have done it. Jailbreaking is cool and all but it doesn’t seemed like I have ever gained much from doing it. Other then changing the theme on my iPhone and a few funny apps. I keep thinking I should jailbreak 3.1 to try out the Google Voice App. Speaking of Google Voice. I am loving that service. I like it better then Grandcentral when they were the dudes in charge. Mainly due to the new interface.
But that is all not much going on really. Weekend is almost here.
Holy Crud!
It’s June and been a crazy busy month at that. Now that summer is here every weekend has been planned and full of events. I purchased a new MacBook Pro the ones they announced last Monday. It’s a screaming 2.8ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM and all kinds of awesomeness. iPhone OS 3.0 comes out on Wednesday which will be all kinds of awesome because I will finally be able to Copy and Paste.
I picked up a Flip Ultra HD video camera so that I can record all kinds of awesome videos in HD. You can check out my adventure the the grocery store here.
http://gallery.me.com/tristan.pipo#100087
But other then doing the life thing. Started going back to the gym. Nice to get back in the groove after a few years of vacation from it. I haven’t lost that much strength and the belly is slowly going away.
But next week I am on vacation and I won’t have any cell phone or internet access so hopefully the world doesn’t blow up while I am gone. It will be odd turning on that vacation auto responder I haven’t used that ever since I got gMail back in 2004.
Well hope to here from everyone soon drop me a line.
Tristan Chimes In! With Ringtones! And Geekness!
So I got an e-mail yesterday from my stalker. Aka StalkerDave asking what ringtone I had on my phone. Well it’s the ringtone from the best TV show of all time. Arrested Development it’s the theme Gob uses in his magic show. I still need to grab the DVD and get his chicken sound for when I get a text message but all in good time.
I must say Arrested Development was introduced to me by my girlfriend when she got the DVD’s from the library. I got to watch 4 episodes or so before it ended up having to go back. I wanted to see more so I could have waited for her to get the DVD’s again but I didn’t have time for rational solutions. So I did some research and found that I could get each season for $20. I didn’t like this idea it just wasn’t geeky enough. So I found that you could hack an AppleTV with Boxee and watch Arrested Development via Hulu. I had been wanting an AppleTV for a while now so I decided to go that route since it was geeky and seemed cooler at the time.
Instead of spending $60 and getting DVD’s and being happy I decided to spend $300 on an AppleTV. Got a USB thumbdrive I had around the apartment and loaded the AppleTV Patchstick on there and installed Boxee and I could have Hulu on my TV. It has been shown that the AppleTV has been a great investment since it plays all my media now. I used to have this task delegated to the Playstation 3. But it wouldn’t play my DRM stuff from iTunes now the AppleTV does it all and I am happy. Plus the HD rentals on AppleTV make it worth my while.
But the moral of the story was I got to watch Arrested Development and every other TV show or internet video I wanted on the magic AppleTV box.
Which inspired my ringtone.
Link is in iPhone format so you will need iTunes to play it.
iPhone
Just got the wordpress app for my iPhone thought I would try to write a blog post. This seems better for short form but it works. Hope life is treating everyone well miss hearing from everyone. Trying to update twitted more and keep contact by emailing people now that I am a proper mobile device. Keep in touch.
1st Annual TristanPipo.com Contest
I figured since I love all my readers so much I would give away a brand new 8GB iPod Touch!
To win the contest you must visit the link below and complete the following.
All you need to do is get to the end of the roll and if it says you are winner it will give you a promo code. Leave a comment with the promo code and if you are a winner it will say you are a winner. If not well better luck next time.
Good Luck to you all!
Hacking the Code
Well they released a security update to the application that runs this blog. So I tried it out on my test server and now it’s running on this one. So pages seem to be a bit snappier or maybe that’s because I fixed the caching module.
So we are running v2.2.1 at the moment if you come across any issues. Especially Internet Explorer 6 or 7 let me know. I spend more time fixing those problems then anything else. Usually it goes like this.
I use some newer or different tag that does the same thing. Internet Explorer doesn’t like it and messes up the entire page and then I need to go figure out how I can use a workaround to get that issue solved and make sure it works with everything else. You pick your battles I trying to go with Firefox but I forget the rest of the world isn’t so enlightened.
They did release a Beta of Safari on Windows. Which is nice for testing stuff while I am at work. If you want to try a different browsing experience.
The Weekend – Movies, Beer, Introducing the Girlfriend to the Friends.
As I sit down at the keyboard and link my fingers crack a few of them and lets see what comes out.
Friday I went to go see Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard. This movie lived up to all the Die Hard fame. One thing that was a bit of a bummer since they had the PG-13 rating you couldn’t really get in a Yipee Ky Yay Mother Fucker. With get Yippe Ky Yay Mother *Gunshot*. So the premise of the movie is hackers take out the world by crippling transportation. Then taking out money and so forth. So it was Die Hard in every aspect of Die Hard. I give the movie a very positive rating with a few dings for no “Welcome to the Party Pal!” But if you go your entire life only see Die Hard 1 and Die Hard 4. 2 and 3 are not really worth your time.
Saturday!
So I went to the Seattle International Beerfest at Seattle Center. I made a few drunk dials. So this place is pretty sweet for $20 you get a 5oz Beer Glass and 10 beer tickets and you have music and all kinds of beer to try. I tried so many kinds of beer I can’t even recall. Some were amazing others not so much. After my first 10 beer tickets ran out I was rather golly and sloshly. The guest list was Jered, Nick, Justin, Greg and the reason you are reading this to begin with. The place was packed and it was a rather nice day. I was shocked there were a great deal of females at this thing. Most girls you talk about beer and they hit you back with Coors Light or Bud Light. But when I saw a girl drink a 20% ABV Stout I was like there is a girl who has it together. They had $3 pints as well. While waiting in line for the pints I met this guy named Steve and I was rather drunk and friendly and he busted out the iPhone.
The Apple Geek in me was like holy shit. Steve being a cool dude lets me play with the thing. I want one of these things rather badly. $600 seems totally worth it.
So we hit Beerfest around 2pm and we left around 6pm after I was rather drunk and we then went to Red Mill Burger. I am sorry to say you can’t get a better burger in Seattle then Red Mill. Then we went to the ferry and passed out. Got home and then went out for the night. I was feeling rather tired and Sunday was going to be a big day so I retired the evening early.
Sunday!!!
Sunday the Girlfriend came over. This was also the day that Me, Nick and Justin have Brunch. So she came over and we hung out for a bit chatted. Then I said we must get going so we hit up the grocery store since I was told to pickup some fruit and juice. I get stuck carrying the heavy things. So cliche but I enjoyed having a purpose. 
When you are taking your girlfriend to meet your friends there are one of three outcomes. Meh, Eh or Sweet or translated Ok, Bad , Good. (Speaking of translations. The new saying that evolved from Beerfest is Delta! Such forms would be “Because I’m so Delta! or Say what! You better recognize the Delta! or That translation from Meh to Ok was Delta! Dude I know)
So I figured well I like to be prepared in such situations so I gave her the names and a slight background of everyone she would be meeting. Her and Audrey seemed to hit it off amazingly. Audrey told me I needed to bring her back. So I think that would classify everything as “Sweet” or “Schweet” the one thing I forgot to mention about this bunch is they take forever to get anything to go anywhere. We arrived around 12:30 to go play MiniGolf but all things said after Brunch and so forth we didn’t leave until 3:45 or so.
But we had a fun day hanging out and I feel like I have met a real keeper. Junniper seems to approve of her just by knowing her name. =)
The parents found out about the girlfriend they want to meet her. They invited me out to have a BBQ at my mom’s work want me to bring her along down at the 3rd of July Fireworks. I am still on the fence about that one. Parents are a totally different realm. They say I should be a bit more concerned about the stories my sister could tell. I was thinking going up on the grassy hill and just having a picnic. Who knows at this point.
Tonight is Guys Night. I have a day to make a decision. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.