I found all those missing bees

I don’t know why the experts are saying there are over 1 billion bees missing. I know exactly where they are. I found them all over my yard this weekend. I have a ton under a holly bush in my front yard. I have wasps that try to build nests on the kid’s playset daily. Bees buzz us when we’re trying to eat out on the deck. They sting the neighbors when they’re in our pool.

Missing? I don’t think so. If anything, I think we have more bees in our yard this year.

Psst. Hey you with that thing on your ear…

I’m going to tell you something that your family and friends aren’t – you look like a complete tool when you walk in to the restaurant with that bluetooth headset on your ear.  Look, I know it’s a great technology, but if you’re still using the phone, stay outside until you’re done.  If you’re not using it, take it off your head.

Seriously.  I’m just trying to help you.  I’m sorry you had to hear it from me.

Safari and WordPress. What’s the deal?

I forced myself to go back to Safari when the beta for version 3 came out.  I now run the nightly builds of Webkit as well.  Overall version 3 is much nicer than version 2, but there is still one thing about Safari that is just driving me crazy -  WordPress.  I host this blog on my own site using WordPress and the editor is terrible with Safari.  It’s basically unusable.

When you open any post in the editor it strips out all of the line feeds and html.  Just destroys the formatting of your post.  Uploading a picture seemed impossible as well.  Of cource Firefox and Camino work great, but I was trying to stick with the Safari engine for everything and it is just not working out.  I had to fire up FireFox just to create this post.

I’m not looking to use more than one browser, I just want one that works for everything and, unfortunately, that just may not be Safari.  Is this an Apple problem or a WordPress problem to fix?

Getting more power out of my iPod

My car has an Aux port in the glove compartment that lets you plug an iPod in and listen to it through the stereo.  It’s easy to find a cable to go from the headphone jack of the iPod to the Aux port, but what has always driven me crazy about this solution is that the headphone jack only puts out so much power, and if you turn the iPod volume up too far the sound through the stereo gets distorted.  If you have ever listened to your iPod when connected through the Dock to a stereo you can really tell how much more power there is without distortion.

So I have been looking for a cable to go from the Aux port to the dock connector of the iPod.  You’d think this would be easy but I checked at Radio Shack, Best Buy, WalMart, etc. and I couldn’t even find anyone that had ever heard of a cable like this.  I found a couple cables online, but one was retractable and wouldn’t work for the routing I wanted to do between the glove compartment and my center console, and the other was 4ft long and white.  The second cable was inexpensive, but I really wanted a black cable to go with the interior of my car and I didn’t think 4ft would be long enough, so I kept on looking.

What I ended up with was a connector called the PocketDock Line Out USB from SendStation that plugs in to the iPod dock connector and has a line out port. I can then run from the line out port to the Aux port in the glove compartment and the power and fullness coming from the iPod now is amazing. I bet it is at least 4-5 times more powerful than the headphone connector.  I don’t know why this isn’t carried in stores, but I was only able to find it online and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a way to get better sound, and more power, from their iPod to their car stereo.

My only complaint would be the cost, but if you shop around online you can take a few bucks off of list.

Go ahead, touch it. You know you want to.

Feel it in your hand.  Run your finger across it.  Flick left.  Now right.  Try up and down as well.  Bring your fingers together, now apart and watch the size change.  Feels amazing, doesn’t it?  Is it heavier than you expected?  A little more substantial?

That’s the way I felt when I touched an iPhone for the first time today.  I’ve read all the hype and a lot of the reviews, but I have avoided the iPhone in person.  Today I held one for the first time and it really feels like Apple has just changed the game a bit.  I’m not even sure I care about the phone piece of the picture – everything else was enough to keep me entertained.  I didn’t get to use it on a WiFi network, but I did get to try it while running on the Edge network and understand why people would be unhappy with the performance.  It would be nice if that part was faster.

It was a great experience and definitely made me want to use it more.  If you are not ready to hand over your hard earned money to Apple and AT&T you better not touch one.  You may just find it is impossible to put down.