Chuck Tomasi

I learn, I share, I change lives

Hobbies

Parsec Award

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This past Labor Day weekend at DragonCon, Kreg Steppe and I were honored that our podcast Technorama won a Parsec Award in the Comedy/Parody category.

Earlier this year one of our faithful listeners nominated us back in May. A month or so later we found out we were a finalist and began the process of reviewing our our material from the previous year. Daughter Julie, who has been a part of the show for the past couple years, was also very helpful in picking just the right elements for our “sample clips.” What an honor to once again make it to the finals after four years!

A few weeks before DragonCon, Susie Murph asked us to present one of the awards (not our own category of course.) We happily agreed. Kreg and I worked on our presentation. We later found out that all the finalists in our category were presenting, and we happened to be the only ones AFTER our category was announced (that should have been a clue.)

Saturday night came all too soon. We were up against some pretty stiff competition (many of whom we are proud to call our friends) including Comedy4Cast, DragonCon*TV, and others. When they announced the winner, we were thrilled, then realize we really hadn’t prepared an acceptance speech because we didn’t expect to win. We spent our time working on our award presentation, not acceptance (lesson for next time – if we are lucky enough.)

This one award makes the last 7 years, 8 shows, and over 1000 episodes worth it. I think I said some of this in the acceptance, but here it is officially… Thank you everyone on the Parsec committee for your time and talent, thank you to the guests on our shows, a huge thank you to all the people who have helped us and influenced us along the way, thank you to my family for putting up with the time, cost, and modifications to the office, and finally thank you to all the listeners over the years. You are the best!

Podcasting has directly and indirectly changed my life for the better and I look forward to continuing as long as possible.

I’m done with Foursquare

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There’s no value to me. I tried it for five months, I became mayor of a dozen places, and earned a similar number of badges. So…

The idea behind using Foursquare is:

  • Easily check in to locations (e.g. work, school, restaurants) letting people know where you are
  • Know where my friends are (and perhaps meet them.)
  • Perks for frequent visits like a 5{ed5c4a4567e714b4a9d66f3c35b7717e53d9aad588694599d620cb788ef41a85} discount.

Sorry, it’s not working out that way.

Let’s start with the ease of use. My iPhone supposedly knows where I am at all times and will locate Foursquare venues near by. If the one I want isn’t listed, I can create one. That’s not too bad, until I either a) get whacky results form my phone “You’re not near that location” or b) three other people have added the same venue with different information. (Check in to O’Hare airport and you’ll see some crazy results. People – you don’t check in to flight 161!) There have been numerous occasions where I run out for a quick errand and forget to check in. That’s my fault – which means it’s not as easy as it should be. I drop off the kids for school, but I’m also supposed to wake up the iPhone, enter the unlock key, bring up the Foursquare app, wait (sometimes up to 30 seconds) for it to find where I am and the locations around me, then four taps on three screens to check in, and two more to go back. That’s not simple IMHO.

OK, One of the extra screen taps was to decline the tweet (or Facebook) of my location. When I broadcast my location, a often received replies such as “What is this foursquare thing?” or “Is that secure, letting people know you’re not at home?”. It’s annoying to many and confusing to others. Having to explain it got old so I stopped tweeting/FB.

I also got lots of friend requests from people I either didn’t know, or didn’t care where they were. Sorry, even though you may be a great friend of mine, if you’re in another state or on another continent, it’s not likely that I’ll run in to you or even care what coffee shop you’re frequenting. I don’t drink coffee.

And those perks? Sorry, most vendors don’t even know they’re listed on Foursquare (probably because they didn’t put it there or use the tool.) I got one luggage tag from our local airport. That was nice. I’ve even mentioned to the lady at the cleaners “I’m the Foursquare mayor here. Any discount?” All I got was a smile and a full charge.

There’s no value to me. Bragging rights for being mayor of a place that doesn’t even know about the concept of social networking is not worth my time so I hereby delete the app from my iPhone.

So long Foursquare.

iPad after two months

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In May I purchased an iPad after Donna told me to give myself a present for landing a new job so quickly. I have now been using it for two months and have some feedback about this interesting device.

1. I love the touch type keyboard, however I might get an external one. One of the critical success factors for me to purchase the iPad was the ability to touch type on it. I wanted it to be a fairly efficient note taking device as well as crank out email faster than touch typing on the phone. When I tried one out in May it seemed to meet the requirement well (although getting used to the location of some of the non-alpha characters is still taking some getting used to). I also notice that I need to tweak my typing style a bit since I normally hit keys like x, c, and n with the tip/nail of my finger and that’s not good enough for the touch screen. I had thought about getting the wireless Bluetooth keyboard for a while, but don’t care for the idea of hauling two items around all the time. Since I work from home, I am never too far from my laptop anyway.

2. I wish they would upgrade to iOS 4. Since the iPhone has upgraded to iOS version 4 earlier this summer, I am surprised it has taken so long to upgrade the iPad to the same. I really enjoy
background processing on the phone and wish I could play Pandora, for example, then switch apps on the iPad. I also love the idea of folders to group icons together on the iPhone. Just because the screen is bigger on the iPad doesn’t mean it is easier or quicker to navigate around 50 or more apps.

3. It makes a great photo frame. I know, this is one of those simple pleasures and specific applications, but since I already have an iPad, why should I spring an addition $50-100 for something that only displays photos. Besides, out single-purpose photo frame doesn’t stand up all that well.

4. It is a great Netflix viewer. Watching movies works well if you have WiFi, but the 3G service doesn’t keep up very well and can get expensive if you are on the 200MB plan. Not only is the app a movie viewer, but it also allows you to manage your queues. The netflix app UI is very similar to the website in terms of navigation so there is no learning curve to watching your favorite Instant Queue movies.

5. Having 3G service is handy. Although it was a premium on the device, I find it very handy to use while traveling and the ability to turn it off while I am not using it. Around the house and several other places that I frequent, WiFi is the preferred method. My only wish is that I could send and receive text messages. The device has a phone number and this *IS* a data plan after all, isn’t it?

6. Having a case like the Apple one or Incase is a must. One of the first things I noticed when I first got my iPad was that it was heavy and kind of difficult to hold for an entire 2 hour feature film. Also, typing on my lap was a bit tricky with the rounded back and the angle it lays on the lap was sub optimal. The challenge was to find a case. I should note that while I looked, the device was protected with neoprene sleeve. I had two options in mind, the Apple jacket or the Incase leather book jacket. Both protect and double as a stand that improve the angle for typing. While the Apple case is less expensive and thinner, I started hearing people report that the case started to get lint and other funk on it. I opted for the Incase sleeve because it offers three stand angles and is a bit more padded. I ordered it online and it took about two weeks to arrive.

Got one? Want one? Leave a comment.

This article was composed and published from my iPad.

New Look

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I’m happy to say the website has undergone a new look. I got tired of updating the photos and front page in iWeb. The most minor updates, such as adding a badge for LinkedIn, could take 20 minutes, had to be done on a specific computer, and involve a secondary application to the upload. Sure, the front page looked nice before, but it wasn’t all that fun to add a few photos since the entire website had to be re-uploaded (I guess Apple doesn’t quite understand the concept of “what’s changed”) and I still had to do some jiggery to get it to use the WordPress blog rather than the one that comes with iWeb.

Believe it or not, I had to reference our book Sams Teach Yourself WordPress in 10 Minutes to find a bit of little used knowledge to make a static front page and still retain the blog. Other key things I learned from this experience included custom menus, more in-depth CSS modification (most of the time spent), and installation/configuration of a photo gallery.

Now when I have new content, I can compose from any browser, the iPad or iPhone. Uploading photos and creating albums is made much easier by staying in the WordPress framework. Very simple.

To make the development of the new look easier, I installed a local copy of Apache, MySQL, and PHP which allowed me to get everything done “offline” then upload it to my server when it was the way I liked.

I hope you like it too.

Special thanks to Kreg Steppe for his help.

Teach Yourself WordPress

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DSC_6605If you’ve ever wanted to start a blog and don’t know where to start, I’ve got a solution for you. My podcasting co-host, Kreg Steppe, and I have just completed work on “Sams Teach Yourself WordPress in 10 Minutes“. Look for it on store shelves in March (2010).  However, you can order it today.

I feel truly blessed to have been given an opportunity to write this book. It was challenging from the get-go. Having experienced a re-write (on a generous schedule) two years ago, this was challenging from a shorter time line. We had six weeks to get the original content completed, then quick turnaround on the author edits. Once those were done we still had to review the PDFs for final markup. To say I’m familiar with the material would be a bit of an understatement.

Having done this book from scratch has certainly helped me with my writing. Already I’m noticing a greater challenge producing the Gmail Podcast. I hope it reflects in the quality of the content in the latest shows.

So what’s next? A companion podcast. Kreg and I are working on the setup (using WordPress of course). Kreg and I will get in to more topics that we couldn’t delve in to in the book (new and useful plugins, latest news, in-depth topics, and more.) Watch this space for more information on the upcoming “WordPress in 10 Minutes in 10 Minutes Podcast“.