Froot Loops, Coco Puffs, Cheerios, and Lucky Charms: Breakfast of Champions (screw you Wheaties!)

Seriously, though, life sucks. Not in general, not this semester, not in the near future, now. Like this immediate moment. You know why? I just spent the equivalent of $5.25 on a bowl of cereal and juice, and it's barely even 9a. I've been wandering the student center alone for the past half hour, and I likely won't see anyone I know for at least another hour. So I won't have anyone to bitch to for another hour or so, and whenever I type "for" or "hour" my phone seems to think I'm trying to type "ems" or "gots." I need to figure out how to reprogram my predictive text.

Thu 05/08/2008 09.03 05082008512



EDIT: OK, I ate a cup of cream of wheat too.

I've been hoping to move this away from personal issues, and more towards tech stuff (I'll keep my personal stuff on FaceBook, where more of my friends actually pay attention), and then I thought, "Isn't the ultimate Geek thing to host your own blog on your own server?" Well, yes. But I haven't a server any more. And with me bouncing between home (MN) and... home (NJ), it's hard to maintain a server, especially when neither my parents nor my aunt and uncle know a thing about computers, or care to have an extra buzzing box stashed in some room somewhere. So I'm going to have to settle for something else.

My school gives me the option to have a website hosted on their servers. This sounds like a perfect opportunity for me to try out iWeb and get going on an independently running blog, instead of relying on LiveJournal (which isn't too bad) or Blogger or something else like that. But I soon discovered a problem.

First, as an off-campus student (and being in MN while the school is in NJ is way off campus) I had to configure VPN access. This wasn't nearly as painful as the experience I had configuring my father's VPN access for his job (though they had all sorts of goofy contraptions and constantly changing versions). I am also aware that no matter how fast your Internet connection is, you're capped at 50 KbPS. I suppose that's OK, since I'll just be uploading HTML and images (nothing too big). I even get FTP access and all sorts of nice little access routes (SMB, AFS, <3). Now the catch.

First was picking an iWeb template. Just about all of them were way too informal. Nothing that could be taken too seriously. The best one was a glossy black one, but it just screamed Apple (as if the "Made on a Mac" watermark on the bottom of every page wasn't enough... at least I can remove it). Last thing I want to do is come off as an Apple fanboy (though I am apparently my campus's resident Apple Geek), so that almost killed the project. Then comes the second problem: iWeb is tied up with a lot of .Mac functions, and pretty much slits your ankles if you're not using it. So, no .Mac means no incremental updates. That's right, you have to re-upload your entire site if you're not using .Mac. Starting off, that's at most a few megs, but throw in a few pictures, maybe 20 entries, and quickly enough you grow to over 20 MB, then 40 MB, next thing you know you're uploading 100 MB web sites over a 50 KbPS pipe. Well, that's at least 50 KbPS down, I don't know what the up pipe is, but it can't be too much less.

I'd try something like TypePad or WordPress, but I don't know if my school supports CGI or SQL on their web servers, and likely they don't (all their servers are set up by HP, so for all I know they're using IIS). If they don't, then they probably won't install it for me either. So, that leaves out the majority of built-it-yourself blogging services.

That brings me back to LiveJournal and Blogger. I might switch to using my school's hosting for pictures, instead of ImageShack, but for now, this is what I've got. ...at least they support OpenID!

So, you want to do photo or video journalism, but you don't have a lot of cash, and you don't feel like carrying around a ton of bulky equipment. Given that, you have to be willing to take a hit on quality (but not too much). Easy. Get a cell phone with photo and/or video capabilities (they're becoming quite common) that is Bluetooth Enabled. This might run you a little more than the bottom-of-the-barrel cell phone, but it still should be cheaper than a full fledged digital camera. A phone like the Motorola V557. It captures digital photos up to 640x480, and video in H.264/AMR Narrowband up to 176x144 at 7 FPS. Far from mind-blowing quality, but it's good enough for quick clips on the go.

Now you have a mobile production studio. Next, getting it on the web. You'll need some sort of website, obviously, and online storage. You're on your own there, but if you have a broadband connection, and an old PC lying around, just set it up with Ubuntu, and activate the web server, and use port forwarding on your router (most broadband providers will require you to have one if you use more than one PC) to forward port 80 to that machine. Then you can just dump and link to files there.

To pull files off of the phone, get a USB Bluetooth Adapter. You can get some off of NewEgg for $9.99, or if you want something snazzy, you can do this. Go to the CompUSA website for the IOGEAR BlueTooth 2.0 Class 2 Adapter (GBU221) and print it out. Go to a BestBuy with the exact same adapter, then show them the page you printed out. Bluetooth 2.0 for $30 is a killer deal, especially when you consider that Apple is selling a USB 1.1 adapter by Belkin for $40, and some places sell the same thing for $50! You can now pull photos and videos off of your phone, as well as load on photos, videos, ringtones, and programs (if you phone supports that).

Beware: not all Bluetooth phones support OBEX (Object Exchange, file transfer) for photos and videos. One example is the Sanyo Katana through Sprint. The Katana only supports Bluetooth OBEX of contact information, and possibly headsets, but nothing else.

As to actually transferring files from your phone and your computer, I can't help you there. More than likely, you're a Windows user, and I haven't used Windows in over two years. For Mac OS X, the process is as simple as clicking on the Bluetooth Icon in the Menu Bar, choosing "Browse Device," hitting Search and selecting your device (you may be required to choose a security code. Don't worry, just enter a few numbers, and when prompted, enter the exact same numbers on your phone, that's all there is), and then locating your file and hitting "get." I'm sure there are instructions for Windows, I just don't know them.

Now, for less than $200 (with a two year contract with Cingular, probably for less than $100, depending), you should have a complete mobile studio that should produce passable content for the web. Don't expect major "oohs" and "ahhs" for the technical quality of what you produce, because if you're looking for that, you're looking to spend a lot more. Either way, it's a good, cheap, convenient way to get