The View From Space

The latest Disney magical attraction is located at the California Adventures Park. The World of Color is a breathtaking ride through some of Disney’s most memorable animated movies. The best part? It’s presented on a wall of water highlighted with numerous dancing fountains. The show itself is about 30 minutes, but if you add in the early arrival at the park to get your Fast Pass and then standing in line to get a decent viewing spot, you’re talking about an all day adventure. We were lucky to get passes to the last show @ 1130 PM, we also got one of the best viewing areas (Blue section, pavilion front and center of the water feature).
Here’s a World of Color snippet. Unfortunately a camera does not do justice to the entire experience, there was too much going on.  You really need to see it in person.

A recent jaunt to Sin City again showed me how the other half lives. My wife and I were “lucky” enough to score a couple of free nights at the Venetian Hotel & Casino (those that visit Vegas often enough know that luck has nothing to do with it, you pay for it one way or another).
True to form the Venetian was everything Vegas touts itself to be: Grand, Excessive, Opulent, Over-Indulgent. Our suite was all of the above and more.  I could get used to living like this!

Haven’t posted in a while as it’s been a non-stop trip. Will have some beautiful pics/vids from the California Adventure’s “World of Color”. It’s well worth the effort to secure fast passes and battle the crowds. More as soon as I recover … I hope.

What a difference a ROM makes.  Recently blogged about updating my G1 (HTC Dream).  Originally rooted and “updated” to a lower hacked version (1.5) which allowed access to things like WiFi tethering.

Well I’ve taken that to the next level and truly updated my OS.  This time to Android 2.1 (Eclair) using the hacks shown here.  It’s amazing what newer software can do for a handset that’s about 2 years old (archaic when dealing with smartphones).  The G1 is now snappy and responsive, opening and closing apps with little hesitation.  The original handset internal memory limitations are now overcome by utilizing the sd card as additional internal storage.   Now I can add apps to my heart’s content (or till the sd card fills up).

The biggest benefit for me was the ability to do WiFi tethering.  Eclair comes with built in USB tethering, great for a laptop but not so for an iPad.  Now I with Wifi tethering I can avoid using AT&T services for my iPad.

Is this something anyone can do?  Being a Geek my first inclination is to say yes.  However, looking back there were portions of rooting and flashing ROM’s that require one to have at least a rudimentary understanding of Linux and programming.  If you’re comfortable with computers and basic programming you’ll do fine.

Checking out the new (at least for me) Twitter for Android App.  Interesting interface, quite different from the iPhone.  

Pluses:

- Option to animate screen (floating clouds).  Nice little touch although I dont use it.

- Allows you options to sync your twitter friends info to your contacts list (All, only with existing contacts, or none)

- Home screen has up-to-the-second trending topics being posted

Minuses:

- No swiping, instead there’s a pull down menu that has the standard, reply, RT, etc buttons. 

- RT, it’s the new style that automatically RT’s once pushed.  To add comments you need to Share then select twitter.  Not sure if I like that.  Twidroid (my current twitter app of choice) offers you RT or RT with comment buttons.

- Min update interval is 5 min

- Exiting app removes sign in data and requires you to re-sign in the next time you open

- Although able to select bit.ly as url shortening service, no option to enter bit.ly API key to access account

For the time being I’ll be sticking with Twidroid.  Whether it’s because of familiarness or it actually outperforms Twitter for Android, I’m not sure.  Need more soak time on Twitter for Android before I can make a final decision.

If you’d like to download the app go to the Market on your Droid or visit this link

To those that left earlier comments and have only recently seen them approved:  My sincerest apologies.   Will do a better job of keeping up.

Work tends to get in the way of things we really enjoy doing.

Also still trying to resolve the RSS feed problem.  Hope to get that fixed soon.

Now that the new iPhone 4 has been announced there will be folks standing in line for hours to grab one once it becomes available.  Me?  Nope.

I’ve found new life and capabilities in my aging G1.  Through various hacks I’ve been able to increase the internal memory and allow WiFi capabilities.  Talk about squeezing “you know what” from a stone.  Hardware wise the G1 can’t hold a candle to the new iPhone 4.  But amazingly it is a very versatile platform, and with the open source android OS there is much that is available to those that know how to access it.  Now, I haven’t programmed since I was in college, so I usually leave the heavy lifting to those that do it for a living or as a serious hobby.  I just leverage off their amazing work.
So I’ll be holding onto my behemoth G1 for a while longer, hoping to squeeze every last ounce of performance from it. And you know what? I’m pretty sure I’ve still got a ways to go…

My apologies, I’ve been semi off-line from twitter and blogging the past few days while flexing my rebellion muscles.

Now that AT&T has officially screwed over iPad customers with their “unlimited data” bait and switch tactics, many are looking for ways around AT&T’s misleading advertisements.  Earlier I wrote about evaluating a product called MyWi.  I recently purchased MyWi and have been using it to tether my iPad to my jailbroken iPhone on T-Mobile.  Problem?  Due to hardware limitations only Edge speeds could be achieved.  What to do?  Well I have a 3G capable G1 waiting in the wings.

So I went ahead and rooted my Droid G1 (akin to jailbreaking an iPhone).  This provides access to the Droid OS root and allows things like wifi tethering. Then found an app called Android Wireless Tether.  Right off the bat it worked seamlessly.  I now have a 3G WiFi connection for my iPad without having to kowtow to the AT&T behemoth.

Anyone need a jailbroken 2G iPhone? 

Recently attended a high school graduation at the Neal Blaisdell Center. It was a great experience save for one issue. The Crowd? Nope, it was fantastic seeing the amount of support given our graduates. The short time allocated for giving leis and hugs? Nope, just glad to see that Project Grad is alive and well protecting our kids on such an emotional night.  I don’t mind giving up a few minutes of celebration to ensure they get on the bus and head off to their safe all-night party.

So what’s got me down on the graduation experience?  In order to spend a few minutes congratulating my nephew I had to pay $10 to park across the street.  Yes I understand parking is at a premium in that area, but does that justify penalizing the people going to help their friends and family celebrate?  I guess the answer to that is a resounding YES!