Monday, November 26, 2007

Buggeration.

Mac people are so, erm, advanced.

Why couldn't I find this article when I was looking six months ago?

http://www.maclife.com/article/blog_from_your_cell_phone

Ms. Ochs' article has pictures, too.


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Hoto
(sent wirelessly from my phone)
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Friday, November 23, 2007

Blog from your phone to Blogger with photos

OK. For any of you who have REALLY tried this, it's not easy. The hardest thing to do is to blog wirelessly from your mobile phone or PDA to your existing Blogger blog, WITH support for attached pictures. Let me tell you it is not easy. And I'm pretty wirelessly savvy.

However Blogger just made it easier by updating their Wireless Blogging service to support emails with attachments from gmail. Up until recently, the only way to submit to your blog wirelessly was either:

(1) email your blog from your phone (text only - doesn't support pictures), or:

(2) send MMS messages with text and pictures from your phone to go@blogger.com
(many wireless networks not supported - including mine)

In the latter case Blogger.com would set up a special wireless blog for you, which you are then allowed to connect/link to your existing Blogger blog.

Well for those of you who want to try the new and improved (and PROVEN) method, here's how to do it.

Easy instructions (I admit these are simplified)

(1) Set up a free Blogger Blog (Let's presume you've got one already)

(2) Set up a free gmail email account and configure for IMAP

(Gmail > "Settings" > "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" > "Enable IMAP")

(3) Get wireless data working on your phone.

Well, D'uh. I'm going to have to presume you've figured that all out.

(4) Set up your phone to send/receive email to/from your gmail account from your phone.

If you're trying to blog from your phone, I'll trust that this step isn't too complex for you. If it is, you might, erm, consider another pastime.

(5) Send a test email from your phone using your Gmail account to go@blogger.com.

(6) Using your desktop PC email client or browser, check your gmail account for an email from go@blogger.com.

They send you a link to your new wireless blog that looks something like this:

"Welcome! [new-wireless-blog-name].blogspot.com is your blog. Claim it at go.blogger.com with code: XYZABC"

(7) Using your desktop browser, click on the link provided in that email which will take you to a special Blogger page to link your new wireless blog to your existing Blogger blog, entering the code as you go.

Yay. Done. Since I had (1), (2) (3) and (4) done already, this took me about 15 minutes to configure steps (5), (6) and (7).

The point is, you can now send blog entries to your Blogger blog WITH pictures wirelessly from your phone. Done and done. That's what I'm using now. No need for some service like PicoBlogger (now discontinued).

Yay


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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Not Gay

Although right-leaning bro and hubby leant toward the aesthetically pleasing solid magenta colour scheme, old lefty-veggy-flower-child-wicca-Mumsy claims Spudling Moss here will be "teased" about a "pink trike" and that the tri-tone colour scheme of this model will avoid "embarrassment" for the little racer on the unforgiving and gritty slopes of Brockwell Park.

Me smells a Hippycrite.

--------------------
Hoto
(sent wirelessly from my phone)
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Pick up the pieces

My bro-in-law beats my most optimistic projection and assembles the trike, sans instructions, in under 10 minutes,

And with Interfero-Spud lending a sticky hand.


--------------------
Hoto
(sent wirelessly from my phone)
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Joy

Seawall Opens Again + Sunset + Wifey =
Mmmmm...Siwash Rock...

--------------------
Hoto

(sent wirelessly from my phone)
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Ain't Goin to Kansas City, Kansas City there I ain't

There's nothing worse than finding out you've got to split for Kansas City. Except perhaps finding out you have to be at the airport at 6am to fly there. After gigging until 1am the night before. Or perhaps that your flight home to Vancouver is via Toronto (erm, look that up on a map).

And there's nothin' better'n findin' out you ain't gotta go after all.

Amen.


--------------------
Hoto

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Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Ahh, Europe

...where the streets are lined with sausages.
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The Once and Future Hoto

It seems that I have a busy life. Some might say a very busy life. When compared to others, I personally think my life is quite sedate. Especially when contrasted with the lives of people like sparx and the frog. My spouse and I have no children, you see, which frees up a broad swathe of time to pursue life.

When I compare my busy-ness to my colleagues who mountain bike, ski, take extra-curricular educational courses, volunteer and manage a busy work schedule with a home life that includes raising kids, again my life seems very quiet. However others around me in my circle of friends and family look at my music career and work schedule (including plenty of travel), and comment on how insane my life is, or can be.

I think that I have a reasonable balance between work and personal life considering my career, but frequently it can become a lot to manage, and so it's at these times which I find myself playing a little mental game. Sometimes this game can get me through weeks of days in which I get up at 6:00 to go to work, and don't get home to bed until around midnight, often because I leave from work to go to a practise, gig or the studio. Other weekends I've packed up from a gig at 1:00am, taken my drums home, slept for two hours and then got up at 4:00am to catch a morning flight to Korea, landing in country for a dinner meeting after having had two hours sleep in 48 (I don't sleep on planes). Or I'll land in Vancouver at 10pm on a weekday after three weeks away in Europe, get up the next morning for an early conference call, and head straight from work to a band practise. This can leave me a little ragged, I admit, and kudos to my wife for suffering me through these periods.

So to get my tired brain through all the days and nights, I play this game which involves projecting into the future to the point in time when I know a particular set of obstacles will have been hurdled. I try to imagine what I might feel like then, at that future point, and picture myself looking back upon the intervening events. I create a vision of my future self peering back in time to the current moment, with true hindsight, and wonder what that will be like.

For example, when I started writing this post on my phone's keypad, I was in a cab tearing up Granville street in Vancouver, headed for the airport, knowing that in five days time I would be driving back in the opposite direction, having completed a somewhat arduous business trip to Sweden and having arrived back in Vancouver to be met by my lovely wife at the airport. I did some more writing of this post in the Vancouver airport, in the security line at the infamous Heathrow arrivals hall, again in my brother-in-laws house in London, more in the long Piccadilly tube trip to Heathrow from Green Park, all showing that even writing about mental time travelling causes me to travel through time.

Allows me to look back on that which I have predicted.

While trying to envision my return to Vancouver on this particular trip, I know that I may or may not have had a successful set of meetings with my customer in Kista outside Stockholm. I know that I will have likely spent a day shopping with sparx and co, that I will have probably eaten out at some nice restaurants in Stockholm, that I will have probably spent a night in a grim Ibis hotel room at Heathrow, and know that moment will eventually come when I will pass the same houses on Granville street, coming in the opposite direction. The small and seemingly insignificant cycle will have been completed, another mini chapter in the somewhat foreseeable sequence of events that is my life. Likewise, if I have a long set of gigs, or rehearsals, as I leave the apartment on the way out, hauling a pile of drums on my handcart, I will picture myself returning to the door having completed the musical date. When the moment arrives that I am hauling my drums back to the door, I will consciously look back to my past self, and remember the previous moment with some relish.

It appears I have created a life in which I can consciously live in the moment, the future and in the past.

It is only idly (and with detachment) that I find myself pondering my forthcoming fate, and considering the recent past. I must mention that it is neither an anxious nor a regretful experience, just an interesting one.

To me.
__________________________________
(sent wirelessly from my phone - written in a cab in Vancouver, at YVR airport, at Heathrow arrivals hall, in Brixton, UK, on the tube back to Heathrow, and at Heathrow Terminal 3 departures lounge.)

Hoto=
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Friday, November 02, 2007

Ammonia Stars Records

Brandon Cherrington mixes Matt's bass at Greenhouse.
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hello


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