Murmur - jstump's Content

Additional Must Have G1 Apps

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:15:55 GMT

by: jstump
Other G1 Must have apps

Ron wrote a fantastic article on G1 apps. I wanted to add a couple others I've been using.

Toggle(x) - There are several apps on the market place that will toggle settings. The Toggle Settings app is great, but when I'm driving I don't want to fiddle with it to turn on my bluetooth. So I have ToggleBlu sitting on one of my main screens. I also have adorned it with ToggleWifi, ToggleGPS, and lastly ToggleAir. They're all simpe, tap the icon and it toggles the setting for that icon either on or off.

Missed Call - There's an LED on the top of that phone and I want it to display more then two colors. No more do I want to see a blinking light and wonder, "is it an email, text, missed call, twitter response, or something else?" In it's current version I can only change texts, missed calls, and bluetooth. This is better then nothing and still helps me determine what is up.

Snap Photo - I have fairly steady hands, put a camera in it and all of this changes. It's like I'm some addict waiting to get his next fix, most of my pictures come out fuzzy. Snap Photo changes this by adding a stabilizer. I've seen drastic drop in fuzzy pictures with my G1 and I highly recommend it for other people like me.

Locale - I'm kinda shocked that Ron didn't talk about this app. It's possible that he just doesn't need it as much. I need to have my phone switch to vibrate when I get to work, along with turn off stuff that uses juice. Even though I have toggle settings, I don't want to actually have to think about it. This is where Locale comes in. See whenever I'm within a certain radius of work or home my phone changes settings appropriately. I also have it set up to turn my phone to vibrate for around my normal bedtime. No one's going to wake me up in the middle of the night with an email about Penis Enlargement... at least never again.

I wouldn't say that there are too many more apps that I would add to this list. Ron hit almost everything else a G1 user should download from the get go. I would just like to say for future G1 users, be weary about the battery life. If you have a phone currently that you forget to plug in for days, you'll have issues getting by with the G1. I have to charge mine about halfway through the day at work and possibly when I get home in the evening depending on how things go. RUMOR has it that T-Mobile may address this in the future. It's striclty that at the moment a rumor, so I'm not going into the details. So being one of those people who never had to plug his phone in every day to having to plug it in halfway through I speak from experience that if battery life is a big deal keep that in mind.

Review of the Ebook Reader Sony 505

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:00:32 GMT

by: jstump
How I was able to trick myself into reading with a gadget.

So let me preface this article that I used to love reading when I was a kid. You couldn't pry an R.L. Stine book from my hands till I had demolished it. I had required reading growing up, but in high school and then college, I had the choice of my required reading significantly reduced, this lead to my disdain of reading books.

Also I picked up some weird quirks about reading books. Such as an irrational hatred towards soft cover books. This leads me to my love for hardcover books, which can be hard to find a book in sometimes, especially cheap. Finally I think I may have solved these problems with my recent purchase. I broke down after a long time of wanting an E-Reader and got the Sony PRS-505. There was a sale going on where it was 40 dollars cheaper and I cashed in.

So I've had the device for almost a month now and what do I think?

Huge Success.

One of my main reasons for getting the E-Reader is that I love gadgets and playing with them. The idea was if I was playing with a gadget, maybe I could trick myself into reading more. I used to love it so much when I was a kid, so there must be a way to bring that back. The Sony PRS-505 has done a good job. Since I've gotten it I've read one and a half books. This is pretty good for me as I don't read anywhere near as fast as I used to combined with how much other media I take in a week.

The screen is really like reading paper to me. Some people complain about the grey color of the screen, but this is not an issue for myself. I had friends and associates say they would rather read from a computer screen then buy an E-Reader. The same people shown the Sony PRS-505 after the statement took it back. Most people were amazed they didn't get any type of eyestrain. In fact there seems to be this misinformation surrounding E-Readers in general that they are just an LCD screen in book size. Trust me they are not.

The next "annoyance" with the device is the flash the screen makes. This flash lasts a fragment of a second, which I find to be trivial. To me it takes about as much time as turning a page and after reading about 10 pages I totally forgot that the device even made the flash.

Now I can't review too much on the Sony software as I have a Macbook Pro. Note for Mac users, the device shows up as a storage drive meaning you can drag and drop books onto it. I was able to install Sony's software using Parallels and putzed around with it in coherence mode. It's pretty much like iTunes only for books. Even the layout is strikingly familiar to Apple's music software. The PRS-505 came with 100 free downloads of "classic" books which are available from many sources online for free such as the Google Book Search. The difference is that these books are formatted for the reader, with bookmarks and a glossary.

I checked out the store as well. The prices don't seem too bad, but to me I always feel that if I do not own a physical version of a book that it should be a little bit cheaper. The prices are about on par with a soft cover book, sometimes cheaper, sometimes more. The best bet is to buy a series where you will save more money. The books prices wise are around the same as Amazon's Kindle prices, so one isn't better then the other as far as book price is concerned. Remember this review isn't a comparison between the two devices since I have not played with a Kindle. I merely compared prices because it is the other main competitor next to eBooks.com which also has similar prices.

The book has about 200 mbs of internal storage, which is more then enough room for the amount of reading even an avid reader does in a week to hold a significant library. The best part is that you can expand it up to 10 gigs of space. With the average size of the ebooks I've loaded onto the reader of about 2 megs (which is a rather large book mind you). If I did my math correctly (please correct me if I did it wrong) a gig holds 1024 megabytes, which would mean 10 gigabytes would hold 10240 megabytes. Which means if every book was 2 megabytes that would be 5120 books that this thing could hold. I don't care who you are, if you read a book a day, that's still about 14 years worth of books. No one would probably never have that many books on the device, but it's mind-boggling. Also remember my math doesn't include the internal storage either.

One of my major gripes about the Sony PRS-505 is that there is no way to sort pictures. Because of this if you put several folders worth of pictures they will all show up together. Why would this be a big issue? If you have downloaded any Manga there is no way to sort it without changing all of the picture names. A little annoying, but at the same time it's not the devices main priority. There is Manga up on Sony's site, but I have yet to download any. The other annoyance is that when I load the reader while using it as a storage device it takes longer for the device to start up afterwards then it does from the Sony Software as it re-catalogues everything. This was really annoying when I put a gigs worth of Manga on a SD card. I had to walk away from the device for about 15 minutes before it was usable only to find out that all of the pictures were sorted together which made reading the manga I had put on the device next to impossible.

So I think I've rambled enough about the Sony PRS-505. When it comes down to it, I think I will be reading most of my books this way from now on. It's less weight then a book, uses less space, and for me is fun to read on. I'm curious to see where E-Ink is headed.

Wonder Woman Premiere Wondercon 09

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:46:10 GMT

by: jstump
A review of the upcoming Wonder Woman Animated Movie.

Friday night I went to the Wonder Woman Animated Movie preview. It was a free showing of the entire movie. The movie starts with an epic battle between the Amazons led by Hippolyta against the hordes of Ares. The fight is epic along with the musical score done by, Christopher Drake in the beginning. Also Hippolyta seems to use all of the classic Wonder Woman tools at her disposal in the first 5-10 minutes.

We are also introduced to a few of the supporting characters. Let me say that I'm a big fan of Artemis from the comics and really enjoyed the stuff with Mike Deadato and William Messner-Loebs in the 90s (yes I know shocking) when she was Wonder Woman. Artemis was done perfectly in this movie. She was strong and could kick almost everyone's ass, save Diana's of course. She was also voice by Rosario Dawson who I think has a the right voice for the character, since she does a lot of strong female roles.

After we're introduced we get jumped to Themyscira island centuries later. Over the island is a fight between some jets with one being piloted by Col. Steve Trevor, voiced by Nathan Fillion (who I have a huge man-crush for). They did a good job of modernizing the original Golden Age version of this character. He fit really well and Fillion, as usual, did a great job at delivering his punch lines. By far one of my favorites was, "I haven't had this dream since I was thirteen." I almost felt as if they took the original Steve Trevor and mixed him with Nemesis from the newer Wonder Woman stuff, although it can be argued that he's a rehash of Trevor from the Golden Age... it's a vicious circle.

I don't want to get too much more into the story as I really think people should see this. When talking with Ron from iFanboy, I went so far to say that this was the best DC Animated film I've seen. I enjoyed all of the others, but it was clear to me that they stepped things up for this one. Although it made sense in the fact that you know not too many people were geeked to see this movie so Timm's productions company needed to make it really good. I mean the last couple sold themselves really, where as this one needs to get good press to do well.

I almost forgot Keri Russel's voice work in this was really good. Since Diana is much younger they went with a younger voice. She did incredibly well at sounding young and strong at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed her banter with Fillion's character Trevor.

I'm sure the original story being worked on by Gail Simone for this had something to do with how great this was. It really was a good reimagining of the Wonder Woman origin. It also managed to combine action with romantic comedy fairly well, something that I have always found hard for a movie to do.

I actually hope that they do a sequel to this, since sadly it's some of the best stuff I've seen with Wonder Woman's name on it in a long time.

Anyways Wonder Woman comes out March 3, I highly suggest you buy it.

Surviving Wondercon 2009

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 05:08:38 GMT

by: jstump
My three days of Wondercon 2009

So these articles may be a little late on murmur, but they can be originally found on my blog: jonstump.net

Day 1

Well Wondercon 2009 is over with. I had a blast for the entire thing. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this sleep deprived. Well how did the weekend turn out for me? Let me start with Friday…

Friday was a little bit of shopping, when I hit the floor within 30 minutes my bag was full and killing my back. I have an affinity for giant Hardcovers and since I was able to snag six for anywhere from 60-65% off I went for it. A little ways in I decided to go to the “Everything You Wanted to know about Retailing in Comics” panel. On my way there I met up with the iFanboys. When Josh heard I was heading to that panel he asked me if I hated money. I informed him that obviously I did if I spent over 100 dollars in the first 30 minutes of the Con. I didn’t stay at the panel long since it seemed to be for older people as I was one of maybe half a dozen under the age of 35 in the room. It was also a little on the boring side since it was a discussion about business.

After that I hit up the DC Nation panel. I got to find out juicy details such as, Paul Dini getting two new books. One is going to bring back the Batman as more of a creature of the night that no one sees. It sounds like it’s more of a mythology book from the point of view of the streets of Gotham. The other book I’m super excited for, it’s titled “Gotham Sirens” and is a team book with Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman. My guess is that it will of course be tons of fun. I also asked a question for fellow iFanboy community member Luthor, and myself, about getting a Batman Beyond comic book. The best answer we could get was maybe.

The last thing I did at the con was go to the Wonder Woman premiere. You can find my review of it here on Murmur.

After the preview I went out for the iFanboy Tiki Tour. The night went way longer then it should have and was incredibly fun. The iFanboys are awesome dudes to hang out with, we all had a blast for sure. I think the two highlights were riding with two new awesome dudes I met, Chunk and Brandon, in a Taxi I thought we surely would die in. The other being a conversation with a few different people about how dreamy Ben Templesmith is. Here are a couple pictures.

Chunk, Brandon, and myself at the end of the night.

Day 2

Day 2 of Wondercon continued with craziness. It involved more purchases and some signatures. I managed to get quite a few signatures and a couple sketched. One of my goals was to see Mike Mignola and Matt Wagner. Wagner did a couple sketches and was pretty cool to meet. Mignola cracked a joke about how he thought he had already signed all the copies of the books I brought him.

On day 2 I also hit up a couple panels. The first was the Spotlight on Alex Robinson that was moderated by Josh of iFanboy fame. I went to the panel because I had heard about Alex’s work several times, I also wanted to support iFanboy in anyway that I could. The panel went really well for everyone and involved candy, which it is pretty great. After the panel I went almost immediately to Alex’s booth and bought both Box Office Poison and Too Cool to Be Forgotten. He did sketches in both and signed them. Meeting creators such as Alex is great, he was really happy to meet someone who even wanted to be a fan. I can honestly now say that I am after reading Too Cool to Be Forgotten. The book is amazing and a real tear jerker.

The second panel I went to was about Podcasting and comics. The awesome thing about this was that they pulled people from the crowd to participate. So oddly enough you will hear my voice on a future podcast. I as usual brought some completely useless knowledge about comics to the table. I’m not going to say what it is now, you can find out when the show comes out. Also we talked about a couple of the things I bought. It quickly became apparent to Ron at least that I love the big hardcovers. Sometimes I don’t think I’ll be contempt until I can replace a coffee table with the ones I have.

The last thing I did that day was hit up the Isotope Comic Lounge for the 100 Bullets party. That place was crazy and it was cool to have a beer with some of the most prominent creators in comics today. Also it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see Dave Johnson’s art in person. He has never displayed his art before and he’s never sold it. Obviously you can get him to do sketches when he’s at a con, but that’s different. To see some of the original covers of 100 Bullets hanging about was awesome. I ended the night by passing out, sadly at 12:00-12:30. With as little sleep as I had received the night before I was ready to get some sleep. I didn’t leave without some signatures and some glasses from the party.

Day 3

Day 3 was the last day. I of course started it off right by getting to the convention without my Badge. The reason this was so bad was that I wanted to make it back in time for a panel. In order to do so I had to grab a cab back to my brother’s apartment. I was able to make it back about 5 minutes before the panel I wanted to see started.

I waited most of the weekend to go my last panel so I was not about to miss it. The panel is question was titled, “25 Years of Usagi Yojimbo.” After meeting Stan Sakai in the first 10 minutes of the con I was super excited to watch him at his panel. Any creator that tells me I should buy one of his books off of Ebay because it will be cheaper is awesome. It obviously shows how much he cares about getting his work into people’s hands. For those of you who sadly don’t know who Usagi Yojimbo is check out his Wikipedia page.

Stan Sakai really put on a show for the panel. He talked about some of the history around publishing Usagi Yojimbo. Did you know that Croatia was one of the first places to have Usagi Yojimbo in other then English? When Sakai talked to the people in Croatia that wanted to localize it he asked them about the war going on. They assured him it was nothing to worry about since it was 50 miles away. The other fun tid bit was at one point Oliver Stone had the option to make a Usagi movie. It would have been interesting to see.

I was awesome to see the man at work as well. Seeing him sketch was fluid and fast, it’s obvious he has no plans of slowing down at any time. It was also interesting to see him go over his process a little bit. When someone asked him if he had an end to Usagi he responded that of course there would be an end, but not anytime soon. Sakai very much made it sound like he plans on doing Usagi Yojimbo as long as he can. I of course plan on reading it for as long as he can produce it.

The rest of the day was relegated to last minute shopping. I planned on going to another panel, but I just didn’t have it in me. I got a few last minute steals, such as Fell Vol 1 for five dollars and Blankets for twenty, so overall it was a good day.

As for the con as a whole, I really enjoyed myself. I can’t wait to go again next year when I have the chance.

Dollhouse Finally Picks Up

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:08:30 GMT

by: jstump
Dollhouse is finally starting to pay off.

I have been mucking my way through the new Whedon show Dollhouse. Everyone has been talking about it, mostly bad. Well I love Joss Whedon's work and even though the first 1-4 episodes were lackluster (some even terrible). I now am on the bandwagon.

I just finished Episode 6 of Dollhouse. It is the best episode that has come out thus far. Episodes 1-5 were pretty much filler, they felt more like 8-10 should in the future. We finally get into something other then a formula episodes where Eliza Dushku wears something hot and possibly has an attitude. We also see that the Dollhouse is an odd way can help people.

This episode showed that a man who uses the service helps him have closure with his dead wife. This was something I didn't really see coming and it was a great change to the overall, I need someone to be my sex slave/kick ass chick/spy that the show has beenformulating thus far.

My favorite part of the episode (and series) is Agent Ballard. He has been by far the best part of this show. Since the first episode, I would actually pay attention to scenes with him in it, unlike most of the show thus far. We got a full helping of Ballard and I want to see more. He's one of two characters that I like that I feel actually have drive and are worth paying attention to. I really want to peg him for Alpha, but it doesn't make sense unless Whedon pulls some super curve ball.

This episode was full of what this season should have been thus far. It had FORWARD MOVING plot worth following, awesome action (the fight with Echo and Ballard was brutal), romance, deception, rape, and death. Holy crap if every TV show had this much in an episode I don't know how I'd find the time to do anything else.

Well done Mr. Whedon, you asked me to wait till episode 6 and I'm glad I did.

This post can be originally found on my blog: jonstump.net

Time Warner Cable and Bandwith Capping

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:32:03 GMT

by: jstump
A brief synopsis on Time Warner Cable and their failed attempt at broadband capping plans

Recently Time Warner Cable tested in a few different cities some different bandwith capping plans. Suffice to say they didn't work out, but it looks like the still plan on trying. They made a post on long reply that can be found here.

There is only one way I can see this working for TWC, if everyone does it. If my provider for cable did this, I'd be looking at the first available alternative and jump ship. The only people who will be okay with these are people who only use theinternet for browsing purposes or light gaming. This seems to me as another play at trying to cash in on new technologies, the big one being streaming video, morespecically Netflix (which if it did streaming a while back when a certain Tubes remark was made...). Of course the best part about our society is competition. Which is why I feel this will never work. As long as the competition can offer "unlimited"internet why go to TWC?

I could maybe see my parents using a lower tier so that they could pay less, but they only use the internet for surfing because they are on dialup. As soon as reasonable broadband is introduced into their area, my guess is that they will upgrade. I also forsee them getting into streaming video and purchasing video which would take them up a notch. I make this statement because after I took my Apple TV up north my Dad informed me that I was not allowed to take it back with me.

Is there anyone out there that thinks this is a good idea? I'm really curious to see what people think.

This article can originally be found on jonstump.net.

Bladerunner meets Spider-Man meets COLORS!

Tue, 05 May 2009 23:19:43 GMT

by: jstump
A Review of Spider-Man 2099 Vol 1

Do you like how conglomerates ruled over everything, awesome architecture, and crazy colors of Blade Runner? Like Spider-Man? If you've answered yes to one or both of those questions this book may be for you.

Spider-Man 2099 was written back in the beginning of the 90s or as I sometimes call them the "Dark Times." Now I've been known to joke about this on the forums, twitter, and with friends about how the 90s produced tons of crap and almost destroyed the industry. On the other hand we did get gems such as this. Spider-Man 2099 was a great combination of talent for the time and evidence that the entire decade wasn't bad.

Peter David, who more recently adapted some of Steven King's The Gunslinger into comic form, is the writer for this book. He does a great job of making our protagonist, Miguel O'Hara, different from Peter Parker, but keeps him to the core of the character's mantra. We all know it and it's of course in this book early on. The major difference between the two is what drives them. Peter was driven by the loss of his uncle. Miguel is driven by self preservation.

Early on in this book Miguel decides to leave one of the giant conglomerates, Alchemax, that now rule the world. This happens after Alchemax start moving Miguel's work further ahead than he wishes. The results are disastrous, to say the least, and anyone will agree that it's a good reason to leave. When he lets his boss, Tyler Stone who has the feel of Norman Osborne/Lex Luthor, know that it's time for him to leave his boss slips him a drug. This drug happens to bond to a person's DNA making them an addict for life. Miguel uses his research to overcome the drug, but of course an ?accident? happens.

The book is really a fight against what our world seems to be eventually evolving into, when reading it I thought of the opening of Fight Club how everything will be named after big companies. Miguel becomes Spider-Man as I said, out of self preservation. He needs to keep Alchemax off of his trail otherwise he'll become a victim of experimentation and their property. Along the way he helps people because it's the right thing to do and he has the power to do it or ?With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.?

The art is done by Rick Leonardi, who is currently the artist for Vigilante. His art in this book is really something you need to see. Somehow Leonardi manages to really hit the Spider-Man look. All of the characters in this book look distinct. For instance the Vulture in this book is not only a new original take, but he has a new look to go along. Miguel's brother, Gabe, doesn't get lost in the background with other characters. As I mentioned just describing how great I thought his art was in Spider-Man 2099 doesn't do it justice.

For those of you who think the costume may be stupid... please stop and take a look at most Superhero costumes. It's from a Day of the Dead festival that the main character went to in Mexico. I really like this costume because it's simplistic, but not too much, and different from the original Spider-Man's while keeping some of the original feel.

As I mentioned earlier this book is full of crazy colors. I don't know what it is with the future, but the colors are bright and vibrant. Some of the pages in this book remind me of Star Wars books in the early 90s from Dark Horse, out of control. If there was one thing I would have liked to see Marvel do with this book it would have been to recolor it. Nothing to drastic, just tone it down just a little bit. The cover is a great example of what they could have done.

Lastly would be the overall quality of this book. I think for a 29.99 book with only 10 issues this should be a hardcover with nice glossy pages. This book instead is a floppy trade and there is nothing special about the print quality. It may be that Marvel didn't think this book was going to sell well and wanted to try and make something off of it. The reason I say this is that I recently bought Nova Annihilation which had a cover price of 34.99, it had three more issues, was hardcover, and nice glossy pages. On the other hand at instocktrades.com it's less than 20 dollars for this book, which is more than worth it.

As I said if you like Spider-Man and Blade Runner I think you'll like Spider-Man 2099.

This article can be originally found on iFanboy.

Mmmm Cupcake...

Sun, 24 May 2009 23:10:18 GMT

by: jstump
A brief review of Google's Cupcake

So I woke up this morning and an old friend of mine had posted a late birthday gift on my Facebook wall. The links to instructions and downloads for the new Cupcake from Google/T-Mobile. Recently they are suppose to have it pushed to all T-Mobile Customers by the end of May. As I eagerly awaited and informed my fellow Android users at work I found out that the date had been pushed. Let's just say that curse words were used.

I haven't made my voice to clear on Android so far, on the internet anyways, let me start off by saying Android as I have used it to this point is okay. Ultimately if the iPhone snafu had not occurred I would probably have one of those instead. Now most of my gripes with the G1 are hardware related. The Battery sucks. You can confirm this with anyone, when I met Ron out in San Fran during Wondercon I asked him what he did to take care of the battery issues, his response was to turn everything off (which is what I currently do). Agent X with Marvel also has a G1, my understanding is that he bought one of the batteries that adds to the thickness to the phone, which I would do only as a last resort.

Now other things that bugged me were the browser's responsiveness, unable to change orientation without opening the keyboard, no onscreen keyboard, all around bugginess (I seem to be in the minority on this one, I've had to flash my phone twice), and many more little things that annoy me. Well in my few hours with Cupcake I can say that Google has made an honest effort at correcting a lot of these issues.

Frist thing I would like to mention is the browser. It's much faster, doesn't act as buggy, and just seems to work better. I used to go back and forth between the built in browser and Steel. There is one reason to still keep Steel along with Chrome and that is to download any files that is "not recognized" by the phone. I findd it annoying that Chrome (the built in browser) won't allow me to download a zip file. The reason being is that I may be somewhere reading about a new program and would like to download it to my phone so that I don't forget later.

Next finally I don't have to open my phone to flip the orinentation. Another annoyance that is gone. This is a feature that I felt should have been there in the first place.

The on screen keyboard also arrived. Any Android users would know by know that there are in fact other apps that have on screen keyboards. In general they suck. The new one is pretty good and offers spelling corrections and possibilities to what you are typing. I like having the new soft keyboard because if I need to response to someone's text with "ok" it now takes less time, but gives me the opportunity to do stupid things like post a review in iFanboy with a slide out keyboard.

There have been a lot of little visual updates as well. Their nice, but not needed. I really don't feel strongly one way or another.

The last couple features I want to at least mention are Google Talk and Camcorder. The Camcorder is okay, it's what you expect out of a phone, the awesome part is being able to upload to youtube with ease. I haven't done this yet but in the future it would be easy to share things with friends that can be only shown in a video. Lastly is Google Talk, an absolute tease. All I can see if that they seperated google chat from the IM program, no new features there.

Overall Cupcake is an improvement and I wish T-Mo would stop screwing around and give it to people. Most of my friends that use a G1 are starting to get impatient (I know I was) and when they heard it got pushed back overall morale seemed down. I can honestly say that I feel that the G1 fell flat for me and when I get the chance I will probably replace it. Now with Cupcake, I may consider sticking with an Android phone, but being the Apple whore that I am I will probably go with an iPhone at some point.

How I Survive a Comic Con

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:34:19 GMT

by: jstump
Things to do and Bring to Survive a Comic Con

A while back I wrote my guide on how I survived Wondercon in San Francisco. I really didn't get into what I did to prepare or what I took to survive the con. It was more of a first hand experience on how the con itself was for me. I know most nerds have their own rituals they practice before going to a comic con and most of you most likely have their own gadgets to take so that you have other things to occupy your time when the need comes. Oddly it seems when a comic con comes up I always seem to see in a forum or posts on an article that poses the question, "What should I do to prepare/need to bring to survive at a comic con?" Hopefully I can at least tell you what I do to help out. Now some of the things below may seem funny or odd, BUT understand that some are suppose to be that way or I'm just that odd.

Before the Con:

Extra Sleep - The week leading up to the con I try to get as much sleep as possible. This has helped me a lot in times past. At Wondercon I was out till 2-3 AM most of the weekend and not "pre-sleeping" would have made it a terrible experience. When I last went to the Chicago Comic-Con I spent roughly 8+ hours on the road traveling home and had to go to work the next day on 3-4 hours worth of sleep. I know it sounds weird but hibernating as much as possible the week before seems to help me more than coffee.

Pre-Drinking/Not Overdoing It - Alright before anyone pulls an intervention on me if you're over the age of 21 the chances of you drinking at the con are probably high. At Wondercon I held back a little mostly because I wanted to be able to enjoy the con the next day, but I know if I hadn't had a few drinks the weeks before, after an extensive dry spell, it could have been disastrous. The night of the Wondercon Tiki Tour could have easily ended with several people standing over me drawing unmentionable pictures on my face in some unknown town. I'm not sure how to handle this cause it could have ment someone talented like Darick Robertson drawing a penis on my face or one of the iFanboys drawing something that looked like one. I also could have ended up like some of my roommates who have forgotten what happened for parts of their con experiences due to binge drinking over the weekend.

Making a List - Before every con I make a list of all the creators I want to see, comics I want to buy, panels I want to visit, and what I need to take. I've forgotten things when going to a con before and had to either purchase new copies of books or not having something I needed. Let's just say you don't want to end up like myself with more copies of All Star Batman&Robin than you can count or spending 10+ dollars on first issues of Justice for Alex Ross to sign. Also without a list you could also find yourself without something simple like a phone charger.

Create a Schedule - Having a simple calendar of the panels you want to see helps you keep track of everything. The best example I have of this is the difference between my first Chicago Comic Con and Wondercon. I only went to two panels at Chicago and many at Wondercon. I missed out on a lot of good news at Chicago and didn't want to miss anything again. With making a simple schedule I got to see much more at Wondercon than I even dreamed of with past experiences at cons.

Check What Creators are Going - I had an embarrassing moment at Wondercon where sadly I was having a conversation with Joe Casey and Josh without realizing that Casey was indeed the one who wrote Godland a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Later I realized this and felt like a rather big idiot. Taking a moment to look over who is at the con or events you are going to and correlating it with your bookshelf is a good idea.

Check your Car - If you're driving your car have it checked before hand. I was burned on this in the past and had to scramble for alternative transportation. I got lucky, you on the other hand may not be. Do yourself a favor and have your car checked before hand or get a oil change to see if anything wrong with your car pops up. Would you rather pay some money before hand to have a safe and reliable form of transportation OR would you rather miss the whole thing?

Things to Bring:

This is where the list that you created earlier comes in handy. Things I always take to a con are as follows...

Entertainment - I always take my DS, PSP, and eReader with me to all the Cons I go to. There will be times when you're waiting to see a creator or even to get onto the show room floor. Having something to pass the time that won't weigh you down too much will make things go by much faster.

Water, Snacks, Food - Con food and water is over priced, there is no getting around this fact. Currently a con that resides in my home state went from twice a year to once a year because the Showplace demanded that creators and vendors purchase food and water at the convention center. This resulted in the Con only being once a year since creators and the like couldn't afford it twice a year with it being as small as it was. Taking snacks and water will therefore bring down how much you spend on these things and leaving you more money to spend on cool things at the con. I even found that Slim Fast works for me in "eating" really cheap for a con.

Comics to sign - Signatures are a neat thing to have. Yes, you can sell them at a later date, but you may end up with a special story to go along with the autograph. An added item to this would be some permanent markers. Most creators have them, but there may be the time that one runs out of ink and you happen to have an extra. Most backpacks and such have the space for pens anyways.

iPod and Tunes - You may wonder why this is under entertainment and that it seems stupid to mention, but I've been to a con where I forgot my iPod (remember that list I mentioned earlier) and was less focused on what I was doing. I use my iPod as a tool to keep my concentration on certain tasks when I'm in buying mode or tracking something down. The con floor is a noisy place and having something to drown it all out is nice. I usually am a man on a mission at a comic con, sadly I get easily distracted at the same time.

A Good Bag(s) - Carrying a metric ton of swag can leave a little bit of strain on your back. At Wondercon I took a simple Timbuk2 messenger bag. I will go on record as saying that it probably wasn't the best choice. Within 30 minutes of hitting the floor I bought The Complete Mad Man and the first 5 volumes of Nexus. I spent hours carrying these books around and it was a killer on my back. I would stay away from a messenger bags altogether in my opinion. I also have a simple Eddie Bauer backpack, which I have used to carry as much stuff with less pain and suffering. More backpacks tend to have a spot to fit a water bottle as well. With a messenger bag you're lucky if it has one, if not I don't suggest doing what I did and using a carabiner to attach a water bottle. This may be more of a problem for guys, but I found that I "tagged" myself more times than I would have liked. Also if you are taking a plane having an extra swag bag you can carry on is not a bad idea. I saved myself an extra 90 dollars having a carryon for my swag.

Cash - This also sounds like a stupid thing to mention, of course you're going to want to bring cash. The problem is that maybe you don't want to grab all of what you want to spend and use a credit card as backup. Here's a little dirty underhanded Accounting trick for you, if you take cash most vendors will not charge you tax. Also a lot of vendors don't take credit cards so if you do need to get cash you'll be stuck spending an extra 2-5 dollars depending on charges with your bank and the ATM. That could be a comic you could pick up but instead you screwed yourself getting more money. When you could have had it on you in the first place. You may also want to carry your wallet or cash in your front pocket... you know if you're like me and are a paranoid type.

A Girlfriend or Friend - I know this sounds crazy and a little silly, it is, but having someone else that can help you in your Con adventure the better. I've done cons with girlfriends, friends, and solo. It's always better with a girlfriend or friend, they share interests (sometimes) with you and that's why their there. Yes I'm also not above using a girlfriend and/or friend to help me carry things. Also it makes less trips back to your hotel room or car, meaning more floor time. Although something can be said for going solo and doing your own thing. This would of course be the most optional of all the things on my list... sorry girlfriends, boyfriends and best friends of comic nerds everywhere sometimes we need our alone time with thousands of our kind.

Camera, chargers, and other misc. items - Having all the necessary chargers for your gadgets and such will come in handy. You don't have to carry everything to the show room floor, but you don't want to run out of juice over the weekend. Also having a camera means you can get all of the moments you want to remember. Once again this may be a no brainer to some people. Don't forget that list and schedule you made, it would be for nothing if you did. Also just because it's not in my article doesn't mean there isn't something else you think of to bring.

Have Fun:

Overall remember you're there to have fun. My article may have made this seem like you're going to a job or what not, but really these are just things I found to work for me. Also try to make sure if you take someone as your mule, as I so eloquently have put it, that they also have fun. If they're going and going to help you they should want to do something cool there as well. Hopefully this will help you in your Comic Con adventure. For those harden veterans out there, what do you do to prepare?

I hope everyone this weekend that is headed to San Diego has a fun and safe time. I hope to see your stories and pictures from when you return.

Google Voice Review

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:54:39 GMT

by: jstump
A Comprehensive review of Google Voice.

I acquired a Google Voice account roughly a month or so ago. I was giddy with excitement and wanted to wait some time before I wrote a proper review. Well after using it for a while I think it's time to write one.

Google Voice (GV) is essentially Gmail for your phone. Google hands you a new phone number of your choice and away you go. Let's get something straight from the beginning, GV is NOT a voip program. There are ways to get a voip numbers associated with GV, and although I haven't done this yet, I hear that it is rather simple. The initial setup was fairly quick. I logged into my GV account, was prompted to pick a phone number, and then at least one pre existing phone number to associate with the new one I picked from GV. I only have my cell phone at this time so it is the only number associated.

I immediately got to using GV and the Android GV app. I highly recommend going and watching Ron's review of the app on App Judgement. He has a fairly extensive review that can be watched in about 5-6 minutes. I really liked how it didn't sound any different than my regular line. Anyone I talked to I asked if they noticed any difference from the new number. I had heard rumors that there was some lag in conversation and thankfully everyone I polled told me they didn't notice anything different. There are some neat features that you can use while talking with Google Voice, chiefly that you can record calls. During a call you hit 4 on your key pad and it is announced that the call is now being recorded. This most likely gets around most laws on recording phone calls, since in a majority of states it is illegal without consent or knowledge for the person you are talking with. I think this would be a useful feature that is out of the ordinary, the ordinary being conference calls and the like, that I could see using if I needed to interview someone and wanted to listen to the call later.

Voicemail and Texts

GV does a great job of being that one stop shop for all of your contacts, voicemails, and text messages. Everything looks very similar to Gmail in layout.

As you can see I have a couple voicemails that are sitting out there, ones I have listened to and read. It's nice to see that you can associate pictures with everyone through your contacts, the same contacts that get used for Gmail. As you can see I picked a decent transcribe and one that frankly I can't remember what the call was about. This seems to go back and forth with GV as sometimes a transcribe can go just fine and then I get things like a Green Manager as Dave suggests Majendro having. Even the call I got from Steve wasn't the greatest. Most of it isn't too bad, but it's clear that nobody's canceling is suppose to be noise canceling.

I also have a transcript from another message my friend Dave left asking me if I wanted to go to the Beards Answer Fest. I'm still trying to figure out what goes on at this festival. Are Beards the answer and do we have to have a festival for them? I can understand why Dave may need to go, he doesn't have a beard. Also I had one voicemail a roommate left trying to through off the transcript to see what happened. I was given a message that read No Transcript. That's what happens when you try to fool the system I guess.

Another neat voicemail feature is that you can setup additional voicemail greetings. Currently if one of my roommates calls me he's greeted by a message letting him know that I can't take his call since I am too busy plotting his demise.

And now for Texts:

Text Messages work pretty much how you would think they do. There are two major differences:

1. You can get send/receive txts for free as long as you have an internet connection.

2. MMS DO NOT WORK!!!

As one might figure, number 2 is a biggie. You may be wondering right now, what does GV do with MMS messages? Well GV has made is simple for themselves, nothing happens. That's right nothing. They don't go anywhere or maybe they do, WE DON'T KNOW! If someone sends you a picture of G.I Joe figures you're not going to receive it. Said person will not receive anything saying it wasn't sent. There is no option to forward these to your old number even. GV decides to ignore the problem at the moment. Hey I have an idea, how about you turn them into an email and forward them that way? I heard that works for other people, but even they know they're getting MMS at some point. As you may have read, I'm not at all bitter about this.

Settings

The settings in GV are quite robust. As you can see from the above screenshot you can do lots of things with incoming calls. Don't want people just calling you and actually getting to talk to the all powerful wizard? Easy just turn on Screening with the appropriate options. When the call comes in, you'll know who it is and have the option to not only send them to voicemail, but to listen to them as they leave the message. I thought this was a pretty awesome feature, but also slightly creepy.

Even though there are many settings Google thankfully keeps them all relatively simple. For instance here is the SMS and Voicemail setup:

As you would assume this is one of the places you can setup your voicemail greetings, notifications (what email address and if you want a SMS sent of the transcript), Voicemail PIN, and lastly the ever so fantastic feature of Voicemail Transcripts.

Something else I like, but haven't had the chance to dig into just yet is Groups.

With these you can edit what happens when someone calls. Some of the features are; what phones to forward members of this group to, what greeting, and call presentation. The call presentation is how the call is presented to you when you answer the call. For my Coworkers group for example I have it set to announce their name and give me answer options. As I mentioned earlier you can change their greeting. This could come in handy for when you're out of the office and want to get the point across that you won't be answering your phone.

Lastly I really like the option that you can setup Widgets for you GV number. This will allow you to setup a link for someone to call you from any webpage. You can edit the options per widget, to say for instance go straight to voicemail.

Conclusion

There of course are many more things that I could show you, but most of them are self explanatory, such as contacts or missed calls. What I'd like to mention is the fact that I have not replaced my number with GV, not yet anyways. The ultimate deal breaker for me was no MMS. I have no problems telling people, ?call me at my new number because I won't answer the old one.? I just don't want to add, ?unless you're sending a picture to me, then use the old one.? I receive just enough MMS messages that this could be annoying for myself and everyone else. It's confusing enough to get people to use a new number, let alone to add stipulations for contacting you with additional numbers.

Right now I have GV setup to essentially be a Visual VM for me. This is nice as I can still take advantage of the hilarious transcripts that GV creates from people who call and leave messages. I am lying in wait for MMS and as soon as this feature hits, I'm making the jump and not looking back. If MMS is not something that is a big deal by all means dive in. The other thing that is really worth mentioning is anyone on T-Mobile with myFaves. You're going to have to change your plan to use everything legally. You're GV number is not going to dial out normally making myFaves useless. Some have actually setup their GV number as a Favorite, but it could easily be argued by T-Mobile that this voids your contract as it is a number that allows for over 500 other phone numbers to be filtered through it.

Also I've added a Google Voice Widget. Feel free to give me a call and let me know what you thought of the article!

G1 and Me - A year with Android

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:21:44 GMT

by: jstump
A year with the G1, how do I feel now?

So it was roughly a year ago that I ditched my Motorola V360 for the G1. The reason I decided to upgrade was that I had the Motorola for some time and the speaker was going out. People would tell me, your phone has great signal and I would respond with WHAT?! I can?t hear you!

So I decided to jump into Android, why might one ask? Two reasons really:

1. I love Google and use it for pretty much everything.

2. AT&T thought that I needed to pay a $500 security deposit for an iPhone. Also their network blows.

I read a bunch of reviews online and the G1 was getting pretty decent reviews. The biggest complaint seemed to be the battery. I thought to myself, ?can it really be that bad?? I of course would find out almost immediately the battery sucked on the phone which to this day is still my largest complaint. After reading these reviews I took the plunge by going to my local T-mo store and buying the last G1 there. In fact a guy walked in as they were getting the last one for myself trying to pick one up. I couldn?t wait to get this baby back to work and start playing with it. The problem was I had to wait roughly a half hour till they actually added a data plan to my service. Once added I entered my Gmail account and away I went.

Things that I immediately loved about Android was how everything synced without hassle. I really liked the fact that I never had to hook my phone up to a computer unless I wanted to drop music on it. I entered my Gmail account and all of my phone numbers and emails I needed were there, ready for use. It also went and got my google calendar, which I hadn?t used as much till getting the phone. I also was happy that this had a physical keyboard. I wasn?t a huge fan (at first) of a soft keyboard that was found on iPhones and other touchscreen phones.

In the first week of having the phone I started to notice what they meant by poor battery. I would learn quickly that I had to keep this baby plugged in all day at work, charge it around 11:00 am, or turn everything off so it would keep a decent charge.

For a good while my Android experience hit a wall. The phone would start to get laggy causing me to either have to delete a ton of stuff or reset the phone to factory defaults. Then it would start acting well again. The music player clearly showed me early on that it was poorly designed along with most of the others in the market. Although Last.FM made a decent player for playing random music, ultimately I found that my iPod works best.

Finally during the summer a nifty tool was released, the one click root, which of course took more than one click. Being able to root my phone allowed access to all sorts of new tools. The biggest was being able to tether my laptop. This wasn?t huge as I don?t need it often, but nice to have. After this soon came my other love for Google and Android, Google Talk. I was lucky enough to be included early into the beta and I?ve written my feelings about it here on Murmur.

After rooting my phone the next step was figuring out what other cool things I could do. Friends and associates had seen on my Facebook how my phones lagginess along with the battery was starting to really piss me off. They then suggested installing a modded version of Android, specifically Cyanogen. Shortly after I rooted came some really easy to install tools to make to move to Cyanogen a breeze. The instructions were about as hard as installing a custom firmware for my PSP, which is also pretty easy.

Cyanogen put a new lease on my G1?s life. It stopped being laggy and started doing what I wanted it to do. The battery wasn?t necessarily better, but at least the phone was opening programs and not hanging up all of the time. I was pretty happy with Cyanogen with the fact that it turned me around on the G1 when it did. The only issue I have with Cyanogen is that sometimes a program crashes. I half expected this since it?s not stock Android and have come to accept it over the alternative of hating my phone. Then Google stepped in and did something very unGoogle. A cease and desist went to the main man behind Cyanogen and like the classy guy that he is, he pulled the project until he could make it work. I then made a last ditch effort to get up to one of the more recent releases before they were lost to the internet ether.

Cyanogen very quickly figured out a way to make everyone happy with the next release. I recently decided to go up to 4.2.1 and have been pretty happy with it so far. It continues to keep a lackluster piece of hardware from being replaced.

Overall in my year with the G1 and Android I would put it simply, Android is awesome and the G1 should NEVER have been the first phone released for it. It?s clear to me that the phone is really something developers were using to develop on when T-Mo came along and decided to make it their flagship phone last year. I would say at this moment Android is still growing and it will continue to get better, the Motorola Droid is proof of that. In fact the Droid is what has me thinking of ditching T-Mobile.

Lately I?ve gone back to my dilemma of wanting to get rid of my phone. The hardware is terrible and I have no plans to get another HTC phone if I can help it. My phone is easily twice as thick as an iPhone, smaller screen, and less battery. Although I don?t know if I want to go to AT&T. Their customer service treated me terribly when I tried to get a phone with them, oh yeah and when I said FU to the guy behind the counter that waited till I almost swiped my card to let me know it was going to be an additional $500 they decided to send me a bill for canceled service along with informing me to send back my iPhone. I like Android enough I wouldn?t mind sticking to another phone with it. The problem now is, do I wait or go with another one that may have slightly better hardware?

This post can be originally found on www.jonstump.net

iPhone vs G1 FIGHT!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:48:13 GMT

by: jstump
Comparing my unlocked iPhone to my G1.

So I've been using an unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile for a couple weeks now. I figured I would take a moment and compare it with my G1 to show how I feel about switching.

I wrote a little while ago my feelings on using a G1 for a year. Oddly I kept mentioning how I wanted to find something other than an iPhone, but sadly the Apple fan in me won out. I wanted to start off by mentioning the Hardware.

Hardware:

The iPhone is thinner than the G1. For anyone who owns a G1, the iPhone comes to about where the screen slides up to reveal the qwerty keyboard on the G1. I love how much thinner this phone is. It doesn't sound like that would be a huge difference, but when it's in your pocket with the rounded edges you'll notice it.

I still feel like the G1 is a brick of a phone. I originally loved the fact that it had a qwerty keyboard, but recently I found that I can type faster with the soft keyboard on the iPhone as its correction is much better. As far as comparing the soft keyboard on the iPhone to the G1, iPhone wins hands down. For those of you wondering my G1 is on 1.6 and I've heard the keyboard is better on 2.0 for Android.

Even though I can expand the storage space on my G1, app storage is resticted to the ROM space on the phone (if I have it wrong I'm sorry and yes I know there is a way to store them on my SD card). What matters is that I can't store a large amount of apps on the G1. The iPhone allows me to store 16 gigs of apps of I feel like it. The one part where the G1 pulls ahead, I can use it as a thumb drive on any computer I feel like. This is something I've been missing from the iPhone. I know I can do it, but most solutions I've seen require me paying for something.

I can't compare the cameras because I barely used either phone's camera.

Call quality is about equivalent. I hear whomever I am talking to just fine. I've asked people that I was talking with if they noticed a difference with the new phone and the answer universally was no.

Speed goes to the iPhone. It wasn't till I installed Cyanogen on my G1 that I really felt that it was worth a damn being able to function, but I still had lag and stability issues.

Battery also goes to the iPhone. The battery was one of the top reasons I decided to make the switch. With my G1 I needed to charge the phone by roughly noon when at work, maybe another hour on Edge. The iPhone can go the whole work day. I know that there are extended batteries for the G1, but I didn't want to make it any thicker than what it was.

Notifications go to the G1. I sorely miss the little blinking LED that let me know when new mail, txts, twitter @s/DMs, and Facebook messages were there for me to check. The iPhone gives me a buzz or a single chirp.

Software:

This is a hard comparison. The reason I say this is that I know that I don't want to make this argument an Android vs. iPhone OS fight. I've tried my best below to do so. The other factor playing into this is that I was using Cyanogen on my phone for quite some time before getting the iPhone, which makes a huge difference.

Customization to the home screens, G1 wins hands down. Yes I can have a bunch of screens on the iPhone, but the G1 lets me do a whole lot with three or five screens being on Cyanogen. Android has widgets, the iPhone does not. I used these quite a bit and not having them is a downer. Also, call me crazy, but when I pick a phone wallpaper I want to see it all the time. Not only when my phone is locked and I'm unlocking it.

Syncing and music goes to the iPhone. I use iTunes a lot so this was a loosing battle for my G1. It also doesn't help that the Music app for Android looks like it was designed in the 90s. Seriously Google get someone on this because the music app is as Steve Jobs would say, "A bag of hurt." I've used the alternatives and I didn't see anything better either. Some will argue that I could use Doubletwist or Songbird for syncing with the G1. I tried and I did not find it intuitive. Also it meant converting a bunch of my music, which I wasn't up for. When it comes to listening to music in both regards I plan on sticking to my iPod classic. The click wheel is the best thing ever created for going through my playlists.

Apps go to the G1 for one reason alone, it's open. The iPhone may have some nice apps and more of them, but the only time I have to worry about Google being bitches about apps are when it comes to stuff like tethering. Honestly if they didn't remove them all of the service providers would throw a fit and I could see Android having a small adoption rate. I may be able to get less apps from the Android app store, but at least I get quality and freedom of choice. I don't feel in general that the quality of apps for the iPhone are all that better. This leads to the next point that I had at least two browsers on my G1. This would allow me to download something that I can't at work and install it to my computer. I can no longer do this with the iPhone that I know of. The iPhone won't let me download anything that may compete with their precious apps and that really annoys me.

Mail and Contacts also go to the G1. When I first started my G1 and put in my google account it was like some sort of black magic had happened. All of my mail was there along with all of my phone contacts. Yes the iPhone now allows you to sync with Google's contacts, but the mail app on the iPhone in comparison to the G1 is no where near as good in my opinion. Google knows how to do search and mail, they got mail right on Android.

Browsing is slight edge to the iPhone. I like the multitouch, but I've lived without it for so long it's not like I couldn't continue living without it. Overall I do feel like the iPhone's browser allows me to look at pages faster than the G1 did. I like the overall browsing experience for some reason on the iPhone better. I just wish I had more of a selection of browsers.

Notifications again go to the G1. Having the notification bar makes it easy to see ALL of my updates. I have to go through my home screens on the iPhone to check them all out.

Overall:

I'm happier with my iPhone. It's a better product than my G1 ever was when it comes to hardware and stability of the software. However if this was a Android vs. iPhone OS fight, Android wins all the way. Android allows for you to do so much more with the phone and is constantly getting better, in the leaps and bounds way. In the long run I'm glad I got a iPhone 3G and I'm glad I did it instead of buying another shitty phone from T-Mobile. I can easily see myself going back to Android when the right hardwarefor it comes out. If I want to keep all of the games and apps from my iPhone at this point I would either keep mine unlocked or just buy an iPod Touch.

For those of you reading this on Facebook or murmur.com this was originally posted on jonstump.net