Like many people with the iPhone 3GS. I have problems with the battery. Connectivity at work is very bad, so my phone is spending most of the day scanning the EM bands, searching for it’s beloved AT&T. It’s nigh impossible to get through the day on one charge. Consequently, I have chargers everywhere I can predictably be found; by my bed, in the car, at the office, and even on my sofa in the evening. But if I find myself somewhere where I can’t charge it, and I know I’m going to be there using the iPhone for any significant time (Indonesian hen parties come to mind), I know that even if it has a full charge when I leave my car, it will be mostly dead (or slightly alive, no loose change here) when I get back to the car.

It was after one such affair that I decided to do something about it. Mophie makes a couple battery packs that double as extra batteries (to be fair, they only make one now; the other being discontinued): the Juicepack and the Juicepack Air.

Mophie Juicepack

Mophie Juicepack Air

Both have an external battery that can charge your iPhone. The Air has a switch (I didn’t know the Juicepack didn’t) so you don’t have to leave the phone plugged in all the time (the phone draws less power if it’s not plugged in, so this saves power). Both have battery capacity LEDs on the back. The Juicepack’s battery is 1800 mAh, while the Air’s battery is 1200 mAh.

The Juicepack can be thought of like a backpack; it’s big and bulky and makes you think you really have something extra back there. It has a bigger battery, and uses the standard dock connector, but looks bulky (to be fair, I’ve never seen one in person; only pictures on the web). The Juicepack Air looks like you just have a fatter case but it actually looks like a case. It has a standard micro-USB connector (more on that later), and a smaller battery.

The connector was actually my biggest concern. As I said I’ve practically cornered the market on iPhone chargers. I have, at present:

Apple supplied USB cable & charger by my bed.
Apple cable by my home computer.
Apple charger in the living room (have to bring the cable from the computer if I need to use it).
A standalone charger in the living room (usually used for my wife’s iPhone).
A car charger.
A car charger with a remote control and audio output.
A standalone charger at work.
(Another standalone charger at work but that only works with my iPod).

So getting something that works with all those would be nice. Not only that, but something that easily plays audio in the car would be extra nice. So my question was: which one do I get?

Juicepack

Pro:

My biggest reason for considering the Juicepack was the car. I use the iPhone in the car constantly, and being able to plug the Juicepack into the car directly, especially with the audio working, would be great.

I also like the extra battery life.

Con:

Biggest con is the form factor. I don’t like how it looks. There’s also real concern it might not fit well in my pocket. And it’s more expensive.

Juicepack Air

Pro:

In addition to the form factor and size (which is important), the Air uses a standard micro-USB charger. One nice thing about that is that if I need to charge the pack without the phone (for example, if I don’t want to plug the phone into some strange computer, but want that computer’s power), I can connect the pack to any computer and charge it by itself. This is important at work, as I am unable to plug my phone into my work computer.

Con:

The inability to plug it into my car audio adapter is probably the biggest pain with the Air. I have three options, typically:

1. Remove the iPhone from the pack and plug it directly into the car audio adapter.
2. Use an audio cable, plugged into the headphone jack.
3. Just forego the iPhone’s audio and use my iPod (or enjoy the silence).

I also found that the micro-USB is much more difficult to attach than the iPhone’s standard dock connector (especially in the dark if my wife is already asleep).

I ended up buying the Juicepack Air. One unexpected feature (especially outside in the New England winter) is that when it’s charging, the battery pack gets quite warm, so doubles as a hand warmer. I suspect that won’t be as welcome in a few months.

Finally, as I said above, I didn’t know the Juicepack didn’t have a switch. That in itself might mean the effective capacity of both is comparable (assuming both stay on your phone all the time). I still charge the phone (and the pack) whenever possible, but now I rarely have to worry about both dying.

And if I didn’t make it clear, I really like and heartily recommend the Mophie Juicepack Air. It’s great!

As you may have guessed from the previous post, I have an iPhone. I got a 3GS last summer and liked it so much I got a refurbished 3G for my wife (whose technological extent is a few poorly-spelled Facebook updates). The simplicity of the interface coupled with the ginormous number of apps makes it awesome for me. I’ve heard some say that it’s great as an Internet device but not so good as a phone. Fine with me; I don’t talk on the phone much anyway.

Recently, I jailbroke my iPhone.

There, I said it.

I fully expect black shirted, blue jeaned goons with an Apple logo on their lapel to break down my door. If you don’t hear from me after this, send lawyers, guns, and money to Cupertino. Or at the very least, my Apple ID to be revoked or something nasty like that.

That’s probably the worst thing about jailbreaking, the paranoia. That and the resistance to asking for support for apps. I’m afraid they’ll say, “you jailbroke your phone? Well of course our app won’t work then!”

For the record, I didn’t jailbreak my phone to unlock it. I’m perfectly happy with AT&T. I also didn’t jailbreak my phone so I could pirate software. Everything on my phone I got from the official App store, or one of the JB app stores (Rock, Cedia). I jailbroke it so I could have better access to it. I’m a UNIX geek, going back almost to the 70s, and while I knew the iPhone is running OSX (a variant of BSD UNIX), I don’t REALLY know that until I see a command prompt.

But the fact is, it’s been a wonderful experience. I like having far more control over my (yes, Apple, I said, “MY”) iPhone than Apple thinks I should. Before, I would have to go into preferences, then Wifi, to toggle wifi mode. Here, I just swipe the status bar, tap, tap, done.

And multitasking. Don’t get me started there. I’ve been doing multitasking on BSD UNIX computers since the Carter administration. And I haven’t checked, but I’m fairly sure the iPhone is a more powerful computer than the ones I used back then (okay, okay, I just checked. DEC VAX 11/750: 3.125 MHz, iPhone 3GS: 600 MHz (and yes, don’t complain to me about comparing apples and onions)). The iPhone already supports multitasking, it just doesn’t support 3rd party apps doing it. And it lacks any indication in the Springboard (iPhone’s app launcher) that an app is already running.

And having been around UNIX machines for so long, I know the dangers of multitasking. So, in the words of Brian Tong from CNET, I “use it wisely”. And in a way, I’d rather I didn’t have to. I only have one brain, and can only use one app at a time (and what separation I support can already be handled by the multitasking already in the iPhone (right brain enjoying the music on the iPod, while the left brain is doing other stuff)). But until all apps preserve your state perfectly, and are quick to launch, I do it, so I can go back and forth between apps without having 10 extra steps.

So why doesn’t Apple allow it?

I don’t think it would be that hard. One of the multitask managers I played with shows you a graphical screen, with each window being a separate app. It’s analogous to Safari and websites. And just like how Safari limits websites opened to 8 (if you open another one, it closes one of the others), there’s no reason why the multitask manager can’t limit you to, say, 8 apps. It’s not quite that simple (there are many apps that I wouldn’t want 8, or even 4 or 2 copies of running on my phone). But from a user interface point of view, it’s certainly not impossible.

So this now brings me to the iPad. As many have noted, it also doesn’t support multitasking (insofar as it has the same limitation on 3rd party apps that the iPhone has). That’s a more glaring deficiency, what with iWork and the prospect of it being a more useful device.

So, will I get an iPad? As it is now, no. Assuming I can afford it, I’ll get one if and when (a) it supports 3rd party multitasking apps, or (b) it can be jailbroken to do so. And even then, it’s a stretch. It’s much bigger than the iPhone, and doesn’t do much more. It’d be a nice sofa laptop (something you can surf the web with while you’re watching TV), but I couldn’t see leaving my laptop at home and bringing that instead.

Of course, having said that, if someone were to give me one, I wouldn’t say no. :)

(don’t say it; I know. Yet another new category)

I got my first iPhone last summer and think it’s great. One of the first games I bought for it was Glyder. I loved how effortlessly it gave you the idea of flying. It had several challenging puzzles for you to solve, and I took to the game like, well, a duck to, umm, water?

Anyway, after a while, I stopped playing. Why? Because I solved everything on it. I even solved the entire game without crashing once. Yes, I was that obsessed with it, and it was that much fun.

Why was it fun? Years ago I wanted to hang glide, but for various reasons, never did. I think this game does a wonderful job simulating hang gliding–only better. The controls are intuitive; there’s almost no touch controls, only motion control. If you tilt the phone forward, you fly down and faster. If you tilt back, you go up and slow down. Tilt the phone left or right and you turn.

And everything in Glyder hinges on your flying ability. Throughout the world there are gems floating in the air, and the object of the game is to collect all these gems. There are also different island regions, so you collect all the gems in one area then fly to another area.

And the islands are very different. One has many caves you have to fly through. Another one consists mostly of one big building and you have to fly through the building (can’t land in the building).

It also has challenges, where you land on a colored platform labeled A and must fly to a platform with the same color labeled B within a certain time.

And that’s just Glyder, not Glyder 2.

Glyder 2 is like Glyder (different islands of course), with extras.

The aforementioned challenges act like guided tours where you are shown a series of circles and fly through each one in turn. Arrows show you where each circle is, and going through one reveals the next one. If you make it to the B platform in time, you might get some reward (more on those later).

There are other challenges. These usually take the form of some device shooting things (snowflakes, etc) in the air and you have to capture as many of them as you can in a fixed time. Other times you have to pick things up and carry them somewhere. When you succeed you get a reward.

Glyder 2, like Glyder, requires you to gather gems. But you also have to collect rewards. These can either be different wings or outfits, or could be various artifacts that are needed to solve the game. In Glyder, all you have to do is gather all the gems. But in Glyder 2, solving the game is more complex. You need some things to power other things, and you need various artifacts to power portals, etc. The artifact descriptions are gems of technobabble in themselves. For example, the Quantum Shifter is described as, “The quantum Shifter can link the temporal arc flow to the warp field modulator to enable actuate phase control in the ethereal aura.”

Wings and outfits: in Glyder, there was just one set of wings and one outfit. You couldn’t change it. But in Glyder 2, there are different kinds of wings and different outfits. The wings have different properties. Some are better at soaring high, and others are better at turning. With some, you can collect the energy gems (those shimmering gems that make you go fast) or even updrafts, and release them when you want. I don’t know of any functional difference between the outfits, but you can dress up in many different ways, ranging from ninjas to zombies.

Upside / Downside:

Upsides of Glyder 2: more of the same as Glyder, with new, more complicated challenges. Different wings and outfits give you options.

Downsides: many of the same problems with Glyder. There’s one fixed puzzle. Once you solve it, you’re mostly done. I was able to solve Glyder 2 in a weekend (albeit a very fun weekend). There’s also a bug in Glyder 2 (also in Glyder) where if you set the orientation of the phone at vertical, you’re either climbing really high or diving.

I didn’t buy Glyder 2 when it first came out mostly because I was afraid of the “one fixed puzzle” downside. I waited until it was on sale for a dollar. Would I recommend it? For a dollar, yes. For more, it depends on how easy it was to solve Glyder for you. If it was easy, you might not be happy. But there are a lot of challenges, even after you solve the main puzzle, so yes, you might like it anyway.

Decided to try my hand at baking julekake again. Olfactory memory is among the strongest memory, and the smell of freshly toasted julekake is a big part of Christmas for me.

I’d made it a few times before, with varying degrees of success, but hadn’t for a couple years, so wanted to try again. I did plan ahead–somewhat. I bought some candied fruit, although not enough (only got a pound and a half instead of two pounds for a double recipe). I didn’t buy any cardamom pods, though, and that’s a story in itself.

My recipe from my dad (ultimately from my mother’s mother, though) specified buying the cardamom in the pods, opening them by hand, and grinding the seeds. And that’s what I’ve always done. Mind you, it’s not easy finding the pods; most supermarkets don’t sell the pods. It’s also time-consuming (but in a relax-with-three-bowls-on-lap-while-watching-tv kind of time-consuming way). So, when I first started baking my own, I bought a pepper grinder and dedicated it just to cardamom seeds, and bought the pods, separating them during the first batter rising.

Yesterday, December 24 / January 6th (when I write dates like that, the first date is according to the Julian calendar, and the second is according to the Gregorian calendar; if you’re confused, just read the second and ignore the first), I had planned to bake julekake. We had some shopping to do first, and I got a late start on everything, which pushed everything back (the fact that we had to be home when our daughter got home from school gave us another deadline). I went to one market, planning on buying the cardamom pods there. But they didn’t have any, just the ground cardamom. Muttering a quiet apology to my dad, I bought the ground cardamom.

Mixing the batter was uneventful until it came time to rise it. My stove is somewhat new and I haven’t explored it’s features. It can go as low as 170°F which I wasn’t sure would work for rising, so I called my dad (but not before starting the oven preheating). He thought it would be way too hot (I’m now not sure and want to do some tests) and thought the little preheating I did would be enough to make it warm enough, so I didn’t bother with the hot water the way I usually do.

But after half an hour it had barely risen so I started to panic and decided to add the hot water. And after an hour it was fine.

The next rising also took much longer. I tried to add more hot water, but it was tough. The dough was very strong after the second rising. Took an extra helping of elbow grease just to get the loaves formed. Another disturbing note: the dough was cold. That should never happen…

The loaf rising was, suffice to say, pitiful. Barely rose at all. At this point I was mostly convinced that the oven was too cold, not too hot. I could only hope that the loaves would rise some after they started baking.

To that end, after I put the egg and sugar on top, I left the loaves in the oven while it was preheating, so they may rise some more. This was probably a big mistake (as you’ll see later).

The final challenge was when to pull them out. Since they were in while the oven was preheating, baking time was harder to determine. After about 50 minutes, they seemed well done, so I pulled them. They were a bit burnt on the bottom, but otherwise possibly okay (some better than others).

But the real problem was after I cut what looked like the best (least burnt) one. There was a big air pocket in the middle (did I mention how hard they were to kneed when I formed the loaves? Good), and the dough around it was mostly raw.

But it still smelled good, and I can work around the bad parts. So it’s all good.

Today is Christmas Eve on the Julian calendar, and while I’m not Norwegian (at least not in any measurable quantities), my family has a tradition of baking Norwegian Julekake (Christmas bread). Here’s the recipe.

NORWEGIAN YULEKAKE

Double recipe, 5 loaves.

3 1/2 cups milk
1 cup butter (or part butter, part new shortening)
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 tsp. salt
4 packages dry yeast
1 cup cold water
6 eggs, beaten
2 lbs candied fruit
12 oz raisins (get 12 oz box)
1 cup candied citron
4 tsps crushed cardamom seeds (check health food store, buy either seeds or pods, NOT ground. Choose only dark seeds)

Lots of Bread flour

3-4 cups of flour (looking for pancake batter consistency) and the yeast in mixer, flat blade
Put the cold milk, butter, sugar, salt, water in pan
heat, stirring, just until the butter melts. Pour in mixer.
Beat the dickens out of it (5 minutes on mostly high), add the eggs, then beat it five or so minutes more.
That gives you a batter.
Move to a big bowl, cover it with saran wrap, stick in oven with hot water under.
until it doubles (about an hour)

When that’s done, stir it down. Add the cardamon and fruit, and mix it well. Put some portion of it (1/3 or 1/2, depending on the mixer) in the mixer with the dough hook. Add bread flour and beat/kneed until you have firm dough. Empty it onto a clean counter, and add the next bunch of batter and flour and repeat.

Kneed by hand all the dough together for 5 minutes. Clean and dry the bowl and put the dough back in the bowl.

Cover the bowl again with plastic wrap, and return the bowl to the oven with more hot water. Let it rise again (about an hour).

Form loaves. Makes 5 9″x5″ loaves.

Back in the oven, they’ll rise again.

Done rising, brush top gently with egg, sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 325 for 50 minutes. It will likely rise more in the oven.

Dunkin’ Donuts, are you listening? This is how I want my bagel sliced!

Mathematically Correct Breakfast — Mobius Sliced Linked Bagel.

If you know anything about me, you know that I have almost zero design interest and skill. But web sites are all about appearance. They probably should look good.

I need help (if you didn’t guess already).

My intention for this blog is that it be a combination of various themes. As I have various interests, so does the blog. I haven’t blogged much about tech stuff yet but intend to do more.

The point in this is that I’d like help making the blog look good. Even tips like “try this theme” would be great.

“Oh no, not another self-absorbed blog about the blog”
“Yeah, I bet he’s even posting it from his iPhone in bed.”

Well, you were part right, I started it in bed, but couldn’t finish it there.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while (or at least you got bored (or had to stay up all night), and had the wild hair to read the whole blog), you’ll know that an unfortunate number of posts are posts about the blog, including the running gag that every other post introduces a new category.

I’ve not been posting much because I’ve been rather active on twitter. I found that the convenience of quick posting, along with the freedom of not having to compose a long thought-out post, rather liberating. But there are some times when I want to espouse a more drawn-out thought, or maybe I want I-told-you-so proof months later, that posting to an actual blog might be nice.

Because I’m so active on twitter, I wanted something that would automatically post on twitter. I’ve also been less than satisfied with the look of my old Movable Type blog (I started it almost 5 years ago, and it hasn’t been touched much since). There’s also the matter of a less painful way to post from my iPhone (the fact that I CAN post to the MT blog from it speaks volumes about it’s browser, but it’s still painful).

So I decided I’d do more. I decided to port the blog to WordPress. Of course, to the astute reader, this isn’t news. The whole blog looks radically different. And now you know why.

UPDATE: The name

Oh, you noticed that? Yeah, I decided to let the name more closely reflect the content of the blog. Suburban Rustications implies (for me) more of a rural, rustic feel. I’m hoping this blog will include a lot of posts on things like the iPhone, Apple, and technology in general. Now, ruminating is what ruminants (like cows) do. It literally means chewing your cud. But in more general terms, it means to slowly chew something over in your mind, pondering it in more depth than is normally allowed.

(Also fixed something — to all those Wordpress developers who take umbrage at my writing “Wordpad” instead of “Wordpress”, I don’t blame you, and it’s been fixed.

On a typical day, I use several machines; some Linux, some Macs. So Foxmarks is a logical choice for managing bookmarks between them. That’s it’s stock in trade.
But I’ve found some other cool tricks that one can do with Foxmarks. It often happens when I’m on one machine, reading a blog (like Lifehacker), and think, “oh, this looks good. I really need this software on other machine“. Until recently, I would keep the entry unread making a mental note to look at it when I’m on the other machine. But I’ve found a very good trick with Foxmarks. Create a bookmark folder on my bookmark bar called TODO. Inside it, create a subfolder for each machine I use (eg. “Office”, “Mini”). Then, if I’m surfing the web at home and find something cool I want to use on my Linux box at my office, I just add that bookmark to the TODO/Office folder. Then Foxmarks copies the bookmark to my office computer. So next time I’m on my office computer, I can look through the TODO/Office folder, make use of the bookmarks therein, and remove them.
Another trick I found is an alternative to Morning Coffee. Morning Coffee is a nice Firefox add-on if you want to open the same websites every day (or every morning with your morning coffee). It has a couple downsides, though. One is that it only works on a single machine, and there’s no easy way to copy it to other machines. Another is that, at this point in time it doesn’t work with Tab Mix Plus (the morning coffee button never shows up).
I use Morning Coffee to read my morning comics. I have about 15 websites I open and read every day, along with a smattering of only some day websites (weekly columns, etc). But using Foxmarks, I’ve found another way. There’s an experimental add-on called Daily Bookmarks that, if you tag your bookmarks with “sunday” through “saturday” or “everyday”, opens those bookmarks tagged with the current day or everyday. So I copied my Morning Coffee links to a “Daily” folder (with subfolders for each day). So now, I install Daily Bookmarks on all my machines (using the aforementioned TODO/machine trick), and can read my morning funnies on any machine. Also, if I find a new comic (*cough*), I can add it to all machines at one time.
There are two things that would improve Daily Bookmarks. One is if instead of tagging, you could give it a folder to use for each day (or if there was a way to set tags for more than one bookmark at a time). The other is if there’s a button you can press instead of going into the Bookmarks menu (like Morning Coffee gives you).
Michael

Okay, I’ve got an ongoing RTM item that reads: “blog about canoe trips”. Ideally I’ll blog about every trip. But at the very least, I have to put something up about the latest trip, so I don’t get farther behind.
Also, I’m going to lie about the date. I’m posting this on Monday, but the “Authored On” date is Saturday, the day we actually canoed. I think that’ll make things a bit easier to follow. I’ll put the actual date in my signature.
Saturday, we put in at the top of the Dedham Loop (right there in the brick-paved spot off of Great Plain Ave (or whatever it’s called on the east side of 128). One thing noteworthy was that we were combining a canoe trip with regular Saturday errands, so the car was full of not just the canoe stuff but 5 5 gallon water bottles we were returning. Car was somewhat cramped.
The put-in is good. Not very busy. There was another car there when we got there but they were gone when we returned. There’s a short half-gravel / half slippery mud path down to the water. Got the canoe off and everything out of the car and in the canoe, and carried the canoe down to the water. Remember what I said about slippery mud. Well, a youtube-if-we-had-video-going moment was when I slipped in the mud, landing flat on my keister — twice. The biggest downside to this put-in is the “beach” itself, which is mostly clay, mud, and murk (yeah, just coined murk; the active ingredient in anything murky, not to be confused with the verb form). What with the mud-wrestling with the canoe and getting my sandles stuck in the mud, I was rather messy when I finally got in the canoe.
We went upstream from there. It’s heavily wooded, and the water was high and flowing well (not so well that we couldn’t paddle or anything, just enough to ensure a nice time coming back). Before we hit 128 there looked like some better put-ins, that probably bear further investigations. Some guy was fishing there (he didn’t catch anything, but I think for some, actually catching fish just interrupts a good day fishing). It was loud going under 128, as expected, and I thought I saw a paved path on the south side between the two bridges, but it was just for drainage. After the two 128 bridges there was a third bridge (off-ramp? not sure), then the river turned sharply to the right, then to the left.
Continuing on, it seemed there might be some picnic spots here and there, until we got into some definite backyard area. Lots of private docks. We ended up tying our stern painter to a branch sticking out of the water and eating lunch in the canoe. I thought Maria wasn’t feeling well (she was hardly paddling the whole trip, which isn’t like her), so I suggested we go back, but both ladies wanted to continue on, so we did.
After a little while the river turned to the left in a wide open area, and we saw a bridge, and some VERY low fast water. We initially tried to navigate it, but the water was too fast and shallow, so we gave up. On our way back we noticed a picnic table nearby, to make a mental note to stop there next time.
Heading back downstream was nice and uneventful. I managed to keep my feet under me while we got the canoe out of the water and back on the car. But I’m sure I was still a muddy mess to look at at Shaws.
All in all, a good day, and nice paddle in some new territory.
Michael, 9/22/08