Life on Snow Hill » Gadgets

An Addiction

Jonathan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:48:26 +0000

Yes, I have an addiction. It’s not so bad, though. I hope.

Sudoku. The puzzle game has its origins in France, and in Indiana. There is a grid, 9 squares by 9 squares with 9 3×3 squares inside. Here’s the idea:

Each 3×3 square of 9 will have all numbers 1-9
Each vertical row of 9 will have all numbers 1-9
Each horizontal row of 9 will have all numbers 1-9
There are no duplicates

I play the game on my iPhone. It’s cleaner than paper, and it’s like an endless supply of puzzles. And it keeps my brain occupied. I’ve included a couple of pictures – one of what the board looks like in ‘expert’ mode (obviously the hardest available), and one of what my best times are so far.

Try it out! If you don’t have an iPhone or iPod touch, you can find free Sudoku puzzles all over the internet.

Texting While Driving

Jonathan — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:31:50 +0000

Just this year in our great state of Tennessee, lawmakers passed a law making it illegal to text while driving. It’s really an unenforceable law, but I’m not going to get into all of that. It’s a common sense thing in the first place – if your attention is on your phone (this can include talking on the phone as well – I avoid it as much as possible while driving), you’re not nearly as focused as you need to be on your driving.

A coworker just showed me this video a few minutes ago. Before you click play, let me warn you that if you don’t like blood, you won’t want to see it. It’s not real, but it is graphic. It is a public service announcement put out in England about the risks taken when you take your attention off the road.

–update

Looks like the video was removed because it violated some part of YouTube’s terms of service. I’m not going to keep posting updated videos, but if you’d like, you can search for ‘texting while driving’ and it’ll turn up for you to see.

It’s Been Too Long

Jonathan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:55:04 +0000

It’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve blogged about anything. After thinking about it for nearly two weeks, I’m still not sure if it’s because I’ve been lazy, or if it’s because I haven’t had anything to write about. Honestly it’s probably a little of both.

Christmas is coming up really soon, so Becky and I (mostly Becky) have been doing as much Christmas shopping as we can. I’ve noticed that as I get older, Christmas gets here faster and faster. When I was a kid, it took forever to get here! Becky and I are also heading up the Christmas play at church this year, so that has been an added, but welcome challenge as well. We’ve really enjoyed working with the youth and hope to be able to do more with them in the future.

I guess all of the Christmas preparations are what has been keeping us busy, but we’re also having to take care of all of the normal day-to-day stuff at the same time. Last year I think I let all of that turn me into sort of a Scrooge – just ask Becky..she’ll be honest with you. I’m determined not to let that happen this year though. I’m trying to stay full of Christmas cheer. See?!

Something else that’s cool is that this entire post has been written on my iPhone. This is the best gadget I’ve ever owned, and probably the most useful as well.

I’m Connected Everywhere!

Jonathan — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:31:32 +0000

Although I don’t know if that is a good thing or not, but I’m sufficiently impressed. Recently we got new phones at work. We, being the 3 person group I’m in. We did have Motorola Q’s, which were cool phones. At first, anyway. They constantly had to be reset by taking the battery out, and lots of times we couldn’t place a call without resetting them. The email worked about 1/4 of the time.

The new phones we got were the latest & greatest BlackBerry Pearl 8130′s. We have all of the standard BlackBerry functionality – email, calendaring, address book… But we also have GPS navigation, which works very well. Forget the fact it’s being run on a phone – it works sufficiently well enough to be a GPS device all its own. The functionality that prompted me to write this blog entry, however, is its modem. My phone is currently tethered to my laptop while I sit here in a chiropractic clinic.

The speed is at least as fast as my DSL at home, which is 1.5 Mbps. I’m very impressed with the service. As long as I have a signal on my cellphone, I have internet access. Do I *want* to be that connected? Sure, when I have something I’d like to look up on the internet. For work purposes? No way.