Jay and I finally got around to going to captain jacks fish and chips, the
new seafare restaurant right across from panos. Its ok. Fish is good, not
amazing, chips are really just thin fries (for shame), and the clam strips
had a mite too much breading. But the tartar sauce was good. #snap

This was a young cub, but his unique/ironic/woofy choice of facial hair made
me double take. I don’t know if he’s gay or if this generation just acts
sassy. Either way, I’d do dirty 80’s porno things to him. #snap

Yay! The end all of this Labor Day weekend for me is the Black Party at Club
Marcella. I expect to get home around 6am this morning… let see how the
night pans out. #snap

Sorry I’ve been absent most of the week. I’ve been preparing for thr Black
Party at Marcellas tonight. Most people get 4 day weekends on Labor Day, I
get one day off: Monday. That’s when I get to sleep. I did buy another Korg
Nano, this time the NanoKontrol, which, while a bit too densely packed for
my tastes, just might be a keeper. That is if it doesn’t break. All my
patches work in Snow Leopard now, and I have a new Blur effect that won’t
crash, yay for progressive effects! #snap

It was no surprise to Android fans that the HTC Hero was coming to Sprint, but what we didn’t expect was the makeover.  The version of the HTC Hero coming Stateside this October will lack a chin, making it look closer to the MyTouch than the European GSM edition. I’ll say, it doesn’t look horrible, but I was really hoping we’d get some GSM 3G action with teflon coating so I can fondle it softly… erm..

HTC Hero is a full-featured smartphone with Wi-Fi capability, a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen with pinch-to-zoom capability and a fingerprint resistant coating, integrated GPS navigation, and trackball navigation. Additional features include:

• Stereo Bluetooth^® 2.0 Wireless technology
• accelerometer, light sensor and home screen widgets for improved usability
• multimedia capable with microSD slot (32GB capable, 2GB included)
• Sprint TV^® with live and on-demand programming
• NFL Mobile Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile^SM
• easy access to social networking sites, including Facebook^®, Flickr^® and Twitter
• visual voice mail for quick and easy access to specific voice mail messages

Notably absent from the specs are any mention of Flash, something the EU edition boasts. I’d assume the Hero would have it, seeing as it runs the HTC Sense UI, but we’ll just have to see. Pick yours up on October 11th, for as little as $179 with a two-year service agreement. Hit up Phandroid, who has a bit more enthusiasm then me for more details

When Google Voice dropped for Android I was stoked, excited, thrilled. To celebrate, I purchased a new number to use, and downloaded the app from the Android Market. I had toyed around with GV, a well written 3rd-party app, but something like Google Voice I’d really like to be fully supported from Google. Imagine my dismay and disgust when I found out that Google Voice app only supports gmail.com accounts and nothing else. unable to even test the service, I moped, complained, and bitched. I had a Google Voice account for my nate at buffawhat.com account for almost a year, but managed to get another invite to test it on my gmail.com acct. The app worked, but if I couldn’t use it on my Apps account, I didn’t want to use it.

Low and Behold, this week Google updated the Google Voice app on the Market, finally allowing all Google accts to use the app.  Besides this new feature, you can also set the refresh intervals in your inbox, and SMS messages now auto-capitalize.

Google Voice is free, but you still need to have a Google Voice acct to use this app. If you signed up for an invite, but never got one, keep waiting. Google is going down the list, and its a pretty big list (even though I signed up for my second invite and got a response within a couple months).

While the Android SDK may be a stellar tool for developers, its also holds a very useful tool for bloggers: the screen shot utility found in DDMS. If you recently upgraded your Mac to Snow Leopard, you may have noticed that DDMS no longer works , instead terminal outputs something like this:

11:17 E/ddms: shutting down due to uncaught exception
11:17 E/ddms: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /tools/lib/
libswt-pi-carbon-3236.jnilib:  no suitable image found.  Did find:
/tools/lib/libswt-pi-carbon-3236.jnilib: no matching
architecture in universal wrapper
        at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(ClassLoader.java:1878)
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:1771)
        at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:823)
        at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:1045)
        at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Library.java:123)
        at org.eclipse.swt.internal.carbon.OS.(OS.java:20)
        at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.createDisplay(Display.java:943)
        at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.create(Display.java:923)
        at org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Device.(Device.java:118)
        at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.(Display.java:754)
        at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.(Display.java:745)
        at com.android.ddms.UIThread.runUI(UIThread.java:330)
        at com.android.ddms.Main.main(Main.java:97)

I’m no java expert, but a quick Google search exposes the problem and reveals a solution:

The SWT library uses a native component that must be loaded by the VM.
At this time we only provide the 32bit version.
I’m guessing that in Snow Leopard the default VM is now 64 bit instead
of 32 bit.

To change this go in Applications folder, then Utilities, and launch
the “Java Preferences” app. You’ll be able to set a 32 bit VM as the
default one.

Eclipse 3.5 added support for 64bit SWT on MacOS, so we’ll migrate to
this to support 32/64 bit on MacOS.

Xav

If that still doesn’t do it, you’ll need to open up DDMS in textEdit and head to this line:

# Mac OS X needs an additional arg, or you get an "illegal thread"
complaint.
if [ `uname` = "Darwin" ]; then
    os_opts="-XstartOnFirstThread"

And add “-d32″ where shown:

# Mac OS X needs an additional arg, or you get an "illegal thread"
complaint.
if [ `uname` = "Darwin" ]; then
    os_opts="-XstartOnFirstThread -d32"

Done. you should be able to run DDMS and take screenshots to your blogging heart’s content.

Thanks to Foo and Xav for their help in that thread.

A year ago, I posted about this 19 year old composer who took samples from Alice in Wonderland to create a totally new rabbit hole of sound. He’s been working on some new stuff and just released his latest track, “Bangarang,” created from the 1991 Spielberg movie Hook.

Pogo’s work extends beyond simple sampling and glitch work, he actually takes video clips from the referenced movie to create something as visually masterful as it is audibly.

I’ve always thought it would be cool to have a digital signature to use on the web. even though my handwriting stinks, I still love putting my signature on things that are important. It feels personal and looks unique on the web. That being said, the only solution I had before was to own a Wacom pad, or scan in my own. Either were extremes for something supposed to be as simple as signing your name. That being said, it was too much work and I set the though aside.

Enter Autograph, the first app I’ve seen, besides Quicktime X, to make running Snow Leopard a truly exciting thing. Autograph is a simple signature screen that digitizes what you draw on the trackpad and then pastes (and it automagically copies to the clipboard)  your John Hancock in any application capable of pasting an image. It also imports into Photoshop as a vector smart object for the serious win (hence the blown up signature above).

Autograph pops up with a shortcut key, and the simple unobtrusive menu item gives you access to a few options like thickness and color.

Autograph only works on multitouch capable Macbook Pros, and unibody macbooks, but it only costs $6.95. I ordered the capacitive Pogo Sketch Pen + autograph bundle from Ten One Design (you get Autograph free when you buy the $15 Stylus Pen), but as you can see below, and above, that you can manage a decent signature with only a finger. I think I’ll sign more posts more often.
Remember: if I sign it, its important.

In my short young life, I have been blessed with the friendship of a few Finlandians in my life, though my contact with Topi ended shortly after his conscription started (PS. I’m total supporter of conscription in the US, though it would never happen, I think it would be a positive discipline builder for all American youth, comrade). Fins are pleasantly odd, from their affinity to dreadlock hair, to their even greater love for saunas.

Thomas Hilland is a Partizan film director who has done loads of advertorial work for companies like Adidas, Nike, Toyota, and even music videos for Röyksopp. He recently completed a documentorial short film called Sweat, which follows the story of Timo, a professional sauna champion. One would think that there is little competition to sitting in a sauna, however at 140 degrees centigrade, it appears that only the Fins can master such scorching temperatures. The trailer is absolutely wonderful to watch, and not just to see a bunch of blonde-locked sweaty lobster-skinned men boil in a tiny little room.  Run over to It’s Nice That to read a short interview with Hilland about the film, and check out the trailer for Sweat over at Partizan.