Category: Technology

When I retrieved the mail today there were two items from AT&T, both looking official. Since I had dropped my landline a few months ago, I assumed they were for my wireless account.

I opened the one that had the three tear-off sides first and found that I had a check. I had to read it three times to be sure, but the amount was truly for 25 cents. Yes, a check for $0.25 made out to me.

As I tried to fathom why AT&T would be sending me a check for a quarter, I opened the other envelope and found my answer. It seems that they had overcharged me by $0.21 on my final statement. Add in 2 cents for interest, 1 cent for state taxes, and 1 cent for federal taxes leaves them paying me that quarter.

But that’s not all. The statement also showed my previous payment and I remembered the circumstances. I normally use my bank’s online billpay for everything, but I had to write and mail an actual check for the final AT&T bill. That’s because the online billpay has a minimum.

Of a dollar. I had written a check, and mailed it, for 20 cents. Now AT&T has returned the favor by writing, and mailing, me a check for 25 cents. Plus mailing a statement.

I’m trying out an application that may solve the non-syncing notes issue with the iPhone.  Evernote has client apps for Mac and iPhone along with web access.  It can handle audio, photo, and text notes with lots of other features.  Plus it’s free.

One of the primary rationalizations for getting an iPhone is to replace three existing devices. The phone and iPod functions are easy, but the Palm PDA is more difficult.

Contacts and calendars are fine, but notes/memos are a challenge. The iPhone app doesn’t sync data with the Mac. Ugh.

One solution that I’m considering is to add a private wiki, blog, or forum to the website. The iPhone’s constant internet access makes this reasonable.

I found these simple instructions and needed a place to store them, so here they are:

Use Safari.
Open the page with the video you want.
Open the ‘activity’ menu.
This lists all the items on this page, locate the entry for the video file (it will be the largest file size).
Double click on this line, it will download.
Rename it, no need to put a file extension on it.
Convert this file to ‘iPod’ format using the free application ‘iSquint’
http://www.isquint.org/.
You’re good to go.
A bit more long winded, but at least it’s free.

If you use OS X and a Palm OS PDA, then you’ll want to check out Pordible. It is an application to convert between text documents and Palm DOC files. It works as advertised and it’s free.

I started trying to learn some Cocoa programming today. I’m working my way through the book Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. I had already educated myself on Objective C, and I’m glad I did. It makes the Cocoa learning curve a lot flatter.

I had delayed buying a digital SLR until recently. I had to wait for the price/performance curve to get within site of my disposable cash. That finally happened when I found a factory refurbished Nikon D50 at Overstock.com.

The best thing about a DSLR is the instant feedback. You can quickly learn what effect each adjustment has on the image, decide what you like, and get the desired shot with limited guesswork. When shooting film, you had to log each shot and hope for the best. If it was print film, then the printing process was a key variable that for which you had no data.

If you’ve been on the fence, jump off. Buy a digital SLR and don’t look back.