I've been busy building a new desk and storage setup for my new office. Above: drilling a 3" hole in the top of my computer cabinet.

When the dust cleared, installed this USB hub that's wired from inside the cabinet. Since my computer isn't directly accessible from the desk, I had to come up with ways to extend the USB connections and use an external DVD-R drive.  

I considered installing this on the desktop, but I didn't like the idea of drilling it and having the hub positioned permanently on the desk surface. The top of the PC cabinet was a perfect location.

Next up: I need to mount my remote PC power switch 'invention' of mine. For now, the switch panel out of my old desk drawer is temporarily in place behind the left speaker. 

The room is much smaller, but I actually have more desk space than I did in my old home office, plus the side shelf at desk level doubles as a laptop nook.

For comparison: the old office, during initial demolition last week. Next project: this space will become the baby's room. 

For some time I've wanted to make the jump to a 'smart phone'. I've been eligible for an early cellphone upgrade for months, but I held out until the phone I really had my eye on- the Droid X- was available. During my wait, the X was nowhere to be found: it seemed Motorola couldn't make the damned things fast enough. There were also reports of problems with the first units. And so I waited. It was well worth it!

When I finally I got my hands on this phone… wow! I love this thing! Forget the term "smart phone"- this is a brilliant phone. With Wifi, 3G, Bluetooth, cellular voice/data, compass and GPS it's like a multi-network communication's power-house. The 1Ghz processor, giant (for a phone) screen, and upto 40GB of memory make it more like a computer than a phone.

Google owns the world. Resistance is futile. Until Google becomes self-aware and destroys us all using its search-engine gathered data against each of us, I'm just going to enjoy the ride. 

Just a few of the uses I've added to my "How on earth did I live without this?" list:

1. Awesome voice recognition. Most things, I just 'tell" the phone to do, and it does, like a true personal assistant. "Call Leila." Done. Find the lowest gas price, and show me directions how to get there. Done. Translate my voice into text for note taking. Done. (Write the last blog post, take a photo, and post it to my site. Done!)

2. Barcode scanning. "Is this product good, and is this a good price?" Hold the phone over the barcode- click- looks up the product, fetches the best price online and locally (the phone always knows exactly where it is), as well as user reviews.

3. "Where did I park my car?" The phone knows! Another button press and it's literally leading me to it.  The phone not only keeps track of where I am, it keeps track of where anything else I want it to keep track of is, anywhere on the planet. If I want it to, it can broadcast my own location to anyone else, as well as see where my friends are. The thing can count my steps when I go for a walk, or tell me how many calories I've burned riding my bike down the strand.

4. "I wonder what that building or landmark is?" Just point the phone at it… -click- it scans the thing, searches through Google's ridiculous collection of… well, everything.. and then tells you! Chances are, someone's wondered the same thing about whatever that building or landmark is, and if so, the phone will find it!

5. Widgets for everything- right at my fingertips -always- news, weather, instant messages, email, stock prices, where the last earthquake happened, web search, etc. etc. etc all a mere glance away. 

6. An amazing level of two-way communication. "Are road conditions bad ahead?" "Is there a speed trap?" Other drivers on the road can send alerts from their phones to anyone traveling the same route or in the same vicinity. So in addition to live Google-traffic data, it also gives me access to countless other eyeballs on the road- all of course without taking my own off the road. "Texting and driving is hella-stupid, so how is anyone sending out alerts in traffic, let alone me sending out my own?" Good question, but pre-'brilliant phone' thinking. Just TALK to the phone and it translates your speech to text. Thus far, even in the car, it's been spot on accurate for me. Once, my passenger laughed as I was issuing a voice command. The phone typed: LOL.

7. Media and entertainment- games, movies, music, internet etc. Also, it's a decent digital camera, and video camcorder. It's multiple gadgets all rolled into one.

Droid X mounted in my car for turn by turn GPS guidance. Above, I was testing an app called nDrive, but I've since found I prefer the built in Google Navigation.

I've put up with everyone ranting and raving about how great their iPhones are. (Okay, granted. But no iPhone for Verizon, so no iPhone for me). Now it's my turn to rant and rave about how freakin' awsome Android and the Droid X are. So there!

So far, I'm failing to find a thing lacking in Android (2.2- 'Froyo") vs. Apple's iOS 4. Apple can boast a bigger app store- but I haven't found myself lacking for a single app type thus far. (There is a lot of truth to the "Do I really need 18 different fart apps?" line. Basically, both platforms have enough apps- and then multiple copycats of each one. So Android has 3 fart apps to Apple's 18. Whoopity.)  

Personally, I like the way Android feels and looks. I definitely like it's customization abilities. It's a complete chameleon- you can make things look and feel exactly how you prefer them -especially the desktop 'launcher' interface that sits on top of everything. With Apple, one has to 'jailbreak' the iOS before you can achieve anything approaching the same level of customization. So yes, basically you can have your iPhone! Meanwhile, you can have my Droid when you pry it from my cold dead hands. 

We're about to see the invasion of settop media players. On the horizon, or in early release already are: GoogleTV, the Boxee Box,  the new $99 Apple TV,  Netgear's Neo TV, etc. 

Most of these boxes once hooked to your HDTV offer network-playback of the media files stored on your desktop PCs, as well as online content like Hulu and Netflix. Most also offer HDMI connection for 720p to 1080p playback, Ethernet and Wifi, and USB for external drives.

The new generation of set top boxes make for great low footprint HTPC replacements if you can live without desktop hardware choice. And the cost is very low: in the $100 to $200 range.

If you're using a full-blown Home Theatre PC, you can already enjoy most of the benefits of these new STB's, plus the addition of DVR functions, PC gaming, and digital multi-channel audio that's only limited by your chosen equipment.

One problem with HTPCs has always been a slick 10 foot interface (IE: a GUI designed to be useful at 10' + distance) so one is never hunting around desktop menus and icons from across the room with a remote.

Recently, I discovered Kylo, a web browser based on Firefox that's made just for HDTVs. If you're already using Windows Media Center as your 10ft interface, Kylo automatically installs itself to the main menu for a seamless experience. For general use, the browser itself becomes a perfect 10ft interface, enabling you to use your HTPC without ever seeing the Windows (or Mac OSX) desktop. All your favorite music and movie sites are available from the easy to read menus, (you can add your own sites too) and you can browse the web using whatever text scale you find comfortable.

Considering all that's available on just Hulu and Netflix alone (both of which have lots of high-quality and HD content), one can easily cancel the monthly satellite/cable bill, and get all their home entertainment needs met strictly via high-speed Internet. Access to just about any song ever recorded, through sites like LastFM and Pandora -and that massive digital music collection on your computer- means you can pretty much ditch your old-fashioned stereo system as well. 

I love how modern camera equipment makes it possible to instantly capture images of the world around us. Digital photography has become so commonplace, that now my cell phone takes better pictures than the first full blown digital camera I ever owned, in a package less than a quarter the size.

It becomes hard to imagine how things were done differently in the past.

I love the immediacy of the following photos. (Click to see either full-size) Surely, the dog took his nap on the shore of Lake Lindozero, and the Emir of Bukhara donned his colorful garb and golden sword only yesterday.

These photos were in fact taken in ‘10.

1910.

These are part of a mind-blowing set of images taken by Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii a century ago, using a revolutionary color-filter process. It’s amazing to see such clarity and full, natural color in images from 100 years ago. Be sure to check out the entire set in the above link to the Boston.com article, and read about how the early color process (that holds up amazingly well a century later) was achieved.

I love catching startling glimpses of the past in an unexpectedly modern format.

Along the same vein, some amazingly early stereo, even quadraphonic recordings exist, that are as mind-blowing to hear given their age, as these photos are to see.

In early music recordings –1910’s into the 1920’s- records were often made by setting up several microphones around the musicians. The idea wasn’t to record stereo, or quad sound- no one was even thinking along those lines at the time- it was simply to create several master recordings at once, using a separate disc-recorder for each mic. So two, three, four or more masters of a recording were made at once, with no thought of their relation to one another.

Years later, audiophiles noticed that copies of the same record/same take had slightly different sounds, from the different mics used. So what would happen if one combined say, the ‘front left’ mic recording, with the ‘front right’? Stereo, of course.

And front left, front right, rear left, rear right recordings combined? Quadraphonic.

Stereo  or quad sound from such early recordings is startling; the effect is surprisingly dynamic given that the position of the mics in the recording space captures the full  ‘image’ of the music in the actual space it was recorded in- something you just don’t expect to ever hear in a recording from so long ago.  It’s an ‘ahead of it’s time’ anomaly -created by sheer accident- that I find fascinating.

Leila got me a wish-list item for my birthday, an HD-Radio. (It was such a great surprise- even despite my maaaaany hints! hehehe! Thanks sweetie!) I'd been wanting one; I like listening to radio, but our local AM/FM reception leaves a lot to be desired. (The dial is way too crowded in the city. Analog FM stations suffer static and cross-talk from other stations. AM reception just plain sucks- it's usually full of buzzing and noise from electronic interference.)

Enter, HD Radio. Despite purposeful ad-hype, the term 'HD' does not refer to "High-Definition" rather, Hybrid Digital. Most of FM and many AM stations in major cities now broadcast a digital signal alongside their traditional analog signal. It's just zeros and ones, so once decoded by the receiver, it's free of all forms of interference. For FM, the music is CD-quality. (Although, there's much debate about that, as the source material is still shoved through compression before broadcast). Suffice it to say, to my ears, FM stations on HD-Radio sound pretty damned good. The best thing, regardless of the source audio, is that the broadcasts are inarguably noise and static free.

AM stations sound as good or better than analog FM, and the contrast is much more apparent. When first tuning a station, one hears the standard broadcast signal for a few seconds while the HD signal is locked in. When the receiver switches to HD, it's akin to the difference between hearing someone talking on a telephone, and then hearing them in the same room.  Radio hosts sound completely different; if you've only ever heard certain shows on AM radio, then you've never actually heard the exact tone of the person's real voice.

Not only do the stations sound better- there are more of them. Most of the major radio stations not only broadcast the digital version of their analog FM programming, but add two or three (as many as seven) alternate broadcasts on top of it.  In the above picture, I'm listening to the 2nd channel of the station 93.1 FM, as indicated by the -2- next to the readout. These extra channels exist only in digital- not ordinary broadcast. I really love the extra dimension it adds- if I turn over to KRAD and they aren't playing a song I particularly like at the moment, chances are they might be on one of the several other digital feeds they're simultaneously broadcasting. 

Of course, the digital signal also includes all artist and album names- no more having to guess what a song is, or wait for a DJ to announce it. 

This model of Sony HD-Radio had a lot to recommend it- it's no bigger than the Nintendo Wii it's next to, it's cheap, and yet it's rated as good and better than many models that cost quite a bit more. In order to get the best out of mine, I hooked it to our rooftop TV antenna and BAM! Every FM station imaginable -plus alternates-  comes in loud and clear. In fact, I get a few from as far away as San Diego. AM stations are still dependent on a small indoor antenna, but luckily my favorite stations come in great.

For those of you that blog and/or comment on blogs, a gravatar is a personal image or 'avatar' that represents you globally, on most blogs, such as those powered by WordPress. The image you choose attaches to your main email address, and will show your avatar wherever you post.

For example, you may notice that when you comment on a friend's blog, there's nothing but a generic representation of yourself, IE:  or . 

But what you'd really like is a goofy photo of yourself, or something more personal. The solution couldn't be easier.

First, head over to www.gravatar.com. 

Click the get a gravatar link, and sign up using the email you use to identify yourself on your own blogs, and in comments on other blogs.

Once you've signed up, sign in using your email address. (You'll be sent a confirmation email at signup- the obvious security measure.)

Under 'manage gravatars' click the add a new image link, choose the source (IE: your computer, a webcam, or a URL) and upload the image you want to use. Don't worry, you don't need to pre-crop your chosen image- the built-in crop tool allows you to select any part of the image to automatically resize for your gravatar. Select what you want and hit 'crop and finish'. 

Select a rating for your image, IE: G if it's harmless, R if you're extending a middle finger or something, X if you've had a bit too much to drink and went the pornographic route.

That should be it. Note: you can create as many gravatars as you like on the same account and choose between them as your moods (or sheer boredom) suits. Likewise, you can add multiple email accounts.

It may take a few minutes at first, but in short order, your selected gravatar should attach to your email wherever you use it on blogs. (Note: it's the same if you change the primary gravatar image, it will take a few minutes for the change to 'propagate' itself around the web.)

A word of caution: If you've chosen a photo of yourself or other more personal image, keep in mind that your gravatar will show up wherever you post using the same email address as an identity. So that 'anonymous' comment-rant posted on Bob's Movie Review Site blasting the author for his his crap review of the movie Avatar will not be all that anonymous with your mugshot on display right beside it. Your gravatar follows you most everywhere blogs and comment boards have 'gravatar-awareness'. (Technically speaking, that is sites set up to use your posted email hash-value to request and display the associated image or profile.)

A mere week after I created and placed an order for the book version of this blog, as mentioned in the last post, it’s here! This is positively the coolest thing I’ve seen in… in… well, in at least the last hour. Check it out:

Photos don’t do it justice. The binding and overall quality are outrageously good. I can’t recommend enough using lulu.com to quick-publish any material you may have written or collected and want in a nice bound format like this; well worth the $20.

Very solid hard-cover binding.

342 pages, black and white interior. For subject matter and photos more important than blog postings, it’d be great to do a book in full color.

A blurb and a barcode, two bits.

Now I definitely want to do Leila’s rezilennuk blog too. And then full color hard cover editions of my first two Ribeye books -mainly for my own amusement. And then a volume of all the comic books my friend Mike and I have drawn over the years. And then a volume of some of the various projects and accompanying artwork we’ve produced in the last two decades. (I’d actually have to keep that from growing into several volumes.) And then maybe a volume of mini-comics I drew as a kid. And then perhaps the letter-journals I kept of our trip to Europe in ‘02, and my trip across the country in ‘06. And then…

Been writing a blog for a few years? If so, then you've actually written a decent sized book. Heck, probably two or three books with photos and illustrations. You spent all that time documenting whatever it was you were documenting, so why not have a physical copy of it all? Someday it could all go *poof* and disappear into the cloud anyway.

I recently looked into how hard would it be to transfer this blog into a bound, hardcover book, how much it would cost, and how difficult it would be. To my surprise, not very hard or even costly at all. For reference, this blog -every post from 2005 to the present- weighed in at 340 pages at US Trade size (6" x 9"). The cost of a nice hardcover of this, color cover, black and white interior is a whopping $20. ($24 shipped). For full-color, the price is $84.00 ($88 shipped). To make it an 8.5 x 10.75 larger book, add about $1 to those prices.  Paperbacks (in a host of different sizes) are on average about $10 to $20 less.

First things first. Me, I love binding my own books, but I know everyone else isn't going to break out the industrial paper cutter and hot glue to do that, so fortunately there's a much easier way to go about it. 

My handy little guide that follows requires a few things:

1. That you're using WordPress to power your blog. Blogger sites can possibly be ported to a press-format, but not using the exact instructions here.

2. A copy of Microsoft Word, or similar word processing application that can output the .doc format. Don't have MS Word? No problem- you can also use freeware, IE: OpenOffice.  (Sorry, MS Word Pad, notepad or the Text app in OSX won't cut it as you'll need the page formatting options of an actual .doc file. Also, if you have a lot of images, beware that OpenOffice will take some time to download them all into your document.)

3. Access to your blog template, and the ability to edit the files there from your wordpress admin panel. (If your site template files can't be edited, you'll need to set them to writable permissions using FTP access- or just ask the site admin to do it.)

You'll want to start at what seems like the last step -deciding on a format and size- because this will determine everything from the price, to how you'll actually set up your blog for press. So head over to lulu.com and browse their publish/books section. There you can pick the size, binding type, paper, etc. that suits you, and best of all, download a pre-formatted template in .doc format. This eliminates a lot of guesswork as to how the finished document will actually print.

So click the get started links and choose your size/style/binding type. Thereafter, you'll be asked to choose to keep this book private, or make it public to sell on the site's marketplace. Chances are, since we're talking a blog, you'll want to keep it private. Fill in the working title, Author, etc. Don't fret over these as the site is very aware that you'll likely just be testing the waters at first, so nothing is set in stone. Later when you're really down to brass tacks, you can change every aspect of your book before you commit to print it.

Continue until you get to the formatting section, where you should see a link to download a template. Download, unzip and open with a .doc compatible word processor. This will be the page size of your chosen format.

Now to the fun stuff- getting your posts -images/formatting/and all- out of your blog on onto the printed page. The first problem you'll encounter right away, is that blogs are kept in reverse order. You'll want a printed book with the posts in proper order. Copy-pasting every single blog post individually and reordering them would be a gargantuan task. Luckily, there's a much easier way. Since your entire blog is nothing but a database being called up and displayed as needed, you simply need to tell the database to display the posts in chronological order. If you're using WordPress, then this is easy.

Login to your wp-admin the same as if you were posting, only go to Appearance/Editor. Open the template file called Main Index Template. This file needs to be writable on your FTP server where it's stored (if you're using WordPress on a WP-hosted domain then it should be writable by default.) Look for the line of php code that grabs the posts. It should look something like this:

< ?php if (have_posts()) : ?> < ?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

You'll want to first COPY this, and paste it into a text file. (Be VERY careful to select only the correct code and containing brackets!) Save it so you have it to put back when you're finished, otherwise your blog will remain in chronological order with your oldest posts first. Replace the line with:

  < ?php $posts=query_posts($query_string . '&order=asc');
if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Save the file. (Make sure you've backed up the original line first!! Keep in mind your original may not be exactly the same code as my example above, otherwise you could use it. ) Now when you view your blog you'll see the very first posts displayed first, all the way up to your most recent posts last. This format sucks for blogs, but is essential for a book which of course reads this way. You can see how this little snippet of code saves a ton of work getting your blog posts in the correct order.

Now that you've done this, you can go to Settings/Reading and update the number of blog posts shown on each page. (Say 50 at a time rather than the default 10). Keep in mind, if you're going to display a very large number of posts at once, the load time on your pages is going to go up tremendously, so this is a temp setting to expedite copying the posts in large blocks. Make sure your posts are set to full text, not summary.

From here, the process is simple. View your blog, and click just before the title of the first post at the top of the page. Then scroll to the bottom of the page. Hold shift, and click right after the last line of the last post. Be careful that the sidebar or any other elements other than strictly your posts aren't selected. (If you have some really odd theme that won't allow this, then you may want to temporarily switch to the generic default theme. Right click and 'COPY' (Or command-c).

If you've used a huge amount of overly-large images on your blog posts, then viewing the posts 50 at a time may overwhelm the clipboard. Simply display fewer number of posts until you get it right.

Put your cursor in the open Word template, and paste. For now, don't worry about formatting and such, just keep viewing the next page on your blog, copy the posts, and keep pasting them after the last set of posts in your word documents until you have the whole blog in the document. (Save the word file often during this process just in case!)

When you've done this, restore your blog to normal settings (reinstate the original post php code, and set the displayed posts numbers back as it was).

Now you can concentrate on formatting your book. Scroll through and see if you have any major issues. Images often can show up sized far larger than the page margins. Generally you can grab the edges and re-size them, taking care to keep within the margins of the printed page. (Your blog's text should conform to this.) If you've used a LOT of custom image placement on your blog, then you may have your work cut out for you in wrangling the images back into place. If you've used the general 'in line with text' format of most of your images, then it should go pretty smoothly.

Helpful hint #1: in Word 2007: Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options. Click Advanced, and then click to select the Show text boundaries check box under Show document content. This will show you the printable margins on each page.

Helpful hint #2: Use Insert/page-break to push posts onto new pages, rather than hitting the return key multiple times. You can also insert blank pages at the start of the document to create title pages.

Once everything is to your liking, register a free account at lulu.com, and upload your completed word file to your book project. The word document for this blog was 14MB on upload, so it took a little while to upload even using a fast broadband connection. Once uploaded, lulu.com has automatic tools on their site to reformat the document as a .pdf and ready it for one-click publishing. You can then preview the entire book as it will look published.

You'll want a nice looking cover of course. Lulu.com's cover designer makes this a breeze. Upload some images and add them to one of the templates, or use your own images/art to design your own look from scratch. You can even place some blurb text on the back cover. Lulu is really cool about giving you the option of marking your book with their logo or not; for more personal books like this you'll probably not want it marred with such labeling.

When you've got everything as you like it, you can click to 'publish' the book, and order your own copy(s) of it. One really nice thing about lulu is they allow you to very easily revise the same project. Therefore you can create your book, order a cheaper paperback black and white (interior) copy of it, and see how it looks when it's hot in your hands. Then revise anything you don't like and order the more expensive hardbound full-color copy. This process makes it very easy to have a really nice bound printed copy of all this stuff you've spent so much time "putting on the cloud".