Is my writing reaching anyone?

The old existential question, "If a tree falls in the woods, and there is no one to hear it..." never seemed to merit any thought.  But lately, I have been wondering if blogging has a point for me.  I write my views of tech and living in a state of travel, but the dearth of comments seems to imply that no one cares.  I could say I do it for myself, and continue, but Blogger has made the exercise more work than fun.

So if I stop, will anyone notice?

Added a Blog Today

I keep my "blogroll" short.  Every once in a while I go through the blogs I read, and curate the list.  That keeps me from getting bored with blogs, lets me add content that I think is relevant to my current state of mind, and exposes us all to new (to me), bloggers with some quality content relevant to ExecHobo.  I added bitterpress today.  Check it out if you like coffee.

New Perspectives on Taveling w/ Tech

ExecHobo Mobile is a state of place and of mind. It is intended to be a moveable collaboration of traveling tech users.

CoffeePedaler is making contributions from NYC, so we now span the nation. Stay tuned for a broadened perspective.



- Exechobo

iPhone App- Camera+ Review

My iPhone is my primary blogging tool, as well as my primary camera, among all the other functions it fulfills so well.  Because my blog is as visual as it is verbal, the pictures are important.  Camera+ is one of several tools I use to make it visually interesting.

Camera+ is feature rich, and as a free lite version of Camera+Pro, it is a powerful, feature rich package that can replace the native camera and most post processing apps.  In fact, its slight shutter speed lag and its understandable lack of HDR functionality are the only reasons I went back to the native iPhone camera.  

(edit, Nov 21, thanks to Jimmy) Tap Tap Tap  is the developer, and as of now this fantastic app is no longer in the App Store.  I have no issues with the quality of this app, and they issue updates often enough to keep it clean and bug free for the most part.  Why did Apple pull it? Because it provides for the use of the volume button to activate the "shutter", a clear violation of terms for developers.  No using hardware buttons! Oddly, I have never used this feature, so habitualized am I to using the screen button.

If I had one space on my iPhone for an imaging app, this would be the one.

I first read about Camera+ on Lisa Bettany's blog, via a link from I forget where.  But it what intrigued me was that Tap Tap Tap was using a professional photographer to create the easy to use workflow and photo treatments.  

One of the best things about Camera+ is that all the photos you take with it are saved to a "lightbox", where you can decide what to do with them before saving to your Camera Roll.  At first I thought this was a hokey way to make you think you were a big time Life photographer (a good angle in Heller's Catch 22), but I came to appreciate that it was cleaner and forced me to deal with photos rather than accumulating them for work "later".  

This photo, of a cafe in Manhattan was treated with "Magic Hour", to make it warmer and more inviting than the native light.  

And inside the cafe I used So Emo just because it can be fun to do so.  This is a whimsical look that can make straightforward portrayals more dramatic and evocative.  

This old modem in our local airport was treated with Hipster, kinda period appropriate I thought.

This salad was post processed using the Food filter, which increased the sharpness and contrast, and warmed it up a touch.  It is really sensational when used on french fries.









In all, there are 27 of these FX treatments, including one called HDR, which is fun, but should not be confused with the serious HDR function of the iPhone's native software, nor apps like TrueHDR.  

Additionally, Camera+ has cropping and 11 "scenes" that you would find on any point n shoot camera, like Flash for increasing shadow exposure, Backlight, Scenery, Text and Food.

In all, Camera+ is the imaging app I find most essential to my iPhotog style.  Thank you Tap Tap Tap and Lisa Bettany!  How lucky we are to enjoy such good work at such little cost!

Going Dark!

Jack Bauer used to proclaim "I'm going dark!" when he left a cell coverage area. I will be writing posts, but unable to rely on getting them online for sometime. The trusted iPhone will become a dumb phone, like an iPod Touch. Look for some cool posts n pics soon.

New Blog Added to Exechobo Blogroll

In the column at the right I list a few blogs that I recommend you read.  I recently added one, and to keep from blog-bloat, I removed one.  First the bad news, Gregarious Loner is no longer shown.  I encourage you to keep reading, for the writing is really quite good.  I decided to de-list Gregarious Loner after a long internal debate, which arrived at the conclusion that brevity is the soul of wit.  I like that.  I may have it inscribed on a rug in my office and attribute it to Johnny Carson.  But I digress.

I became acquainted with Generation Y on Professor Matthew Perry's blog.  This is a blog run by a Cubana who is documenting her life.  It is important, and courageous.  Really so, not like a George Cloony movie courageous.  She lives in a repressive society that hassles her continually about her writing.  Go to Generation Y and read it.  It is important.

Introspection

In a blog called The Gregarious Loner, a writer put out an entry that resonates with your many in our age of exposure.  Your humble Iconoclast is no exception.  Follow the link.

More on Exechobo Blogstyle

So.  More thinking.  Dull ache.  Caffeine.  Beer.  Tequila.  Work around the ranchita.  Work on some consulting.  


Not in that order, but that has been the last few days.  RIght now, it seems this blog has a history of being about how to live a 50 something retirement.  If you have to label it, and I seem to need to.  Focus you know, that's the ticket!  I do like to use the blog to sort some of this thinking out, maybe it is a journal-aid to sustain itself?  

Blog Roundup

A video was on Carpe Diem today, Prof. Mark Perry's blog. It is funny. Go into the left column, and check it out.

Also, several new posts at African Hillbilly. The blogger is in rare form.

Phone research

So last night I was bored, and did some research into mobile phones.  Why?  I don't know, I am not in the market for one.  Yet.  Someday I will be.  Of course, the iPhone may have something to do with it.  IT is soooo sexy!  So clever, so cool, so Apple!  So is it the hands down, no contest best choice for my next phone?  Especially if the price comes down as the rumors have it?

Well, that depends on what I want to do with the phone, and if the things the iPhone does well are the things I want to use it for, and if there are things it does not do well (seems impossible, right?).  So, now for the thinking part- what have I used my cell phone for in the last 20 years or so, and are there new (to me) functions that I am fairly certain I will use?  

Looking at the cell phones on the market makes me wonder about some of the features, or more accurately, the amount of emphasis that are placed on some of them.  Of course, I said that about cameras in phones a few years ago.  So lets take stock:

I make calls.  I use the speakerphone for meetings. I use bluetooth for hands-free convenience (victim of marketing-speak).  I take photos.  I send texts and texts with photos.  I occasionally check email.  I get directions.  I check news.  I want to make stock trades.  I want to track stock in my account.  Calendar.  

Things I do on my PDA that I could do on a phone: Quite a bit of email.  Spreadsheets.  Notes. News reading.   Blogging.

Things I have not done, and probably won't do:  Play games.  Web surf. Listen to music, much.

Euro travel remainders

I finally loaded the photos from the trip into my Powerbook last night.  It took quite some time, there were about 6 gigos (as they call gigabytes in French).  The seemingly simple, if time consuming task was complicated by the fact that I am out of hard drive space, and needed to clean the hard drive.  So that dictates a back up, and I did a full mirrored hard drive, so that took a full evening.  

The G9 took very good pictures, even in snapshot mode (Program setting), and of course I have to admit the manual exposures I made turned out good too.  Because this is digital photography, I can bracket, adjust and snap away, with no concern for film costs, so eventually I get a good shot.  I did a few panos and some movies.  We will see if any of the panoramas came out, I took care to apply the lessons learned so far.  I had to use panorama to work around the issue of the focal length of the G9, a 35mm lens equivalent, not a wide angle at all.  The new G10 has 28mm, a more decent landscape focal length, but then it only zooms to 140mm, not quite enough.  I should do a quant analysis of how many pictures I shoot where 35mm is not enough compared to the number shot above 140mm.  But I won't.

Now begins the process of winnowing down the photos to those that are good, then categorizing them into relevant groups.  It will be fun, but will require some focus.  Stay tuned, for this will take a couple of weeks.  

Home again, home again!

We arrived here in Sequim last night. It is a comment on the attraction of this area that we consider it to be among the best destinations of the trip! We enjoyed seeing the fall colors as we traveled the road home, and the first sight of the house warmed our hearts. Then they were cooled again when we went inside. So I reset the heat to go on, turned on the water and all that, and we took a quick walk around the place. Pictures are to come.

Future posts on the blog will have to include a couple of slide shows with our best photos, but first we will spend a couple of days just absorbing the luxury that is our life here.

Emails
Many people have received an email notice whenever we post, thanks for your interest in keeping up with our travels. Now that we are back in a USA mode, I am going to overhaul that list. Let me know if you want you name left on the notification email by just replying to it.

I do this because you may not like getting emails added to your inbox, and because you may have changed your mind about reading Exechobo with such frequency. Of course you can come by to visit anytime...

Some new posts are photos

In a move to be more "multimedia", more "current" and more "visual", posts at the Exechobo blog are now being made via photos only.

"This is one of the important new ways of communicating." Stated editor Paul Banbury. "We think that photography is here to stay, and will play an increasingly important role in communication. It is a logical next step in our evolution as a blog about life. We like to stay "au courrant", and to quote withing quotes, and to stick French phrases into our posts. It keeps us, you know, hip."

Speaking from his headquarters at Sequim, Banbury did not go so far as to state that Exechobo was now engaging in photojournalism. We can only hope that Exechobo will also make a foray into the world of video. For access to some of the photos Banbury was referring to, just look in the left column for the widget that has a slide show.

Blogging as an outlet for thinking

When I was a kid, I could better express complex ideas in writing than verbally. It was frustrating to have ideas forming in my brain that I couldn't really express, or develop, so I started to write them down in notebooks. The notebooks are long gone. As I reviewed them years, or even months after writing a theme, I found them not worth keeping. I thought I was a bad writer, but should have realized I was maturing like any kid, at a pace that made my writing and thinking obsolete.

The benefit that stayed with me was that I learned to write pretty good. And some of the themes I developed, while not new to mankind, did put a stamp on how I think today.

An Interesting Look at Our Economy

I found another blog with some interesting posts. This one is a comparison of US to Euro economies and illustrates very well how well off we in the USA are. The writer does a lot of good research to get his data, and since he is a college professor, he must be smart, right? So, unless you are one of those whose guilt about being an American interferes with common sense, you can be proud of living in a society that has created more wealth and lifted more people out of poverty in a shorter period of time than any society in history. Relish it, be grateful, and do something with the privilege.

Bugs & Preparation for Travel

I have been asking via email who would like to be updated on new blog
posts when we travel. Today the number of subscribers climbed above
10, and that's when Blogger blew up. It only allows 10 email
notifications of new posts. So I conceived a work-around. I just
made a new address book group, and will use that as a cc list
whenever I post. So the good news- all of you won't get bugged when
I post until we start to travel. I will run a test of this system
for a few days. If you would be so kind as to go on the blog and
post a "Comment" to any post, or to this one, I will then be able to
see the efficacy of this solution. Thanks!

Photo Blog

If I start to get more serious about photography, I may have to find a way to publish big photos that those of you with good connections can see in large size, assuming any are worthy of looking at.  More research.  Picassa? Photobucket?  Box.net?  

And if I shoot in RAW, I will have to learn to post process on the computer.  Could that be satisfying?  But the cost of the software is so high it is a big step to take.  Pondering.  

Tools for mobile blogging

I have been getting my old PDA ready for using to keep up the blog while traveling. This thing is many years old, pre iPhone tech. It has taken several hours to make it work again, now finally it seems to be back, a working tool for travel blogging. In fact, this post is being sent from it. The big challenge will be to find places to connect.

Why do I "blog"

Blogging is now a verb.  To blog.  It originated as a noun, derived from web-log.  Easier to say.  All things technical need to be easier to say.  I think cause technical people drink a lot of caffeine and have to talk fast, so verbal shorthand is helpful.  As is text shorthand.  FWIW.  IMHO.  LOL.  Some writers even have text acronym nervous giggles, adding LOL to most statements.  

But obviously I am putting off an answer while I ramble.  Is it a compulsion to be understood?  Nah.  Is it a desire to achieve a small bit of fame?  Nah.  I think it is partly a way to teach.  To pass along thinking and experience.  At least it is for me.  Sometimes it is a simple way to let others know what we are doing.  We have a family living on three continents right now, so they can check in when it is convenient for them.  It keeps my mind occupied.  It is weirdly fun. IMHO. LOL. FWIW

Doctors 9000 time more dangerous than Guns!!

IMAO is a funny conservative political blog. Because politics is not an apporpirate subject for this blog, but guns and the 2nd Amendment are, I am linking to it.  You will have to read the comments in this linked post to see how that statistic was calculated. 

Be sure to read comments #5, #18, #25, they are brilliant!