new york city over the sofa

a few years back, i took my first trip to new york city. it was a great time. i took my dslr (a canon rebel xti) and nabbed many photos of the city. i didn’t get to do everything i wanted to do on my initial visit and decided i would come back to complete my list.

last october, i finally made my return. although this trip had a different primary goal: to fetch an image of the city which i could hang on the wall behind my new sofa.



after passing through my photos, i finally found the one that i wanted to use as the image for the picture. this was taken from the top rockefeller center on friday evening during my visit. i think the image is a little dark compared to the original, but it still looks great on the wall in my living room. f/32 Photo did a great job making this into a 40×60 inch piece of wall art. (not to say that my photography as wall art, but it is my wall art.)

new ice box

my kenmore refrigerator of eleven years died last week. i noticed the compressor making a much louder noise than normal. when i got home from choir practice last wednesday, my freezer was too warm. all my frozen fruit has defrosted and leaked all over the bottom. (the cherry juice looked like blood.)

i moved the bacon down to the fridge to keep it alive, and i put a thermometer to monitor the temperature. by thursday, it was getting warmer.

i had already started my replacement search. i wasn’t sure how much time i had because i did not know if the problem was just my freezer or the whole unit. between online and in-store searching, i was not finding what i really wanted. what complicated my search was a static width of 34 inches. most of the fridges these days are being made for 36 inch width spaces.

i narrowed my selection down on by friday morning. despite their selection, sears could not get a replacement to me in less than two weeks. best buy, home depot, and lowe’s didn’t either have model i was considering or they didn’t have an alternative in black.

the winner this time was hh gregg. i had found the LG model LFXS24623B which was more than i primarily wanted to spend; but it matched the size, color, and configuration on my list.



this was my first hh gregg experience, and it was a good one. richard d. was my sales guy. he answered all my questions and was patient as i worked out my final decision on this fridge. for weekend delivery, there was a $20.00 fee, which included transportation of the dead fridge. considering this unit was in atlanta on friday evening and in my house saturday morning, it was worth the twenty bucks.

life is back to normal at mock manor now. i did end up losing some bacon in the whole ordeal. (that was not due to spoiling but to ice in the cooler melting and seeping into the packing.) i will recover that sooner, though.

more keyboard redesigns from lenovo

lenovo has had a history of screwing with keyboard layouts on their products. from thinkpads back as far as the T40 series, they have moved and shuffled keys around for the sake of the rest of their machines’ designs.

i recall glenn making a comment about his thinkpad because the escape key was placed above the F1 key. for a programmer running linux (and using vi), pressing the escape key is a regular occurrence. it’s maddening to get the help screen every time you reach up to exit insert mode!

there have been several lenovo laptops i’ve skipped over because the keyboard layout is non-standard.

and here is another example of this case: the new lenovo yoga 3. first, let’s look at a keyboard from the yoga 2, which follows a standard layout:

see how the row of function keys are above the number keys and the tildé/accent key is above the tab key? that’s important. now, look at what they’ve done to their latest laptop keyboard:

they have moved the tildé/accent key to the other side of the keyboard! they eliminated the whole function key row. i can already predict how my keyboarding experience would be on this laptop!

but perhaps i’m not seeing this as lenovo sees it. perhaps they don’t intend to market it to programmers or people who use that key in that spot often. given that they completely removed the function key row, non-techies seem to be more the audience for this device.

and it won’t matter anyway. lenovo will have yet another and different keyboard design next laptop line they introduce.

android L preview apps: starbucks, google, and others not ready

looks like i might have written too soon. the starbucks app which now actually gets me into my card so that I can pay does not allow me to refresh to check my current balance. i can’t really complain, since i can at least still pay for my drinks with the app. and i can always go online if i need to check my balance in real time. the app will, however, let me load my card, and i can still see my rewards.





but the starbucks app isn’t the only one not working. i’ve had several of google’s own apps crash at various points on my android L preview. the my maps app, one i tried to use on a recent trip, started but failed to function properly. the photos app (which now seems to be a function of the google+ app) crashes when trying to build auto awesome movies with captured video. the google music app refuses to connect to the internet to stream tunes with the latest update (at this writing). also amazon’s ability to stream prime video to devices seems to start playing the video but then crashes.

the point of a preview is to give the companies time to get these things worked out. but the one company i am most confused about getting working apps with android L preview is google. i mean, they are making them all android L ready. shouldn’t they be working with android L? and it’s not like i have a one-off device. i’m on a stock nexus 5.

maybe i’m being too picky. the android L becomes no longer just a preview in a few weeks. with all these little crashes all over the place, i’m more than excited for the release of android L!

nyc again

when i redecorated my house last year, i took a painting off the wall behind my sofa. i needed to replace it with something other than the painting since it no longer matched. what i really wanted was a good shot of new york city.

my trip to the big apple in 2010 didn’t include any i could use, i booked a trip back up north. (i had wanted to have come back ever since my initial visit.)

because my purpose was primarily photography, i did not plan for shows. i scheduled some extended time on top of rockefeller center. morning sunrise and evening sunset provided enough for the shots i was looking.

all of the photos in this post were taken with my nexus 5:





last time i was here, i didn’t actually visit the statue of liberty. i got some tickets this time too. i think it would be worth visiting the island if you can make the climb up to the crown, bit you have to book those tickets well in advance (which i failed to do). and it was raining most of the morning. i stayed on the island long enough for the clouds to clear and get a few snaps.



the ticket also included ellis island. because i was hungry and my legs were hurting (a little), i didn’t read the whole museum. many of the artifacts were still in preservation since hurricane sandy caused serious problems. i would like to return when i was less pressed for time and the items were no longer in storage. by the time i was ready to leave, the clouds had broken enough to get more pictures of the city from another angle.





two other things i didn’t really get to do last time here was eat pizza at two places i heard were some of the best. (i know that is a highly subjective statement, but…eh.) i ate at grimaldi’s and lombardi’s. both were very good pies. can’t beat new york style pizza.



one bonus shot was of james earl jones leaving an off-broadway theatre after one of his shows. i was headed back to my hotel on the first night when the crowd was waiting outside. that was fun.

nexus 5 photo of my canon 70d display

oh, one note: although i didn’t plan for shows, i did try to catch a taping of jimmy fallon and the tonight show, but i didn’t get tickets in time. turns out it was dane cook as the guest, so i didn’t feel so bad for not getting tickets.

i wish i could have made it a three full-day visit. there were a few more things i would like to have seen. i did get to eat street-vendor food.

there will be another trip.

starbucks joys

it would figure that the day immediately after i post about their broken app that starbucks would release an update to fix it.



and i can report it works for the android L preview (actual screenshot above).

as i stated yesterday, all of this didn’t stop me from swinging by my favorite store this morning and trying something new (for me). now, i can resume my first-world life.

thanks, starbucks!

starbucks woes

i love starbucks coffee. i am a regular at the store on cedar bluff. i know the personnel, and most know me. i even know former employees. and i spend a good chunk of money with them.

but this past month has been frustrating with regard to payment options.

it started with the upgrade of their android app. about a month ago, i started getting email announcements of a new app with features and a new interface. i became excited. new apps are always a small thrill. but when they don’t work, it can be quite the disappointment.

after eagerly checking google play store more frequently than normally, i finally saw the starbucks app on the updates list. i clicked to make it new, waited, and jumped to my main screen, and tapped the app.

it started up…but then crashed. i tried again. same result. i went through the stand rituals of clearing cache, clearing data, and finally reinstalling the app. crashed every time.



i decided to go back to an older app (unofficially starbucks). after shuffling around a backup of that app’s database, the payment screen wouldn’t display the payment barcode.

i also had the bright idea to do a screen grab of the barcode from the working app on an older phone, but drm protection squelched my plan.

since the app didn’t work, i was loathed to pull out the physical card with which to keep up. when trying to pay, the card registered empty. great.

i am running android L preview. if it had been released less than thirty days ago, i wouldn’t be too upset. it has been out since june, long before i started receiving the teaser emails. that means plenty of time to test against the future operating system. it would have been in their best interest to develop toward this change.

it has always felt as if starbucks treats their android customer base as an afterthought. it took them years after the apple device owners had an app to provide one for the other group. and this app might not be problematic to merely the cutting edge crew. read the latest comments in the store to find many others having new-app issues.



if you haven’t upgraded yet, don’t.

i can still pay with credit card, cash, or make my coffee at home until they fix this. it’s definitely a first-world problem. i will continue to be a fan and buy their coffee. it just bugs me. and i have a blog.