Today our usual Saturday group headed to Chaska to play Bluff Creek Golf Course. According to my score database, the last time I played there was August 4, 2001. Nothing much has changed (although they may have remodeled the clubhouse).

The front nine was uneventful – two pars and seven bogeys. The weather was beautiful (sunny and upper sixties with a light breeze), pace of play was good (especially for how many people were playing) and the greens were nice (although I’m not a fan of their contouring).

I had a nice tee shot at the par 3 eleventh hole and remember taking a picture of the green with my iPhone. After hitting my second shot on the twelfth, I realized my phone wasn’t in my golf bag. It also wasn’t in my pocket or anywhere nearby.

I retraced my steps back to the previous green, but couldn’t find it. My friends called it (the ringer was on), but we couldn’t hear it. I let them play on while I continued to search. Several groups passed by and I told each one I was looking for a phone. I decided to catch up with the other guys and check in the clubhouse afterwards.

After the round, no one had turned it in yet, so I asked to use their computer to login to the Find My iPhone site, which showed it at the corner of 101 and Creekwood Drive. I figured that was maybe just the closest tower, so I sent a message (with alarm) to the phone asking them to return it, then headed back out to the course to look more.

No luck on that search and no one had turned it in while I was out looking. I used their computer again and now it was showing up in Eden Prairie at Riley Lake Park. Dammit – I can’t believe someone actually picked it up and took it!

I drove home, logged in again and decided to do a remote wipe of the phone. It was still showing up in the same park, but I decided having the data off the phone was more important that getting the hardware back. I was using a passcode, but I still didn’t want them seeing any of my incoming messages or alerts. The one downside of the wipe is that I can no longer track it.

Oh well – I guess I did need a higher capacity model anyways…

Old Apple propaganda, circa 1997

Imagic for Intellivision brochure:
Ice Trek, White Water, Safecracker, Dracula, Tropical Trouble, Truckin’ and Nova Blast (full size image)

M Network Brochure: You won’t believe it’s the same Atari VCS! Super Challenge Baseball and Football, Lock ‘N Chase, Astroblast, Space Attack and more…

Activision for Intellivision brochure: Happy Trails, The Dreadnaught Factor, Worm Whomper, Beamrider and River Raid (full size image)

ATARISOFT brochure: Now you can play the ATARI arcade hits – no matter which video game system you own…

ColecoVision brochure, date unknown

Coleco brochure for Atari, Intellivision, Sears Video Arcade and Sears Super Video Arcade video game cartridges – Venture, Turbo, Cosmic Avenger, Smurf, Mouse Trap,Donkey Kong, LadyBug, Carnival and Zaxxon (full size image)

http://westcoastlogic.com/slides/debug-mobile/#/

http://www.crashplan.com/enterprise/software.html

I have to say, I’ve been pretty impressed with Delta lately – the free upgrade to first class on last trip, the Delta iPhone app, improved airport kiosks, good on time performance, friendly flight attendants and good service.

Today I used the inflight wireless service from Gogo during my flight to San Diego. I didn’t really need to be online, so I skipped the $12.95 day pass. The service still allows you to connect, however, and have free access to a limited set of services and web sites.

You can only read so many People magazine stories, Amazon product reviews and Stubhub ticket listings, but I found the live inflight tracker page (displayed above) to be pretty cool. Airspeed, altitude, time remaining and map position reminds me of the panels they used to have on the Concorde…

On a lark, I decided to run the Photoshop CS6 beta installer on my 13-inch MacBook Air, despite it not having a dedicated hardware graphics card (although it appears that requirement has been removed from the minimum system requirements section). Chewed up a bunch of space on the SSD, but the new beast installed and launched fine.

I need to read up on the new features (this Verge story does a nice job), as some of the things have me totally confused already (WTF crop tool). But overall I’m just happy that Adobe is doing public betas again with their expensive flagship product – bravo!

http://krypted.com/iphone/managing-ios-devices-with-apple-configurator/

iPhone > Android > Nokia > Land phone > Typewriter > 2 cans and a string > Message in a bottle > Pigeon with a note taped to it > Blackberry

Servers to support MGT kiosks and IGT slot tournaments, Fortune Bay Resort Casino, Tower, Minnesota

https://www.hover.com/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204792404577225124053638952.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

http://pinterest.com/davidkingsbury/

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/in-which-i-fix-my-girlfriends-grandparents-wifi-and-am-hailed-as-a-conquering-hero

http://krypted.com/sites/removing-a-domain-name-from-a-google-search/

http://www.therestartpage.com/

http://thinkvitamin.com/code/create-your-first-wordpress-custom-post-type/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2012/01/02/why-best-buy-is-going-out-of-business-gradually/

My friend Terry was kind enough to give me a tour of the KTCA/TPT studios in downtown St. Paul tonight. I’ve driven by that building for years, but had never been inside. It was also pretty cool to see the new central corridor light rail lines in the street outside.

Terry does lots of different things at the station, but I seem to have forgotten most of the “official” titles. I got to see the air control center, most of the sound stages, a number of edit bays, a recording booth, their cool autograph wall and the IT and marketing departments.

I was really impressed with all the digital workflows – can’t imagine how that all worked using tape. Lots of encoders/decoders, IP and fiber connections, giants DVRs and tape storage, time servers, sweet video monitors and satellite feeds all come together to bring 24/7 programming to your TV (more photos after the jump).

Thanks Terry!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Snow-White-Macbook-Air-Pro-Sticker-Vinyl-Decal-art-Skin-/190530415862?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item7217570879#ht_7280wt_1024

http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/29/2595691/hp-laserjet-printers-pose-massive-security-risk-say-columbia

As they say in the commercial, I’m a Mac. Have been for a very long time. Lately that’s meant a laptop and the 17-inch MacBook Pro has long been my weapon of choice.

Until this week.

The casino where I work runs a lot of old technology. One of my first steps was to help the marketing department upgrade to a quartet of MacBook Pros with Cinema Displays. Later I added an 11-inch MacBook Air to the floating IT laptop pool. A sliver of PCs have been upgraded to Windows 7, with the majority still on XP. Don’t even ask about the servers…

I was tired of 1) having a PC tower plus my personal laptop and 2) not having a work laptop. When a friend of mine was selling his lightly used 13-inch MacBook Air, I had accounting cut him a check and started planning my new setup.

When the 13-inch arrived, I loved the size compared to the smaller Air. The screen resolution of 1440×900 was a big drop from the HD 17-inch, but still good enough to place Chrome on one side and Twitter/iChat on the other. Combined with careful configuration of hot corners, Mission Control and Dashboard, the smaller screen size is really a non-issue.

The limited number of ports has caused a bit of cord shuffling (and a run to the Apple Store for a USB-Ethernet adapter). My friend sent along an external SuperDrive, which has come in handy a few times so far. I had an extra USB hard drive that I’m using for an encrypted Time Machine backup, but that needs to be unplugged when I want to charge my iPhone. The Thunderbolt Display looks mighty tempting with all those extra ports…

The build quality on these machines is just amazing – so solid. I love the size and feel of the lighted keyboard keys and the screen is bright and crisp. Wireless connectivity has been flawless and battery life seems OK (although I usually have it plugged in). This model has the upgraded i7 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 250GB solid state drive. Performance has been wonderful so far, handling most everything I throw at it (which usually means 8-10 simultaneous running apps). The clean install of the OS seems to have eliminated most of the negative Lion experiences I had on the old laptop.

Going from a 1TB normal hard drive to a 250GB SSD created a few challenges. I realized a lot of that space was consumed by music and photos. I kept all of my personal photos on the old machine (although many of the “best” images are already online here) and just loaded work photos into Aperture. Google Music came along just in time to solve the music issue – I uploaded 17,000+ songs to their servers for free and just listen to them in Chrome. Overall, I’ve used up about half of the space on the SSD so far.

My primary goal was to run everything on this machine, eliminating the need for the PC tower in my office. I really only used that computer for payroll, our golf reservation system and Outlook. There are a slew of other Windows-only apps we use in the company, but I never really ran them much. I wanted the new laptop to have all of these programs too, so I could finally learn and use them effectively. Enter VMware Fusion 4.1.

I’ve used virtual machines for years, but always reluctantly due to performance issues. The specs of this machine, combined with the just released 4.1 version of Fusion, make it tolerable (if not damn-near equal to the PC). I started with a clean Windows XP environment, loading all of the virus/spyware/adware/firewall crapola and system updates. Once that was ready, my staff installed Office 2010 (including Access), multiple casino, resort and marketing apps, along with the aforementioned payroll, golf reservation and Outlook stuff.

I can basically run a full-screen Windows XP environment in one of the spaces, bound to our domain, that acts just like the PC tower. Just for kicks, I added Windows 8 and Ubuntu VMs for testing and training. Everything installed smoothly and the Fusion preferences for shared networking, file sharing and printing just work.

Back on the Mac side, I purchased (or transferred) licenses for Photoshop CS5, Pixelmator, Coda, Transmit, BBEdit, Aperture, OmniGraffle Pro and Pages. Free or included apps include Chrome, Firefox, Twitter, iChat, Dropbox, CoRD, Terminal, Screen Sharing, NetNewsWire, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Google Music Manager, VLC and Perian. Configured the VPN and localhost web environment and now I’m good to go.

Well, almost. Still need to troubleshoot an Oracle connection issue, finish setting up HP’s ProCurve Manager, optimize some firewall/VPN/wireless settings and download my old MySQL tool. Oh yeah, Coda needs to be configured and hooked into our hosted SVN solution too.

Not bad for a 2.96-pound sliver of technology, eh?

http://www.pixelmator.com/

Apple Product Diagram, Pop Chart Lab

http://www.magpies.ca/

Enterprise iPhone and iPad Administrator’s Guide, Charles Edge

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/technology/personaltech/windows-phone-is-back-full-of-great-tricks-state-of-the-art.html?_r=1

http://www.retrospect.com/products/mac

Epson R2000 Color Inkjet Printer, IT Office, Fortune Bay Resort Casino, Tower, Minnesota

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204505304577001980486025736.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_careerjournal

Like many others, my brother ordered a new iPhone 4S last week and asked me what apps he should put on it. This is his first smartphone, so this got me thinking about how I use my phone and what apps actually get launched the most. Here’s what I decided (in order of usage):

#1 – Tweetbot

I spend a lot of time on Twitter and this Tapbots app is my favorite client. $2.99

#2 – Mail

The default email app has a few quirks I don’t like, but it interacts with my Exchange account at work better than my expensive laptop does. FREE

#3 – Words with Friends

This is probably number one, but I was too embarrassed to admit it. Scrabble + social networking = brilliant. $2.99

#4 – Facebook

It doesn’t have all of the features of the full web site, but still a decent app. Each new revision gets better and better too. FREE

#5 – Camera+

Forget the default camera, Camera+ is better in almost every way. $0.99

#6 – Angry Birds (Original, Seasons and Rio)

Three stars, every level, each game. $0.99 each

#7 – My-Cast

Even if my friend Jake wasn’t the author of this app, it would still be my favorite weather app. $3.99

#8 – QRANK

Daily bar-like trivia, but I always skip sports. Will never get that Balls Out award either. FREE

#9 – Weightbot

Another Tapbots creation, this one is for all you scale watchers out there. $1.99

#10 – Tiny Wings

Strangely addictive (and more difficult to master than it appears). $0.99

—

Honorable mention (built-in apps):
Photos, Calendar, Messages, Maps, Clock, Calculator, Music, Safari, Phone.

Honorable mention (games):
HoldEm, Canabalt, DoodleJump, Mondo, Skee-Ball.

Honorable mention (everything else):
Shazam, Netflix, Urbanspoon, Fandango.

Fortune Bay Resort Casino, Tower, Minnesota

I had the pleasure of witnessing the “reality distortion field” in person many times over the years at several Macworld and WWDC keynotes, ranging from San Jose to Boston to San Francisco. At a Microsoft party in San Francisco in 1998, I stood nearby as I tried to work up the courage to actually talk to him. I was too shy at the time to say anything, but I remember being shocked when I saw him in the bathroom later that night and he didn’t wash his hands before leaving.

That unpleasantness aside, what can you say about Steve Jobs’ contributions to the world? I first read the news today via Twitter on my iPhone while walking down the Las Vegas strip in front of the Bellagio. I stopped and watched the beautiful fountains, then headed to the Cosmopolitan, where a literal hoard of hipsters ran wild with their requisite iPhones. iPads are everywhere at the convention I’m attending and iPods are given away as prizes at multiple booths. MacBook Pros and Airs are the laptop of choice for millions and Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Personally, much of my technology career is based on the products and ideas that have originated from Cupertino. I literally would not be where I am today if it were not for the work of Steven Paul Jobs. And his association with Disney and Pixar cannot be understated either. Thank you, sir.

We all knew this was coming, especially with the way the resignation announcement was worded. Cancer sucks (curse you, Bruce McCullough). Condolences to the Jobs family and thank you, also, for sharing him with the rest of us.

56 is way, way too young, but as Steve said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

Namaste, Mr. Jobs.

With the new work site about to come online, I’ve been experimenting with various options for displaying photo galleries in WordPress. I’ve used Gallery2 with the WPG2 plugin for quite a long time on many of my sites, but it’s getting a little long in the tooth. Gallery3 hasn’t seemed to get a lot of traction yet and I really wasn’t too impressed with the other WordPress gallery options I tried.

There is a Lightbox plugin I’ve been using for a bit on this site called jQuery Lightbox For Native Galleries. It works with built-in WordPress galleries, which I also didn’t really like much. After reading more about them, however, I’ve decided to migrate from Gallery2 to native galleries and use the Lightbox plugin for all of my images.

There is another plugin out there that’s supposed to help automate this conversion, but I have so many images and albums, that I really want to do it manually. I’ve already culled some albums and might decide to only repost the best images in some of the larger albums (especially with golf and hockey shots).

I still need to research a way to replicate the random photo in the sub-footer (and not include private photos), reload several photo categories, decide how best to handle URL re-directs and/or 404 issues with the old Gallery2 URLs and decide if I want a better way to deal with titles, captions and EXIF data.

So far, though, I’m pretty happy with how things are working. Here is a sneak peak of the new look – feedback is always welcome.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time this week finally studying up on the latest and greatest features of WordPress, CSS and JavaScript. This was mainly in anticipation of the work I need to finish this month on the new Fortune Bay website, but I also wanted to change up the look and functionality of this site.

The biggest items involved adding post formats to my custom theme (which now supports standard, link, quote and image posts) and integrating a three-column formatting structure based on the jQuery plugin Masonry. I also modified the RSS feed to deal with post formats, tweaked the Twitter section and cleaned up the style sheet.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how I spend my time online and how I present myself in various venues (I’m currently on a Facebook hiatus, quit Google+ before I really started and came very close to shutting down my LinkedIn profile). The simplicity of Tumblr drove the implementation of post formats and I like the idea of having full control over my content. Also have high hopes for the next version of the WordPress iOS app.

All of these things will hopefully mean I get back to posting more often, but no promises…

Dragonfire, Demon Attack, Beauty & the Beast, Atlantis, Swords & Serpents.

I really liked Imagic games back in the day. So much so, I guess, that I actually wrote them in 1983 (when I was 14) asking when their stock will go on sale. Kathleen Booth, Consumer Affairs, wrote back and said I should contact Merrill Lynch to see what information they could give me. She also enclosed an application for the “Numb Thumb Club.”

Such a nerd.

It’s sort of easy to see how I came to work in technology, isn’t it?

I really was spoiled growing up – I’m pretty sure I owned every one of these games at some point.

I remember how totally cool I thought this was when I first got it – “B-17 Bommmmmber!” That particular game was even cooler for me, as my grandfather actually was a B-17 bomber pilot in World War II.

Space Spartans and Bomb Squad were pretty lame and I don’t remember if that Tron game ever actually got released. I wonder if anyone has those sound clips somewhere now…

UPDATE: Of course there is, this is the age of the internets, after all.

Because when it comes to new ideas, the world is coming to Seiko.

Here are a few shots of what I’ve been working on lately. Various 318 projects this month have taken me to downtown Minneapolis, Novi, Michigan and Hurley, Wisconsin.

Nerd overload…

I was on the fence about the iPad and really didn’t want to form an opinion until I actually got to use one. Kid one needed an iPhone case last weekend, so we visited the Southdale Apple Store and I got to check it out. After about 20 minutes (and some advice/prodding from a couple of Apple employees I know), I left with a 16GB model and Apple case.

Most of the first day was spent syncing, configuring, tweaking and installing apps and media. The kids had it the next few days and then I left town on business for a few days and didn’t take it with me. So I still haven’t spent much time with it, but here are some initial thoughts:

• Initial sync took a really long time.
• It’s heavy if you try to hold it with one hand for any length of time – it really needs to sit on your lap or sit tilted up in the case on a tabletop.
• The screen is gorgeous, but needs to be cleaned after almost every use.
• The battery is as good as everyone says – and the device never gets hot.
• I don’t like using any of my iPhone apps on it, with the exception of a few games.
• The lack of caching more than a few pages in Safari is supremely annoying.
• With the right set of apps, this is an awesome education tool for $500.
• Speaking of apps, The Elements for iPad, by Touch Press, is incredible (and almost 2GB in size).
• I like typing on it better than the iPhone, especially when it’s on a tabletop.

My hope was that this would be a good, affordable laptop substitute for my kids and I think it is. Strong apps, digital books, email, internet access, music, movies and more in a sturdy package for half the price of a Mac Book.

In my brief time using it, my favorite things are viewing photos, the New York Times app, watching videos via the ABC and Netflix apps and the Foxtrot iPad wallpaper I see every time I turn it on. I can’t wait to see what developers come up with next…

As I alluded to in my Disneyland post, I’ve started a new position with a California-based company called 318, Inc. My new title is technology consultant and I will be based in Minnesota. You can reach me now at 952-232-9296 or via email at dkingsbury@318.com.

318 calls itself a “boutique technology solutions company delivering comprehensive technical support services and software solutions to SMB and Enterprise businesses.” The headquarters is located in Santa Monica, with offices in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. I will be working with noted tech author and 318 partner Charles Edge to establish a new Minneapolis office.

318 has a platform agnostic philosophy, but is also one of the largest Mac consultancies in the country. Founded by Kevin Klein in 1995, they have a mission statement I really like:

“Helping business grow profitably through the smart use of technology.”

I’m very excited to work with Charles, who moved here from California about two years ago. He’s brilliant (not trying to kiss up here) and I feel this will be an excellent learning opportunity for me. I’m currently studying for both Apple and Microsoft certification tests and gain new client experience every day.

318 has internal expertise in many areas, but especially shines in Xsan, Final Cut Server, Podcast Producer, OS X Server, imaging/mass deployments, Filemaker development and Kerio mail servers. If you need technology help, check out the web site or give the service desk a call at 877-318-1318.

I know I’m a little late with this post, but some of these new Apple toys just began shipping this week, so I guess it’s not too late to dash out a few comments.

On October 20, Apple updated several product lines, including the iMac, the Mac mini and the entry-level MacBook laptop. The new multi-touch Magic Mouse was also introduced.

Apple has posted links to some of the many reviews on their hot news page, so I’ll just add a few of my observations:

• A maxed out 27-inch iMac (2.8GHz quad i7 processor, 16GB RAM and 2TB hard drive) costs a cool $3,849. Although that is still much less than a similarly-equiped Mac Pro tower (which has an older processor and no monitor).
• The Snow Leopard Server version of the Mac mini was a total surprise. I’d consider replacing the mini this site runs on with one of those eventually. The internal RAID option is nice.
• Don’t have much to say about the MacBook – wouldn’t really want one.
• Same for the Magic Mouse, although I’ve heard some people say it’s nicer than a trackball. I still have an old Kensington Turbo Mouse trackball that I love, so I’m curious to test out that statement.

Nice products, but nothing I feel the urge to run out and buy right away.