Oops, Microsoft forgot how to create a random list.

I wrote an entry a few months back titled SMS to Android - get my email!. That was in the days before I knew about imap idle, and before a version of k9mail was released with support for push imap using imap idle.

Back in October of last year I wrote two entries (here and here) about my quest to make my HTC Hero's battery life not suck. The bottom line: Enabling background data kills the battery. Without it, you can't utilize the built in gmail client, and the other email client, well, sucks (and only supports poll). Enter k9mail. It was built (or so I read) from the stock email client, and added features to make it not suck so much. The key feature, in my opinion, is push imap using imap idle. In the old days, your phone would periodically check for new email (calling polling). You could specify how frequent you wanted it to check, every half hour, or daily, or whatever. The problem is, even if you don't have any new mail it still wakes up and checks; and when it wakes up to check, any other application that wanted to run (but not badly enough to wake up the phone to do it) will also run (part of the android architecture to save battery life). The net result: battery drain. If you want 'near instant' notification, you have to poll very frequently, wake up the phone many times throughout the day (and night), and all these other applications would make the phones 'awake time' even longer, draining the battery even more.

With k9mail you can configure it for push imap. This means it goes to check for mail once, and tells the mail server to tell it when new mail arrives (the technical term is imap idle). What this means is that the phone doesn't need to wake up to periodically check for messages. The advantage is instant notification of new email without the downside of polling. k9mail also supports polling, which you might want to do because moving mail / deleting mail via another email client or the web won't clear it out of k9mail (those changes aren't pushed).

So, here's the numbers: The phone was on for 53 hours straight with only 55% battery drain or 825 mA, for an average battery pull of 15.57 mAh (my best so far! The phone could last up to 96.3 hours at that rate). I didn't make any calls during that time. I used the phone very minimally to read a few emails and text messages and check the battery life. GPS, WIFI and Bluetooth were disabled (mobile network on). Background data was disabled, and no weather updates. k9mail was configured for pushmail on my gmail account (probably ~10 emails/day) with polling setup for every 6 hours (push and poll only on the inbox).

I built a couple laptop stands for Kristen (one for home, one for work). After finishing those up, I had some leftover scraps so I decided I would build some monitor stands for my new displays that came without height adjustment. The screens were definitely too low for me before, now they're just right. I think this will be the single best thing to help me improve posture (and hopefully less back pain). Added benefit: speakers fit underneath which allows me to put all 4 screens (two work + two home) next to each other; this makes it more comfortable to sit at (in terms of chair position / desk legs). A couple of 2x4s, a nice 1" thick piece of wood panel, black paint and polyurethane.

I still need to paint the two final pieces of scrap wood on the leftmost two monitors.

We haven't "facebook announced" so I suppose it isn't official yet, but there's a little Irwin Diepenbrock on its way - I'll post the email notification we sent out in a comment.

While we're on the topic of 'the news', word on the street seems to be that the NY Times will be going back to some form of "for pay" model for its website. It's common knowledge that newspapers are struggling - advertising isn't bringing in as much money in the internet days as it did in the print days due to increased competition from other sources of internet news and the evil aggregators. On the one hand, charging for content brings in money - on the other it drives away readers and thus advertising dollars. And there's some idea of 'moral responsibility' it seems to provide news to people who can't afford it. This is 'the problem' that seems to have no good solution.

Or does it? Ok, back to the days pre-internet. If you wanted good news (i.e. not delivered by talking heads), you paid for a newspaper. If you were less concerned about knowing right now - or didn't have the money, you'd pick up a previously read paper at a coffee shop, bus stop, etc. If you want to find old old news, you'd go to the library and enjoy the wonders of microfilm - also for free. The only time you paid for news was to get it right now (or without coffee stains). What if... now work with me on this one... newspapers had a pay-wall for only the most recent stories? You want to read the headlines for today - subscribe. Yesterday - free. Blog posts from from the past month - subscribe. A year ago - free. Sports from the past week - subscribe. Last month - free. Classifieds - nobody uses these anymore, give up on it - craigslist wins. Oh yeah, and put ads on all the free stuff, and for heaven's sake keep annoying ads out of the pay area. If you want to implement this idea, (not that any journalists read this so I think it won't happen because of me) a kickback would be nice. Maybe I should patent this idea (although it probably already is).

There was a time not that long ago when I was classified as a non-coffee drinker. This all started to go down hill (although rather slowly) a few years back while traveling through Pagosa Springs, Colorado. The hot-springs resort had a machine that put out vanilla coffee and hot chocolate; I found that mixing the two made for a most enjoyable beverage. A few years later, again while traveling - this time in Italy, I found discovered the joy of a well made cappuccino. Neither of these were enough to convert me to a regular coffee drinker. You see, that took the work of a single person who is brushing her teeth at her computer right now.

This brings me to the point of this post. What to do with the Christmas money we received? Our coffee maker was on its last leg, and we were buying grounds because we didn't have a grinder that could grind enough for a whole pot. The mixer and knives have some new friends:

We went to see the Nutcracker last night at La Mirada Theater. It was a fun way to start our holiday vacation together. We also made a stop by Costco earlier in the day to spend some of the Christmas money that folks have given to us. Note the coffee grinder & flannel sheets... warm flannel!

Also, you can check out our First Annual Christmas Letter.

Don't like the images fading while you're reading journal entries? Or maybe you want to admire the wonderful colors of the header image without fear that it will fade away. Fear not! I bring you, the (unfinished) pause and play buttons - hopefully soon to be accompanied by forward/back buttons. This might seem a bit overboard for the header images, but, when I get around to making the fancy-pants photo page, knowing this stuff will make it much easier.

The journal has been without an rss feed for about a year now, ever since I switched to PHP. The darn RSS standards were a tad... annoying back when I tried to do it before. RSS 2.0 seems to be much cleaner. So, for you RSS peeps, the feed is... well, right up there to the right... but you already saw it, so this post was really rather pointless.

It's a well known fact that everybody loves images fading in and out. I have this snazzy new header images, and I thought, "hey, I can fade between them so I don't have to decide which one to put with which page". So now, the header images fade. I learned the javascript from various websites, some with cross-fade examples, others just plain tutorials and the like. I've done mouse over action before, so I borrowed some of my own old code. Then I took and combined it with PHP so that we can put the first randomly-selected image straight into the HTML, and begin the rotation from there. Mental note: don't forget all this snazzy stuff you just learned before you implement the photo album!

I went to costco today... no surprise there. I have a general rule for shopping at costco, or, shopping out in general... no more than one impulse buy per day, unless there's a *really* good reason. I generally like to research products before spending money. Today's impulse buy set me back only $13, for a normally $30-40 product - an evolve showerhead. I visited evolve's website, and I have a rant. I don't need somebody walking around on the screen talking to me unless I ask for it. Make a giant button if you want to get people's attention. In general, I don't want any sound when I go to a website. That just interrupts my mood music. You don't want to interrupt my mood music.

So, the shower head. The cool thing, you can turn on the shower all the way hot and go about your business waiting for the water to heat up. The showerhead has a fancy pants valve that reduces the water flow to a slow drip once the water is 95 degrees. Now you can finish brushing your teeth, shaving, or any other "business" without wasting lots of water, and also wasting time standing next to the shower with your hand under the water waiting for the hot water to arrive. And you'll know it's hot because, well, you can hear the water stop running and start dripping. Convenience, energy conservation, and water conversation all in one, you don't find that every day, especially on sale!