As I was noodling around with a Window Phone 7 app idea, I realized that I needed a visual canvas on which to explore my genius. The Design Templates for Window 7 is an excellent start, and there are some other great resources available from the official developer site, but I needed some sheets with blank mockup screens… so I made some. Read on to view and download the files…

The Templates

Here are several PDF files of varying opacity to suit your printer and sketching styles. 

Solid Phones
60% Phones
40% Phones
30% Phones
100%-to-Wireframe Phones

And now, a bit of gushing…

I have been digging around in the Windows Phone 7 apps for about a month and I am [honestly] excited about them.  The application development experience is second-to-none and is ridiculously easy with Visual Studio 2010.  Can’t wait to get my hands on the next release of the tools scheduled for September 16th, 2010.

UPDATE: Templates in Action!

Mr. Blurrycam stopped by to snap a picture of the templates in action.  The only way to make the “change process” less expensive is to find free erasers. 

I love the pencil-and-paper design process; anyone can do it, and no one ever gets the mistaken impression that the app is “almost done.”

Now… where did I put those crayons?

When I saw a video of Sterling Johnson blowing enormous bubbles, and I knew at that very moment what I wanted to do when I retire.  Since I will probably never actually retire, I decided to just get this little itch out of the way right now.  No time like the present, and all things are possible with the vast compendium of knowledge called… the interwebs.  Read on about the details!

Just search Google for “giant bubble solution j-lube” and you will find a rich list of recipes and advice.  Why J-Lube?  Because it contains a polyethylene polymer that provides better bubbles through chemistry!  That ingredient seems to be the differentiator between ‘just OK’ and ‘much better.’  It might also just be a bunch of hogwash, but how often do you have the opportunity to purchase an agricultural veterinary obstetrical hand lubricant?  (Be warned: Don’t search the internet for J-Lube with children looking over your shoulder; it is also apparently used in certain non-mainstream human adult interpersonal physical activities, the subjects of which are not suitable for discussion with children.)

Instructables.com has a good tutorial on how to make a big bubble maker-thing similar to my device, and they also have a recipe very similar to what I chose.

Keep reading on the internets, and you will discover some amazing bubble artists devoted to their crafts, blowing bubble chains, bubbles in bubbles, touch tricks, and more.  I am an amateur hack compared to the pros, and their entertainment careers are not at risk from the likes of me.

Partial Shopping List

So, here’s an abbreviated list of what you need. (A more complete list of instructions and materials is available at Instructables.com):

• Two PVC or bamboo poles as long as you like.
• You need to hand braid three lengths of cotton packing string.  The braided cotton string will absorb the bubble solution from the bucket and will serve as a reservoir as the bubbles form.  You need enough string to form a large loop.  There does not appear to be any standard size for these bubble makers, though bigger is not always better.
• You also need some lengths of string to attach the braided string to the poles.
• A drill to put holes in the poles to run the linking string through.
• A pot to mix the solution
• Measuring utensils.
• A Milk jug to store the solution (when it has cooled)
• A bucket to dip your string/loop thing in.
• Some old towels to wipe up your mess.
• Paint impeller/mixing attachment

The Formula.  Mwuhahahah!

Here’s the recipe as I’m currently formulating it:

Notes:

• I have decided to forgo the “Dawn Manual Pot & Pan Detergent” because it is expensive, hard to find, and the solution seems to be OK without it.
• J-Lube is available from suppliers on E-Bay.  $12 worth will last you forever and ever.
• Some sites and instructions recommend bringing the distilled water to a near boil, removing from heat, then mixing in the components.  This would be VERY hot, and terribly dangerous if spilled or splashed.  I personally do not recommend heating your water to boiling.  If you decide to heat your water, No kids or pets allowed in the kitchen or working area!!!
• Some sites suggest that letting the bubble solution ‘age’ overnight helps.  I haven’t found any difference.  I suspect it might have more to do with the humidity and time of day than anything else.
• The Glycerine is definitely a key component, and it is available in small bottles at Walmart – in the pharmacy/beauty section.  Just ask the pharmacist.  The lady at our local Walmart knew exactly where it was.  I’ve heard that white Karo syrup also works, though not as well.
• Never add salt to your solution.  There are some sites that suggest doing so, but they are under the mistaken impression that salt = sodiumwhatevercylate.  There is plenty of that stuff in the dish washing detergent.

It’s Not the Heat; It’s the Humidity

The same bubble solution that works great one day might work terribly the next.  Humidity is a real factor, and direct sunlight on a hot dry day will end your fun really quick.  Dust and other particulates can also play a factor in the death of your bubbles.

Even on the perfect day with the perfect bubble solution and the perfect bubble wand, your bubbles are subjected to the forces of gravity’; they will float to the ground, so…

Aim High

Start your bubbles high with long poles, or position yourself at the top of a gentle hill with the wind blowing downhill.  There are many public parks and college campuses with perfects hills.  So far, our smaller bubbles can travel up to 50 yards over a gentle slope, but our bigger bubbles have a much shorter distance/lifespan of around 20 feet.

Sheer cliffs and bridges are dangerous and never appropriate for kids or pets, especially when bubbles are involved.  Kids and pets will become distracted by the bubbles and will lose track of the edge.  The kids and pets will see the bubbles continue to float over the edge and will not be aware of the edge of the cliff.

While we’re on the subject of kids, be sure that they have their own tools and their own solution to keep them busy.  They won’t stay entertained by the big bubbles for long, and they will want to blow their own bubbles.  You do not want them sticking their grimy, grass-covered hands in your pristine bubble solution, and you don’t want them to froth up your bucket of solution by swishing their bubble wands in it.

Think Like A Hot Air Balloonist

If you fill your bubble with warm air and float it over cool air, the bubble will rise.  The opposite is also true – cold air bubbles will sink in hot air.  Experiment with parking lots and bodies of water to see if you can find the perfect thermal lift.

Good luck, and let me know how you’re doing in the comments!

While the tool is ridiculously-awesome, I do have an important tip for using it –

Lie about obstructions and height to see ALL stations.

If you tell the truth, the system will faithfully only show you the stations that you might get with rabbit ears.  You really want to see ALL of the stations that you could get if you bought/built an Frankentenna.  So, you should say “no” obstructions, and that your antenna height is absurdly high, like 200 feet.

Doing so will cause the website to show you vectors and distances to all stations in the area.  You can then dial the exaggerations back a bit to see more-realistic estimates of reception.

The AntennaWeb website will give you a detailed listing of stations, channel numbers, distance, compass direction, and the recommended antenna type for each station.  You can even click “View Street Level Map” to see a Google map with directional markers and a legend for each station.  It is truly a smile-making tool.

If you’re on the fringe, you will likely see that most/all of your local TV stations’ transmitters are grouped together in one area so that one directional antenna will cover them all.

Good luck with your OTA TV endeavors, and let me know how you’re doing in the comments!

The old “coat hanger Hoverman” served us well this past winter and early spring, but it just couldn’t cut through the leaves on our lush Illinois oak trees this summer.  Some of our TV stations were getting jittery with bad tiling, and they finally became unwatchable.  Upon further inspection of the antenna, I noticed that the heavy-gauge wire had also become ‘kinda’ loose at their junctions, and that probably contributed to the poor reception.  It was time for an upgrade!

I revisited the sites that got me started on this Hoverman journey and found Bill Casano’s plans for his Hoverman.  I found them very easy to follow, and used them in conjunction with the exact technical specs with exact measurements found here.  Note that Bill’s design uses a single reflecting plane made of wire screen, and the official design uses an array of tuned reflecting poles.  I opted for simplicity and went with the single screen.

Bill Casano’s PVC schematic laid out the measurements so that the centers of the T-connectors lined up nicely with the 254mm distancing.  VERY handy. I used some 1/2” PVC that I had in the shed, though Bill’s design calls for 3/4” pipe.

I didn’t document my build process, but it was pretty straight-forward.  I took a trip to Lowes and approx 3 hours to put together, and another hour or so to remove the old coat hanger version, install the new one, and fiddle with positioning. (Note: Lowes did NOT have #8 copper wire, but Home Depot had it for sale by the foot for $0.48/ft)

The new antenna is MUCH more directional, and a few degrees of rotation makes a big difference.  Luckily, all of our local stations’ transmitters are grouped together to the south of town.  You can use the AntennaWeb.com website to find your local TV stations’ transmitters, and even see a map of your house with lines pointing to the transmitters.  Very neato website. (I have some tips on using the website here.)

Even with the increased gain, I had to move the antenna to the back of the garage because the house was blocking the signal.  The house did not pose as much of an obstruction with the small antenna, but I’ll live with that trade-off!

The new antenna is also much more ‘respectable-looking’ than the piece-of-wood-with-coat-hangers that was on the roof for the last 6 months.  Since it is quite a bit larger, it is more visible to the neighbors.  That’s OK; it’s a fine looking piece of equipment.

Construction Note 1:  I further modified the design by insulating the #8 copper wire from the mounting screws with rubber tape, and then coating the connections with liquid tape to fix their positions and reduce the chance of corrosion.  My thinking: reduce impedance mismatches at the mounting points.  The copper wire only needs to make contact with the 300-75 Ohm transformer; the wire does not need to make contact with the screws.

Good luck with your journey to cable-free TV!  Let me know how you’re doing in the comments.

“Should I update my tablet computers even though they seem to be running OK?” 

It sounds simple on the surface but, as usual, there are some nuances that deserve attention.

There are four kinds of updates:

1. "Windows Update" updates,
2. Software Vendor application updates,
3. hardware manufacturer updates,
4. BIOS updates

Here is the rundown and rules for each:

Windows Update

"Windows Update" updates (redundant much?) are well-tested and are almost always safe to install. There are only a couple notable examples of ill-behaving updates in the last 15 years, so your odds of a trouble-free update are greater-than-excellent.  Microsoft operating system updates can be installed by visiting http://update.microsoft.com – or you can set your Windows computers to automatically download them/ install them/ or just notify you when new ones are available.  Microsoft’s unofficial “Patch Tuesday” is the second Tuesday of each month, so you will usually see the update notification icon in the lower-right corner of your screen around the middle of the month.

With Windows Update, the system can automatically install the updates for you.  I personally choose to set the system to “download only” because some updates can force a reboot, and I don’t want my machines to automatically reboot themselves in the middle of the night.

Software Vendor application updates

The makers of your software applications (Adobe Photoshop, Intuit Quicken, Firefox, Daemon Tools, etc) may release software updates.  Many applications have an ‘update checker/notification’ feature built into them.  I consider each of these updates on a case-by-case basis.  The general rule is to trust the people who made the software, but always be prepared for the update to break something.  Application updates are generally not as well-tested as operating system updates.  That’s not a knock against us software folks; it’s just a fact of economics and scale.  It is not uncommon to install an application update to fix something that was broken by a previous application update.

Hardware manufacturer updates

Hardware manufacturer updates are device-specific updates (for the hardware in the Motion C5) like the pen/screen device, sound card, display, network adapters, etc. If you are experiencing specific problems, it would be a good idea to review and install the hardware manufacturer updates. The most commonly-helpful ones are usually related to the wireless adapter; it seems like the manufacturers are always updating those. Most of these hardware updates have been integrated into the Window 7 Update system, but XP/Vista users must manually visit the manufacturer web sites and download them. As such, many XP/Vista users are totally unaware that updates exist for their hardware.

BIOS Updates

Rarely required, these are sometimes helpful when installing newer hardware or operating systems on an older computer.  If you think that you need to update your BIOS, you should study the BIOS update process thoroughly before performing the procedure.  (Here is a video of how to do it if you have a floppy disk drive in your machine, but who has one of those anymore?)  If done incorrectly, you can turn your $400 computer into a brick.

In summary:

• Rule #1) If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
• Rule #2) It’s already broke; you just don’t know it yet.

…so, if Microsoft or the manufacturers say that they have some updates, you should probably install them.

Hi Scott,

I was wondering if I could get some A/V system advice from you?  We are putting an addition on our house and will have some walls and ceilings opened up so I was looking at upgrading/adding to our system while it has easier access. 

The big question I have is what wiring to run so we are set up for a number of years in the future.  Do I want to run coax, cat5 and HDMI everywhere or is that overkill?  My ultimate goal would be to set up a distribution system to share signals through most of the house. 

Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.  If you need more details let me know.

Hi [name withheld],

Ask for advice, and you shall receive it until you cry for mercy.

Yes, you should do a "home run" distribution, whereby each/all of your cables run back to a common point.  Fancier configurations (i.e. trunk & branch, loop-through, etc.) are only required for large facilities and long distances, or for people in small facilities who enjoy making things ridiculously over-complicated.  "Home Run" distributions offer greater flexibility and are easy to troubleshoot. 

(MUCH more advice after the jump…)

I’d recommend running coax and CAT5/7 to as many drops as you can, and double up where it makes sense.  While 802.11x wireless is great for those hard-to-reach places, wired connections are preferable for fixed-placement devices.  We use wireless exclusively for our laptops, but many TVs, BluRay players, and all game consoles are becoming network-enabled.  You might want a couple of RJ45 connections behind a kid’s entertainment center, and you’ll need a 4-port network hub behind your main entertainment center.  Cable is cheap, and you can always install the jacks/receptacles later (a surprisingly expensive part of the job at $3-$5 per drop).

Coax will also remain a valuable type of cable for quite a while, so you should also run it to a couple of walls in each room.  Cable companies will continue to use coax to distribute analog and digital signals for several (6?) more years, and people receiving over-the-air broadcasts will continue to use it indefinitely.  If you set up a centralized DVR/media playback channel in your house, you will likely use coax to distribute the signal to all of your TVs. 

Interesting note: We have cancelled our subscription to cable TV and now use free over-the-air TV broadcasts distributed through our house via coax.  See our story at http://www.unthinkability.com/?cat=17

Before you put up the drywall, don’t forget any surround sound cabling that you might want to use later.  There are some wireless satellite surround sound speakers on the market, but they would still require power.

HDMI is not a long-distance technology.  New remote display technologies will probably utilize some form of wireless and RJ45 connections (see http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=wireless%2Bhdmi).  If you want to mount a flat-panel TV on a wall and completely hide all of your cables while still remaining flexible for new connector types in the future, you should plan your TV placement in each room and run a big conduit from the viewing height to the floorboard for power/audio/video.  Remember that (if you are connecting the TV to local devices like a DVR, game console, or surround sound system) you will need to fit the power cable AND the connectors through the conduit, so the conduit will need to be extra wide with no tight bends.  You will pull your cables through the conduit when you are ready.  Finish the prep work with a large/quad junction box and cover the top with a framed picture, and cover the bottom with a vent grill until you install a TV.  You could buy a fancy-schmancy HDTV terminal faceplate for your wall, but who is to that say the connectors won’t be obsolete in a couple years?

Some other notes and advice:

• When planning your CAT5/7 cable drops, be sure to include one for a wireless access point easily accessible in a closet, cabinet, or a drop ceiling.
• Find a common distribution point for all of your cables.  Be prepared for a bit of a rat’s nest until you can cut your cables to length and tie them down. (I’m too embarrassed to show you mine.)
• You could also pick a single common network node on one side of your house to concentrate that side’s network and RF cables, and then run a single RF trunk and a network backbone from that side to you main network location.
• LABEL YOUR CABLES as you pull them.  Numbers are ok if you have a diagram, but descriptions are WAY better ("living room east", "kitchen north")
• When you are ready to start connecting the new RF/TV drops, find a friend in the Cable TV world to help you select your RF fittings and connections.  You’ll need to plan out the splitter and tap values to balance the amount of RF signal to each drop.
• You cannot splice network cables together.
• You must use RF splitters or taps to combine coax cables.
• Do NOT put any splitters or connectors behind the drywall. They can spontaneously fail, especially during lightning storms.
• CAT5/7 maximum length will not be an issue in your house, so you can run them each/all back to your main network switch(es).

Good luck.  Sounds like a fun project!

Better you than me.

Our bill used to be $55.63 a month.  It is now $62.52 a month.  Where does this gradual rate increase end?

If you look at our Vonage bill history over the past 16 months, you can see a gradual increase in our monthly costs.  Up $0.55, up another $2.95, (then down 30 cents), then up $0.78, and up another $0.52, and up another whopping $2.51. 

The end result is: we now pay $7 more per month than we did when we started. That works out to more than $80/year, or a 12.5% increase in just over a year.

Old Bill Feb 2009	New Bill May 2010

What’s worse: The base product that we use costs $39.99.  Vonage piles on another $22.65 in ‘taxes and fees’ making the bill $62.52 a month.  The ‘taxes and fees’ now represent 36% of the bill.  That’s worse than this blogger’s 29%.  While there are some real increases as in the “State Communications Service Tax", they also now pre-charge me for unlimited 411 Information calls (built into the “Information Services Fee”).   I didn’t want 411 services.  I don’t want to pay for it, but Vonage has denied me that choice.  Vonage also raised their fees to offset their legal costs.  I have no reason to believe that they are not also including other revenue-generating fees in their ambiguously-named line items like “Regulatory Compliance and Intellectual Property Fee.”

Look, it’s not our fault that you had legal trouble.  We signed on at a fixed rate plus whatever variable government taxes might exist now or in the future.  If you incur new costs or need more revenue, raise you rates for new customers; Don’t pass your troubles on to your existing customers in the form of ancillary line items on an invoice in hopes that no one will notice.  Some of what you are charging us in the ancillary fees is just ‘the cost of doing business’ and your company should be eating it. 

I am concerned about these seemingly-endless rate increases.  I need to get off of this burning plane.  I’m ready to jump out and I’m looking around for the ripcord, and oh-my-god this parachute is really a knapsack!  – Vonage numbers are not always “portable” to your new phone provider depending upon which local exchange the prefix belongs in, but Vonage says that they will comply with the FCC regulations. You can try this process.

If you are considering dropping Vonage, be sure to check out Tom Keating’s article on his experience cancelling his Vonage service.  I’ve been through it once before, too, and I hope it is not nearly as painful as the first time.

Our entertainment is a la carte, with new TV shows recorded to the central DVR for free, new movies costing $1 from RedBox, and ‘all-you-can-eat’ old movies and TV series costing $9 a month.  Cable TV providers must know what is coming next, because they have been converting themselves into telecomm companies. 

We really, really do not miss cable TV one bit.  Now, if we could just get some more competition in the Internet Provider space, we’d be all set.

The answer to world peace is to give everyone in the world iPhones and Twitter? Really? Maybe it would help, but not in the way you’d expect. Imagine- In between your posts about Qdoba, Iron Man 2, and the new KFC all-meat double-down sandwhich would be tweets like:

• OMG Im like so totally hungry right now #actuallystarving
• Sure wish crops would grow in this f***ing sand!
• ROdirtFL
• Typing this with my feet #hatelandmines