Chris

“It’s time to take back the city and repent of our sins. Evil will not prevail in my house”

Good! I just upgraded from the ATT/HTC 8525 to the ATT/HTC 8925 or the Tilt. Why do you ask? Simple. As much as I loved the 8525, every time I sent a multimedia message (frequently), it accessed the data network to send and then stay connected. I don’t want to spend $39.99 a month for a data plan when there is free wifi everywhere in town. ATT kept charging me and I would call/complain and the charges credited back to me and dropped. Good. They also sent a replacement 8525 to fix the issue except…

The replacement failed the same way and we were back to square one. After two phone calls totaling 3 hrs (not a joke) and 2 weeks, I have a phone upgrade and it is a few steps up from the very nice 8525.

Features included:

• All-in-one device for simultaneous voice, data, and email
• Large tilting touch screen, slideout keyboard and Wi-Fi
• 3G fast wireless broadband connectivity and speed
• Microsoft Windows® Mobile 6 Professional with Vista compatibility (flawless in my testing)
• global with tri-band UMTS/HSDPA & quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Stereo Bluetooth® 2.0 – Use voice, data, and accessories simultaneously
• Next generation processor for 3G fast wireless broadband connectivity
• Music player, AT&T Mobile Music, and Cellular Video capabilities
• Instant Messaging – Yahoo!®, AOL®, & Windows Live(TM) Messenger
• Sliding QWERTY keyboard with trackwheel for easy navigation
• Microsoft Office® Mobile -Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook (works with my Office 2007!)
• 3 MP camera with 10x digital zoom, panoramic shooting, sport shooting and editing!!
• Multiple messaging capabilities – Text, picture and video messaging
• microSD expansion supports up to 2 GB potential expandable memory ( I use almost all of this space up already!)
• Integrated Wi-Fi (802.11 b.g) capabilities
• Tethers to your laptop as a high-speed modem
• Push to Talk capable for instant communication (meh)
• Built-in GPS for use with Telenav GPS Navigator(TM) Oh hells yeah I love this
• Voice command and voice dialing

I’m starting to use a lot of 3rd party apps that I download to my phone that I’ll cover soon but this phone makes my heart happy even though ATT customer service is the suck.

https://www.magiccityart.com/index.html

Once again it is time to head to downtown Birmingham to enjoy fine art, let the kids romp/explore, enjoy delectable food/wine and enjoy musical acts from almost every genre at the Art Connection.

Once again, I am shooting the event and will be there Friday afternoon, and most of Saturday/Sunday.

Video Promo:

 

If you plan on going, let me know and we’ll do a meetup

205.588.6899 or twitter me @mojodenbow

Upcoming.org: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/491924/

Here are a few photos and a link to Flickr photo stream of last year’s event.

http://flickr.com/photos/mojodenbowsphotostudio/sets/72157600152168363/

I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of weekend events and weekday goings on that I haven’t had a chance to mention them here. Life goes on but not without looking back a little…

The Good

Friday afternoon, we visited the Aldredge Gardens in Hoover and snapped a few photos. Daphne was asleep in the car and not in her usual “take my picture” kind of mood.

Saturday morning was spent hiking Ruffner Mountain with my good friend, Ed and his dog Riley. We went early enough were the only people we saw were headed up while we were coming down. Very brisk and relaxing.

Saturday night, Wonderwife and I hit the kitchen to make Mongolian beef on rice. Take THAT P.F. Chang’s!

WW also fired up her bread maker and we devoured warm, fresh rosemary bread.

On Sunday, we enjoyed a super simple recipe and oh so tasty one at that. Italian flank steak and mashed cannellini beans. Yummo!

DVD is learning how to walk. At almost 8 months old. Seriously. We are not prepared for baby-proofing the house. Yet.

http://videomojo.info/2008/04/19/baby-steps/

DVD is eating baby food a lot more but enjoys sharing it with us even more.

 

The Bad:

Of course there were downsides to the weekend: the dog refuses to alert us when she needs to go out and uses the foot of the stairs to the basement as her personal toilet. Bad dog!

The heating element in the dryer craps out.

The brakes in one of our cars needs replacing.

The front porch step has a huge crack in it and is separated from the porch.

Up Next:

This upcoming weekend is PACKED for me. News on that is forthcoming.

I’ve said it over & over again and it bears repeating that Jenny is simply amazing. I don’t tell her this enough nor express my appreciation very well. When she does something, she does it very well. The woman can cook, craft, raise a newborn and more. She has a brilliant mind, full of wit and common sense. Not only did she excel in college (4.0 every semester), she is very attractive.

Yes, folks, I got the ideal wife.

No, I am not in trouble and this post isn’t  “get out of jail free” card. This is just something I had to get out of my head.

We’re coming up on 17 years together and a 12 year marriage and it just keeps getting better.

I love you, WonderWife.

Another Barcamp has come and gone here in the Birmingham area and once again, we can claim a success. How do I know this? The presentations on cutting edge web development, online reputation, new media and breakout sessions on communications tools such as Twitter and more. New contacts were made and filed into virtual rolodexes, friendships renewed as well as a spirit of cooperation in seeing the tech industry thrive here.

There was discussion on the future of Barcamp here and even PhotoCamp 2.0. Someone even suggested hosting Wordcamp (for Wordpess enthusiasts). We’ll see how far the adrenaline from Barcamp takes us. In the meantime, thanks to our sponsors, Microsoft, Google. Thank you to our camp organizers and to everyone who participated.

See ya next time…

– Happy Camper

Thanks Molly!

http://bhamweekly.com/article.php?article_id=00745

I’ve redesigned my Tumblr blog into Combo Mojo, added my custom domain (as opposed to tumblr.mojodenbow.com. This website pulls feeds from all of the websites in Studio Mojo. Now you can enjoy all of these websites into one by going to http://combomojo.info

Want to grab the feed? Here it is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ComboMojo

BARCAMP?

So what is this “Barcamp” thing all about? Despite what the name implies, it is not a beer-guzzling excuse to go outdoors with over 100 people. Although the idea is tempting in itself…

What I am talking about is a fantastic opportunity to come participate in a conference that is unlike any conference you’ve ever attended, unless you were present for Barcamp 1.0. This is what we call an “unconference”, a format where the attendees are the presenters and the camper decide what topics/presenters they want to hear. No keynote speakers, just people in the know sharing what they know. Sound good so far? But wait, there is more.

PROPOSED TOPICS

You can expect a lot of various sessions at Barcamp. The first Camp we had here in Birmingham included AJAX, Ruby On Rails, Microformats, typography, web 2.0 and even juggling for geeks. This year, expect discussions on Twitter, social media tools, marketing, startups, design and more!

PRESENTERS

As promised, you, and other like-minded people that you want to meet.

NETWORKING

This is a bonus here at Barcamp and we encourage this every chance you have while attending. Some people come to look for better career opportunities. More than a few campers attend just to see old friends and make new ones. The discussions and networking opportunities are invaluable. This year my goal is to make at least 5 new friends and add no less than 10 new contacts. Are you one of them?

FREE, AS IN BEER

Yep, this unconference is free. How cool is that? It isn’t often that you get so much value for free.

MAC, LINUX, WINDOWS, WHO CARES?

We do not discriminate based on your computer’s platform here at Barcamp. There will be free wifi for each. The same goes for your cameras. Bring them both and share with the gang!

STILL READING?

Register yourself as a camper and/or presenter as well as more Barcamp details by going to our wiki site: http://barcampbirmingham.org/ The not-so-secret password is c4mp. See you there!

Photos courtesy of Dimitri, Glynnish & Photo Mojo with gratitude and no compensation whatsoever.

 

So I am heavily into this thing called micro-blogging, or lifestreaming and created a Tumblr account a long time ago. This site allows me to aggregate most of my Studio Mojo web feeds and combine them into automatic blog posting. I could post a blog article on there as well, but I already do that here.

If you want to see it all at once and on one website, check out Combo Mojo: http://mojodenbow.tumblr.com/

Daphne spends a day at the Birmingham Botanical gardens