The Only Things I Really Watch On YouTube
by heather on Oct.06, 2011, under YouTube
I know people spend hours of their life in front of YouTube but I don’t. I much prefer to watch the actual tube. So when I do spend time on YouTube I really only watch 3 channels and I really like them.
Channel 1 – vlogbrothers
These guys are absolutely nerd-tastic and awesome. I really have enjoyed John’s writing and their videos are great and cover all kinds of nerdy and non-nerdy topics.
Channel 2 – xperpetualmotion
A recent grad from RISD and current YouTube employee, Karen Kavett is my younger, probably better graphic designer self. Thanks Karen for making graphic design very accessible 
Channel 3 – jaaaaaaa
Julia Nunes, awesome, not enough recent posts but ’nuff said.
TV Fall 2011
by heather on Oct.06, 2011, under TV
Okay so the season started a few weeks ago but I thought I’d let the shows stew a bit and see where we landed. So I had A LOT of new shows on the docket and here is how they’re stacking up. See my MASTER GRID
Pan Am – I’ve only seen the pilot episode so far and I wasn’t blown away. None of the characters were very interesting or grabbing me but I’ll give it some time for Christina Ricci’s sake.
Terra Nova – I’ve been lazy and haven’t started this yet. I’ve got a few episodes stacked up on my TiVo.
Playboy Club – I liked this show which unfortunately is the first of the season to get the axe. I actually really thought they did it well and was looking forward to some murder mystery as well as learning the significance of the “bunny dip” Oh well it lasted 3 episodes.
Unforgettable - Watched the pilot, eh… It wasn’t interesting enough to feel like I wanted to watch the second episode. Off the TiVo.
Ringer – I never watched Buffy but I’m liking where this is going so far, I’ll keep watching.
New Girl - I like Zooey so I was looking forward to this. The pilot was pretty good, but I was seriously disappointed at the replacement of Damon Wayans Jr. by episode 2. I’ll keep watching but this was by no means a super hit that it seems to be portrayed as.
Up All Night - Like it a lot. The second episode had a bit too much awkwardness but was good and in episode 3 where they flash back you can’t go wrong with “classic” Christina Applegate with the red mini dress, black leather jacket and straight blond hair, nicely done!
Free Agents – Don’t know how long they can keep this same plot going but we’ll see. I’ll keep watching.
Revenge – I was pleasantly surprised with this one. It had just enough fake Hamptons schmooziness and blue collar heart. I though Emily Van Camp was going to be the same as her character on Brothers & Sisters but she is fitting in nicely here as a bit evil. I think this could use a little more strength in the why is she really that pissed off department but I’ll keep watching.
Charlies Angels – Awful, unfortunately I was kind of expecting it to be terrible! Suffered through the pilot and deleted my season pass right after.
Person of Interest - Still undecided on this. I kind of don’t really care for Jim Caviezel so I’m finding it hard to get past that aspect. I also find the limping and stiff neck that Michael Emerson puts on in his “current time” persona just silly and distracting.
The Secret Circle – This is definitely standard fare for the CW so I’ll keep watching, but I sort of don’t expect this to last long.
Prime Suspect – I like this, I like Maria Bello. This is really the only cop show in my rotation currently other than CSI so it stays.
Well, that’s it for now. Still a few things to watch which I haven’t gotten to yet like Homeland and American Horror Story so stay tuned.
I Want These Very, Very Much
by heather on Mar.05, 2011, under Design Nerd
I absolutely love the look of the these letterpress cards with edge painting detail. I should really get my act together and design some stuff for myself.
http://ohsobeautifulpaper.com/2010/09/colorful-edge-painting/
Notion Ink Adam – Things That Could Be Better
by heather on Feb.28, 2011, under Technology
So I received a Notion Ink Adam as a Christmas bonus for work, thanks! It is the LCD Wi-Fi/3G model. I really like it but I have some suggestions to make things smoother and more user friendly. If you’ve been following the Adam story at all you’ll know that this device has great potential and hopefully over the next few months there will be a bunch of updates and improvements from Notion Ink including direct access to the Android Market. Any suggestions of your own please leave in the comments.
- Hide keyboard button should be bigger, directional arrows can be smaller (NI Keyboard)
- Pressing on the wireless/3G/GPS icons in notification bar should do something or at least have info when you expand the bar
- A quick notes app that doesn’t require logging into your Google docs account
- Better GPS, doesn’t work indoors at all!
- Tab button for keyboard would be nice or some kind of “next” for filling out forms, hitting enter doesn’t always advance to the next field
- When entering contacts info, fields that are always going to be numbers i.e. zip code should have the keyboard default to number view
- Fix the time display in the home panel to display 12-hour a.m/p.m. time if that is how it is set in the preferences
- Preferences do not seem to carry over to every app, make this more consistent
- Date/Time entering for the calendar can use some work, you have to be very precise and can’t really go back and edit, you have to start over again
- Should have duration options for events i.e. 1hour/2 hour
- Should be option to not set a reminder in calendar
- Brightness is misspelled in settings panel
- When downloading you should have the option to save to a specific location (like the microSD card)
- Constant auto focusing on the camera app is really annoying, need to be able to turn off
- The power off/screen lock is buggy. It often seems to shut down when I intend to lock it only
- The time and date seem to change all on their own. I’ve had to reset it too many times
- I was unable to get the keyboard to come up when trying to add to a word press post via the browser
Mozy is no longer my friend
by heather on Feb.02, 2011, under Makes Me Mad
So I just received an email that Mozy is discontinuing its unlimited backup service. Instead of my reasonable $55 a year to back up everything it will now cost me over $400 to back up the same amount of data and that isn’t counting for any future additions! Argh, this stinks!!! This follows in the footsteps of AT&T ditching its unlimited data plan for the iPhone, luckily I was grandfathered in to that one. According to Mozy most of the their customers fit comfortably in their new 50GB of backup for $5.99/month. 50GB? Thats it? 50GB is NOTHING. If you have a couple videos and a bunch of high resolution photos you’ll fill that up in no time. Now between my boyfriend and I we’re going to have to invest in a tape backup or something because I doubt that Carbonite will offer their unlimited plan forever either.
