Teich.Net :: All In

Upgraded to Leopard last night.  (BTW, drove by the Palo Alto Apple store on the way home, where there was a ~100 person line @ 6 waiting for the store to reopen.  For an OS.  Apple, please rub some juju on me too).  As you can imagine, there are thousands of people pontificating all over the web.  I haven’t seen anyone cover the one change that means the world to me:  Spotlight and mail.

Previously, searching for mail was tedious.  My standard M.O. involves remembering that Steve sent me an email with a presentation in it, but not really remembering anything else.  It used to be, I created a “smart folder” for email from steve, then searched that folder for emails to me or that contained a presentation.  Not exactly useful.Now, just type: “from:steve to:oren odp” (yeah, I use neooffice/staroffice) and I’ve got my results.  This is the way google desktop, MSN desktop, and even ancient Lookout search all worked.  It’s been the ONE thing I’ve really missed in my switch to a mac, and now it’s here!  I’m such a loser - but this made the $120 upgrade totally worth it.  Doesn’t hurt that spotlight is now blazing fast too.   

I’ve been looking for the perfect device for geotagging, and I can definitively say I’ve found one that ISN’T it. At first glance, the AMOD AGL3080 sounded like the perfect device:

• SiRF III chipset for best sensitivity and low speed tracking
• Standard USB 2.0 interface which doubles as an USB Flash Disk
• Works with Windows, Mac, and Linux based computers
• Long operating time - 15 hours with 3 x AAA batteries
• Large data capacity - stores over 256,000 data records

Too bad it doesn’t work well at all. Takes forever to get a lock, once it has a lock at walking speeds it’s worse than a drunken sailor on $2 rum, it’s huge and heavy. I can’t say anything good for this thing at all - just stay away.  On this map, I walked around the light white path through the green all around - you can see how poorly it tracked.I’m going to get a Wintec WBT-201 instead. It’s not SiRF III, but I know it works.  Semsons has been super cool, and a great vendor.  Definitely a good place to buy your GPS toys from.

UPDATE: Some comments have come up that I should review it again now that they’ve fixed the problems.  While I’d be happy to do so should someone send one my way, the form factor would still be a killer for me.  It’s just plain big compared with the WBT-201, and that’s the most important criteria for me, more important than accuracy.

We’re off to Argentina in November for vacation. 5 nights in BA, 4 nights in Mendoza. Since a 13 hour bus trip doesn’t appeal, we’re flying between them. Turns out, it’s not straightforward booking a flight inside of Argentina, so here are my notes on the process, in the hopes of helping someone else out.

First some notes and background you should be aware of:

• Aerolineas is the only airline I can find.
• Aerolineas does not let you book online.
• They do let you reserve online.

So the process seems to be this:

1. Visit Aerolineas site and reserve a ticket, select your flight time, choose your seats, etc.
2. Get your reservation number (email or confirmation page) and call them up - 800-333-0276 in the US
3. Listen to the nice lady tell you to visit the web site for lower fares, and ask you to push 1 a bunch of times.
4. Pay with your credit card over the phone. They don’t give you a confirmation code of any kind - your reservation number is now your ticket number.
5. Fly away, enjoy yourself!

In case you were wondering, standard coach fare for us at time of writing (October 2007) is $250/roundtrip.

A simple topic, but one that I spent altogether too much time thinking about - Happiness.

Go check out this video of Dan Gilbert giving a talk at Feb 2004 TED.