bloggie blog

A bit of silly computerizing today. My dock spells out the word “SEXY!” and I agree, my desktop is sexy!

The photo is from my recent trip to Arches National Park, where we were mesmerized by this iridescent cloud as we stood under one of the “windows.” The icons are from Quicken, Entourage, Excel and Yahoo Mail! as a Fluid app. The only trouble with this lovely setup: the dock is too huge, but I had to magnify it for the screenshot. Enjoy! Now back to our regular dock size.

The new iPhone is good, so I think it’s time to tell all the world once again information that I find really helpful as I try to get around town. This is how I get street addresses from my home Mac to my mobile iPhone with ease.

Requirements:
0. Want to get a street address to your iPhone more easily.
1. Use Safari or Firefox on your computer at home. (IE is untested.)
2. Have a server somewhere that runs PHP and can send you email.

Basically, if you have access to a server, here’s an easy solution I call Mappie Map. It’s kind of like iPhoneSender, but you don’t have to type something every time you use it.

First, create a script file on your server and name it iphone.php:

< ?php
function mystrip($s) {
	$s = trim($s);
	$s = str_replace("\xA0",' ',$s);
	$s = preg_replace('/\s+/','+',$s);
	return $s;
}
$to = "YOUREMAIL";
$address = $_REQUEST["address"];
echo $address . "<br />";
$subject = "Map: " . $address;
$address = mystrip($address);
$message = "http://maps.google.com/?q=" . $address;
$from = "Mappie Map YOUREMAIL";
$headers = "From: $from";
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
echo $address;
?>

Then drag this link [Mappie Map] to your Safari bookmark bar and click on it after highlighting an address in your web page.

Of course, you’ll have to edit the bookmark first, with your server name; you’ll have to edit the other script with your email info, too. Once it’s running, click on the bookmarklet, a new window pops up showing the sent info which you must close manually, and you’ll soon get a message from Mappie Map. Just tap on its contents, and the address will now appear in your iPhone’s Maps app without you having to type it in. I find this real real handy. Leave a comment if you find it handy, too!

In April, somebody stole my iPhone. My life shifted in April — and it was hard to sense how much of that shift was from the loss in communications for a few days. Other things contributed, to be sure: focus on my indie film, the seasons, I hit a sense of being in LA rather than being new to LA, I had a horrible audition, etc. The point? Well, today I got a new iPhone (white 16GB 3GS), and now that I have an iPhone again, I am wondering if some of the goodness that I had in my life in the first quarter of 2009 will return. Not that things have been bleak without a gadget, but there was a shift. So I’m watching for another shift. We shall see….

Yesterday on Science Friday, Ira Flato interviewed some high-level movie guys working in 3-D, aka stereoscopy. Said Lenny Lipton, a long-time 3-D player and the inventor of some stereoscopic technology, “I think all movies, for business reasons, will have to become stereoscopic movies … just as all movies have sound.”

There you have it. This is not a prediction for the far future, but the near future. I don’t know that actors will get left behind this time, like Norma Desmond, but it’s an interesting piece of news, and in particular the pervasive future of stereoscopy is what’s news to me.

Lipton, who also wrote the lyrics of the song Puff the Magic Dragon, might be biased. The others on the panel, director Henry Selick and executive Jim Mainard, think only half of high-profile films will become 3-D films, about 25 titles a year. By the way, Selick pushed for some sort of smell-o-vision on Coraline, but the panel agreed that’s not coming. Rather, new sound technology is the other thing on the verge of changing our movie-going experience.

Here’s how often I use “Coverflow” view when in iPod mode: never ever ever. In fact, every time my iPod goes into that useles, maddening album-art mode, I die a little inside and/or swear a lot outside. IT SUCKS!

Please, please, please: how do I turn it off for good?! Ten bucks to the first that can show me how.