shane glass

I was driving home from class today, when I remembered I had not checked in on Gowalla while on campus. Then I recalled the rumors about the possible iPhone OS 4.0 update enabling some method of multitasking. This is some mighty fine news for us iPhone owners who, after three years, are still stuck running one user application at a time (which excludes Mail and Safari, apps Apple allows to run in the background). The only feasible way around this is to run Backgrounder, a jailbreak-only app. It’s decent, but due to the iPhone/iPhone 3G’s low memory, programs will be forced to quit after a while.

Back on track. As I recalled the rumor of multitasking for iPhone OS 4.0, I thought how cool it’d be to have Gowalla run in the background, automatically checking you in when you get close to a known location. Then I thought of the main stretch in town, where over half of my local Gowalla locations are within one or two kilometers of each other. How would Gowalla know exactly which location I wanted to be checked in if it became an automated process? (Because let’s face it, checking-in is a work-around method for these popular iPhone apps because of the lack of running apps in the background). And how would it know I moved from place to place, with such proximity to each location? Sure, GPS can be pretty accurate, but sometimes it’s not. So how would Gowalla know? Then I had an idea.

Gowalla could be setup to automatically check in a user to a location if that user has been to that location x amount of times. For instance: I have checked into my home over 50 times, so it stands to assume I like people knowing when I’m home. Gowalla could incorporate some settings the user could change, something like “Check-in automatically at locations with over x visits.” This could be user-modifiable, allowing a personal degree of automation.

It doesn’t solve the issue of GPS-reliability, which is really beyond Gowalla’s control any ways, but it keeps the check-in process on an interactive level (in that you must choose to let people know you’re at different places), while giving you the opportunity to automate the process for the locations you visit the most.

Of course, this idea is moot with such a shoddy battery life for the iPhone 3G/S. I live two hours away from the nearest 3G-blanketed area, so my 3G is always disabled. I keep my screen’s brightness around 75%, and WiFi enabled. With this, I’m lucky to get a whole day. Toss an app running GPS services in, and you’ll be lucky to make it to lunch.

I hate reading blog posts that are simply a bunch of lists, but I wanted to share a list of books/sites I’m currently reading from to help hone my skills.

• The Smashing Book
• The Elements of Typographic Style, v 3.2, by Robert Bringhurst
• Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0, by John Allsopp
• Web Standards Solution: The Markup and Style Handbook, Special Edition, by Dan Cederholm
• Sexy Web Design, by Elliot Jay Stocks

These are the most recent books I’ve delved into. Actual, physical books are so much better than PDFs or online sources. I just picked up five PDFs from SitePoint for $25 (as part of their Christmas specials, wrapping up with this sale today), but they won’t be read “cover to cover” like the actual books will be. I dig the paper so much better.

This past Wednesday officially began my Christmas break. I took four classes this semester: Literature of the South, Elements of Spanish 1, PC Software/Hardware Maintenance, and WWW Programming. I got As in all four (which was no surprise). The most difficult classes was Southern Lit, in which we had to read seven novels and one play. I didn’t finish complete all of them (and I “read” one as an audiobook). But that’s my challenge to myself, to finish those that I didn’t: Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (which I’ve already read before, but I love it that much), and Warren’s All The King’s Men. Yeah, I was a horrible student.

I’ve also become addicted to buying books on Amazon thanks to their free 30-day Prime trial. Since I signed up, I’ve ordered several books, all of which I’m exited about, but there’s three in particular:

The first I actually bought on Amazon some time ago, but haven’t been able to devote the necessary time to it. It’s The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ: From the Transfiguration to the Triumphant Entry, edited by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Thomas A. Wayment. It’s volume two of a three-volume series, a collection of essays written about the different events in Christ’s life. Holzapfel and Wayment are, like myself, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the seventeen essays in this volume are by LDS scholars who provide insight into the Savior’s mortal ministry. These essays touch upon subjects like the apostles and the seventy, the Transfiguration, the parables of Matthew 13, more details on the Apostles, the death of the Baptist, the Olivet Discourse, and the family of Jesus. The first volume was great, and I’m excited to read this one.

The second book I recently ordered, and it’s the continuation of the The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ, and this volume is entitled From the Last Supper Through the Resurrection: The Savior’s Final Hours. Again, very excited. This volume contains fourteen essays and is, rightfully so, the largest of the volumes. The essays discuss the historical setting of Christ’s prophecies and His life, then the story of the Last Supper, broken into the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with a separate essay regarding John’s testimony; Gethsemane; the arrest; the Jewish authorities; the Romans; the Crucifixion; the Burial; and the Resurrection, and more. On a side night, this volume has one of my favorite paintings of the Savior, composed wonderfully by the LDS painter Simon Dewey.

The third book is for the design geek in me. It’s Robert Bringhurst’s design “bible,” The Elements of Typographical Style. I’m hoping to gain a lot of understanding from this book, considered to be one of the best on the subject of typography. My design education opportunities in my neck of the woods are rather limited, with UAM offering rather basic art classes. So I’m undertaking a lot of the education myself through the web. In the end, I found books—those tangible, paper wonders—to be the best teacher, though the web is, of course, awesome in its own right.

Needless to say, I’ve got a lot of reading ahead of me, with these books and others I hope to read in the following weeks.

As a left-handed person in a right-handed world, I sometimes just adjust to certain things in life. When something needs to be cut, I hand the scissors to my wife or to whomever happens to be nearby. Scissors are a frustration I’ve come to deal with, but not everything made for right-handers has to be enforced upon those of us in our right mind. (Okay, I had to use that lame left-handed joke—I’m sorry.)

I recently decided to use my left hand as my mouse hand after years of giving in to using my right hand, and I can say that it feels much better to be able to do so. Here’s a few remarks I have about it and some things that have helped along the way.

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I use Google Reader for my RSS feeds. (Yes, I know Twitter killed RSS, and I’m just dragging its corpse around.) In fact, I love it. Between the web interface and Byline for iPhone, I still depend on gReader for a lot of my information consumption.

That aside, Google sucks at designing intelligent and accessible user interfaces. I ran into one such example of suckage tonight.

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