Operating System: Magic Cap 1.0, later 1.5.

Pros: ARDIS radio modem, sturdy clamshell design, two PC Card slots.

Cons: Price of ARDIS radio service, non-backlit screen, slow-mo user experience.

History

Motorola products from the 90's were built to last, and the Envoy was no exception. It was the StarTAC of Magic Cap devices—flip design and indestructible. The first thing you'd notice is the antenna, which is exactly what the marketing folks wanted. The engineers said they would have preferred to build the antenna into the display housing.

That antenna brought with it both good and bad. On the good, you could run data over the ARDIS network while on-the-go. You couldn't use it as a phone, however, as data was slow and VoIP didn't exist at the time anyway. On the bad side was paying for ARDIS. I was chatting with an Envoy early-adopter who used it for email for exactly one month. He loved it until got a $400-ish bill from ARDIS and that was that.

The Envoy had flash ROM so the Magic Cap 1.0 devices could be upgraded to 1.5. In addition to the upgrade program, Motorola released an Envoy 150 which shipped with 1.5 and also a novel screen coating. Motorola's "holographic screen," as we called it in-house, apparently reflected off-axis light back to the user's eyes, so when you held the device right, the screen looked noticeably brighter. The electronics underneath were the same.

There's a very minor bit of trivia around the Envoy and the Magic Cap user interface. While the user interface was very nearly identical to the other Magic Cap devices, there was a small signal strength indicator at the very top, in the name bar. The interface designers needed to account for this, so they added an option to the Magic Cap simulator: "Place Fried Egg in Name Bar." This would put a fried egg icon in the name bar, with the same location and size as the Envoy signal strength indicator.

This Envoy was kindly donated to the Magic Cap device gallery by Mike Shaw.

The Buddipole is an antenna system for ham radio that's ripe for experimentation. In the pictures it's usually a dipole, but in practice it's more like a lego antenna kit. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to make an antenna configuration that doesn't work than one that does, so people often turn to modeling software to do their initial experiments.

The Buddipole, however, is something of a challenge to model. Budd himself said to me: "EZNEC modeling for this antenna has proved to be a burden on many knowing folks. Don't spend a lot of time on it." Well, saying that to a programmer is equivalent to issuing a challenge.

Today I restored the site from backups and converted the old audio to MP3. Version 1.0 featured an interview with Scott Knaster of Macintosh fame. Version 2.0 featured an interview with Special Agent Von Holt of the US Secret Service. I recalled these being good, but on listening to them again for the first time in years, they're really damn good.

This image of the riverwalk in downtown San Antonio started life as a high-dynamic range (HDR) image created from five long exposure photos. I compressed the dynamic range with Photomatix Pro tone mapping, then converted to black and white using Alien Skin Exposure.

Okay, so I open the print queue and open the troubleshooter:

Wait a second, you're asking me what my problem is?

This is worse than useless. Windows has inverted the problem, making its problem into the user's problem. Notice the wording: "What problem are you having?" The workflow puts the user in an impossible conundrum:

1. Windows says there's some problem, but no details on what.

2. But never fear, the troubleshooter can help!

3. Troubleshooter asks the user what the problem is. Funny, that's exactly what the user was wondering, too.

This appears to replace the old way of doing things, where a program would display an error message specific to the problem encountered. But now, with some perverse intent of "helping" the user, we've got a generic error message -- "This document failed to print" -- combined with a troubleshooter that doesn't have the first clue about what the problem is.

What do you say to two guys in a public park with two huge antennas and an improvised hut in the middle?

"Are you trying to talk to the aliens?"

We got that one about three times. The most common inquiry was, "umm, I have to ask, what are you guys doing?" We got that one about twenty times.

Last weekend my pal Joel (W4LL) and me (N0JDC) operated a ham radio station for ARRL Field Day in a park near my house. Field Day is an event where amateur radio operators across North America simulate emergency conditions — improvised locations, no AC power, getting chewed on by mosquitos — and attempt to contact as many other stations as possible.

I was hoping for some 20m PSK31 DX yesterday evening but I only got some local QSOs on 14.070MHz before the band closed.

Another ham might respond:

Were you running barefoot or did you turn on your linear?

A non-ham, who's a pal and a good sport about ham stories, would respond:

Wow, cool. (nods head, empty stare)

The average non-ham, however, would respond:

Huh? Are you even speaking English?

Truth is, hams have their own made-up language, kind of like Esperanto but it sounds deceptively like English. But the layperson or ham-wannabe can learn to speak ham (or at least comprehend some of it) with a little help.

There's a price, however: the SCM keeps metadata on my machines, and this can add up. Plus there's the time needed to commit files. When it became clear I needed to switch away from Subversion because it doesn't cooperate with iWork files, I decided to look into alternatives.

Mercurial and Git appeared to be the best solutions, but there's quite the holy war going on between the two. Git's confusing, Mercurial is slow, etc.. I decided to run some of my own tests and let the data speak for itself.

Update 2008.04.25: Adding results for Bazaar.

You may have noticed that all URLs go to joshcarter.com now, and hopefully I've got redirects for all possible URLs — let me know if not. That's part of my longer-term plan for this site.

This is partly a how-to article, but mostly a collection of useful tips for Photoshop and Alien Skin Eye Candy filters. I'm using the Cowboy Denim theme I recently created for the T-Mobile Sidekick as an example. The WQVGA version pictured here is part of the final result.

Almost without trying, this theme became a cornucopia of Eye Candy effects. I use Eye Candy Impact on a regular basis in commercial work, but Sidekick themes are a good chance to pull out some of the crazier stuff. Go check 'em out at Alien Skin's web site.

You gotta give Apple credit, they know how to release products. Tonight they released Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) with great fanfare and no shortage of fans, either. I've seen impressive crowds at previous product releases and Apple Store openings. But what impresses me now is that, even though Apple has four stores in the Denver/Boulder area, and this is the sixth version of Mac OS X, they still drew hundreds of people to each store for the release.

I snapped these photos as the Flatirons Crossing store opened for Leopard. Once they packed the store and the line outside had cleared somewhat, mall security brought over the other line of people that couldn't fit in the first line. I went and got a bite to eat. Came back, store's still packed, line still outside. As I said, impressive.

UPDATE 2007.07.11: version 1.2 released.
UPDATE 2007.08.29: instructions for MT 4.0.
UPDATE 2008.05.01: instructions for MT 4.1.

Joel just clued me in on a new Captcha system called reCAPTCHA. What's different about reCAPTCHA is that they use the verification words to correct OCR mistakes in scanned books. In their words: "About 60 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day.... in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort?"

They provide PHP code and a WordPress plugin, but I'm using Movable Type here, so I wrote a Movable Type plugin to use this system. Details follow...

When it comes to photo editing, I'm a do-it-yourselfer. I like to set levels and color adjust by hand, tweaking until I get it just right. Many Photoshop filters I've tried leave me unimpressed -- they tend to clobber any subtlety in the image, screaming, "look at my dazzling filter effects!"

But Alien Skin's Exposure filter is... wow.

Exposure claims to bring "the look and feel of film to digital photography." I don't have any wistful longing for "the film look" but I was suitably impressed by their samples, so I downloaded the demo. It turns out Exposure isn't just about the film look — it's a superb tool for all kinds of photo correction tasks.

Just a quick tip for the caffeine fiends out there: my favorite morning drink these days is a combo of Yerba Maté (South American tea) and Horchata (milk with cinnamon). The best Maté I've found out there, by far, is Coco Maté made by Café Maté. You can buy it in bags or as loose tea. Then I get Rice Dream Horchata, heat it up in the microwave, and mix it 50/50 with the Maté. The combo is stellar: it's like the best parts of a latte, tea, and Turkish coffee all in one.

Also, if you're into loose teas, my favorite accessory is this French Press mug. I use it for both tea and Maté. It's more convenient than tea bags because once you're done steeping, just push the plunger down — you don't need to worry about finding a trash can for the tea bag. Plus you can mix teas if you like, e.g. I'll often mix a green tea with an herbal spice tea.