-{ redgeek.net }-

I know I’ve really been slacking with photos lately, but there are some new ones up at osbornphoto.com, with one new one per day for the next few days.

So, I’ve been playing around with Android on the G1 (and wrote my own app), and discovered there’s a fair number of quite useful, non-gimmicky apps I end up using with some regularity outside of the standard phone/sms/calendar type application. Posted below, in case you’re curious, but more specifically in case I end up having to re-download them for some reason and can’t remember the names:

Toggle Settings: quickly turn a variety of things on and off, like wifi. A must to save the battery.

EvenTrend: This is app I wrote, used for trending arbitrary data. Most importantly, I track my weight, body fat percentage, time between taking allergy medicine, and hours trained in various martial arts and exercises.

OI Countdown: Generic countdown timer application, but incredibly useful, for everything from exercise sets to cooking. Most importantly, the UI is slim and easy to use, and you can have an arbitrary number of named counters running concurrently. I most frequently find myself using timers for “pre-heat,” “meat,” “veggies,” “bread,” etcetera.

WeatherBug / The Weather Channel: Especially now that I’m taking sailing lessons, being able to check the weather quickly and easily is essential.

Google Finance: Watch my stocks. ‘Nuff said.

Hungry!: Quickest, easiest, most configurable shopping list dealy. Perhaps most useful, since I tend to buy the same items again and again, it keeps lists of the most frequently and recently purchased items.

Twidroid: I’m still torn on the whole Twitter thing – I like having the instant updates when important/interesting things happens (“party at my place tonight!”, “there was just an earthquake, I’m ok”, “Off hiking, out of touch for a few hours”, or various funny offhand comments that are worth sharing), but I find a lot of the other tweets rather … mundane. Regardless, I like this client.

ActionComplete: Great GTD (Getting Things Done) task/todo list with reminders.

The rest of these I don’t find myself using as frequently, but when I need them, they’re really useful.

handycalc: crazy uber-powerful calculator. I most frequently use the conversion tool, when I forget how many knots are in a mile or how many liters are in a gallon.

Movies: Lists local movies, with links to ratings and whatnot. I’ve used it a couple times when I missed the planned showtime and wanted to see what else was playing nearby.

NewsRob: Google Reader client. Only really used when I have some time to kill but not enough to do something else.

AK Notepad: Just jotting misc things down. Most of the time these things end up in ActionComplete, but sometimes not.

My Tracks: GPS tracking. I generally try to keep the GPS from being on continually, due to battery life concerns, but it’s pretty cool to be able to turn in on for a few seconds after taking a photo with my point-n-shoot and geotag the photo from the gps log.

Kanji Flash / FlashDroid: Practicing Japanese – doesn’t happen as much as I’d like, but it’s nice to have to kill a few minutes here and there.

Wow, no updates for quite a while … I guess ‘cause that’s because I’ve been out doing all that stuff I’ve been wanting to do. The plan manifest is, of course, a bit different than the projected one, but it’s not too far off. Not much rock climbing, but definitely martial arts training and teaching, prepping for the ASA 101 sailing certification (that probably sounds harder than it is), running with the dog, working on the notes, reading, coding. Speaking of which, if you have a G1 phone, check out my trending app: EvenTrend. Codesite here (warning, the code’s a bit ugly; it’s the first time I’ve coded java in 15+ years. Much less on a completely new embedded platform.)

Oh, and I’m headed out to Australia for 3w come Nov.

Cool.

Recently, I was feeling like I’d hit some sort of wall or plateau, where things just weren’t moving right. I’d felt dissociated from training, and my extra-curricular activities just were evolving. I didn’t have enough time to do what I wanted, and it seemed I was flailing trying to get things done, and as a result, I wasn’t accomplishing much of anything.

Being an engineer, I sat down, identified what I was spending my money on and where I was spending my time. Outcome: a new schedule and rough budget, where I train twice a day on MWF (morning and night), rock climb about twice a month on Thurs, take Kato to the dog park 2-3 times a week, and start reading up on sailing in anticipation of taking some sailing classes with the girl. I set aside hour blocks during the week to study languages, work on my notes, read, shoot photos, or run errands.

Net result: I’m feeling energized again, and after heading down to SD and seeing a bunch of the old martial arts buddies, I’m amped up to train hard, learn some new skills (rock climbing! sailing!) and generally just Get Shit Done.

Shit that I look forward to doing.

Ok, all better.

Venice Custom Bike Show