Another year!

Posted by bookermorgan on

So I just renewed my domain and mapping for this site! YAY! So lets jot some notes of what the heck I have been doing!

My last post was in July and since then there have been a couple key events.

A few of our friends got married in July, and were were happy to be part of and be invited to the two weddings in July.

Tricia and I did a trip to Ontario in the beginning of August. We were able to visit my family and see where I grew up (for a few years), as well as some touristy things. Our trip took us to London, Collingwood, Barrie, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and back to London. It was and extremely busy two weeks. I have posted photos on my Flickr.

On the tech end of things, I purchased a Galaxy S3, and ended up rooting it and installing CM10. Its running great, and I am now looking at installing CM10 on my touchpad, as I have found CM9 to be terrible.

My MacBook Pro is still running great, even at gaming. Selling my HP Notebook on Kijiji has been a chore though. Its amazing how hard it is to sell anything online…

 

It’s been a while…

Posted by bookermorgan on

Haven’t written in a very long time… so here is a quick update!

The TouchPad is still running CyanogenMod 9. I am now using a ROM manager called goo.im to get updates. I am also running CM9 on my Samsung Captivate. Yes Galaxy S I. I use goo.im on there too for updates, but find that it wont work with my ClockworkMod to automatically install. Not a big deal! Hopefully I will be looking into the Galaxy III in the fall after travelling kills my savings.

Another savings killer…bought a Macbook Pro 15″ a few weeks ago. I bought it from the Offical Apple refurbished store. So saved a bit of coin going that route. Probably would have saved more if I had waited until about a month after the new releases, but apparently I “had” to have it.

Moving from Windows 7 to OSX isnt too tough, but there are many things I still havent figured out how to do in OSX. But the screen and stability is why I bought it, and its great. I will now be doing all of my photo edits on the Macbook. And hopefully I will be learning more of Creative Suite in the next year, so I can make videos, and other digital media.

anyway… will write again, once I get some topic ideas!

Touchpad Update

Posted by bookermorgan on

CyanogenMod 9 has been released for the Touchpad. This is awesome because it is a Ice Cream Sandwich build, which is much better than gingerbread on a tablet. Obviously Honeycomb was designed for tablets, but apparently Google never released it for developers.

I am going to put CM9 on my TouchPad, but figured that I may as well update the WebOS to 3.0.5 too. Of course, updating WebOS breaks the ClockworkMod dual boot. At this point I decide that I should erase the TouchPad. I think that this will allow CM9 to work best if there are no lingering pieces of CM7 floating around. After erasing, I log back into my WebOS account. I have to comment WebOS at this point for pulling all my apps and settings back onto the Pad. Now I do the set up using this guide New Touchpad? (WebOS Nation Forum). This will allow my WebOS to run optimally, which I may need due to the CM9 build not working exactly perfectly.

An now…CM9… Here is the link to the release.
Previous Instructions:

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Boot your TouchPad into WebOS.
2. Connect your TouchPad to your computer with a USB cable. (Mac, Windows, or Linux work fine.)
3. On WebOS, you should be notified that you are “Connected” via USB. Select “USB Drive” and then, if asked, select “OK” to confirm.
4. A USB icon should appear on your screen, and the TouchPad WebOS volume should now be accessible on your computer.
Depending on your OS, an icon for the HP WebOS volume may appear on your desktop.
5. Using your computer, create a folder/directory on the HP WebOS device called “cminstall” in the first folder.
Inside this folder, copy the “update…zip” files you wish to install. Minimally, you should include the update-moboot and update-cm files described above.
Optionally you may add the update-ClockworkMod and any other update…zip files you wish to have installed.
6. Unmount/Eject the TouchPad volume from your computer.
7. Reboot the TouchPad. As it is booting, hold the volume-up key until a large white USB symbol appears.
8. From the Terminal, or the Command prompt if you are on Windows, navigate to the directory with the ACME Installer binary,
cd C:\Program Files\Palm, Inc\(This is what I used on my 64bit win7 Comp)
and type the following command:
$ novacom boot mem:// < ACMEInstaller
In the above example, $ represents the prompt.
boot mem:// < ACMEInstaller2 (This is what I used on my 64bit win7 Comp) On Macintosh, the Terminal is accessible from Applications->Utilities->Terminal. Ubuntu and other Linux users may use the Terminal application.
In future revisions of ACME installer, it may not be necessary to use the Terminal at all.
9. Cross your fingers.
10. If all works well, the “update…zip” file will automatically be installed and your TouchPad should boot into Cyanogenmod.

My Touchpad installed and booted to android correclty, then “optimized apps.”  This means…apparently the WebOS Erase function did not actually erase the CM7 info.

CM9 looks excellent on the TouchPad, and seems to be very snappy. I am looking forward to updates that will allow the device to run at its full potential.

Cranberry Eggnog Braids

Posted by bookermorgan on

Cranberry Eggnog Braids 

From  A Brunch Dream and Cranberry Eggnog Braids
Inspired by Taste of Home’s Cranberry Eggnog Braid 

Makes 2

Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 ¼ cups eggnog
¼ cup butter
½ cup halved fresh cranberries

Glaze:
1 tablespoons eggnog
1 tablespoon icing sugar
1/8 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of nutmeg

Instructions:

1. In a large bowl, whisk whole-wheat flour, sugar, salt, yeast, and nutmeg; set aside.

In a small saucepan, heat eggnog and butter over low-medium heat just until warm.

Add to the flour mixture, stir until combined, and then beat at medium speed for about three minutes, or until mixture is smooth.


2. Stir in 1 cup of the all-purpose flour, and when combined, add the cranberries and remaining flour. Stir until most of the flour is incorporated, and then turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Alternately, use a dough hook attachment at low speed for 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, toss to coat, and cover with plastic wrap; let rise in a warm, draft free spot until doubled in size, 1 to 1 ½ hours.




3. Punch down dough and divide in two. Divide each half into three, and then roll each piece into a 16 inch (40 centimetre) rope. Braid the ropes together, making two braided loaves, and tuck the ends under. Place the loaves on a large baking sheet, cover with a tea towel, and let rise in a warm, draft free spot until doubled in size, 30 to 45 minutes.


4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake loaves for 25 minutes (place a piece of aluminum foil loosely on top if they brown too quickly); remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

5. Once the bread reaches room temperature, whisk the glaze ingredients together and then brush over the top of each loaf. Serve immediately.

Contour Roam

Posted by bookermorgan on

I decided that this year I am going to be a crazy skier. Well not really, but I figured it could be neat to get a POV camera to have while skiing. There is that one big name in POV cameras, GoPro. I really don’t like the look of those cameras myself, sitting on top of the helmet. I remembered watching a Driving Television episode where they had shown off some of the small cameras they use. Contour made one of those cameras. I headed to the Contour site to see what they offered, and at what price point.

They currently have three models: ContourROAM, ContouGPS, and Coutour+. The prices are $199.99, $299.99, and $499.99.

I chose the ROAM, not only because the price is the lowest, but also the lens has the same 170 degree field of view that the + has. The GPS model has a 135 degree field of view. This base model ROAM also is waterproof to 1m for 10 mins. It will shoot 720p, 960p and 1080p at 30 frames per sec. There is no onboard storage, but I was able to pick up a microSD card from MemoryExpress for $55. The ROAM has a internal battery that charges through a mini USB. In the box, they included a rotating flat surface mount, a Profile mount, a leash, and some stickers and the manuals. I placed the profile mount on the right side of my helmet, and the rotating mount on the underside of my rearview mirror in my car.

So far I find this camera to be perfect for my needs. Which is a very easy sell! I have shot three driving videos and a day of skiing at Lake Louise. I have only just started to learn the video editing. The camera will cut your longer video into separate videos. My drive to Red Deer was an hour and a half, I ended up with two videos. The transfer speed from camera to computer through the Contour software is very slow. I haven’t tried doing the transfer through plain old Windows Explorer. There have been complaints about the audio with this camera. I’m not too sure, as I removed the audio in both my driving videos below.

You can probably tell I need to work on my video editing, and ensuring I have all the settings set correctly before rendering and uploading :)