I think there is a slight difference in the way someone treats someone with and without a beard.  I could be imagining things, but I feel more confident.  People respond with more respect or something.  I can’t put my finger on it exactly.

I haven’t used a hair brush in a long time.  But I have found that a boar hair brush works wonders for a beard.  The hairs line up, and everything seems in place after I brush my beard.  Plus it feels great!  So stimulating.

A neckline is a difficult, and on-going chore.  The beginning was the hardest part.  Trying to  a carve a neckline that is symmetrical and the proper shape was not easy for a beginner.  And as the beard grows, the edges become rough, I have to trim it again and again.  I didn’t expect that bit to be so much, maintenance wise.  I assumed all I had to do was shave my neck.

I’ll post pictures soon.  For now I believe my Google+ profile has a public picture.

Openness

The only push for openness Apple has been a part of is with products they give away, like Safari.  Everything Apple sells uses proprietary standards.

Full web

Arguing that you’re popular enough to have a dozen websites create special versions of their website for the open standard you support doesn’t justify ignoring all the websites that use flash exclusively.   Yes, vimeo and youtube have the resources to keep two versions of the video on their site, one for computers, another for mobile devices, but a lot of good content providers do not.  And even when sites implement dual-website approach, it is a partial conversion.  The mobile-optimized video is a subset of the video available to computers.  Apple, why are you forcing companies to do more work?

Reliability

Nobody expects flash to be perfect.  A cross-platform solution is always a little buggy.  What about all the unstable apps you approve?  If Apple is going to argue with this against Flash, they should apply it consistently to other third party software that runs on your platform.

Battery Life

Laughable.  Everyone knows video sucks battery life.  What if I’m ok with that?  It’s the end of the night, and I want to watch some online video as I’m falling asleep… what’s the problem, Apple?  Why is my battery so important to you?

Touch

This is really the only compelling reason, in my eyes, against flash on the iphone.  But honestly, can’t they just use long touch or something to simulate mouse-over events?  Isn’t this simply saying “we don’t know how to simulate mouse-over events with a touch screen in an intuitive way,” and acknowledging their platform’s weakness?  Flash isn’t the only thing that uses mouse-over.  It’s all over the web.

Control

App developers want to be able to develop flash applications that they can sell as iphone apps.  Users want to be able to browse flash websites on their iphones.  Adobe wants to sell more licenses for their Flash development software.  But Apple wants control.  So they’re screwing everyone over, including themselves.

Honestly, I actually hope html 5 wins over Flash in this battle, but Apple is being a little too heavy-handed with its approach in supporting html 5.  Apple should develop its website with the html 5 <video> tag and forget about their quicktime plugin, and develop websites that challenge the interactivity of flash.  They should not use their popular development platform to bully Adobe around in an anti-competitive manner.

When the iPad allows flash support, I’ll consider getting one.  Until then, thanks, but no thanks.  I would rather watch this on a real web browser than surf with one of those things.

I found out about this band when two different friends of mine recommended the band Hot Chip to me.  I looked up their stuff on iTunes, and previewed most of their tracks.  None of it really grabbed me.  I was on one of their albums, and noticed the “Listeners Also Bought” section and noticed a single by CSS.  Intrigued, I discovered a pretty cool band.  So while I wasn’t all that impressed by Hot Chip, I found CSS irresistible.  I browsed their albums, and finally decided on the International version of Cansei de Ser Sexy, which is what CSS stands for.

Cansei de Ser Sexy is Portugese for “tired of being sexy,” which was another appeal.  The band named themselves after an alleged quote from Beyonce, who said she was tired of having to be sexy all the time.  I never considered myself sexy.  But I am familiar with the concept of living up to an expectation, and the same expectation, over and over again.  I had fleeting, very minor, fame as a jazz pianist in a single city. When people recognized me, at first it was flattering, and I loved every minute of it.  But, it grew to be a burden.  I wondered how I was perceived by people who didn’t know me.  I wonder what they expected of me, if anything.  The people that did know me expected me to always be ready to play something for them.

I’m sitting here laughing at myself, because of course this problem is very low on the list of problems I have had in my life, and yet I’m writing about it.  I’m not even sure I could call it a problem.  But this band and this album took me back to those days.

I’ll have fun rocking to this album and all its 80s-era synthesized pop.

Balance: $16.08

Days Remaining: 11

I like this style of tower defense type game.  While the multiple-queue style (as opposed to the free open area where enemies can end up walking at any angle) is somewhat simplified, it does have some interesting strategical differences to the open version.  Towers placed in different queues have no effect on enemies on all the others.

Something else I liked was the theme.  Zombies are always fun.  And carnivorous plants rock.  The animations, sounds, and music add a lot to the enjoyability.

This was an easy decision, prompted by the recommendation of a friend.  I will enjoy wasting time playing this app, when I get some spare moments.

Balance: $26.07

Days Remaining: 12

The quality was not that great, which was expected.  Apple didn’t build video recording capability into this phone for a reason.  The video size was 200×160 by default, which is the low quality option.  The frame rate was low, but the frames themselves were fairly good.  I imagined the video being much worse than it ended up being.   When I switched to the high quality mode, the frame rate didn’t seem to drop all that much, but the resolution became 400×320.  The aspect ratio, on both low quality and high quality, 5:4, is unusual for video, but I suppose it could be cropped.   I wish I could choose between 4:3 and 16:9, which is more standard for video.

Some of the sharing features were pretty cool.  Upload directly to many websites, email, save to picture library.  One option I really loved is the ability to share over the network.  I was able to download the video I recorded over WiFi much faster than if I had emailed the video to myself.  This would allow me to copy the file to my Mac, edit it, and upload to youtube very easily, without all the fuss of syncing my iPhone with my Mac or emailing the video file to myself and downloading from there.

The effects button looks like an eject button, which I thought was weird.  I’m not all that interested in the effects, because iMovie or Final Cut will allow me to do that faster after I’ve copied the video over to my computer.

For $0.99, I believe this app will be one of the best values of all the apps I have bought in this mission.  I will be using this quite a lot, I’m sure.

Balance: $29.24

Days Remaining: 13

Looks like I’m going to need to spend more money more quickly, if I’m to meet my deadline.

So I bought a more expensive, more full featured app, from the same website: Geocaching, for $9.99.  This was much more interesting.  It had an interactive map, and location-aware directions to the nearest geocache, in real time.  My second trip didn’t prove to be successful, but it was still fun.  I think part of my problem was that I went after dark.  I’ll keep trying, probably only during the day.

Balance: $30.29

Days Remaining: 15

The use I saw for this was to quickly log in with my phone to decide whether to log in using the real desktop client.  If certain contacts of mine are online, I’m more likely to spend some more time there.  This way I don’t get sucked in as often.  Hopefully it works that way.  Maybe I’ll just get sucked in further.

This type of mixing real life with second life could be dangerous.  I wonder how long this app will stay installed on my phone.

Balance: $42.10

Days Remaining: 21

When I realized that I was stuck in finding things I wanted to buy, I decided to just go to the iTunes store to find an impulse buy.  The genius recommendation section had this album as its first choice.  As soon as I previewed it, I was amazed at the level of playing by this mature group.  Chick Corea will always be one of my favorites.  Listening to this album is a joy, in so many ways.

I’m very impressed by Genius’s ability to create good playlists and its suggestions on the store.  Well done, Apple.

Balance: $45.10

Days Remaining: 24