June 2007

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Apple iPhone Unboxing and First Impressions

6/30/2007 in Apple, Ideas, Music by Elliot Lee | 1 comment

Since Steve Jobs first announced it, I’ve been excited about the iPhone. My old Nokia is fine, but it scrolls my address book extremely slowly, the camera’s quality is very low at 640×480, and it has only 2 MB of memory. Compare that with the low-end iPhone: fast address book scrolling, high-quality camera at 2 megapixels, and 4 GB memory. I’ve read tons of reviews, watched lots of videos, read the tech specs and did some minimal research on what launch day would be like.

So come Friday, June 29, I decided that if I’d had a good day, I’d walk over to the Apple Store, Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, and pick up an iPhone. At 6 PM, I searched online to see what the release was like. I couldn’t find any reports on the Santa Monica Apple Store, so at 7 PM, I decided to go out and walk down to the store.

third-street-promenade.jpg
A look at Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica, on the day of the iPhone launch.
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Being Thankful

6/27/2007 in Goals by Elliot Lee | No comments

Here’s a wonderfully optimistic thought:

Greet the day. I love being able to get up, and greet a wonderful new day. I suggest creating a morning ritual that includes saying thanks for your blessings. I’m inspired by the Dalai Lama, who said, “Everyday, think as you wake up, ‘today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”

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Browser cache is confusing

6/23/2007 in Blogging, Questions, Technical by Elliot Lee | 2 comments

Yesterday, I was working on a website and had two versions of the same file. When I was ready to put the new version up for testing, I deleted the old one and put in the new one. I refreshed my browser window. No change! I pressed Ctrl+F5. I was still seeing the old version! I replaced the old file again, making sure to overwrite the old copy. I refreshed a few times and used Ctrl+F5 a few times to “force refresh.” No go. For about 5 minutes I was totally confounded. Why was the old version of my file still showing up, no matter how much I tried to refresh?! As a last resort, I went to Tools -> Clear Private Data in Firefox, and cleared my cache. One last refresh, and– BAM! The beautiful new version finally appeared. Another example from today after the fold…

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iPhone with YouTube will be successful

6/22/2007 in Apple, Stuff 2 Buy by Elliot Lee | 1 comment

Mark my words. Now that it’s been confirmed that YouTube will be on the iPhone, I’m certain of it. And the video quality looks even better than it does on the web! The iPhone is certainly the only phone I want. I can’t imagine wanting any other.

youtube-on-iphone.PNG

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BSoD during Albatross18

6/17/2007 in Entertainment, Family by Elliot Lee | No comments

I was on the third hole of Albatross18’s White Wiz course. Albatross18, for those unfamiliar, is an online multiplayer golf game. It’s a fun game to play with my sisters. I pressed the spacebar to begin my shot. Suddenly, I got the much-dreaded blue screen of death. This is not a common occurence. I use a Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows XP, and I often run it for days at a time without problems. Not so this time. And it was a double pang weekend, too! Oh well. See Microsoft’s explanation after the break.

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Web Clips Aren’t New

6/12/2007 in Sidenotes by Elliot Lee | 1 comment

Steve Jobs announced a web clips widget at Apple WWDC 2007. I feel like I’ve seen it, or something exactly like it, before. It’s not new, is it? What am I thinking of?

Cameras with face detection

6/9/2007 in Geek Stuff, Ideas, Neat Stuff, Social Networking by Elliot Lee | No comments

Today I read three interesting articles in Popular Science. The first is about new cameras with face detection. The second, setting up your own cell phone tower for your home. And finally, making predictions profitable is the most accurate way to forecast the future. These are all interesting topics to me because they’re ideas I’ve had or seen before, but I didn’t know things have come so far.


Camera with face detection.


Cell phone tower for your own home.


Predicting the future by making it profitable.
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Hawaii Grows Coffee

6/6/2007 in Sidenotes by Elliot Lee | 2 comments

According to the cap of the Snapple iced tea I’m drinking now, “Hawaii is the only U.S. state that grows coffee.” It’s “Real Fact” #138, Snapple says, and you can get all of these facts at their website. I like coffee; don’t you? Where does most of our coffee come from, anyway?

Tiananmen Square Massacre

6/4/2007 in Sidenotes by Elliot Lee | 1 comment

Today, June 4, is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. This is an event I think we should never forget. Although I was only one year old when it happened, it’s striking to me to read about it. In the news you’ll find various articles about its effects on today, but what I wonder most is what those hundreds (or thousands) of victims would be doing today, had they lived.

Being John Malkovich

6/1/2007 in Sidenotes by Elliot Lee | 1 comment

“…the Y combinator in  functional programming” sounds like an interesting thing, even though I don’t know what it is. Thus, when I have time, I want to see the movie Being John Malkovich (1999).