Over the last year I’ve been wanting to learn how to ride a motorcycle. I didn’t plan on getting one due to safety and being nervous about my potential lack of ability on a bike. However, we got done with the course, passed our tests, and have licenses now! We also both have helmets and riding gloves so now were just considering getting a bike.

At first i decided to not spend much and get something I could sell in a year. I started looking around town and found a cheap buell blast. Since Buell has abandoned that bike and is distancing it from their company I decided against it. I then found a used kawasaki ninja 500r at another nearby dealership. Upon riding that I thought about possibly stopping this pursuit to ride a bike. I did not feel safe on it. It reminded me of a hot rod. with just a little throttle it jolted forward with a ton of power. No smooth transition. Upon later inspection I also saw some hints that it was dropped. Yesterday my dad and I went to Sindt’s motors in Dubuque (my hometown) and checked out their triumphs. Triumphs are great looking bikes in my opinion. The urban sport models are gorgeous and are like the porsche of the motorcycle world and the cruisers have a classic look and great feel to them. After taking a look at some of them the dealer let us take 3 of the bikes for a spin. We drove a Thruxton, Bonneville, and Street Triple. In my opinion I found them desirable in the following order: Street Triple, Bonneville, Thruxton. My dad and I both favored the ST3 or S3 as the Street Triple is referred to. As beginner riders we found we could both easily handle the power of the bike and found the handling very desirable. The Bonneville had a bigger engine and of course had that classic look. If I were older this might be my preference, but Im young and want a hot bike. So now that I’ve driven one I want to go for quality now. When it comes to bikes the number one concern for me is safety. I want a bike, they’re so much fun, however I want to feel safe knowing I have a great bike under me that I can control. Speaking of safety we also just picked up some helmets. I got the rubatone Icon Alliance full helmet and my dad grabbed a glossy black HJC modular helmet. Anyways I’m being told to look up the population of Gambia for my sister. People of the internet, let me know if you find a good deal on a street triple!

Just got a difficult chunk of HTML working properly on a website. iWeb actually was a key part of getting it working.

Hey just wanted you all to know that the new site is coming along nicely over at drewbaumann.com ! Im just adding little enhancements here and there now and thinking of ways to grow it out! Take a look and leave me feedback in the comments!

Bantha – Fictional creatures in the Star Wars universe. They are large elephant-sized mounts, with long furry tails, that are native to the planet of Tatooine.

Contributed by Travis Huinker

Automagically – Something that happens automatically, but that also has some mysterious, “magical” element to it. “Smart” appliances, features, etc. that do intelligent things with less help than you might expect.

Contributed by Lynette Perry

White Trash – Slang term for white people that usually live in a trailer park. With low incomes that spend their tax returns on things like big screen TV’s instead of clothes for their kids. These people tend to be mouthy and fight frequently. Generally these people are uneducated and have little concern for personal hygiene. To see these people at their best watch Jerry Springer.

Contributed by Brack Smolarich

This past week, after waiting years, I was graced with a Google Voice invite. I immediately set it up to use my new number as a forward to my iPhone. Things were looking good and I was adjusting the settings within GV so I could avoid little annoyances such as SMS messages being forwarded etc, when I started to wonder what developers had already done with the technology (after all it had been in existence awhile as GrandCentral). So I found two apps on the iPhone App Store that would dial out, playback voicemails, send and view SMS messages, and a few more common things. One of the big features I found missing was the ability to receive calls through the apps. One may think this is no big deal, but considering that I live on a campus without a strong GSM cellular signal I need all the help I can get! Fortunately I found a solution…

While exploring an App idea of mine I stumbled upon a website/service I had signed up for years ago called Gizmo5. Gizmo is a SIP service. Without getting technical this is pretty much like any VOIP where a

user can make calls to other VOIP users or to outside lines for a small price. However I found out that Google Voice will allow you to forward to your Gizmo line. After a little searching I found a few apps for the iPhone that

would let me make and receive calls with my Gizmo account. To cut things short I found that TruPhone was the best

option out of fring and NimBuzz due to its ability to use the numeric pad. However to use

TruPhone you have to forward once more. So sign up for TruPhone and then go into the settings of Gizmo and put forwarding to “Forwarding all calls” and set it to go to yourAccountName@truphone.com (put your account name in where it says “yourAccountName”). This way you’ll be able to receive calls within the TruPhone app when using Wifi.

Now you will want to go into your GV settings and verify that Gizmo number while you have TruPhone open. hopefully the phone will start buzzing and you can enter in your verification code.

After that you are set to receive GV calls on Wifi!

…However I wanted to go a little farther. If you are like me I’m pretty sure you won’t want to leave your phone on one application most of the time anticipating a call. That is why I wanted to take advantage of push notification. Now unfortunately the most obvious solution is not there… TruPhone does not send notifications for calls coming in.

What I decided to do was start up a second Gizmo account and forwarded that to one of my gmail accounts (after going through the verification like with the first account). What this will do for me is send me a message in Google Talk (or chat in gmail) requesting I answer the call within the app. However for what I am doing I just want that message sent as soon as a calls coming in. So with your favorite push chat app (Beejive for me!) for iPhone setup you GTalk or gmail account and make a test call with the app open. You will have to verify the senders before you can exit the app and wait for pushes. Once you are ready to go close the app and have a friend give you a call.

As soon as you see that notification press “close” and open up TruPhone. Wait a second for the app to open and then it will start ringing. Pick up the phone and you are in business!

If you would like to place a call when outside of your cellular network but in a Wifi area use GV Mobile or the lite version to dial out and then immediately open TruPhone.

One of the best things about this method is that when on a college campus that is blanketed in Wifi (like I will be my senior year) it is not even necessary to use an iPhone. If I had an iPod touch and a headset I would be set!

Ideally I would like to see TruPhone add Push notification for incoming calls or Beejive to include SIP services so I can run Gizmo within that. For now this will do and I’ll be saving money on calls!

Feel free to leave comments if you found this useful or have found a better way of achieving the same results!

Special Word of the Day:

Birthday - The day of a person’s birth.

Contributed by Drew Baumann (for my best friend Mack celebrating his 22nd birthday today.)

Snozberries - In Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willie Wonka mentions licking snozberries. What most people don’t know is that in one of Dahl’s adult books, snozberry is a euphamism for penis. He was slipping dirty humor into a kid’s book for his private amusement.

Contributed by Travis Huinker

Speed - rapidity in moving, going, traveling, proceeding, or performing; swiftness; celerity: the speed of light; the speed of sound.

Contributed by Andrew Woodard

Hyperspace - A fictional space in which laws of physics may be circumvented allowing faster-than-light travel or time travel.

Contributed by Aaron Harpole

Thumbtickler - Like a french tickler except you put this on one’s thumb.

Contributed by Brack Smolarich

Antidisestablishmentarianism – A political position that originated in nineteenth-century Britain, in opposition to proposals to remove the Church of England’s status as the state church of Ireland and Wales.

Contributed by Eric Smith (long word winner of today)

nostalgic – Eric Smith
funtime – Travis Huinker
jocular – Brack Smolarich
intelligent – Nick Mozena
malapropism – Lauren Baumann

I wrote this play for my ten minute plays course.

It has some profanity and adult themes so if you want to read this send me an email and I will send you the pdf. DrewBaumann@Me.com

So as you may know I am one of those guys whose pretty fluent with the technology.

I was looking around the web yesterday and found out people are cracking iPhone/iPod Touch apps. One of the key communities I found for the “cracking” scene is a forum at haklabs.com. Basically there are two current methods of cracking and installing. One method involves modifying a file on the iPhone so you can install via iTunes and the other is through SSH. One is packed as a .ipa file and the other a .app directory. Both methods require a jailbreaked 2.0 device. I’m not going to go into how to crack or install the apps, but right now it’s not real user friendly on either end. To crack the apps it is necessary to own the file and have your iPhone/touch jailbreaked. You’ll also have to use terminal and SSH.

I spoke to one of the crackers and he let me know that while its difficult at the moment, a GUI version will hopefully be out soon.

Right now I am waiting in line again! Im grabbing a white iPhone in place of my current black one. 3 people were ahead of me… pretty crazy. I’ll take a pic or something later.

[UPDATE]

So I went into the store and the mac specialist had no idea what to do so she grabbed the manager. I got the lamest manager possible. He was authoritative, but had no idea what he was talking about. Very bad combo (look at a certain someone in the white house). Unfortunately I couldn’t explain official policy to a manager for obvious reasons. I’m currently on the phone with AT&T and they let me know the policy and didn’t see this as a problem. So they’re working through this and hopefully I’ll end up with that white model.

[UPDATE TO THE UPDATE]

So I called AT&T and got a really nice guy on the phone who listened to me and agreed that the Apple Store Manager was giving false information (only the primary account holder can buy the phone… bullshit!). After awhile of talking about how we could get my situation worked out the customer service rep. said that I’d have to do a return through a retail AT&T and that if they had them in stock itd be a swap plus restocking fee (but he’d wave it cause he was awesome) but if not I could wait it out or order one via direct fulfillment. He said the system read a week to get the 3G, but when I called the store they said DF orders would take 10 – 21 days. Since I’m leaving fairly soon I’ll just call AT&T to see if they’ve gotten any in. Once they get them in, and I have one, I’ll let you seven or so viewers know. 

As a side note I’m starting to worry the Apple backlash will begin soon. With the flood of new iPhone adopters, I have to worry about how the unstable 2.0 operating system and mobileme issues will effect consumers’ views on the company. By all means I love Apple and its products, but over the summer dealing with the management in the retail stores and seeing buggy software, I’m feeling a little let down. Be cool again? Just promise not to get all Radio Shack on me.