Updates from briansawyer RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Brian Sawyer 10:47 am on August 30, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Whale Watching 

    I took my family whale watching yesterday. The experience exceeded my expectations by orders of magnitude and was a thrill for the budding marine biologist who inspired the trip.

    Whale Tail

    More pictures and video after the jump.

    (More …)

     
  • Brian Sawyer 1:24 pm on August 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Step Right Up 

     
  • Brian Sawyer 10:45 am on August 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    How I Tethered My iPad to My Android Phone 

    I just rooted my G1, installed Froyo, tethered my iPad, and posted a how-to for O’Reilly Answers. Enjoy.

    This Changes Everything

     
  • Brian Sawyer 2:07 pm on May 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    The Ragnar Relay Show 

    This weekend, I’ll be part of a Ragnar Relay team, running from New Haven to Boston (with a generous margin of error for location on either end). I know I’ll be missed while I’m away and that everyone will be very jealous of my running a total of 20 miles across three legs within 24 hours (or so) without sleeping, bathing, or leaving a van of five similarly sleep-deprived and sweaty teammates to do anything but run. To ease the envy of those who won’t be participating, I want to capture and broadcast this experience as well as I can for anyone who won’t be able to make it, and I’ve decided to do so in real time. You’re welcome in advance.

    For tools, I’ll be using only my Android phone and free apps that are readily available in the Android Market (all of which are also covered in my forthcoming book).

    (More …)

     
    • Andre Parker 11:39 am on May 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      This is cool!

  • Brian Sawyer 2:00 pm on May 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Ringtone 

    Thank you, Donny.

     
  • Brian Sawyer 11:41 am on May 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    New Look, New Functionality 

    With this new design, now I can update directly from this page, without going to my WordPress dashboard, which makes it quick and easy to post, even from my iPad.

     
  • Brian Sawyer 11:11 am on May 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    In yet another attempt to revive activity on this long-neglected blog, I’ve transformed it into a kind of blog/microblog hybrid (more thoughtful and permanent than Twitter, but with a less intimidating threshold for posting content than a big-boy blog). Let’s see how this goes …

     
  • Brian Sawyer 1:25 pm on April 13, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    David Foster Wallace on the iPad? 

    I’m thinking of the potential for one of my favorite books as an app, when it’s available for the iPad* (and when I actually own an iPad UPDATE 4/15: I got an iPad yesterday). I’d expect the capabilities of the device to enhance the already amazing experience I already had with the printed book, minus the few drawbacks of the medium in which I consumed it.

    When I read Infinite Jest, the 1,100-page book required two bookmarks to read: one for the body text and one for the 100+ pages of end notes, which actually advanced the plot and were not considered supplemental to the text. I would have loved to have a more convenient way to access these endnotes where they occurred in the main narrative, popping them open to read them and collapsing back to the main text when finished. And the end notes were in a tiny font, which I would have loved to increase to read more easily. And the book weighed more than an iPad, so reduced weight would also be a feature, not to mention an easier form factor (have you ever tried to hold open a 1,100-page book for reading over an extended period of time)?

    With regard to the endnotes, I could see many different ways of handling the content in ways much in the spirit of DFW’s intent. Here’s one approach that The Atlantic took for an online version “Host,” a print story by DFW that included heavy footnotes (linked as pop-ups on the page).

    (More …)

     
  • Brian Sawyer 5:43 pm on March 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Google Navigation: Free Garmin Replacement 

    Best Android Apps Book

    Note: I’ve coauthored a book on Best Android Apps. I’m running this post simultaneously on my support blog for the book and at O’Reilly’s Answers site.

    Last night, I needed my Garmin to get somewhere important, but when I reached for it in the glove box, I remembered I’d loaned it out to the other car in our family and hadn’t gotten it back yet. What to do?

    No Garmin in the glove box, but I did have my G1 on me, and the directions on Google Maps had saved me on numerous occasions, so I fired it up and plugged in my destination:

    Google Navigation

    That Navigate option was new to me. I’d remembered hearing about Google Navigation coming to phones running versions of Android below 2.0 (my G1 is running Android 1.6, but note that Navigation is still not available for my Motorola Cliq, which is still back on Android 1.5), but I hadn’t had the chance to look into it yet. So, here was my chance. I pressed Navigate …

    (More …)

     
  • Brian Sawyer 2:53 pm on October 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

    Google Logo as Bar Code 

    Google’s logo is a bar code today (to celebrate the invention of the bar code). I scanned it with my Android phone to see what it meant:

    Google as Bar Code

     
c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
esc
cancel