Robotic Tom

I pulled up to my local Bank of America location, last night, to use the ATM. Parking lot is empty and it is dark. Being the semi-street wise person I am, I like to take note of my surroundings whenever I’m in a poorly lit place and about to take out money. Imagine my surprise when I round the corner and come eye to eye with a life size cut out of a person in the lobby of the bank. Except it took a second for me to realize it was a cardboard cutout and not a person. Scared the hell out of me.

Perhaps this isn’t the smartest piece of marketing material to put in a bank lobby:

The New York Jets have aquired Brett Favre. This is so unreal. I have always been a huge fan of Chad Pennington and was very excited about Kellen Clemens, but to have a hall of fame quarterback on the team is an opportunity every fan has to be excited about. Really have to get out to Hofstra, to the Jets training camp, to see this team up close.

Favre jerseys are already on sale at the Jets online store, but the server seems to be overloaded and crashed. I’ll pick one up soon!

Just got the new wordpress app for the iPod. Very excited to play with it. This is the app I have been most looking forward to.

So far, this has a nice, clean interface and is easy to use. Writing on the iPod or iPhone may be a pain, but this will be great for mobile blogging.

Nice work, wordpress!

Office Morning, originally uploaded by tom sullivan.

I love the early mornings in the office. The sun reflects off the buildings across the street and the light starts to pour through these huge windows at the front of our office.

After the day of delays, I was finally able to download the 2.0 firmware for my iPod touch last night. One thing I noticed, today, is that the passcode lock on my iPod was reset. I’d like to remind everyone that this is a very important feature and everyone should take this opportunity to ensure their iPhones and iPods are set up with a passcode.

The passcode lock feature is simple - it’s been on cell phones and mobile devices for years. Before the device can be accessed, a four digit code must be typed in. With mobile devices getting smaller and holding more personal information, this feature is more important. I don’t see enough people using it.

On the iPod and iPhone, the passcode lock feature is found under Settings -> General. There is a Passcode Lock area which allows you to set the four digit passcode and the timing associated with it. You can set how long the auto-lock feature will take to activiate (mine will auto-lock after five minutes of inactivity) and set a time for how long you can access the iPhone/iPod, after the auto-lock, without a passcode (I also have this set to five minutes so that I can change tracks quickly).

A few months ago, I freaked out after I thought that I had left my iPod and cell phone at a Friday’s I ate at. Several hours after I got home, I couldn’t find either device. I called the restaurant and they couldn’t find the iPod. It was a terifying ordeal - to think that someone could have picked up my iPod and now had access to my e-mails, web history, calendar entries and an addresbook full of many high profile business contacts my co-workers cell phone numbers’. In a blur, I changed all of the passwords for e-mail accounts, Twitter, and even my online banking(I had a shortcut for my online banking on my home screen - I know the password wasn’t saved, but I changed it just in case).

It was entirely more information about me that I wanted a person to have access to.

The loss of the iPod wouldn’t have been an issue if I had my passcode set - No one would be able to easily access the information on the iPod. Just a few days before this incident, I had removed the passcode lock because it was a pain in the ass to change tracks while I was out on a bike ride (this was prior to me figuring out the auto-lock timing, above). I sacrificed security for a momentary inconvenience and now I was paying for it.

Of course, I am a huge idiot and fund the iPod and cell phone, misplaced, the next day. They weren’t lost - I’m just a moron. In this case, I was lucky enough to get a second chance and make sure that this doesn’t happen again. Next time, the passcode lock will be set and, while I will face a financial loss, at least my information is safe.

Mobile devices are continuing to shrink but hold even more personal information. Whether it be an iPhone, iPod, Blackberry, cell phone, or whatever - make sure your data is safe on your easily misplaced mobile device. With millions of iPhones and iPod Touches getting the new firmware, and millions more iPhone 3Gs being sold, use this as an opportunity to make sure your passcode lock is set and your data is secure.

Jon set up the camera and made a cool time lapse video of one of our foosball matches this week. I lost.

Hexday is a website where you pick a color each day. That’s all. You pick a color and the next day you pick a new color and so on. It is part social experiment, part fun toy, and a part of my daily morning routine now.

Recently, they have added a new feature that will take a photo, sample it, and output the average color values contained within. It’s a fascinating look at the color trends within a photo.

I sampled some of the photos I took at the Red Bank Fireworks Tt is really interesting to see some of the dominant colors through the photos. I am most surprised to see how light some of the photos came out - I expected even more very, very dark colors. I am not surprised at how prevalent red is throughout the photos.

This post is cross-posted to the Hexday Blog. Thanks to Jon for allowing me to contribute over there.

Although I don’t currently use one as much as I should, I have long been a fan of Moleskine notebooks. Freelance Switch has a great post with a rundown of all the different ways to use them in The Monster Collection of Moleskine Tips, Tricks and Hacks. A great rundown of the different types of notebooks Moleskine offers and different ways to use them. Very cool, inspirational post.

My favorite holiday tradition, that my fiancee and I have, involves going to Red bank to eat at my favorite Mexican restaurant, Juanito’s and then seeing the Fourth of July fireworks. It is always a fun night for us and after all these years, I am still a sucker for good fireworks (and the quesadilla at dinner at dinner helps).

Jon set up a camera in the office to record a time lapse video of the fireworks overheard. It turned out very cool. He’s got the video over on his site.

Here’s a video, that I took, of the finale of the 2008 Red Bank fireworks:

As I said earlier, the dolphins stuck in the Navesink River has become somewhat of a big local media story. This morning, WNBC/MSNBC reporter Monica Morales was in Sea Bright doing a live report when a gust of wind caused an unfortunate but hilarious moment of live TV:

Thanks to Eric Grissom for giving me the heads up so I could create this clip on Red Lasso.

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Update: Oops - my bad. I put the wrong reporter’s name in the video and in this blog post, earlier. My apologies to Monica Novotny! Monica Morales is the reporter in the video.