My shiba

Maya, my shiba is the strangest companion I have ever had the pleasure to meet. All day long she just lays in the corner of the bed as content as can be.

Abit late to the party, but I have recently discovered Spotify. For those unaware, Spotify is a music streaming program that for free streams any song you can think of to your pc, all for free. Spotify has many things going for it and a few aspects that left me scratching my head. First the good.

- The design. One look at the program and you know they were inspired by Itunes. Not that its a bad thing. Its very easy to navigate and very non tech savvy friendly. Because of this, spotify has been a great way to share music with my family.

- The selection. No matter what song I looked for, it was there. We even tried old obsure french songs... yup its there. Even better is how its layed out. When you find an artist you want to listen to, it will list first their 5 most popular songs, then their records in chronological order.

- The playlists. A fun social aspect of Spotify is playlists. You can create a playlist and share it with whomever you want. They even have big lists like Rolling Stones top 500 songs of all time.

- Radio. Not sure why it is but the music selection for the Indie channel is perfect for me. I find it better then Pandora, last.fm, slacker radio, turntable.fm or any other radio style streaming sites.

- Cost. Its free! Can't beat that. They do have a premium membership of $9.99 a month which gets you access to the mobile app and no commercials. The commercials on the free version aren't intrusive at all. It seems like they're almost too infrequent if that makes any sense.


Now the bad.

- Registering. You have to use facebook to register which I find bothersome. I'm not a big facebook user, I like my privacy.

- Playlists. While they are great, I don't understand why most of the playlists are found on other websites. For an app that seems to push the sharing of music, I found it strange their isn't a part of the app to post and share playlists.


Overall its a great program that gets used everyday. In the past to find a song that was stuck in my head I had to go to youtube and make sure the version was the original. With spotify, its as simple as typing the song in search and hit play. So give it a try. Its free.

Changed launcher

One of the best features on modern phones is the ability to customize. This past summer I got an HTC evo 3d. It was my first Android phone and, coming from Windows mobile 6.5 it was leaps and bounds better then my old phone. I told myself I would never unlock the phone, install custom roms like I had with my old phone (which was a constant battle of always finding something better). I wanted to protect my precious from myself. Well 6 months later and the gloves are off.
Phone unlocked.. Check
custom rom installed.. Checked..
OC kernel...check.
Add  anew launcher.. Check.

Now my phone looks like this






I got so tired of Sense.  It became very bloated looking.  As you can see, my new setup is the exact opposite of what Sense is. Instead of a cluttered home screen, I've opted for minimalism.  The black and white icons and date and time widget, don't hide the wallpaper.  Now I can't wait for Ice Cream Roms to start coming out.

Overall i'm very satisfied with my current setup and the modifications are easier on android then they ever were on WM 6.5.

list of enhancements used.

Viper Rom
ADW Ex launcher
Matte Curve ADW Theme
Simple Clock Widget

The new blog will be made up of whatever I find interesting.  Right now I have ideas of apps, programs, games, and other media that I'd like to share my thoughts on.  I'm hoping to change the name as well.

I'm still using Mturk and if I find anything interesting worth commenting about, I'll still share.

Inactive

Been abut crazy past few weeks leaving me to neglected my blogging. Hopefully that will change. It has given me time to think about the direction of the blog. I realized a mturk blog is pretty stupid considering how fast it changes. So, tomorrow this blog, like the phoenix will rise from its ashes.


In the meantime here is a shiba

Left foot, right foot, repeat........................

Last spring I set a goal for myself to run a 5k race in the summer.  The problem was, I hadn't run in ages.  Even when I was in the military, I barely run.  Adding to it I had ballooned in weight since leaving the service.  70 lbs over weight, I started last February the C25k program.  The program worked wonders.  I lost 40 lbs and in May completed my fist 5k.

After the 5k I quit running. It became summertime and excuses were convenient to find.  Fast forward to Jan 1st.  I told myself I"d get back into running.  For the past month I've been going to the gym and sweating out on the treadmill. This past Tuesday, was my watershed.  I got on the treadmill wanting to try a slow run.  A slow run is simply that, a run that you go at a slower pace in order to increase your time and distance.  This Tuesday I ran for 60 minutes straight. It was such an amazing experience.  People around me probably thought I was going to pass out, but I had a blast.  I told myself right then that next up would be an 8k.

I looked up and found hal higdons 8k novice training schedule and starting next week will begin to follow it. But, curiosity got the best of today.  I wanted to know if I could run 2 miles outside.  While I'd run 3 miles and 5.5 miles on the treadmill Tuesday, running outside is completely different.  So with that, I loaded up a great app I got during google's 10 cent summer deal and had a go. And here are the results Endomondo

First I love the app.  It provides so much information.  Its pretty amazing how much actually. Not only does it track you on google maps but also includes elevation, and embarrassingly the playlist.

Second, while my time sucks, I realize i'm still 30-40 lbs over weight, and I'm only going to get faster.  It will be interesting going forward looking how my time increases over the next few weeks.

Tip for the day:

Surveys

Surveys can be a great and easy hit for you.  But you have to be careful.  Some Surveys try to make sure you are actually reading, and post fake questions.  Usually it will go something like this.


In this day in age cell phones are a Key part of everyday society.  80% of citizens in modern society are owners of smart phones.  Smart phones are defined by wikipedia as:

"A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone.^[1][2][3] The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a mobile phone or camera phone. Today's models also serve to combine the functions of portable media players, low-end compact digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and GPS navigation units. Modern smartphones typically also include high-resolution touchscreens, web browsers that can access and properly display standard web pages rather than just mobile-optimized sites, and high-speed data access via Wi-Fi and mobile broadband.

The most common mobile operating systems (OS) used by modern smartphones include Google's Android, Apple's iOS, Microsoft's Windows Phone, Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry OS, and embedded Linux distributions such as Maemo andMeeGo. Such operating systems can be installed on many different phone models, and typically each device can receive multiple OS software updates over its lifetime.

The distinction between smartphones and feature phones can be vague and there is no official definition for what constitutes the difference between them. One of the most significant differences is that the advanced application programming interfaces(APIs) on smartphones for running third-party applications^[4] can allow those applications to have better integration with the phone's OS and hardware than is typical with feature phones. In comparison, feature phones more commonly run on proprietary firmware, with third-party software support through platforms such as Java ME or BREW.^[1] An additional complication in distinguishing between smartphones and feature phones is that over time the capabilities of new models of feature phones can increase to exceed those of phones that had been promoted as smartphones in the past

Smart phones give one the access of the internent in the palm of the user hands.  If you are reading this please type smart phone and hit continue.  These phones are a major source of revenue for business.  Please choose which type of smart phone operating system you own.

a - Android

b- Appple IOS

c- Windows 

d. webOS

e. other

   fill in if other ____________

Submit

Did you catch it?   Look at second line in the last paragraph.  If you were just breezing through, you would easily miss this, and loose any chance of getting your reward.  On top of that it would go towards your rejection stat, and enough of those will prevent you from being eligible for some good paying HITS.