This is a response I wrote on a friends blog about iPhone apps. His post is HERE but I thought I’d copy my reviews here. **are apps he reviewed that I haven’t tried but am interested in.

Bejeweled 2 - I love it so much but I was an addict already. I think it looks fantastic.

Tap Tap Revenge - I have it but it only has like 3 songs so it got boring.

Urbanspoon - I love this one, we’ve gone to 2 places based on it’s recommendations. They were both excellent places. Very useful for Ken and I because we’re horrible at choosing where to eat

Facebook - I’ve got it but I’m still waiting for it to update some more. I still use Safari to get to facebook.

**Evernote for iPhone - Don’t have this, I was worried it was too complicated for what I need.

**Midomi - Don’t have this either but I could use it

**Aurora Feint The Beginning - Don’t have it, might pick it up now.

**Units - Have you looked at Equivalence by ApogeeDev or Units Converter by Yuchao Zhou or Units by Ben Spratling.. I haven’t been able to choose between them yet.

I also have:
Dobot Todos by Aria Haghighi - I use it but I’m slightly disappointed with it’s limits.

Voice Notes by GarSoft - I’ve used it once just for fun but I can imagine an occasion where I’d need it and it was free.

Gift Wrangler by Raging Fjord, LLC - I mean to use it but it seems like a lot of work to set up.

Crosswords by Stand Alone, Inc. - Really hard to use, hard to switch between horizontal & vertical lines unless you use the clues window. The latest update seems to have fixed the keyboard covering half the screen issue. There’s now a smaller keyboard at the bottom of the screen.

Solar eclipse of August 1, 2008 (wikipedia link)
The Solar Eclipse that takes place on August 1, 2008, will be a total eclipse of the Sun with a magnitude of 1.039 that will be visible from a narrow corridor through northern Canada (Nunavut), middle of Russia, western Mongolia, and China. It belongs to the so-called midnight Sun eclipses, as it will be visible from regions experiencing Midnight sun.

In Siberia, the total eclipse zone will pass through populated places, including the “capital of Siberia” Novosibirsk, and the cities of Nizhnevartovsk, Barnaul, Biysk. Greatest eclipse duration will be reached near the town of Nadym in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in Northern Siberia.

A partial eclipse will be seen from the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbra, including eastern North America and most of Europe and Asia.

NASA Link

Scientific American - (link)
Get your pinhole cameras—and laptops—ready. This Friday, August 1, a total solar eclipse will occur as the moon passes directly between the sun and Earth for the first time in more than two years. For a few minutes, the moon will blot out the sun, casting its dark shadow over a narrow, moving strip of land and revealing the sun’s corona.

Sadly, this eerie, awe-inspiring event—known as totality—will be visible only from remote parts of the Northern Hemisphere: Starting in northern Canada, the moon’s shadow, or umbra, will glide across the Arctic into central Asia. (View the path of totality at NASA’s eclipse Web site.) “It is best to see the eclipse live,” says Paul Doherty, a senior staff scientist at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco. “If you don’t want to travel,” he says, “you will wait an average of 300 years for a total solar eclipse to come to you.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t share in the experience remotely. Doherty will be part of an eclipse expedition broadcasting the eclipse live via the Web from Xinjiang Province in northwestern China, near the Mongolian border, beginning at 3:30 A.M. Eastern time through totality at 4:09 A.M.

I woke up on Friday around 4pm, Ken was already gone to 151 to work on some issues. He and Nick stopped by to pick me up to go to Mongolian for dinner around 8:30pm. Then we all went back to 151 and I played Sims 2 while they tried to figure out the problem all night. At 3pm we took a break and drove around the city and stopped for snacks. We drove by 3 Roger’s Wireless stores, one near the Eaton Center had a line of about 20 people. One at Davisville & Yonge had no line and the one we wanted to go to at Eglinton & Leaside had no line as well. So we got our snacks and went back to 151 till 6:30am.

Back at the Eglinton & Leaside store there was a line of 2 people. Not too bad! It was raining off and on, and 2 people got out of their car and got back in front of the line just after we got there. The guys who were in front of us said they were really the first people. But that was ok. Then the line started to fill in behind us, and the manager of the store arrived and told us that he had 7 16gb phones, 4 in black, 3 in white but that he had plenty of the 8gb phones. By then another guy had gotten out of his car and joined the 3rd guy. They all wanted the black 16gb phone, #5 (the doctor) wasn’t sure if he wanted the white one or not. But Ken said he would take it. So that left 1, maybe 2 more for the people behind us. Right away several people behind us left the line.

We met some great people while stuck there. We were in line at 7am, there were 4 people in front of us and the store didn’t open till 8:30am, so we all chatted about what plans we were gonna get, what news we heard about how many they would have. Once they opened, they let in 8 people who were purchasing iPhones, that was the 4 in front of us, plus some guy who had been waiting in his car who was with the 3rd guy, so that was 5 iPhones, then Ken. At the time we went in, I was going to try to get my phone from Fido because I have a Fido cell phone now and I have 290 “Fido Dollars” so the iPhone would have been free. So Ken was #6, and the lady behind us, Oedile was #7 and Simon, behind her #8.

The first two people were a couple, they had a small pug dog with them too. Turned out that the girl wasn’t eligible because you could only use an upgrade if it’d been a year since your last phone or get a new account. So she left pissed off. But it freed up another 16gb phone so we started talking about who would get it. Simon wanted it but he wasn’t sure if he was eligible for the upgrade or not and they couldn’t check

After about 2 hours, they had finally gotten the first guy at least paid for, and he could have left and come back later once the activation was working again but he stuck around and after another hour it came up briefly and he was able to leave with his phone but he still had to actually unlock it once he got home and he wouldn’t have been able to because the site went back down again. At least he didn’t need to go back to the store and he had a physical phone in his hand to play with. We took a picture with the display iPhone of the first activation to make it out of the door The iPhone really takes nice pictuers, so we asked the manager to send it to us.

The 3rd guy had the same deal. The guy who was with him (who had been sitting in his car the whole time we were lined up outside) was stuck at the trying to pay part so he stuck around awhile but #5 was a doctor so he had to bail and leave before getting anything. We all felt bad for him, but it’s not like the iPhone is going away. If he comes back next week they’ll have more 16gb phones and he probably won’t have to wait for hours like we did.

So that freed up another 16gb phone, so we decided that instead of repeating the process at a Fido store for me, and possibly having to wait another week or two for the 16gb phone (I’d actually put my music on it) that I’d take it here and we’d just have to lose the Fido Dollars. So I took the #9 spot after Simon.

It was like 11am by then and everyone was getting really antsy, the people outside were complaining that it was getting hot, and we were just tired because we’d been at 151 all night. So Nick and I went on a coffee and donut run. The poor staff hadn’t been able to take a break or eat or anything. So we bought them coffee and shared donuts with them.

We kept checking the apple websites and different tech blogs from the iPhone demo display To see if there was any news about what was going on. Europe had their release day 8 hours before us and they had no real issues other than they ran out. Which is to be expected. By noon, the people in PST were just jumping in trying to get theirs so there was no chance that the issues would clear up. At noon, the site came up briefly enough for the manager to at least check on Oedile & Simon’s eligibility for upgrades. Oedile was eligible but Simon was not. So he left, and the manager let 3 more people in.

The #4 guy, David, had to leave because he was going away for the weekend, but he’d already paid so they would just keep it aside for him till he came back.

So with Simon gone, there was 1 more 16gb iPhone available, but it was white. The #10 guy didn’t want it, #11 said he might take it, but he ended up not taking it. #12 guy was actually like #20 because the line outside kept shifting, people kept leaving. So he took the last 16gb phone by the end of the day. He was very very happy and I said he should buy a lottery ticket. He said it was actually for his wife though.

Manager Dan got an email from the head of the company saying that he could have people sign the contracts and set aside the phones they wanted and call them back when the system came back online. So that’s what we did and we finally left at 2pm. Drove Nick to his car at his condo and passed out at home as soon as we got there. Hopefully the system will be fixed tomorrow and we will get a call from Manager Dan but at least we have one set aside for us.

**Update** Today, July 12th, 2008, Saturday. Ken and I went to a bead store grand opening at 9am then got to the Roger’s store at 10am. They opened but the manager’s car had been swiped by another car in his parking lot so he had to stick around and take pictures and stuff so he was running late. Raquel and Ti couldn’t open the stock room that had all the iPhones with the already signed contracts so we had to wait. 2 people were already there when we arrived, one of them was #11 from Friday. So they started to process them, but it took almost 2 hours. Meanwhile, #10 showed up again too. We eventually walked out of the store by 12:30 with both of our iPhones. Ken’s is black 16gb and mine is white 16gb. We drove over to Best Buy to see if they had any cases. They had 4 but nothing spectacular. So we went to FutureShop, they had none at all. So we came home, did the registration on iTunes and starting looking through the App Store. I grabbed the Facebook App, AIM App… Then synched up my contacts and email and such and we drove over to Yorkdale Mall to check what cases the Apple Store had. They only had 4 cases as well but different ones. I picked up a clear clam shell case and Ken picked up a leather “sock” type case with a ratcheting clip. His came with a lot of other pieces like a screen cloth and arm band but he ended up not liking his case at all. The face cover kept sticking to the screen and making strange bubbles. Nick described it as “badly applied window tinting”. I did use the clear plastic faceplate sticker on mine since my case didn’t have any kind of cover.

We’ve been playing with them ever since. I’ve spent a good long time creating my mac address book so I can sync it up because I never used it. I also couldn’t import my old SIM card contacts onto the new SIM card so I had to manually enter in all the phone numbers I had stored. Then I added contact pictures for the Call Display feature. Now I think I’m going to nap, since I was up really early this morning.

We’ve received a lot of snow this month, and I really don’t mind it. I actually love the way snow looks on trees and such. Luckily we are able to choose not to go out in it most of the time. Even on the worst snow day (Saturday the 8th) there were still so many cars on the road. I don’t envy them.

March 2 (Sunday)
I met up with Sosena and we went to Kelsey’s and chatted over some Nachos. She gave me 3 bracelets she’d purchased that she didn’t really like as bracelets and asked if I would make them into something else. I’m pretty happy with what I came up with! Later we went to see The Eye. I’ve been a huge fan of Jessica Alba since the Dark Angel series. I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars. This is what I said on my facebook movies app:

This was pretty good. It had some very spooky moments but nothing too scary.

Afterwards, we hung out at Starbucks and devised a movie plot that will make us millionaires! Email me if you’re interested in funding us :p Sorry the video game adaptation rights were already sold to Nick. LOL Note to other people who hang out at Starbucks: You know when they close, especially when the staff have gone around giving 15 & 10 minute warnings, don’t bitch when they finally start moving people to the door.

March 3 (Monday)
Our car spent the day in the shop getting it’s check-up and getting detailed, the latter I only let Ken get done twice a year. I didn’t feel like going out to lunch so Ken and Chris went to the Indian buffet again. I don’t dislike Indian food, but I don’t really crave it either. They were supposed to pick me up something on the way back but they ran late and had to rush back for a work call. Ken later went out to get me some tacos from Moe’s. Andrea was over and poor girl had slipped on some ice that morning outside of her building. She was obviously a little sore :/

March 5 (Wednesday)
A very very Happy Birthday to my sister-in-law Missy! I got to talk to her, but she was trying to plan Daemon’s birthday party so we didn’t get to talk very long. I hope she got to relax some. It’s pretty stressful just trying to talk to anyone in that mad house sometimes

March 6 (Thursday)
I’d been missing Peter so I arranged a “Girl’s day” over at Chris & Lesley’s house in Milton. Unfortunately Sosena had to work, and Michelle had something come up at the last minute so it was just Erika and I. Still had a great time! We played more Rock Band, Erika brought her drum kit & guitar, I brought my new guitar and mic. Lesley made an awesome chickpea stew that I absolutely must get the recipe for! Peter was adorable as always, he kept running around singing songs from Mary Poppins. LOL We also teased Chris to no end when he wasn’t working, which is always fun. I wish they lived closer, I would definitely babysit Peter every day! I’m going to steal him. I’ll just have to settle being the crazy lady who teaches him strange words and what mazda’s say :p

March 7 (Friday)
We knew there was going to be a lot of snow, but I was supposed to puppy-sit Logan while Ken’s sister and her husband were in Buffalo. I left at 6 and it took me an hour to get there. The roads were very slippery. We’re on the lower level of the underground parking so we have a pretty steep driveway to get out. They had the “out” door open and the “in” door blocked off. I had to gun it up the ramp but ended up sliding into the massive snow drift lining the road to the front door. I didn’t hit it very hard, just tapped into it. It popped the corner of the bumper in slightly but Ken was able to pop it back out later. I stayed with Logan till around 9:30 when there was a break in the snow. The roads were much much better so I picked up Ken and we went to the grocery store.

March 8 (Saturday)
Just insane amounts of snow fell. Every time I looked out of the window I couldn’t help but say “good lord”. We just stayed home, played games and watched tv.

March 9 (Sunday)
I met Sosena at Yuk Yuk’s after her work get-gether, Nick also met up with us. First we went to Boston Pizza, chatted had some nachos. From there we spent the next few hours at the Tim Horton’s. Lots of fun!

March 10 (Monday)
I didn’t get home till around 5am. I don’t usually have much sugar but I had 2 medium hot chocolates so I was unable to go to sleep till around noon. Ken and Chris were too busy to go to lunch but Chris went down to Licks and got some food for them both. Sadly I slept through Andrea being over.

March 11 (Tuesday)
Clint, Erika & Brea came over to watch Ark of Truth the new Stargate movie. It was pretty good, it wrapped up a lot of the storylines.

March 12 (Wednesday)
Nick came over for lunch, we took him to Moe’s then Ken showed him Assassin’s Creed which he’s been playing a lot for the last few days. Very Happy Birthday wishes for my favorite nephew who turned 9! We got him the Danger Mouse Season 1-6 DVD (which my brothers and I used to love) and Princess Bride DVD (second best movie ever made).

March 13 (Thursday)
Melar and I got to finish the Borlis Pass mission in Guild Wars, only one more to go till we’re out of the Northern Shiverpeak Mountains and hopefully not long till we can make some prettier armor! I got my giant book on web design today. I’ve read the first 3 chapters but it’s pretty boring. I just want to learn how to make my own site and friends sites better. I’ve got a lot of ideas for my site, I’ve been sketching them out along with the site I made for the Malamute Rescue group and the one I worked on for Ken’s sister. Perhaps I will look for a course or something. Though last time I took a course I got stuck sitting next to a girl who didn’t know how to use a computer, in a graphic design course. I spent more time answering her questions about where to click than hearing the teacher. :/ Sucked big time.

March 14 (Friday)
Today I’ll be packing for my week in Virginia. I leave tomorrow morning at 9am which means I’ll be at the airport at 6am. It’s also Brea’s birthday today, so Happy Sweet 16! Happy Birthday to Ken’s cousin Greg! I’m debating on bringing some of my jewelry tools. I’ve got 10 bracelets to make for upcoming birthdays and I ordered the parts and had them sent to my mom’s. The stuff takes up a lot of room and we only have 1 good big suitcase left but I will probably have a lot of quiet time to work on it while I’m there.

Our last episode left us at Valentine’s Day, which was 2 weeks ago .. I am so fired. :p

February 15-21 (Friday-Thursday)
Not much to note, we gamed a lot. Me mostly on Guild Wars with Melar and Luvene and Ken on EQ2. Monday was the newly added Family Day holiday, no Andrea or Chris. So Chris came on Tuesday instead, we had lunch at Duff’s. More gaming and relaxing, catching up on shows like American Idol, Numb3rs and ANTM.

February 22-24 (Friday-Sunday)
Friday was our big “slumber” party at 151, I tagged along with Ken and Chris for their upgrade / moving servers work with Nick and Myles. I had hoped to be able to play Guild Wars on my laptop while I was there but a: Ken didn’t have time to install Boot Camp and b: Chris forgot his laptop anyway so he had to borrow mine. We played a bit of Rock Band before heading downtown and Chris had me giggling over some ad-libbed words to Metallica! We were at the colo from about 10pm to 9am and it was pretty fun. I got to sneak in some Civ IV playing whenever Chris didn’t need my laptop and the pizza we ordered ended up being an EPIC EVENT*

I mostly just tried to stay out of the way and not bug the guys too much. Finally was able to give Myles the souvenirs I picked up for him in Kiev in November and give Nick the hilarious phrase books that Ken picked up for him in Sausalito in January. We also gave Nick the bag of chocolate covered coffee beans we got from Soma and I can’t wait to hear a review on them

When the boys were finally finished, Ken, Chris and I went to the Golden Griddle for Saturday Brunch. We were all pretty tired though so we didn’t eat much and got the check quickly. The rest of Saturday and Sunday were spent napping and trying to recover sleep habits.

February 25th (Monday)
10 Months of Not-Smoking! I couldn’t get to sleep that night, and Chris was over for working. Right after our lunch at Tandoori Buffet I passed out and completely missed Andrea. She brought us some amazing chocolate croissant type things though. We also ordered my tickets to Virginia for March.

February 26th (Tuesday)
The day started off innocently enough. I was originally going to go pick up Sos and hang out with Erika for the day, but after finding out that Sos hadn’t been able to get to sleep and worrying that the snow would get worse by the end of the night we decided to “Snow Check”. Ken downloaded a game demo for the PSP called PataPon, which is a really cute rhythm game. Then all hell breaks loose.

I started to smell something like chlorine and after writing it off to the amazing pools website I was reading at the time, it kept getting stronger. Ken smelled it too eventually and we heard dozens of sirens heading our way. Ken looked out from the balcony and said that Eglinton was blocked off to traffic along our block and that there was thick smoke from somewhere near the corner. He turned on the news and could find nothing about it, searching online didn’t get us any info either until almost an hour later after the power had shut off and we were running on battery backups. Good ol 680 news.

Ken and I decided we’d be better off finding a place to eat or something because they were saying the power might be off for up to 12 hours. So we loaded up the cats with food, just in case, and trudged down 24 flights of stairs to the 2nd sub basement and since Eglinton was blocked off between Yonge and Mt. Pleasant our back streets were heavily clogged. It was only around 3pm though so once we got away from it a bit the roads were fine. We drove around trying to decide where to go and ended up at the Eaton Center Mall. We hung out there, I got new shoes! I’ve always been partial to Skechers. (Sneakers & Shoes) until around 7pm. Ken had brought his laptop so we opened it up and found some wifi to look up hotels. We’d kept calling our house phone to see if it would ring indicating that our power was back on. Just after we’d picked a nearby hotel, we tried to call the house phone again and it rang. Yay!

Decided to have dinner at Pickle Barrel at Yonge & Eglinton where we could watch the literal army of Toronto Hydro trucks lining the street. That light was still out but there were 2 cops there directing traffic. I think they had all but one elevator shut off so it was a rather long wait and it was packed but we walked into the apartment around 9pm. Checked that the computers and air conditioners hadn’t blown if they tried to restart themselves. All were off, so that was good, then there was an announcement over the intercom system that Toronto Hydro was in the building and demanded that everyone turn off as much power as they could, and not use their stoves, or they would have to shut off all the power to the building. So we left our computers off, turned off and unplugged everything we could think of and took naps.

February 27-28 (Wednesday & Thursday)
Tried not to do too much, our knees were finally feeling all those stairs. After moving around a bit it was ok, but the initial acts of standing or walking were pretty freaking painful.

February 29th (Friday)
Happy Leap Day! Didn’t do much except watch the snow fall. Caught up with Melar in Guild Wars and finished off some tough quests we both had. We basically had to zerg ourselves and 2 henchmen against a couple dozen Charr who were guarding the ashes of Prince Rurik’s fiancee Althea. Luckily there was a rez shrine right next to the temple. Althea was one of my favorite pre-searing npc’s so I was not very happy about her being burned at the stake.

Most of the time I scramble to find ways to amuse myself while Ken is working. Sometimes I make dates with friends. This week however was *packed* !! So awesome.

Monday was Chris & Andrea over as usual. Tuesday I hung out with Sos all day and then we met up with Nick for dinner at Mexicali Rosa’s, then on to Starbucks and then his place for some Family Guy episodes. Wednesday, was pretty relaxing during the day, then Ken’s cousin, Michelle, came over and we played Rock Band and she gave me some jewelry to fix/change for her. I already finished a bracelet she wanted shortened (before / after), and made a new chain piece for the headband I made her awhile ago. Still have another bracelet to make longer though (close up left / close up right). Thursday, I spent the day with Erika at her place, she finished a very pretty sweater she’s been working on for my birthday present. Then when Clint came home from work we went to dinner at Apple Jacks and then played Rock Band for awhile. Tonight we went to Iron Chef at Eglinton & Tomken Rd for Chris’ birthday dinner. Best part was when Chris was opening the Christmas present from Ken and I, Peter insisted on helping. Then said loudly “Oh My Goodness!” when he saw what it was. Other people in the restaurant thought it was just as cute The food wasn’t as good as usual but we had a good time! Tomorrow, we’re finally going to see a movie, though it’s one I don’t really know much aboutFanboys?? with Clint, Erika and Brea. Then they’re coming over to our place to watch Family Guy: Blue Harvest and play Assassin’s Creed (I think). Chris will also be over late tomorrow night because he and Ken have a 3am upgrade to do.

So lots of friend dates, lots of jokes, lots of laughing, and good food! So far I have nothing on my calendar for next week but I’m trying to set up a girls sleep-over for the week after, when Ken and Chris are away in California.

I’ve sent out all invitations (except one that i’m trying to get an email address for) to Ken’s Birthday Gaming Party! If you know anyone who would like to attend please let me know!

**Invitation made by Sapphire using cut images from various people at GameRenders.com

If you’ve ever wanted to write a story but couldn’t think of a good name for small_town_029 check out Serendipity!

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

HOWTO set an alarm for light sleep periods
Waking up to a buzzer alarm or loud music is traumatic — doubly so if you get woken up in the middle of a dream, when your sleep is deepest. Ideally, your alarm clock would only go off while you were in light sleep. You can wear EEGs or special watches that do this, but wearing an EEG to bed is a little, you know, impractical. Here’s a method for using a music/buzzer alarm-clock to wake yourself up during light sleep, without disturbing a dream.

* Set an alarm to go off before you want to wake up.
* Make the alarm really quiet radio or music.
* Set a second alarm to go off at the latest time you want to wake up.
* Make the alarm the usual loudness.

The whole point is that the first alarm should be so quiet that it will only wake you up if you’re in “light” sleep. Waking up in “light” sleep should leave you feeling more refreshed than waking up in “deep” sleep. The second alarm is the back up to make sure that you wake up in time .

Ken so needs this!! Anyone have any links to a good alarm clock?