Podcasts without headphones

For some reason it never occurred to me to try using my iPhone's iPod app without headphones plugged in. I was momentarily mystified this morning when I didn't plug em in all the way, making my Tuesday-morning dose of Dan Savage play out of the device in my hand rather than into my ears.

I have wished in the past that I could sometimes listen to podcasts without having to wear headphones (or be seated in front of my desktop Mac), so this is pretty cool.

One quarter with iPhone

More iPhone thoughts, while it's on my mind:

I've been an iPhone user for three months now. Before I bought it, I imagined it would act as a convergence of my iPod and my cell phone, meaning one fewer thing stuffed in my pocket.

What I didn't expect was how it's freed me up from carrying around my laptop bag, in many situations. Before July, I'd sling my laptop over my shoulder when I went just about anywhere, because I can't stand the thought of being caught somewhere without the ability to access the internet. I'd also bring it along whenever I expected to be sitting down and taking text notes.

The iPhone covers both these bases, so long as I'm willing to go without a keyboard - and for freewheeling note-taking, that's fine. Add in the fact that its camera makes its utility as a field-reporting tool even better than what I had before, and I find that I now only bring the lappie along if I expect to be doing some real sit-down work, like coding. Other than that, I quite frequently travel without my bag now, even to conferences and the like. That's a major, and unexpected, convenience.

(I also find myself using social apps like Facebook far more often now, since their iPhone integration is so nice, and it's fun to throw up cheesy phone-pics of whatever I'm doing as "status updates". Whether or not this is a real improvement in my life is not mine to judge. But it's fun.)

Craigslist gigs

I kind of don't know why I'm bothering to look at Craigslist "computer gigs" posts. Ninety-five percent of them fall into these formats:

• I'm looking for an "intern" to work 20 hours a week on this project. I have many shiny bottlecaps I can pay you with. Great for college students!

• Here is a somewhat reasonable request for a piece of custom software. Please submit your bid. Not looking to spend more than $50.

• MY COMPUTER BREOK I PUT THE CABLE IN AND THE MAN SAID IT WORK OK BUT IT IS BLANK HOW LONG TO FIX

Anyway, this is why I launched a Google Adwords campaign for Appleseed yesterday...

Google Ad Fu

Spent the greater part of the afternoon tuning Google AdWords campaigns. I have four distinct ad-groups running now, covering the spread of (local | national) and ("I'm a Perl hacker" | "I'm a software consultant").

Running many variants of ad-haiku, but they all go something like this:

Web consultant for hire
Clean design, robust software.
SaaS, Perl our specialties.

Budgeted one V-note per day for the whole deal, and put some Google Analytics goodness into the Appleseed site as well. Trying to not be addicted with reloading my stats page now, which is already showing results. Lemme give it a day, at least.

Help a nerd who doesn't get out much

So when I learn that there's a show goin on after 9pm at the Middle East, but its website sez its box office closes at 7pm, does that mean I'm out of luck (unless I leave RIGHT NOW and then kill two+ hours), or will they sell me tickets at the door anyway?

O wants U

The Obama campaign called me. classicaljunkie said, "Ha ha! It is because you re-registered as 'Unenrolled', sucka!" But actually they were more focusing on the fact I'd given them some ca$h recently, and wanted to know if maybe I felt like a little canvassing.

I said: NO WAI! But I told them I'd pass along word of their need. So, yeah, if you've got some free time to help make sure the country is prised from the clammy grip of the Neocons and their stooges next month, do visit http://my.barackobama.com.

(Heh heh, my paid account expired, and let us find a good omen in that my Moonbat icon is one of the ones that didn't get locked out...)