Lafayette is beautiful in the fall!

Joshua Tree!

The delta has always intrigued me. It’s a different lifestyle up there. I headed out Highway 12 with an end-goal of Collinsville. (You’re probably thinking, where the heck is Collinsville?!?!) It got so rainy and gross out that I finally turned around and came home.

Such interesting history and so close to home. I’ll save the drive out to the remains of Collinsville for another day!

I’m serious about not losing my data and have been looking for a better way to backup my phone’s content than just plugging it in and manually copying files when I happen to think about it. Enter the app, FolderSync.

Right now I have FolderSync linked to my Dropbox account and via samba to my NAS at home. FolderSync monitors the following folders and backs them up for me.

-SMSBackandRestore: An easy to use txt msg backup app that backs up my txts nightly. FolderSync grabs the nightly backup and puts it in my DropBox.
-Photos: Grabs my photos and puts them on my NAS at home.
-Tasker: Tasker is my favorite app of all time. It allows full automation, and I have it highly customized. FolderSync grabs the backup file and saves it to DropBox.
-Titanium Backup: TB backsup my apps and their data, FolderSync backs this up to DropBox so I can restore my apps and data onto a new phone if I ever lose mine.
-Music: Backs up to my NAS. I tend to buy music from the amazon music store, but I like to know I have a backup somewhere.
-FolderSync: When I make changes to FolderSync, I make a new backup of the FolderSync database. FolderSync then copies it to my DropBox.

I find ways to break things, no matter what. I’m super gentle on my gear, yet somehow things break. I’ve learned this about myself, and therefore my handy skills always come into play. It’s an adventure to take a “Non-Steve Approved” item and make it better. I love the process actually, as frustrating as it sounds. If I could weld, it would make lots of things easier/cheaper in life

Recently I bought an Alien Bees flash and a Mini Lithium inverter/battery. The lightstand mount worried me from day one. The included clamp didn’t tighten up at all. I used a superclamp like many other folks, and one day I opened my trunk at a wedding venue and the photo below is what I saw. The built-in 1/4-20 nut had removed itself from the case, and took some plastic with it. I ended up throwing the battery in a reuasable safeway bag and hanging it from the stand for a couple weddings before I just HAD to make a new mount. My custom mount is so much more stable! WOOOOOOT!

The problem:

My solution:

All images are unedited (SOOC – straight out of camera) and most images were shot with my primes: 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm f/1.8

When my batteries are in the charger, they all face the same way. When I pull used batteries out of a flash, they face opposite directions. This is how I organize them in my cases so I know which are charged and which are in need of some time on the charger.

Example:

(Left are used, right are fresh)

There ya go!

The application Tasker for Android is incredible. Let me give you some examples of profiles I’ve made to automate things on my phone.

• When I get home, based on GPS location, my phone does the following automatically:
  • Turns WiFi on and re-associates with my router at home
  • Sets my auto screen brightness to Auto
  • When I leave my home gps zone, it turns off wifi and sets screen brightness back to the minimum.
• When I plug in headphones, my phone turns the volume to my preset level and prompts me if I want to run the my music player or pandora. When I unplug my headphones, it sets the media volume to zero and kills pandora and the music player.
• When I dock my phone at home, it does the following:
  • Wifi and Bluetooth turn on and it re-associates with my router at home just in case it had dropped for any reason.
  • Auto-screen brightness turns on
  • Keyguard turns off
  • Speakerphone becomes default – This is so I can answer calls from bed without undocking the phone
  • When I undock my phone, it reverts these changes.
• At 11pm every night, my phone does the following:
  • Sets all audio to zero and turns on vibrate.
  • Sets alarm volume
  • At 7am, it turns audio back on to my desired levels
• When my phone sees the calendar event “Working” on my schedule it does the following:
  • Media and ringer volume set to zero and sets vibrate for phone calls
  • Updates my GTalk status to busy and “Working.”
  • When the calendar event ends, it reverts these changes and sets me to available on GChat
• When my phone gets to 20% battery, it does the following:
  • Sets display brightness to zero
  • Turns GPS, Bluetooth and Wifi to Off
  • And puts the phone into Airplane mode
  • I’ve noticed I don’t drain my phone this far in an average day, so this is more of a security measure knowing I’ll be able to pickup the phone and still have some life left.
• When a calendar entry is for a wedding, my phone does the following:
  • Sets all audio to zero and turns on vibrate
  • Sets GChat to invisible!

YL Capernaum :: Golf Tournament Slideshow from Steve Arnett on Vimeo.