Most of you don’t know that I recently moved from Michigan, a state I’ve lived in for my entire life. The last city I lived in was Troy and I must say, Boulder has been an upgrade.

Boulder offers a wide variety of people, unlike Troy, MI which was located in Oakland County. Little known fact,…

I am really excited to finally be out of Troy, MI.  I miss my friends, but not the area.

Top 5...

Comic Artists as of Today:

5. John Romita, Jr.

4. Mark Bagley

3. Amanda Conner

2. Gary Frank

1. Darwyn Cooke

Who are your top 5 comic book artists?

iPhone vs. G1

So I’ve been using an unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile for a couple weeks now.  I figured I would take a moment and compare it with my G1 to show how I feel about switching.

I wrote a little while ago my feelings on using a G1 for a year.  Oddly I kept mentioning how I wanted to find something other than an iPhone, but sadly the Apple fan in me won out.  I wanted to start off by mentioning the Hardware.

Hardware:

The iPhone is thinner than the G1.  For anyone who owns a G1, the iPhone comes to about where the screen slides up to reveal the qwerty keyboard on the G1.  I love how much thinner this phone is.  It doesn’t sound like that would be a huge difference, but when it’s in your pocket with the rounded edges you’ll notice it.

I still feel like the G1 is a brick of a phone.  I originally loved the fact that it had a qwerty keyboard, but recently I found that I can type faster with the soft keyboard on the iPhone as its correction is much better.  As far as comparing the soft keyboard on the iPhone to the G1, iPhone wins hands down.  For those of you wondering my G1 is on 1.6 and I’ve heard the keyboard is better on 2.0 for Android.

Even though I can expand the storage space on my G1, app storage is resticted to the ROM space on the phone (if I have it wrong I’m sorry and yes I know there is a way to store them on my SD card).  What matters is that I can’t store a large amount of apps on the G1.  The iPhone allows me to store 16 gigs of apps of I feel like it.  The one part where the G1 pulls ahead, I can use it as a thumb drive on any computer I feel like.  This is something I’ve been missing from the iPhone.  I know I can do it, but most solutions I’ve seen require me paying for something.

I can’t compare the cameras because I barely used either phone’s camera.

Call quality is about equivalent.  I hear whomever I am talking to just fine.  I’ve asked people that I was talking with if they noticed a difference with the new phone and the answer universally was no.

Speed goes to the iPhone.  It wasn’t till I installed Cyanogen on my G1 that I really felt that it was worth a damn being able to function, but I still had lag and stability issues.

Battery also goes to the iPhone.  The battery was one of the top reasons I decided to make the switch.  With my G1 I needed to charge the phone by roughly noon when at work, maybe another hour on Edge.  The iPhone can go the whole work day.  I know that there are extended batteries for the G1, but I didn’t want to make it any thicker than what it was.

Notifications go to the G1.  I sorely miss the little blinking LED that let me know when new mail, txts, twitter @s/DMs, and Facebook messages were there for me to check.  The iPhone gives me a buzz or a single chirp.

Software:

This is a hard comparison.  The reason I say this is that I know that I don’t want to make this argument an Android vs. iPhone OS fight.  I’ve tried my best below to do so.  The other factor playing into this is that I was using Cyanogen on my phone for quite some time before getting the iPhone, which makes a huge difference.

Customization to the home screens, G1 wins hands down.  Yes I can have a bunch of screens on the iPhone, but the G1 lets me do a whole lot with three or five screens being on Cyanogen.  Android has widgets, the iPhone does not.  I used these quite a bit and not having them is a downer.  Also, call me crazy, but when I pick a phone wallpaper I want to see it all the time.  Not only when my phone is locked and I’m unlocking it.

Syncing and music goes to the iPhone.  I use iTunes a lot so this was a loosing battle for my G1.  It also doesn’t help that the Music app for Android looks like it was designed in the 90s.  Seriously Google get someone on this because the music app is as Steve Jobs would say, “A bag of hurt.”  I’ve used the alternatives and I didn’t see anything better either.  Some will argue that I could use Doubletwist or Songbird for syncing with the G1.  I tried and I did not find it intuitive.  Also it meant converting a bunch of my music, which I wasn’t up for.  When it comes to listening to music in both regards I plan on sticking to my iPod classic.  The click wheel is the best thing ever created for going through my playlists.

Apps go to the G1 for one reason alone, it’s open.  The iPhone may have some nice apps and more of them, but the only time I have to worry about Google being bitches about apps are when it comes to stuff like tethering.  Honestly if they didn’t remove them all of the service providers would throw a fit and I could see Android having a small adoption rate.  I may be able to get less apps from the Android app store, but at least I get quality and freedom of choice.  I don’t feel in general that the quality of apps for the iPhone are all that better.  This leads to the next point that I had at least two browsers on my G1.  This would allow me to download something that I can’t at work and install it to my computer.  I can no longer do this with the iPhone that I know of.  The iPhone won’t let me download anything that may compete with their precious apps and that really annoys me.

Mail and Contacts also go to the G1.  When I first started my G1 and put in my google account it was like some sort of black magic had happened.  All of my mail was there along with all of my phone contacts.  Yes the iPhone now allows you to sync with Google’s contacts, but the mail app on the iPhone in comparison to the G1 is no where near as good in my opinion.  Google knows how to do search and mail, they got mail right on Android.

Browsing is slight edge to the iPhone.  I like the multitouch, but I’ve lived without it for so long it’s not like I couldn’t continue living without it.  Overall I do feel like the iPhone’s browser allows me to look at pages faster than the G1 did.  I like the overall browsing experience for some reason on the iPhone better.  I just wish I had more of a selection of browsers.

Notifications again go to the G1.  Having the notification bar makes it easy to see ALL of my updates.  I have to go through my home screens on the iPhone to check them all out.

Overall:

I’m happier with my iPhone.  It’s a better product than my G1 ever was when it comes to hardware and stability of the software.  However if this was a Android vs. iPhone OS fight, Android wins all the way.  Android allows for you to do so much more with the phone and is constantly getting better, in the leaps and bounds way.  In the long run I’m glad I got a iPhone 3G and I’m glad I did it instead of buying another shitty phone from T-Mobile.  I can easily see myself going back to Android when the right hardware for it comes out.  If I want to keep all of the games and apps from my iPhone at this point I would either keep mine unlocked or just buy an iPod Touch.

For those of you reading this on Facebook or murmur.com this was originally posted on jonstump.net

My mustache is starting to come in a little more.  More like a dirtstache at this point.  Clearly if people would donate then it might have a chance of coming in better.

http://us.movember.com/mospace/57783/

I think this sums up how I feel about Wizard and their cons.

G1 and Me - A year with Android

So it was roughly a year ago that I ditched my Motorola V360 for the G1.  The reason I decided to upgrade was that I had the Motorola for some time and the speaker was going out.  People would tell me, your phone has great signal and I would respond with WHAT?! I can’t hear you!

So I decided to jump into Android, why might one ask?  Two reasons really:

1.  I love Google and use it for pretty much everything.

2.  AT&T thought that I needed to pay a $500 security deposit for an iPhone. Also their network blows.

I read a bunch of reviews online and the G1 was getting pretty decent reviews.  The biggest complaint seemed to be the battery.  I thought to myself, “can it really be that bad?”  I of course would find out almost immediately the battery sucked on the phone which to this day is still my largest complaint.  After reading these reviews I took the plunge by going to my local T-mo store and buying the last G1 there.  In fact a guy walked in as they were getting the last one for myself trying to pick one up.  I couldn’t wait to get this baby back to work and start playing with it.  The problem was I had to wait roughly a half hour till they actually added a data plan to my service.  Once added I entered my Gmail account and away I went.

Things that I immediately loved about Android was how everything synced without hassle.  I really liked the fact that I never had to hook my phone up to a computer unless I wanted to drop music on it.  I entered my Gmail account and all of my phone numbers and emails I needed were there, ready for use.  It also went and got my google calendar, which I hadn’t used as much till getting the phone.  I also was happy that this had a physical keyboard.  I wasn’t a huge fan (at first) of a soft keyboard that was found on iPhones and other touchscreen phones.

In the first week of having the phone I started to notice what they meant by poor battery.  I would learn quickly that I had to keep this baby plugged in all day at work, charge it around 11:00 am, or turn everything off so it would keep a decent charge.

For a good while my Android experience hit a wall.  The phone would start to get laggy causing me to either have to delete a ton of stuff or reset the phone to factory defaults.  Then it would start acting well again.  The music player clearly showed me early on that it was poorly designed along with most of the others in the market. Although Last.FM made a decent player for playing random music, ultimately I found that my iPod works best.

Finally during the summer a nifty tool was released, the one click root, which of course took more than one click.  Being able to root my phone allowed access to all sorts of new tools.  The biggest was being able to tether my laptop.  This wasn’t huge as I don’t need it often, but nice to have.  After this soon came my other love for Google and Android, Google Talk.  I was lucky enough to be included early into the beta and I’ve written my feelings about it here on Murmur.

After rooting my phone the next step was figuring out what other cool things I could do.  Friends and associates had seen on my Facebook how my phones lagginess along with the battery was starting to really piss me off.  They then suggested installing a modded version of Android, specifically Cyanogen.  Shortly after I rooted came some really easy to install tools to make to move to Cyanogen a breeze.  The instructions were about as hard as installing a custom firmware for my PSP, which is also pretty easy.

Cyanogen put a new lease on my G1’s life.  It stopped being laggy and started doing what I wanted it to do.  The battery wasn’t necessarily better, but at least the phone was opening programs and not hanging up all of the time.  I was pretty happy with Cyanogen with the fact that it turned me around on the G1 when it did.  The only issue I have with Cyanogen is that sometimes a program crashes.  I half expected this since it’s not stock Android and have come to accept it over the alternative of hating my phone.  Then Google stepped in and did something very unGoogle.  A cease and desist went to the main man behind Cyanogen and like the classy guy that he is, he pulled the project until he could make it work.  I then made a last ditch effort to get up to one of the more recent releases before they were lost to the internet ether.

Cyanogen very quickly figured out a way to make everyone happy with the next release.  I recently decided to go up to 4.2.1 and have been pretty happy with it so far.  It continues to keep a lackluster piece of hardware from being replaced.

Overall in my year with the G1 and Android I would put it simply, Android is awesome and the G1 should NEVER have been the first phone released for it.  It’s clear to me that the phone is really something developers were using to develop on when T-Mo came along and decided to make it their flagship phone last year.  I would say at this moment Android is still growing and it will continue to get better, the Motorola Droid is proof of that.  In fact the Droid is what has me thinking of ditching T-Mobile.

Lately I’ve gone back to my dilemma of wanting to get rid of my phone.  The hardware is terrible and I have no plans to get another HTC phone if I can help it.  My phone is easily twice as thick as an iPhone, smaller screen, and less battery.  Although I don’t know if I want to go to AT&T.  Their customer service treated me terribly when I tried to get a phone with them, oh yeah and when I said FU to the guy behind the counter that waited till I almost swiped my card to let me know it was going to be an additional $500 they decided to send me a bill for canceled service along with informing me to send back my iPhone.  I like Android enough I wouldn’t mind sticking to another phone with it.  The problem now is, do I wait or go with another one that may have slightly better hardware?

Day 2 of Movember. Slight stubble, most likely not visible in this picture.

Clearly if people donate my Stache will grow in faster.  Click my photo to go to my donation page.

Aeropress Coffee Maker

I just received my new Aeropress Coffee Maker in the mail today.  It’s a slick little gadget.  Now I like coffee but too much can upset my stomach.  I normally drink tea instead, I also have some single serving loose leaf tea steepers, the best being from Adagio.com.  With the Aeropress I can have a single cup of coffee or espresso without having to make a whole pot.  The one thing I like about the Aeropress over the tea steepers I have is that it’s easier to clean.  The way the Aeropress is designed makes cleaning it take a few seconds.  Tea Steepers aren’t terrible, but I could in theory clean the Aeropress without even using water.  The only downside to the Aeropress over a tea steeper is that it take a little more preparation.  Mostly because you need to do 10 seconds of stirring, I know it’s pretty rough.

Can’t wait to try this thing at my desk on Monday.

Check it out if you have the chance.  http://www.aerobie.com/Products/aeropress.htm

Some people have too much time on their hands in the office. What I saw when I opened my cabinet at my desk.