Greetings from Bellingham Washington.

We decided this morning that the best thing we could do to celebrate the 4th of July, our country’s day of independence, would be to spend it in Canada. We poured the kitties, ratties, birdies, fishies and piggy some huge-ass piles of food and water (the fishies have a whole other tank), threw some clothes in some bags and headed northward.

After driving all day and timing rush hour in Tacoma, Seattle, Everett — really an place along I-5 that might have a rush hour — JUUUST right to maximize the amount of time traveling 60 MPH below the speed limit, we decided to call it a day about 20 miles from Our Neighbors to the North. Tomorrow, after a continental breakfast, we’ll be off to one of the other countries with the unfortunate distinction of sharing a landmass with us. I hope they won’t judge us too strongly for that.

Priority #1 is not hearing any freakin’ fireworks. Based on the rumored politeness levels of the average Canadian, their long wait times for medical care, and laws prohibiting anything that’s loud, smelly or illuminated, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Priority #2 is to acquire some Mountain Dew — and not just because it rhymes. I may have been making up the laws in the prior priority, but one that I’m NOT MAKING UP prohibits translucent soft drinks from containing caffeine in Canada. Which means that Mountain Dew has none. Crazy.

Oh, yeah: Priority #1 was ACTUALLY to make sure we turn off roaming on our Android phones so that we don’t rack up 11K of international data charges, because, even combined, we don’t have enough Twitter followers to qualify for the “50K followers so the rules don’t freakin’ apply to you” discount that Adam Savage gets. We’d actually have to pay our bill, so we’re smart enough to take action to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Defined tags for this entry: 4th of july, canada, fireworks, mountain dew, road trip, you hosers

Today, after some tinkering, I accomplished something of which I’ve long dreamt: placing a Voice-Over-IP call, from a real phone number to a real phone number, from my Android phone, using only my 3G/EDGE data connection. No plan minutes involved.

Here’s a brief how-to (that’s not even dependent upon having an Android phone):

1) Get Google Voice. (This step is going to be kind of a buzzkill for most people, as Google is still in some sort of indeterminate closed beta with the Google Voice system. I’m not exactly sure how I ended up with access, so I don’t know what to tell you to do to get it too.)

2) Create a free Gizmo account.

3) In your Google Voice settings, add the ‘SIP’ address that Gizmo gives you to your Google Voice account, selecting ‘Gizmo’ as the type of number. (Detailed instructions.)

4) Install a Gizmo-compatible client on your phone. The folks at Gizmo have written clients for many popular phones. You can get one at http://gizmo5.com/pc/products/mobile/. If your phone supports ‘J2ME,’ then chances are they’ve got you covered.

(On Android, I installed ‘sipdroid,’ which isn’t a Gizmo-specific application, but one that can handle any Voice-Over-IP service. (You can find sipdroid in the Android Market, but that version only works via wi-fi. Get the full version which supports 3G/EDGE calling via their site.) Configure it using the info from the Gizmo support page.)

5) Use Google Voice’s web interface to tell it to call whatever number you want, selecting your Gizmo number as the one to ring when connecting. (Gizmo offers incoming calls for free; telling Google Voice to initiate a call and ring your Gizmo is technically an incoming call, even when you’re calling a friend.)

6) Tell the Gizmo client on your phone to answer the call. You’re now connected, and you’re not using any minutes.

A nice side-effect of this Gizmo compatibility is that you can run Gizmo clients on any computers you have around. When someone calls your Google Voice number, all the computers will ‘ring’ as well as your cellphone, so you can answer it from one of them instead. More minutes saved.

Defined tags for this entry: android, cheapskate, free, gizmo, google, google voice, voice over ip, voip

I think Disney/Pixar are headed in a very wrong direction with the 3rd Toy Story film:

Defined tags for this entry: disney, leo tolstoy, movies, pixar, posters, sequels, toy story

One of my favorite movies is Steve Oedekerk’s High Strung. Chances are you haven’t seen it, because it wasn’t released theatrically, was only available as a rental, and the company that put out the VHS tape went out of business. You may occasionally run across a copy at ye olde video shoppe, but it’s pretty unlikely since most rental copies have since been stolen.

Over 10 years ago Steve Oedekerk’s official website reported that they had finished the video mix for a DVD release, and all that needed done was a 5.1 audio mix and menus and extras and whatnot. About 3 years ago I ran across a VHS copy, digitized it, and made a torrent of it so that more people could have a chance to see this gem of a film — and maybe increase demand for the “any time now” DVD release in the process.

It’s been a couple years since I’ve checked for an update on the DVD release, but yesterday I came across a copy online purporting to be a “DVD rip.” So I downloaded it. Turns out that it is a significantly higher-res copy than the one I put up, and even wide-screen to boot, but still pretty obviously VHS-sourced. It smelled fishy, so I pulled out my copy and compared them side by side.

Click for larger

I then found the same frame in each version and did some scaling and lined them up. Here, the “wide-screen” version is outlined in red, overlaid atop my full-screen version.

Click for bigger

So, as you can see, someone simply cropped and stretched the full-screen VHS copy and pretended as if it were a 1.78:1 wide-screen-sourced copy. Since it is cropped down, it means that there’s even LESS of the film visible, and since it is scaled it means everyone has put on a good 10 pounds. It also means that there is still no DVD.

Bummer.

(Until a DVD does get released, you might want to check it out here: http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3464649. It makes me very happy that 3 years later there are still seeds on that torrent.)

Defined tags for this entry: dvd, high strung, movies, steve oedekerk, torrent

I’d like to take a second to commend this dude: http://www.thepirategoogle.com/

Essentially he just proved that the “Google Defense” is, in fact, a perfectly valid argument.

From the site:

The intention of this site is to demonstrate the double standard that was exemplified in the recent Pirate Bay Trial. Sites such as Google offer much the same functionality as The Pirate Bay and other Bit Torrent sites but are not targeted by media conglomerates such as the IFPI as they have the political and legal clout to defend themselves unlike these small independent sites.

UPDATE: Google has blocked this site from searching Google. How retarded is that?

Defined tags for this entry: google, in your face, not cool Google, pirate bay, torrents