Why can't smartphone cases and mounts get along?

I hate the modern cellphone mount & case market, I really do. Sure, while there are dozens or hundreds of choices of neat and colourful cases with a variety of features for most phones, and there are almost as many mounting systems for cars, stereo systems, etc., rarely do they cooperate.

Here's an example: lets say I want a nice protective case from Otterbox. Now lets say I want to mount my phone in my car. Does Otterbox also make a car mount for my phone in their case? No. Does anyone else? Yes, exactly one that I can find from Slipgrip, but it requires that I plug the phone in manually every time I insert it in the mount. Okay so what if I want a good mount that supports hard wiring to the ignition? Proclip makes some really nice ones of those, but I can't use them if I have even a half mm extra of thickness from a cover on my phone. Without a case on my phone, I can drop it into a Proclip vehicle mount and have it charging and auto-connected to my stereo but I can't use a protective cover.

With my last phone, a Dell Streak 5", I actually disassembled my Proclip mount from my previous HTC G1 (Dream) and epoxied it to my disassembled Slipgrip windshield mount I ordered for it. This let me mount the phone in a nicer position (something Proclip mounts are excellent for), but still didn't solve my wiring problem.

Now I have a beautiful new Galaxy Nexus. It has a three-pin connector on the side for auto-connecting to the associated vehicle and desk docking stations. This lets me drop the phone in and have it automatically begin charging and connect to audio but once again, prevents me from putting a case over it.

What I'd really like is to eliminate all such connectors on modern cell phones. I don't understand why we even have them. I expect any modern device to support built-in inductive charging with Bluetooth for communication. Between those two, my phone shouldn't need any external ports accessible at all while in its case, and still be just as functional and stay charged while docked. Alas, this is only true if you own a Nintendo 3DS.

Personal web presence

In this modern era of social networks and blogging, I've realized how woefully out of date my personal website has become.  I've had my own website since 1995, presently hosted on my own vanity domain http://mikebabcock.ca.  When I started blogging (which I'm not very good at, as you can see), I also stopped maintaining my website the way I once had.  Various pages are years out of date, although some are still referenced quite often by people looking for specific information from that era.

What is a modern geek to do?  I don't like blogs as an end-all and be-all of web presence, they're too limiting in format.  At the same time, a traditional website is a lot of maintenance work.  Thoughts?

On quoting scripture

I noticed this 'hot' post on Google+ today:

One of the many things I don't understand about devout Christians is that they seem to believe that quoting the Bible gives them credibility with non-believers. My general reaction when confronted with a line of religious scripture is one of "this doesn't make any sense" which is then further reinforced by the inability to explain why I should find the passage relevant.
In future, Christians of the world, I will respond in kind by quoting the ingredients list of the wrapper of whatever food product I have recently consumed. At least my response is likely to be based in fact even if is logically irrelevant to the matter in hand.

I responded:

Within any given worldview, any one person will end up citing references they believe to be relevant to the data at hand.  A philosopher may quote Nietzsche while a scientist may quote Darwin.  A Christian who cites the Bible is no different.  Without context, without sharing a worldview, the citation is meaningless.  Any intelligent and interested person would bother searching out the meaningful context of the quote no matter which of the above were cited.  Singling out the Bible and religious people seems arrogant.

Excited and worried

Have you ever been excited about something that worries you immensely?  We're at that stage right now in our house.

My wife has an X-linked genetic disorder (which she's written about on her own blog) called OTC that not only makes her life difficult regarding diet, but means there's additional danger in child birth and the possibility of losing the baby shortly after birth.

The problem is that being X-linked, and male babies normally only having one X chromosome, the males afflicted with this condition do not survive past about 72 hours.  Their systems build up with toxic ammonia that isn't properly scrubbed from their blood streams.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, now a healthy nine year old girl, the hospital arranged for genetic screening of her and her affected family members so as to isolate the exact genetic anomaly.  This done, they were able to then test the amniotic fluid and tell us for certain our daughter would not also be a carrier.

Unfortunately, our second child was not so lucky.  First we found out he was a boy, which while normally exciting, left us with the concern he may not survive.  Then the news came in that he was in fact a carrier.  I've written briefly on that before, but basically it was terrible.

I must say in advance that I have nothing against animated features. I thoroughly enjoyed the Toy Story movies, and I both own and love Shrek, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc and Ratatouille, all of which are very well written and well produced movies. Now that that's out of the way, please don't waste your money watching Monsters vs. Aliens.

This wasn't a horrible movie, but it really wasn't worth paying to watch at all. Aside from the 3D gimmick, the plot is worse than most Saturday morning cartoons I've watched with an insanely silly choice of monster types and only a few well-executed jokes. In fact, most of the funniest material is the horribly blatant references to other source material which you only enjoy because those movies were good.

Despite its having an all-star voice-acting cast (who really did the best they could do with the material they were given), the movie was panned by the 'real critics' out there too, with an average score of 56% among respectable reviewers.

Moving back up to this week, we've just received the news back that we're having a boy again.  The full genetic screening results are about two weeks away.  The emotional levels in the house are indescribable.  We're excited to possibly have a healthy baby boy.  We're also concerned about going through the incredible pain of losing another child.

In some sense, we're reliving that pain already, because the memories are so strong.

Falling behind

Have you ever put something off intending to get to it soon, then realizing hours, days, weeks or months later that it still hasn't gotten done?

If you haven't, good for you and go write a book on discipline for the rest of us. Today I realized I had some time, thought of playing a video game or something equally mind numbing and then realized I still haven't uploaded my photos from our visit to Ottawa and Montreal. That was a month ago now, and as I loaded the memory card to finally get to it, I see that I also forgot about my Auto Show photos from February. Oops.

So as the first few dozen upload, I thought I'd write this. This may very well be the least interesting bit I've ever put on-line, but yes, they're uploading. New photos. Lots and lots of car photos at the moment. Feel free to peruse over at my Flickr page.

Next, raking the leaves. Sigh. Maybe tomorrow :)

Mobile blogging

Being able to blog from my phone isn't new, but I've thus far avoided actually doing it. No real reason; it just wasn't on my list of things to do.
That said, today Blogger for Android had another update in the Market and I figured I should either give it a try or uninstall it.
I must say I can't imagine having done this before Swype was available as it makes writing so much garey on a touch screen.
Swype, in case you're not aware is a program or app that lets you drag your finger around the on-screen keyboard instead of tapping on each letter of a word. To swype "hello" for example, I put my finger on the "h" and then drag it across the keyboard left to the "e", and without living my finger, drag it back over to the "l". Now there are two of that letter in a row so I do a little loop on it and then slide up a bit to the "o", lift my finger and the entire word appears.
Now there are occasions when multiple words have very similar Swype scrawls, and if it's not sure which to use, a pop-up list of options appears. In general, even with mistakes, it's much faster than screen clicking and still slower at least than my keyboarding. Much like good old fashioned curve writing however, you can develop a decent muscle memory for frequently Swyped words.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8