schmenzer speaks!

I am working with American Micrographics, a digital imaging and record retention service here in Milwaukee. We are doing a website to showcase the capabilities of the company. It is a cool place because not only can they do all the current digital imaging techniques but they have bunch of legacy machines like aperture card readers and several types of microfilm machines that represent several decades of record retention and archiving services. Converting these legacy storage systems to the digital age is an interesting process.

The website is, of course, Wordpress driven and will ultimately include a custom skin and several plug-ins to add required functionality. At this point I am adding content and working on how the info flows. Skinning will be the final phase.

Technorati Tags: wordpress

We will be running the April HFAY races at the Mini Speedway shop on the weekend of April 25,26 and 27.The exact time is still being determined but the Mini Speedway site will have it posted when it is available.

Technorati Tags: mini-z

Southparkstudios.com now has all episodes of South Park available in a streaming format. Only the most recent shows are not available for a short period of time. They are available for a week, taken down, and then put back thirty days later, permanently! Sweet! Hippies Rule!

Mini-Z Overland Obstacle 16

Originally uploaded by gasmith

Clearance testing.

This is part of a series of photos detailing the construction of an obstacle course for Mini-Z Overlands.

For more about Mini-Z racing check out minispeedway.com.

Last Friday, February 15th was the Open House in the 4-story building where I have the Mini Speedway track. The building is filled with artists, musicians and crafts people as well as my RC plane manufacturing biz, plus the Mini Speedway!

The official hours were 6PM to 9PM but we had people until at least 11PM.

In addition to a slightly larger than Wide-L layout for people to try running 2-minute races. We had Groovesquad Live, a local improvisational electronica band, Lena, a local artist who painted live and John Shlick, my partner in Schlick Cycles showing our excellent Performance Cruiser bicycle.

In addition I had my Pole Camera setup at a 12 foot height, just a few inches short of the ceiling to take remote photos from on high.

Over all we had a couple of hundred peole come through. It was an interesting crowd as many of the people were in the building to see specific artists but I think a lot of them came away with a better understanding of Mini Speedway and RC car racing. Hope we get a few of them to become regulars. I gave out first race free cards so I hope to see some of those come back!

Check out the Mini Speedway website for more info and Pix.

Technorati Tags: mini-z

The building our Mini Speedway shop is in, known locally as The Nut Factory owing to one of its previous incarnations, is having an open house on Friday, February 15th, 2008 from 6PM to 9PM.

Mini Speedway will be participating with Open Track Time racing our 1/28th scale rc race cars, entertainment from Groovesquad Live, a local improvisational electronica musician, specials and giveaways and, if all goes well, a fantastic local artist.

In addition to the Mini Speedway shop being open several other artist tenants of the building will also be participating.

Check out the Mini Speedway contact page for a map to the building.

I remember this bit from last year and it was funny then. Still is now!http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1304035668

Well, winter has set in here in Milwaukee and it is time for some indoor RC activity so I got a bunch of RCP Track, a Core Systems timer and cleared out some space at the slopeflyer.com shop and will be hosting 1/28th scale rc car racing right here in Milwaukee.

I set up a site for Mini Speedway RC at www.minispeedway.com that will provide information for our local racers, info for the Mini RC community in general and an online store.

We have a dedicated space for the track in a 1200 sq/ft facility. The track and associated useable space is about 800 sq/ft and the track occupies an area of about 18 x 30 feet. The remainder of the facility is dedicated to an RC airplane manufacturing business.

So, if you are an RC Car racing enthusiast in Milwaukee or Southeastern Wisconsin interested in Mini and Micro RC cars like Mini-Zs, xMods, iWavers, Firelap Nanoracers, come join us for fun and competition on a professional rc race track on the East Side of Milwaukee.

Here is an updated Amazon Wish List:

I recently began working with Poblocki Paving, a Milwaukee asphalt paving contractor, to improve site usability and search rankings.

When I began to work with Poblocki Paving the website had just undergone an extensive redesign and the business owner is happy with how the site looks but recognized that it could be easier for users to find the info they were looking for and that the tone of the site could be more friendly. In addition the web site has never ranked well in the major search engines. We aim to change that.

I began by getting some baseline analytics from Google Analytics to see what the site was currently getting for traffic as well as running some Web CEO reports on how the site ranked for important keyword phrases. As I suspected there is nowhere to go but up and so the work begins…

My son likes phones. He pretty much gravitates to any phone so the iPhone is nothing special to him but pushing buttons is. On the iPhone there is really only one button to push so he has at it. Well, the other day he picked up the iPhone and it was locked and he rapidly pushed the home button a few times and it brought up the iPod controller! I didn’t know it did that, thanks little buddy!

Reminds me of another feature I found by accident. In fact, I even went to the Apple store to find out what it was and those guys couldn’t tell me. Seems when you have a song paused on the iPod function the name of the song shows up under the time instead of the date. I think this must have been changed with the 1.1.1 update because now the song name, and album cover as well, shows up only when the iPod is playing.

Technorati Tags: iphone

Over 300 new features and several that are major and will change the way you use your Mac.

If Time Machine lives up to its billing as a way to go back in time and restore and file on your system the usefulness of a backup solution just got easier.

The new finder looks interesting but I’ll have to wait to see how it works and feels to give an objective opinion.

Spaces may prove to be cool. For me, the ability to define different workspaces for different tasks should make me a bit more productive. At any given time I am likely to have 18-22 apps open apps and bunches of windows. If Spaces can help me stay a bit more organized that would be a good thing.

If I heard about Quick Look in the past it must have blown right past my memory circuit. With tens of thousands of files I produced on my Mac having a way to breeze through them sounds cool.

I am looking forward to a faster and better Spotlight as well. I recently began relying a lot more on the systems “Find” features rather than trying to take the time to file every doc in a hierarchal folder system. I now toss every document in the same “Document” folder, all still Photos and graphics in the Pictures folder, Music in Music and Movies in Movies folder. That covers about 95% of my filing. So far so good. By keeping the folder sort on “Most Recent” and using Spotlight to find groups of documents on the same subject, I think I am saving some time.

I’ll probably have to upgrade even if it were not for any other feature that Boot Camp. I have one, and only one, program I HAVE to run in Boot Camp. It is an RC Simulator called RealFlight G3.5. Doesn’t work in Parallels.

So, I pre-ordered my copy at Amazon for $109. You can too!

“Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard” (Apple)

Technorati Tags: apple, mac software

It’s been a while since I looked at MySpace and I like the new default skin. It seems much less cluttered and it was immediately easier for me to find my way around. Now I’d like a way to always view pages with the default skin. I see a lot of personalized pages that just confuse me!

If you are looking at schmenzer speaks! on an iPhone you should be looking at a theme specifically formatted for easy and fast viewing on your iPhone. I got the Wordpress plugin that automatically detects an iPhone request for a page and then displays it using the appropriate iPhone formatted theme from http://iwphone.contentrobot.com. If you have visitors who access your Wordpress blog from an iPhone give this a shot. It does not affect viewers using other browsers who will still see the normal theme. Pretty cool!

Now I am on the hunt for the admin access tool that is formatted for doing blog posts from the iPhone!

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone

First, let me say that I am overwhelmingly happy with the iPhone, especially the phone, calendar, contacts and Safari parts. And, I never really expected to use the iPhone as a primary iPod but now that I have it I think that would be cool, unfortunately, non of my current 5G Video accessories work with the iPhone.

Bummer #1

I’m getting ready for a trip and decided to try the iPhone with my Pioneer DEH-P4900IB Car Stereo. No joy. I got an error message on the Pioneer unit and a notice on the iPhone that this is not a compatible accessory. This is really only a minor issue since I usually have my 60-gig 5th generation iPod hooked up but what I wanted to really know is if it will charge the iPhone. I had just taken it off the dock and it had a full charge so I didn’t notice but I’ll try it again. The DEH-P4900 unit has only been available since Dec 28, 2006 and it kind of bums me out that it doesn’t support the iPhone.

Bummer #2

Neither my wonderful Grado SR-80s or my Sony Earbud MDR-EX81LPs work as manufactured because the headphone port is recessed and the plugs won’t go in. I know there is an accessory that will extend the port but it seems kind of susceptible to damage. There is some chance I’ll have a friend help take the excellent Sony earbuds and mate them to the stock Apple earphones. I’d like the better sound as well as be able to keep the nearly hands free phone features of the stock Apple headset.

Bummer #3

My cool XtremeMac MicroMemo microphone is not supported either.This would actually be useful if it worked. I wouldn’t have to carry around the 60GB Video to make recordings though I don’t know if I’d plug the iPhone into the dongle at a Radiators show!

I expect we will see some similar devices in the future if not just updates of these units. Time will tell.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone

For some clients I bill for consultation time spent on the telephone. On my RAZR I could pull up a call and check the duration for the call and enter it into my time-tracking app so that when it is time to bill at the end of the month I don’t have to remember how long that phone call a couple of weeks ago was. Well, for the life of me I can’t find or figure out how to do this with the iPhone. From what I’ve found there is no iPhone call timer or call duration timer except for the overall usage timer. This is not really an issue at my office because I can just start a new task in the time-tracking app but sure would be cool on the iPhone.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone

Arrrgh! I found out a bit late but I be prepared for next year. ‘Tis marked on me calendar. September 19, Every year. Ye should do the same. If ye be needin’ more info set sails for http://talklikeapirate.com

I’ve been using eMusic for a while now as a companion to iTunes and am finding it very useful. The company is based in the UK and it seems to me to have a more “European” bent that iTunes. I have been exploring the Electronic genre quite a bit and have found a bunch of songs I like and probably would not have discovered any other way. There is a Related Artists section as well as the ability to explore other member’s playlists fro suggestions on new music.

You can sign up for a free trial at emusic.com and get 25 songs free. Seems like a good way to experience it! They also have a referral program so if you’d like an additional 25 free songs on your trial, shoot me an email to that effect to schmenzer@gmail.com and I’ll send you an invitation to take advantage of the extra free downloads.

When your trial is finished you can choose from several different plans with varying numbers of downloads per month. Songs can be had for as little as $.40 (40 cents). Seems like a deal to me.

Just a quick test while I wait for my haircut appointment. I’m working on my keyboarding skills! Also wanted to see how practical the Edge network is.

A Black & Decker GrassHog, model NST2018G, to be exact. So far this is a pretty nice unit. I got the GrassHog to replace my aging Craftsman Gas String Trimmer. I don’t remember the exact model but it was 6-8 years old and really LOUD!

A few things led me to replace the Craftsman unit. Sure, it was working OK but it leaked fuel, was REALLY NOISY, didn’t feed line well and was just wearing out after at least 6 seasons. Plus, I used it not just for trimming but edging and grooming my backyard RC race track. The track was grass, and still is, mostly, but it needs to be short for the 1/18th scale trucks my family likes to run. So, I used the trimmer in groom mode ie. beating the grass down around a 4 foot wide by 150 foot long track.

One of the main considerations when I got the new trimmer was noise. I was sometimes embarrassed using the gas string trimmer so I wanted a quiet electric job. Plus, I did not want to be encumbered by a cord so a rechargeable model was mandatory. After reading a few reviews I decided on the Black & Decker NST 2018G GrassHog.

The only negative I see on an otherwise positive experience so far is that I can out last the two included batteries. To be fair I have only recharged each about 3 times. They should continue to gain capacity for another few charges. And remember, I have not been using the GrassHog in a “typical” fashion. I had 6 weeks of un-groomed RC track to clean up and even longer on the yard edging and weed trimming. Weekly maintenance should take about 20 minutes, or only one battery’s worth.