Patrick Gensel

Cascade Of Libations

Moat Mountain Pub North Conway, NH

Well the time has finally come. in two days I will be heading west for the first time in my life. Really i’m quite surprised i’ve waited this long to do so. Wednesday evening I will be flying out of Philadelphia bound for Denver Colorado. This trip will be a culmination of things for me, such as adventure, exploration, climbing, friends, and hopefully some self discovery. I don’t really have any set in stone plans, and I kind of like that feeling. Though I really don’t have an itinerary, I do have some places I intend to try to get to, of course as you would imagine these destinations are climbing or hiking related. The places I want to get to are Eldorado Canyon, The Flatirons, and possibly a 14er. One thing I forgot to mention, There is one plan on this trip: Devils Tower. Devil’s Tower is a rock feature located in NortheasternWyoming, We intend to climb the Durrance route to the summit. I really hope that everything goes great on this trip and I get to see and experience a lot. when I return, expect a full report at www.campthesummit.com

Just a quick update, I created a new page called Portfolio that will display all of my creative media. check it out

Found this on Digg yesterday!

Click Photo for orignal post.

In the first edition of my video blog i review two apps for the Google Android platform: i Tweet a free Android Twitter client, and My Tracks a GPS tracking app. check out the video here:

Android app reviews:i Tweet and My Tracks from Patrick Gensel on Vimeo.

The Motorola Droid

I have had the Motorola Droid since 11am today, and so far i like what i am seeing. thats not to say it isn’t without its quirks, but in the grand scheme of things i like the device a lot. i have been a sucker for apple products the past few years, and had an iPhone for a short period of time, but the less than usable AT&T signal in my area pushed me back over to big red where i suffered on a blackberry curve for several months.

Look & Feel

when photos were first realeased of the Droid, i wasn’t super impressed, but there more is saw it, the more i liked the hard edges and somewhat retro feel of the device, and that has be validated with the device actually in my hand, it also doesn’t seem as huge as i anticipated which is great in my opinion. it has geek appeal i will tell you that much!

The Droid's slide out keyboard

the slide out on the keypad feels great, it slides out and locks into place with a reassuring click. the keyboard could use some space, but it is usable none the less, even the onscreen keyboards work better than expected.

Android Software

Coming from a guy who has used a Blackberry, Windows Mobile device, and an iPhone, i must say i like this a lot so far. its not as polished looking as the iphone, but its leaps and bounds ahead of the blackberry device i used in terms of visual appeal, and windows mobile, well we won’t even go there.

one thing i did find quite interesting, though i don’t know how effective it will prove is the gestured unlock. for those of you who don’t know, this form of unlocking your phone lets you set up a pattern you draw based on 9 points. its basically a game of connect the dots. it is a real unique spin on an alternative to a password.

importing my contacts was a cinch, literally all i had to do as a mac user is export my contacts as a vcard in address book, and import them into gmail, then my droid synced with gmail and grabbed all my contacts.

Voice search is nice, but i don’t see using it a lot unless maybe im driving, or just super lazy.

Camera

This phone is packing a 5 mp camera on board, which you would think would be great, and i think it still can be, but i think some software tweaking will be needed to do so. the major thing i saw was on occasion there was a bit of hesitation by the camera before it would capture the image. on the other hand though, i was thoroughly impressed with the video quality for a standard definition video device.

Box shot with Droid

Navigation

Google has really raised the bar with this one. a free turn by turn navigation app that has the major navigation companies shaking in there shoes. it is built on the already solid google maps platform, and even uses street view in some instances. unfortunatly i have not got to test drive this feature yet, but i will be sure to update as soon as i get out on the road tomorrow and test it out. i will say though that i have heard good things.

Android Market

this is like the app store for android, this is where you will go to get all the neat little add on toys you can handle, and if the droid is as well recieve by the public as it has been by the press then we can certainly expect a heap of developers to jump on the android bandwagon for there share of the cash to be made. hopefully this will lead to a larger catalog of apps to imbibe in. that being said, there is still an admirable anount of stuff available, sure its not the apple app store, but there is a lot of very similar stuff, and some different stuff as well. one thing i found intriguing is a free app called barcode scanner which uses the camera to capture and image of any barcode then has it give you a list of prices online for the item. this is great for comparative shopping to make sure your getting the best price.

Conclusion

though im sure i will be updating this over the next day to so as i discover new things about this device, i will conclude by saying that i am very pleased with this device so far, though the platform does have a lot of growing up to do, thats not to say that it isn’t competitive with the other players, because i believe it is, im just saying that this platform has great potential, it just needs to be realized.

Everyone knows Google, you know that search engine provider gone mega cloud computing super power. well they are currently beta testing called Goolge wave. really the only way i can describe it is that it is a combination of email and twitter. there is an inbox, drafts and so on, but on the right side there is the screen where all the conversing goes on. you send out what google calls waves. each wave can have a title, and multiple users. the wave kinda plays out like a twitter stream. honestly im not quite sure what Google is trying to accomplish with this app, but i don’t dislike it, just not quite sure what to make of it. i guess we shall find out in the coming weeks.

Google Wave Dashboard

The Motorola Droid has been announced, will it be a game changer, will it beat the iphone, the coming weeks will tell. here is a collection of the current news regarding verizons promising new contender.

Droid Navigates
Droid First hands on
Droid Unboxing
Droid finally Official!

OpenVPN
Today I had the joy of successfully configuring a VPN server, usually something like this can be tricky, especially when you want to do it on the cheap. i had messed around with Openvpn in different incarnations for a little while but it never quite worked how i wanted it to, then i discovered Openvpn Access Server. what is Openvpn Access Server you might ask, well it takes the power and flexibility of the open source Openvpn Platform and rolls it into a nice package that can be implement on several different platforms. my platform of choice is Ubuntu Server 9 64-bit. the beautiful thing with this piece of software is that once you have it installed on the server you never have to log into the server again, because Openvpn Access Server features a wonderfully designed Web interface where everything can be configured, and deployment is as simple as navigating to your servers ip address with the port specified during setup, and logging in with your credentials. the web interface provides the instructions to setup with windows, linux or Mac. another great thing about this software is it has the ability to configure with LDAP which allows for integration with active directory. the only catch to this software is that if you want to more than two concurrent users, you have to buy additional license, but at 5 dollars a user they really aren’t asking much. i highly recommend this to anyone who needs to connect to there workplace or home with the need to deploy rapidly, and effectively.

Visit the OpenVPN Website.

OpenSSH
another nice tool i implemented on my ubuntu server is openSSH, which allows me to securely connect to my ubuntu server from anywhere as if i were right next to the computer. i think this is a very good complement to OpenVPN since it would allow you to easily troubleshoot any server side issues remotely. it works well with putty, or from any unix terminal with an internet connection.

Visit the OpenSSH Website.

Next week i will be finally heading into the wilderness for a well needed several days away from society. i was supposed to do this in June in the White mountains of New Hampshire, but that was foiled from a broken foot i sustained. fortunately for me, my friend was kind enough to extend me an invite to his home in Atlanta, followed by several days on the AT in northern Georgia. I just finished gathering a few essentials this week such as a Snow Peak Litemax stove and and a GSI pinnacle soloist cooking system to complement the array of other gear i already own. of course as usual expect plenty of photos when i return, and provided my blackberry battery holds, updates from the trail can be had at www.twitter.com/patrickgensel.