So, I'm testing the code for stolen phone--send an SMS with GPS coordinates and snap a stealth photo back and front camera (which is the uploaded to Dropbox as part of my DB config). I wanted to use a simple trigger to fire off the code, instead of hitting the play button, so I chose "camera shake" for brevity's sake.

Awesome pictures, as one might guess.

I'm also trying to work out what Defcon Bears should encompass.

Right now, upon receipt of a text with the word "funkytown" (SPN fans know whereof I speak) takes my phone out of any silent mode, and bounces up the volume just in case. Doesn't currently announce itself, though. And the settings changes are permanent.

Sensible? I had been thinking of putting the changes on a timer (so it would revert after thirty or however many minutes) but that doesn't seem as simple as I'd originally hoped. Another consideration is that the settings will be changed for just that one person--so if my sister funkytowns me from her Blackberry, it'll only ring if she calls me from the same device. I'm trying to work out if that's practical, or will people be texting me so they can call me from a land line?

Also, are there really some times you don't want it screaming at you? What if it was during a calendar entry with the word "movie" in it? Should it maybe "just" vibrate ferociously? That's still going to annoy the other watchers, but significantly less.

Hmm....

This is hard.

Yeah, sounds reasonable. There is definitely opportunity for abuse, depending on your friends' sense of humor. The SO Byfuglien'ed me in the middle of a crowded department store once, to find me. Fortunately for me, I had yet to reset it. But it would have been very embarrassing had it succeeded.

I know nowt about (those don't rhyme in my head, FWIW) Byfuglieri, so I skimmed the wikipedia page of the hockey player, and all that stood out was this:

Byfuglien has appeared in a video supporting You Can Play, a campaign dedicated to fighting homophobia in sports

So I'm more confused than before.

My sister does get grumpy when I don't pick up during the work day. I think she understands I have a trufax grownup job where I have to do tings instead of waiting wth bated breath for her to call me randomly once a month, but I can't be sure. She might get excitable. However, ever since my mother's diagnosis (and my selfsame sister's reluctance TO CALL ME DURING WORK HOURS WITH CANCER NEWS) I've been kinda twitchy about which call I might be ignoring and which I'm not.

Maybe I should set up a filter on the Google voice transcriptions for hot-button words, and robo-call them back ASAP. That totally wouldn't be an overreaction...

No, he's awesome, that's true, but it just happens that Byfuglien is my trigger word. Because he's my favorite player that no longer plays for my team, but also because his name is really hard to spell, and it's unlikely that someone would be randomly texting me about his excellent play.

I didn't mean to be confusing. I thought I'd mentioned before that he was my trigger word. Although now you will all know this and can totally set off my phone. So maybe that was a bad idea.

Of course, when you say "trigger word" I have a whole different thought...I think this conversation is inherently flawed.

If only I had your phone number! I'd be Byfugging you left right and centre...

My Chumby died a couple months ago. I didn't consider replacing it with a Chumby--it was an interesting piece of hardware, but I wasn't totally happy with the solidity of the hardware, and the software was a bit glitchy too...in the end I got a tablet easel, and have the Touchpad doing a (pretty subpar) job instead. I just stumbled into something which informed me that the hardware arm had gone dead, and the software had been sold to Sony, who'd also stopped selling their hardware....damn.

I did poke around to see if a cheap tablet would fit the slot properly, and came away with the impression that it wouldn't. Cheap tablets weren't sacrificing the right things, precisely, to leave a better-than-Chumby in its wake. I mean, why not just take the phone/tablet you actually like and use that instead?

(WebOS is sucking at it, because I had to spend money to get the app solution I have, and there are two apps running--one clock and one alarm app...such a damned shame...)

I know! But I don't know what I should call it! Yeah, we may be having a conversation fail. But anyway, yes.

If only I had your phone number! I'd be Byfugging you left right and centre...

(And you do. It's in my profile for the nonce, for f2f reasons.) BUT DON'T EVERYBODY BYFUG ME!

So, I decided I need an actual desktop computer so I can carry my laptop around outside my house sometimes without disrupting my ongoing processes, so I ordered myself a new Mac mini, and while I was spending money on that getting an iPad mini also didn't seem so very extravagant.

What I need help with is my naming scheme. Thus far, my portable Mac devices have been named for Pratchett witches (the laptop is Granny Weatherwax, iPad=Nanny Ogg, iPhone=Magrat) so maybe I should go with Tiffany Aching for the iPad mini? Or maybe that should be the name of the desktop mini, since she's all tied to the Chalk. Either way, I don't know what to name the new thing that isn't named Tiffany. Suggestions?

There's lots of witches if you don't need them all to be competent witches! You could do Annagramma, or Desiderata, or you could do Lily if you can have an evil computing device, just keep it away from mirrors.

My devices are all LotR themed, so there's no shortage of names, but I have been using the scheme so long there are definitely less favored characters in the mix at this point.

Ooh, ooh, or Miss Tick!

I just recycled a name. I feel I'm cheating, but I really like the name, and the last hardware to have it can no longer power up--that makes it fine to roll around another Cassandra, right? RIGHT???