Is that a way to politely phrase a situation where you feel like a cockroach without a head? This past week has been a crazy one and continues to boil down, but for good things. I’ve been fighting a fever, then a cold (partially still here), trying to balance sleep for the cold and study for a calculus exam with less then a day opposed to a weeks worth of time, packing the gear giving it a full work down, and trying not to forget to pack my unmentionables!

But I digress. Enough about that awful crap because its behind us. Tomorrow we head out for LAX and then off to Baja the following day. I can’t wait to finally get the sand between my toes. They will have internet on the boat so make sure to stay tuned for all your photography goodness!

Other cool news tidbits:

• Google is coming out with a new service very soon called “Google Voice.” It is basically VOIP, but you can create your own phone numbers just like vonage, Or you can tie all your existing phone numbers to ring when that phone number is called, or you can view all your voice mail from the web, or you can send text messages, or… There is a ton of new features. One really useful is a speech to text function for voice mail. You can check it out here and sign up to be notified of its release real soon here.
• I have always wanted to set up my own SMS (Text messaging service) where I can receive responses as I text a number. I don’t own some big bad iphone or expensive smart phone so I rely on googles SMS text messaging service for all sorts of tidbits of information. Ever wanted to create your own? Well now you can! A website called TextMarks allows you to set up a 140 character text message response when you text 41411 with a certain command/message. The last 20 characters has some text advertisement to keep it free. Well one thing I have always wanted is the tides and sunrise/sunset on my phone. So this site allows you to crawl a website for information and pull the text between any two words or pieces of text you specify. I Found a local tide site that doesn’t need special updating or access and is constantly up to date. Used this one here. And I had it pull text after “2009-.” It is a bit rudimentary. but it works and that’s all I need it for. If you want give mine a try. (Keep in mind standard text messages apply.) So it’s just  like a standard text, but if you get them for free or have a bunch try it out. Text “gktides” to #41411. It shaves off the end part, but based on the other data I can tell what it is. A neat little tool. If you’d like to save your texts and see it first; here is an example of what mine looks like:”03-13 4:32 AM EDT -0.56 feet Low Tide
  2009-03-13 7:11 AM EDT Sunrise
  2009-03-13 8:01 AM EDT Moonset
  2009-03-13 10:15 AM”

  One last thing. To make texting a bit easier. Name the 41411 number as one of your contacts with a name you’ll remember and is also easy to recall when creating a text message.

• If you use a plain google as your home page try out Blackle. It is google with a black background. Does the same thing, but saves a ton of energy as we all use it more and more. Even has a nifty approximation calculator to see all the energy were saving by using it. http://www.blackle.com/ It is a strict search bar though, doesn’t have the tabs for images and such so it can be a draw back. I leave it for IE which I don’t use that much. I use firefox the most. I use www.google.com/ig as my start page to pull in all the data at once.
• I am working on another portfolio on my own webspace. Save some money in the process and allow more functionality. It is in a completely alpha stage, not even beta, but I would like all of your opinions. Feel free to let me know what you think. Portfolio

Isla Carmen, an old salt mine that is now a part of history.

Baja here we come!