Shaukland

I stumbled back across this video, and with much of it showing...

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:39:40 -0800

I stumbled back across this video, and with much of it showing my 2011, it is a good way to close out the year. Bring on 2012…

A Straight Person's Guide to Gay Etiquette

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 19:31:00 -0700

A Straight Person's Guide to Gay Etiquette:

While this website is something like 15 years old, it includes some really solid advice for straight friends of gay people. I’ll be an usher in a wedding in two weeks, so that section is particularly interesting to me.

Beyond Coming Out: Long-Term Strategies To Avoid Pissing Your Gay And Lesbian Friends Off

genderqueer:

“You’re worried. You know, from various statistics that have seeped into your brain via the media, that approximately one in ten Americans is either gay or lesbian. And yet, to your knowledge, no one you know is homosexual. Since you know more than ten people, you can only assume that this is because your gay and lesbian acquaintances are still in the closet, at least relative to you. Your fear is that one day, one of them is bound to come out to you — and you won’t know what to do.”

Includes advice for straight people that goes beyond the coming-out situation, such as “How Not To Flaunt Your Heterosexuality”.

You can take the boy out of Wisco… … but he’ll...

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:33:00 -0700

You can take the boy out of Wisco…

… but he’ll go back.

I trekked to Madison last week to see friends and help with the ever-amazing All-Campus Party. The best event was Club Bucky, which we revamped last year to take place in a giant event tent, in the backyard of a UW-Madison residence hall.

You really have to see it to believe it, so I did a time lapse of the 4.5 hours. Dancing, sixty pounds of glow sticks, and another successful alcohol-free event for the campus.

Nice work, Wisconsin Alumni Student Board. Make sure you watch in full screen and HD.

Dear Wisconsin: Spring has been cancelled due to lack of...

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 18:00:00 -0700

Dear Wisconsin: Spring has been cancelled due to lack of hustle.

"Whenever I’m filling out an online form with a drop down box for US States, I still hit the..."

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 08:33:19 -0700

“Whenever I’m filling out an online form with a drop down box for US States, I still hit the “w” for Wisconsin. Then realize what I’ve done and hit “c” for California.”

General Sherman, the largest tree on the planet by volume and...

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 12:24:58 -0700

General Sherman, the largest tree on the planet by volume and mass. Emily, Kate, and Kailey were here for the last few days. We capped off a city trip with the complete opposite, an excursion into the snow-topped mountains of Sequoia National Park.

Snow chains and all, we made it to the top relatively early and had this giant to ourselves. Absolutely breathtaking. This photo is a vertical panorama so you can see the whole perspective.

Amazing scenery as I flew into Las Vegas yesterday. I miss the...

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:48:00 -0800

Amazing scenery as I flew into Las Vegas yesterday. I miss the desert and mountains!

keepyourselfwarm: “Skinny Love (Das Kapital Remix)” - Bon...

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:45:19 -0800

keepyourselfwarm:

“Skinny Love (Das Kapital Remix)” - Bon Iver

Hotness.

I finally got my Cape Town panorama printed large scale for my...

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:00:00 -0800

I finally got my Cape Town panorama printed large scale for my living room. So fitting.

For those that haven’t seen it before, it is a nearly 360º panorama from atop Lion’s Head at sunset. There’s a full moon rising above the city on one side, at the same the the sun sets into the ocean on the other. Simply fantastic thing to experience. See my blog post about it to hear more.

It has been cold in Wisconsin for a long time (or so I hear)....

Sun, 27 Feb 2011 16:20:09 -0800

It has been cold in Wisconsin for a long time (or so I hear). In the spirit of better weather, and something Badgers love and miss… here is a time lapse video that I did last June at the Terrace.

The is the first time I’ve posted it, I just enjoyed putting it together at the time. And yes, that is Spiderman on the screen. Oh, Madison summer. It’s coming soon!

A Kindergarten Teacher Speaks

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:13:11 -0800

Lots to say about what is happening in Wisconsin to dissolve unions under the guise of balancing the budget. But, I thought I would share just one thing.

It is somehow poetic that your kindergarten teacher can show you the simplest things, like counting and letters and sharing when you are five years old—and many years later teach more complicated things like the importance of today’s legislation. This is a message I got from her:

“We are fighting for rights that we achieved in the strikes of ‘72, ‘74, and ‘76. In my first year of teaching (1969) I had two kindergarten classes which had 35 kids in each session am/pm.

There were no assistants or specialists. Two of the issues of the strikes were class size and a 30 minute duty free lunch (without students). These are two issues we will lose without the right to bargain.

Thanks for supporting us we need all the help we can get.”

These are the people at our Capitol the last week. She’s been teaching for 41 years, and is still someone very special to her students. She remains one of the best teachers around. Thank you!

We reached a heat record for the day yesterday. I took...

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:51:47 -0800

We reached a heat record for the day yesterday. I took advantage.

In love with this. Can’t stop listening.

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:00:06 -0800

In love with this. Can’t stop listening.

"I want to touch you in real time not find you on YouTube, I want to walk next to you in the..."

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:36:27 -0800

“I want to touch you in real time
not find you on YouTube,
I want to walk next to you in the mountains
not friend you on Facebook.
Give me one thing I can believe in
that isn’t a brand name.”

- I Am An Emotional Creature

Hands On: After Leaving iPhone, One Month with Nexus S

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:17:02 -0800

I bought my first iPhone shortly after the original launched in 2007. I had been saving up for about a year, following the then-smaller rumor mill about when this magical new phone would arrive. I even skipped the replacement of a stolen iPod as I waited to get this from my new phone. Since then, I’ve had the 3G and 3GS.

Despite working at the Apple Store when iPhone 4 launched, I decided not to buy one. Mostly because of my possible move to San Francisco, where AT&T service is deplorable, but also because I had started looking at Android phones. Yes, my years-old Apple loyalty was being tested.

I was losing calls like it was a feature on my iPhone, and I was becoming frustrated with the closed nature of the OS and its limitations on my Google services. It was, then, not a difficult choice when the new flagship “Pure Google” Nexus S was released and offered to me as a gift from work.

I’m now one month into my ownership, and I’ve been very pleased. Read on for what I’ve loved and hated about the phones, the transition, and learning a completely new OS.

Game Changing:

Service. I can make calls, I can receive calls. I was dropping so many before it was maddening. Not only that but I can enter my building, go up the stairs, go in my apartment, and then talk from anywhere in my apartment. These things were not possible before. This has also been helped by my switch T-Mobile.
Google Voice integration. As a Google Voice user, I appreciate that the functionality is built-in at the operating system level. All of my text messages are free, so I’m now saving about $20 per month. On the iPhone, I was able to use the Google Voice app, but had to launch is manually, and OS-level commands like tapping phone numbers and using voice dialing were still sending calls through the native dialer. Irritating.
Voice Actions. Not only is the recognition quite reliable and accurate, a command like “Call Home Depot” actually finds your current position, searches for the nearest Home Depot, and dials the number within seconds. ”Navigate to the Rose Bowl” actually worked to get us there, providing turn by turn directions the whole way. My favorite is “send a text to (contact), I’m in the car, it’ll still be another 20 minutes because traffic is bad.” Yes, this actually transcribes a text message that you can hit the send button on. I’ve used it while driving many a time. Voice Actions=Incomparable.

The Good:

GMail. I love my GMail account, and can now have access to all the great features that I was missing before in the mail app. Labels, true threading, stars, reporting spam, and being able to reply from any of the email addresses that I can normally send from. It is a great app… I only miss unified inbox.
Calendar. Likewise, I’ve ditched the janky exchange connection that it was using before. I can see attendees on events, can RSVP. It is just more functional.
Music App. This is something I didn’t know I was missing, but there’s a bunch of added functionality that I’ve really liked. When playing a song, you can tap and hold on the artist, song, or album to start a search in YouTube, Last.fm, Pandora, or the web. This has been handy when I want to start a streaming station from an artist I like on Pandora or something. Since iPhone’s conception came off of the heels of the flagship iPod, it is ironic that Apple has fallen behind in this area.
Live Last.fm Scrobbing. Similarly, the music app will also scrobble my songs to my Last.fm profile, on-the-fly! This is something that users have been requesting for years, but iPhone closed system hasn’t allowed the modification of the iPod app to do it. It is great not having to sync my device up to Last.fm to get this info anymore. Love it.
Tethering + Wifi Hotspot. I didn’t think I would use this very much, but I’ve found that having the option to do free tethering from my Nexus has saved me many times. From train rides to Chicago, to hotel rooms at the Rose Bowl, and airports in between… it has really saved me when I needed a connection that wasn’t there or would have been expensive. It also doesn’t hurt that T-Mobile offers this for free, and I have unlimited data.
On transitioning: As opposed to a year ago, the app development on Android has really sped up. Almost all of my apps were available on Android market, so they are generally the same. There are a few missing, see below. I was also really worried about transferring all my text message history, because who wants to lose that? One thing that I loved most about iPhone was having every text message for the last few years if I needed to reference it or just for kicks. After moving about 22,000 texts to the Android app, I’m up-to-date! (Do I really text that much?!)

The Bad:

The Unknown! As with any interface switch, I’m still learning and have engrained thought about how things should work. For example, when there is a field of text that is pretty long, and still tap and hold to wait for a cursor that I can drag around (iPhone), and instead get the copy text dialog box. I just learned yesterday that you can actually swipe the text without tapping it to scroll it. Pretty simple, but I’ve been doing it wrong forever, and didn’t know what was wrong. These sorts of things happen, and it’s annoying.
DRM and iPhone. I was bought into the iPhone platform. Songs, apps, etc. Luckily, I didn’t have a ton, and my paid apps weren’t plentiful. My DRMed music won’t play on the Nexus, so I had to upgrade a number of songs to non-DRM versions to correct this. It was worth it, and only cost about $10.00. Irritating though.
Keyboard. I think it is more sensitive, or I’m not used to it? Either way, it is slightly harder to type on. I hope I get better.
I miss the physical vibrate button on iPhone. I never realized how often I feel in my pocket to see now only if my phone is silences, but when my phone is upright and how to find buttons for volume and the such. I never know if my phone is right-side-up anymore!
I miss AirPlay and Tap Tap Revenge. Two of my favorite apps, I can no longer control my iTunes wirelessly, play music to the speakers wirelessly, or tap my fingers to rock star status with my favorite game. Hopefully developers will solve this problem for me.

Overall: This list isn’t comprehensive, they are just the major things I’ve noticed during my switch. By all means, both phones are great. But, one of main problems with the iPhone right now lies in search… it sucks. Finding things locally, finding your way around, finding your email, and connecting content you have with content your want online. The Nexus S does a better job at this and it has made it a great companion the last few weeks. I’m really enjoying my new phone.

"When you are in your new city..."

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:22:54 -0800

“… find all the old constellations you knew from your old city. That’s very reassuring. It’s something you were used to seeing before, and there it is again, right above your house.

It makes the whole world seem smaller, because the people that you miss are not that far away. You’re both looking at the same sky.”

-Kami, Cape Cod, Massachusettes. From the book Life after College.

That seems difficult from SF. Damn you, light pollution.

Goodbye Los Angeles. It was a nice introduction, but I prefer Northern California. You did,...

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:02:00 -0800

Goodbye Los Angeles. It was a nice introduction, but I prefer Northern California. You did, however, provide lots of things for me to do with my friends.

Soul II Soul put it best—Back to Life, Back to Reality.

Video

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 19:15:12 -0800

It is 3:00am Central Time. I’m getting ready to board a...

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 01:08:01 -0800

It is 3:00am Central Time. I’m getting ready to board a flight to Pasadena to cheer my Badgers to a Rose Bowl win! Where are you?

Badger Spotlight: Shaun Aukland—A Badger and a Googler

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:04:51 -0800

I was interviewed by the Wisconsin Alumni Association for their Badger Spotlight series. Props to Michael Hebert for writing it and caring about what I’m up to out here! See you all for the Rose Bowl.