Inside the Mind of Suz

Ever since the iPhone 3GS debuted last month, there has been a race to the App store to provide Twitter apps and add-ons that provide video tweeting functions. Twittelator Pro, Tweet Reel, Tweet Media, VideoUp for Facebook, and TwitVid are all taking advantage of the 3GS’ new video capabilities.

That’s all well and good, but some of us have been recording and sharing video with our iPhones for quite some time now. We are the ones who chose to jailbreak our devices an install either Cycorder or iPhone Video Recorder.

I was pretty sure it’d only be a matter of time before 3rd party developers started including the 3G crowd into some video apps. I was thinking it’d be something along the lines of the Pixelpipe fix using PPVideoEnabler (available free via Cydia).

Presently, there are a few workarounds for jailbroken 3G users to share video via Twitter. Pixelpipe/PPVideoEnabler actually does allow you to share video via Twitter. And if you link your YouTube account to Twitter, you can share video that way as well.

I was extremely thrilled to see that qTweeter’s new update provides the very first video tweet functionality for 3G owners. Leave it to one of my fave apps to come through with the save!

qTweeter uses the popular TwitVid service to upload and share video. You provide you Twitter username and password in the qTweeter settings and that’s it! You call the app, select options, and it prompts you to either record or select a video from your library. I have bother Cycorder and iPhone Video Recorder and qTweeter pulls up Cycorder. I like iPhone Video Recorder better, so I was hoping that would be the program called, or I’d at least have the option to choose my video recording app. That’s not the case. I uninstalled Cycorder, as a test, and qTweeter told me that it “can post video either from Cycorder or from the iPhone 3GS”. So that’s that. Maybe in a future version of the app? In any case, I’m still thrilled as can be that I can quickly an easily video tweet!

It’s a great thing that TwitVid provides an API for developers. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a plethora of video tweeting options for 3G users.

Note: qTweeter also lets original iPhone (2G) users video tweet. I don’t want to leave them out. It’s just that I don’t have a 2G, so I rarely talk about it. Power to the people, though!

One of the super fun parts of having a jailbroken iPhone is being able to customize so many of the UI sounds. Austin Powers tells me when I get a new email, Michael Jackson’s “Mama Say” chant from “Wanna Be Startin Somethin” is my ringtone, and up until today, Borat alerted me when I got a new text message.

Perusing the “changes” section of Cydia, I stumbled upon some new SMS tones that I thought would be fun. One was the Super Mario Bros. “1-Up” sound. Loved it! Then I installed the “Pac-man Dies” sound, and that was great too!

But the SMS tone that captured my heart was the “Coca Cola” one I got yesterday. It’s the sound of ice being dropped into a glass, followed by the opening of a bottle/can of Coke, and then it being poured into the glass. So refreshing sounding! It makes me grin every time I get a text.

Listen below!

coca_cola_sms_tone

Isn’t that a hoot? I crack myself up!

If you followed my tweets earlier, you know that my two cats, Puddles and Gracie, had their yearly appointment with the vet today. If you have cats, you’re probably thinking, “yea, so what’s the big deal? We do that every year too.” Well, if it’s not a stressful event for you, consider yourself lucky. Because in my household, we need to create a military style plan to get our cats to the vet! It’s not pretty!

The cats know when they have to go to the vet. We must release some pheromones or something that tips them off because they scatter. We have to close all the doors upstairs and corner them in one room. Then Puddles starts howling as if you’re trying to kill her. My mom has to put on these ridiculously thick gloves because Puddles’ claws will be coming out to attack. And I have to stand in the doorway and act as a block to stop her, if she gets away from my mom. One time, she ran towards and knocked me over. No lie!

Something was different today, though. Puddles had no clue it was “vet day”. She was strutting around as usual, begging to be pet, and taken outside. Just another day. We’ve tried the outside thing before and she always knew what was coming, so never came outside. Not today! She came right on out! My mom put on her gloves and opened the hatch of her car. Before Puddles knew what hit her, she was in the car! Success! Gracie is always easy. She tries to hide, but isn’t very good at it. So, we can just pick her up and put her in the car. (more…)

We all saw this go down today.

Serena Williams hoisting another Grand Slam trophy. Ho Hum. This happens most of the time. Pretty much any time the surface isn’t clay. She’s won 3 of the past 4 slams and still isn’t #1.

< begin rant >That ‘title’, which no one agrees with, still belongs to Dinara Safina, who got killed in the semi’s by Venus. I mean, it was an ol’ fashioned ass-whoopin’ if you ask me. The number 1 player in the world isn’t supposed to lose matches 6-1, 6-0. She’s also supposed to have won a Grand Slam tournament at some point in her career.

I know how she got to #1, and I’ve blogged about this before, but I just can’t get behind how the points determine the rankings. So what if she “won Rome and Madrid”. Those are warm-up tournaments that not everyone competes in. She needs to be able to get it done on the big stage as well. There needs to be some sort of update to the formula, because it’s majorly flawed.

“If you hold three Grand Slam titles, maybe you should be No. 1, but not on the WTA Tour, obviously. I see myself as No. 2. That’s where I am. I think Dinara did a great job to get to No. 1. She won Rome and Madrid.”

OH SNAP! You tell ‘em, Serena!

We all know who the real #1 women’s tennis player in the world is. It’s Serena Williams (not Dinara Safina), and it’s not even close. < / end rant >

One of my fave Pussycat Dolls tipped me off to King James being on stage with Jay-Z late last night. I immediately hoped there would be YouTube video, and there is! Now, granted you can’t really hear what he’s saying, but you can tell it’s him and the crowd is loving him. Check it out!

Jay-Z Intro and LBJ Talk

On stage with Jay-Z during show

Candace Parker alerted the masses when she started practicing with the Sparks again. She said afterwards that they were going to play everything by ear in regards to when she’d suit up on gameday.

Well, that question has been answered. Candace tweeted that she’s going to play this Sunday when the Sparks host the Phoenix Mercury. There’s a corresponding press release on the team’s website as well.

Don’t expect CP3 to be on the court for he entire game. This is going to be a process. But her return will definitely be a welcome boost to the team’s production. Unfortunately, the game airs at 9:30PM NBA TV (for those of us not in the greater Los Angeles area), a channel that I do not get. Otherwise I would be watching!

And despite not having even played yet this season, Candace is 5th in WNBA All-Star Game fan voting. Amazing, right?

Here it is:

  Week 4 Podcast - Michael Jackson Mix #1 Redo (21.8 MiB, 3,381 hits)

I’d write more, but I’m on my way out the door to give it a test run. Let’s hope I did this one correctly!

ETA: The run was nice. Listening to some of my MJ faves (up-tempos only!) just made time fly! Here’s the playlist:

1. “Beat It”
2. “Smooth Criminal”
3. “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”
4. “In The Closet”
5. “Jam”
6. “Leave Me Alone”

So after it was revealed that I suck at life, I decided to edit the poorly made “Ghetto Week #4″ podcast and try it out.

And oh what a difference taking out that one interval makes! I almost wish I hadn’t been in as good shape as I was last year so I could have struggled a little through the Week 4 podcast and possibly figured out that I had made it incorrectly. Last year, I didn’t even blink. Week 4 was just another week. But it was soooo much more manageable without that extra interval! Imagine that!

Oh, and guess what? I did Week 3 wrong too! Great, huh? So, that’s two out of nine so far. Best believe there are more screw ups! I mean, it is me we’re talking about!

I see now how I misunderstood the little summaries Robert Ullrey gave. For example, the Week 4 description goes as follows:

We’ll start with a Brisk five-minute warmup walk. We will then have 2 repetitions of the following: jog for 3 minutes, walk for 90 seconds, then jog for 5 minutes, and recover with a 2 1/2 minute walk. Then we will repeat the intervals jogging and walking for a total of about 18 minutes. We’ll finish up with a 5 minute cool down.

I think his use of the phrase “2 repetitions” and later “repeat the intervals” is what screwed me up. So, I took it as doing the 3 minute run & 90 second recovery intervals twice. Then do the 5 minute run. Then repeat the 3 and 5. If I had actually listened to his podcast, I wouldn’t have goofed, but I didn’t, so it’s my fault. But I wanted y’all to see why I made them like I did. If he had left off one of those key phrases I could have gotten it right. Nah, who am I foolin’? I probably would have screwed up anyway!

I am still working on the Michael Jackson themed Week 4 re-do because I am having a hard time narrowing down which songs to use. For just a 30 minute workout, I’m gonna have to be picky! But, for right now, I edited the old and incorrect one. There are still no vocal cues, though. Download:

  Week 4 Podcast - Hip Hop & R&B Mix #1 Redo (15.5 MiB, 3,735 hits)

I will redo Week 3 too. Since no one ever complains about dying during that one, I’ll probably delay that for a little while. Also, it takes a little longer to redo a podcast that has audio commands layered over them.

Stay tuned!