To Catch a Gizmodo Editor…

So with all this talk surrounding the lost iPhone scandal, I’ve been thrilled that theres some headline tech news in my good hometown of Fremont, CA. That news coming from this past Friday, when Gizmodo’s EIC, Jason Chen, had his home raided by California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team. You can read more about the story over at Gizmodo’s own coverage. But one of thing that spectators (like John Gruber) took note of was how Jason Chen’s personal details were pixelated out. While this is normal procedure and perfectly understandable when publishing documents on the web, many are angry with Gizmodo’s decision to publicize Gray Powell’s (the Apple employee that lost the iPhone prototype) personal info all over their site. With that being said, I’ve been curious to find out where exactly this whole thing originated, Jason’s house. Not for any malicious use, but I think it’s almost a historical landmark in the tech world. So I ventured to find out.

This morning, I was greeted with the following news report from Bay Area NBC:

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/syndication?id=92186849&path=%2Fweather%2Fstories

In the report, you can see a few shots of Jason’s home’s exterior, with the house number “40726” in plain view:

After some quick Googling, I was able to find a matching property purchased by a “Jason Chen” in January with the same number. 40726 Greystone Terrace (part of the newly built Park Lane West community, which was previously occupied by Tri-City). Entered into Google Maps, I found an aerial shot of the neighborhood that very much resembled what was shown in the background of the news report.

So I took off to check out the Park Lane West community and grabbed a quick shot to verify that it indeed is the correct house.

At the Movies, at the Gym.

In previous years, I’ve had a major problem keeping myself entertained for the duration of my gym time. Music definitely helps when I’m constantly moving from machine to machine. But when I’m running on a treadmill or Elliptical, I’d completely lose my motivation. Almost to the point where I just wouldn’t be excited to go anymore.

But for the past 2 months, I’ve found that watching movies while running has rejuvenated my gym fun. I rarely get a chance to watch movies these days, so there’s a huge backlog of movies I still have yet to watch on my computer. So I’ve been loading them on my iPhone to watch during my runs. By spanning them over several days in 20-minute segments, it’s kept my attention span not only the duration of my run, but also between visits to the gym.

Screenshot watching 2012:

To convert my movies I use HandBrake 0.94, which has presets for every Apple product.

Time conversion doesn’t have to be a bitch.

While I wait for my iPad to arrive, I keep checking my UPS tracking code for updates.

However one of the things that gets me frazzled is trying to figure out when exactly all these updates occur. Each update has a timestamp recorded according to whichever time zone the update took place. While this is pretty easy to figure out for domestic packages, I always have a hard time with international ones. I just can’t remember how many hours I have to add or subtract, not to mention whether or not daylight savings is in effect. Blech! I Google it, which will normally bring me to the official time.gov site, where I have to wait for the 90’s Java applet (below) to load, and then figure it out from there. While this works reliably well, it is definitely not a preferred method.

There’s a much easier way, with the help of our geeky friends at Wolfram Alpha. In the equation box, type in the time and location of the update you’re looking to convert. In my case  typed in, “4:10am april 2, 2010 china”. And just with that, WA knows what to do.

Tah-Dah! My iPad left Guangzhou, CN on 4/1 @ 1:10pm local time.