Those who know me know that I love cameras and taking photos. I’ve been thinking about new cameras, mainly the Olympus E-P1 and the Canon D10. But now a new camera has entered the picture (pun intended). It’s an instant-film Fuji Instax Mini camera which a couple of my friends have, but this one is the Hello Kitty version. There is even Hello Kitty film! In case you think I am a big fan of Hello Kitty, I’m not. This is my wife’s idea. We actually have a couple instant-film polaroids (a Joycam and an i-Zone pocket camera) and they are a lot of fun. We’ll see if Mariko actually orders this, but I’d say there’s a pretty good chance!

T-mobile has been releasing a ton of new goodies in anticipation of the launch of their second Android phone, the MyTouch. Us old G1 users can also take advantage of the slew of new apps, including T-Mobile’s Visual Voicemail. It’s pretty cool, and something that we’ve been waiting for a quite some time. IPhone users have had visual voicemail from long ago (my buddy Mikey replied to my tweet by saying “@barron Welcome to iPhone 2007! (Happy for you, though!)”. Fair enough. Android still has a way to go, but it’s definitely picking up steam.

The app itself is pretty straightforward. You just launch it from the icon, then your inbox opens up and you can see all your voicemails in a list, with phone #, time called, duration, and Name and Icon of the person if you have that listed in your Contacts. From there, just select a message, and you get the message screen where you can listen to the message. You can also delete it from here or call back the person. There’s a handy button to switch over to speaker phone as well. Other features that can be accessed via the Menu button are Add to Contacts, or Reply via phone or Text Message. All in all, it’s a really nice feature to have, and it’s free! All you have to do is call T-mobile and tell them to activate it. It won’t cost anything, and you can stay on the plan you are on, without losing any of the features you already enjoy.

It’s so nice that new features are added to the phone with pretty good frequency. The fact that Google can update core functionality to their phone via Market updates is also really neat. Seems like a quick and easy way to deploy cool stuff to Android users.

You can get the T-Mobile Visual Voicemail app from the Android Market on your phone, from the T-Mobile AppPack bundle, or you can visit Cyrket and point your camera at the QR Code (use the free app “Barcode Scanner”.

One of the apps that I have had on my G1 for the longest time is Locale by two forty four a.m.. It’s a really nice utility that lets you customize your phone based on certain dynamic situations. It’s really easy to do.

First you add a new Situation and give it a name, then you add at least one Condition. You can see the list of Conditions in the screenshot above. Then you select what Settings you’d like to have changed when that Condition is met. All of the Situations I have set up are based on time, but you could specify something to happen based on Location. For instance, when the phone is 100’ or more from your home address (using the phone’s GPS to pinpoint your location), you could have it turn off your wi-fi to save battery. Or when the battery drops below 20%, you could set the screen brightness to 10%.

Like I said, all of mine are simply time-based. The Situation named “Quiet Time” has the Condition of 11PM - 7AM, and the Setting is to turn the Ring Volume down to it’s lowest audible setting. The other Situations I created just change the wallpaper at certain times throughout the day. It’s very basic, but it adds a bit of fun customization to the phone.

As with most Android apps, just go to the Android Market on your phone and search for Locale, or you can visit the Twofortyfouram website for more information.

At Kuroshio Sea in Okinawa. It looks so cool!

We just returned from a great vacation on Maui, and Mariko told me that she wants to redecorate our house with a Hawaiian theme. I’m very excited about this! After we moved into our present house, Mariko decided to decorate it in a country/antique style. I’m really not a fan of that style, but I didn’t really object. But now that we are moving in a Hawaiian direction, I am getting inspired to pick up the paintbrushes and build a few canvasses and get painting again. I don’t think I have painted anything since I left college (I majored in Art Studio) so I have some experience. The style we are going for is actually kind of related to country style (Hawaiian country as opposed to Hawaiian kitsch), so most of the antiques that Mariko has collected will fit right in. Now just need to plan out my paintings, but I think I am going for some flower close-ups similar in a Georgia O’Keefe flavor, and maybe some ocean scenes. I have done several wave paintings, so it will be fun to do some more of those. This is just the kind of inspiration that gets my creative juices flowing! Off to find my old sketchbook… and how much do oil paints cost these days?