I was really excited to get a new cell phone, and I decided to go with the LG Chocolate over the Motorola KRZR. Well, I quickly discovered that mp3 ringtones for my phone cost $2.99 apiece! I grumbled enough paying $1.50 for a polyphonic ringtone, but $3 is just too much. So I spent a bit of time finding a workaround to get my own ringtones on the phone. I quickly discovered a piece of software called BitPIM that will access contacts, calendars, messages, and ringtones on a large assortment of cell phones, including the Chocolate. However, to use BitPIM you need a special USB cable to connect to the phone. The cable itself costs $20, but it comes included with a headset in the Verizon Media Essentials Kit for $30. I found the kit on eBay for cheaper.

So after about a week I had everything I needed. BitPIM automatically recognized my phone. But when I click on the "Get Phone Data" button, I got an error stating the file directories on the phone where not accessible. After some internet searching, I found out that I have version 6 of the Chocolate software. BitPIM only works with version 4. An upcoming version of BitPIM will work with version 5, but version 6 is locked down tight. Well, at least I can use the USB cable to transfer mp3s to my phone just to listen to them, but to be honest, the Chocolate is not better than a dedicated mp3 player.

But wait, there's another option. I actually tried this before I shelled out any money for the Music Essentials Kit. You can send text messages to any verizon phone by email! The address is just [phonenumber]@vzwpix.com (remember to include the area code in the phone number). It also allows you to transfer pictures, audio, and video files this way. So I tried it by sending myself a couple of very short (30 seconds or less) mp3 files. My phone received the messages right away, and allowed me to save the audio as a ringtone, but the audio sounded horrible! It appears that somewhere along the way, the mp3 files were converted to crappy qcp files (don't ask me what those are!). So I gave up on that option right away and went ahead with the BitPIM method.

After BitPIM failed with the Chocolate, I thought about the email method again. QCP seems to be more of a container format than an actual encoding, so I thought to myself, "Why not just change .mp3 to .qcp on the file name and try that?" I mean, the phone already plays mp3s, so I just have to get the file to my phone without it being downconverted. As a qcp file, it should pass through unaltered to the phone. And what do you know? It works!

OK, so here's how to get free ringtones on a locked-down LG Chocolate:

1. Create a short mp3 file (about 30 seconds at 96kpbs). I think it needs to be less than 350 kb.

2. Open the folder on your PC containing the new mp3 file. Go to Tools > Folder Options..., select the View tab and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types". This makes the ".mp3" part of the filename visible.

3. Change the file extension from ".mp3" to ".qcp"

4. Attach the qcp file to an email sent to [yourphonenumber]@vzwpix.com

5. Once you receive the message on your phone, select "Options" and then "Set as Ringtone". Voila!

A lot has happened in the past few days! I flew to Chicago to give a geology colloquium talk at Northwestern. Then Kelly, her family, the dogs, and I hiked to the Jug for Mother's Day. Then just yesterday I got a brand new cell phone.

The weather was quite nice in Evanston. I guess it was during those two or three weeks of Spring every year. But it was sunny in the mid-60s, with only a little bit of wind. My talk went well. I just gave basically the same talk that I did for my Carnegie interview, but without the proposal stuff and a bit more general explanation. I also brought samples of my cherts to pass around, which I think the audience liked. I didn't have a lot of free time, though. I arrived Thursday night, hung out in the geology department and met people on Friday, then left Saturday morning. But I did have some time to meet up with Eric Singley for some whiskey at a local Evanston bar. Eric's a pretty cool guy. I never really hung out with him that much as an undergrad, but I should have.

Then on Sunday we all hiked to the Jug. There was water flowing this time of year, but it was a bit lower than when Kelly and I went last Spring. Ed wussed out a bit after we got to the water, so Jace and Kelly's dad stayed behind while Kelly, Kelly's mom, and I went to the swimming pools. Gunner went with us and had to swim for the first time ever in his life. He looked pretty clumsy and made tons of splashing, but I think he had a good time. But both he and Ed did not like the hike out. By then it was hot and the trail was burning Gunner's feet. Ed also got overheated and he was wheezing like a steam engine. Jace and Kelly's mom had to carry Ed for a little while, and I carried Gunner for a little bit. They were both out of it for the next few days. They both seem back to normal today, though.

I'm having a great time reading The God Delusion. It was a bit boring in the middle when Dawkins was talking about evolution of religion, why the anthropic principle doesn't prove God's existence, and why God's supposed omnipotence and omnipresence also implies that he doesn't exist. But now he's talking about morality, which is really interesting. I've always been told that an atheistic society will decline into immorality. Dawkins does a very good job of showing the separation of morality and religion, and how morality and ethics are beneficial (evolutionarily-speaking). One way he puts it is to think about how morals and ethics have changed over time, leading to more gender and racial equality. But if morality is based on religion, which is based on a document (or set of documents) that hasn't changed in a couple thousand years, morality shouldn't change over time. This change occurs because religion and morality are separate sets of memes.

I just finished reading a great section about something I've come across as a scientist, and I've seen it from other scientists, even at conferences. Dawkins tells the story of Kurt Wise, who runs the Center for Origins Research. Kurt was set to become an outstanding geologist. He got his graduate degree from Harvard under Stephen Jay Gould. But Kurt was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, and realized that there were contradictions between the Bible and what he studied at graduate school. Fed up with the internal conflict, he sat down with his Bible and cut out (with a pair of scissors) all the passages that disagree with the current scientific worldview. Needless to say his Bible was a shambles afterwards. At that point he made a choice, either "Science" or God, and he chose God...

"It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science."

He could have taken the Bible as an allegory or symbolic text, as many do. But this is what fundamentalism does to people. It causes people to ignore scientific evidence. It causes people to want to be dumb!

Sometimes Gunner's cute facial expressions remind me of Lil' Brudder.