Monthly Archives: November 2008

Review

Nokia 5610

4 Comments

The Nokia 5610 is a step up in camera from the 5310 but a step down in design. What is the point of the slider on this phone? None in my opinion. It certainly did not enhance my enjoyment of this phone. I guess the slider was in place so that the screen could be bigger. A big screen is okay for the web surfing and the other things but it really isn’t needed for things like the camera or the music player.

The Look

The 5610 is a small chocolate bar shape with a slider feature. By holding the phone in your palm and pushing gently with your thumb the phone slides back to reveal the number pad. This does, in essence allow for a larger screen. However, it felt gimmicky and made me feel like the keypad was a little cramped. Why not make the phone slide sideways and reveal a qwerty keyboard instead. Texting is the big thing. Make a phone that makes it easy to text.

The phone I got was a metallic red and black just like the 5310 that I tried out. But the 5610 doesn’t look as good. It is more boxy where the 5310 was fun with it’s slim size and dedicated music keys. There are no dedicated music keys on this phone. Actually there is the play/pause button on the face and the volume buttons on the side. They just didn’t look as cool as the 5310.

The Camera

The camera is a 3.2MP camera. This is a step up from the 2.0MP camera from the 5310. But it is still not good enough in my eyes. It takes too long to focus and if anyone moves the pictures get totally blurry. I took a bunch of photos and posted them on Flickr.

What I did like was the macro feature. It worked very, very well when I was in the exact right spot for it to work well. Here is an example of the macro. You can even make out the fabric lines.

Sparky Macro

The Video Camera

Video is pretty standard and not that great, it ranged from really bad to tolerable. Here is a tolerable video. You can see the bad ones on Flickr.

Using the Phone

Using the phone was easy, it is a pretty simple phone. Everything is where it should be, the sound is good and clear. Getting the sim card in and out is weird but I dealt with it. Overall not a bad phone. Not a great phone but pretty nice if you are into music. Did I mention that the Music XPress option is really nice and there is even an FM tuner.

I want to thank the folks at WOM World / Nokia for everything these past few month. I’m going to be participating ina a very special event that they are having with the Nokia 6650 phones.

Contest

Who Won the Fry Sauce Competition?

11 Comments

I learned many things from BenSpark’s Ultimate Fry Sauce Recipe Contest. A Little about my friends, a little about my readers, a lot about Mayo (I am sick to death of the smell now) and mostly about how to run a crazy contest like this.

Set Limits

I was smart about the limit to 10 fry sauce recipes. While I only received 9 recipes and didn’t really need the limit, it was still smart to have it in place. This made the creation of each recipe more manageable. If I had accepted over 10 entrants I would have been swimming in Fry Sauce, even more so than I was. And also the total cost to me would have been even more.

I got the 64oz suckers!

Know what you are getting into

I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. I had set the rule that only Heinz Ketchup and Hellman’s Mayo were to be the base ingredients, that saved me from buying many different kinds of ketchup and mayo. But what about the ingredients that were added to each recipe. They could have been anything (except a blue Halls cough drop, Stephen) and that meant secret costs. If you ever do a recipe contest where you have to buy all the ingredients make sure that you don’t have any surprises, I was lucky.

Kitchen too small

Know how much you are making

I did take each recipe and break it down into “parts”. The parts would work as I made 2 cups of each sauce. That was still way too much Fry Sauce. Make a test batch to gauge how much you really have to make. I ended up with about 2 gallons of fry sauce in total. I made all ten sauces (#10 was my own creation, not in the competition) and had so much left over that I was a little sickened by the waste. Had I been smarter I would have made about a cup of each of the sauces. that would have been a little more manageable. Or if you make as much as I did make sure you have enough judges to taste test.

Wasabi!

Share Your Vision

One of the best things about doing this was that I was able to share my vision as well as something I found tasty with many different people. The judges all found at least one sauce that they enjoyed. The competitors each shared their favorite recipe. I’ll be sharing all recipes with all of you. That is what was so fun about running this competition.

So, who won?

Check back November 10th to find out who won.