I updated my iPhone 3G to OS 3.0 yesterday. I enjoy some of the new features. However, I am annoyed that the "back up" still takes FOREVER to run when I sync my iPhone. I decided to sync it today after it went through a full back up and OS upgrade just yesterday. It's taking forever!

Any other iPhone users out there that have experience slow back ups? Or tried syncing since installing 3.0?

Anyone planning on getting the 3Gs? I'd love to get the 3Gs with the better camera, autofocus, video, etc, but it isn't in my budget. It seems like I'd have to pay a $200 fee to upgrade before my 12 or 18 months is up. I'll probably head into an AT&T store once the madness calms down to see when I'm qualified to upgrade with no extra fee.

It's going to be tough watching so many people enjoying their 3Gs, sending videos, taking better quality pics, etc, while I'm stuck with the 3G phone. :P

If I have to wait 18 months to get the best upgrade price ($199 for the 16GB 3Gs) I may just wait for next year's iPhone.

Also if you use Twitter, you may follow us:

http://www.twitter.com/newgrounds
http://www.twitter.com/wadefulp
http://www.twitter.com/tomfulp

We are now @newgrounds on Twitter!

http://www.twitter.com/newgrounds

Be sure to follow us if you use Twitter! :)

Also follow @tomfulp and @wadefulp if you want! :P

Sorry for the lack of news updates. My life has just been boring lately I guess. :P So for those of you who don't know, I like flashlights. What?! Flashlights? Well, I've always enjoyed a cool gadget. Growing up I always liked gadgets like graphing calculators, Swiss Army knives, digital watches, etc. I can't say why, maybe it's in my genes. My grandfather and Uncles are engineers, my father is into HAM radio. I grew up playing with old radio equipment, electronic parts like resistors, transistors, LED's, etc. I have always found electronics interesting. As far as flashlights I never really had an obsession with them, but as a kid they were always fun to play with. Growing up a flashlight was a flashlight. Some were a little brighter than others. Usually they were plastic, large, bulky, and contained some kind of incandescent bulb. I remember when I was in high school my friend found a Maglite and boasted about how good they were. They can be run over by a car, thrown out of a car window, etc, and still work. Later in life I discovered the flashlight company Surefire, which makes tactical flashlights for the military, police, etc. I purchased a Surefire E2e, which uses two CR123 batteries, and produces around 65 lumens. At the time I was amazed at how much light was coming out of such a small flashlight. It was brighter than my big 3D Maglite. Fast forward to a couple years ago and I came across the Fenix P1D-CE. This LED based flashlight, half the size of the Surefire E2e, was putting out 135 lumens on a single CR123 battery. It seemed hard to believe, but sure enough, it was brighter than my Surefire E2e, using far less battery power in the process! It was this leap in technology that started my fascination with flashlights. It was more to do with the LED in the flashlight and being interested in the advancements in LED technology.

This led to me coming across a topic on a flashlight forum (yeah, there is a whole website/forum dedicated to talking about flashlights) where you could enter a Photoshop contest where you could win a custom made flashlight. Like anything else out there, there are people who make custom flashlights. Like a custom motorcycle, they are considered works of art by flashlight enthusiasts, collectors, etc. One of these custom lights is the Gatlight, made by a company called Lumencraft. These flashlights are too expensive for me to consider buying. The Gatlight is made from many custom machined Titanium parts. Titanium alloys have gotten expensive and they are hard to machine. So when you combine the cost of materials, machining, labor, etc, the Gatlight comes with a $495 price tag! That's one pricey flashlight, but when it comes to custom flashlights, it isn't the most expensive around. I have seen some custom flashlights bring $900 or more!

So I entered the Photoshop contest almost two years ago. The contest went on, and on, and on. The company took their time bringing the contest to an end. Finally, a couple months ago, they got around to selecting the finalists and set up a site where people could vote on the entries. I ended up winning ! Turns out there weren't many entries, there wasn't much competition, and there weren't very many votes in the end.

So I was lucky enough to receive a Gatlight for winning their Photoshop contest! Here is a photo I took of it.

UPDATE: I guess I should include a link to the company's site, which has the details about the light: http://www.lumencraft.net/GatLightTI.h tm

The cool thing about it is you can turn a knob on the back to control the output, from ultra low, to ultra bright. :) Like a dimming knob.

More pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/wadefulpng /Gatlight#

I've been playing around on Twitter for a few months now and thought I'd set up an official Newgrounds Twitter. I wanted twitter.com/newgrounds, but someone already took it. Maybe they will hand it over, but my repeated attempts to have Twitter support get it for me have failed. Maybe they couldn't confirm I was who I said I was. They just seem to ignore my requests now.

So I set up http://www.twitter.com/newgrounds_com

What is Twitter? Basically it's micro-blogging. When you post something it is called a Tweet. You might post something like "Playing COD5 on XBL!" or "Check out this cool website, newgrounds.com!" etc. You can follow people who you find interesting, and people can follow you. CNN, Foxnews, etc, have used Twitter to successfully build up a large number of followers. They can bounce questions off their followers, inform their followers about upcoming broadcasts, etc.

I'm not sure what all we will do with a newgrounds_com Twitter. Probably post links to cool content, maybe some behind the scenes info, or whatever. People can also re-tweet a tweet. So if newgrounds_com tweets a cool link you can re-tweet it to your followers and so on.

Many people use Twitter from mobile devices like iPhones, blackberrys, or any cell phone that can text. Or you can use the web browser interface.

If you are already on Twitter feel free to follow newgrounds_com, and I will set it to follow you. If you aren't on Twitter, check it out as it is easy to set up a new account.

Some of the NG staff have Twitter accounts. Well, at least Mike and I do. If you want to follow me, I'm http://www.twitter.com/wadeng. I just post about the stupid stuff I'm up to.

You can also attach pictures to Tweets, at least I can with my iPhone. So I may take a picture of what I'm doing, etc. There are some cool iPhone/iTouch Twitter clients such as Twinkle, Tweetie, Twitterfon, etc.

If you are already established on Twitter feel free to spread the word that we have an official account there now. :)

There is a lot more chatter now about Global Cooling. If we are actually going into a period of global cooling it would be bad for all of us. Shorter growing seaons, more energy needed to heat homes, etc. This is an interesting bit about how the Russians believe we are going into a period of global cooling and how they are taking advantage of it:

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articl es/2009/20090106201017.aspx

Click the little video player, it's just an audio stream with a still image.

Joe Bastardi is a very talented meteorologist and has been on many of the major cable news networks to discuss weather events, usually Hurricanes. He's one of the best long range forecasters out there and has an excellent grasp of our weather history. I'd believe him over Al Gore any day.

We are looking to form a NG Digg Team. If you are interested in joining the team, apply in the NG Digg Team topic in Clubs and Crews:

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/10 14356

I'm also working on setting up a NG Twitter. For now you can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/wadeng until I get the official Newgrounds Twitter feed up.

Well, it happened, my 5 year old is now in Kindergarden and it didn't take him long to get exposed to Pokemon. So I picked him up some basic pack of Pokemon cards to play with. Seems like it might be fun to play with him. One our mods, Jonas, generously offered to mail me some of his old Pokemon cards for my kids to play with. So I was thinking, if anyone has any Pokemon cards they don't want, and want to say "Wade Fulp's kids play with my Pokemon cards" you can send them to:

Wade Fulp
PO BOX 480
Perkasie, PA 18944

USPS only, UPS, etc, won't deliver to a PO BOX.

In other news I saw Twilight the other day with my wife. She has read the books so she just had to go see it. It was okay.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who is sending cards. Include your username with them so I know who to thank. :)

I don't buy many video games these days, but Gears of War 2 is one I will be picking up at 12AM. :) Who else is excited for GOW2 and will be online after picking it up at 12AM?

Will you first play the story mode? Or will you go right into online multi-player? I'd rather go straight to online multi-player but it sounds like a lot of people I know will do the story mode first. If that's the case, anyone want to play story mode co-op with me?

It's kinda of early for snow, but we got some today! Just a heavy wet snow that mostly melted on the ground, but after while it did start to accumulate on some surfaces. My road had a nice slushy coating on it. Here's a video:

Well, if you haven't noticed I like to play around with flashlights. I've always been into gadgets, but lately flashlights have grabbed my attention mainly because it is a way to play with the latest and greatest in LED technology. Something about the fact that these new LED's can generate so much light, while using far less power than incandescent bulbs, is interesting to me. It is fun to keep up with the technology and realize we are getting closer to the point where LED's will light our homes, our streets, replace our car's power hungry headlight bulbs, etc.

For now flashlights are still a useful thing to have around the house, on your keychain, in your car, etc. I would be surprised if people didn't have a flashlight or two around their home somewhere, incase the power goes out, etc. Take the recent events with hurricanes. Millions of people were without power, and some probably still don't have power from Ike. What kind of flashlights are these poor souls stuck with? Battery hungry incandescent flashlights that start to dim minutes after turning them on? Maybe they are lucky enough to have some form of LED flashlight, but unless they have something with cutting edge technology it probably isn't that bright and may not last as long as something newer.

So I thought I would recommend some basic flashlights that use cutting edge LED tech which are very efficient and provide long run times, more light, etc.

For those who want a keychain style flashlight, I recommend the Fenix E01. This light will run off any 1.2v-1.5v AAA battery and it will run at full power for 10-12 hours before dropping to a dimmer mode that will still put out useable light for an additional 10+ hours. I have one and I got over 40 hours of light out of a single battery. Now this light isn't extremely bright, it's about 8-10 lumens. The light it puts out has a purplish tint to it. This is designed as an emergency light that will give you enough light to get around in the dark.

It's available in a bunch of colors here:

Fenix E01

It runs $15 shipped (free world wide shipping). It's a tough little sucker too, with a hard anodized coating, water proof, etc.

For those who want something a little more exciting with a lot more output check out the Fenix LOD, which is listed on the same page. I keep one of these on my key chain, and our forum mod Osamarama (Sanjay) also picked one up and has been having fun with it. At $46.50 it may not be for everyone, but it's a fun little flashlight that will impress people when you fire it up on TURBO (high). You can run rechargeable NiMH AAA's in it. You can read the specs here:

Fenix L0D-CE

There are some special batteries available that can turn this 75 lumen flashlight into a 200 lumen flashlight, but it will void the warranty and you do run some risk. If someone gets this light and is interested in super charging it with a 3V lithium ion AAA, PM me. :)

There are all kinds of other cool flashlights on that site as well, but I just wanted to point out these two as they are small and easy to carry on your keychain and may help out when you find yourself in the dark. :)

This isn't intended to be a sales pitch. I am simply trying to pass along some helpful suggestions from what I've learned in the world of flashlights. After hearing about some of our users going through Gustav, Ike, etc, I wish I had done more to recommend things like this that may have helped them out.