Moto 360 Review

Recently I purchased a Moto 360 watch off the Motorola website after months of hearing hype about it. Retail price for the watch with a leather band is $249.99. My initial impression of the watch was not so great, but after learning how to "properly" use it, I've come to kind of enjoy it. It pairs great with my Moto X.

The watch was released on September 5th and reached my doorsteps on September 10th. Out of the box, the watch looks beautiful with the classic round watch face and leather wristband. Everything looked really sleek. There's about 10 default watch faces that you can choose from, but I'm sure as time goes on developers will create more.

The Moto 360 charges wirelessly through a dock. I read a review where someone said the dock was chunky, but it honestly was not that bad. The dock and watch actually makes for a nice bedside clock at night. The watch does not take very long to get a full charge. Less than an hour and a half on the dock and it's good to go.

The first day I used the Moto 360, I was really disappointed with the battery life. I took the watch off of the dock at 7am and the battery had died by 4pm. Not even a full work day. I was seriously considering returning the watch. However, after some research I learned how to make the best of my battery life. The most important thing you need to know about prolonging your Moto 360's battery life is that you should not have it on ambient mode. What is ambient mode exactly? Basically the watch face is always on and just brightens/dims depending on lighting. This was what killed my battery life so quickly on day 1. On day 2, after turning off the ambient mode, my watch was able to last from 7am all the way to 11pm and still have 20% battery left. Huge difference.

While the Moto 360 has the ability to be voice activated, it's not that responsive. It doesn't hear me say "OK Google" about 50% of the time which is annoying because it makes me look like an idiot yelling at my watch. Sometimes my phone responds (from my back pocket) instead of my watch. You can activate voice commands by tapping the watch face, but I thought it'd be cooler to just talk be able to talk to my watch.

The Moto 360 responds to a lot of the same basic voice commands as my Moto X. You can ask it for the weather or how to get somewhere and the screen will display everything for you (even the turn by turn navigation). You can also ask the watch to show your steps (pedometer) or to check your pulse.

Like other Google Android devices, the watch can show you cards with relevant information. For instance, mine shows me each day how long it'll take for me to get to work. Once basketball starts again, it'll probably display score cards for me as well.

The watch is said to be waterproof although I have been to scared to test that aspect and in any case, I don't want to ruin the leather band. Motorola will have metal bands available, but they're $80 each and I'm not going to fork over anymore for this watch. The watch face itself is covered with Gorilla Glass.

A cool feature that I found this morning is the remote control camera. Now people can take selfies without having their arms show up. Basically you pull up the dedicated Google Camera app on your phone and then your watch will display a button for you to press when you're ready to take the picture. The button will set off a 3 second timer before it goes off. After the picture is taken, it'll display on the watch for you to look at.

Overall, the Moto 360 is good watch. The sleek design is fantastic and breaks the norm of rectangular smart watches. I'm excited for new apps for the watch. I just wished voice response was a lot better.

Team 7 Vlog - Episode 16 - Doritos Jacked Test Flavor #404 and Tyler Ward Comes to Dallas

Team 7 Vlog - Episode 15 - Rugged Maniac

Really, really late with this one. Rugged Maniac in Dallas happened in early November and I only JUST NOW decided to work on it. Oh well. Enjoy!

A Slow Rebranding of Myself

Been sick the past couple of days so while I was stuck in bed at home, I decided to take this short period of free time to slowly start rebranding myself. As such, I created and ordered myself a business card (something that I've never done before), redesigned my resume, and I'm now in the process of redoing my website. It's taking me a lot longer than usual because I've decided to delve into the world of mobile website design. Before, my website appeared on mobile devices exactly as it does on a desktop only scaled down to fit the screen. That's not exactly the best thing to do so this morning I sat in bed watching tutorials on how to use fluid grid layouts in Adobe Dreamweaver and now I'm in the process of building a website that can be mobile enabled. Hopefully the end result is to my liking.

My redesigned resume, which can be seen here.

My website in Adobe Dreamweaver CS6.

My website in live mode (work in progress). You can see my current website here.

Elsa Has "Frozen" the World

Definitely gotta applaud Disney's attempt to globalize. I love that they're taking their songs and having them performed by artists from countries all around the world in their own language. Here are the versions I found and they all sound beautiful. Enjoy!

Demi Lovato - Let It Go (English)

La Reine des Neiges - Libérée, Délivrée (French)

Martina Stoessel - Libre Soy (Spanish)

Dương Hoàng Yến - Let It Go (Vietnamese)

And my personal favorite...

Hyorin - Let It Go (Korean)

2013 Review

So I'm taking a cue from @hungrytien and writing my own recap of 2013. I would say a lot has changed, but then again it hasn't. Let's start.

Struggle to Start My Career
     As some of you know, I graduated from UTD in December of 2012. Since then, I've been on a mad search for an actual career job thing. From January to May, I basically had nothing. I mean, I had a very short lived job as a poolside server at the Gaylord Texasn Hotel but that doesn't count because it's not design related. And I guess I also had a small freelance project for Hughie's designing their logo and starting up their social media marketing. Besides that, I didn't have much going on for me.
     In May, I landed an unpaid internship at MetroMedia Technologies which was a company that specialized in outdoor advertising. I thought it was cool because it was my first ever internship and I got to work on projects independently and stuff. Eventually, I got tired of it because 1) I wasn't learning anything new and 2) most of the "projects" was just copy this and slap on the MetroMedia Techonologies logo. I was basically wasting my time. So I left MetroMedia Technologies in September and continued to work at Studio Movie Grill (which I had quit in November in 2012 but picked it back up again in May to make up for the fact that my internship at MetroMedia was unpaid).
   Then something happened. In August, I had gained a Twitter follower named @BlackBookInk. Curious, I looked up this Twitter follower and found that they were an advertising agency located in Dallas. I ended up asking if there were any career opportunities available for graphic designers and in October, I landed an internship at this small design agency in Deep Ellum. Again, it's unpaid, but I feel like I'm learning a lot more here than I did at MetroMedia. It kinda helps that I actually know who our clients are and that someone knows how to help me when a design issue comes up. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that by the end of my time as an intern I will be accepted as an official member of the team. If I don't get accepted, then I don't know what I'd do. Some people are saying I've been too hard on myself for not having a paying job. I'm only 22. I still have time. But I graduated a semester early to try and get a head start on my career and not being able to land a job is like failure for me. Maybe I just set my standards for myself too high.

Family Life
   I'm not gonna say that I've been the best big sister this year because I haven't. Ever since I've gotten more involved in work and youth group stuff, I've spent more time with my friends than my family. Some might not say that it's a bad thing, but when your siblings start resenting you every time you go out then something's wrong.

Health
   So the previous years, I've always had a goal to gain weight. In all seriousness, what I should be worried about is maintaining a healthier eating habit. Some days I only have one meal, some days I have 3. It's taking a toll on my health. And on days off, I sleep like 12 hours a day. No bueno.
   On top of bad eating habits, I haven't really developed a habit of exercising regularly. I mean, sure, on some Friday mornings I go play basketball with the guys but I'm not really that good at it. I need to work on some other form of exercise. Get in shape. Maybe this year Team 7 will be able to take on Tough Mudder.

I have no idea what I'm rambling about anymore. Haha. But yeah. Goals for this year!

• Maintain a better eating habit (3 meals a day, no skipping meals)
• Develop an exercise routine? 
• Spend more time with the siblings