After using my phone without a protective case for a few months, the camera became almost unusable because the scratched coating created blurry halos around any light sources.

Enter the savior of the iPhone camera: Meguiar’s PlastX plastic polish. (or any optical quality plastic polish for that matter) After five minutes of work with a Q-Tip, it’s as good as or possibly better than new. Pictures below:

Do you just count the time playing with the device or add all the time it took to learn how to use things like Web browsers and email clients too?

Living a digital lifestyle is such a cumulative thing and new concepts and services pop up every day. If you aren’t familiar with blogging, what do you make of something like Twitter?

How do you keep up?

Some describe it as drinking from a firehose but that’s not quite right.
It’s more like drinking from a fire hose connected to a moving fire truck. If you stop to take a breath, you have a lot of catching up to do.

I actually spend quite a bit of time per day reading magazines like Wired or visiting tech oriented Web sites (lifehacker.com, engadget.com, gizmodo.com, etc…) just to keep up. That doesn’t even count actually playing with and evaluating the technology to see if it’s something useful.

What do you do to keep up? What are your favorite sources for tech info?

[edit] Ok then. I have no idea what the slashes are about. So much for using contractions, eh?

[edit 2] After upgrading my blog engine, it seems to be working.

The University Hall clock tower at night (©2008 Daniel Miller/University of Toledo)

The new Glass City Skyway bridge at night (©2008 Daniel Miller/University of Toledo)

Two fishermen are perched on the East bank of the Maumee river in a classic Toledo scene with the Willis Boyer museum ship and the Anthony Wayne Bridge in the background. (©2008 Daniel Miller/University of Toledo)

Some people say the music scene in Toledo sucks but damn was there a great show at Frankie’s Inner City last night. The only band on the lineup that I knew of was The Matt Truman Ego Trip, a really solid local band that’s always fun to see, so I knew the night wouldn’t be a waste. Their up front tongue-in-cheek narcissism is always good for a laugh and they rock, so yeah; game on. I figured the other bands would just be gravy, lumpy, out of town mystery gravy. Wow, was I wrong.

The other two bands were The Hard Lessons, from just up I-75 in Detroit (Go Wings!) and Bryan Scary & the Shedding Tears, from Brooklyn, NY. I have no idea who was considered to be headlining because Bryan Scary came on first but was BY FAR the most entertaining of the bunch, and that shouldn’t be interpreted as a slam on the other bands. I’ll get to them in a minute.

The Hard Lessons is a hard rocking pseudo power trio, with keyboard bass instead of an actual bass player. The first thing I noticed about the band was the vocals coming from singer, Ko Ko Louise. She has a soulful and sultry sound that’s an almost dead-on match for Toledo’s own Michelle McGrath, formerly of The Rivermen and The Capital Sun Rays. I’m not convinced that her vocals mesh well with their music though. Her voice is almost too good for rock and roll. Add in the raw-style guitar and vocals from Dave Grohl lookalike Augie, and you have a band that I won’t hesitate to go see again and again.

I’ve saved the best and strangest act for last; Bryan Scary & the Shedding Tears. I’ve been trying to come up with an accurate description and the only way that works is a comparison with other bands and performers. They can best be described as unequal parts of ELO, the White Stripes, Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, Tiny Tim and Carrot Top. (I have to qualify that last one. I’ve never seen a lead singer with so many props.) They present a sort of pop symphonic revival movement that is endlessly entertaining. I had to research the exact genre of their sound but at the time I thought, I don’t know what they’re trying to be but whatever it is, they nailed it. They eagerly launch into long musical storytelling that even included props like model airplanes, lab coats and the odd space helmet on Bryan Scary, the lead singer. The band’s music was articulate and complex enough that it must have been written in sheet form first. There’s simply no way songs like theirs were thrown together with a couple repetitive chords and a catchy chorus.

Scary’s on stage performance was riveting. From his huge swaths of blue eyeliner to the donning of a 60s style space helmet, I just couldn’t wait to see what he’d do next. He was just as likely to frantically run in place with his back to the audience as single out one of the Elvis impersonators in the audience. (Yes, you read that right, no I don’t understand it either.)

If you’re bored with the normal rock bands or whiny emo groups, I can’t possibly recommend this group more strongly. GO SEE THIS BAND.