It's moving day.

My little blog has been moved over to the main site at Chroniclet.com.

Please come over to take a look at what we are doing.

Behind the Lens

Assign a photographer

Taking a look at our web traffic today, I started thinking about how many Chronicle readers are living all over the world. Last month, we had visitors to Chroniclet.com from 122 countries and territories -- how ya doing Wake Island!

I imagine you miss this area enough to keep in touch, and that sparked an idea.

If you could assign members of the Chronicle photo department, where would you send them for a photograph? Let me know what area you would like to see and we will do our best to get the shot. Have you wondered what the mall area looks like these days? Do you miss the playground where you used to play? Did you have a favorite place to go for ice cream when you were a kid?

I’ll pick some of the good suggestions and post shots online for you to see.

HDTV calibration..who knew

So you just shelled out $3,500 for that new plasma TV only to get it home and find yourself under whelmed by the picture. Provided you aren’t already twitching from the discovery that the best cable to hook up that new TV with your cable box costs well over $100, you could call Best Buy and add another $300 for HDTV calibration.

It would be cool to have the Geek Squad van parked in the driveway for an hour or two but that sure is a lot of money. For the price of a Toy Story DVD or one of several hundred other THX certified DVDs, you can get the basic calibration tools free. (They even give you a super geeky pair of glasses that look like old school 3-D glasses to use while you calibrate.)

There probably is a difference between what you get from the Geek guys’ and the out-of-the-box freebie, but my bet is the average consumer you won’t see any real difference. From my experience, save the money on the calibration but let the pros handle the installation of your new television. I realized too late that the big holes I drilled into my fireplace were a little high. It took some prying and fairly brutal adjustments to get the TV hung on the wall. It hasn’t fallen off yet but the first few days I was a little stressed.

Mosquito ring tone

I have written about the Cellware.com site in the past. It’s a company that offers free ring tones that you can download to your cellphone. I have received the occasional e-mail from them marketing other things they offer but they haven’t been pests and it sure beats giving up $2.99 a tone to Verizon.

The point of this post is to tell you about one of the tones we came across today. The Mosquito ring tone is an exceptionally high-pitched tone designed to be heard by young people.

According to a New York Times article about the ring tone, the super high pitch came to America from Britain, where shopkeepers would use a tone generator to annoy teens and keep them from loitering around outside their businesses. It wasn’t long after that when somebody flipped it around and made it into a ring tone only kids should be able to hear.

Never one to believe things at face value, I decided to put the ring tone to the test in the official Chronicle lab – the newsroom.

It went something like this:

I scanned the room for the most seasoned reporter (I wouldn’t say old, that might be a bit offensive) I could find, so I settled on Steve Fogarty. And guess what? He didn’t believe I was playing anything at all when I asked him to listen. He was wise not to trust me but, on this particular occasion, the pained faces of several younger co-workers backed me up.

While the test did prove that the ring tone is hard to hear by those in certain demographics, it was by no means 100 percent. I could hear it, and I’m 41. I guess the best advice would be to use this ring at your own risk. If you use it in school and your teacher happens to have good hearing, you could be in trouble.

Democrat Debate Tickets

Obama, Hillary, Obama, Hillary…. Which way to go?

It might be easier to make your decision if you see the two candidates live and in person. And, as luck would have it, it turns out there is a way to do that, but it’s going to take a bit of luck.
Cleveland State University is offering a very limited number of tickets for the debate between the two Democrats that’ll take place Tuesday. The ticket lottery requires an online request. There are two options -- one for students of Cleveland State and another for the general public.
The drawing deadline is 3 p.m. Thursday. Those lucky enough to win a golden ticket will be notified by e-mail on Friday.

If you score a ticket, be sure to let us know. We would love to hear about your experience at the debate.

Presto, E-mail without a computer

Dear Grandma,

I’m sending you an e-mail that you will never be able to read. Sure I bought you that $600 computer and even showed you how simple it is to turn on and and log into Outlook. Well it didn’t work out so well. You kept calling the computer “that thing” and after three years you still haven’t been able to turn it on. Not that I blame you, a lot of people who remember World War II have the same problem.

What are we going to do? I really want to send you pictures of the kids, and I want to just drop you a quick note while I’m out of town. I guess I could call, but we both know that I’m kind of irresponsible about making those calls, it’s not that I don’t love you, because you know that I do. I guess I could actually mail you a letter. But again, we both know that the odds of me putting a stamp on an envelope is about as good as you logging onto iTunes and syncing an iPod full of the best of Benny Goodman. You would love an iPod by the way; they really are great.

So here we are at his communication impasse. I wish there was some way to send you e-mail without using a computer … Well it turns out there is a way to do just that.

Best Buy, Amazon, Wal Mart.com and several other online vendors are selling a device called Presto that works alongside the HP Mailing Service.

Basically you have an HP printer that prints out e-mail without needing to log onto a computer, or even have a computer in the house. You can schedule download times, up to five times a day and the machine receives from computers and even cell phone messages.

The basic package $149.95 includes a free ink cartridge and there is a monthly fee for the service. So grandma, keep an eye on the printer and I’ll be in touch.

There’s only one problem. You can’t write me back. So, after the thrill of reading my messages is gone maybe we can talk about that computer again.

Love, Your grandson.

Finger Painting

Like everybody I get a lot of forwards sent to me. Today I got one that was just too cool to delete.
The artist behind these odd temporary works of art is Guido Daniele. The artist based out of Milan, Italy, started doing the body painting in 1990. Daniele paints models bodies for use in commercials, and fashion events. For more examples of his amazing work check out his Web site, When you go to the site, make sure you click on the translate button on the right part of the opening page, or be prepared to test your Italian reading skills.