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This stunning picture of Mars I stole from the Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the grand valley of Mars which is known as Valles Marineris:
This canyon is 3.75 longer than ours, 20 times wider, and 4.4 times deeper!
In a few months, my house will be knocked down and we're going to build a new one in its place. The old one is starting to fall apart partly because I'm not all that handy with the tools, so to speak. The other partly is because we've known we were going to do something drastic for well over a year so I kind of let things just go.
Oh, and did I mention that we have more carpenter ants than you can shake a stick at? We do and they seem to know they are about to rule the joint because they no longer fear us. They come out in broad daylight and make their away around the kitchen like we're the intruders.
In preparation for the move, we started packing. The best way to pack is one room at a time. Put everything in boxes, label the boxes, and stack them up for the movers. We're going to rent one of those PODS thingies like everyone else does. Once it's full, we're going to have them haul it all away. We're also taking this opportunity to throw a bunch of stuff away. My wife and I are pretty good that way. If we don't use it, we just incinerate it.
When the house gets demolished, I'll be sure to document that so stay tuned.
I purchased a new Sony HDR-HC3 High-Definition camcorder yesterday. On Wednesday, we’re getting our new adopted daughter and I figured that this was as good a time as any to get a new camcorder.
A good writeup which sold me on the concept can be found over at camcorderinfo.com. The financial excuse that I made for myself was that I will sell my Canon GL2 which should make this purchase a no-brainer expense-wise.
Where my Canon GL2 was an almost professional standard-definition camera with tons of manual controls, the Sony HDR-HC3 is mostly a point and shoot automatic camcorder. I can adjust white balance, manually focus, and change a few other simple options and that’s all. The problem with my GL2, If you recall, is that the firewire port was dead and I couldn’t import any video into my computer. At that time, I had suggested this strategy:
I could then use the $274 to buy a cheap and portable MiniDV camcorder. The cheap device would have been an excellent way to bring the footage I record with my GL2 onto my computer!
I have since reconsidered.
The HDR-HC3 is Hi-Def, after all, and my initial tests have blown me away. The unit is so small. I can’t believe it easily fits within the palm of my hand. When you compare that to the bazooka-style Canon GL2, you have another compelling argument to upgrade.
I paid a little over $1400 for it at Best Buy. This is a little over $200 what I would have paid online. My decision to pay near-list price was driven by a two main factors. First, my ability to walk out of the store was key. Second, I know the vendor and was confident I could deal with a defective unit with little hassle.
I’ll be sure to post some sample videos here so stay tuned. I’ll likely be reporting on OS X-based video editing workflows at the same time since I plan on doing all of this on my new Mac.
A good friend of mine, the one who got me into blogging way back in the Fall of 2003, has finally gained his senses and started a blog of his own.
Rob is a phenomenal programmer and architect. His blog focuses on programming topics. For now anyway. You owe it to yourself to go on over to http://www.robherbst.com/blog. and check it out. Don't even think. Just go there and subscribe. There are already tons of Visual Studio tips up there and you don't want to miss any!
Subscribed.
UPDATE: Rob has moved to his own domain (a smart move) and has a FeedBurner feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RobHerbst
I am going to wet my pants.
I am writing this blog entry from the train. I am not doing this via the Diarist Pocket PC app. I am doing this from Ecto running on my MacBook.
My MacBook is connecting through the Internet via Bluetooth via my EVDO Pocket PC Phone.
This is so freaking cool!
Picasa now supports RAW files. Well, actually, I did some digging and they have supported raw for almost a year. The reason I’m mentioning this now is because they support my Sony R1. For all I know this has always been the case, but I doubt it. For the first time my RAW directory was scanned immediately after this update and my .SR2 files were properly imported.
For me, this is good news. I must admit that I have to rethink my editing and storage workflow as a result of this. Storing all of my RAW files in a flat directory will become tedious soon. The reason they are in a flat directory is because I’ve traditionally had to move them off my camera by hand. Picasa simply did not recognize the SR2 files.
Even now, as I import my latest batch of photos using the Picasa beta update, the SR2 files are left alone. I stil need to manually get them off the camera. Once they are on my drive, they seem to be detected and automatically imported into my library without too much fuss.
Picture of the day
:
This is an excellent production. What a gem. You must watch this, it's hilarious!
A friend of mine send me the link. And please, whatever you do, don’t go to Wikipedia and find out what a Prince Albert is! You will regret it. I won’t even post a link.
I just got an e-mail from Adobe telling me that their new professional image management software, Adobe Lightroom Beta, is available for download. I had a bit of trouble getting into the site right now becasue I forgot m y adobe.com ID and password but I’ll resolve that soon enough.
It will be at least a year before I’m permanently moved onto the Mac for all my photo and video work so I don’t think I’ll buy this for my Windows PC. However, I shoot exclusively in RAW these days and my ability to manage that growing collection is somewhat limited.
Right now, I’m managing about 60GB of RAW files. I use Picasa mostly, making use of the 5 megapixel images I set my camera to record along with the RAW files. I wrote a program that helps me delete Sony SR2 files for which there is no associated JPG but this method is clunky!
Saw this come across my astronomy club’s mailing list. From the BP Kongsberg Underwater Image Competition 2006.
Some of the microscopic images found here are frightening. Check out the other categories. Some of the creatures have fantastic shapes. Check out thess awesome structures.
What a day for me and my MacBook. Over the past few days, the MacBook that I got last week always had small problems. I had a strange Firefox page corruption issue, the machine often froze, and the machine had trouble going to sleep properly. Most of the problems were annoyances.
I solved the page corruption issue by recreating my user account (recreating my Firefox profile did nothing, strange). The sleep problems were never resolved and the freezing issue well, we'll have to see if that still happens with the new MacBook.
Yes, you heard me. I got a brand new MacBook. This morning I experience a Kernel Panic for the first time. On Windows, this is a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). On a Mac, from what I understand, this is a dim screen overlaid on top of my desktop and a message repeated in six or so languages. The message was basically, “You're screwed, restart your computer immediately.”
After that the machine simply would not start. At all. I called Apple and after trying a few things, they told me to bring it to the nearest Apple Store for an immediate replacement unit. I did just that and I am now typing this on the new machine.
So, although I'm bummed that my Mac burnt out so quickly I'm pretty impressed that they gave me a brand new machine.
I've had my AOL IM account for years and years and years. My ID is NickCody99. However, I've always hated the AOL IM client. Compared to the brilliant design of Yahoo! IM and the Google Talk client, the ad-filled AOL IM client was always severely lagging behind.
At one point, I tried using the Triton beta of AOL IM. It was definitely a UI improvement but the presence of ads was still too much in my face. I had the option to choose whether ads are displayed full-time in the buddy list or when I'm chatting in the chat window. Both options were lame as far as I'm concerned.
Enter my new MacBook and iChat. iChat is an awesome chat/audio/video client. It has the simplistic design similar to Google Talk. iChat works with their own iChat accounts, AOL IM accounts, Jabber servers, and locally with Bonjour (formerly Rendevouz but not after Reuters got pissed off at the use of their trademarked messaging middleware).
So, I'm now chatting with someone who's likely using the AOL IM or Trillian but I don't care that I'm doing it via my AOL IM account. I'm using a better client.
Slowly but surely, the Mac improves my life. Even if only in trivial ways,.
From BoingBoing:
Professor Cappuccio points out that short sleep duration may lead to obesity through an increase of appetite via hormonal changes caused by the sleep deprivation. Lack of sleep produces Ghrelin which, among other effects, stimulates appetite and creates less leptin which, among other effects, suppresses appetite. However he says more research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which short sleep is linked to chronic conditions of affluent societies, such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension.
So, when am I supposed to do programming?
MarsEdit is another blogging client for Mac OS X. I'm using it now and it's clearly a very basic tool when you compare it to Ecto, or even BlogJet.
For one thing, you edit directly in HTML. I'm sure some people appreciate that but I'm not one of them. I live to code up embedded CSS like the next guy but providing only raw HTML editing is a little too basic for me.
Also, there are some quirks that made the experience less than appealing. First, MarsEdit couldn't auto-discover my blog settings the way Ecto did. I believe Ecto properly parsed my RSD file:
http://www.primordia.com/blog/rsd.xml
Also, it couldn't enumerate the blogs hosted by my installation so I had to figure out the blogid by hand. (Psst, it was easy... 1).
Lastly, categories are not loaded up so you don't get them for this post, sorry ;-)
That, and I have no idea how line breaks are going to be interpreted since I don't remember specifying that any where and I'n not typing <p> all over the place!
Back to Ecto.
Exploring google video and Youtube, you can find a bunch of fan-created lightsaber
These two are awesome!
Star Wars Light Saber fan video - Ryan Wieber vs Brandon Flyte. This is a follow up to the Ryan vs Dorkman video thats been gaining poularity a lot latley. (Link)
RYAN WIEBER VS. MICHAEL “DORKMAN” SCOTT
What began as a friendly rivalry between two effects artists explodes off TheForce.Net's ... (Link)
A collection of test videos can be found here, here, and here. Then, I made the mistake of entering “lightsaber” into Google Video's search box and I got back about 376 links, the whole first page looks like more fan videos!
You can do the same search in youtube, but the links don't seem as good, thought this one was cute.
And can we ever forget the original Star Wars Kid?
Too bad I don't have the original unedited video.
It seems like the guys at Google have leapfrogged the capabilities of Yahoo! Widgets by providing a Gadget Designer:
The Google Desktop Gadget Designer is an integrated development environment (IDE) for Sidebar gadget design that lets you quickly prototype or modify your gadget's UI and test its performance. This document assumes familiarity with the principles, objects, and interfaces described in the Sidebar Scripting API document and the Sidebar Gadget Design Guidelines. Here, we only explain how to use the Designer and do not go into any detail about object or property types, design guidelines, how gadgets are packaged for Sidebar use, how to write associated scripts, etc. (Link)
I’m still loyal to Konfabulator Yahoo! Widgets but the addition of an IDE certainly lowers the bar and makes Gadget development attractive.
I'm posting this entry from the Ecto desktop blogging client for the Mac. The first words out of my mouth were, “whoa.”
The main difference between Ecto and BlogJet, aside from Ecto being so much more beautiful, it that Ecto starts off in a screen where you see a listing of all the blogs in your account and all of the latest blog entries for the selected blog. BlogJet starts off with a blank document, assuming you're ready to edit.
I'm still a bit slow on the Mac. My typing isn't as fast, but I suppose that's mainly due to the new keyboard. Then there's that “apple key” thing that I have to use all the time to get anything done.
Editing in Ecto so far is pretty easy and I'm able to edit in “Rich Text” or “Raw HTML” just like I could in BlogJet. Inserting pictures is integrated with iPhoto, but you can drag files from the desktop (such as screen captures) just as easily. Well, not so easy. The images I uploaded didn't upload properly so I'll have to keep experimenting to find out why.
I don't want to bore you with any more details. Ecto seems like a solid editor and unless someone tells me otherwise, the editor I'l likely stick with when blogging from my Mac.
From APOD:
Explanation: The scene might have been considered serene if it weren't for the tornado. Last June in Kansas, storm chaser Eric Nguyen photographed this budding twister in a different light -- the light of a rainbow. Pictured above, a white tornado cloud descends from a dark storm cloud. The Sun, peeking through a clear patch of sky to the left, illuminates some buildings in the foreground. Sunlight reflects off raindrops to form a rainbow. By coincidence, the tornado appears to end right over the rainbow. Streaks in the image are hail being swept about by the high swirling winds. Over 1,000 tornadoes, the most violent type of storm known, occur on Earth every year, many in tornado alley. If you see a tornado while driving, do not try to outrun it -- park your car safely, go to a storm cellar, or crouch under steps in a basement.
I got a new MacBook. Is there any other kind? It's black. It's sweet. I'm offically a switcher.
This blog is normally pretty light-hearted, but I came across this link and thought it a good idea to post this:
http://www.familywatchdog.us/default.asp
There are links to tips to keep your kids safe, products (like safety watches), amber alerts, etc.
The site is pretty well-designed and their use of the Google Maps API showing the proximity of sex offenders to an arbitrary address is certainly an eye-opener.
I bookmarked this a while back and meant to blog about it. Click on this link and take the Machiavelli Personality Test!
http://www.salon.com/books/it/1999/09/13/machtest/index.html
Here’s what I scored:
The Machiavelli personality test has a range of 0-100
Your Machiavelli score is: 54
You are a low Mach, you reject Machiavelli's opinions.Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but there's a significant minority at either extreme.
Today marks the 230’th anniversary of our great nation. I hope your holiday was fun, relaxing, safe, and everything you intended it to be. Here are some fireworks photos I took on my Indy trip:
More photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickcody/sets/72157594187293787/
Jon Udel (of InfoWorld fame), published a fantastic screencast where he explores Ray Ozzie’s Live Clipboard idea (Wiring the Web), the link to the screencast is as follows:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/liveClipboard.html
Most of the demo shows him copying events from one calendar service (Eventful) and pasting it into another calendar service (upcoming). Since both services understand the hCalendar microformat, he has some success in posting the same event to both sites.
The problem he leaves us with, and it seems like a major stumbling block, is the lack of a standard moniker for naming things like venues. The URL for the venue was 3669 in upcoming and V0–001–000150985–3 on eventful. Thus, you can’t just copy/paste the hCalendar details. You need a way to map 3669 to V0–001–000150985–3. he proposed a del.icio.us hack but it remains clear that mapping slike this will prove a difficult obstacle for Live Clipboard to really take off.
