Christmas Projects

It took over an hour, but Sam and I finally finished this Lego Indiana Jones set. Sweet!

Not an easy song....

We got owned.

Sleepy Christmas Eve

Skate memories...

I saw this near one of my clients I visited today. Looks a lot like the Coffin Banks I skated in my youth.

Been busy...

Here's why I haven't posted lately - the best reason in the world. Here's baby Clover. Mom and baby are doing well.

Amazing Footage Of Meteor

Found this on YouTube today. An amazing video capture of a meteor strike from a police car cam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_2aX-784sw

MILF rebels at it again...

MILF are becoming a huge problem.

Two Weeks With The G1

I have had my T-Mobile G1 Android phone for two weeks now. If I was rating it on a scale from 1 to 10, I would give it a solid 8. I'll start with the negatives first:

The battery life is unbearable. I use the phone for work 80% of the time and it won't make it through an 8 hour work day with moderate use. I have disabled the battery guzzling features, like wi-fi and GPS, but I need the bluetooth for work. I have gotten into the habit of pressing the hang up key when not in use to turn the screen off and this has made a huge difference. I can go about 6 hours now before I have to charge up.

I don't mind the size of the G1 -- it is only a bit bigger than my old Blackberry Curve. However, it does seem quite a bit heavier. A minor complaint, but it feels heavy in my sports jacket pocket whereas I used to never notice the Blackberry.

The camera is fairly useless. There's no flash and apparently no stability control. Expect a ton of blurry pics. The good pics I have taken are rare exceptions.


Other than that, the phone is an incredible tool. The 3G coverage in the Sacramento area is exceptional. I haven't found a place yet, downtown or suburb, where it doesn't work. The web browsing is great and the messaging works very well; e-mail or SMS text messaging. The Google integration is nothing short of amazing. This is a nearly zero-cofiguration phone. Plug in your Google credentials and the phone syncs calendar, contacts. and e-mail seamlessly.

The applications I have tried from the Android Market have worked well. The phone hasn't crashed a single time.

All in all, the phone has exceeded my expectations. If the battery life was better, I could forgive just about all the other minor flaws.

Olbermann on Prop 8

Sammy's Favorite Game

Prop 8 Bummer

My disappointment in the results for prop 8 are best summed up by my friend Kevin here.

New Phone - T-Mobile G1 with Google

I've had one form of Blackberry or another for the past 6 to 7 years or so. Recently I decided to make a change to what I call the next generation of phones. This generation must have real-time e-mail, a realistic web browsing experience, and simple to use, touchscreen controls. The huge seller out there is, of course, the iPhone. Being locked into my T-Mobile contract, that wasn't really an option, especially since AT&T is the sole vendor for the iPhone and due to a serious disagreement I had with them a couple of years ago, I will never do business with them again.

When I heard the G1 was coming out, I was very interested. It's based on the Android platform, a mobile device OS made by Google. I decided to try it out and it arrived yesterday.

I'll write more about it in the coming days, but suffice it to say I'm very impressed with the OS and the phone in general. A lot of peeople on Internet forums complain about the weight, size, and the keyboard, but I found all of these to be not only acceptable, but preferable. I watched many videos of the device in use on the Internet and it looked a lot bigger than it does in person -- it is only a bit larger than my Blackberry Curve. The one SERIOUS complaint I have is the battery life. With moderate web browsing and e-mail, the phone lasts a good 6 hours, maybe. My Blackberry could make it to bedtime with about 10-20% to spare. News that relief may come in the form of software updates is encouraging.

The Google Apps integration is great. I use the reader, docs, gmail, and search with no problem, although the read-only docs is a bummer. That should be fixed in an update, too. Another key feature is 3G. I have found the coverage in the Sacramento area to be excellent and even works way out in the suburbs, i.e. Elk Grove.

The Android Market for applications is growing like crazy everyday and I've tried a few out. My three favorite so far are:

Any Cut - Let's you place certain types of shortcuts on the desktop above and beyond the one's the OS restricts you, too. It's not a very sexy app, but so far has been the most crucial.

TuneWiki - Shown in the pics. It's a music player that has a lot of nice features and displays the lyrics as the song plays.

Compare Everywhere - This is one of those applications that makes you feel like you're living in the future. Very, very cool. Just hold the camera up to a barcode on a product and the phone vibrates when finished scanning it. It then goes out on the Internet and price compares with online and brick and mortar stores. Hit the map button and it will use the GPS to identify where you are and the closest stores that have that product.

I have only had the phone one day so I'll post more as I go along.

Sam's Mini Pumpkin

Iron Man is here!

Sam is ready for Halloween.

Age of Booty

I downloaded the demo off of XBox Live Arcade and Age of Booty is a great game. If any of my friends get this, ring me up and let's play online. It looks like it would be a blast online. It's kind of a real-time Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne. The demo is good and you can even play online multiplayer with it.

Vigilante 8 Arcade

I'm looking forward to this on the 360. The split screen multiplayer mode should be fun for parties, while the online will make it fun the rest of the time. I was a big fan of Interstate 76 which this was based on. The new multiplayer XBox Live modes should breathe some new life into it.

Are you a Genius?

When I'm alone in the car I typically set my iPod to play an album or occasionally shuffle my whole library. The library shuffle tends to require a lot of song skipping which can get annoying. At home, I play whole albums almost exclusively.

That is, until the new iTunes introduced Genius. I'm back in the shuffle game now! It is simple to use. Pick a song and hit the Genius button. ITunes will try to find 25 songs that it thinks you will like. It doesn't just base its selection on genre, it also looks at era the song was released, mood, etc. I'm not really sure all the criteria it uses, but it works pretty darn well for a quick and dirty playlist. Of course, it does have issues. Rare songs give it heartburn and will tell you that Genius does not have any recommendations. It also won't include arcane or rare songs in the playlists it generates. But overall, when you don't know what to listen to, it works very well. I've been surprised by some of the playlist selections and it has the grand effect of digging out songs I have forgotten or never listened to.

Korg DS-10

Synthesizers are usually very expensive items. Korg has released the DS-10 for the Nintendo DS. Check out this video of the software in action. For $40.00, this is a deal.

Do you want to laugh?

I laughed so hard I started to cry.

Screencast Test -- Using my iMac

I've been testing out screencasting software and decided to make a video showing the progress I'm making on configuring and using my new iMac. I highlight my C-64 emulator as well as music software and Chad's Spatula City BBS, now available via telnet.

[EDIT] Well, the video doesn't quite look as good after the upload conversion. I will fiddle with the settings and see if I can get a better result.

Everything you wanted to know...

If you weren't convinced that the Internet contains the total sum of all information in the world, past and present, this should prove it to you. I found a scan of the entire manual for Temple of Apshai and the coveted "Command Card" that shows all the key commands needed to play. I think it's time to revisit an old favorite and beat it this time.

Temple of Apshai and other C64 games...

I finally got my new iMac somewhat dialed in so today I started looking through all the disk images I have for the Commodore 64 emulator and found this little gem -- Temple of Apshai. I do remember spending a lot of time playing this way, way back in the day. It is not joystick driven (I tested out the joystick compatability with another old favorite, River Raid!) so I had to fumble around with the keys to figure out what I was doing. I did manage to kill the giant mosquito in this room. I need to find the directions somewhere that outlines what key does what -- that might be challenging seeing as this game is well over 20 years old. I'm having fun just launching various games and suddenly remembering the screens and music associated with them. When I launched "Jumpman" I remembered the crazy font used in the cut scenes. I guess nostalgia sometimes has an upside, too.

Synthesizer Sam

Ghosts From The Past

During the early to mid eighties I lived in this house. It was never a great neighborhood, but our house looked pretty decent compared to the others on the block, even though we were renters. I took this picture a couple of weeks ago. I will drive by there every so often -- usually once a year or so. The house has never looked this bad.

I've had to come to terms recently with why I make the yearly trek out to the old house; or why, for that matter, I constantly have to look up old and lost friends on the Internet. I have this strange form of "Nostalgia Anxiety". I'm not sure if that's really a disorder or condition, but I'm ready to once and for all give this a name. Nostalgia Anxiety seems to describe it well enough. Google returns zero hits on that particular string, so maybe I've coined a new phenomenon. Yay.

Nostalgia Anxiety manifests itself in many different ways for me. For all local things, I tend to go out of my way to drive by old schools, houses where I've lived, friends houses, etc. I'll park there for awhile -- sometimes I'll take a picture or two. I'll compare the modern version to the version I still have in my brain. I'll think about it for awhile and then move on, satisfied for another year or so.

For old friends, I'll take spare time I have in front of a web browser and meticulously search for their name. I've found quite a few people from my past that I had completely lost touch with. But the funny things is, once I speak to them, the desire to talk to them is gone. Their lives all pretty much followed a particular pattern based on their personality form back when I knew them. I could almost guess exactly how their lives turned out and I have a an 80+ percent chance of being right -- it's a bit uncanny, and sad in a way.

Sometimes I wonder if my "condition" is rare or somewhat unique. It's my own personal version of Fermi's Paradox in that I've never had someone from my past come looking for me, even though I'd be pretty easy to find online. Fermi's Paradox addresses why, with the infinite possibility that extra-terrestrial life exists, why haven't they contacted us yet? Somtimes I wonder the same in my life -- if there are so many people out there I've come across in my life up to now, why haven't any of them come forth looking for me? Most people I know don't have this overwhelming need to hunt out people from their pasts. Maybe it's more healthy that way.

Classic Rodney Mullen - 1984

Lego House Under Attack

Sam has directed a plush toy parrot to attack the lego house.

Studio E-Doo Version 4.0

The new home studio / computer area is coming together. I purchased a new iMac today (24" monitor, 2.8 Core Duo) and unpacked the D888 Korg Digital Recording System. Here's some pictures of the new area (Ikea Vika modular desk system).

The living room is also shaping up with a new couch, loveseat, and ottoman. The  couch and loveseat have recliners built in for mega-kickback video game action.

 

 

Bitter Sweet Guinness Cupcakes

Jennifer made cupcakes with Guinness in them. Yum!

Live from the park...

Incredible Skate Video

This video has some pretty amazing moves, but the stuff Ryan Sheckler is doing at the end of the video I thought only possible in video game physics. Crazy.

Early Morning Mantis

Caught this picture this morning on the porch...

Civilization Revolution

I downloaded the demo for Civilization Revolution when it first came out and liked it ok, but without instructions I really didn't spend the time getting into it. When it became available on Gamefly, I got it and tried it out. I loved it and went ahead with purchase. The game captures all the fun and depth of the PC version, but makes it easily controllable on a console. I've read in forums that some people think it has been dumbed down for console play, but it seems just as deep and strategic as the PC version to me with the convenience of completing a game within a couple of hours.

So far I've beat the game on the first two levels using all four victory conditions (Economic, Technological, Cultural, and Domination) using five different cultures. I'm taking on the medium level soon and look forward to new challenges. The Technological victory seems the hardest to achieve. You have to construct a spaceship and get it to Alpha Centauri before another culture wins. I had no problem reaching a level where I could win, but had a hard time getting to Alpha Centauri before the game ran out of time and granted me a Domination victory. I finally figured it out by focusing on the tech tree and making sure I got everything necessary for the spaceship parts as soon as they came available.

If you enjoy turn based strategy games (my favorite), you should get a lot of mileage from this game.

Soul Cages

I was on my Google homepage today and a quote popped up on my "Quote-A-Day" widget:

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. - Charles Mackay

I recall a song by Sting on The Soul Cages with the lyric:

Men go crazy in congregations; they only get better one by one.

Coincidence or influence?

We made cake...

Sam wins a game of Candyland, fair and square.

The difference a .0.1 makes...

A couple of days after my tirade about Firefox crashing all the time, Mozilla released an update bringing the web browser to version 3.0.1. After updating, I haven't had a single crash yet. Going from 5-10 crashes a day to zero is a pretty big leap. Like I said in my previous post, Firefox 3 has a lot of new, great features and is very fast at rendering pages. I'm finally a happy Firefox user.

That's how I roll...

I thought this was pretty funny...

Home Sweet Home - Garbage Truck Style

I came across this on the Internet today. It's a garbage truck that was converted to something like an RV, but looks incredible inside.

I think it would be fun to travel across the U.S. in something like this.

Burned by Firefox

Everyone on the Interwebz told me Firefox 3 was the cat's meow. I've been running it since Release Candidate 2 and while I enjoy all the features and the updated memory management, the thing crashes on me 5 to 10 times a day at the worst possible times. I googled the issue and it seems I'm not the only one. People recommend disabling plugins -- tried it, still no relief. Safari blows, so maybe I'll give Opera another chance. Anything but IE again. Or maybe that's what I'll be left with. Ugh.

Drums in Guitar Hero - World Tour

I have to admit, these drums look very nice. It might make me jump back to the GH franchise. I haven't seen the drum kit yet for the new version of Rock Band. I hope they have elevated cymbals at the very least.

To Sam

A message from Raydoo to my son, Sam.

4th of July Fun

Rock Band, Manhattans, and more BBQ food than we could eat. I'll let the pictures tell the story.

New Template - Back to the Basics

I've been struggling with the old blog template I was using. I couldn't find the right colors and I didn't like the width of the column where posts publish. It always looked a little odd to me.

I looked through the choices Blogger offers and decided to choose a simple template with a lot of real estate for posts. Yes, it's boring -- so be it. I'm tired of fooling with it. I also removed all the Aperture pop-up shit. I don't know what I was thinking; no one likes that kind of stuff and I agree. Simplicity.

Listening to Shearwater's Rook right now. This was a suggestion from Chad and it really does deliver.

360 Flip -- Nice!

Reporter Owned By Sled - Watch more free videos

The strings that connect us.

It was my 3 year old son's first day in a new class at preschool this morning. I ran late for work getting him ready and out the door. He slept most of the ride but woke up a couple of miles away from the school and we talked about a new class and new friends to meet -- he seemed ok.

Once we got inside, he wanted to go to his old class and I reminded him he had a new one and we walked through a different door and made our way in. There were roughly ten other kids -- a couple he knew, but he stayed close by and looked a little uneasy. I met his teacher and then sat down with him while we looked around at all the toys. After about 10 minutes I got up to leave and saw a look on Sam's face I had never seen before. His eyes teared up and he buried his face in my leg and asked me to stay. Sam cries now and again like all other kids; when he's hurt, when he doesn't get his way. But this was very different and really pulled at something inside of me. I had never seen Sam genuinely afraid before. Even though I was running late, I stayed with him another 20 minutes until more kids came and he seemed to settle down.

I thought about him as I drove to work and the broad and strong connection I have with him. I hope that he knows and understands that I always think about him and will be there when he needs me.

Baby ducks in a huddle...

As seen on our walk today.

Spinning Blonde

This video makes me feel funny....

Giant Ultraman

Here's a link to a giant Ultraman made of tiny Ultramen. Sweet!

Pixies "Doolittle" Available Next Week For Rock Band

I know whole albums have been released for Rock Band, but this is the first one I'm really interested in. This is my favorite Pixies album and "Wave Of Mutilation", the one song from this album already in Rock Band, is one of my favorites to play. This might be the spark that gets me back into playing Rock Band. I've taken a hiatus of sorts to play Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and GTA IV.

Of course, I'm not surprised.

I saw the Kings lose to the Lakers in Game 7 in 2002. It was obvious something was askew. It is one of the reasons I only went to one game this year and never watch the NBA on TV anymore.

Yeah. I think I need a pool table...

Check out this video of trick shots.

Seen on street near my apartment...

Skate Spot

Even though I haven't skated in years, my brain is still wired to notice places that are frequented by skaters or places I think would be great to skate. I've noticed quite a few lately, but today I had my camera phone with me. Back in my day, there weren't a whole lot of skate parks around like today. We would have to seek out places with entertaining terrain.

Devo downloads coming to Rock Band

Like the title says.

Thank you.

"We tarp our loads for your safety."

Even superheroes sleep...

Summer's Bounty

Gears of War 2 - Video Preview

Here's a clip from Gears of War 2 that was released yesterday. The graphics are amazing.

Auto Hybrid Strap-On

Here's a company soon to offer a hybrid system you can attach to any old car. Interesting?

 

Can they make a little less, er...ugly?

More rants about what's wrong with Linux

Continuing my argument about what's wrong with Linux and why, in its current state, it will never be adopted by mainstream users, check out this site about how to install a Mac OS X style dock in Ubuntu. I installed a similar one on my PC to test it out and it involved one installer and one double-click.

My favorite part of this at the end is where the author states, "That's it." Are you kidding me?

Apture

I've started using a service called Apture which allows me the ability to add multimedia objects within my site very easily. The hover-over objects are not intrusive and very handy for embedding information in my site. I can add previews from my friends' sites, like Seeglow Music, Aru Online, and Chezray. I can add embedded videos. I can directly link to information, like Wire, the band I'm listening to right now.

It's ridiculously easy to set up on your own site if you run Blogger or Typepad.

Starbucks and Spirit of Eden?

I'm sitting in a Starbucks waiting for a doctor appointment. When I   first walked in the music playing was instantly familiar and soon I was in the soothing and instantly recognizable intro to Desire by Talk Talk from the eclectic album Spirit of Eden.

Spirit of Eden at Starbucks? Spirit of Eden has been in my top ten for a long time. It's one of those albums that has a rich history, which you can read about here. An interesting opinion in the Wikipedia article:

Music historian Piero Scaruffi believes that with Spirit of Eden, Talk Talk "invented a new form of music, one in which a complex atmosphere is created out of slow, inorganic, inarticulate streams of simple sounds. The six lengthy, free-form, brooding and cataleptic ruminations . . . pioneered 'slo-core'."^[28] Numerous bands and artists, ranging from Catherine Wheel to Sarah McLachlan, have praised Spirit of Eden or have cited it as an influence in their own music.^[29]

Most people I know have never heard of Talk Talk, much less Spirit of Eden. It's strange to hear it at such a mainstream place as Starbucks.

If you want to read more about music, my friend Chad has begun a new venture at Seeglow Music. Check it out.

ASUS Eee PC

A few months back I got an ASUS Eee PC. You can check out the specs here. In a nutshell, it's a cheap, ultra portable PC with Linux and a solid state hard drive (4GB). You can add more hard drive space via an SD slot.

I have been using the Eee for several months now and I really enjoy it. I use it primarily for writing and note taking, using Google Docs and Firefox as my primary applications. Once you get used to the small keyboard, it is a great little PC. It's rugged as there's no hard drive with moving parts and it's very quiet. It is no bigger than the small notepad I used to keep hand written notes in, so it doesn't take up any more room in my bag.

I don't want to write up a whole review since that has been done all over the web many, many times already, but suffice it to say I'm happy with the system. My chief complaint is not with the hardware, but with Linux in general. It has been something I've written about before, but the same issue got ugly recently. It's the difficulty with installing software.

The Eee forum has been very useful for help with installing applications. I'm trying to keep the Eee very light on applications so I can focus on writing, but I really needed my VPN software, Hamachi, and a note organizer. I looked at a couple of offerings for Linux and found Basket to be a very popular and feature rich research and note taking tool.

On the PC or Mac, Hamachi typically installs with very little  headache -- double click the installer and let it do its thing. In Linux, nothing could be further from the truth. Luckily, I found this article that shows how to do it. Twenty steps and several error messages later, it finally worked. I installed gHamachi to add a graphical front-end and now I have a working Hamachi client. It took about an hour and fifteen minutes. How is this user-friendly? Operating systems exist to run programs. If this fundamental step is complicated, do you really believe your OS is going to have wide adoption?

My version of Linux includes the "Synaptic Package Manager" that is supposed to aid in installing software. Hamachi was not in their database and Basket had an old version. Nonetheless, Basket actually installed a bit easier. I used the command "sudo apt-install Basket". I have no idea what that means, but once again I found it on the Eee forum. Once this completed, I used the command "./Basket" which installed it pretty easily, although it did take a total of twenty minutes to install. OneNote 2007 on my PC took about three minutes and is a much larger application.

Anyhow, the Eee PC is now dialed in and the software is working very well. I hope there is some strategy out there in the Linux group to make software installation easier. I know each flavor has their own "package manager" but how does that help over different platforms? In my opinion, the Linux platform is too splintered into disparate camps to make a big enough push into the Microsoft / Apple stranglehold.