Amgen Tour of California Bike Race
Our quaint little town of San Luis Obispo will have its 15 minutes of fame when Stage 4 of the Amgen Tour of California Bike Race finishes on the corner of Monterey and Osos downtown tomorrow afternoon.
Despite the 90% chance of rain and the maddening crowds, we’ll try and get to the finish line and snap some photos. 
Canon EOS-1D Mark III
My new object of lust. Here are the stats (taken from dpreview.com)
- 10.1 Megapixel APS-H CMOS sensor
- 10 fps continuous shooting for up to 110 frames
- Dual DIGIC III processors (holy cow.. now cameras are going dual core… sorta)
- New auto focus system with 19 cross type sensors
- EOS Integrated Cleaning System (vibrates the sensor for 3.5 seconds to shake off dust)
- ISO 50 – ISO 6400 (wow… I’m curious how much noise will show up at that level)
- 3″ LCD with Live View mode (so you can compose shots like a point & shoot digital camera)
- Wider, brighter viewfinder
No word yet on pricing. That’s probably a good idea. I don’t think I’m ready to refinance my house to get this and its accessories.
Another Side to the Story
I’m truly sick and tired of the media and politicians scapegoating video games as the new evil influencing children’s lives. On the extreme opposite end (of which I admit I agreed with to an extent) is laying the blame on bad parenting. It’s always easy to point fingers when everything is black & white.
The truth lays somewhere in-between. What if the child is “broken”? Our legal system doesn’t seem equipped to handle this situation.
I’ve been following a case about a boy who murdered a homeless man and then afterwards defecated on him. The boy said that he was, in so many words, influenced by violent video games. A media circus ensued.
Gabe at Penny Arcade made a pretty scathing post blaming the parents of this boy for failing to raise him properly. In reaction to that, the boy’s “stepmother” (who happened to be a longtime Penny Arcade reader) responded.
Her letter is posted here. It is heartfelt and very candid. Will this ever make the news? Probably not.
Jogwheel Mouse
It looks awkward at first, but after checking out the video of it in use, I can actually see myself using it. Not a bad idea at all.
Yahoo Pipes Revisited
I spent about 10 minutes with Yahoo Pipes and I must say that there is potential here. I have a huge list of RSS feeds that I keep track of, but about 90% of the stuff that gets presented to me gets ignored. One of the groupings I have is “Shopping” which is a list of feeds from sites like Woot.com, Steepandcheap.com, edealinfo.com, dealnews.com, slickdeals.net, etc. (actually, I think that’s all of them). That grouping spits out close to 1000 articles per day.
Needless to say, that grouping goes largely unread. Enter Yahoo Pipes.
As an avid photographer, I’m interested in deals that involve flash memory cards and the like. Using Yahoo Pipes, I created an RSS feed that scours all the previously mentioned feeds for the keywords: “compactflash”, “miniSD” and “microSD”.
Check it out and/or add it to your RSS aggregator. If you don’t have an RSS aggregator, Netvibes is pretty good.
I made another Yahoo Pipe that allows you to enter a search term in case you weren’t interested in just memory cards.
Even though Yahoo Pipes is still in beta, I think it has some serious potential in this information laden world we live in.
USB LCD Monitors
Yep, you’ve read that correctly. Samsung is developing a line of LCD monitors that connect to your computer via USB.
What does this mean?
- Rendering for this monitor will rely wholly on the CPU, so this probably isn’t good for gaming.
- If you wanted a multi-monitor setup, but didn’t want to shell out for another video card, this could work out.
- With quad-core processors here and more multi-core goodness on the way, this might not be too bad.
- Entry-level and budget workstations might potentially be cheaper since a video card won’t be required.
We’ll see where this goes I guess.
Sniper Posts Kills on Google Video
A sniper in Baghdad named “Juba” posted anti-Western propaganda on Google Video. The videos depict U.S. soldiers being stalked and then shot.
I find it somewhat hypocritic to denounce a way of life and then make use of that way’s technology and infrastructure. Okay, maybe more ironic than hypocritic.
Should this be taken down? Thoughts?
Transformers The Movie… Again
With the live-action Transformers Movie coming out this July comes a (predictable) slew of toys. I have to admit these look pretty cool.
Michael Bay, please don’t defile my childhood memories.
Too Much Functionality for a Toilet
I have mixed feelings about having this much technology in my meditation space. If this was self-cleaning… maaaybe. Also, I’m not entirely sure about running electrical wiring to this thing.
Create PDFs for Free
Adobe’s PDF format is a godsend to me. I use it to digitize and distribute a plethora of documents ranging from musical scores I’ve composed in Sibelius to password-protected/encrypted financial documents.
When I have the money, I will definitely invest in Acrobat Professional 8.0, but in the meantime, software such as PDFCreator does the job.
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