This is one of the best procrastination tools I have ever come across. Basically it is a database of cool things you can see on google maps' satellite images. Everything from tourist attractions to sunken drug smuggling planes and Chinese submarines. Now go waste some time. http://www.googlesightseeing.com
Now until Sept. 30, 2006 use this coupon to get a free *$ (read: star-bucks) iced drink between noon and 9pm. Just print out this pdf coupon and redeem at your local bucks.
What's the nerdiest thing about you?
I am a licensed amateur radio operator. That is some serious geek.
The lamp in my DLP projection television blew out this week. I had always heard people talk about these bulbs shattering but I guess seeing is believing. When I pulled the lamp assembly out I was surprised at just how destroyed the thing was. Toshiba is supposed to replace this lamp under warranty but I think I will still stock a spare just in case. If I had a spare now I would not be twiddling my thumbs wondering what happened on Entourage this week. Yes, I could download it but then it wouldn't be presented in all it's HD glory, so I'd rather wait.
Is the world's most expensive MP3 player cast in 18 karat gold with 63 one-karat diamonds really necessary?
After digging around allot and many test encodings later I managed to encode video for my Nokia E61. This method requires that you have quicktime pro, I played around with ffmpeg a bunch but wasn't able to find the correct settings. I could to go back and figure it out with ffmpeg but if it works with quicktime why bother?
Load the movie in quicktime, go up to File -> Export, select "Movie to MPEG4", then click on "Options" and apply the settings above. Pay attention to the text at the bottom of this dialog box, the settings for the audio tab are listed but now shown in the gui part. Feel free to play with the data rate to suit your file size vs quality tastes, 500 kbits/sec is probably on the high side but what can I say, I'm a quality whore.
I picked up a Hyperdrive HD80 for dumping Compact Flash cards from my DSLR in the field. This thing dumps a card faster than any other device out there. Unfortunately, the build quality is awful, the case is shoddy and the doors on either end are sloppy. Furthermore, after only dumping one card I managed to break it.
After installing a formatting the hard disk I tried copying some CF cards. The first card copied fine (very fast!) so I removed the card and tried to copy a second one.
While inserting the second card something felt wrong, it wouldn't insert all the way. I removed the card and looked in the slot to find one of the pins had been bent. I was careful to align the CF card with the rails and inset the card straight. The bent pin was longer than the other pins in the connector; this leads me to suspect that this pin was loose to begin with and when the first card was removed it was pulled up by the card. When the second card was inserted the alignment was not perfect on this longer pin and it was crushed.
I like this guy, he thinks like me. Even though he uses microsoft office and flip4mac he hates them for the same reasons I would. Not to say the world needs more people like me but, um, the world needs more people like me. Thank you very much.
Went to see the rally portion of the xgames today, although I had fun, it was unfortunate that the super special stage was not really set up to showcase what these cars and drivers can really do out on the stages. Hopefully next year they will allow spectators out on the forrest stages! It was also quite something to see Colin McRae and Nicky Grist in the flesh at the service park afterwards. Check out my flickr for more photos.
If you could be on any reality TV show, which one would you pick and why?
The Amazing Race, It's like a modern day treasure hunt! Sort of like geocaching on steroids.
