Real. Nice. Graphics.

HBO & Others Forcing Netflix Into Forcing Me To Go Elsewhere.

2012-01-05T15:37:00.004-05:00

My Response to An Article posted on CNET: "HBO forces Netflix to go elsewhere for its DVDs"

This is totally getting annoying with each company trying to do the "providing" and makes me wonder if at some point Apple won't come out and say, "we won't accept albums from musicians anymore and will no longer sell them on iTunes, and instead will provide all new music via in-house recording artists."

I mean come on. Netflix had a decent service. What they needed was content. Others have content. They don't have a streaming service. None of us want to juggle 15 different streaming movie accounts.

When I buy a car, it's understood it comes with Tires and all the various pieces from different companies all put into a nice package we call "A Car". Goodyear (or whoever) makes the tires and so on.

If the streaming "content" business, which was just maturing nicely up until a year ago, now devolves into a "go here for that show, then here for that show, then here for that movie, then over there for THAT movie, and each one needs my credit card and each on has different requirements and interfaces and accounts I have to deal with. SCREW IT... I'll go back to finding my stuff on Google... which ultimately will probably win in the end.

www.realnicegraphics.com

Intel and the ridiculous way it names chips.

2011-12-21T15:36:00.002-05:00

If Intel truly wants to win the hearts and minds of consumers like me, ditch the "medfield" and "Moorestown" type names for both mobile and desktop/laptop chips because absolutely no one has a clue which one is which and which came first and which one means it's "Better" or "Faster" than the other.

Pentium I, Pentium II, III, IV, now those names at least meant something with you just looking and saying,

"Ok, 4 is greater than 2 so it must be faster. Mom, buy this computer because it's faster."

"Mooresfield"? What does that mean? Sounds like an old car my Grandfather owned.

So please, Intel, take a look even at your competitor, ARM. They use numbers to signify better/faster chips and perhaps that's why people understand or recognize their value and performance better. You started losing me, someone who IS actually a tech geek, with the Core2Duo crap. What's the "Duo"? part for?

I mean, what IS a "Clarksfield"? Sounds like a crop circle location to me.

www.realnicegraphics.com

Lightbox

2011-10-13T14:48:00.001-04:00

Finally got around to implementing a "Lightbox" effect to view my image galleries. At the same time I also made the Picasa <--> website gallery operation more efficient and require less time to pull large amounts of images.

Why Android Falls Short.

2011-09-02T15:55:00.001-04:00

Hint: It's not because of Android

After being an iphone user for years with access to IOS apps, and then jumping ship to Android, I can say without a doubt the biggest shortcoming Android has is not the OS, it's the software people are writing for it.

It's utter crap compared to what developers are writing for IOS. I love the freedom of the Android OS and it has a ton of features IOS can only dream of, but the shortage of professional level apps, such as good camera replacement apps, video editing, paint programs, games, ... I mean everything I came across to try to fill in gaps left behind from my iPhone I came away either not finding an app for it, or the app seemed to have been written (but not quite completed) by some teenage hacker.

95% of the apps I came across were awful. And there were so many duplicate apps by the same company that the entire app search process is a muddled mess. If Apple's App store control freak mentality is annoying, it's also a major benefit to the end user from the standpoint of finding good, fully functional applications.

If Google wants to level the playing field, they themselves will have to jump in a bit and start writing something beside google doc readers and the maps application. Because it sure as hell isn't going to be samsung or motorola or HTC writing apps, so who will it be?

I have about a year left before I can break my contract but I can say without a doubt that while the Android phones rival Apple's hardware and the IOS is easily as good if not better, I feel so limited by not even being able to do things like find a decent doodling or paint program.

It's pretty sad state of affairs in the Android Marketplace and THAT is what will eventually make or break Android.

Android Hardware
There's another big reason why I think it's tough for people to write good applications for android: The hardware. With IOS / Apple, there is only 1 iphone and 1 ipad.

With Android there are 20 or more hardware configurations and from what I can tell reading notes by developers, testing for all of them is a nightmare. It's akin to writing applications for Windows and even then I bet it's easier to write an app that's compatibile across a broad range of windows machines that it is to write across a range of Android machines.

Someone needs to reign in the hardware and software specs. Until then, developers will shy away. At least the good developers. No doubt this is partly why Game developers have avoided Android... because it's a mess.

Google MUST take more control. They developed the engine but left the rest of the car (3 wheels, 10 wheels, gas pedal on left or right) and in fact the entire road system (lets drive on the left today and tomorrow have some fun and drive on the right side of the road! Hey!), totally up to whoever wants to screw around with it.

Android... I hate to say it... needs a Steve Jobs.

The need to rebuild

2011-09-02T15:43:00.001-04:00

It's time to rework my site a bit. Some of the items on my todo list are to reinvigorate my blog, which of course I'm posting to right now.

One of the challenges I have with my site, oddly enough, is that I'm a web developer and designer and yet I hate working on MY own site.

Couldn't Resist a Name Change

2011-04-01T12:29:00.000-04:00

I was playing around the other day looking for domain names for another company and stumbled upon one I couldn't resist. As such, I decided to change the name of my site, "TheCodeFromLastNight.com" into simply "RealNiceGraphics.com".

www.realnicegraphics.com

Writing Forms in PHP the easy way

2010-11-01T11:47:00.002-04:00

I don't particularly like writing "forms" for websites, but unfortunately,
most websites that I've built had one form or another, either a contact form a
questionnaire, or some type of use input form.

Although you can create a form in one file, in php, you typically have two
files: The actual form page and the page that processes the form data.

The files must share information via variables, with each form element (what
is your first name?) being assigned a variable and then passed along via "submit"
to the processing engine.

The typical way I used to do this is on the form page is something like:

<input name="firstname" value="Your First Name"/>

Then on the processing page, you'd pull in that variable like so:

$firstname = $_POST['firstname'];

All this does is now on the processing page simply assign $firstname to the
value submitted on the previous page. From here, you'd then group all the variables
together (firstname, lastname, email), etc and then perhaps write the data out
to a file or send in an email or whatever.

Where the tiresome part comes in is that most forms are not so short as simply
the first name. There might be first name, last name, email, address one, address
two, zip, then perhaps a whole host of questions. A simple form might be 20
or more variables and it's vital that the "Form" page and "Processing"
page all match, and all are pulled in in the correct order and then written
out again in the correct order. And there might be several places in the processing
page where this has to be written out, variable by variable, in the correct
order (or the order that matches the form).

It's truly very tedious.

There is a simpler way which I began playing with today and that is to simply
assign each form "name" value to an array as so:

(and radio buttons)How do you prefer to be contacted:

<input name="formarray[]" type="radio" value="direct
mail" />Direct Mail

<input name="formarray[]" type="radio" value="email"
/>Email

... and so on. Notice how now instead of a unique (and annoying to remember)
variable, you instead use the same 'form[]' name over and over for each element.
This makes life MUCH much easier when you handle the processing page in that
you simply now have to pull in one item as such:

$form = $_POST['formarray'];

From there you can loop through the data in the array and do whatever you need
to do, for example:

$savestring = ""; // opens variable $savestring

foreach ($form as $show) // loop through each item in $form
and call it $show

{

$savestring .= $show . ","; // append $savestring with current
value of $show and separate with a comma

} // go back and do again for each item left in $form array.

$savestring .= . "\n"; // when all items are looped
through, tack on a "newline" item to the $savestring

(that last depends on what you're doing with the form of course)

You now have all the data from one form submission, in a string called $savestring
which at this point you could email to yourself, write out to a file, or whatever.
The beauty is that you never have to worry about remembering which items you
had in the form vs which you have to pull over to the processing page, which
ones to write out, etc.

I wish the iphone had:

2010-09-07T17:14:00.002-04:00

This is a constantly updated list of items I really wish my iPhone had:

Application Location & Installation Lock. I'd like to be able to lock in place and prevent deleting of apps on my iphone by, for example my 3 year old who holds his fingers too long on an app, then hits the "X" button and deletes the app. With all the parental controls, this seems like such a critical one. -added (9/13/2010)
ISO or shutterspeed settings for the camera. -added (9/13/2010)
Folders for images and photos. Yes, there apps that do let one create folders, but only in their respective package, and all are very cumbersome to use. -added 9/10/2010
Image stabilization for taking photos. Again, 3rd party apps allow this but it would be nice if the built in camera could handle this. -added 9/10/2010
Automatic focus and refocusing of the video camera. Again, some 3rd party apps allow this but not the built in video camera. -added 9/10/2010

Job Description: Parent

2010-08-20T14:17:00.000-04:00

My wife sent this to me where she found it online somewhere. Pretty amusing.

Title: Parent
JOB DESCRIPTION:
Long term, team players needed, for challenging, permanent work in an often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call.

Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities! Travel expenses not reimbursed. Extensive courier duties also required.

RESPONSIBILITIES:
The rest of your life.
Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5. Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly. Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf.

Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets and stuck zippers.

Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and coordinate production of multiple homework projects.

Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks.

Must be a willing to be indispensable one minute, an embarrassment the next.

Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap, plastic toys, and battery operated devices.

Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.

Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product.

Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.

POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION:
None.
Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills, so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE :
None required unfortunately.
On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.

WAGES AND COMPENSATION:
Get this! You pay them!

Offering frequent raises and bonuses.

A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent.

When you die, you give them whatever is left. You will actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

BENEFITS :
While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered; this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth, unconditional love, and free hugs and kisses for life if you play your cards right.

THERE IS NO RETIREMENT -- EVER!

Site Name Change, CSS3 and IE and other fun stuff

2010-07-29T17:28:00.001-04:00

More Customer Websites
Couple new "Demo" websites I've placed online:

World Gym & SKM
~~LaBovick & LaBovick (injurylaw-flex)~~
Smile Lobby (still being built)
Tivoli Lakes A hacked together site built really the wrong way around but rather the very old fashioned way of simply having several pages with images on them and linking each together. Bad, Bad Bad, but had to be done quick quick quick (4 hours).

(note: LaBovick requested that their website be removed as demonstration purposes).

CSS3:
I've built in a browser check so if you are using Internet Explorer you'll get a little message to maybe switch browsers if you want to see a nicer looking website. The new site is going graphic-less as far as the basic design is concerned and instead using CSS to implement drop shadows and nice looking curves. In IE you'll still see the site ok but everything will be sort of squarish looking.
(my customer built sites don't do this for obvious reasons)

TheCodeFromLastNight.com, CodeFromLastNight.com, Ericsimage.com

The goal had been to create a new domain name ("codefromlastnight.com"), and have it a sub-hosting account under ericsimage.com but my hosting company, siteground.com totally f'd up the process and broke both sites. In a fit of anger I opened an account on GoDaddy, create yet another domain name "thecodefromlastnight" and got that up and running. I then tried to point ericsimage.com or transfer it to the new GoDaddy account but I'm still awaiting anything happening on that side.

For the moment, the only site working is "TheCodeFromLastNight.com"

www.ericsimage.com down

2010-07-29T15:28:00.000-04:00

In the process of getting a new domain name, www.ericsimage.com managed to explode and is having issues.

My website can still be found at http://www.thecodefromlastnight.com

Hope to have this resolved shortly.

Eric Knight Holbrook

Just how "big" and good is the iPhone 4 screen?

2010-07-26T17:08:00.001-04:00

So just how good is the new iphone 4 screen?

Well the best way to give you a true sense of the resolution is to show a screen grab from my phone.

This is an un-touched snapshot, pixel for pixel, of what the front page of the New York Times website looks like fully zoomed out. You will see the Safari navigation bars on top and bottom

To view the image, Navigate first to my iPhone4 Gallery, then click on the NY Time thumbnail.

The first large preview is scaled down view. Click on the button (top or bottom) to view the fullsize image.

http://www.ericsimage.com/?page=showgallerypage&gallery=iphone4

www.ericsimage.com

CSS3

2010-07-26T16:44:00.002-04:00

Applied some CSS3 to my "demos" page.

I find it very cool to see what you can do without any images, but instead just using special styles to control radius and shadowing.

Note, this does not work in IE, but should in all other modern browsers including Safari (including the iPhone), Firefox, and Chrome.
In Internet Explorer it simply reverts back to square boxes with no dropshadow

www.ericsimage.com

CSS3 and My Site

2010-07-26T09:36:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to write a quick note to anyone using Internet Explorer 8 (current version) and older(7, 6, 5).

I'm starting to slowly implement some minor CSS3 effects and because no version of Internet Explorer yet supports CSS3, I would recommend you switch browsers to Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Of the 3, I prefer Firefox.

Internet Explorer 9 should be out in a few months but like others, I think I'm tired of waiting around twiddling my thumbs.

You will still be able to view the site and I'm not doing anything crazy, but you won't see it as it really is supposed to look.

CSS3 and HTML 5 are the future and while HTML5 is still off in the future a bit, CSS3 is basically already here and of the major browsers, only Internet Explorer still lacks support for it.

www.ericsimage.com

Why I Bought an iPhone 4 and why I couldn't get a "Droid" or Evo

2010-07-19T12:10:00.003-04:00

Just prior to the iPhone 4 coming out I debated interally what I should do. Upgrade my 3GS, or get an Android based phone. There was the Evo (sprint), the HTC Incredible (verizon) and soon the Droid X.

All had 8 megapixel cameras. HD Video. And they weren't controlled by Steve Jobs. Apple and Steve had taken a huge hit in my likeability book in the past year, from removing apps, the fighting with Adobe and just getting more and more arrogant.

I looked at some of the pictures taken with the Evo and other Android phones and while quite large, they honestly didn't look that great or as good as they should for an 8 megapixel camera. Almost as if they were 5 megapixels, blown up, then sharpened. The video samples too looked a bit washed out and just not that great. Better than my 3GS, but not by much.

So I leaned towards simply upgrading my 3GS.

Then AT&T announced their new capped data pricing. I got the jitters. I would be grandfathered in to still receive unlimited data but it spooked me and I swayed back to getting a "droid".

This went back and forth right up to about 3 days before Ordering Launch day for the iPhone4 orders and by Launch Day for Orders I had swayed back to getting the 4.

Now, back a year ago, I ordered the 3GS day it came out and it was at my door 3 days later.

I figured I'd do the same and I waited about a day before I tried upgrade from my 3GS, thinking the "traffic" and chaos to buy this phone would be about the same as when I bought my 3GS (and upgrade from my original 2G).

But then all the news came flooding. AT&T problems. Mixed up orders. And then they ran out. 3 Weeks to get the 4. Ah shit!.

So I went back to my quest for a "droid". I ruled out Verizon because I had heard they "might" be switching to a capped plan as well and so I was basically left with Sprint. Sprint had decent pricing plans. And they were selling the Evo. Or so I thought.

In reality, the EVO was sold out online. Could not even order it. I called several Sprint stores, BestBuy and several other locations (about 30 in all) and irritated salespeople basically said, "No. We don't know. Have no idea when more will come in. Goodbye."

About 3 days from iPhone4 Ordering Launch Day had passed now. I couldn't get an Evo. I couldn't get a 4. But then I read the best way to order a 4 was use the Apple Store App. Don't upgrade through AT&T.

June 17th. Downloaded the App. Cool. Saw the 4, saw that I could order it but that it would take 3 weeks to even ship. I debated about an hour then cringed and hit "order".

A week passed.
The iphone 4 released and the first users had started trickling in.

Yellow spots. Antenna issues. More and More. And More. And on and oh my god what have I done????

June 24th: I called up Apple and canceled my order. I was back to nothing.

I went back to Sprint's website. Still out stock, still couldn't even order.

Another Week Passed

It was now the first week of July and still no one had any of the newer droid's in stock.

On July 2nd, I bit the bullet and re-ordered the iPhone4.

2 more weeks passed.
Consumer reports came out with their "don't buy" article.

I checked again with Sprint. No Evo's. It was Friday July 16th. I called Verizon who I had previously ruled out and found a store that didn't have them but expected them in Monday. I could go over and order and get one in 3 days. At my lunch break I drove towards Verizon but BestBuy was on the way and I decided to stop there, "just to check".

No Droid X's. No Evo's. But to my surprise they had the 32gb iPhone 4. Ah crap. Now I had to decide again what to do.

My Decision came down ultimately to this:

Had hundreds invested in Apps.
I already had two older iPhones.
My wife had her iphone.
Better picture quality but lower "megapixels" vs more megapixels but inferior quality.
Better video quality.
No need to cancel my AT&T contract and deal with annoying paperwork to switch carriers.
Was tired of waiting.

In the end, I'm glad I kept the iPhone.

Compared to my 3GS the main differences are really just the camera. The "retina" display is way overblown. It looks nice but if you showed my the two side by side for two seconds, they basically look identical. You have to really look and they you see, oh ok... things are a bit smoother. Whatever. Way overblown in my opinion.

The camera on the other hand (the main reason for me to upgrade) is the kicker. I use my iphone almost exclusively as my main camera. It's with me all the time. It's easy to share photos, uploaded, edit. But the 3megapixels of the 3GS was wearing thin as was the 640x480 video.

I am very impressed with both the camera and video camera of the iphone 4 compared to my older 3GS. The video is so much better and higher resolution that I was truly blown away and I've uploaded two photos taken, not with the camera, but with the VIDEO camera.

These are freeze frames from a 1280x720 size video shot with the iphone 4. The detail (for a video frame) is outstanding.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ekholbrook/IPhone4#

(remember, this is not a "photo" exactly, but a still from a video frame).

I will upload some actual photos taken with the iphone 4 shortly

www.ericsimage.com

Apple Hiring Antenna Designers? Now?

2010-06-30T17:49:00.003-04:00

From PCWorld:
"..On June 23, Apple posted three job ads, all seeking candidates who can "design antennas suitable for wireless handheld devices with excellent radiation performance." It could be just a coincidence, but a poorly timed one if so."

www.ericsimage.com

Picasa Albums To Website - Round Two

2010-06-29T22:40:00.000-04:00

After several hours of research into how Google generates various RSS output for picasa albums I was able to rewrite some of the code on my site to pull in images from each album in a much better fashion.

Was able to dynamically, or on the fly, strip out all the excess code surrounding the actual thumbnail images and write code to pull out and build the actual small image and link to the fullsize image, without ever having the user actually visit the picasa interface and gallery.

This led to being able to display the thumbnails on my site in a much much cleaner fashion, and of course, have full control over what the user saw when they clicked on each thumbnail.

Was better able to parse how many images were in each gallery without stepping through each item in the feed. I knew this was possible but simply couldn't figure out the write way to write it until tonight.

Rewrote the entire php script such that instead of each gallery needing it's own "real" page and then jump out to another script to read the feed, and the back to the gallery page, I simply pulled all the pieces into one file, then assigned each feed url to a variable based on which URL the user entered in the browser. For example, you'd go to page 'showimagegallery' & gallery=3DRendered. Based on that info, the script would use the XML feed for that "Gallery" and proceed with the rest of the script. To create a new gallery page now, I simply enter at the bottom of the RSS list, it's RSS url into the showgallery file, and the rest takes care of itself.

My next goal is to build a "Next Page", "Previous Page" set of links on the top and bottom of the navigation and then after that, create an iPhone compatible CSS because it bugs me that I spend 90% of my time online on my phone and I cannot read or see a single thing on my own website.

www.ericsimage.com

Behind the scenes of my image galley

2010-06-28T22:17:00.002-04:00

I took the core code of a simple XML feed reader and customized it a bit to work with Picasa's image & photo gallery.

Originally the code simply read in a feed and you could specify the maximum items to show. While this might be fine for text articles, to show perhaps the last 10 posts, but for an image galley I needed to make it work better. Because in the case of a photo gallery, I really wanted to show ALL posts (in this case images) but not overwhelm the viewer by showing all on the page at once.

So in php I wrote the following concepts and code:

1) I wrote a simple routine to first quickly parse the XML feed from picasa and count items and save as variable, called $count

2) I then told the page in the URL to pass new variables called $startcount and $jumpcount.

3) I then divide $count by $jumpcount and determine number of pages needed (for example: 36 / 12 = 3 pages). Then create dynamic links to each page and assign a $startcount to each link, with the $startcount increasing by $jumpcount for each link / page needed.

4) Then, beginning at $startcount, displays $jumpcount number of items (images). For example, one page 1, starting at image 1, display 12 images. Page 2 would start at image 13 (startcount + jumpcount)

5) $startcount increases by $jumpcount and passes new s$tartcount to URL for next page.

6) Display images starting at new $startcount... and so on... And repeat over and over for the rest of the required pages. That, in essences is what my code does. I also added in the ability for the user to determine $jumpcount which in turn changes the number of pages needed for each gallery.

The other cool feature I sort of wrote in as I was doing this was that all this code is in a single php include and when I need to show another gallery, I simply pass it a new RSS feed and the same page does all the work, figures out the number of images, the grid, the pages, etc.. This one file now can be used to display ANY picasa gallery without the need for more files on the web server.

One of my next goals is to try to figure out a better way of displaying the actual fullsize images. Currently you simply click on the thumbnail, a new window pops up showing the picasa preview.

What I'm guessing I'll need to do is
a) Read into an array the code generated for each thumbnail page, strip out all the garbage and figure out which image the link is trying to goto for each image and rewrite the generated html dynamically to create a better link. Right now the RSS picasa generates is full of tables and rows and and whole mess of garbage so that's one reason I'm limited to how the thumbnails themselves are displayed and aligned as well as where each thumbnail takes you.

New way to show gallery. New way to show posts

2010-06-26T19:53:00.000-04:00

I started the process today of shifting the content / entries on my home page to be a feed coming directly from my blog. This allows me to better syncronize my posts across my site, twitter, facebook, and my blog. I write in one place, the post will appear in all.

Using a similar method but with some extra programming required to break the "posts" into pages of 16 entries each, I swapped out my old image gallery with my gallery from Picasa. It gets fed in as an RSS feed like my blog, with image being an "entry". However, in this case because I had 450+ images, it was too much to show all the thumbnails on one page and I had to write a loop in php to break the gallery into pages.

Polo Lakes Apartments, Wellington Florida - Going Downhill

2010-06-26T08:41:00.000-04:00

Vandalism, and now at 8:30 on Saturday morning the pool is locked on both sides. No notes. No reasoning.

We're paying $1350 a month for this? This is higher than we paid in New York in a wealthy community.

I'd seriously consider alternative places if you're looking for a place to live.

Twitter & Facebook

2010-06-20T23:30:00.000-04:00

I followed up on my News Years resolution (a bit late, true), to delete / deactivate both my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

While both were rather entertaining, in the end I found them both basically useless in the grand scheme of things.

200 megabytes of Data enough?

2010-06-04T09:31:00.002-04:00

I don't think I use my iPhone in a very extreme fashion. 90% of my use is on WiFi while at home or work.

The main time I use 3G is when I drive to 30 or 35 minutes to work I turn on the AOL Radio App and listen to WFAN, a New York Sports radio station.

So when AT&T announced their new pricing plans, I was curious how much data I was actually using on their data network (as opposed to wifi).

I reset my statistics yesterday morning before I drove to work, and periodically checked throughout the day. I listened to WFAN while driving in and driving home, about 35 minutes each way. I also checked my email several times when I took a break from work, but didn't download any attachments. I didn't watch any movies. I read the news at lunch for about 40 minutes, skipping from article to article. I didn't turn on any other streaming apps or "data" type apps that I'm aware of. I sent one to Facebook.

When I checked my data use that evening as I stepped out of the car, I had used a whopping 31 megabytes download, and 3 megabytes upload.

David Pogue, a reporter & writer for the New York Times wrote me back that my calculations seemed rather high and indicated he rarely used more than 150 megs... a Month!

I reset my stats again this morning before coming to work and took a snapshot.

I turned on AOL radio and when I stepped out of the car I took another snapshot. I had used 8 megabytes.

Hopped in my car and reset data.

I turned on AOL radio over 3G and drove to work.

I stepped out of the car and checked my data use.

Notice the times. For some reason too, I had also apparently sent nearly 1/3 of a megabytes as well even though I hadn't actually sent anything directly.

The Great Quarterbacks of Today: What will it be like when they're gone?

2010-04-25T08:56:00.001-04:00

What will it be like when Peyton Manning retires.
When Tom Brady hangs it up?
When Eli Manning gets his second Super Bowl ring and walks away?
When Brett Favre finally goes home?

I grew up watching football in the late 70's but really didn't latch on to any particular players career until the late 1990's. Maybe because I also basically started my own career around the same time and I could sit back and start to watch the progression of others around me.

These guys all were rookies once and we never really paid much attention to them, with the exception of Eli, but that was no doubt because of who his brother was.

Running backs retire and it's an adjustment. Linebackers hang up the cleats and you wonder, for a few weeks, who can make of the difference. But it doesn't really unsettle you much.

When a quarterback retires, a good quarterback, the best the team has had in years, perhaps decades, it reverberates around the league and closer to home, it makes one feel mortal. They got old. And you too, are getting old.

It will not be the same.

The first quarterback I paid even a small amount of attention to was Terry Bradshaw, and to some degree, Roger Staubach. I was playing little league Football at the time so these were my heros, at least as far as football went, for me.

I was 8 or 9. I read Terry's book. Didn't make much sense of it. But it was because of him I tried to watch the Steelers as much as possible, follow their games.

But even at that young age I remember it weird when one day he was playing, and the next year he wasn't there anymore. He's gone? Why? Too old?

That didn't really make sense to me. But I didn't dwell on it and I stopped paying attention to the Steelers.

I watched Joe Montana a bit. Or was aware of him. But unlike most teams throughout the ages, his successor came in easily took over the reigns and all was well in San Fransisco for a few more years.

I remember Jim Kelley and when he lost those four super bowls and retired, that was probably the first quarterback in football, for me watching, where it hit home that these Hall Of Fame Quarterbacks get old and suddenly they leave the game and leave a huge void in the sport that's hard to overcome by the rookies who try (and fail) to fill their shoes.

The bills have never been the same since.

Brett Favre has been flirting with retirement for years but it never really seemed real. He did. Then he didn't. Then he left Green Bay and his successor, while good, it's just not the same.

This last year Kurt Warner retired. It came too quick for me and I couldn't put together in my mind that it seemed like just last year he was with the Rams, winning a super bowl, then trying again the next year. "Greatest Show On Turf". Was that 10 years ago? I thought that was like last year or maybe two years ago.

Peyton will be retiring soon. That might be the hardest one for me to get over. I've admired him as an athelete who, like Brett Favre and Eli Manning, has never missed a game. Not one. One Hundred and ninety plus consecutive starts.

When quarterbacks are falling like flies around them, somehow these guys simply don't get hurt, or not enough for them to justify staying out of a game.

But it's not just that. It's one thing to just be durable, but these guys are also extremely good at what they do. The team wins or loses by how well they play and for the most part, they've won. They are not winning because of their coaches, or because of players around them. Those are all replaceable parts. These guys aren't replaceable.

Tom Brady is an amazing quarterback. Three Super Bowls. Accurate. Tough. But pull him from the game and the team still wins. Put him on the Browns and the Browns still suck.

What will happen when Peyton and Eli and Favre (Finally) do retire?

Yes, somewhere, someday they will be forgotten a bit as the decades pass, but I don't think football, for me, will ever be the same again. And it's scary to think that this day is coming far sooner than it really seems like it should.

How Much Does Google Know About You?

2010-02-19T16:35:00.004-05:00

Check here, just for starters.
https://www.google.com/dashboard

Apple or Windows Safer?

2010-02-19T16:22:00.001-05:00

A user to a popular tech forum writes:

"Which one is safer is obvious... it's Snow Leopard, somewhat because it's a generally secure system, but mostly because it's a much smaller target."

Well, here's the best analogy I can think of to respond:

A motorcycle is a smaller target for a drunk driver or any car on the road to hit. Far far more cars get into accidents each year than motorcycles do.

On a motorcycle, there's far less chance you'll get whacked or sideswiped by another vehicle simply because you're smaller, less of a target.

So which is safer to driver to work: A car or a motorcycle?

The Apple mentality is that the motorcycle is safer. Because it's less of a target. They're sleek, they're sexy, they go fast, great fuel economy... what's not to like?

The windows mentality is that you're probably going to get into an accident, hence there's bit more sluggishness and Code and resources used to secure the OS. We're going to put 3,000 of metal around you, 4 tires, airbags, seats, crumple zones, and yeah even then it's not guaranteed you'll survive but at least you have a better chance.

16 track audio recorder for iPhone

2010-02-15T23:19:00.003-05:00

Came across a pretty awesome 16 track recorder for the iPhone yesterday, called "Multitrack".

Not to be confused with a sequencer, this app let's one import one or several stereo audio tracks, and then using a mic or the built in mic or any other audio source, playback and record several tracks of vocals (or other audio). It has Full panning, volume, punch in/out for each track.

You can then export out each separate track (or the entire mix) to then import later to a desktop sequencer such as reaper or sonar.

Name of the app is called "multitrack"

2010 Camaro V6 vs 2007 Mustang GT V8

2010-01-05T22:40:00.003-05:00

Mustang vs Camaro. The age old muscle car war. Except this time with a twist and times have changed.

One has a V6 engine and one has a V8. One has (arguably) a more modern structure and platform to ride upon and one uses and old solid rear axle setup. One has On-Star with satellite hookup and built in phone, one has a decent radio with 500 booming watts. One has an automatic transmission, one had a manual 5 speed.

If you're hoping to read an article drag strip time between the two, this is the wrong article. This review is simply from an owner of both who simply stepped out of his GT one day and into a V6 Camaro and my own impressions on their speed, handling, and whatnot.

After driving around for the last 3 years in my black, 2007 Mustang GT, I got thoroughly used to the roar and rocketship like g-forces the powerful V8 thrust upon the driver. In any gear (except 5th), you'd simply step on the gas a little bit, even a tiny bit and wham!, the car rocketed forward.

In 2nd gear you could hit 70mph. You could also go from a standing top IN second gear and hit 60mph faster than most cars, without ever shifting gears. On the highway, you could comfortably drive in 3rd... or 4th. Or 5th to save gas. In 3rd gear, traveling around 65mph, if you stepped on the gas you'd hit 90 before you could count, "one one thousand, two one th...". Likewise with 4th. 4th was a bit nicer if you didn't feel like hearing the engine wail like formula one car and wanted to save gas a bit, but either sufficed to get you up to 90 and back to 55.

The Mustang GT had serious kick in the pants appeal. It sounded fast. It was fast. I handled great. And if driven respectably, it got decent fuel mileage, averaging around 20mph, as high as 30 on long highway travels and as low as 13 if you raced from stoplight to stoplight. It also was simply a well built car. In 3 years of owning it I had total out of pocket maintenance expenses of $60. No new brakes. No burned lights. No new tires. Just changed the oil and fluids and that was. 40,000 miles later I finally said goodbye to a car that still acted like it was brand new.

I bought a 2010 V6 Camaro last week and admittedly have only had around 500 miles to feel it out. Here then are my comparisons of the two cars, back to back, because truly I walked out of one having used it for 3 years, and stepped into the other. Truly the most honest comparison I think anyone out there in real life could do.

Looks:
The '05 to '09 series of mustang GT's looked mean, bad boy-ish, don't mess with me, like an angry junkyard dog ready to pounce. The two fog lights near the center of the grill added to this effect as did the low nose, high rear end stance. The 2010 Camaro, no question in my mind, took alot of it's looks and profile from the Mustang, despit GM saying this is a new design. Well it is for Chevy, but from the side and with the exception of the pointier front bumer, this looks almost identical to the Mustang. The 2010 Mustang lost much of this bad boy look somehow. Not sure what happened but the new look didn't appeal to me and it's a step back towards the 90's and 80's look which I despised. Chevy was wise to take their design cues from the 05 - 09 mustang look.

Handling:
The Ford, despite it's live Axle, handled ridiculously well. Straight. Around sharp corners at high speeds, Over bumps. train tracks, uneven roads, those little "slow down" bumps on residential areas.

But I didn't really have anything to compare it to until I got into the Chevy and drove along the same types of roads.

The verdict? They both feel exactly the same. In fact, there were one or two roads with some rough patches that when I drove over in the Chevy I was a little startled that it actually felt more rough.

The bottom-line is that BOTH are very very smooth cars for what they are: muscle cars. These are not BMW's or your Dad's old Lincoln or a Caddy. They are rough around the edges, sports cars, for lack of a better way to describe them. They have moderately tight suspension but yet both are very smooth and relaxed in how they handle and how they go over bumps and ruts and whatnot.

Power:
I described the GT above. G-Force is the key term I like to use. 0-60 shifting from 1st to 2nd was exciting, fast, and required some activity with your right hand and left and right foot. You heard it. You felt it. It took in all your senses and gave you a rush. The big V8 roar. To jerking of the gears from 1st into 2nd and then 3rd if you wanted to break into illegal speed limits. And it was all over in a matter of 5 seconds.

The Chevy V6 Camaro is fast. But it's totally different. For starters, the automatic takes away the physical activity involved. You just step with your right foot and away you go. Next is the lack of sounds. The V6 is very very quiet and sounds like a Nissan Murano. It hums. Compared to the V8 GT it feels electric almost. There's also no jerking back and forth (or the sense of it at least) as it shifts gears. The car tilts back slightly and if shifts from 1st to 2nd to 3rd all relatively mildly.

Yet... it IS fast. When I'm at a stoplight and really step on the gas, the tires squeel for a second and it pulls away from cars next to and behind me with nearly the same speed and distance between (judged by looking in the rear mirror) as the GT "seemed" to do.

The Ford was supposed to do 0-60 in 5.1 seconds. The V6 Camaro in 6. I would say that's about right. Because i'm no test driver and I was using a manual in the GT, I probably did it a bit slower in the GT and because the Camaro is automatic, I'm probably getting close to even 0-60's times in the two cars. And again, that's sort of how it feels so far. The difference really is just that the Mustang made you really know you were moving because of it's roar and far more brute force feeling it gave you.

Where there's also noticeable difference is when traveling at highway speeds of say, 60 - 80mph. In the Ford you simply stepped on the gas a bit harder and the car rocketed forward. You never even worried or thought twice about passing as it was so fast to get from 60 to 90 and beyond it was almost silly. You didn't have to shift down in gears, the engine was so powerful from 2,000rpm up to it's redline and you really never needed to ever get the RPM's up past 4,500.

3rd gear. 4th Gear. It really didn't matter which one you were in.

The Camaro is no question a different animal. When you step on the gas to pass at these speeds it does a noticeable downshift and it's noticeably lacking in oomph and so you step a touch harder and THEN it kicks down one more gear and THEN you zoom forward. But all this takes about 1 second. So when you step on the gas instead of what seems like an immediate burst forward like the GT, there's a moment of hesitation before the gears in the Camaro kick the beast foward. And yes THEN it does move forward fast.

As fast as the GT? Hard to say. Again it's a different feeling. Quiet. The gear shifting and slight pause. The GT is simply, you're going 60 and you step a bit harder and you're going 90. No shifting. No pause however quick. It's all just one motion in the GT where it seems like it takes 3 steps to do this in the Camaro.

Again though, this is partly due to the Automatic vs Manual in the GT configuration, the 5 gears in the GT vs 6 in the Camaro, and yes, partly due to the V6 vs V8 in the GT.

Visibility from the drivers seat

This is an area like the live axle area that I think reviews got things wrong. When I stepped into the camaro I was expecting the view out of a barrel as one reviewer described it.

Instead I found the seating position, visibility out the windows (front and side), and location of the steering wheel virtually identical to the Mustang. If I had been sitting in the Mustang and you had told me to close my eyes while you moved me to the new Camaro and I opened them I would have sat there for about 20 seconds not noticing anything different.

Then I would have noticed the rear view window was a touch smaller.

Anything else?

Ok, headroom is a bit lacking but since that plays no part in my visibility or seating position I could care less. I only noticed this today, a week after driving around.

Final Analysis

So what's the bottomline? What's my feeling thus far between these two different yet similar cars?

The Ford was a very reliable, stable, relatively smooth, and extremely powerful car. It looked mean. It sounded mean. And was fast.

The Camaro's reliability I won't know for several years. It's just as smooth (but no smoother). It's quiet as hell compared to the GT. It looks mean but feels docile and well mannered by comparision. It's arguably just as fast as the GT V8 in the hands of a typical driver like me who is really not out to push either car to it's limits.

The Camaro cost $24,500 before taxes and whatnot. The Mustang set me back $32,000 three years ago when I bought it new.

What it will really come down to in the end is how well the Camaro holds up over the years.

Bing mobile still in German only?

2009-09-24T08:32:00.001-04:00

Goto bing.com on your iPhone and you are presented with this (see photo below)

How can Microsoft hope to expand marketshare of Bing if one cannot access the search engine on their mobile platform?

Does a blackberry show the same?

-- Posted from my iPhone

Blue Danube

2009-09-16T08:41:00.000-04:00

I spent a few days (hour here and there) converting this classical piece by Johann Strauss II into a more modern feel.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/rntdtgirdun/BlueDanube.mp3

No NFL Fieldpass app for iPhone? Problem Solved... sort of.

2009-09-13T12:26:00.008-04:00

Since the MLB "At Bat" iphone came out for the iphone last spring, I've been waiting for a similar application for the iphone for the NFL.

Well, opening day for the NFL is here and still no iPhone application.

I don't particularly want to be tied to my desktop/laptop computer just to listen to the NFL games.

I want to listen on my iPhone.

The solution it seemed then was to find an application that would allow me to stream audio from my laptop, over the network, to my iPhone. "Network" is the key and also the "catch" (no pun intended).

For my solution to work, for now until I find a better method, you must be on the same wifi or lan network as your actual computer. Still, this means the computer can be in a dark closet somewhere and I can plug in the headphones to my iphone and walk around my house or outside and pretend I'm paying attention to anyone talking to me when in fact I'm actually listening to the live audio of my favorite NFL game (via my laptop and it's subscription to NFL Fieldpass).

What's the solution?

There is basically one that I found acceptable.

Go download on your phone A free application for the iPhone called "AirMic Lite"
A desktop client/sever app for either your mac or PC which can be downloaded at: http://www.senstic.com/iphone/airmic/airmic.aspx
(also free --- I chose the Mac version simply because I don't really use my Mac much and figured I'd give it something to do while I use my PC.)
A Male to Male 1/8th inch audio cable.

How does it work? Why the cable?

The way airmic works is that it will stream any audio it hears in the Mic in or Line in jack of your computer. It does not (strangely) simply stream the audio out from say the audio of a movie on youtube or in your browser or itunes or whatever.

So in theory and practice you CAN do away with the cable but it means having your laptops speakers playing out the audio and the built in microphone picking up this audio. It gets kind of noisey to say the least.

By using a loop via the cable, you do away with all the external audio and what plays out of the headphone jack, now gets fed into the microphone (or line in ) jack.

Problem Solved!

Finally, you start up your NFL Fieldpass in your browser, turn up the audio (you might want to disconnect the cables just to verify your audio is playing on the PC/Mac first).

Once it's playing, boot up airmic, plug in the cables and verify a signal is reaching airmic (you'll see the input signal as a visual).

You may also want to adjust your audio preferences on your machine to increase or decrease what the microphone/line in jack hears, or it's gain, etc.

Now, on your iphone, simply start up airmic, enter your username and password (or whatever it asks) choose your desktop machine... and that's it!

Presto... NFL Field Pass (or any audio really) on your iPhone.

What's the downside? Local wifi or LAN connection only unless you're smarter than me and know how to take this one step further to let you access the audio over 3G or edge which would let you listen to the games while you're shopping with your wife for clothes or mowing the lawn out of wifi range or something.

For me, this is sufficient and means I can now walk around with my iPhone instead of my laptop.

--- One additional package I use is LogmeIn which is not necessary but I find it useful (and free) to access my mac from another computer. I also have LogMeIn Ignition (not free - $29) which lets me view my Mac desktop and actually manipulate my mac as if I was in front of it. This way I truly can do everything on my iPhone, such as visit the FieldPass site, change the game, adjust the input/ouput audio, etc.

To be honest, a better solution would be if Ignition allowed streaming audio from the remote desktop to an iPhone (logmein pro can do this but only from desktop to desktop). Until then, this seems the only solution.

Actually the truly best solution would if the NFL got off their ass and wrote an iPhone application similar to what Major League Baseball did.

But until then, we must overcome these hardships in other ways.

-Enjoy

Apple's lack of a mobile website

2009-09-13T08:27:00.001-04:00

I find it odd that Apple doesn't bother to create an iPhone or mobile version of their website.

Madden NFL for iPhone. Too easy

2009-09-11T11:21:00.002-04:00

With madden NFL for the iPhone comes great graphics and controls, but the game, with no difficulty settings built in, is way too easy. The shots below are typical of what I scored against opponents. 90 points. 80 points. 94 points.

Not recommended.

-- Posted from my iPhone

Foreign Cars For Clunkers?

2009-08-15T06:17:00.007-04:00

Asian Carmakers Doing Especially Well Under Cash for Clunkers
Government data shows that while 54 percent of the top-10-selling vehicles were manufactured domestically, eight out of 10 carry Japanese or South Korean nameplates. Click link above to read rest of article
.(from Fox News, www.foxnews.com)

Ah ok, now I get it. The unspoken Government plan must have been to actually get American's to buy Foreign Cars, ...then ..oops... the Government runs out of funding and won't pay the foreign dealers,... and, uh oh.. have all the foreign dealers go out of business.

I found this one paragraph interesting:
"David Wilson, a Toyota dealer in Orange County, Calif., told Automotive News that he has been paid for only three of 92 claims he submitted before Aug. 2, leaving him on the hook for about $374,000. In total, he has 450 unpaid claims filed for $1.9 million.

"I'm worried the government will run out of money before we get paid," he told the publication."

Dave, here's a tip: the government has no money to begin with.

NFL Field Pass vs MLB At Bat - Not Even Close

2009-08-10T13:40:00.002-04:00

NFL Fieldpass was terrible last year (2008/09 season) and am considering not doing it again this year. The MLB at bat for iPhone was so much superior it's not even funny. The NFL computer only stream is the darks ages by comparision. At nearly 3 times the price too for the NFL one, it's hard to jusfity such poor service.

Biggest complaints with the NFL

1) Annoying repeating "NFL" music plays during commercials. After about 10 times you want to smack the computer and shut it off.
2) The same music that plays during the commercial was poorly managed so 9 times out of 10 it would cut into the first play of the return to the game, be it 1st down, kick off, whatever.
3) Music was always about 10 decibels louder than the play by play
4) Computer only format meant I couldn't use my iphone, say if I was out of my house. By comparison, the MLB would work ANYwhere I had my phone.
5) NFL is $29 for what? Maybe 16, 17 games you can reasonably listen to? MLB is $9.95, includes 160+ games for EACH team and there's a game every night...

I would highly recommend not signing up for Fieldpass. That's my bottom line.

What's bugging me today?

2009-07-23T17:27:00.004-04:00

I have to say, that as an iPhone user, one of the most annoying things is, when viewing a site on my iPhone, to be redirected automatically on a site I normally use on my desktop, to a mobile version that I cannot get out of.

A couple really annoying examples of this are Google's Picasa and Bing.com.

Bing.com is worse because the mobile version (try bing.com in your iPhone) is all in German.

Google's Picasa is irritating because it used to be optional to view the admittedly nice looking mobile version but the one flaw the mobile version has is you cannot save out images from an iPhone. There's some javascript wrapped around each image that turns off the "Save" option when you hold your finger over an image.

I have a bunch of albums on picasa and it's frustrating that if out and about I can't goto my album, find one of my photos, and send it to someone or download it back to my iPhone.

That's what's bugging me today, July 23, 2009.

(Song) "Elected Officially)

2009-07-20T09:39:00.005-04:00

Written / Created on July 19, 2009

Download MP3 here Elected Officially

Or use the player below (to be phased out soon)

My New iPhone 3gs

2009-06-22T21:18:00.001-04:00

Having owned the original iPhone 2g (8 gig model) since it went on sale two summers ago, I felt it was about time to take the plunge and give myself a present and get the new 3gs, 32gig model.

I really wanted the faster 3g cell speed and the video recording was probably what pushed me over the edge. I have a two year old son and there's times when I simply don't feel like dragging along my camera, but my phone is always with me.

Apple claims they sold 1 million since they went on sale 3 days ago last Friday. I didn't want to wait in line so I ordered, with some trepidation, through AT&T directly. Thankfully I was eligible for the upgrade price of $299.

I placed the order. A message came up explaining it might be a week to two weeks befor it shipped.

To my surprise, It arrived this Monday morning by fedex.

It is fast. The video is very good. Being sble to shoot 3 or 4 minutes of video then post right to youtube without any computer intervention is awesome.

The biggest difference is the amount of free ram compared to my older model. The old one typically indicated 10 - 15 mega free at any given point after opening safari or my email or whatever. The new one consistently shows 100 - 120 negs free. That's a huge difference.

The one downside? 8 hours later in still using the old phone to make calls as the activation still hasn't kicked in.

One neat thing? I can still use my old phone for everything except cell calls and cell data transfer.

-- Post From My iPhone

June 12, 2009

2009-06-14T20:52:00.001-04:00

Intersesting cloud pattern.

Wellington Mall

Vue 7 vs TG2

2009-05-01T08:18:00.003-04:00

I think both programs were developed with the same goal in mind originally and that was to create nice landscapes and scenery images.

Where they diverged a bit is that Terragen and TG2 stuck with landscapes and scenery as the main goal, Vue went off in every possible direction to please many people: home hobbyists, ex-bryce users, poser folk, lightwave users, max users, architects, interior designers, and so on.

It was a good goal. It had a serious flaw though which is trickling down now as we type

1) Development costs sykrocketed

2) Prices had to be increased

3) Base features (landscapes, terrains, scenery) suffered

4) Features were riddled with bugs and started cause the entire program to be a black hole of crashes and system errors

5) The base user who originally bought Vue as their favorite program,.. the home hobbyist and part-time freelancer,.. was slowly priced out as prices went from the $200 range to now upwards of $1000.

6) They started to address this issue of pricing by taking the core program and taking OUT features and creating dumbed down versions and sell those at lesser costs.

7) As the base user, the hobbyist and free-lance designer, fell away and that money started to dry up as these people were priced out and core features were stripped out, E-on had to make up the difference by raising prices in other ways... maintenance plans, strange upgrade methods where a X.5 release required another purchase regardless even if the feature set from x.0 to x.5 didn't justify it.

They created a long wait period before patches were released to base owners. Whereas most companies, if they fix one or two even minor items, a new patch is released immediately,..yet e-on consistently held back from releasing new versions for months. Behind the scenes it became obvious too more and more that SOME people had access to patches while the average user did not. This is now justified by the "Maintenance Plan" pricing and issue.

TG2 and Planetside remains still a hobbiest program with pricing and features. It has more professional landscape and scenery features than Vue, but it doesn't have all the rest that Vue has.

You can make professional results with it, but you're not going be yammering about how come your poser's dynamic hair doesn't import.

Vue has now officially been targeted at the mult-thousand dollar purchaser who is going to buy Max, Lightwave, several multi-core machines, and will try to make $100,000 or more a year with it.

The problem is, they totally have destroyed their loyal user base who wanted a good $400 - $600 software package.

The ones who bought the multi-cpu systems, Max, Lightwave, Maya... those folk are not loyal because if they can't make money with Vue in a few months, they will abandon it and write it off from their taxes.

The other folk simply will disappear and are slowly doing so.

E-ON has made some bad choices. They are selling a hobbiest software package at low-budget movie studio prices and the results will destroy them.

zoo

2009-03-09T23:53:00.001-04:00

Nick and dad at the zoo

-- Post From My iPhone

Vue 7.4 Infinite Feature List

2009-03-09T23:33:00.000-04:00

With Vue Infinite 7.5 being a paid upgrade, I came across on E-On's website a list of Vue Infinite 7.4 features, presumably free. They include:

Multi-processor EcoSystem population
Paint material distributions at the surface of terrains With
Import, view and edit distribution maps in the Terrain Editor
Terrain effects optionally affect material distribution map
Multi-processor procedural terrain construction
Hide objects from render and disable lights by clicking their icon in World Browser (can't we already do this?)
Multi-processor panoramic rendering
Sky preview with clouds
Realistic MetaCloud preview
Dynamic plant display optimization
Support for Sketchup 7 (Win 32 only)

3D Rendered Image Gallery

2009-03-09T10:49:00.001-04:00

In case anyone's curious about my 3D rendered images, I'm keeping my images hosted on Google for now at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ekholbrook/3DRendered#

FOXNews.com - Surprise Asteroid Makes Near-Miss of Earth - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

2009-03-02T12:32:00.000-05:00

FOXNews.com - Surprise Asteroid Makes Near-Miss of Earth - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

Wait! Did you hear that whooshing sound?

A small asteroid buzzed by Earth Monday, though only real astronomy geeks in the Pacific would have noticed.

The rock, estimated to be no more than 200 feet wide, zoomed past our planet at an altitude of 40,000 miles at 1:44 p.m. universal time — or 8:44 EST.

Dubbed 2009 DD45, it was discovered only on Friday by Australian astronomers.

Forty thousand miles may sound like a lot, but it's only about one-seventh of the way to the moon, and less than twice as far out as many telecommunications satellites.

Had 2009 DD45 hit the Earth, it would have exploded on or near the surface with the force of a large nuclear blast — not very reassuring when you consider humanity had only about three days' notice.

According to the Australian news Web site Crikey, the asteroid is likely to be drawn in by Earth's gravity, meaning it may return for many more near misses in the future.

Out of the Rat Race. Into the Rat's Mouth.

2008-12-10T15:03:00.004-05:00

Back in September of 2008 (3 months ago), the company I had worked for full time in Greenwich Connecticut for five and a half years, began to make it clear that because of the economy, it was basically time to start looking for another job.

Which I did. It turned out to be somewhat of a bogus threat, or at least not as imminent as it sounded, but regardless, I took it seriously this time, and I put my resume up and made available for jobs in New York City and strangely enough, Southern Florida

I didn't want to work in New York City particularly, having worked there most of professional career going back to 1987 and basically deciding after 9/11, of which I had a clear view of the events from my office window in Midtown Manhattan, that I didn't want to be stuck in NYC when the next one hit, so to speak.

In my line of work I've found I simply have to post my resume and within 24 hours, the recruiters start calling me, at least in the New York area. So I got alot of calls from recruiters in Manhattan and did the nice thing and went on several interviews but nothing really struck me as something I'd want to do all day, everyday, and because of the downward spiraling economy, for probably less money than I was currently making in Greenwich.

No one called from Florida however and I had to actually (gasp) make an effort and search out companies. I managed to line of 3 interviews and took a flight down a few days later with a co-worker also seeking a new job. A week later one of them called me back with a job offer and I bit.

Two weeks later on the dark Friday morning of October the 24th, after kissing my wife and son goodbye (for 3 weeks), I found myself sitting in my '07 Mustang GT at 4:am on the Jersey Turnpike, then driving on down through Philadelphia, Washington D.C., North Carolina, then South Carolina (where I finally crashed for the night), then on into Georgia and finally into Florida. I reached Palm Beach and West Palm Beach by 7pm Saturday evening.

As I was driving away from my apartment in Port Chester and the areas around Westchester county NY, it struck me as rather odd that I was not coming back. When you hop on a flight, you always anticipate the return trip. When you hop in your own car with all your crap in the trunk, the impact is a little more weighty that, "holy shit, this is for real."

I started work in Boca Raton on October the 27th.