Nadine took me to my first lacrosse game tonight. It was a blast.
Those who think hockey is violent probably have never seen a lacrosse game.
The Jax lost 9 to 7 but they put up a good fight.
The venue would let me bring in my new camera so I had to take pictures with my iPhone.
Click the picture(s) to see more.
I think we’ll go to the next home game.
Go Jax!
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Both Twitter and Google Reader are services that I use every day.
Recently Twitter has been duplicating (random) tweets sent via SMS. It’s good that I’ve got unlimited texting. 
Along the same lines, Google Reader has been duplicating random posts from feeds. I think TechCrunch posts are duplicated most.
This is annoying. Twitter and Google… fix these issues please.
If I wanted to see double of something I’d pick something a little more interesting, say for instance the Doublemint twins 
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It was a good little point and shoot camera but today I retired my Sony DSC-W5 digital camera. Taking its place is the highly recommended Nikon D40. I was reading Josh Bancroft’s Tinyscreenfuls blog post about the D40 and it inspired me to take the plunge into the DSLR world of photography. After reading the reviews I was convinced that the D40 was the best choice. I opted for the 6.1 megapixal version of the camera verses the 10.2 MP D40x after reading this review.
I realized I have no practical reason for the 10 MP version of the D40. Taking pictures at 10 MP is overkill for most scenarios and you are likely to do a lot of cropping. More importantly pictures which have been cropped from 10 MP don’t look nearly as good as photos taken at 6 MP that hasn’t been cropped. Don’t be fooled by the camera manufactures trying to tell you that you need as many megapixels as possible for the best picture quality. Take the time to read Ken Rockwell’s interpretation of The Megapixel Myth for a complete breakdown on this.
After doing some price comparison I discovered Pro Photo Supply in NW Portland had the best deal. Their price even beat out Amazon!
The kit contained the following:
In addition I bought the following accessories:
Taking the plunge into DSLR from a simple point and shoot camera is overwhelming. There is so much to learn and it all seems quite complicated. Hopefully the DVD’s that came with the camera will help shed some light (no pun intended) on it all.
I’d like to start out by learning the basics of digital photography. Then once I’m comfortable with that I’ll move onto the features of the D40. Without knowing how to properly frame a shot, when to use the flash, or why to use one type of lens over another there is no point learning about the advanced features of the camera.
The good news is I am able to set the camera in "Auto" mode and use it to take shots. I’ve played around with that a bit already and the picture quality is amazing!
A quick search helped me find a (free!) handy plain english users guide for the Nikon D40. The Author, Ken Rockwell has a ton of great information on his website. I’ll be spending a lot of time there and you should too.
Since I finally have a camera that uses the SD card format I’d love to buy the Eye-Fi Wireless SD card. This sweet bite sized gadget will automatically upload the photos taken on it to any of the 17 supported online photo sharing webistes. No more need to connect the camera to the computer or mess with card readers. A neat concept that I’ll probably end up buying once the price goes down a bit.
In the meantime I’ll be (manually) uploading my photos to my Flickr account. Check there often for my latest photos.
Ultimately I’d like to do macro (close up) and night photography. It will happen. Someday.
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Just got back from seeing the movie "Untraceable". It was a decent movie that could have easily been the sequel to "The Net". The movie did a good job of keeping the realism in tact as much as a Hollywood movie could.
Diane Lane plays an FBI agent who works in the Syber Crimes devision… busting kiddie porn peddlers, online scammers and identity theives. One day she is given a tip about a website live streaming the murder of a kitten. When Lane tries to find out where the stream is coming from, she runs into roadblock after roadblock and finally realizes the perpetrator is… are you ready for this… UNTRACEABLE! (dun dun duuunnnnn!). Lane is told to move on to another case since it was just the death of a cat, but when the website starts capturing people for death, using internet traffic (the number of people visiting the site to watch someone die) to quicken the death of those held captive, the case is raised to top priority. You see, the website’s traffic monitor is directly tied into the death machines the victims are in. The more visitors, the faster they die.
What I thought was going to be the major weakness of this movie actually turned out to be one of it’s strongest points. The story. This isn’t just some random killing spree. The plot behind the killer(s) motivation is actually pretty believable and makes for good storytelling. The crimes are methodical, there are very few loopholes (if any) in the movie (which is rare for thriller films like this) and the characters are likable and seem more real than the traditional line up.
I’d give it a 5 of out 10.
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I got my new phone today and switched carriers to AT&T. 
Overall this phone is amazing! I’ve got it setup to sync my contacts using Plaxo for windows mobile, I’m using Oggsync to sync my google calandars and Milksync to sync my tasks at Remember the milk.
I don’t like the QWERTY keyboard. It’s cramped and hard to use. Instead I’ve been using TouchPal, a soft keyboard that I’ve installed on the phone. It’s an incredible keyboard that I’m still learning to use.
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I’m ditching Vista. It’s a horrible operating system. I just need to get things done and Vista = anti-productivity. I spend more time messing with the operating system than I do on things I need to accomplish. Furthermore the future of Vista is not that great. The final release of Vista dropped the best features in order to meet the release deadline. As a result the operating system is half baked and reminds me of Windows ME. Yes, Vista is that bad.
Today I had to call Microsoft to activate my copy of Vista Ultimate (the online method failed). I could barely understand the foreign customer service rep that told me that my Installation ID was ”invalid”. What this translates to is that Microsoft was not willing to activate my legitimate copy of Vista that I paid for. It was at this point that I told the representative that I’d just go download a pirated copy of Vista and avoid all the hassles of being a legit customer. What a bunch of choches. This was the last straw.
So, I am saying goodbye to Vista. I don’t recommend it. Go with Mac, or stick with Windows XP which is rock solid and has proven reliability and excellent driver support.
UPDATE: I was finally able to get Vista activated after 2 1/2 hours on the phone with Microsoft. The solution was to give me a new CD-Key. In other words they had no clue why Vista wouldn’t activate on my original CD-Key.
UPDATE 2: I was called by a manager at Microsoft. He apologized for the all the issues I had with activation and spent 10 minutes on the phone with me collecting feedback on what I thought could make the experience better. Props to Microsoft for total ownership and follow through of support issues.
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