A few months ago, I introduced the alternative to the waterproof disposable camera. While it was somewhat successful, there are some inherent challenges to taking pictures underwater and just above the surface. I am here to report back on the experience, including the successes and the shortcomings.
Ok, this pic is long overdue but I shall still share it. It's my "live the moment" shot while in Jamaica. It is where I tested out the AquaPac for my camera.
Ja Mon
The Good:
Having a waterproof camera allows you to capture moments from much different viewpoints, which is great. Take a look at these pictures:
All underwater pictures look exactly like this one.
These pictures are hard to take because..well, you need to swim and breathe.
The Bad:
Notice the spot of water to the right. There is not a whole lot you can do about this. You can try to wipe the drops of water off with your hands, but alas they are wet also. The only way to do it is just to dunk the camera back in the water and reassess the lens area. The LCD is difficult to make out during use because you are trying to stay afloat. Unless you have amazing water treading skills and have a lot of patience, good pictures will be hard to come by.
Peace out
The Fugly:
Inevitably, you will end up with a significant % of pictures that are blurry either due to the AutoFocus in your camera not being able to focus/meter correctly, or because of drops of water on the case, or because you suck at swimming. I can't help you there. I've seen Workmonkey and Nelly try to kayak before. It wasn't pretty.
Impressionism is rad.
Conclusion
Ultimately, you can take pictures of that piece of reef that you saw down in the water. Whoopty-doo. They all look the same, really. You might as well download a much better pic over the internet. The AquaPac leaves something to be desired because there is a lot of space for it to move around in. While it does a good job of keeping the camera dry, it's not really that practical because it's hard to grip. Also, the big problem with it is that the flex-plastic material is not very durable. Mine looks like a small land-based turtle (or tortoise?) has been chewing it for 9 straight days. I like turtles.
Alternatives
I recommend going with a hard case. I have seen a used one for my camera for ~$60 on eBay. They are generally pretty pricey new, ~$170 for a case!!! Fdat. A cheaper alternative is to go with a waterproof FILM camera. Don't get those cheap Fuji/Kodak disposable waterproof cameras. They are a RIP OFF!.
Get a reusable waterproof camera from REI instead for like $15. While it may not be digital, it looks pretty decent and it doesn't cost that much more than a disposable waterproof camera. The best thing is that you can replace the film inside and keep using the camera. The only downside is that it's film...that means every time you want to use the camera, you have to drop $5 for film and like $10 for processing(photo CD). That totally blows. Also, you can't take video and you can't see the shot you just took.
Get this instead of those cheap Fuji's next to the 2 for 1 Doritoes at Safeway, fatso.
Bottom Line
Digital cameras: buy a used OEM waterproof case on eBay.
Cheaper Route: buy a reusable waterproof camera from REI
My mortal nemesis Workmonkey aka The Human Pear had a holiday party that I missed last weekend. Being that it is in Brooklyn, about 3000 miles away from the Bay Area, I decided not to drop by. But because his evite was long-winded enough, I have decided that it is worth sharing with my audience (which unfortunately also includes Workmonkey):
Christmas. Or, as Manuela, the El Salvadorian nanny that raised me would say, Mas Christ. The time for more Jesus. Some of you, I won't name names (Kim ------), believe Jesus to be nothing more than a myth created by the religious establishment, used primarily to control man, gain immeasurable wealth, and make us all feel guilty about masturbation. It is not my place to argue with that analysis. I will say, though, that this "myth" has generated more acts of kindness, love, and sacrifice than any of you "real" people have (Kim ------). If love is a myth, than consider me a believer. The point is, if you have trouble joining Jill and I on Saturday, December 16th at 8:00 PM to celebrate Mas Christ, then you can find another cause for celebration. Perhaps you heathens can celebrate the X of X-Mas. X, of course, being the algebraic variable of any holiday celebration. In different cultures, X stands for frankincense and myrrh, egg nog, entertaining Tim Allen movies, or, in my case, drunken grandmas who have trouble keeping mashed potatoes in their mouth. Whatever it is, you are responsible for finding a reason for coming to the 1st Annual Mark Cordes Christmas Party this year. We will celebrate holidays, friendship, and memories with all the essential elements ... Turtlenecks, holiday music, shots that taste like candy canes, and that fake fireplace thing from Target. It will be like you walked into a photo shoot for the Dolly Parton Christmas Special from 1982. Best of all, afterwards, we'll walk through freezing air to look at manger displays, before continuing the drinking at a festively decorated bar. And please, if you are Jewish, you are still more than welcome. Just because your ancestors are responsible for the crucifixion of the world's most loved man doesn't mean you aren't invited. It is the night We will all finally bury the hatchet and share a snip of holiday cheer as brothers.
I'm assuming everybody knows that Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is the biggest shopping day of the year in terms of electronics. The way it generally works is that there are a set of really good deals like $299 laptops and cheap computers that are called "doorbusters". These are the hooks that bring people in front of the stores waiting in long lines at ridiculous hours. People at Best Buy lines stand in line starting around noon the day before. WTF.
I've never really had success because I am not one to stay up all night for deals I feel like I can get the rest of the year. Last year I woke up at ~6am with my Pops to get a Toshiba 46" DLP Projection TV for $1500. While the deal was pretty good, it was definitely not a BF deal.
This year, it so happened that my brother and wife were around during Thanksgiving instead of Christmas...AND we were looking to upgrade our folks' aging computer. So the entire week we researched and talked about purchasing a laptop at some point. After eating turkey and chow mein for Thanksgiving, my brother and I returned back to the pad and tried to see if there was a good deal for a laptop. After going through all the Core Duo laptops we came to the conclusion that all the laptops on sale were deficient to some extent and that we should wait for a better laptop. Sleep in, forget this mad rush on Black Friday.
Then at 2:45am, I asked my bro: "Hey, what do you think of driving by just to see what Black Friday looks like."
"Well, if we actually get the opportunity, we're getting the doorbuster."
We arrive at the store and to our amazement....nobody was at the store! As we walked up to the store 2 others got out of their cars to the beach chairs that were in front of the store. As it was only 3 hours until they opened (6am), we were surprised there weren't more people. The store advertised 3 of the $299 laptops per store, which usually means they have exactly 3 of those. Since we were there we just sat down and chilled for a while before my bro decided to go home to grab chairs and his laptop so we can watch Greys Anatomy episodes (McDreamy ring a bell?).
So we just chilled in front of this store for a couple of hours before the store manager arrives and announces that they have 4 $299 laptops! We didn't need them, but we had to get it. He hands us the vouchers for the laptops roughly an hour before they open so that there's not a mad rush to get the laptops. There were other items for sale that people got vouchers for but this was the grand prize. So once they opened the doors, we got in there and grabbed a bunch of crap including:
We got back at ~8am and we just crashed. Was it worth it? I guess so, because we ended up with the doorbusters. I would not think it was worth it if we had to wait there starting at midnight and don't know if we will do it next year but we have finally experienced the true Black Friday.
Now we just gotta fill out all those damn rebate forms....
Everybody loves to eat. Everybody loves seafood (every Asian, anyway). But there's the flip side to all of this. Does every crab, lobster, fish love to be eaten? Why do we treat these creatures with such disdain that we punish them with such atrocious deaths...ie boiled to death, cut up into small pieces, fried to death, etc?
I would like to ask all of you to be humane when preparing food with live creatures and invest as I have in a Humane Tool for such atrocities.
If you enjoyed the zombie flick(s) as posted in my last blog, you may enjoy Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Terror, AKA Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead Part 2: In Shocking 2-D
You are coming back from a weeklong camping trip. You just had a great time with your good friends and are semi-anxious/semi-not-looking-forward to catching up on all 1498 emails and 354 meetings scheduled for this week. As you wander from these thoughts of work, it occurs to you that traffic has been quite light. Is it because it is a Sunday? Is there an important football game on? You cross the Bay Bridge and still see not one car on the highway. Your desolate commute continues until you get home. It is in your driveway as you are exiting your car that you finally get a glimpse of the first person you've seen in 4 hours a few hundred yards away.
"Hi, quiet day, huh?" you ask, hoping for some sort of news.
The man, dressed awkwardly with torn jeans and a reddish t-shirt briskly but cautiously jogs towards you. It is when the man gets 25 feet from you when you realize that there is a large hole on the side of this man's unshaven face. His eyes are sunken in and he appears to be in a manic state. You notice his hands are red with what appears to be dried blood on them. As this man runs closer and closer to you, you realize that you may not get to those 1498 emails.....ever.
====
Ok, that was a poor attempt at story writing, but strikes at the heart of why I am intrigued with many of these movies:
I have not yet seen Day of the Dead (waiting in my queue of movies to watch) and 28 Months Later is yet to be released, but there is such a great Doomsday theme to these movies that is fascinating. What do you do when the world has changed and you have to survive?
Here are some points to what I like specifically about this genre of films:
1. Survival - How do you survive such a situation and how do you interact with others to create a society that is built upon the new societal rules.
2. Social Commentary - To some extent many humans out there are living dead, preying on the flesh of other living souls, thereby creating more living dead.
If you want an introduction to the world of Zombies and their potential, watch the 1st half of Dawn of the Dead (2004 remake) or 28 Days Later (also 1st half). Both these movies take a turn for the worse and lose sight of what was good. There is still yet to be a great zombie movie, but the groundwork has been set for such a movie. 28 Days Later is probably as good as I have seen, altho Dawn of the Dead had some great potential.
If you are interested in what a Zombie actually is, look here.
It is Monday night. I am down by 15 points going into Monday Night Football with only my kicker, Scobee, to go. In fantasy football this is as good as dead.
Alas, the Jacksonville Jaguars are ahead of the New York Giants by 13 points with ~5 minutes to go. 80% of America has stopped watching this game since Eli is not putting on a show and neither is Tiki and the game is pretty much out of reach.
These next plays occur next:
4-1-NYG25 (5:44) D.Garrard up the middle to NYG 25 for no gain (Team).
PENALTY on JAX-K.Brady, False Start, 5 yards, enforced at NYG 25 - No Play.
4-6-NYG30 (5:44) J.Scobee 48 yard field goal is GOOD, Center-J.Zelenka, Holder-C.Hanson.
NYG 10 JAC 26
I assure you nobody else in America cared about that kick more than me or my opponent. ESPN will never show that highlight, but for me, that was the last second kick to win a game. I needed exactly a field goal greater than 40 yards and it happened (amidst a flurry of text messages to my phone exclaiming "SCOOOOBEEEEEE"). Next time you see random people yelling on Sunday/Monday, it's not necesarily because they have Tourettes, it could very well mean that a meaningless sack or field goal won a fantasy football game for them.
After 6 years of running everything off of a server in my room, I've decided to offload all the server admin work over to a hosted service. While I still have all the SSH / FTP access, it means I don't have to deal with firewall, OS upgrades, and Apache upgrades. It also means I don't have to worry about blackouts anymore. That's rad.
I've had my phone for a few months. As many of you know, I've been trying to maximize on utilizing this phone to its full potential. So far I have been using my phone to do these things:
1. Check my work email through Opera Mini browser.
2. Check Yahoo IM through the built in browser (WAP interface)
3. Stream media (photos, pics, movies, mp3s) to my phone
4. Send SMS and MMS (PictureMail, VideoMail, VoiceSMS)to all my friends('s chagrin)
5. Use Opera Mini to check / update Fantasy Football news and rosters along with viewing other web pages (slashdot, news.com, rockmidgets.com)
...I'm forgetting something else.....oh yeah, making calls.
As of yesterday, however, my phone has just increased its value 3 fold. Apparently all phones these days have GPS functionality already built in. They just want for you to pay for their subscription service to access it. I downloaded one such GPS app and voila:
GPS, Baby!
My phone now offers me turn-by-turn directions with a lady giving those directions to me through my phone speakers. How cool is it? It works flawlessly! The screen is a bit small but beggers can't be choosers. The alternative I had been considering would have been to use a BlueTooth GPS unit (~$60 street) that you then have your PocketPC talk to. The problem with my old Dell Axim X5 is that it doesn't have Bluetooth and therefore I would need to get a Compact Flash BlueTooth card, which sucks because that in itself would be $30 and it would mean I would need to swap out my CF Wifi card. Get it? Good.
FAQ:
Q: "WOW eMarklee, How do I get that on my phone"????
A: First you to access a high-speed wireless network like EVDO. With Sprint this is called PowerVision. You would also need a phone that has GPS built in, which are probably all newer phones. Thirdly, you need the software which people will generally need to pay for ($9.99/month or so).
The latest version of IE7 has been released. There are a number of security related fixes and enhancements that are significant and enough where I would recommend that my family upgrade. The only roadblock is this:
Oops
Damn, I ditched my legal copy a while back to skip that lame "activation" process and I ain't about to go dig it out. Oh well, maybe someone will circumvent this activation process soon. Vista is planning on limiting the moving of the software from one machine to another to only once. Boo. Since when should MSFT decide how many times I can transfer my software if I am just using one instance. Sure there are piracy concerns that MSFT needs to address, but for the rest of us dolphins getting trapped in the net, this is not a good user experience. Fdat.
If you know me or want to dig through old blogs, you will know that when the Honda Element came out, I thought that thing was great. It was a rugged SUV that could go up to the mountains for some snowboarding. It had a good price tag AND it had back seats that you could fold into a bed...so you can crash there if you wanted to when you go camping. There were a few factors that ultimately killed the idea for me:
1. It is fugly
2. It only seats 2 in the back. Boo
3. I lived in SF and did not need another car...especially a SUV
4. It is fugly
This bad boy is everything the Element was supposed to be and more. It looks good, can seat 5, and can take you around in Tahoe. The problem is the gas mileage isn't that good at 17/21. But hey, you gotta pay to play...and in this case, it's well worth it to be radical.
Just saw a story on 60 minutes that aired in March I guess, but it claims authoritatively that the debate of gayhood as 'nurture' vs 'nature' is over. It is not 'nature' as there are cases of gene sharing identical twins where one twin is gay and the other is not. It is not completely 'nurture' either, since in the same way you have identical twins grow up in the same environment but have one turn out to enjoy batting whereas the other likes to catch.
The answer to it all is hormonal while the baby is inside the womb. The story is interesting in that we finally have the answer of why Workmonkey is gay.
Check out this rat that was just born. Man, it's fugly. Ok it's not really a rat...it's a bear, a panda bear at that, but it's still fugly. Something about babies when they are first born...totally fugly.
Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications Initiative
What is the DHARMA Initiative? It is a fictional mysterious research project on the popular TV series Lost. No one really knows what it is yet and there are theories behind the plot and what will happen. Personally I think it's all in that fat-so's head and he's going to eat everybody on the island like Kit Kat bars.
Asian found on primetime TV!
The most important part of Lost is the guy above. Probably about 60% of the public know who this guy is now compared to .0003% before Lost. This is incredible coverage for an obscure Asian dude (not including Jin, who is huge right now). It gives all Asian actors out there hope that they, too, can some day work for the Hanso Foundation. My uncle above is François Chau, the actor behind Marvin Candle, the face of the DHARMA Initiative
(funded by the Hanso Foundation). BTW, this random blog was started because I just saw him on Beverly Hills Ninja 3 with Chris Farley, one of the best comedians to come out of SNL, behind only Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, and maybe Steve Martin and Chevy Chase at his prime (Vacation).
We're proud of you, François, even though you will be consumed by the fatso soon.
Don't you love the people that go to the gym so they can wear their newest Puma outfit? I see people all the time that go in there so they can jump on 2 machines and the treadmill on 2.5 for 10 mins. You burn more calories watching Hells Kitchen than doing that. If you go to the gym please spend more time actually touching weights than just looking at your triceps, por favor.
BTW, if you use Firefox, do not think by a mile that you are safe from malware and other exploits, the most prevalant being social engineering including phishing. Many exploits do exist that will compromise your personal information. At the end of the day, though, you just gotta be smart about what forms you are submitting and what files you are opening. If you see any attachment, you better be sure you are not opening the wrong type of file. Long story short, stop browsing for pr0n.
1. Put a small convex mirror on your side view mirror. The same one that semi-trucks use. This is so you can feel big on the road....in your big Honda Civic.
2. Let the world understand your support of Honda Automotives and the superior build quality of their fleet of cars and trucks, with the use of a "Powered by Honda" seat belt cushion. In case of sudden stops, this functional device will cushion the impact on your shoulders.
3. Protect your car carpet with the use of some form of elastic hydrocarbon polymer (not the same one you use on your remote control). This is to protect your carpet from wear and tear and general stains.
4. Provide ergonomic support to your neck with the use of Doraemon head rests. This provides a soothing and comforting ride while sipping on your bubble tea.
5. Freshen up the air in your car with a can of My Shaldan. My Shaldan comes in a variety of flavors (Lime being the best) to fit your lifestyle and taste.
Don't worry about what it says on top.
Once you have Fob'ed up your car, you're ready to Fob up your life. That's the next lesson.....let me know once you've got your car in shape.
Lance Bass is gay. Um....dude, this is olds. If you actually publish news about Lance Bass, it better be one of these things:
1. Lance Bass reveals he is straight.
2. Lance Bass revisits moon and loses arm to atrophy during masterbation.
3. Lance Bass kills Justin Timberlake in a dance-off where Lance harpoons Justin with an actual lance.
4. Lance Bass marries Britney Spears.
5. Britney Spears kills Lance Bass with an actual spear.
Everybody has seen Captcha images at some point in their browsing. These are the distorted images that a number of websites ask you to enter before performing a function. Captcha, an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart" (that's what you guessed, right?), is widely used to subvert bot activity on sites. Namely, to prevent scripts that run that may scrape a site for content or transactions.
An example is putting a captcha image on a sign-in page. This would make it so a bot that just cycles through a series of passwords could not continuously attempt to crack the password. Another example is Craigslist, which wants real people to list items and not automated scripts that would allow companies or groups of people to list a huge number of items in bulk.
Captchas aren't really a silver bullet against bots, as there are many ways to get around it. There are implementation issues where one modify the client to display unrendered text, you could run human farms that decode capchas, you could forward the image to a porn site and have unsuspecting human farms that will decode it to see the latest image of Tera Patrick's rack. OCR software and more advanced neural networks have also been proven to beat Captchas.
A more creative captcha.
Something about this captcha I don't like...not sure what yet....
The cool ones coming out now are the ones that are adding a human factor in the decision making. The following are a couple of different systems that ask for a more human touch in identifying nature or kittens
Bots can't tell the difference between a cat and a cow. I can't taste the difference either.
My favorite by far, though, is the HotCaptcha. A takeoff of HotOrNot, it shows a bunch of chicks (there's a dude implementation, but I didn't click on that). Basically, you pick out the hot chicks vs the fugly ones. One problem is that different people may find different chicks hot. For example I know dudes that couldn't tell a hot chick from a fugly one if a hot chick rubbed her boobs on his head. I know some others that only go black and never look back.
Next time you see a captcha image, you know that there is a better implementation out there...or one that's more fun anyway. Personally I would design one that had a bunch of black dudes on there and you gotta pick out Dre, Ice Cube, and Easy-E, from the images. If you don't know the original members of NWA, then you shouldn't be on my site. As a matter of fact, if you don't pick correctly now, I am going to ban your IP from accessing my blogs from now on:
I found the first glaring hole in the Samsung A920, my mobile phone of a few months which I have become quite close with. Before this phone, I never did this whole "texting" thing. All I did was use the cell phone like...well...a cell phone. These days my phone is probably less a cell phone than a mobile miniPC (not PocketPC, as that is bigger). I use it for everything from checking my work email/calendar between/during meetings. Taking pictures of a urinal after a few beers and sending it via Sprint's PictureMail to a unsuspecting victim in my phone book (generally this is Workmonkey).
So as part of my package, I now get 500 free Text Messages a month, so I do what I can to use them up. Usually it is with dumb pointless messages like "You ready to ghostride the whip?" and "Your ass is grass". This is all good and fine, but when I try the usual "You piece of shit" type of messages, the T9 implementation on my phone will not allow me to type that.
T9's objective is to make it easier to type text messages on small mobile devices. The technology allows words to be entered by a single keypress for each letter, as opposed to the approach used in the older generation of mobile phones in which several letters are associated to each key, and selecting one letter requires multiple keypresses.
Without an expanding dictionary of words, my "piece of shit" message will always look like "piece of shiv". WTF. My phone will never figure out that when I type in 24824, I am not trying to type "chubi", I am trying to type "bitch". This is a terrible flaw that has relegated me to working extra hard to swear. Who is Samsung to impose their morals on me? It's like making me do finger hail marys every time I want to sin. This is pure shiv. Those chubis.
I am astounded by all you Tivo users out there (not faux-Tivo..ie cable carrier DVRs) that are not using the 30 second skip. And for all you users of faux-Tivos out there...SUCKAS!!!!
The 30-second skip is one of the best inventions in technology since the invention 2-ply toilet paper, bringing relief to chafed rectums across the free world. Faux-DVR users claim they can skip commercials, but manually fast-forwarding through commercials is akin to taping a show on a VCR and having to actually watch the content at 2x, 4x, or 8x speed. 30 second skip, however, allows instantaneous skipping of 30 second increments. This means you can fly through the commericals in about 4-5 clicks. If you skip over the beginning of the segment, there is a 8-second instantaneous rewind that will take u back to the 22 second point, 14 second point, or 6 second point. So at most, you will click 4-5 clicks for 30-sec skip, and then 3 clicks for the 8 sec rewind. All in less than 5 seconds. Once you get good at this, you blast through the commercials like suburbs in Lebanon.
Unfortunately the cable industry is well aware of this skipping of shitty Mercedes commercials and has had its way with Tivo. This means that Tivos do not allow 30-second skip out of the box. You have to enable it through the Select-Play-3-0-Select during the playing of a show. Once you do this correctly you will hear 3 joyous chimes...the beginning of the rest of your short, miserable, and wasted life. Enjoy.
If you look back a few blogs, I referred to the fact that I don't like any sport where you can play for like 2 hours and be at an exciting score of 0-0. Just doesn't do it for me. But the great sports gods have heard my plea to make the World Cup exciting by giving me Penalty Kicks(which I think should replace soccer altogether) for a couple of the last games including the finals. In addition to that, Zidane gave one of the best headbutts I've seen since the old days when the UFC allowed headbutts and shots to the balls.
The actual clip of Zidane is great...it always seems to look different every time I look at it for some reason. Here are different ways one may interpret what happened with Zidane:
EVDO, 1x Evolution-Data Optimized, abbreviated as EV-DO or 1xEV-DO is a wireless radio broadband data standard adopted by many CDMA mobile phone service providers including Sprint. What it provides is significantly greater transfer rates: 3.1Mb/s for downloads, 1.8 Mb/s for uploads. It is also referred to as a 3rd generation or wireless broadband, or 3G.
What this allows is a whole set of useful applications for my nice 3G phone. The best apps that I've been rocking are these:
1. Opera Mini - much better browser than the one included with the phone.
2. Google Maps Mobile - directions, maps, satellite photos, and business listings all on the phone. It's pretty nice.
This is where you find limp noodle.
The best service that takes advantage of the EVDO, however, is Orb. Orb allows one to stream media (videos, photos, mp3s, Live TV) from your home computer to the phone. And it's all FREE currently. Basically you download and run a media server that is running on your home computer. On your phone, you sign in to Orb and send requests for files on your computer via a regular mobile browser. Orb then makes the request to the server running on your computer to stream the media from your computer. Your phone then receives the streaming media and plays it as it would normally.
What this means is you can watch any movies stored on your computer on your phone. It means you can access your entire 100 gig mp3 collection on your phone. It means you can look at your collection of vacation pictures of yourself doing shots of 151 Jamaican rum on your phone. You get the picture. It's impressive.
When I watch my Tivo'ed CBS Evening News, the first thing seems to always this unrest in Isreal. When I look at CNN.com, the top news article, again, is some Isreali bombings.
Dude, WTF.
Is this any different than the warfare that have been going on the past 2000 years in that area? Is it really news that there is turmoil in the Middle East? I think news needs to be partitioned into "news" and "olds". 10 Iraqi soldiers get rocked by IED. Olds. Isreal and Palestine leaders don't like each other. Olds. Israel gets bombed. Olds. Pitt shocked by post-Katrina devastation. NEWS!
I'm not being insensitive here...well, maybe a little bit...but no need to explain myself cuz that's olds.
A more boring type of D's, actually. If you ever need some D batteries for those things that seem to need D batteries...like camping lanterns, portable pumps for air beds, or a frying-grease ethanol conversion kit, I would recommend you go to your local Dollar Tree or any other 99 cent store to pick up a pack of 4 like this one I just picked up for camping. That price is right for double or quadruple Ds if you ask me.
Soccer is a game that I do not watch. Why not? For starters, the US played in 3 games at the World Cup this year. How many times did they score? Once. That's right...3 games, 1 score. Oh yeah, Italy kicked a ball into their own goal...but that doesn't count. There are interesting parts of the game, like red cards and Red Hooks....but it does not occur during regulation...it's called PENALTY KICKS. That's right. Do or Die! Let's kick off 5 times each....whoever gets more goals wins. That is the part of soccer that is exciting to watch. I say cut out the shitty part of the game prior to the penalty kicks and you have a game.
I think the game actually calls for a change. I think if they make the goal the width of the field and allow the players to use their hands and hit each other, I'd would totally watch it.
Having just traveled to Jamaica (more posts to follow), I prepared myself with DEET. We brought a 23% and a 29% spray. I probably used it 5 days in a row...which begs the question of safety. Is Deet safe? BTW, Off sucks. The Walmart brand is much better. There are 2 camps from what I can find on the Internet.
The "this shit will kill you" take:
The use of DEET in mosquito repellents is extremely troubling. DEET has been associated with seizures and several cases of toxic encephalopathy (encephalitis) in children, including three deaths, according to the Extension Toxicology Network at Cornell University.
Every year, approximately one-third of Americans use insect repellents containing the insecticide DEET. Duke University Medical Center pharmacologist Mohamed Abou-Donia has spent 30 years researching the effects of pesticides. He has found that prolonged exposure to DEET can impair functioning in parts of the brain."Damage to these areas could result in problems with muscle coordination, muscle weakness, walking or even memory and cognition."Abou-Donia says rats given even small doses of DEET for 60 days had a harder time accomplishing even the easiest tasks. Abou-Donia says short-term exposure to DEET does not appear to be harmful, but warns against using any product with more than a 30 percent concentration
The Who Cares take:
Those of you who are concerned about the safety of DEET, let me remind you, that in 30 years of use there have been only 30 reported cases of severe adverse events-mostly in young children who have been kind of "sheep-dipped" into deet; where you have a large surface area to body mass, such as in children, DEET should be used especially sparingly.
But for adults, the risk is remarkably low. If you want to read an excellent article on deet and insect repellents, Fraden, in the Annals of Internal Medicine, 1998, wrote a wonderful review on DEET and other insect repellents.
What you can do instead of DEET is use a all-natural repellent (lemon eucalyptus, lemongrass, etc) while eating granola, cleaning your birkinstocks, and combing your armpit and leghairs if you are female. Do the natural stuff really work? Dunno. I'll give it a try next time I go camping....but regardless...be careful with the amount of DEET you put on.
Advertising for a purified tap water in a bottle never got better than this Dasani campaign that I saw on TV the other day. Does anyone else find it absurd that people are marketing/advertising WATER of all things? Can anyone really taste the difference between Evian and tap water? Some say yes, but wtf...it's still just water! I can understand advertising for Lymon, but purified tap water from LA???
In a way I guess people would be rather seen drinking from an Evian bottle rather than a Kirkland bottle, but I still find the whole thing pretty absurd. What are they going to start advertising for next? Salt?
Ok, so with a new high-speed wireless internet phone with mp3 player, you have to be able to play high quality ringtones, right? The problem is the service carriers want to nickel and dime you by making you pay for the ringtones. That's just not right. Why would I pay for the service when I can do it for FREE???
Step 1: Purchase the mp3 version of Drop It Like Its Hot
Step 2: Download Mp3Trim
Step 3: Download QuickTime Pro (You have to pay for this.....unless you acquire it somehow)
Step 4: Load Snoop into MP3Trim and chop off everything at the end except for the first 30 seconds. Anything longer than that will go into your voicemail anyway....you can also make the end fade out. Save the file.
Step 5: Load that cropped mp3 into Quicktime Pro and goto File-> Export. Make sure you do the following:
a. Select Movie to MPEG-4.
b. Select Audio in the dropdown
c. Audio Track is set as Music
d. Set the kbits/sec to 24
e. Make it mono
f. Output Sample Rate to 22.050khz
g. Set Encoding Quality to "best"
Step 5. Save it on your desktop as "drop_it_like_its hot.mp4". Change the name from ".mp4" to "*.m4a". You've got the file ready for upload to your phone now. FYI:
M4A is a relatively new compressed audio format from Apple. It is said to be lossless, that is, if you encode it to be so. It is AAC audio contained in an MP4 wrapper. If named with an MP4 extention, it is used for audio and/or video. M4A is for audio only. The industry likes this format because it can be lossless and it can also be rights managed. I.e., you can play your files but I can not unless I also have a license. So, it was a natural choice for Sprint amung other companies to chose this format for it's ringtones both for the improved quality and because they can protect the content from being shared if they chose to in the same way that iTunes does.
Step 7. From there you just click on the SMS message and you download it to your phone. Once it is in your phone, you just set that as the default ringer for your mom and you'll be pimpin out from now on everytime mama calls.
So you are going to Jamaica or white-water rafting and you want to preserve the moment with some pictures. What do you do?
There are currently only options I know of:
1. Put your camera in a zip lock bag and snap shots. The problem with this is your camera gets wet and you gotta get a new camera. No Good.
2. Buy a waterproof disposable camera for ~$10-$15. This works...cept it's in film, which blows. This means you gotta pay another $10 to get it developed so you can get a photo CD. Boo.
3. Purchase a waterproof case for your camera.
For my Canon camera, this will run $240 from the Canon website. WTF. That costs almost as much as the camera itself. FDAT.
So what is the eMarkLee solution?
The AquaPac:
The Case in all its glory.
Putting the digital camera in there. The clear part apparently is made of kryptonite so it takes good pictures. They say there's also some composite of zinc and moron in there.
Putting that bad boy in the water....
Here's the beautiful picture from the camera itself. The image sucks cuz everything is contorted but I assume things are better under water...or not. Regardless, in situations where the camera could get wet, this would be pretty cool. Does this distorted picture make me look fat?
Holding the camera is a bit kludgy...it's not snug or elegant in whatever way, but hell, it works.
I returned the 2 disposable waterproof cameras I purchased from Walmart (I only purchase things made by Indian sweatshops) for this item. If it leaks, I'm out the cost of the camera. If it works, I will have made my money back....so we'll see how it goes on my trip to Jamaica goes next week, mon.
Ok, I've made my peace with Sprint PCS. For a couple of years I had bad-mouthed it with regards to the shitty service and coverage it gave. There were dead spots all over my apartments in SF that would require that I go outside in order to make a call. That totally blows. But after 5 years with them, I'm now on quite possibly the best phone plan ever:
500 Anytime Mins
Unlimited Mobile 2 Mobile
Unlimited EVDO Power Vision Web Access
Unlimited Picture and Video mail
500 Text Messages
6pm Nights and Weekends !!!
All for: $30/month
But don't stop there:
$5/month off the bill
25% corporate discount
I feel complete now with my Sprint phone plan and would be happy to praise their services for 2 years to come.
Remember Voltron? I remember that set of toys as one of the coolest ever. Better than Transor-Z, even Transformers....except for maybe Jetfire. I was never able to trade my GoBots for any Voltron pieces for some reason.
But Voltron finally met his match as seen in this video:
Do you want to save the Earth with a nice Toyota Prius hybrid like Leonardo Dicaprio?
Fdat.
Hybrids are unproven and overpriced for a marginal improvement over gas engines. The additional upfront cost to purchase the vehicle and the HUGE added cost of having to replace the battery after a certain number of years makes the total cost of ownership quite high. I'm not sure you would make that money up in savings for like 13 years.
A couple of years ago, when I had a long 50 mile commute, I considered the hybrid car, but it could not be justified by a longshot. So I got the Civic HX. It got 44mpg on paper, 40mpg real life. That's pretty good. That's probably not that much worse than what people get with their hybrids. The Civic Hybrid, for example, gets 48mpg. Is 4 mpg different worth the extra 5k? NO WAY! The problem was that I was driving a Civic. This meant a number of issues and my ultimately getting rid of my commuter car:
1. I'm driving a Civic. That's soooo high school.
2. No power
3. My Civic shook violently when trying to accelerate on a cold engine.
4. I got rear ended, hence the muffler rattled.
5. Because it is a Civic, the rims got stolen. Yeah...seriously. It was sitting on bricks like the movies. wtf?!?!
6. I celebrated a birthday in it with my boyz KokoBWare and ODJ one year in it where I rolled down the window and puked out the side, spraying my friends in the backseat....on the freeway. That was awesome. But it left a mark on the car...to forever taint it.
So now with gas prices at $3.49, what is the best car to get?
This thing gets 49mpg!!! That's better than the Civic Hybrid. The only caveat is that it's diesel, which means you can't just fill up at any station....but then it also allows you to put biodiesel in there. What is biodiesel? It's grease. It's going to McDonalds, getting a Big Mac, fries and a supersize of a tub of french fry grease to go. You just run that free oil through a machine to remove the floating chicken heads and fingers in there and you got yourself free fuel!!! If you aren't a hands-on person, you can find biodiesel stations that sell the stuff for way less than Saddam Oil. Do you really want to be supporting Saudi Arabia?
The only caveat is that California, New York, and Massachusetts have forced VW to withdraw the TDI because of questions about the emissions....but I say who cares?!?!! You're using Chicken McNugget grease to get to work!!!!
So my shiney new phone has Bluetooth. This means you can do one of two things with it. You can either wear a Borg-like headset that is all the rage or you can transfer files between the phone and your computer. Back to the headset thing.....I went to dinner a few weeks ago with some random people and this one dude wore the headset the entire evening. Um...hey dude, you forgot to take your headset off...Star Trek is not good for hitting on chicks.
I plugged in this bluetooth adapter to my computer to start experimenting:
Bluetooth adapter
'ferrin some files, yo
So I find out that this phone is actually quite limited in Bluetooth file transferring. You cant transfer ringtones, mp3s, or anything like that to the phone. Kind of lame. What I can do though is transfer addresses via "vCards", which are essentially contact information. So you would type in all the info into Outlook and then export each contact individually as vcf files. You then transfer these files to your phone via the standard Bluetooth file transfer handshake. While this works fine, it takes forever cuz you have to transfer each file individually. Hmm...I'm not sure if I have the patience to do it. I may have to get a program like DataPilot sync addressbook information between phone and computer. Yes, and I'll go out and pay for software right after I wear a Borg-like headset through dinner and drinks.
I like drinking as much as the next guy, but sometimes you need a different drink. There are only so many Grey Goose Martinis, SoCo Limes, and Red Headed Sluts you can take down before you wonder what the next special drink is going to be.
Well, I have found it. It's "Spiced Rum", not Cap Morgan's, but something more authentic....You can find it HERE.
There is an interesting protest going on today. A day without illegal Mexican immigrants. I want to be clear that this protest is not for "all immigrants" but "Illegal Aliens from the planet Mexico".
Viva Mexico (um, I thought we're marching to be in the US?)
I am in full support of the protesters. As a matter of fact, I wish all farms and sweatshops mandated ALL illegal aliens to take the day off. This way we could get the govenment support that the aliens seek. It would show the government what the effect is of all of the illegal aliens really is in this country. If the govenment truly recognized and supported the protest, then for one day California residents would get:
1. Reduced state taxes because we don't have to pay for healthcare for illegal alients
2. Reduced insurance rates because we can discount the % of uninsured motorist claims from illegal aliens
3. Reduced healthcare costs because hospitals do not lose money treating undocumented workers
4. Reduced traffic on the roads during traffic hours.
5. Reduced crime / drug activity
Audio: I copied my mp3s from my computer onto the TransFlash card via an SD card adapter that allows it to go into a SD card reader and voila, I can listen to 50 cent while drinking my juice in the hood in South Central.
Video: Gets a bit trickier. You can convert mpeg 4(xvid, divx) and mpeg 1 videos into the correct format if you want to do the re-encoding. There are some commonly available softwares available for doing the encoding. Quicktime Pro is one of them. After fiddling, I got my video on my phone:
Boo ya. I put Family Guy Seasons 1-4 on my phone and it only took about half of my memory card, leaving ~500 megs for music. I'm starting to dig this phone...this will come in handy next time I drop the kids off at the pool
For those of you that have not researched the prices of flash memory, here's an update: flash memory is cheap!
You can get a 1 gig Secure Digital (SD) card for like $20. Compact Flash(CF) is pretty much only used in digital cameras now, but you should be able to find it for roughly the same price. MiniSD and MicroSD(TransFlash) are formats that are used in cell phones.
The flash memory that is What I had to purchase was the MicroSD, which also goes by under the name of TransFlash card. Do not confuse this with the MiniSD, which is another type of a "miniature flash memory card" that is used in some phones. Personally, I don't think these cards can get that much smaller and be usable. Every time I take the MicroSD card out of my phone, I'm afraid to sneeze.
I paid ~$40 for the 1 gig....about double what you may pay for the bigger SD cards. Oh well, I guess it is quite small...and size matters.
Quarter, MicroSD, Secure Digital, Compact Flash in comparison:
Some people call me an old man. My response to those hooligans is that just because I have to consume supplementation of fiber to stay regular and need to stretch for 15 minutes before I do low-impact pilates does not make me old. To prove this, I have taken on a project: a cell phone.
Yes...a cell phone.
I've been using some old piece of crap phone for a while now, while the entire cell phone generation passed me by. My phone allowed me to do 3 things: 1. Call someone. 2. Get called. 3. provide additional lighting in dark places.
Recently I decided to up the ante and purchase a new generation phone, the Sprint Samsung A920.
This phone has all the bells and whistles that anyone can have on a small cell phone. My project is to step into the present and figure out what I can do with it. Namely, here are the features I will be working with:
1. 1mp camera
2. Video
3. Sprint's EVDO high-speed internet access
4. Transflash card expansion slot to store media
5. Media player
6. Bluetooth
7. PictureMail
I will be exploring all aspects of this phone in the upcoming month, so keep posted if you want to catch up to what the rest of the young'uns are doing with their phones.
Everybody knows I am a big fight fan. I like watching violence and people beating each other up (see previous blog on Strikeforce), but nothing matches up to unexpected violent acts by grandmothers.
Not sure if you can see very well here, but I was driving by this fat chick who was straight up EATING RIBS WHILE DRIVING!!!! I mean, WTF?
Now I can understand a latte, an Egg McMuffin, even a burrito while you drive but when you're busting out ribs and au jus, you've taken it a bit too far. Couldn't you wait 15 mins before digging into the slabs of meat? Better yet, couldn't you just throw it away and go to the gym? Talk about obese America.
Oh, btw, if you're trying to guess what kind of car I drive by the bottom of the picture above, I can just show you a picture of my hoo-ride (it purrs like a bengal cat).
So I went to the Strikeforce show this past Friday. California has just recently sanctioned mixed martial arts and this is the biggest show ever in the history of the sport:
All in all there were like 6-7 fights that were good in general. The best was of course Frank Shamrock, with his trademark staredown before the 15 second fight where he just dropped Cesar Gracie right away. Here's the picture that I took.
I am going to Jamaica for a wedding in June. Being a beach wedding, it requires that I do some extra work on my body to not look like I sit in front of the computer all day (which I do). In consulting with fitness experts, I am planning on starting a program that will include some "special ingredients" that promise to get me to look like the following picture in 6 weeks. I can't wait!
I think everyone and their mother(I literally played poker with my mother over the holidays) plays poker these days due to the wild popularity with World Poker Tour and similar shows. To my point, my brother purchased a set of 500 poker chips from Walmart for $40 to keep in the house. We played over the holidays and they served the purpose fine, but there were some major flaws with that set:
1. Small Dealer button. Come on, it can't cost that much to make one the standard size.
2. Distribution of chips. The distribution of chips(in rows of 20 chips) was poor. 2 red, 2 white, 2 blue, 2 green, 2 black. Who needs 2 rows of black and 2 rows of blue? What you want is 3 rows of white, and 3 rows of red. If I had my way I would have this:
4 rows of white
4 rows of red
1 row of green
1 row of black
3. The aluminum case did not stay open. Not a big deal.
4. The cards sucked. No big deal, just pick some up for $1 each in Vegas. It has to be Bee cards, not the Bicycle cards you use to play "a$$hole".
5. dice sucked....but who needs dice in poker?
There are issues but what do you expect for $40, right? Those issues still bothered me so we returned it and I started doing more research. I found that the best chips you can get are the Paulson chips. They are the real clay ones, not a plastic composite with a metal insert like 99% of the people have. These are textured and are the same ones used in the casinos. The popular one is called the "James Bond" chips. The James Bond Paulson Chips have the Casino De Isthmus on each label. The Casino De Isthmus was the fictional casino in the James Bond movie License to Kill:
Good chips, crappy James Bond movie (this is the worst Bond of all)
A quick search shows that they pretty much cost around $1 per chip. So if you want 500 chips, you pay $500 or so. Um....
Below is the set I ended up with from HomeDepot.com. Not sure why they are selling poker chips...but then again, why is my mom playing poker? Pretty much has those things I wanted...distribution of chips, etc etc...and all for less than $20!!!!!!!
Now if I can only get my mom to go all in with $20.....
Many of you have found my cousins Jimmy and Johnny to have been appealing or even sexy. Well, after giving them the word of their fame, they have decided to please all the ladies in an encore presentation:
What is human essence? Why do I rip a big one in the mornings? Why do I enjoy watching UFC but not Extreme Makeover:House Edition? Why do I cry when I watch a double feature of Beaches and The Notebook?
This past weekend I tried to find the answer to these questions in an exhibition called Bodies. You think you know what a human being is...then you take the human being and cut it into 100 cross-sections and you start to appreciate everything that is going on with each movement. The idea is that they had purchased 22 cadavers from China and injected them with some kind of polyurethane composite to preserve the bodies. They then slice and dice them in different lights to represent the intricacies of the different systems in your body...ie respiratory, nervous, digestive, etc etc. Kind of freaky to see the inside of the human being whole like that. It was also very cool to see how everything works. They also had samples of lung cancer, kidney stones, tuberculosis...even penile cancer. They also had fetuses at every stage. All in all this exhibit was pretty bad-ass and I would recommend to all...almost as good as ripping a big one in the mornings.
I'm planning on moving away and have a couple of pets that are looking for a loving new home for my pets. Please contact me if you know of anyone interested in my lovely cat or dog:
Armistice Day is on 11 November.
A two minute silence is observed at 11:11am on 11th day of the 11th month because this is when the Great War, or World War 1, came to end in 1918.
But now, this anniversary is used to remember all the people who've died in wars since World War 1. It is also the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut, who has stated that when Armistice Day was changed to include all wars and renamed to Veteran's Day, the true meaning was lost. So to all, Happy Armistice Day. Be sure to observe the 2 minute silence at exactly 11:11 as the holiday was meant to be.
1. Any of various birds of the widely distributed family Columbidae, characteristically having plump bodies, small heads, and short legs, especially the rock dove or any of its domesticated varieties.
2. Slang. One who is easily swindled; a dupe.
SYNONYMS: rats, filth, grime, disease, evil, satan, bush
I am on a personal campaign to take back our cities from these flying rats. God knows I have killed a few in my time....(well, Workmonkey does the actual killing, I just order it to be done. This way I sleep easy. ) The only issue I had with the execution that Workmonkey(God be with his soul for this evil act) performed was how messy it was. What I have been exploring have been how to execute an eradication of this disease PETA calls 'pigeons'.
Damn it, someone beat me to the punch:
All in all it looks like what I set out to do albeit in a satirical way. I just need to have everyone perform the "cleansing" now. My brothers and sisters, it is time to save our cities. GO OUT AND KILL A PIGEON!!!!!!!
Mycousins in Taiwan are trying out for the newest season of Asian Idol and have made an excellent audition tape for the scouts. I think they are getting their first record contract next month, so I am very excited.
