Continue reading »]]> It goes without saying but I obviously don’t update this site very often. Google probably has this site ranked somewhere in the back of the dusty old boxes at the bottom of their darkest basement but it certainly doesn’t prevent the post bots from dumping their little gems into my comments. I’m still getting about 20 or so per day which is probably nothing compared to sites that are actually active but it’s nice to see at least the spam bots are still interested!

99.9% of it is just advertising spam but every once in a while I notice one or two that stand out – obviously the English translations are what make them funny.

A few of my favorites:

I’d title your site the actual dreamland! While Santa claus scrapes from our doorway just once each year, you weblog is open up the whole year C amazing!

Precisely the facts all of us is within search of. Should certainly disrupt my expenses quickly.

It is much like a person read my mind! You gaze to know such a lot related to this, just like you wrote the book in it or something. I do believe that you could do with some pics they are driving your message house a bit, but additionally to that particular, this is excellent blog.

Continue reading »]]> About two weeks ago, I did something I very rarely EVER do. I broke my phone. 3 years – no drops, dings, nicks or bad scratches. Originally, I had planned on upgrading my iPhone 3G at the end of the month but I was shuffling some stuff around on my desk and the phone slid off the edge. Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal – I’ve got a case for it and it’s only about a 2ft drop. Apparently this time it was enough. Phone fell flat on the front face. I picked it up an when I turned it on – white screen of death.

After a couple hours fiddling with the internals and some Google searching I had two options – hope the internal connection re-seating fixed it or replace the entire LCD screen and digitizer. Breaking it apart and putting it all back together didn’t work and I figured I was so close to swapping it out anyway, I might as well upgrade early. So after about 2 hours in line at the local Apple retail store that night, I walked out with a new iPhone 4.

So. A lot of really cool things with the new hardware platform. One of the best – the on-board 720p HD camera. I had a chance to goof around with it last weekend while we were at Centennial Park. Madeline was at the play ground so I thought I’d give the camera a try.

There are a couple caveats:

• Shake is hard to control when you walk around, over, through stuff. As far as I know, the phone doesn’t support any sort of hardware/software correction. Ultimately, shake contributes to a decrease in video quality when you try to rip or convert one format to another so it’s something I need to work on reducing.
• Lighting – wash out from reflection or glare occasionally interferes with the visual quality in HD.
• Conversion compression. This is the toughest part of all. A raw 90 second .MOV video at 720p from the phone pushing roughly a 10kbs data stream comes out to about 126mb in size. Not much these days file size wise but still too large for most web blogs posting videos without streaming or smart bit-rate streaming (unlike YouTube, Hulu, etc.). Since I’m just linking video directly into my player code, I need a compression that reduces file size but still maintains some of the HD quality in the feed. FLV is usually the most common type and it’s what I’m going to be experimenting with the most. After conversion, I was able to reduce the FLV file to about 24mbs and still maintain a decent frame quality.

Anyway, I think the final cut turned out pretty good considering I created the entire time-line on my iPhone using the onboard camera and the iMovie app to splice two different shots together and add some additional titles/overlay. iMovie isn’t very powerful but it does let you get something patched together with a little creativity and experimentation. It also lets you export your final cut into 360p, 540p or 720p MOV formats.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Raw downloads: 360p (44mb), 720p (130mb)

Continue reading »]]> I remember playing all 6 games on my friend’s console. Gripping the joystick (black, square base with a single red button) between the web of our thumb and pointer, we’d play for hours until our hands started to cramp. Atari has converted them into flash based web games:

Atari Arcade

Bonus Link: Muppets return to YouTube!

Continue reading »]]> I don’t get a chance to catch many movies during their general release so I rely on services like iN Demand via my cable provider to keep me caught up. Problem is, not every movie makes it into any single service so I’ve been thinking about picking up a second service like Netflix. My brother actually canceled his cable and relies on Netflix exclusively – via direct download to his Xbox or through their DVD snail-mail service. Makes sense if you don’t watch a lot of regular TV considering the basic Netflix service runs $8.99/month vs. $75+/month for basic cable. Heck most regular TV shows are streaming online now anyway – Hulu.com being one of the best.

Anyway, here’s an ongoing list of movies I’m waiting on:

• Observe & Report
• BSG: The Plan
• Iron Man 2
• Clash of the Titans (2010)
• Zombieland
• Monsters Vs. Aliens
• The Expendables
• Edge of Darkness
• The Bad Lieutenant
• The Crazies
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
• From Paris with Love
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
• The Men Who Stare at Goats
• RZ’s El Superbeasto
• Avatar
• Bronson
• Inception
• The Wolfman
• Legion
• Book of Eli
• Up
• Pandorum
• Brothers
• Push
• Daybreakers
• The Hurt Locker
• Cold Souls
• Caprica
• Surrogates
• Public Enemies
• Extract
• The Hangover
• Armored
• District 9
• The Road
• Bart Got a Room
• Crank 2: High Voltage
• Planet 51
• Adventureland
• Where the Wild Things Are
• 9
• Inglorious Basterds
• G.I. Joe
• Moon
• Watchmen
• Fast & Furious
• Taken
• Terminator: Salvation
• The Limits of Control
• Star Trek
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• Mutant Chronicles
• Coraline
• Fanboys
• Underworld: Rise of the Lycan
• Gran Torino
• Gomorrah
• Transporter 3
• Quantum of Solace
• Role Models
• Body of Lies
• Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars
• The Dark Knight
• Get Smart
• Street Kings

Continue reading »]]> Every couple of weeks I browse through the iPhone App store hoping something catches my eye. 3rd party app development has really taken off – everybody with the SDK and a Macbook is hoping they’ll strike it rich with the next virtual fart machine, beer glass, etc. Sifting through all that useless crap can take some time but occasionally you stumble on a useful or productive application that enhances your iPhone.

This isn’t one of them. In fact, this app is the anti-christ of productivity. Simple to play, addictive and relatively cheap. Three components that make it easy to waste a couple hours staring at your iPhone screen.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Continue reading »]]> We get a ton of junk emails everyday. In fact, our Barracuda Spam Firewall has blocked 56 million junk emails in just the last 6 months. I’m not sure what our current junk fax rate is but I’m willing to bet it’s something a bit less than 56 million. It gives me the warm and fuzies knowing that organizations like the NNRAA (National Number Removal Assistance Association) are out there fighting the good fight against unwanted fax spam.

However, the irony of somebody sending us an unsolicited fax advertisement offering a service to help remove us from unsolicited fax lists did not escape me. Yes, I’m that sharp. I sent the following fax back in reply (Ron Tuber is my porn star alias):

Dear NNRAA:

Thank you for offering your free service to help remove our telephone number from unsolicited fax lists. It’s gotten out of hand. I’m literally drowning in unsolicited faxes everyday. It’s so bad, our increase in thermal paper costs have cut into our annual Christmas bonus monies.

I’ll start by asking you to contact the NNRAA and have them remove our corporate fax number (770.953.XXXX) from their fax lists. At the moment, the NNRAA is responsible for 90% of all our current unsolicited junk faxes and we’re hoping you guys can help stop the insanity.

Sincerely,

Ron “The Fax Admin” Tuber

Continue reading »]]> Full story

The officer fired at Uzowihe as soon as he pointed the gun, striking the young man twice, police said. Jackson and another witness, Julia Kelly, said Uzowihe fell because he couldn’t keep his baggy pants on his waist.

“He was running pretty fast,” Jackson said. “The only thing that messed him up is he was trying to pull his pants up.”

Said Kelly: “I bet he won’t wear baggy paints again.”

I’m quoting this article because it all went down yesterday afternoon 1 block from our loft building in downtown Atlanta. Fun times in the Big City I say.

Continue reading »]]> Congratulations to the U.S. Women’s Open 8+ for taking Gold! Thanks to a timely phone call from my wife Melissa last night, I was able to catch the Women’s Open 8+ Olympic final on TV. It’s probably been 7+ years since I’ve watched a regatta so it brought back a flood of memories from my own rowing/coaching days. It was awesome watching 3 of the 6 crews race [Empacher shells], including the U.S. Women!

They led through the 1000m mark with almost a half a boat length over Canada and never looked back. Both Mel and I were waiting for the Canadians to gain water during the last 500m but their charge never materialized as the U.S. Women held on (at one point they almost had Canada past their coxswain) to win by almost a 3/4 boat length. I believe their winning time was 6:05.24. For comparison, the winning Men’s Open 8+ was 5:25.11 (the U.S. Men took Bronze in that race, loosing to Canada).

MSNBC has a recap and videos of all the Olympic rowing races [here] if you have no idea what Rowing is.