If you liked Shaun of the Dead, you’ll love Zombieland. Tongue-in-cheek story with great special effects, slo-mo high-def videography and a great cast. Part of it was filmed here in Georgia (I caught a 99x bumper sticker on one of the destroyed highway vehicles – lol) so that was pretty cool. This one is definately going on my DVD purchase list and I hope it does well enough to spawn sequals.
Overall, I like some of the new changes in IE 8.0 but one feature in particular is driving me crazy: the delete option on the drop down URL list. The little red “X” is located in a column almost immediately beneath the drop down arrow. Mechanically, my natural URL selection motion drops the mouse pointer right over the delete button or close enough to it that every third or fourth time I scroll down to select a URL, I accidently delete the address I’m looking for. Very poor implementation of a GUI feature especially considering IE8 doesn’t offer any options to change the behavior.
I’m not the only person who thinks this “feature” is annoying.
Among other things, we’re still trying to decompress from our 2 week whirlwind vacation to Vancouver, Alaska, Victoria and Seatle. Most of it from the deck of the Celebrity X Mercury cruiseship. My first time aboard a ship this size and we go for almost 2 weeks! I’ve got over 600 digital pictures from 3 different cameras, a couple days worth of GPS track files, and plenty of amazing memories to sort through as we try to get stuff posted online between this site and our Facebook account.
Throw all that into the blender with Madeline, College Football in full swing, and the day-to-day stress of Atlanta and it becomes clear we need more hours in the day to get it all done on time.
I’m hoping to get pics posted by the end of the week and then some of the GPS track highlights afterwards. I think we’ve got some cool shots of some amazing scenery and I can’t wait to get them posted.
A couple of weeks ago, my wife asked me if I would take a white water kayaking class with a friend of mine. Turns out, his wife wanted to surprise him with a 2 day class for Father’s Day hosted by White Water Learning Center of Georgia but he needed somebody to go with him. I’ve spent a dozen + years on the water in small boats but never had a chance to do any white water kayaking so I agreed.
This one came directly from a friend and fellow iPhone user I met in Columbus, Ohio last weekend. At the moment, AT&T doesn’t officially support tethering. They have a seperate 3G USB adapter product that costs an extra $60/month. However, with the latest 3.0 OS release, somebody over at BenM.at figured out a way to modify the default carrier profile to enable the feature (already built into the new OS).
It doesn’t require jailbreaking or a funky SIM/Service hack, it’s 100% reversable and on U.S. carriers, doesn’t seem to affect IMs. You can turn it on/off via a config interface under Settings -> General -> Network -> Internet Tethering. It supports both USB and BlueTooth connections (after pairing with your laptop, look for a new network adapter).
Of course at some point, I’m sure AT&T will try to squash this hack. We already pay for “unlimited” data service via the iPhone interface so I assume that as long as people keep their tethering usage to a minimum, not much will happen until AT&T figures out how to trap and charge people for the service.
Sunday 7/19/09
Trip: 6.36 miles
Elevation: 3003ft (max) 1975ft (min) ~1194ft (total accent)
Time: 3h 15m
Temperature: 75 F
Wind: Light breeze
Conditions: Clear, no precipitation, low humidity
Pack Weight: ~31lbs (Madeline in her carry pack)
Summary:
The Little River Trail is just one of about 40 or so easy, single day hiking trails located in the northern section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Mel and I were in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. for a friend’s wedding and decided on spending our final afternoon hiking. A quick conversation with a Ranger at the north entrance welcome center and we were off for Elkmont and the Little River Trail. The Little River Trail is well groomed and graded (more like a narrow gravel road) and follows the Little River for several miles. Roughly 2.4 miles up the trail is the Cucumber Gap trail head. This trail takes a more aggressive climb back towards the Elkmont camping area via the back side of Burnt Mountain but makes for a great ~5 mile loop. Perfect hiking weather and great views of the Little River made for a nice day hike with the family.