Archive for October, 2006
Next Entries »Condo reorg project, before and after
Sunday, October 15th, 2006
About 6 months ago I set out to reorganize and rejuvenate my condo. I got rid of my old (awful) couches, got new comfortable furniture, removed the curtains and frosted the windows, and got a new audio setup.
Overall I have to say I’m glad I did it. It’s a lot more comfortable to live in, and looks a hell of a lot better. The frosted windows bring more light in, offer more privacy, and don’t look dumpy.
This was 23 images shot from a leveled tripod. I used the Photomerge feature in Photoshop CS, and then did a lot of hand tweaking (particularly on the TV and speakers).
“Condo reorg project, before and after” by sparktography
The rain is back
Sunday, October 15th, 2006Hello Rain,
I had almost forgotten the downside to living with you in Seattle: eight months a year of rain, rain, rain. Upon waking up this morning I discovered the wet, gray world had arrive to wrap me up in it’s soaking embrace. Skype of course insisted upon going for a walk and getting us both drenched.
Regards,
Sparky
P.S. Luckily I’m home now, and drying out in front of a toasty iMac. I have the breakfast of champions (pictured below) and a slightly damp pit bull to keep me company until the rest of my day catches up with me and I get to work on cleaning and such.
Touch for on
Sunday, October 15th, 2006
I love the little touches Microsoft got right on the out of box experience for the Xbox 360. You can normally turn the console on and off using the wireless controller, and since the controller comes paired with your console out of the box you can start his first boot sequence by turning on his new 360 with the wireless remote.
The only thing that could possibly improve this experience would be if Microsoft started shipping the Play and Charge kit with the 360 and left the battery back in the controller for shipping. If and when the 360 finally gets built in HDMI it could reduce the setup of the set to 2 cables (HDMI and power) and push a button to get going.
A 360 beginning
Sunday, October 15th, 2006Today was a momentous day for my friend Ken - he got himself a shiny new (matte white) Xbox 360! I drove downtown with him to go pick it up and had a chance to snap the below photo of a used copy of Oblivion in a funny case. Somehow the anime just does not seem to go with the content and feel of the game.
After getting Ken home to tear into his new toy he got to try out some of the Xbox Live Arcade online experiences. He is in my camp that Marble Blast Ultra and Geometry Wars are two amazing games and really help round out the platform. I would have insisted Ken get a copy of Oblivion as well, but knowing the kinds of games he is into I think he would have found it difficult to get into.
Afterwards we picked up Brien and headed to Siam on Lake Union for dinner and drinks. Both Ken and Brien started in on the infamous Woodland Park Zoo’s, but Brien decided he was ‘not a fan’ and quit out early. Check out the picture of the day that resulted from our first round of drinks.
Only three days in to my picture of the day campaign and I’m already pleased with the results. I’m ’shooting for coverage’ with my whole life to ensure that I have the right photo at the end of the day. I actually ended up with three pictures that were worthy of being posted online today, and several yesterday. If I keep this up I might start actually using my 2GB of upload a month with flickr again!
Katamari Damacy
Saturday, October 14th, 2006
Joystiq just pointed me at the last installment of an interesting take on video game reviews. I love Katamari Damacy enough that when I read the following I almost fell out of my chair laughing:
Katamari Damacy is expressed as a “male-centric” game and an offshoot of the “mono myth.” It speaks to the oppression of women and of the King of All Cosmos spreading his seed (the stars), while the “phallic” looking Prince continually attempts to impress his father by presenting bigger balls. Is this a feminist critique or repressed homosexuality critique — or are they one in the same? So kidding, calm down!
I think that simple paragraph just made the whole universe make sense. I would even go so far as to say that it brings meaning to life through video games as art.
What?
A picture a day
Friday, October 13th, 2006
I’ve started a new project to take a picture and post it with the POTD tag every single day. I was inspired by some of my favorite artists like Chromasia and this article on Photojojo. After looking at the Photojojo article I’m enthusatic about the project, and just hope I don’t lose steam before a year has passed.
Aside from this new project life has been good. I was sick the first couple of days this week and spent the latter half of the week playing catchup at work. Now that I’m all caught back up and feeling healthy I’m looking forward to a week of catching up on everything in my personal life that got put on hold while I was sick, and getting a chance to relax a bit.
In other news I’m becoming even more and more enthusiastic about Marble Blast Ultra for the Xbox 360. It’s such a simple game, but mastering it is proving quite difficult. There is a lot of finesse that goes into rolling a marble through their twisted little obstacle courses. If you have a 360 and have not yet checked out Marble Blast Ultra go download the demo from the Xbox Live Arcade and give it a whirl!
Connect360
Saturday, October 7th, 2006
I just found the coolest bridge between my Apple iMac and Microsoft Xbox 360. I found some software called Connect360 from Nullriver Software. It’s a simple preference pane that allows any Mac to share it’s photos in iPhoto and music from iTunes with a 360 seamlessly. It’s now possible for both Windows and Mac’s to communicate with the 360 for living room entertainment.
Installation was a breeze: after opening the zip demo from Nullriver’s website I double clicked on the Connect360.prefpane to install the preference pane. After starting the service I was able to select what I want shared and configure transcoding options for any files that the 360 won’t be able to play natively.
I walked into the living room and used my Media Center remote to browse to the media tab on my Xbox 360. My imac showed up and after clicking through an authorization screen I was able to browse my music library and playlists as well as browse through all my photos and albums in iPhoto.
The interface is snappy, and browsing the photo libraries were response. It even increments play counts and last played dates in iTunes when you play music. I have to say that Microsoft keeping media interaction open to developers is a big win. Connect360 supports MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF and AAC Lossless for audio files, and JPEG, RAW, GIF, PNG, BMP and TIFF for photos.
Update: With a photo update Connect360 now supports video as well. Check out the Connect360 website for more information.
If you have both a Mac and an Xbox 360 I suggest checking out the free demo. If you like it it’s $20 to unlock the ability to browse your full library rather than 1,000 items that the demo restricts you to.
Sadly for now Connect360 does not support transferring movies or iTunes store purchased content but hopefully that will be released in a future version. While waiting to check out Apple’s upcoming iTV it’s nice to have a good solution for getting my media from my Mac to my living room.
Technorati Tags: Connect360, Intel iMac, iPhoto, iTunes, Mactel, Media transfer, Xbox 360
Holy chips Batman!
Saturday, October 7th, 2006
My dear friend Elliot and my mother both picked the same fine day to get born (abit many years apart). I made the unfortunate mistake of going to Elliot’s party and managing to get drunk enough to not even remember this photo or how exactly I ended up in that pose.
My evening started early as I arrived an hour early to Mama’s Kitchen in Belletown so that I could reserve a massive table for 14. After having hardly eaten I started drinking early, and as other arrived and the party being my memory fades slowly into delightful blur.
Aside from a late lunch with Brien and a showing of X-Men 3 at my place it’s been a pretty quiet day at home. Battlestar Galactica Season 3 just started and I’ve been catching up on watching all of Season 2
again before I go dig into the new season.
iSight Vodcast
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006A quick post to test how well the built in microphone and iSight in my iMac work:
I would say the answer is pretty well for simple stuff like this. Obviously I won’t be shooting the next special effects blockbuster with the thing, but it does a pretty decent job for this type of application. I also note that using the new iMovie HD was surprisingly easy and painless.The Core 2 Duo also impressed when I finally exported it. It did a h.264 encode down to 320×240 and managed to compress the 95MB of DV video into about 2MB in less than 10 seconds.
Update: As further testament to how easy this whole process was I just realized that I sat down at my computer less than 15 minutes ago. In that time I was able to do two takes of the video podcast, trim it, add a title and compress it for the web - not to mention writing this post and uploading the video to my hosting provider. iMovie HD + iSight = a strong win for Sparky!
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