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Thursday, December 7th, 2006I went over to the Tom Bihn factory with Skype today so he could try fitting my Macbook in some prototypes of new bags. Unfortunately Skype behaved badly with his dog Reilly and tried to get into a bit of a fight, but other than that it was a great visit. I just kept Skype on his leash and right next to me while Tom, Darcy, and myself sat around for a while talking about bags and computers.
Tom made me a longer key loop for one of my bags and I got to see the coolest sewing machine ever in action. This machine sews 42 stitches automatically into a strip to seal two ends together. It’s almost hypnotic to watch it pound out 42 stitches so precisely in about a second. I took this video of the mechanical ballet - check it out:
Logitech Harmony 720: the taming of Le Cinema Sparks
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006
Brien, Chris, and myself all went to Costco this afternoon. They had a great deal on the Logitech Harmony 720 - the ultimate (6 months ago) home theater remote. It has a color screen on it that enables really advanced features and highly customizable buttons.
Setting the remote up is simple - you hook it up to your computer via USB and tell the little wizard what equipment you have. You can then tweak any settings and set up macros to your hearts content from their interface, then move the settings over to the remote. Logitech has an online service that keeps the remote codes up to date, and has support for more than 17,000 devices.
The remote itself has rechargeable batteries and comes with a little cradle to charge it when you are not using it. The remote also features a tilt sensor so it lights up when you pick it up, and goes to sleep after you put it back down again.
I’m still getting the hang of it, but so far I’m pretty impressed. I’ve gone from needing 3 remotes to tame my home theater to a single easy to use remote. Now I just need to get IR-compatible light-switches for in the living room and I can even macro dimming the lights when I run my “DVD activities” script.
This phone is tapped
Sunday, November 5th, 2006
I took a walk up to Mud Bay to get food for Skype today and brought along my 10D and Lensbaby. I found this pay-phone with stickered warning along the way. What a great statement about modern life here in the United States - be careful what you say on the phone these days. Big brother is watching!
On a surprisingly similar note I saw Borat last night with Brien and Scott. I have to say for the record it’s one the of least culturally sensitive films I’ve ever seen, and I feel guilty for having laughed so hard it hurt. Borat manages to strike a truly funny balance between offensive and “too far”/
“This phone is tapped” by sparktography
Blue, Red, and Tan
Saturday, October 21st, 2006
Brien and I went out today to go to the Army/Navy surplus store and get his car washed. On the way back I took this photo out of the sunroof of his car while at a stoplight just north of Downtown. I love the way the colors came out on it.
I also took this shot while out and about. This one outside of Pacific place from the passenger window of Brien’s car. I’m slowly getting better at taking pictures of people in public places. It’s something I’ve been struggling with for a while and I’m finally starting to get happy with my results.
After a dinner of Sushi we came back to my place so that I could introduce Brien to the a truely groundbreaking film from my youth: John Carpenters “The Thing”. It really is surprising to me that as much of a film buff as he is there are some classics that he simply hasn’t seen!
“POTD 10/21/06 - Blue, Red, and Tan” by sparktography
“Standing at Pacific Place” by sparktography
Waiting for the news & domino violence
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
My picture of the day today was taken during my lunch break at work. I was walking around and I found this curved line of newspaper bins and it caught my fancy. I took a few shots of them and ended up being most happy with this one after a little photoshop tweaking.
My semi-regular fix from Amazon arrived today with all 14 DVD’s and HD-DVD’s shining in their full glory. I even had Mikba and Brien over to watch Batman Begins on HD-DVD. Beforehand I played around with a few shots and found this one:
I really pushed the colors a lot on this one in photoshop - I like the kind of gritty feel - I think it goes with a phrase like “domino violence”.
* * *
I’m finally finishing this post this now at nearly 1 in the morning due to an asshat parking in someone else’s spot in our condo building. As a member of the homeowners board I had to help get it towed so the poor lady could park her car and get some rest. I have an early day tomorrow and am none to pleased. More to follow!
“POTD 10/17/06 - Waiting for news” by sparktography
“domino violence” by sparktography
Vodcast quickie: Skype with a firetoy
Monday, October 16th, 2006I had to share this one - I think it’s adorable. I took a video of Skype playing with a toy made of fire-hose. He loves them because once the stuffing has been removed they are virtually indestructible. Now without further ado or any apologies for the crappy video quality:
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!
Fun with friends
Saturday, September 30th, 2006Tonight was unexpectedly populous at Le Cinema Sparks! I had planned on doing a movie showing with a few friends, and it ended up being quite the showing of The Chronicles of Riddick in hi-def for a large number of people. Thank you so much to Ben, Elliot, Ian, Keenan, Rob, Shawna, and Troy for the fantastic evening and great company.
Ian, Ben, and Keenan joined me for dinner at Pho 900 on Broadway, where we all made the bzzzt mistake of bzzzzzzt drinking iced bzzt Vietnamese coffee and having Pho. The Pho was fantastic, but the sugary deliciousness of the coffee was significantly more caffeinated than planned.
After dinner we all went back to my place and were joined by the rest of the crowd for some drunken movie madness. Now it’s past two in the morning, and I’m left alone, somewhat buzzed, and very awake still from the caffeine with nothing but an exhausted puppy and my beloved TNG to keep me company.
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