Posted by speedeep at 1:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Netflix:

• Please give me a tool to manage moving movies from queue to queue (even if it is only from the "main" account queue to the subordinate account queues. It's ridiculous that I'm basically reduced to jotting down notes and re-searching and re-adding to move a couple dozen movies from one queue to another.
• I may never watch all 500 of the movies in my queue, but why limit me to 500? The longer my queue, the longer I'm a customer of your service...
• When I add a movie to my queue, let me pick a queue position for the movie to be inserted into. Now my only options are bottom (default) or top, why nothing in between?

  Tags: bluray video suggestions experience service improvement dvd netflix blu-ray ideas

  Posted by speedeep at 1:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While traveling through Denver recently, I noticed that the Baby Doe's Matchless Mine restaurant overlooking Lo-Do had been demolished (I know this is old news, but I live 1,500 miles away, so I don't get all the breaking new s out of Denver...) I was doing some quick searching on the web and found indications that there used to be Baby Doe's in Kansas City (I'd heard that before) as well as Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia.

I'm particularly interested in the locations in Kansas City, Birmingham, Alabama ("near the Vulcan status on Red Mountain") and Atlanta, Georgia. Does anyone have more specific information about the location of these restaurants? Also interested in knowing when they closed. If anyone has information, stories, photos of these locations of the restaurant, I'd be interested to see/hear about them.

Posted by speedeep at 1:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My first real IBM PC-compatible computer was an IBM PS/2 Model 50. It was purchased sometime around the summer of 1987. I was about 12 years old and about to enter middle school. I'd previously had a Coleco Adam (which was sort of an Apple IIe mixed with a gaming console.)

It had a 10Mhz Intel 80286 processor, 1 MB of RAM, a 20MB hard drive, a 1.44MB floppy drive, 4 MCA slots (they all went unused), a IBM 8514 VGA Monitor, an IBM 5842 2400bps modem and a IBM 5201 dot matrix printer.

The fact that it had 1 MB of RAM was a bit of an early confusion to me as DOS could only use 640Kb until memory manager and extended memory utilities became available.

I remember distinctly saying that I'd never be able to fill up the 20MB hard drive. A little research lists a replacement 20MB drive for the system at $795 (~$40/MB) at today's market rates (cost/MB) that drive would cost approximately three tenths of one cent (.003 dollars) These days my digital camera takes 10MP RAW photos that are almost 20MB each. A 1TB drive (which are available for approximately $200) holds 50,000 times as much data as that 20MB drive. I've long since stopped saying that I'd never fill up a give hard drive...

I remember running IBM DisplayWrite 4, Harvard Graphics, Deluxe Paint (DPaint), F-19 Stealth Fighter. I briefly ran a couple of starup BBSs using Renegade and Wildcat! that never amounted to much. It was mostly an outgoing BBS terminal with occasional application distractions here and there.

I had a 2400bps modem, but all the BBS were 1200bps in town. I used to call long-distance (remember that?) to take full advantage of my modem's speed for the first couple months. The phone bills hurt.

I made the mistake of using DoubleSpace disk compression for the first and only time on this system.

This computer ran MS-DOS (3.0 - 6.22), PC-DOS, DR-DOS, GEOS, Windows 3.0, OS/2 (1.something.) I cut my teeth on BASIC, Turbo Pascal, REXX

Now my computers(!) run at multiple gigahertz with multiple processor cores, have gigabytes of system RAM, and terabytes of storage. I can't wait to see what happens in the next 20 years...

Tags: computing ps2 progress ibm technology experience computer memories

Posted by speedeep at 3:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Does that song in the American Express sound strangely familiar? It's "Give Me Some Money" by Spinal Tap. Who would have thought that we'd ever see mainstream advertising using a mostly fictitious spoof band's mostly fictitious spoof music in an advertisement? Anyone want to bet whether or not anyone will use "Sex Farm" or "Bitch School" in an advertisement?

Tags: mainstream advertisement television video advertising money spinal spoof spinal tap tap

Posted by speedeep at 5:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Alabama Nature Center at Lanark is a 350-acre wildlife preserve that serves as the headquarters of the Alabama Wildlife Federation. It is located between Millbrook, AL and Prattville, AL, just north and east of exit 179 (Cobbs Ford Road) on I-65. The facility is currently only open to the public one weekend a month (the third weekend.)

If you are a nature buff, a photographer, or just like to catch some fresh air, you should take some time out of your weekend to visit and explore the facility. They've got over 5 miles of beautifully-built walking trails organized in 3 loops around the property. They are all marked with interpretive signs about the flora and fauna you'll see around you.

Price is currently $3/adult/day or $5/adult/weekend and $2/child (3-9)/day $3/child/weekend. Kids under 3 are free.

(Every third weekend of the month)
Saturday 8:00 am to 6:00 pm
Sunday 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Directions and more information can be found at the following link.

Alabama Nature Center @ Lanark

Photo Gallery >> Lanark
sm med lg	sm med lg	sm med lg	sm med lg	sm med lg

Tags: photography awf millbrook alabama trails nature prattville lanark alabama wildlife federation wildlife

Posted by speedeep at 1:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was contemplating how much filter factor (light cutoff) I get with a cheapo Quantaray Circular Polarizing filter that I inherited when I bought my Canon 50mm f1.8 second-hand. It finally occurred to me that I could switch over to M (Manual) mode on my camera, aim it at something, dial in an exposure (I happened to set it to '0'), then drop the filter over the lens and watch the exposure level indicator ( -2..1..0..1..+2 ) adjust (usually downward) and note how many stops the exposure dropped. The camera focuses and meters through-the-lens (TTL) (and thus through-the-filter), so it takes this into consideration anyway when metering a scene.

For my 52mm Quantaray Circular Polarizing filter, the exposure drops 1 1/3 stops. I'd been working with the filter on most of the time, not realizing that I was losing 1 1/3 stops unintentionally, turning the "nifty fifty" f/1.8 effectively into a f/2.8. Oops, lesson learned, check your filters out.

Tags: photography test filter dslr canon camera slr nikon technology howto

Posted by speedeep at 1:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got a Canon Rebel XTi (400D) several months back and I'm immensely enjoying expanding my knowledge and horizons. I moved to the XTi from my 3.3MP Sony Mavica MVC-CD300 workhorse point and shoot camera. Despite being quite comfortable with the Sony (and its limitations) I have frequently said that I felt like a complete beginner again when staring through the viewfinder of my Canon.

I was contemplating all the different settings on the XTi that can be chosen for each shot the other day and I decided to toss them in a table:

A little math reveals: 61,749,528,383,550,522,560,348,160,000 combinations! That's 61.8 octillion (a thousand quadrillion or a billion billion billion (those outside the US refer to this to a quadrilliard))! Another way to look at this is 6x10^27, estimates of the number of atoms in the observable universe range in the 10^77 to 10^79 range. Those are some big, big numbers! No wonder I feel like a beginner again. Not all the settings will make a viable or desirable image, but there is the big picture math on the issue.

A typical photographer (me) usually only changes a couple of these at a time and usually through a limited range of the settings for each option, so it's not as impossibly complex as it looks. As with all technology, I look forward to seeing where this technology goes in my lifetime. The Canon Rebel XSi is out next month with even more options...

Tags: photography options dslr canon aperture camera settings shutter exposure configuration

Posted by speedeep at 1:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A while back I contacted the top five or so vendors of home weather stations to see if they offered any product that would simply measure various atmospheric variables and allow the home user to poll the station for data via some sort of open API. My search came up empty. Most of the time I felt like I had just asked them if they made pants with four legs.

I know there is a segment of consumers want a weather appliance that sits on their counter and tells them the weather. There is another segment that wants to be able to work with and track the data (for which some vendors provide their own software, usually Windows only.) Still another segments literally wants to just have the information available through an API that I can interact with. That last segment is me; that's what I'm looking for.

If you have a weather station that will:

• provide basic weather information
  • temperature
  • humidity
  • dew point
  • wind speed
  • wind direction
  • barometric pressure
  • precipitation
• allow me to poll the weather station
  • when I want
  • for what values I want
  • from on open API from whatever computer OS I want

You can reach me at speed-weat@transmit.net.

Tags: station pressure lacrosse precipitation api open wireless wind weather temperature

Posted by speedeep at 4:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently washed (and dried) an off-brand SD Card full of photos through the washer and drier. To my surprise, all the data was still there, undisturbed and uncorrupted. I'm quite amazed that the technology stood up to that kind of abuse with no glitches. I'm not planning on trying this with my CF cards any time soon, but I wonder how they would fare...

Tags: durability photo secure digital solid-state memory media storage sdcard flash

Posted by speedeep at 6:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)