Thoughts on HDV.

Hey Everybody! This is actually something I wrote as a forum post, and then liked, so here it is on my blog. If you'd like to follow the discussion, click here.

This evening I was reviewing the procedure for getting video from my sony handycam (video8) onto the computer, and usable by a nonlinear editing system such as Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express. One of the things I discovered is that FCE/FCP doesn't like plain mpeg4 DVD rips, so my procedure for using (any analogue video source with a composite or svideo output really) Video8 now includes using Quicktime Player to convert the .mp4 file to a .dv file.

My main concern with this is that it has become a bit of a time consuming process to prepare my video for final cut, and that the filespace advantage of using a ripped DVD file (which is about 700megs/hour) versus a .DV file (which is about 13 gigs per hour) is now gone, without any of the actual quality advantages of having imported from a real DV camera.

I've been looking at newer camcorders, and what I've seen is that while DV (and digi8 too, if I were going to go that way...) is become less expensive, so are DVD cams, hard disc cams, as well as HDV cams.

DVD cams are interesting because they seem to promise nice, DV quality, but they don't use tape. However, I've noticed that those don't mix well with the iMac. Plus, that only eliminates one (admittedly the least fun) part of the current process.

MiniDV cams are attractive because they are inexpensive (bhphotovideo.com has one for $199) but I am concerned that this format (along with all other things standard def) may be a bad investment (at least to buy new) because of the growing popularity of all things high-definition.

Hard Disc camcorders are significantly more expensive, one of the cheapest ones around is $430 and this is still standard definition. Unfortunately what I've learned is that the current hard disc camcorders are extremely difficult to use with Macintosh video software, and they're even difficult to use with PC software, but very slightly less so. The idea is good, but it's still not been executed properly I think. Add to that, these units are still standard def, which could mean in the long run, it'll be a bad investment.

This brings me to HDV. I've noticed that there is now at least one HDV camcorder for under $1000, the Canon HV-10 for $800, and the Sony HDR-HC5 for $999. Canon's upcoming HV-20 is also going to be available soon, for $1099.

This format seems to be the future, it uses MiniDV tapes (though higher-grade "HDV" tapes are available, which supposedly improve the quality of the format significantly), and it can record 1080i or 720p (I bet it can record 1080p but the low end cameras don't do that apparently.)

My question is whether or not it seems like HDV is really worth it yet, especially for those of us who might already have access to other high def equipment, if some hypothetical person is interested in getting a camcorder sometime within the next few years.

Naturally, there are not really any HD-capable disc burners within a reasonable price range yet, but for displaying HD works on the TV, there's always the component video output on the camera, and there isn't anything saying that bluray or hddvd burners won't come down in cost in the coming years.

Another thing that may be worthy of noting is that HDV is the same data rate as DV, so in the end (storage-wise) if I record an hour of video with my handycam and put it on the computer (after converting to the .dv file), and an hour of video with an HDV cam and put it on my computer, they take up about the same amount of space. (at least this is my understanding, it may or may not be correct.)

I think if I were to adopt HDV today, I'd go for the Canon HV10, it's a smaller size than the Sony offering, as well as being better in a few ways even than its upcoming big sibling, the HV20. The HV10 has the ability to record analogue audio/video from its line-in port to a DV tape, for example. In fact, just about the only down-side to the HV10 is its lack of a microphone port, but that isn't that big of a deal for me, considering I only first started using an off-cam microphone a few weeks ago. Plus, another advantage I've got is that I'd still have the old handycam hanging around if I needed to make recordings using the microphone.

I like the idea of the extra video quality that HDV offers, especially if I intend to do some sort of independent or experimental film at some point in the future, but I am unsure if it's really worth it right now, especially given the fact I've already got the Handycam... well, handy.

Return of the iMac

The yet-unnamed iMac has returned. It's weird though... all of my data is gone, and I'm going to be spending a very long time getting everything returned to normalcy, I can tell. It is really unfortunate that what happened did, because it really reduces my trust - not only in computers in general, but specifically in this computer. This computer was less than 90 days old and it failed completely and totally - as a result of BootCamp with Windows XP, I had to get the motherboard and the hard disc replaced.

Unfortunately, replacing the hard disc means that all of my important data that was on the hard disc is gone. These include such awesomenesses as the UeberWiki, my entire iTunes library (minus whatever I may be able to derive from old archives), and a few of my photos.

It's somewhat devastating, but I guess that this is a good lesson for me in BACKING UP! I am going to start a backup plan this evening, where my home folder will be backed up on a regular basis. I also intend to back up the UeberWiki at least once per week, and create archives of files I am no longer using on DVDs, which will help reduce confusion and uncertainty, and maintain order and whatnot.

Luckily, I've gotten some network things sorted out (this also prevents unauthorized people from using my printer) and gotten the UeberWiki back online! http://134.114.127.122/ is the new URL. I'm going to create a new intro page, and that'll probably host my potential future video podcast or something.

Birthday, RA Interview

Well, it's been an insane few days... This really should be like four different posts, but here it goes.

My birthday was on Friday, so on Friday night, my friends Megan, Justin, Seth, Mike and Ashley came to sweep me off my rear end onto my feet, out of the room and into the world for our "night on the town." We had the mandarin super-buffet, which was okay - but not remarkable. Admittedly, I was a bit difficult for awhile, and the original plan was to go to the other chinese place, but in the end it worked out well enough. After that, we get back to the dorm, and it turns out that Megan and GirlChris had baked a cake earlier that day - wow! (I'm still eating the cake now, I'm going to finish it this morning. It's awesome.

It didn't end there, though! I got an Easy Button and a Staples gift card from Megan.
Needless to say, I think I've got the most awesome friends of anybody, ever.

In the morning on Friday, I went to check on the status of my iMac. It turns out that the hard disc needs to be replaced, and they're doing that for me. I am going to go Monday and ask them to perform the data recovery service as well, which could cost me up to $60 depending on who is working and how helpless I seem to them. I really dislike putting myself in that kind of position, but I also really want my data back if I can get it. that drive had my music, the UeberWiki, some schoolwork, and lots more on it.

As far as my other computer goes, I now have the PowerBook G3 running Mac OS X 10.3.9, I will probably just leave it with this for awhile. I've got a few nice apps on here, and I'll probably go ahead and put Dreamweaver MX and Office 2004 on here, to prevent me from needing to run PPC apps on the Intel iMac. (I still intend to buy Adobe CS3 when it comes out, but that's quite far away.)

Saturday was big too, my dad and Brenda came for a visit and we went to the Flagstaff mall for lunch at Ruby Tuesdays, then some shopping. I got a new pair of pants in a slightly smaller size, which is my new goal. I also got a shirt. Then we went to Target and got some microwave burritos, deodorant, shampoo, laundry detergent, milk, and a tripod. Some useful stuff, some cool stuff, in all, a nice day. After shopping, we went to to the Olive Garden for dinner, and then my day was over. (Not really - I stayed up until like 3am playing computer. :P)

This morning was like an EventExplosion. At 7, my dad came by and dropped off a birthday card. Then I went back to sleep. Unfortunately, the phone rang a few times. I ended up ignoring it the first time, then it rang again and a message was left. "oh my god!" I thought. It was an NAU Office of Residence Life director, calling to say that I was currently missing my appointment. "Oh noess!!!!" I thought. I called back after a shower, and left a message explaining that I regretted missing my appointment and I was in the process of getting myself over to the office. The director called me back shortly, and said not to rush too much, that if I got there before 10, I'd be good. She said "we didn't want you to miss this, because your application was definitely not just thrown together." (that made me happy.)

So I get there and my interview starts - It's a director from Sechrist, and RAs from McConnell and Tinsley interviewing me. Their 20 questions ranged in difficulty, but they obviously know how to make sure that somebody is well-qualified. I felt fairly confident, but one thing I observed was that I started using fairly big, somewhat formal words, which I'm not sure they wanted. Hopefully I get a second-round interview though.

Anyway... have fun, and to all - A Happy Tuesday!

iMac... maybe?

Well, the iMac was repaired, but that has apparently failed. I went to the NAU bookstore today and checked on the status of my repair, and it turns out that the replacement logic board was ordered, received, installed, and then failed!

Sometimes, I wonder about computers, and whether or not they're worth it.

I'm now using the PowerBook G3 (500MHz/1mb L2, 512mb of ram, 30gig hdd) as my main computer. It started on Mac OS 9.2.2 as a no-internet work computer, as well as doing my website in Dreamweaver MX. Then, getting tired of it's lackluster Internet performance, I put SuSE Linux 10.1 on it. That failed miserably, Linux is significantly lacking in the usability and speed departments.

The PowerBook G3 is currently running Mac OS X 10.3, where it has basically all of the apps I really need, and it runs them quite well. (still some performance issues, but they're nowhere near as awful as running Linux was.)

Relief!

Well, that certainly is a relief! For those of you who don't know,
last Thursday while I was attempting to discover the "Wow" power of
Microsoft Windows Vista, I decided that vmware wasn't enough, and that
I would need to use Vista in the Boot Camp environment. Unfortunately,
I couldn't partition more than 5 gigs of the disk for some reason, so
I decided I may as well do Windows XP. Unfortunately, that failed too.
The iMac stopped recognizing all forms of boot media.

Anyway, I brought it to the shop on Thursday, and have finally heard
back today - they ordered a new logic board for it, and it should be
ready within the next two to four days. I am going to go pick it up on
Thursday if it is ready by then.

Also, I cleaned my room, that made me feel a bit better. Plus, I've
been picking up the paper on time.

German Class Canceled

Among other things, but the chief topic of this post happens to be the fact that my German class was canceled today. I was quite surprised, really. There was no prior notice, but a sign had been posted indicating that our instructor's 9:10 class would be canceled.

Anyway, lots of snow, a class was canceled possibly as a result. Have a good day!

Holy Improvement!

Google/IG has some improvements that I really like. It turns out, the display of RSS feeds can now display part of the post from the feed, and it displays the date of the post. This is useful for things like the feed of a webcomic that displays the same title in every post, or for keeping track of how often I post to my own blog.

Speaking of cool things - I've been using /IG to keep track of this webcomic. (Actually, I linked to a specific strip. It shows something I've noticed about people with cellular telephones that take photos, and with point and shoot digital cameras.)

Thoughts on Convenience

I am a bit of a luddite. I absolutely love technology, but when it comes to using it, sometimes I shy away from some of the newer and more adventurous technologies. One of these, has traditionally been digital music players. I was a fairly big fan of tapes, and I still am. However - December, 2006 brought around an interesting new device. I received my own digital music player.

There are basically a few reasons why I have had an aversion to things like digital music players.

• They seem to disconnect people from other physical people.
• I'm sure there's some sort of health issue in there.
• Any digital music players that are worth looking at have traditionally been somewhat costly, for somebody with a fairly modest collection of music.
• I have always thought that it was a bit of a waste to keep my music on my computer, as well as on a portable device.

Naturally, there may have been more, or it may just be my aversion to the way people act when they are using such devices. (the same with cellular telephones.) However, it seems as though what the portable digital music player device category offers is convenience, which is not necessarily a bad thing. A good recent example of this is that I recently needed to make a quick run down the stairs and to the ATM machine at the student union. Before, I would have used my analogue tape player on that mission. Instead, I brought the digital player. What I noticed was that I was just as "disconnected" and would have been so, even if I didn't have headphones on. There simply was nobody for me to talk to. Another interesting thing.

Additionally, I didn't have to, or feel the need to change music sources when I came back and sat down, and if my computer were having some sort of issue, or if I were using another computer, I would have still had access to my music.

I guess that this means I must concede... this digital music player device is fairly nifty, and thus far, I give it a rating of "fairly useful" among the sea of devices I've seen, read about, and had the pleasure to use. Naturally, I'm not dumping the tape player, or the optical disc player, but this has probably succeeded those two devices for music which will play on it. (If, however - I feel like only listening to John Tesh's album "Avalon" (which I have on compact disc), or "The Disney Afternoon" (which I have on audio cassette tape) all day long, I will probably use the disc player or the tape player, respectively.)

Epic Video Game

Hey Everybody, this is just a little note to say that I recently acquired an epic "video game." It's the kind of video game you play with a camcorder, apparently! It's this interesting 1990s thing called "Camcorder Helper" it comes with a little handbook, a sound effects CD, and little cards that suggest scenes to act out, among other things. It is from the creators of Magnetic Poetry, and the packaging suggests that it's a combination of an awesome party game, and a "Video Chemistry Set."

I need to throw a mini Camcorder Helper party some time.

Also, an update on CraGNoWriMo, which is now called "ProCraGNo" (Project: Crazy Group Novel.) Brandi has notes about our main characters, and the setting and basic premise. In upcoming meetings, we will discuss more of the technical details about what we will write the novel on, as well as when we plan on starting and stopping the novel-writing madness, and we will also discuss some of the ideas for chapters, specific events, etc. I might even bring notecards to that meeting.

Action News Update!

Heya Everybody! I have news about a variety of things. Firstly, classes start tomorrow, and I am insanely happy about it. Tomorrow, I have GER102 and PHO281 - those were two of my favorite subjects in high school, so I'm interested in what I will think of them at the university level.

Nextly, I have a laptop so old that it is considered to be quite epic. It is an old Toshiba Satellite 486 laptop with 4 megabytes of ram, and a disproportionately large 2 gigabyte hard disc. It will dual-boot Windows 3.1 and IBM's OS/2 Warp 3. I hope to use it for word processing and other retro things. In fact, I may get the CaGNoWriMo group to use it so that we're all writing using the same computer, so that there isn't any issue if some of us use Macs or PCs or whatever. Plus, I bet this thing would withstand being dropped or tossed in case of clumsiness or frustration. Plus, backups onto a modern computer would not be very difficult using floppy discs.

In other news, Brandy and I want to get CraGNoWriMo started by the beginning of February, so we hope that anybody who is going to participate will be able to make it to an Introductory meeting sometime soon. This way, we'll be able to hammer out some of the details, and get going on the upcoming novel. With luck, each of us will be able to have a few characters, and have a lot of say in the overall feel of the novel, we were even thinking of having a very liberal amount of time available to work on your segment, and with luck, with that amount of time, we'll be able to have two full rotations of the novel. That'll be great.

Also, I'm working on moviemaking projects, and probably a lot of other things. Anyway - Happy Tuesday!

WebComic 002

I am now even further into the depths of the world of web comics. In this one, I am introducing another character! Also, I've set up a bit of a strip visual style, with luck the same frame and panel arrangement will be used for awhile - at least for the rest of the strips I do on this computer. I am currently looking for a title for this particular series, and comments about it. If it is not-so-awesome, then it would be best to tell me before I start putting them together in advance or anything silly like that.



Oh, I also plan on another series, which has already undergone some development, I just need to set up a visual style for that one and start making strips in the computer. I don't feel like scanning anything, and my handwriting sucks anyway. Maybe I'll use Poser for my other project.

Electronic Sketchings (WebComic #001)

I am at mother's house tonight, and I don't have the iMac. So I'm just using the old Dell OptiPlex machine - what a surprised. Luckily for me, the Adobe Creative Suite exists on this machine, to prevent me from becoming insane. What a wonderful consideration, don't youthink?

So, basically, I created the first issue of my web comic. I may do more, I may give up. I will probably switch art styles multiple times throughout its run - I may even experiment with using Poser to create each panel, using some of its defaultPeople as the objects of my craziness.

Trip to Vegas!

Today was Vegas Day for Dad and I. :) Here is a Photo-Blog-Post of the adventure. (This is, by the way, my first blog entry of the year!


They started building some improvements to Highway 93, I presume.



Pink Jeep tours now gives tours in pink Chevrolet Suburbans. Don't tell the tourists - they won't even notice.


We then got to the Hoover Dam, and had to drive across it. We went from the "AZ" time to Pacific time.


I saw a ram that you don't put in your computer, as well as an extremely deceiving walkway, it looked more like a wash ditch than a walkway!


Las Vegas has some very interesting landscapes, as well as a lot of smog! I don't know if I'd actually want to live there with that kind of smog hanging around all the time.


I saw a lot of buses in Vegas, which is surprising, and not surprising at the same time. I haven't seen an accordion bus since I lived in Washington, I think. Also, there is a casino with friends. I wonder who they are.


In Las Vegas, especially on or near the strip, just about everything is either more scandalous, or shinier with more neon light tubes.


Danny Gans was Entertainer of the year at least two or three years ago when I went back to Michigan, and he is apparently still it. I think it should be Celine Dion or somebody else for a change.

How interesting! Fashion Show Mall has a huge iPod ad on the front. Almost every surface in Vegas has advertising on it.


Vegas has a lot of interesting advertising. Here is some examples of adversiting on taxi cabs. NewEgg, Toshiba, Microsoft, and Benq seem to REALLY love that advertising space. I also think that the stacked deck thing is somewhat funny.


We went to the Apple Store in Fashion Show Mall! I really liked looking around the store, but I found that while it was mesmerizing, it was less mesmerizing in a "must have a new Mac" way now that I've got... ba-dah-bing - my new iMac. :)


Teavana is another store in the mall. Dad went in here, and was going to buy a book, but he didn't want to, he said, after the cashier in the store said that photography wasn't allowed. The store had a silly fan setup, I took a picture of it from outside after that incident.


I got a new lens for my camera! It's a Quantaray 18-125mm lens for Nikon AF. It is awesome! when I got that picture of my dad, I was standing about three feet away from him. This is totally an awesome wide-angle lens. I also got the picture of the Tamrac logo from probably... well, it was quite far away. I certainly can't wait to test the lens out tomorrow, and next week at school. It will be awesome.


Here are some automotive things from the very end of the trip. (taken with my old 28-80 Nikkor glass.) The first belongs in "Stick Figures in Peril" I'm sure. The second is an automobile that seems to be missing parts.

In all, it was a very awesome day, and writing this blog post has taken much too long. Here's to an awesome 2007, filled with loads of photography opportunities, and great times!

Last Post of 2006!

Oh my goodness! I can't believe it's my last post of 2006! I've had 60-or-so posts on this blog since January, probably more than two thirds of which hve been since August, so I think I'm getting better at this blogging thing. Also - it helps that there's a bit of a reason to use this blog - every other piece of software I've tried on almost every other hosting service has been massive fail, plus now that blogger is out of beta, it integrates with my Google account quite nicely, and I can compose posts in Google Docs, or just email them from my gmail page.

Well... enough about the wonders of blogging, eh? What exactly do I want out of 2007? Well, hints from the gifts would say that my family wants me to go jogging or walking or something, so I might say that one of my resolutions is to go jogging.

Of course, year-round, my resolution is 1440x900.

Another thing I'd like is for working at the TV station to go well, or for me to find an actual paying job somewhere on campus. Naturally, I'd also like for my application to become a residence assistant to be accepted, and to get into that - it'll help tremendously I think.

I've got a few creative projects I want to work on more in 2007. Given that I now have a super-fast computer and a legal copy of Poser 7, I think that it is necessary I start working on such creative projects as 'A Man and his Mac' (the necessary props can be created with Shade LE or something.) I'd also like to start on more ueberfriends projects, including writing some episodes of the anime, and possibly starting to come up with the characters of it.

Another thing I'd like to do is work on my ideas for CraGNoWriMo, and NaNoWriMo - I've got a few interesting ideas, but I am not totally sure how they'll go over. I want to start making notecards of the plot for at least my NaNo idea, and see how far I can really take the plot. My next NaNo novel will really depend on the ability to create compelling characters that, if introduced in the right order and in the right way, that they can create their own compelling storyline. I have at least one idea that is somewhat feasable for my writing needs, but I've got ten months to come up with some things, right?

In 2007, I'd like to make a movie. Luckily that's been made possible for me by way of an old camcorder and a DVD recorder, so digitizing analogue video will be fairly easy. In addition, there isn't much of an excuse not to at least use iMovie for sequencing shots, and I can use GarageBand for the audio portion of my film, if that's the direction I am going in. (Though, Final Cut Pro is much more impressive, and I think it offers more options for me.)

I'm sure there's more I have to say, but I got caught up in a project helping mom, and I want this blog post to show up before 11:30 so that it has a chance show up on facebook before the new year.

Sayonara, 2006! I'm ready for 2007!

Cory Defeats Home Networking

Headlines are completely devoid of today's best news! I have defeated home networking. It turns out, the best idea was for me to put the base station just a little bit higher than it was, and everybody who once complained about wifi speed, is now jamming along at the full speed of IEEE802.11G. No additional equipment was purchase, no crawlspaces were entered, and no holes were drilled in the walls. However, there is still one unsightly wire still dangling about, I will have to see exactly what the issue is there. I think my mother may have some lead in her closet.

In other news, I have also defeated Network Address Translation! :D You can see the UeberWiki here: http://70.101.193.185/info/ for awhile. I am unsure of how long this will stay up, but if I notice the address changes, or if something else happens that requires me to notify you (like I move UeberWiki to a new server, upgrade the RAM in my PowerMac G3, or go back to university and the address has changed) then I'll do so.

As another note - Kris, Ms. Arnold's new helperguy, is really cool, and he's turning into one of my online buddies. He's "helped" a wee bit with the Wiki too, so if you see something unexpected (such as ranting about a squid or something on the photog Knowledge page) then don't be too surprised or worried. Also, you must bow down to the FVMs! (search the wiki for it.)

Now that we've discussed that, I must bid thee adieu and wish you many happy returns, and that all of your Moon-Tuesdays are excellently happy!

My Week at the High School

I just got done with a week and two days at the high school. I got a bit of a different perspective, because I spent almost all of my time in one classroom, which really gave me my first almot accurate impression of what teaching at the high school level is really like. It's certainly interesting, but I think that it is somewhat restricted. I noticed that Kate spent almost all of her time behind the desk helping students with various things, so at this point in her class (Photo I at least) it is all helping with the Series Project, and no actual instruction.

Another unfortunate thing about Kate's job, especially compared to university instructors and professors, is that she must manage all of the equipment that her program uses. This includes ordering things, maintaining them or hiring maintenance, as well as disposing of broken equipment, and dealing with the state department when it comes to things such as her old video equipment.

In addition, this year she's got a new helper or two, both of which are very interested in video equipment. So it turns out that they've been doing some "fundraisers" in the form of recording Choir and Band concerts on video, editing them, and theoretically selling DVDs or tapes of the finished product at a profit. However, what I have noticed is that these few are causing quite a few problems for Kate. So by the end of her day (this year), Kate spends about 40% of her time interacting with her students. 20% of her time interacting with the school and taking care of business related to that, and 40$ of her time doing fundraisers and working with the video people. I think that it's unfortunate that that's the breakdown, because her students deserve more time, and she deserves more time to just sit, or to do things other than taking care of some sort of business.

Compare this to a standard teacher who spends probably 60% of their time with students, 20% of their time working on school business, and 20% of their time doing other things such as more student interaction, grading papers, etc.

Ahwell, it seems to work for her mostly, so it surely isn't my place to judge. I would probably try to spend less time during the actual day working on equipment, and more time interacting with students or getting other business done.

Luckily, I was able to help Kate (and Mr. Burden) with some things. I helped Kate start to import her old audio tapes to iTunes, with the goal of eventually putting them on CDs. I helped get things a bit more organized in the room. I am also going to help Burden get some of his computers fixed.

Holy Glayven! This network needs help!

Hey Everybody! I'm posting this from home, where I think that my mom's network fails exactly every 128 megabytes, because I can't seem to get the 129 megabyte Aperture 1.5.2 update downloaded. In addition, I get dropped from AOL-IM every so often, and I don't even want to try MSN Messenger.

I just hooked up my printer to the dell and made a proposed network layout for what I call the Network Improvement Project. (That's also known as PNL01 for the NIP.) I printed it over USB (a first for my printer) because I don't feel like screwing around with trying to get everything rigged up with my printer and more than one of my computers at a time on this network. Honestly, even Kingman High School keeps a more functional network.

In other news, I also need to clean up mom's office, not only my stuff in it, but I think the whole thing needs a nice cleaning... I hope to make the stand-up desks more accessible, and get everything in here set up in a fashion that's satisfactory to me, so that I can go ahead and start getting things done, such as some work with a few retro Macintoshes, and the consumption of caffeine, and my network repair/improvement project.

So... currently I'm going to say that the network is in Condition: -10, fails every few minutes, and is in a bad physical state.

If I can improve it to Condition 0 or even have it in a Plus Condition, then I will be made of win. Please wish me luck in my network related quest!

Back Home From NAU

This is just a post to inform the masses that I'm back in Kingman from NAU, and for what it is worth, I have already visited Mrs. Gaska, Hr. Gotsch, and Ms. Arnold.

I still think that Ms. Arnold is the best photo teacher ever, as evidenced by the fact that I am borrowing a MacBook Pro once again (albeit not my own!) to use to install Aperture on it, which unfortunately, has failed thus far. I will make more attempts to make it work throughout the day though.

Another project I've got today, however, is called Photoshop CS3, which has been released in the form of a Public Beta by Adobe in what I call "just in the nick of time" because of the fact that there are rumors that there is a new Macintosh in the pipeline for me, vis the Mystic Force™ known as Santa Claus. In addition, I've got four MacBook Pros under my command now, which means it's necessary for me to try the Photoshop CS3 beta anyway.

It's quite interesting/awesome to be back at KHS, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this month-long break.

Fire Alarm

I just figured that it's important for everybody to know something. At approximately 2:30 a.m. on December 11, 2006, The fire alarm in Reilly Hall at Northern Arizona University went off. It's just about 3:05 right now and we've just been let back in. This is dissapointing, of course, because it was very inconvenient for me to have to wake up from my pre-finals slumber and leave the building, and complain about it for as long to Jim, Nathan and my roommate.

So, if I fail my SC-111 final, I have a reason.

By the way... (Reilly as a cheesy videogame) the mutants are on the first floor, the pirates are on the second floor, the ninjas are on the third floor, and the zombies are on the fourth floor. I am fairly certain that the ghosts are on the fifth floor, and the corrupt cops from the west are on the sixth floor. I haven't beaten the sixth floor yet, but I think that the seventh floor has the big evil monster. I hear that if you start by going in the back entrance, you can go to the first floor after the fifth and you get all the nice powerups from the first floor before the sixth and seventh floors.

Ninjas or Pirates? What about Zombies!

Today, Brandy informed me that Zombies are awesome. I wonder, however. How do zombies relate to Pirates and Ninjas? Of course, we discovered through our discussion that it would certainly depend on the Zombies being evaluated. For example, the zombies in Shaun of the Dead would not do very well in any kind of epic battle.

However, stronger zombies may do well, and it should be noted that zombies have nearly infinite replication powers, which ninjas and pirates lack.

In the end, I think I'm still going for ninjas, though pirates are still awesome, as are zombies. I think that the real moral of this story is that Pirates vs. Ninjas vs. Zombies would make an excellent NaNoWriMo Novel.

Potential Name Switch

I am thinking that I might change the name of my blog. Right now, the title is "Life :: Strapped to a Desk." It describes that my life is one where I am basically strapped to a desk, but because I've got a mobile computer, and I lead a fairly mobile life, what with my feet and legs, I don't know if that really describes my life.

Of course, my idea for the new name was something relating to Tuesdays, or to Pam, or 3 a.m. I might call it "Praying to Pam at 3 a.m. on Tuesdays" or "Tuesdays at 3 a.m. I pray to Pam" or "Pam is the best tree to pray to at 3 a.m. on Tuesdays."

Naturally, I might also like to include some reference to the Steno Pad. I could call the blog "The 3 a.m. Steno" or "Tuesdays praying to Pam is the best time to write in the Steno Pad." Though, I think that that's some pretty extreme integration.

Another idea is just calling it "The Steno" or "Steno Files" or "Online Steno."

Or, I could keep my blog as "Life Strapped to a Desk" and then offer some of my other friends the opportunity to contribute to a group blog with some sort of Steno, Online, 3 a.m., Tuesdays, or Pam theme.

Maybe I'll call it "OMG, Cory's Awesome!"

Though, when I think about it... "Life :: Strapped to a Desk" is not actually that bad. I will probably keep that name for some time.

(Note: for those reading this through FaceBook, the actual blog is located at http://cory5412.blogspot.com/)

Daria Season 1 Complete

I have acquired the complete Season 1 of Daria, I think this even includes the pilot episode. I am certainly going to have a marathon sometime soon, if anybody else is interested. It'll be on my computer (17" CRT) though, unless I get my laptop to TV cable back from Seth, at which point I can play it on the roommate's TV (17 or 27" CRT).

I can't wait for it, and I'm tempted to start right now.

Getting Better

I am glad to be able to say that my health has slowly been recovering, and I'd say that right now, I'm probably at 80 to 85% of full health. I hope to be between 95% and 100% tonight. Yaay! Then I get to go suicide again, with studying and stuff. How wonderfully and posilutely enjoyable.

In other news, I know a lot of immature people. They need to grow up. Oh, and the weather has been decent. The sun has been shining, which isn't my favorite type of weather ever, but it's better than cold + rain + wind. I'd much rather have cold + snow with no wind, though.

Have a Happy Tuesday!

The Universe Hates me, and I'm Ready

Ready for the semester to be over with!

I am not sure what's happened, (other than the horrific sickness, and general awfulness) but ever since getting back to school from Thanksgiving break, I am just ready to be back at home, the way it was over summer. Or maybe I am just ready to not have classes any more.

It starts last Thursday. At about 4am, I had just gotten done eating a microwave burrito, and I was going to go ahead and stay up all day to finish my NaNoWriMo Novel. Unfortunately, what I discovered was that I had started to become ill. So, I decide that I can afford an hour of sleep. Unfortunately, after the hour of sleep, a shower, and anything else I could think of to try, I was still feeling fairly awful. So I just slept until about noon, when I had to get up to get ready (very slowly, might I add) for my class at 1:50. I went to class, and gave the presentation about my extended argument paper. That sucked massively, but at least I did it.

After ENG105, Kat and I went over to the Comm building to get our JLS130 practice final exams, and we then bid each other our goodbyes, and as I walked in front of the math building back toward my dorm, I vomited.

Luckily, I eventually got back to Reilly and lay down in bed, looking forward to a lot of sleep. I crawled in bed, and was nearly asleep, when, of all the awesomely lucky things that could have happened to me... the fire alarm went off. At this point, I knew that the Universe hates me. I eventually got back to sleep, and managed to sleep right through Friday. It is now Saturday, and I'm feeling a bit better, but I don't know when I'll feel perfectly awesome again.

22 hours yet.

Hey everybody. This is just a post to let everybody know that there are approximately 22 hours left in NaNoWriMo. How Exciting!

I am about 6900 words away from being finished. Wish me luck! :)

Why I Hate Computers

As many of you know, I have been working on my novel this month. In order to achieve that without many distractions, I have been using Mac OS 9 as my preferred booting operating system on my PowerBook G3. Unfortunately, it seems to have decided on needing a mental vacation, and now, just short of 40,000 words into my novel, I am without an OS9-booting computer on which to write my novel, and I'm sans-the-laptop. It's unfortunate but true.

Of course, I expected some sort of massive failure out of it. i wish it had waited another week, but I am not surprised by what happened.

FLURRIES!

I hope that I am one of the first to inform everybody that just now, I saw snow flurries coming down while I was walking to/from Surplus Sales at NAU, from Reilly. I think that this is a favorable thing! Snow should follow VERY shortly. I expect to have snow-related problems getting back to my dorm room tonight. Yaay!

Success with NT4

Today I started looking around for some software that I need for my NT4 box. It turns out that I actually found some of the software that I want. Entertainingly enough, It is now running Office97, Internet Explorer 6, and most excellently, the SETI@Home client. I eventually plan on putting VisualBasic 6 Professional on there, though for the rest of this year, I think that this machine will probably be used primarily for SETI@Home, however I would not be surprised if at some point in the future, I get more into retro WindowsNT action, and maybe even try to do some things in VisualBasic 6.

Anyway, here's to finding the aliens!

Some Good Techniques

Here are some things that I have found to be helpful when I'm doing teh-polyphasic.

• Don't always try to be actually doing work, especially while I'm still transitioning.
• Have a small amount of caffeine, a shower, or some food right after I wake up. (but not a whole 1L Mtn. Dew)
  
• Have a list of things to do, even litle things like "write pointless blog posts"
• Doing physical activity, including showering, random 6.5am walks with the camera (I got some AWESOME pictures :D), etc.
• Drink lots of water, apparently.
• Enjoy little things, like finding the aliens.
• Find the aliens.
• Write a novel.
• Actually get up on time.
• Don't skip naps.
• Try not to reposition individual naps more than about an hour in either direction... it screws everything up.
  

I officially get complaining rights.

So.... I just read this interesting MacWorld article about how the Mac Pro can play 4 hidef video streams, and record the screen as another hidef video screen using Snapz Pro X, without even breaking a sweat. However, my main computer, the PowerBook G3, is unable to play one uncompressed WAV file while skipping constantly, if I am copying 470 megs of JPEGs (interesting video project coming up!) from a card reader to the hard disc over USB 1.1. This does not please me, to say the least. I was happy with its ability to play the sound while doing nothing else... but it disappoints me, to say the least, that I can't type on AIM or copy files while playing a WAV.

I had a freakin' 25MHz 80386 computer, with FOUR megabytes of memory, that could play a WAV file under almost any circumstances. What gives?

2006-Cory5412 vs. 1993-Cory5412 & 2019-Cory5412

Epic Time Battle!

I am intentionally depriving myself of sleep, therefore anybody who is insane enough to read these (I [heart] you Megan!) is now going to be subjected to some sort of rant about technology. (You have permission not to read this if you don't want to, Megan!) Of course, those folks in my English 105 class will know that my premise, (sleep deprivation) does not imply my conclusion (tech rant). Of course, I mentioned the sleep deprivation, right? That means that I don't care. [insert smile face here]

So what will I rant about today? Recently, at the vintage technology internet forum that I visit, the 68k Mac Liberation Army, a member posted an interesting PDF file. It was a 107 megabyte scan he made of an Apple Product Catalog from Fall of 1993. Thirteen years ago, the 68-page catalog of 68k Macintoshes was hot off the presses, and if we had lived back then, with unlimited funds, it was decided that every one of us would have a Mac Quadra 650 with the 16" Macintosh Color Display, a LaserWriter 630 Pro, with the 500-sheet feeder of course, along with every other little goodie we could get our grubby little liberator paws on.

I see a problem with this, however. My issue is that almost nobody provided a reasonable dream setup. My own setup was actually a Quadra 610 with one or two bits of software, the inexpensive monitor, as well as the cheap laser printer. Additionally an even more realistic setup that I cited, was a Mac Color Classic, and one of Apple's inkjet printers, paired with just one software package, an integrated piece of kit that can nearly do it all. As an added bonus, the cheaper computer and printer had carrying cases available for them, and they were within my arbitrarily defined budget of "just a few dollars more than whatever I want."

This leads into something else though. One thing I've noticed is that when it comes to older technology, it is extremely tempting to simply not look at the lower end machines. It is not every day when I hear somebody talking about how awesome it was that they were able to pick up a Mac LC and a 12" color display from the school. In fact, I have even heard some people talk with disdain about older low end machines, as opposed to the not-really-much-faster high end variant.

I do understand the argument that in 1993, there was a massive difference between a 25MHz 68LC040 and a 33MHz 68040 processor, let alone a 16MHz 68030. However, I think that that difference equates today to a distribution like this. the 16MHz 68030 would be about equivalent to a 1.5GHz Intel Core-Solo processor. The 25MHz 68LC040 would equate to a 1.83GHz Core1Duo, and the 33MHz monster powerhouse would equate to a 2.16GHz Core2Duo
microprocessor.

The funny thing is that in 2019 then another thirteen years have passed, and a retro technology enthusiast's group has formed and is discussing these things... the actual difference between a 1.5GHz single-core chip and a 2.16Ghz dual-core chip will be so negligible, that the 2019-Cory5412 is unlikely to claim that there is any practical speed difference at all.

Good god, do I want to slap the 2019-Cory5412! However, 2019-Cory5412 certainly brings up a good point about the aging of technology, and the 2006-Cory5412 is saying similar things.\

Of course... I don't think my rant is necessarily tech-based, I think it's now a rant of excessiveness. Quick everybody, I'm going to run out and get a 3.0GHz Mac Pro with 16 gigs of ram, four 750 gigabyte hard discs, two 16x SuperDrives, and I'm going to fill it with four of the nVidia GeFORCE 7300GT cards, then I am going to buy four 30" monitors, and four 23" monitors for it. I just know that 2019-Cory5412 will have one of those, but 2006-Cory5412 will certainly have something closer to a 17" iMac Core2Duo, 2.16GHz, 1 or 2 gig, 250gig.

I am certain that for that, 2019-Cory5412 will laugh at 2006-Cory5412, but who cares, because 1993-Cory5412 would have ended up with a used Mac Plus and, if he was lucky enough to get a laser printer at all, one of the original LaserWriters, or a LaserWriter II of some sort. He would have enjoyed it until its death (in 2003, I bet. There's a reason I don't want to be 1993-Cory5412.)

I [heart] my Dell OptiPlex GX110 and my 500MHz Apple PowerBook G3 "Pismo." As an aside, I probably have another tech-related blog entry somewhere, but this will do for now. It proves that I am definitely going to stick to polyphasic sleeping this time. (Yay! +10 points for reference to polyphasic sleep in this blog post.)

Massive Gargantuan Failure...

... At polyphasic sleep. Last night I was doing well, then got to my 1am nap, and I must have either not set the alarm, or slept through it for eight hours, because I found myself waking up at about 9am. Actually, I could have waited until 9:30 to wake up, but I wanted to take a shower and today is a Wednesday which means I've got my 10:20 class.

At the very least, SETI has begun to act properly again, meaning that I am now on my way to being the champion of Work Units, and my NaNoWriMo novel has begun taking shape. I have crossed the line for 20,000 words, but today's quota is 25,005 words. Will I make it in time? Will I end up making it to 26,672 words tomorrow, whether or not I mke it to 25,005 today?

Well, I probably will do both if I stop writing silly posts to the blog. Oh-well. One thing that these failures make me wonder is whether or not I am capable of adapting to polyphasic sleep, or whether the current time is just too intense for it. I am thinking about just trying to adapt to polyphasic over the winter break, but I really need it right now, not next year.

The other thing to consider is the fact that I really like sleeping. Not so much being in bed, as I like arranging the covers, jumping in, and just being comfortable and warm between the sheets and the blankets, not necessarily doing anything productive at that moment.

I will continue trying to do polyphasic sleep, hopefully it will have more success with fewer classes and horrible things like that in the next few days to cause it to go wrong.

A Thought on Desktop Arrangement

You may know that I've recently been using a Windows-based PC. I used to just keep the icons for my applications on the desktop in order to not be required to deal with the start menu. However, I recently did a bit of a clean-up.

This is how my desktop looks now.

Before, it had a whole bunch of icons everywhere, it wasn't that messy, but apparently it is regarded as not-awesome to have the icons for twenty applications arranged neatly along one edge of the display.

This is how my desktop looked 20 minutes ago.

For comparison, I am going to include a screen shot of Mac OS 9. Apparently it's wrong of me to have the apps on the desktop in this system too, because the Apple menu provides functionality as an app launcher, if I were so-clever as to include a folder of aliases in there. I did to that long before it was suggested to me, but I find it much less intuitive and quick as just clicking on the app on the desktop.

This is Mac OS 9. Note the killer battery life.

I just thought that I might bring that to everybody's attention.

Facebook Import Working Again

Apparently switching to the Beta of Blogger had messed a few things up. It appears, however, that everything is working properly now. As an added bonus, Blogger now pushes full-text of my posts on the feed, meaning that I don't have to run around like a maniac, commenting on my own notes to make sure everybody reads the full text at http://cory5412.blogspot.com. (hint hint).

Success at Last! (Among Other Things)

This is just a note to say that I have finally defeated the 05:00 nap! :) Now I just need to survive for the next two weeks or so, as well as conquer today.

In other news, I am going to have to sign up to become an RA today, as well as possibly going to surplus sales to get a proper keyboard and mouse for this Dell OptiPlex GX110 computer.

In other news, it's really hard to get any radio other than country stations on my Walkman in my room. That's unfortunate because I like radio stations other than those which play country music. Of course, there is always the Internets, but I quite fancy listening to tapes any more. Lord of the Dance and Keys to Imagination are quite awesome tapes. I also have Avalon but that's a CD.

As another sidenote... blogging is an excellent choice over sleeping. I would rather be pointlessly pouring my random thoughts into the deep, dark depths of the internet than sleeping any day of the week. Especially Tuesday. However, being that it's only Monday right now, I'll have to day with blogging on Monday instead of Tuesday.

However, please expect Tuesday to be an insanely awesomely blogging-filled day.

Finding the Aliens!

I have decided that I am going to return to the SETI@Home project, to help find the aliens. Just this evening, before my 21:00 nap, I installed the BOINC client on my Pentium 3/933MHz box, and started processing a unit. I know I'm using a dated machine in one more way now: It will take me approximately 22 hours to complete one unit. :)

I am probably going to go back to the Surplus place tomorrow, so I will pick up my own kb/mouse, and I will probably pick up another power cable, and long ethernet cable, so that I can start using the P3/500 for SETI as well. :D

In other news, the CoryWiki/UeberWiki is back online.

Going Back to Polyphasic, & some New Music

This is mostly just a note to say that I am going to attempt to stick to the polyphasic schedule better from now on. I've moved my alarm clock to the other side of the room, so that I have to get up in order to turn it off. I think that today will be fairly hard because I haven't even pretended to do the naps, after last night's mess up with it.

I am impressed with my newly found ability to get up at exactly 9:30 every single morning, though.

Also, I got two cassette tapes and a CD from the Bookman's today. The CD is "Avalon" by John Tesh, and the two tapes are Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance, and Keys to Imagination by Yanni. All three are highly entertaining, and the two tapes give me yet another awesome thing to play in my Walkman. Honestly, I love the Walkman. :D

Still Failing at Polyphasic

Honestly, this is harder to keep up than I thought it would be. Yesterday morning I failed, and then again today I failed miserably as well. I had thought it would be easy to keep up with, but because I failed yesterday, I didn't take any of my naps, and then last night I ended up playing Monopoly and watching Clerks II until about 1am.

Luckily, I did get a few hundred words into my NaNoWriMo novel, but I am certainly not pleased that I feel asleep so easily. I need to find a comfortable spot other than my bed where I can do writing, and not be tempted to fall asleep. I think that tonight, I will try the Reilly Hall lounge, or maybe the 6th floor lounge. However, I do think that the main lobby/lounge on the first floor is more likely to happen as a good writing spot than the 6th floor lobby.

As a sidenote... Monopoly is quite a fun and interesting game.

Brilliantly Fail.

I don't even know if this counts as polyphasic sleep any more. I've certainly had my most impressive of failures today. I went to take my 01:00 nap, and I ended up waking up from that 09:30. That's a full 8.5 hours! I feel great, but that's wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. There's 7 hours in there of novel-writing that I missed!

Polyphasic Day 3

I am now in Day 3 of polyphasic sleeping. I think I'm in Day 3, anyway. This may be the fourth day, but I have been through three nights.

Unfortunately, a few bad things have happened. First, I seem to have a habit of not waking up from my 05:00 nap. I lay down at about 05:00 and then wake up somewhere between 08:00 to 09:30. The other bad thing is that, true to what I have read on the Internets, found via The Google, delivered via the tubes, I do now feel like I am a zombie, continuously being run over by the force of a thousand school buses. It's totally fun and you should try it!

Another misfortune has struck my polyphasic sleep project. I seem to be getting sick. This is one of those "Seriously, WTF?" moments, where you just have to ask if the Universe is out to get you. I know that it's not my God, because my God is a tree at Kingman High School called Pam, and I happen to have a close relationship with my God. Additionally, my God is busy saving Earth from the Aliens, so she doesn't have time to attempt to foil my polyphasic sleep plans. Luckily, the vending machine has provided me with some Orange Juice, which seems to have helped.

At any rate... I am plodding on bravely with my efforts to gain four hours in every day. I must say that I do quite enjoy the extra time. I feel as though by 10:00 I will have either caught up with the few days' worth of NaNoWriMo writing that I have missed, or that I will have the cleanest dorm room in Reilly Hall. Maybe both will be true.

I am Filburt

Apparently, as per an online quiz which I didn't really take seriously, I am Filburt from Rocko's Modern Life. I remember that show... I used to quite enjoy it.

Which Character from Rocko's Modern Life are You? Take the test here

Polyphasic Day 2

I find myself on Day 2 of Polyphasic Sleeping. I have already had some discouragement. It is hard to stay encouraged to do something so completely different from what is considered to be socially normal and acceptable. In addition, I'm having issues finding things to do during all of my "additional time." I know that what I should be doing is working on my novel, but somehow I end up just kind of... sitting at my computer.

I find that I'm doing silly online puzzles instead of writing or my schoolwork.

I have also just awaken from (oops!) oversleeping multiple times. I think that this means that I need to put careful consideration into whether or not I really want to continue my attempt at Polyphasic Sleeping.

Blogger Beta

I must say that I am fairly impressed with the new Blogger Beta. I like the fact that enough of it is different to justify it being a Google Beta, but enough of it is the same that my blog basically has the same appearance that it had before. There are a few other things that I can't wait to see implemented, but of course I'm not actually sure of them right now.

Polyphasic Day 1

I am in Day 1 of my new Polyphasic Sleeping lifestyle. I am going to be using this month to transition to an interesting way of distributed resting, so that I can get more hours in the day for studying, being online, and writing my novel.

Right now, I am pretty tired, but I would say that I am fairly alert... I have not had caffeine today, though I may have a few sips (or a few liters) of Mountain Dew later on today.

Hopefully this gargantuan increase in my available time will let me do things like re-learn some three dimensional modeling techniques with 3dStudioMax, watch a lot of youtube videos, listen to a lot of FM radio, finish my NaNoNovel early, and keep my sanity while getting schoolwork done.

New Dells

Last Friday, I picked up two Dell Optiplex desktops from the surplus sales shop at my university. I will describe them as being "#1" and "#2" for now, because I have not given either of them proper names.

Number One was received with a Pentium III processor at 933MHz with 256mb of memory and a 10gigabyte hard disc, as well as a cdrom drive. Number Two was a P3/500 in a 576/20/cdrw/zip100 config, and they were both just ten dollars.

I am now using the 933MHz dell as my main desktop computer. While I do realize that I don't have enough desk space, I enjoy having a proper desktop computer, and this thing, honestly, is quite capable! I can even view Youtube videos now!

I just need to get 3dStudioMax and Office 2003.

As another sidenote, I will have a lot of time to work on stuff in 3dsMax soon. More on that soon.

DCP05285 - Self Portrait

DCP05285 - Self Portrait,
originally uploaded by Cory5412.

This is a picture that I took with the oldest digital camera that I've used in quite a long time. It was a Kodak DC210+, my roommate's. I was surprised, for being nearly 10 years old, just how good the condition it was in was. Quite often, older digital cameras are not in that great condition, I've found.

I really enjoyed playing with it, It was certainly an interesting opportunity. What I found was that... it sucks. Unfortunately, for the same price as a DC210 in 1998, I can get a nice digital SLR and multiple lenses today.

My favorite part of it though, is probably the idea that such a camera is completely compatible with, just as a thought, an older Macintosh, such as my Quadra 840av, as well as with newer macs like my PowerBook G3. This is because it uses Compact Flash cards for storage, which I have reader for, but it can also be attatched directly to older Macs and PCs with a serial cable.

I love older technology sometimes. Though, to be fair... the contact sheet plugin for Photoshop just doesn't exist on 68k Macs. I need a PowerBook 3400c to do retrophotos with now.

Mauled by Colorgaurds!

Today Justin and I went to dinner at the duBois Center, to find that they had laid out the nice spread.. Justin calls it "themed meal" night. Luckily we got there early, because right as we sat down... a bunch of people from Air Academy in (I think) California came in. LIke... 200 or so at least. We were being attacked by a colorgaurd. It was certainly a scary experience. Then, people from Ayala, in Chino Hills, CA came! That group was GARGANTUAN. Luckily, Justin and I escaped before half of the Ayala people came in... and we discovered that Pomona was waiting outside too.

We're being attacked by californian colorgaurds!

Definitely Participating in NaNoWriMo

I just wanted to clarify that I am definitely going to participate in NaNoWriMo. I have a wiki up at http://134.114.91.55/info/index.php/Main_Page that shows some of what I'm going to do, concerning the UeberFriends, and Gotschland, which will be the central focus of the story. I will probably use the Joerg and Kayana characters more, as the title of my novel will be "The Desert Dance of Joerg & Kayana", however I am also going to be using the rest of the Gotschland characters, and the UeberFriends will make plenty of appearances.

http://134.114.91.55/info/Ueberfriends is the page for the UeberFriends.

I totally [heart] Wikis.

Writing A Novel

I've discovered something awesome. It's at http://www.nanowrimo.org and what I'm going to do is write a novel during the month of november. I get to start at 00:00:01 on November 1, and on November 30 at 23:59:59, I have to have 50,000 words written.

I know I'm going to do it, I know a few other people are doing it.

I mostly can't wait to see what happens... I'm somewhat hoping that I can "win" (which just consists of finishing).

I have quite a few plans... I'll probably reveal some of them on this blog before long.

Cosplaying at Java

For those who might be reading this that aren't "in the know" (At Northern Arizona University), we have a 24-hour coffee shop and smoothie place. It is to be referred to as "Java" because that is what we call it. One of my favorite activities at Java, is Friday or Saturday night Smoothies, right before all of our mealplan meals are about to roll over. The best thing about this, of course, is the fun we have in the process of getting the smoothies.

For example, the first time that Jim, Justin and I did this, we became Tim, Jeff, and Corey. Then, it was Jeff, Tim and Cory. After this, we've decided just to use false names - It's a fact of life that the friendly folks working at Java don't check the ID card that you use to pay with. So earlier this evening Jim, Justin and I went under different names.

Jim went as "Drake" with his Silent Bob trenchcoat, and the sunglasses. Justin went as "Mordechai" - which happens to be the name of my D&D character from high school.

I went as Jeff, because that was a name that they had given to both Justin and Jim. I was wearing my beige khacki/carpenter pants, and my blue sweater. Quite honestly, it felt very generic. It was interesting. I have actually begun thinking of what a generic type of person like Jeff might do... I might write him into a short story. Maybe he'll be generic in Gotschland, or maybe just generic in the insane land of people who I've invented. He can live in England with "ML5" and "Joerg Berliner"

Next week, we are all going as Andy and we are all ordering the same type of smoothie. We may even be honored by Jacalynn's presence, though she said she was going to go as Jack.

Reflections on English105

Traditionally, I've considered myself to be a decent writer. In fact, I would say that I've done fairly well in a variety of English classes, involving both composition and literature, even a combination of the two. Because of this, I find it odd that a class with "English" in its title happens to be one of my least favorite this semester.

I think I know what it is, though. This class requires more, and a diferent style of. off the cuff awesomeness than high school classes did. I am used to coming to class on a regular basis (perfect attendance for 3.75 years, anyone?) but I'll admit that in high school, the accepted standard is for a teacher to stand in front of the class and essentially feed you. In my English 105 course, we are required to come to class prepared to make stuff up right away, and continue making stuff up until we have it right.

Or so is my perception. I think that the problem with this is that we still end up accepting the instructor's idea of correct, we just happen to be filling our heads with a whole lot of incorrect before reaching correct. This may help some of us who are more keen on the methods of this type of instruction, but at least half of my particular class has left the building just thanking God that they've come to a Liberal institution where they apparently (or so they think) won't have conservative stuff jammed down their throats.

So far, English 105 is both frustrating, and highly comical. With luck, it'll become less frustrating and more englightening and comical as time goes on.

New Desktop

New Desktop,
originally uploaded by Cory5412.

The desktop picture here comes from Justin's new PC. I stole the picture from it.

On the note of that PC... it's some new Compaq Presario. It's like, only the 2nd brand new PC I've ever seen from its purchase at an office supply store, to it being set up in a dorm room (Or any room.)

One thing that amazed me was how... generic it really is. Its enclosure has very few amazing identifying features, and is otherwise the same in a world of now black boxes. The box is surprisingly small... I remember the box that my Gateway PC came in being... fairly huge.

Carrying the PC wasn't a problem, we carried it from Staples to IHOP where we ate and waited out the rain, then we carried it into WalMart, where we had to explaint to everybody that he had bought it at Staples, then we had to buy the monitor (a 17" CRT). Bringing that 17" CRT back to his dorm was the hardest part.

It was an interesting day, to say the least. I decided that if I ever need a super-cheap x86 box, I might get the same thing Justin bought, it's Vista-Capable, and has a Combo drive... Maybe I should look into Pirating Vista then.

First Week Done

I am posting this on the Saturday Morning after the first week of classes at Northern Arizona University. It's definitely been an interesting week, and I already have classes which I'm sure that I love and I will do awesome in, and I also already have classes that aren't my most favorite. In the next few weeks, I'll do my best to post about my favorite classes, places to eat, etc. I also hope to begin posting more pictures (from Flickr, of course) to the blog.

ContactSheet 213

ContactSheet-213.jpg,
originally uploaded by Cory5412.

This is one of the crazy things that I do. I create contact sheets of all of my photos. This is number 213 of 215, and that's just so far. As you can see, the numbers are almost, or in excess of 6,400 - that's how many pictures I have total. Each on has its own number. Nifty, eh?

I do them in black and white, or I have done them in the past in black and white, but shortly I'm going to start doing them in full & glorious colour!

The other thing is that I print all of these - I printed 210 or so of them with an Apple LaserWriter 4/600PS, and I'm going to be printing later ones on the Xerox Phaser 6120. Fun will be had by all. I have a 3-hole punch and I actually fill binders with these. I have "PhotoBook Volume I" which is Pages 001-200, and has images 00001-06000, which is highly entertaining. I have started on Volume II, which will be Pages 201-400, and Images 06001-12000 (ish). 12,000 Photos is a lot, and somehow, I bet that I'll have that goal reached by the end of this school year, if not by the end of the semester.

I do this all on the 500MHz PowerBook G3, or soon a 450MHz PowerBook G4, my Nikon D50, and Photoshop CS2.

I need to do a whole thing on the entire method, including a tutorial and everything, because what I have found is that this is a great low hdd-space and low computing-oomph method to managing large numbers of digital photos. I simply do the thing with them that somebody might do to a bunch of film negatives, I make contactsheets and put them in a binder. :D

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Vista Pre-RC1 Invitation!

I got an e-mail in my inbox inviting me to the Vista Pre-RC1 test. Naturally, I took Microsoft up on this offer within moments of recieving it, and I am currently in the process of downloading the offending operating system. I will be installing VPC7 on my powerbook g3 shortly, and trying this out. I wish there was some soft of "insane projects test lab" I could use on the campus to do something like, actually install Vista Pre-RC1 on real hardware. I'd love to see the results on real  hardware, not just in VPC7 emulation on my powerbook g3. Though, my results should prove to be fairly indicative of the status of Vista on "old hardware" (think of my setup as a slow Pentium II with 4meg S3 Trio graphics, and only 128 or 192 megabytes of memory.)

"Vintage Mac"

This is an interesting thing that LCGuy pointed me to - the first of the dualprocessor PowerMac G4 systems are now officially "Vintage" along with such venerable machines as the b/w g3s, the firewire powerbook g3s, and other interesting pieces of equipment.

It's interesting to see the change in attitude about any given piece of equipment, from the day that macworld prints their glowing review of the latest professional desktop or workstation, to the point at which it's considered to be "vintage." For what it's worth, I do remember reading about b/w g3s and early g4s while I was in elementary school, in macworld and macaddict. I was always super-excited to read about the latest revision, update, price-drop or speed-bump.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304210

I wonder if this could be any potential indication regaurding  the type of hardware that Leopard will easily run on, not that I'm particularly interested in that, after a) the fiascos I've had with Tiger, and b) with my slow hardware.

Interesting things to say the least.

Mac Pro, No more!

For what it is worth, I've decided to go ahead and not get a Mac Pro. I still have all of those job applications in, and I will still probably be saving for a new computer, albeit a bit slowly. Instead of a Mac Pro, I am going to see if my parents will be willing to bring me my PowerMac G3 and its monitor, and I'll be using either the Power Macintosh G3 for OSX and photoshop stuff, or the PowerBook G3 for that, and the other of those two computers for OS 9.

Loads of fun with old technology!

New Printer

I talked to dad today, and have just placed an order on a new printer. It's a Xerox Phaser 6120 from Xerox. No auto-duplexing built in, but I can do manual duplexing page-by-page when needed, and I can order the duplexer later on.


Everybody, get ready for a special 2nd run of 3am! In full glorious colour!

At NAU

I apologize sincerely for not having anything up for awhile, I seriously have several blogPosts from the past few weeks that are on my computer, and that I fully intend to put up.

 

Anyway, I'm at NAU and I've met a lot of awesome people - mostly through Glenn. I've already met several people through him, and I already have lots of ideas for photos to take here.

 

Tomorrow, I am heading to Target to see if they have a particular printer, and then to see if I can put it on layaway until Dad gets here on Saturday. That one's a network printer. However, I'm going to look at campus surplus sales too, I may be able to find an excellent old LaserJET or so in there. Glenn and I have discussed it - if I do, we will probably share it, and the printer will be our sexy printer ho, and we'll all print our long books and stuff on it - Of course, Glenn will be buying some of the toner. :)

 

Sexy printer hos aside, I am amazed with Target, their online store has laser printers, VOIP phones, among other crazy things - They don't have the brother printer I wanted, but dad and I talked about it and I may get a Lexmark E210n (I think that was the model number) It's only three digits of modelnumber powah, (vs. the HP LaserJET 1022, the Brother HL-2040, and the Xerox Phaser 6120) but it's an "n" model which means it's networkable, and it's lexmark, which in the laser arena is okay I hear, I have no personal vendetta against them.

 

As far as getting a MacPro goes, I'm still not sure, I'm fairly certain that I want it, but I'm not exactly certaon on how I'll get it, etc. The desks in Reilly hall are not as big as in Sechrist, I think, so my estimations are wrong, but a printer, and my stereo will fit on top, and there's definitely room for an LCD monitor, be it the nice 20" Cinema Display, or the cheapest dell 17" LCD (which is not that bad, actually), I don't know if I can go back to a CRT for my photos, unless it's suepr-nice and gargantuan, which won't work well with NAU.

 

Anyway... I'm rambling. :D

 

http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~clw249/

Just a note on the Mac Pro

Yes, it looks almost exactly like the Power Mac G5
Yes, it is a Revision-A product from Apple, Computer Inc.
Of course, I don't have $2500 to drop on a new computer right now.

But I still seriously believe that this machine will be my next Mac. It will be a significant upgrade from the PowerBook G3 and PowerMac g3 I am using right now. A collective... 10.66GHz of Woodcrest (XEON 5100) awesomeness, how can you deny that? I honestly think that the Mac Pro is slated to become one of those machines that's around ten years past discontinuation, still chugging along with every imagineable upgrade, with a few software hacks, running the very latest version of Mac OS X and a variety of applications, with users still reporting that the machine is very useable.

Naturally, I hope that's how mine behaves, because I fully intend to keep it, and upgrade it a bit every few months, or year, or whenever. In ten years, my system probably will have eight monitors, 3 terabytes of hard disc space, 16 gigabytes of memory, and it may be upgraded to the 3GHz or an even faster variant of the Woodcrest. Who knows?

Anixter Warehouse

Today I am at work with dad at the Anixter warehouse. It’s fairly interesting because there are various Frontier guys running around on their side of the warehouse, and I’ve learnt various things today. For example, there’s a company called “Calix” which I need to research. Also, Siemens makes a higher-end ADSL gateway called the Speedstream 5930, it is apparently a business model. I’d love to see what it looks like, and get my hands on one. Unfortunately, I think that those are tracked a little bit more tightly than, for example, the Linksys Wireless-G notebook adaptor that dad has allowed me to try in the Pismo.

Unfortunately, the building has wireless-blocking metal walls, so I won’t be able to take advantage of the card and link right here. However, I was surprised that the computer did recognize the card, and Airport was going to let me connect with it – I think. I am unsure if I’ll be keeping it, closer to the end of the day he’ll either tell me I can pack it in my bag, or to repack it and put it back on the shelf from whence it came.

It’s just too bad that those SpeedStream 5930 ADSL things are probably tracked better than this, or those ADSL pci cards… either would be an awesome upgrade from the SpeedStream 6520 that we’ve got at home now. If it were me, I’d pop the PCI card in my g3 and redo Mac OS X 10.4 server. We’ll see though. There are also wireless-G routers (WRT54G) among other cool things. However, I doubt I’ll be able to nab anything like that. :P I do get to keep the card though, and that has a broadcom chipset, I think… either that, or whatever chip it does have is useable in the Pismo. I’ll test it out this evening.

Long Walk

Today mom came home at about 2:30 pm and told us that we’d be going to dad’s house. Unfortunately, I didn’t prepare properly and didn’t have any real decent spare clothes… I need to wash them shortly.

Anyway, we went to dad’s house, and then I went for a big walk. I did the old 1-mile around the “former forty” (we sold 20 of it a long time ago), then I walked around a different 40-acre set. Then I walked up and onto “something-Griff” road. I forgot its exact name. Then I walked down Kirkland up Patagonia then around some other road whose name I forgot. It was a very long and tiring walk, but I’m supposed to feel good because it counts as having partaken in the activity referred to as “exercise.”

so sick

Wow… It’s been a long time since I’ve been sick, but I think that there is something in the new house that I am actually allergic to, or something, because today, I was ‘sick.’ That is to say… sick in the context of actually puking. It was not that pleasant, but I felt much better after taking a shower, then being outside for awhile. Unfortunately, I’m inside now and within minutes of turning on the PowerMac G3 and being back inside, I felt sick again.

This is frustrating, to say the least. I feel as though I wasted the part of the sandwich I had eaten earlier.

In other news, I saw Roxy from Photo Class at Wal-Mart today, which was cool. It didn’t look like she really wanted to stop and chat, so I just waved hello and went on in.

Moving Help

My brother's friend came over to help, which is awesome because I don't have to unload everything at the new house. It is bad because everything left was little (a few computers were really the biggest thing left.)

Next up is my stereo, TV, the pismo will go in the next trip, my now-disassembled desk, and the chairs, dishes, and vacuum cleaner.

And then the house will be empty.

It's amazing, really.

By the way, if email posting works, I'll probably... be posting a lot more often. I just need to figure out if I want to do big posts, but less often, or small posts, but very often (like I'm doing today)

If there's any reader feedback, you can send it to corywiegersma -at- gmail -dot- com.

Stamp Story

Well, there was the one time when I was trying a mailing campaign in an attempt to rule the world, I licked stamps for like eight days straight. Unfortunately, half of the letters came back because while I was still licking stamps, the US government approved another postage rate-hike. Anybody ever think "That wouldn't happen if I were in charge" ? That was one of those moments for me.

That was, of course, just one more jab in the side, and one more failed world domination attempt. Unfortunate, but true. Didn't you get the memo?

Moving...

Oh, and by the way. We're moving... umm... today. I bet we'll be staying in the new place tonight, actually.

I just thought you should know.

The place is on the corner of Chino and Hassaympa so that it may be easy to find for an interested local party. (Umm... not that I'm throwing a party, per se.)

Using This Blog

I am officially going to use and post to this blog. Supposed advantages are e-mail posting (Have yet to make that work though) and the fact that its not hosted by me, so it is always up. Yaay.

If I linked you to here from mySpace, this is it, you're in the right spot. There will be more eventually.

Potential Revival.

Hey Everybody. I am getting this blog ready again, in the event that I need to use it, which is highly likely. I am doing this because currently, my blog is hosted on my own website, which is at http://stenoweb.selfip.org/ and I update it with iWeb.

However because I am going to be at NAU before too long, and because we are going to be moving to the house soon, where mom might not get broadband internet, I am creating a soon-to-be successor to the blog that I was running using iWeb.

At least one other perk will be the email posting to this blog, and the fact that I don't have to worry about hosting anything, anywhere.

Paid Job?

You might know that my mother is a real-estate agent for DCD Realty,
and that DCD Realty is connected in some way to a marketing firm
called TW-Ventures.

Recently (In fact, it opens tomorrow) they opened a new office in
Golden Valley, Arizona. I helped bring up this office's computers and
network equipment.

Today, I even got wireless networking (sortof) set up from their
router, which is interesting.

I was informed, by my mother, that the people in charge who saw me
helping really liked my help, and that I will be helping again in the
future...

In fact, the future is late January to early February, they are
opening an office in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, and the person who is
going to be managing most of this wants me to be *the* technology
bringup helper, which means I'll get to play with a bunch of Dell
PCs, and set up the local area network there.

Also, mom wants me to hang around a bit at TW Ventures marketing firm
and help out a bit there, which may also lead to a small inflow of
United States Treasury Department notes.

2006: Back into Blogging

One of my arbitrary promises to myself for the year 2006 will be to
post to a blog more often.

Why? Well, for starters, it's terribly hard work telling everybody
everything over instant message. Additionally, what if I want to let
people who I don't know take a look into my life? not possible unless
I'm flaunting it publicly, as so.

This past week, I've been going to mom's work with her, primarily
because they have fast internet that nobody takes full advantage of,
though I feel a bit bad and wish that I could put a cap on my
tibook's usage, though I will not ever actually look into it. :P

My G3 is now running Mac OS 9.0, and is acting primarily as my
MLAgazine computer.

Today, for some reason, the thought struck me to research over the
air NTSC broadcast equipment, which I am doing this evening. I've
even gone so far on this one as to bust out the digital video camera
and start importing things from tapes to clear them for TV show
production work...

now I need to write and film and edit a television show. :D

Also... there is no good TV scheduling software for Mac OS X. I might
need to see if I can't rig something up, I think it would make an
awesome little app, provide streaming video out on firewire, or to
quicktime streaming server. ... Once I can find the blasted Mac OS X
10.4 developer tools, that is. :P

Oh, and for Christmas the highlight was being with my family, and the
excellent Nikon D50, which takes awesome photos. You can check them
out at http://cory5412.5gigs.com/d50_shots/

... Until next time.
~Cory

eMail Posting Test

This is a test of posting to this blog from my electronic mail account.

~CoryW

Maya Book

Today I bought "Introducing Maya 5: 3d for Beginners" at Hastings. It's for an old version, but just like that final cut for dummies book helped my video chopping skillz, I plan on using this to greatly assist in my quest to become good at using at least one "real" 3d program - other than Poser.

I'm still working on getting the ESI graphics for the octane - where I plan on eventually running Maya and/or lightwave. I also still need to do a bit of room-cleaning in order to make it "not terrible." I may just call it quits with retrochallange and put the 475 away... that's most of the problem, sadly.

Actually... Life on IMPACT Donkey.

IMPACT Donkey is the name of my G3, in it's new civilian role of :gasp: not an Intrikit Weaver. I might one day go back to it being an Intrikit Weaver, but certainly that won't be until school starts, or I have my TiBook back, whichever is later. It is interesting to actually be strapped to my desk (not literally) in order to use my computer. I like having the extra screen realestate, and the substantial keyboard is quite a nice change from usual TiBook life, if you know what I mean.

I do find however, that the G3 is actually substantially slower, which saddens me because I like to find myself doing alot of things at once... The other problem is that I have to shut the G3 down nights and when I'll be gone, and that my desk is too small to easily accomodate the keyboard/mouse/monitor for my G3. The iMac, back when I used that, just barely fit... but was better than fitting than this 17" Gateway EV700.

On the G3

I'm on the G3 now, and once again my main computer is something that other people consider horridly ancient. It's interesting to see how people say "Oh, you wouldn't last a moment on an old computer" and you point out "neither would you, Mr. got a G5 the moment they came out."

I think that this is a lot of the reason for the 68kMLA's Retro Computing Contest, is to prove who is the manliest and can use the oldest computer... In all reality, it was not but two years ago that my main computer was ten years old, and even now I'm sitting at a five-year-old... I guess that all of this funny business makes the SGI Indy my backup machine, and that's ten or eleven years old... Interesting how that works out in my favor when you look at it that way.

Truth be told, the newer computers just work for me, and that's why I am not participating in the retro contest this year... there's been things that I really have needed to do for the whole month of July that an older computer wouldn't have let me do. One of those things is get online... the TiBook is my only computer that has a modem... without the 'net, I may as well just get rid of all of my computers at all, right? ;) The other thing that I needed to do during July was to travel, I took my TiBook to grandma's house "and all was well in the world" because I was able to do all sorts of nifty demos for people on my "that's so tiny!" laptop computer. Even the best-equipped PowerBook 190cs or 540c wouldn't have been able to do some of the stuff that I was doing... Quadras like the 840av and the 950 would have choked, even my G3 in a lot of instances, I'm sure.

There's been two reasons that I haven't been making blog posts, which is something that you might have noticed... the first is that I was in Michigan, as mentioned above, and the next is that my blog's host has gone berserk... Luckily, I have deviantArt and blogspot to be able to publish to, so I'm not completely dry for resources. I may just keep posting blog posts to devArt, or I might start using the blogspot thing. I'm sure that people might (or might not) comment either way, just so long as it's out there is what I'm concerned of. I guess i have some signature-changing to do.

So far I like sitting at a normal desktop computer for a change, Though, I am not sure of what I am actually going to do without the TiBook for so long. I've got the FireWire cable right here too, what I really *should* do is go to see if I can find the MiniDV camera, and see if it has a firewire port, then burn the contents of my video hard disc, minus the music probably onto CDs so that I can start working with MiniDV video in iMovie or Final Cut Pro 3. I will have to get that 'Backup' App installed on this mac and see how that works out. I might also take advantage of that .MAC account trial that I signed up for on here. I'm going to see later tonight if I can get online through mom's PC on here.

Tomorrow or the next day I'll see if I can find the MiniDV cam... I think it'll be great if I can do more video making because I have a semi-decent video camera that can import into my computer that much quicker than some other things.

As I write this, I'm sitting here all day long,