All posts by jetrotz

the author of this blog.
technology

I almost forgot…

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Yes, it’s true. I’d say it’s looking a lot like Christmas, excpet for my religious affiliation. I have just received a brand-spanking new G5 dual-2.5gHz liquid cooled PowerMac at work. Oh, baby! I spent much of the last day of work before heading out on vacation getting this bad boy set up. It’s just amazing. First off, the Setup Assistant was able to seamlessly transfer my home directory and most of my applications from my old 1Ghz TiPB drive with little or no work on my part. It took a while – over 2 hours – but when it finished, the new machine rebooted and looked just like the old one. Same desktop, same dock configuration – everything. Except of course the incessant slowdowns whenever I tried to do much of anything. Gone are the days of the spinning beach ball in iPhoto. My current library has about 2,000 6MB+ photos. Even touching the thumbnail slider was enough to trigger a beach-ball wait of 15+ seconds. Scrolling was the same – each page took at least 10 seconds. Now, I can scroll from top to bottom of my collection in a blink of the eye.

The new G5 arrived only a day after I received a new Seagate 100GB 2.5″ 5400 RPM internal drive for my aging Titanium Powerbook. The enclosure I ordered was dead out of the box, causing some concern until I could confirm that it was not the new drive, and I have managed to migrate the old data onto the new one, and installing was easy-peasy.

Put simply, I am a very happy man.

Travel

Big, Big, Waves

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Surfers from around the world converged on Oahu’s north shore for an elite invitation-only event to the top competitors in the sport. As reported in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the event has been held only seven times in the past 20 years, the event features a purse over $50,000, and only takes place when waves are generally over 30 feet. sign_hs.jpgThe Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational honors the life of former Waimea Bay lifeguard and surfer Eddie Aikau, who was never found after he paddled off for help when the Hokulea capsized in rough seas in 1978. Someday, I’d like to get back to Hawaii during the winter to see these waves and to watch the whales come through in their seasonal migration, but I did get to photograph the windsurfers on Maui’s north shore during our honeymoon in 2003.

technology

MCE Envy

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It’s Italian. It has a built-in touchscreen. It’s freaking gorgeous. It’s the most lust-inducing Windows Media Center Edition PC I’ve seen to date. The specs – 7” 1280×720 VGA touchscreen, dual layer DVD burner and 500gbHD, dual SD tuners, plus FM and integrated Wi-Fi. I don’t speak Italian, but their web site is worth a look. Meanwhile, it’s been like six weeks since I ordered an Alienware DHS – and no sign of it yet.LINK to Oncinema web site (Italian).

Miscellaneous

AP Complicit? Let’s not jump to any conclusions

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Salon.com has a roundup on the recent hullaballoo (pay subscription or brief commercial viewing required for access) around the AP photographer who captured that brazen daylight execution of several Iraqi poll workers last week. Conservative bloggers (e.g. “Wretchard” of the Belmont Blog Club, whatever that is) have suggested AP’s complicity in these events. Perhaps, they say, the photographer knew what was going to happen. Huh? How do they jump to this conclusion. Unlike my earlier post surrounding Kevin Sites catching the apparent execution of a wounded combatant, this case could be more questionable – but the facts don’t really support this speculation. Rather than point a finger at the old leftist media, this case shows how unstable Iraq remains. Cold blooded daylight assasination in the middle of public streets – looks like we have a ways to go with this whole ‘democracy’ thing over there.