Enter Sandman…Please?

Oh how I love insomnia. I’m writing this blog entry at 2:30 in the morning. Since I have to get up at 7:30, you can guess how much this sucks. I really need to go the doctor about this. I just don’t get enough sleep any more. This probably happens at least once a week now.

On a more pleasant note, I got a new digital camera on Saturday! It’s a 7.1MP Canon Powershot SD1000. It’s a really great camera. It’s pocket sized, and has a really fast auto focus, and image processing speed. My favorite feature however is the red eye removal. After you’ve taken a picture, and notice that there’s really bad red eye (like I’ve got right now) you can view the picture on the camera’s playback mode, and use the thumb pad to draw a box around the red eye area of the image and remove the red eye. This way, I can remove the red eye while I take the pictures, and not later in bulk when I upload the images to iPhoto. Take a look at the latest pictures in my Flickr library to see some of the SD1000’s handiwork.

Sweet dreams everyone!

A Letter to My Late-Night Cereal Dealer

Dear Kellogg’s,

I would like to inquire why, with your ability to form corn, wheat, and oats into seemingly impossible shapes and infuse them with artificial sweeters and preservatives (which is very tasty BTW) , you can’t package your cereal with an inner liner that won’t lose every ounce of its structural integrity upon its first opening. Is it made of tissue paper? Old newsprint from the 50’s? Everytime I crack open a newly purchased box of Frosted Flakes, or Honey Smacks, a gapping hole in the liner is created through which rogue cereal morsels escape to the bowels of the box, never to be seen or heard from (if it’s a Rice Crispy) again. Post doesn’t have this problem! They have inner liners that are made of a thin plastic where each corner can be easily opened forming a little “spout” where all their cereal goodness can be directed into my bowl. Now granted, their liners might not be as “earth friendly” as yours, but that’s a small price to pay for my ability to easily pour sugar saturated processed grains into my bowl at 11:30 at night so that I can gain another 5lbs. Come on Kellogg’s! Get your act together! Cereal isn’t grown on trees (is it?)! There’s no need to waste good cereal by letting it escape to the bottom of the box like a bunch of senior citizens moving to Florida to wait out their lives and expire. (Ok, so my analogy broke down.) Anyway, the point is – strong plastic inner bag = good. Scott’s toilet tissue inner bag = bad.

Your loyal Cereal Junkie,

Matt

Movie Review : American Psycho

This is not a new movie, I know, but it’s one of those movies my friends kept telling me I needed to see and I never got around to it. Today, I finally did. To my friends, let me say this : “Did I miss something?” To be honest I felt this movie was a waste of 2 hours. When it comes down to it, I think I just didn’t “get it.” Was this movie supposed to be a comedy? A thriller? A dramedy? A thrillomedrama? All of the above? The problem with this movie is that if it was supposed to be all those things, it did none of them well. It wasn’t thrilling or funny. The parts that were supposed to be disturbing were ruined because of the movies quirky humor, and the parts that were supposed to be funny were ruined by the movies subject matter. The main character played by Christian Bale (who did a good job) was so pathetic that he couldn’t create any suspense. The only part of the movie that ellicited any kind of emotional response was the scene in which he spared his assistant by telling her to leave before he hurt her. I gotta say the ending did nothing for me either. It didn’t really wrap anything up, or give the viewer any kind of resolution. Again, maybe I just didn’t get it.

Anyway, I give it ** out of ***** .

Van Halen Tour Announced (Again)

The Van Halen website recently announced that Van Halen will be kicking off a reunion tour with David Lee Roth in September. The first 2 shows on the tour schedule are Charlotte, NC and Greensboro, NC. Even though I’ve never really liked Greensboro Coliseum, I think I’m going to try and get tickets to that show since Greensboro is only about 1:15 from from Raleigh. Mike Anthony is still not in the band, which is a real shame, but Eddie Van Halen’s son, Wolfgang will be playing bass. Hopefully, next year, we’ll see another Van Halen tour with Sammy and Mike back in the band.

I’m really looking forward to this show. I’m too young to have seen Van Halen during the Roth years, but love the VH, Diver Down, Fair Warning, Women and Children First, and 1984 albums. So, here’s my chance to see Dave in action. (Even if he is a goofy bastard. 😉 )

QuickTime Streaming Server – Neato

I recently installed Quicktime Streaming Server on my eMac, and wow is it fun. You install it like any other Apple program (it has a package file) and then access its web admin interface. Basically, you tell it where your music files are, select how much bandwidth you want it to use, create an MP3 playlist, and then start the playlist. Then, using either iTunes or Windows Media Player you go to “Open URL,” enter the URL of your QSS, and you can listen to your streamed music! It’s great for when you’re at work and want to listen to your music. Right now I’m trying to get the streaming working for my Nokia smartphone so that I can have my music with me anytime and anywhere.

Video Games = Work ?

When was it the notion that video games needed to be work sparked to life in game developers minds? Remember back in the day when you could just tap up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-b-a-b-a-select-start and get 30 lives to beat the game you were into? When did game developers decide that cheat codes needed to go away? When did they decide to go on a crusade to make people play the game “right” and not cheat?

I paid for the frigging game. I own it. I should be able to get maximum playing enjoyment out of the game without having to beat every level perfectly, not missing any items, to unlock level “Whatever” or characher “Whoever.” Heck, electronics manufacturers even started tapping into players’ frustrations by selling “cheating tools” like Game Shark and Game Genii so that gaming customers could access all the features of a game they paid for. You can’t even find them anymore.

Game developers. take note. I don’t need a referee. I paid for the game. Don’t make we put hours of “work” into it just so I can see level “X”, or play the game with character “Y”, or drive car model “Z”. You’re pissing off the old school gamers who now have full time jobs, are married, and have kids. We don’t have time to play a game for hour sjust to unlock some game feature that should be available anyway. Either bring back cheat codes, or stop locking out game features all-together. Come on, tap into my demographic. You might just make some more money.

MacBook Video Card Memory Allocation

This is a very informative excerpt from the MacNN Forums about the Intel GMA 950 video card found in all Apple MacBooks. MacBook users, read this!

“Put simply, there are two types of “things” that go into video memory:

1) The frame buffers
2) Textures/Surfaces

The GMA950 has a maximum resolution of 2048×2048 pixels with 32bpp color depth. That means a single frame buffer can take up to 16MB.

It can also display two unique images simultaneously. In the case of the Macbook, this means the internal LCD panel and the external DVI connector. Taking this into account we’re up to 32MB — in practice this will never happen since there really aren’t any displays with that high a resolution on the market. However, Apple could be playing it safe and always reserve enough memory to handle all frame buffer sizes.

Similarly, Apple may be using the concept of having front and back buffers to provide smooth video. This means each display effectively has two frame buffers associated with it. As a result, now we’re up to the magic 64MB number.

In addition to frame buffers, there are typically off-screen areas that are used to cache bitmaps, individual characters of fonts, the contents of a window that is going to be blitted or blended, etc.

There are countless uses for off-screen memory. Importantly though, the GMA950 can only off load work from the CPU when it has this memory to use. It can only accelerate drawing and compositing within video memory.

In this case, it sounds like Apple has ensured that there is a minimum of 16MB of off-screen memory for this use. As a result, we get the 80MB number.

The important thing to realize about integrated graphics chips such as the GMA950 is that memory can be dynamically moved from the system to the video processor at will. This is done in 4KB chunks up to the maximum address space of 256MB.

We already know from IOReg that Apple has configured the GMA950 with a 256MB aperture.

And Apple themselves have effectively confirmed all of this with their knowledge base article:

Mac mini (Early 2006), MacBook, iMac (Mid 2006): About the Graphics Processor

In short, the 64MB number being thrown around is a minimum value not a maximum value.”

Weatherman – Lesson Learned

On the way back from Kure Beach on my motorcycle, I learned an important lesson. When the weather man says, 20% chance of scattered showers, what he means is : “100% chance of consistant rain.”

As we were packing to leave the beach on Saturday, it started to shower at Kure Beach. So, I checked the radar images, and it showed that the rain was pretty much isolated to the Wilmington/Carolina Beach/Kure Beach area. So, with the rain being light, we went ahead and headed home. Chrissy took the regular “cage” route, 421 to I-40W, but I took the more scenic 421N route. The ride went fine, with only a little sprinkles hitting my helmet visor to inform me that it was raining. Then I left Wilmington.

On 421N, about 15 miuntes outside of Wilmington it began to pour. I rode in the puring rain for about an hour on 421 before I came to a rest stop inbetween Delway and Clinton. I was soaked from head to toe, and trembling from the cold. To make a long story a little shorter, I called Chrissy from the rest stop, and we decided to meet up at the Walmart in Clinton. There, we bought me dry clothes, boots, and a PVC rain suit. After that, I made it home without further incident.

So, remember- if you check the weather the day before, or the morning of the day you’re planning to ride your motorcycle a long distance, and the weather report states “scattered showers” … don’t believe it. 😉