Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Sweet natural lighting

[Standard Incandescent] [Incandescent Reveal] [Compact Fluorescent Lights] [Compact Fluorescent 50K]


























Shortly after I moved into my current apartment, I took to changing all of the light bulbs within to compact fluorescent bulbs to save energy. After I installed the first CFL bulb, I found two things that disappointed me.
  1. The bulbs I got did not initially light up to their full brightness. It took a few minutes before they were fully lit.
  2. The color of the light that came forth from these bulbs were yellowish, similar to their incandescent counterparts. I had hoped that, being fluorescent, they would more closely resemble their tube-shaped cousins.
Still, they would save me some money in electricity bills, and I supposedly wouldn't have to replace them nearly as often as the incandescent bulbs, so I stayed with using them.

After using them, I've noticed that my indoor pictures, where I am loath to use the camera flash unless absolutely necessary, are all turning out very yellow. In other words, I am getting atrocious lighting from these bulbs.

Last week, I was finally fed up with it and decided to look for alternatives. Fortunately, I found some online stores that have "natural lighting" or "full spectrum" CFL bulbs. Good news for me, but I wasn't sure if they will truly be "white light" as advertised, so I decided to see if I could find any at the local stores. My search turned out in vain, and I ended up trying some incandescent "Reveal" bulbs by GE, which visually isn't much better, although in photos they show up better than my old CFLs. There seems to be very little difference between them and the regular incandescent bulbs in my photos, however.

So I went ahead and ordered the CFLs from online, which were rated at 50,000 Kelvin for color temperature.

They work well. I now finally have white light, and they light up fully without delay. Now if only the CFL 3-way bulb from them had brighter low settings...


On a side note, I don't know what that white stuff is at the bottom right corner of the standard incandescent pic... it certainly wasn't anything I placed there when I was taking the picture. Spooky.

In-N-Out Burger


3x3 burger with grilled onions
Fries, well done
Large drink

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

RAID rebuilding

One of the hard drives in the main RAID server at work went down again last Friday. Ideally, with three drives in RAID 1 mode, the mirrored drive should have gone to the backup and tried to rebuild itself in the background.

But that's not what happened. Instead, I had to reboot, go into the RAID tools, and try and get it to rebuild from there.

Unfortunately, it seemed to have gotten stuck at 22% since Friday afternoon, and remained so all weekend. It was only through luck and perseverance that I was able to get it seemingly back on track, as it's now gone past 22%, and hopefully will be back to 100% by the time I get back to work tomorrow.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Finished Dragon Quest VIII

Sort of. I defeated Rhapthorne, the final boss character, and then there's a sequence involving the lifting of the curse and the princess' marriage. But a new quest opens up after this, and you're given a chance for a save game with everything your characters have right before you started the final boss fight.

I sort of knew it coming in, because there are "Infamous Monsters" which don't become available until you "beat" the game.

Reading online, there's mention of how this new quest is about the Hero character's background. Not really a surprise here. It was almost immediately obvious, once you reached Argonia in the game, that the Hero is the son of Eltrio, the king's older brother who disappeared.

And unless I'm completely off-track here, it seems very likely that Munchie--the little mouse/hamster the Hero carries around--is actually Chen Mui in disguise; Chen Mui being one of the elders who magically shows up to guide the party through the town.


So I guess finishing this quest will make an alternate ending available, as it should make the Hero the son of Eltrio and Xia, who would have ruled Argonia if Eltrio hadn't died. So having the princess of Trodain marry the Hero would still fulfill the old promise between Trodain and Argonia... and it was too much to expect the current king to find out about the Hero's past and halt the wedding between Medea and Charmles.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Butterface

This picture, or sequence of pictures, has been floating around the net for quite some time.

I was trying to find it and show to my friends the other day, but had the hardest time in locating a web page that contained it.

Luckily, someone posted it again on the forum. So now I'm uploading it here for easier access in the future.


For those who don't know what a "butterface" is... well, looking at the picture, it should be obvious.

A butterface is a woman who has excellent physical attributes. Everything looks great, but her face...

Thursday, December 22, 2005

This is hilarious -- Sushi

Another Google Video gem... a spoof documentary on the etiquettes of eating sushi, made by Japanese comedy duo "The Rahmens."

[You should never ask about this]...the chef ("Taisho") wipes his sweat with his cloth, and immediately aftewards, proceeds to wipe the blade which he uses to make sushi. "You should never ask about this." LMAO.


Edit: The video appears to have been removed from Google Video, so I found the same video on YouTube.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

A Western tradition with a Chinese twist

I have finally taken the artificial Christmas tree that I bought two years ago out of storage and set it up in the living room. I also went to Target to buy some hooks, on which to hang my Christmas wreath.

But it's not your typical wreath by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, it's one made with Chinese knots.
When my grandmother came to visit during the summer, she brought along a few of these "wreaths" that she had made. There were two designs, the other one was much prettier and more "wreath-like," as it had large leaves made of Chinese knots, making it look much fuller than the one I got. I picked this one because it still looks good (just not as good as the other), and my relatives in Canada (to whom the remaining wreath will go) deserved to see how good the other one looks.

And of course, I'm too lazy to decorate the tree... plus I'll be the only one here during Christmas, so there doesn't seem to be much point in decorating it. And I think it's festive enough as it is.

Friday, December 16, 2005

SanDisk RMA--Received

As the tracking from UPS indicated, my replacement SD card was delivered today. It's basically a new card, as you can see from the contacts that it hasn't been used before. 512 megs only gets me an approximate 200 pictures in my 5.0 megapixel camera, but over a thousand in my 2.0 megapixel digital SLR. So that should be plenty for both of these cameras.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Bananas!

Apparently, in a recent episode of Family Guy, Brian (the dog) tried to cheer Peter up by donning a banana costume, and then proceeded to perform the "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" dance.

I guess it's funny enough on its own, for people who don't get the reference. And even if you do get the reference, the original was pretty much a "WTF?" anyway.

Someone mentioned that he had the original as a ringtone for a while. Which reminded me of the infamous "Banana phone"--another "WTF" phenomenon on the Internet. (Although when Raffi originally made the song, I'm sure he didn't expect this kind of exposure.)

I'm not sure which came first--the NewGrounds animation, or the sped-up versions. So I'll link the NewGrounds one first:


Then there are the sped-up versions. I'm pretty sure this one was the first. It's a simple, Gundam in a banana suit, being held by an ASCII girl, animation.

Following the ASCII-girl banana phone, there was a "remix" done, with the "badger" animation.


So, what have we learned from this? Nothing. Except there's some weird stuff on the Internet. Which I'm sure most people knew all along.


Edit: Wow, you really can find anything on the Internet. A quick search on Wikipedia found both songs/animations and references.
Looks like there are a few more animations that I haven't seen.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Guess I'm a bit behind the times

Checking my Gmail yesterday, I noticed a link for Google Talk, Google's (currently Beta) IM service. Turns out Google launched this service back in August.

A quick search showed that it's simple task to configure Trillian to work with Google Talk, and since the only other requirement for Google Talk right now is a Gmail account, I figured I'd give it a try.

Although, actually, I'd still need to get my friends who have Gmail to setup their computers to use Google Talk for it to be worthwhile. Plus I'd still need to download the actual program from Google to see what its functions really are.

SanDisk's RMA

Let me just say, although their support leaves something to be desired, their return service is top-notch.

I went to their website last Tuesday and opened a support request, but they didn't get back to me until two days later. And when they did, half the questions they asked was already anwered in the form I filled out when I submitted my request. Then, on Sunday, without informing me, they closed the request and opened up an RMA ticket. Luckily I happened to check their support page on Sunday, and noticed the change. It basically wanted me to confirm my shipping address. So I gave them my work address.

On Monday, they sent me an email to let me know that my RMA has been authorized, and gave me instructions on obtaining a shipping label from FedEx. They have pre-paid FedEx 2nd Day service for me to send back the defective SD card, which is more than any of the other companies I've had to request RMA from. They didn't even ask for my receipt, although I did print one out before I submitted my support request, just in case.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

What do they call it when everything intersects?

Well, they all came today. The camera bag by Konica Minolta, and the PIAA replacement bulbs.

It should be able to protect the camera well enough. Too bad it no longer fits my shirt pocket.


Super Plasma bulbs... This is the one that burned out on me. If you hold it up to the light, you should be able to see the burned-out filament.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Origami rose

Oops, forgot to rotate the image. :o

Michelle lamented on the fact that the roses she received on Monday had already wilted after less than a week. Which reminded me of an episode of Prison Break from a few weeks ago--The prison doctor said that she didn't like flowers, because they don't last. So the main character left her an origami rose at the end of his next visit--and prompted me to look for instructions on how to make an origami rose of my own.

This is the result. It actually looks better when seen from the side, and I imagine much more like a rose when a stem is added, along with a different colored paper.

My second attempt turned out a lot better, IMO. Now I've just got to find some real origami paper, so I can see what it can really look like. And also make a stem for it.