The pen is mightier than the sword

Literally.

...

Okay, maybe not literally.

As with most items I purchase online, I had my new SD card shipped to my office. However, as I lack the means to a sharp blade at the office, I was left with a rather dull blade from a Swiss army knife.

With it, I futilely tried to cut open the child-proof packaging of the memory card. When that failed, I grabbed a pen and traced along the lines made by the Swiss army knife, as was able to break through the plastic.

Couldn't have done that as easily with the Swiss army knife, so yeah, that makes the pen "mightier." Obviously, that's not what they had in mind when they came up with the phrase...

The upside of online shopping

Aside from being able to comparison shop much faster than one would be able to in the real world, it's also quite easy to pull up an old order from most online stores and print out an invoice.

I received my new 2 gig Ultra-II SD card today (I ordered with next-day air shipping), and Sandisk has a lifetime warranty on the card. Since the 512 meg SD card that failed on me was also a Sandisk, I realized that I should be able to contact them for a repair/replacement. However, they will most likely want to see some proof of purchase, and I doubt I'd be able to find a receipt for something I got two years ago.

Luckily, I remember clearly which online store I got it from--TheNerds.net--because at the time, they royally f***ed up my order by claiming to have the camera I wanted in stock, but only shipping me the memory card. So even though I refuse to do any more business with them, I can still look up my user information at their site. And sure enough, there was the order info, all ready for me to print out. Now I just need to get the model number from the card when I get home, and I should be able to contact Sandisk about a repair.

On a side note, I was able to find a carrying case made by Konica Minolta for my new camera, rather than some generic brand, online, while the many electronic stores I've been to do not seem to carry any Minolta accessories.


The major downside, for me, regarding online shopping, would be the shipping--the cost, the wait, etc.

Classical... electric guitar

Saw this posted on Club3G last week. Quite cool, especially for people who like electric guitar.

Canon in D Guitar, hosted by Google Video.

Rock, baby. Rock! Hopefully I'll remember to make an MP3 out of this when I get home.

Secure Digital card failure

After the first day at Vegas, I had my brother place my 512MB SD card into his laptop to take a look at the pictures I've taken. Afterwards, when I tried to take pictures, I got an error from my camera, telling me that it's unable to use the card...

I've tried it on everything else available to me that can read SD cards, but none of them work, either. His memory card seems to be still working fine. I wonder what the actual cause of the problem is. At any rate, all of my pictures were lost, and I've placed an order for a 2GB Ultra-II card.

Dragon Quest VIII

After two days of running around to various stores (Target, Toys 'R' Us, Best Buy), trying to buy a copy of this game, I finally found a Game Stop store and got it. Though they didn't put it on the shelves, so maybe Best Buy had them, too, but I didn't ask the clerks there. The clerks at Target and Toys 'R' Us, on the other hand, had no idea what game I was talking about.

But at least the clerk at the Target store told me where the Game Stop was, as the map they had online was quite useless and had me looking in the wrong place. They had a 20% off deal for the strategy guide if you buy it with the game... I didn't really want to get a strategy guide, but decided to get it, afterall, if for nothing else but the colored-artwork alone.

Ah, the character design styles of Akira Toriyama. If you're familiar with his work, then it would be unmistakable--you'd be able to recognize his work immediately.

Which makes me wonder how Johnny wasn't able to tell when we saw the game at Anime Expo earlier this year.

"But I like the wenches!"

A rainbow... sort of

We went to lunch rather late today, and the sun was already quite low in the sky by the time we were going back to work. On the way back, I could sort of make out a mini-rainbow in the sky, where the sun's rays have refracted off the few clouds in the sky. I decided to take some pictures, just to see if they will show up, as well as see the image quality of the camera.

Technology and magic

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

-Arthur C. Clarke

Soooo wrong

Saw this posted on rec.humor.funny:

Three guys were working on a high-rise building project -- Steve, Bruce, and Bluey. Steve falls off and is killed instantly. As the ambulance takes the body away, Bruce says, "Someone should go and tell his wife."

Bluey says, "OK, I'm pretty good at that sensitive stuff, I'll do it."

Two hours later, he comes back carrying a case of Foster's.

Bruce says, "Where did you get that, Bluey?"

"Steve's wife gave it to me," Bluey replies.

"That's unbelievable! You told the lady her husband was dead and she gave you the beer?"

"Well not exactly," Bluey says. "When she answered the door, I said to her, 'You must be Steve's widow.' She said, 'No, I'm not a widow.' And I said, 'I'll bet you a case of Foster's you are.'"

Music Genome Project

I got this link from the Club3G forum. It's a pretty interesting idea. The basic premise is for you to tell the site what songs/artists you like, and it'll play songs based on your selection. In the background, the site breaks down each song and artist's style to their more fundamental elements, so that they can relate the various songs with one another and come up with new recommendations.

In other words, once you've set it up with your own specific preferences, listening to it should be like listening to a radio station created to suit your specific tastes.

Lord of the Rings parody animations

Sam knows where it's at.

These have been around for quite some time now, but I thought I'd put them somewhere easy for me to find, since I didn't save them when I first saw them. I know there are a few others out there, but I haven't had much luck finding them. Hopefully I will find them in the future.

Looks like Blogger converts animated GIFs to JPEGs. So I'll have to use another server.

"One does not simply... walk into Mortor..."

Boromir gets a bright idea...

And the pay-off:

Test: Photographing the moon

One of the things I've wanted to do was to take a photo of the moon, which I've not had much success of in the past. I tried again with my new camera, testing various settings. This was the best result of the bunch. I've, of course, cropped the picture, as the rest of the canvas in the picture is just black-nothing-ness.

Since I got a decent result, I decided to try again using my Panasonic camera, using basically the same settings. The resultant picture (also cropped) is the one on the right.

The setting that seemed to work well is manual ISO 50, spot metering, with automatic flash.

DiMAGE X50

As I expected, my camera arrived today, because the post office doesn't deliver on Veteran's Day (yesterday), while DHL dropped off the camera at the post office on Thursday. I asked Rosemary to call me if they receive a package for me at the office, so I could go and pick it up.



A quick size-comparison shows that the camera is just a tad bigger than a credit card. It's also a bit bigger than my brother's PowerShot SD300, but it's good enough for my purposes.


The design of the camera feels a bit spartan to me, but they're easy enough to figure out. I applied the screen protector I got for me PDA, and cut off the excess with an Xacto knife.


Quite obviously, this is the most compact camera I've ever owned. Forgoing optical zoom capabilities in favor of portability might come back to haunt me in the future, but for now, it seems a fair trade-off. It is, at least, also capable of capturing photos at a much higher resolution, but I'll still need my old Panasonic (12x optical zoom) if I want to take telephoto shots of subjects from far away with a reasonable resolution.

DHL @home

Quite possibly the worst idea. Ever... Or at least in shipping. Anyway. According to DHL's website:

DHL@home

DHL has partnered with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to create a new service designed for business-to-residence shippers who desire a secure, cost-effective shipping solution. Shipments are picked up by DHL and delivered directly to your customers by the local post office.

Features and Benefits

• An efficient service for shipments from businesses to U.S. residential locations, including P.O. boxes
• Standard delivery within 2 - 4 business days, Deferred delivery within 2 - 7 business days
• Shipments up to 70 lbs.
• Door-to-door visibility and tracking

So, DHL picks up the package. Ships it to the city where it's supposed to go, and then, even though they're in the same area as the intended destination, they don't deliver it. They drop it off at the nearest post office, by which time the mail courier has most likely already left the office for delivery, so it will just sit in the office, to be delivered the next day.

This is not progress. It unnecessarily prolongs the delivery time, with the only potential benefit being that USPS can leave items in your mail box, and not require a signature. But the potential benefit is only there if the package is small enough to fit your mail box. If it's not, they will still have to leave it at your door, which is what DHL would have done anyway. I mean, when was the last time the USPS left something weighing around 70 lbs. in your mail box? Or even 5 lbs.?

And even though they say "door-to-door visibility and tracking" as one of the features (which they provide with their regular service), on my package, it seems to stop right at "arrive at USPS." I may be proved wrong tomorrow, but as far as I can tell, it's not going to tell me the delivery progress of USPS from DHL's website. And there's no link to the tracking service at USPS.

Considering that my package shipped from Fresno, California, if it had been delivered via USPS from the beginning, I probably would have received the package already yesterday. Maybe, just maybe, if the package had been sent from across the country, it would have been faster via DHL... if they flew it over on one of their planes. Somehow I doubt they would have put it on a plane for standard shipping, though. So there couldn't possibly be any benefits from using this system.

The Media

So it's the day after the special election, and while I some of the preliminary results on the local news last night, they were far from final, and I was curious as to which propositions passed, and which didn't.

So I logged on to L.A. Times' website, just to look at the results. The only thing I could find were articles talking about how Schwarzenegger failed.

Okay. So the propositions he was backing did not pass. But those were not the only propositions on the ballot. What about the others? If the results for all the props were available on the site, they sure as hell didn't make them easy to find. I just want information, I don't need the media spin on what (supposedly) cause the voters to vote the way they did. Is that too much to ask? I thought the basic idea of the news is to report the facts, not the biased ideas.

I later logged on to iWon, though I didn't expect to find the results there, since this is basically local news. I highly doubt that the rest of the country cares much about the election results of California, when they've got their own results to wonder about. They did have an article on the same four propositions that Arnold was backing, I think from the Associated Press, which is more information than I expected. But alas, nothing on the rest of the propositions.

Eventually, I thought to check the website of one of my local TV stations, and found the results of all the propositions. Looks like none of them passed.

Thank you, KTLA, that was all I wanted to know. Screw you, L.A. Times!

New digital camera

After some contemplating, I have decided to get myself yet another digital camera.

For my previous digital camera, I focused mostly on the camera's optical zoom ability, which would have been great for public events, such as the concerts, graduations, etc. And while I do love the Panasonic that I've got, its resolution is on the low end these days, and even though it's not as long as the 10x zoom camera from Sony, it's still quite a bit larger than most of the other digital cameras out there, which makes carrying it around a bit of a hassle.

Since I don't typically need to utilize the full capabilities of the zoom, I've decided to obtain a new camera for the purposes of snapshots. Which means a compact camera, with decent (average) zoom ability, and decent resolution.

After some searching, I settled on the Minolta DiMAGE X50. It is now on order from Overstock. I hope it arrives soon.

PSP Gripdock

About a week ago, I saw the PSP Gripdock at Target, and thought it might help with the less than ergonomic design of the PSP, so I picked one up yesterday, and gave it a go. It costs about $40, but was placed in the automotive section, rather than the gaming section.

You flip open the top "Safety Clip," then plug the PSP in to the headphone jack and power jack.

Obviously, its main function is to give the PSP a better grip, more resembling that of a regular console controller, so that your hands don't cramp up after hours of play. It does add some other bonus features, as listed in its manual:

• Ergonomic design and cooling fan with multiple air vents for a comfortable, steady grip when gaming
• Two premium built-in speakers enhance the audio experience
• Internal backup battery pack doubles PSP runtime
• Charges PSP in 2 1/2 hours
• 12 Volt DC Charging Adaptor included
• LED Battery Charge Status Indicators
• Dual headphone ports for shared private viewing, listening or gaming
• Convenient drawstring backpack stores GripDock and PSP
• Safety Clip and recessed latch to hold PSP securely in dock

There was no "drawstring backpack" that came with the package, and I couldn't find any references to it in any of the online stores, so I guess they decided not to include those after printing the manual. The "double PSP runtime" requires fully charged batteries, as well as using headphones so that you don't use the speakers, and use without the fans.

The "battery pack" is basically 4 rechargeable AA NiMH batteries.

The DC adapter is a car charger, it doesn't come with one that works with a regular wall outlet, although you can use the normal PSP adapter that came with the system.

There power switch is located on the top of the device, along with the dual headphone ports and the power plug. In the center, you see the fan vent, while the fans themselves are located on each grip to help cool your hands, should you be the type of person who has sweaty palms while you game.

You turn on the fans by pushing the switch at the bottom. You can also see the speakers located on the grips in this pic.

As you can probably tell, with the size of the PSP, the gripdock is quite large. Here's a size comparison with the Gripdock, a PS2 dual shock controller, a N64 controller, and a Sega Dreamcast controller. It probably rivals the size of the Xbox controller.

The gripdock does make the PSP much easier to hold, so it succeeds in its primary function.

Pros

• Better grip for the PSP.
• Rechargeable NiMH batteries to extend the battery life of the PSP.
• External speakers to make the PSP more audible (louder).
• Dual headphone jacks.
• Car charger.
• Fans to keep hands cool.

Cons

• Adds a lot of bulk to the PSP, reducing portability.
• So-called "premium" speakers crackle at high volume settings.
• Must remove PSP from dock to switch game, Memory Stick Duo, or PSP battery.
• Must turn on Gripdock for sound.

Conclusion

If you don't mind the bulk, and would like to have a more "console-control-like" feel to your PSP, then the Gripdock is a pretty good solution. If you want better sound quality, however, look elsewhere. Or just use the headphones.