Ups and downs of the week.

  Vacation time – Off to Florida and some warm weather.

  Backaches – Bad muscle pull this week. Just in time for vacation.

 Timing – Rain tomorrow until after we leave. Then snow.

  Airlines – Fares going up, service going down.

 New Camera – I think I’m going to like it.

I was buying myself a new camera from Amazon and tossed in a Havoc Heli for the fun of it. It was only $24 at Amazon, although Target sometimes has them as low as $15.  Pretty cool little gadget. The cats go bonkers over it.

 

As for the camera? It make take a bit to get used to. It does do very wide angles and the steady shot feature is nice. I need to pick up an SD card because the internal memory will only hold about 6 pics. Here are a couple of quick shots of my cat.

Note the noise. This is with the camera on the full auto setting and using ambient light in my living room. I’m pretty happy with the white balance (usually incandescent lighting leaves a yellowish tone), but the noise is pretty extensive in low light. I haven’t had a chance to use it outside yet. I was about to go big and get a full DLSR, but it was running close to $900. This Lumix is a “bridge” DSLR (meaning halfway between a point and shoot and a full DLSR). For under $300, I figured I’d relearn to shoot (used to own high end film SLRs) in digital mode and when I get the hang of it, move to a DLSR. By then the 10+ megapixel cameras should be coming down in price.

I bought Sarah a Nokia 770 this week. For around $140 on Amazon, it was a no-brainer. It works like a PDA, but it’s Linux based and has only basic functions such as web, email, contacts, and calendar. It connects to the web either via WiFi or a Bluetooth phone connection. Unlike other PDAs I’ve used, connecting to wireless or a phone with the 770 is quite simple and the interface enables you to choose between multiple connection options. The screen is bright and roomy and you can view webpages full screen or zoomed in. It’s a little bigger than your average PDA, but it’s quite light and will fit in a purse or inside jacket pocket. It charges up very fast, too. Quite the gadget. 😎

EDIT: BTW, I first noticed these cool little toys after seeing a deal on Reseller Rating’s Homepage Deals. Great site to check every now and then.

As if climbing into a semi-reliable spacecraft sitting atop a million pounds of explosive force and hurtling into space weren’t ballsy enough, this guy agreed to be attached to a huge robotic arm by his feet and be foisted out on his own toward the shuttle tail to repair a thermal blanket. And if he screws it up, well, you don’t get home. Talk about guts.

Put out a little birdseed and you never know what you’ll attract.

Not much going on lately. The semester is winding down, the Red Sox are winning again, Manny came out of his slump in a big way last night, and there’s still a few weeks left to enjoy the mostly deserted backroads here. This is one of my favorites. It’s flat, smooth as glass, and completely devoid of sight line obstructions.  😎

Nice sunset captured by the Mt. Washington summit cam.

I found another webcam that’s oddly captivating. This is the entrance to the Nürburgring race track. On non-race weekends, anyone is allowed to take his or her vehicle on the track to test its limits (or their own). The highlight of the course is the 14 mile long Nordschleife section. Several deaths occur here each year when drivers overstep the limits of their ability or their vehicle. Such a thing would never survive in our lawsuit happy land. What makes this webcam fascinating is the endless parade of high end super cars rolling though the image. Equally fascinating are the cars that make you go, “Hunh??” like the station wagon in the lower left of this image. Can’t image he stood much of a chance against the two Porsches behind him.  🙂

As much as I like the XV6700 as a PDA, it’s not a very good cell phone. It’s hard to hear when you’re outside and it has a nasty habit of dropping incoming calls. It works better in an EVDO area (Verizon’s high speed data network), but it still is not as polished a phone as it is a PDA. The proverbial straw was the fact it refused to play nicely with the BMW Bluetooth setup in my new X5. It was still hard to hear other folks and they all said they couldn’t hear me very well. So I took Verizon up on the offer for an upgrade from my old V710 to a new Motorola Razr (V3m).

The Razr is very light, has large, easy to push keys, and most importantly for my aging eyes, it’s easy to read. No problems dialing now. It’s on the list of supported BMW Bluetooth phones, so it paired right up with the system in my car and works perfectly. Now I can hear folks and they can hear me loud and clear. It has a mini-SD card (TransFlash) tucked away behind the battery, so I can store images from the camera on it and retrieve them later. Some folks don’t like the location of the mini-SD, but I think it’s a big improvement over the SD card in my VX6700, which is spring loaded into the top of the phone and will eject forcefully if push at the wrong time. There’s no chance of accidentally losing the mini-SD in the Razr. And surprisingly enough for a cell phone, it even takes pretty decent pictures. 😎

I’ve long been a fan of Formula One. It’s the pinnacle of motor racing with awesome technology, incredible driving talent, and some pretty involved strategy. This promises to be a really interesting year with some veterans changing teams and several extremely talent newcomers. Add in the best team of announcers in any sport (SpeedTV crew), and you have a great way to spend a few hours on Sunday mornings.  😎

I set up our webcam, which is usually used to check the cat food bowls when we travel, to point outside. The camera pans through almost 180 degrees, so today I panned over to see if I could catch a cat looking outside. Sure enough, there’s my calico watching a raccoon snarfing up bird seed. And if you look just above the cat’s ears, you’ll see a deer coming out of the woods. A few minutes later the raccoon came nose to nose with a possum. Busy day down on the farm.

Later I was bored and started fooling around with some snow pics and MS Paint. Amazing what you can do with no talent whatsoever. 🙂

No, not the Patriots. I’m talking about a simple marketing ploy that some overanxious public servant mistook for a threat.

Yessiree, Bob. That’s sinister enough to scare the bejeezus outta me. The Urlacher of Lite Brites, it is. 🙄