Have iPod touch. Cool apps tho havnt seen killer app
Enjoy some family and friends time!
Here is a short video that I made using my new Flip Video Recorder. Image quality is fine for the tubes so enjoy.
Check out the link: 4th of July 2008 Video for the video or browse to our Gallery (see top of page for link) and then choose Video and then 2008 to find it.
Pixar doesn’t care about Copyrights
What a great post that Crunchgear made regarding how Pixar violated copyright law.
Apparently, they don’t respect the current copyright laws and are, by example, telling us to not respect the laws either. Maybe we should re-write the existing laws so they work in today’s world to increase content creation rather than limit it.
The Pixar copyright violations stem from the use of a movie and it’s soundtrack being copied and replayed many times. This element of Wall-E were important at first to show loneliness and later to show romance.
Guess what? Our anniversary is…
Guess what? Our anniversary is 8 days away. 25 years – can you believe it?
PTSA Fiscal Year End
This is sort of anti climactic since I’m not just the outgoing Treasurer but the incoming Treasurer as well but today is the first day of the next fiscal year for my kids school’s PTSA.
That means for my outgoing gig, I’ve got to put together a team of folks (during the middle of summer too!) to review the books and sign off on it. Having done the audit myself the last couple of years, it’s got more bark than bite. What I mean is that it is intimidating to volunteer but the actual work is pretty simple and easy (depending on the records).
I’ve sent out an email to some folks (some who where interested and some who are just lucky enough to have me as a friend to nag them to volunteer) to ask for volunteers. Hopefully, I get the number I need to make this work.
Blanket Chest – Progress finally!
I’ve been very busy over the last 2 weeks or so on my blanket chest. It is assembled and sanded and ready for a finish.
Here is a picture on the way to getting done:
Here is the final assembled (still needs knobs on the drawers though):
I have already installed the knobs and drawer sliders. It is sanded to 220 grit and I’ve softened some of the key edges though not all because the design really wants to have crip edges (especially around the bottom molding).
My goal for finishing is to leave it natural so it will probably be poly. I plan on putting a few coats of gloss with the final be a matt finish.
UPDATE: I’ve decided to go with a clear shellac. I’ve done a few coats while sanding with 320 grit between coats. I will do at least 2 more.
Guitar Repair Maintenance
I bought a DVD talking about Electric Guitar setup and maintenance. The DVD is titled Fret MD: Electric Guitar and Bass Setup and Maintenance with Al Markasky.
Short of a class on this subject, I thought the presentation of the areas covered were excellent. He covers the main areas of setup which in his process is 5 steps. Some of the steps still look a little scary but that is probably more about changing the current physical setup when you are not an expert.
He also covered a couple of small things regarding maintenance.
The complete process of setup and maintenance would be really useful on a beat up garage sale find. Taking the steps here and maybe adding a few like part replacement (he only covers nut replacement but if he covered changing out electronics, that would be very useful) could turn a non-functional garage sale find into a great instrument.
Overall, this is a good DVD and could be great if it included electronic replacments.
Woodworking, swimming, and now…
Woodworking, swimming, and now BBQ’ing. This is what I call a good summer!
FISA, Renewal, and Obama
There have been some negotiations in Congress regarding the FISA renewal.
FISA is the law put into place after 9/11 that gave US Government agencies extraordinary powers to investigate people. To me, the law is not only not necessary but also puts our government on a direct path to a police state. No, it’s not one with this law but once you enable the discardment of individual rights, you will start asking for more invasive and offensive rules.
The renewal is bad enough since we have a Democratically controlled congress. Democrat’s seem to be unable to distance themselves from the tactics of fear that we have seen from Bush’s administration. Yes, we need tools to investigate crimes, terrorism and such but those tools existed before and FISA, for the most part, just eliminated oversight.
Not only is FISA being renewed but they are adding immunity to the Telephone Companies for participating in an illegal activity. Our representatives in political office are finding it impossible to not to take the interests of Corporations over the citizens that elect them. Even candidates that start off talking the talk about citizens and their rights make too many compromises for Corporations.
The most disappointing person to do that recently has been the Democratic presumptive nominee, Barak Obama, who has come out in support of the current FISA Renewal bill which again is bad in what it enables but also includes immunity for the Teleco’s.
When will we get a politician that can be elected, stay elected, and have influence over other politicians and the electorate that will stand up for citizens rights including privacy, fair use, and the multitude of other issues that have been sacrificed to the Corporations?
UPDATE: Ok, here is at least one politician out there doing the right thing. Check out NM Sen. Tom Udall via Daily Kos and here is some of what he said:
The FISA bill we considered today would compromise the constitutionally guaranteed rights that make America a beacon of hope around the world.
UPDATE 2: I just saw that Barak Obama has issued a statement (perhaps to clarify) that he supports the FISA renewal bill but will work to remove the section granting immunity to the Telephone Companies. This is partially good news but again, he’s taking fear pressure and accepting that we need the FISA rules at all.
Summer has begun!
I know that the official start of summer is not till about 5pm today (6/20) but the weather is finally here. Yesterday was low-mid 70′s and today is upper 70′s/low 80′s.
Xander, Mitchell and I (plus our neighbor Egor) have gone on several bike rides and the boys are all playing in the sprinklers right now.
Browser News: Download Firefox 3 Today
At 10am (PST), Mozilla (makers of Firefox) is asking it’s existing and new users to help it with a challenge.
Their challenge is to establish a new world record for the most downloads of something for the internet in a single day. Since it’s a new record, anything measurable establishes the record but they want to set a really high bar by having as many people world wide as possible download Firefox 3.
Again, this begins today (6/17/08) at 10am (PST) so go to Firefox 3 download location and get Firefox 3 today.
(Yes, I know this sounds like a commercial but it’s not. I really like Firefox and think Firefox 3 is an enormous improvement over Firefox 2.)
Update: I had the wrong link to the download site. Go to the real Firefox 3 download location if you want to download it. You may want to wait awhile though because the website is really really really slow.
MacJournal vs Ecto
Well, I’ve used MacJournal for about 100 posts and it’s a nice application. It has the benefit of allowing you to have a “Blog” and a private journal.
In my view, the weaknesses include the lack of synching a designated number of posts from a blog site which could include download all posts. I like my blogging software to have a complete record of what I posted.
Another weakness is the lack of simple use of HTML tags. Photo’s, audio, video use it’s own mechanism which requires these to be uploaded to your blog but if you just want to link to something, you can’t do it – at least I couldn’t find it.
A strength of MacJournal in addition to the private journals, is the ability to freeform tag. I like this though it could be improved by showing a list of the tags set up in the blog itself.
Ecto has once again become my default blogging software. It has the ability to do or at least work around the weaknesses of MacJournal.
Garage Sale Today
Well, today’s a day that we always struggle with.
Our purpose behind a garage sale is to get rid of the stuff to someone who may use it. Trashing it (taking to dump) is not very green and taking it to a thrift store doesn’t always work out (what do they take and what do they not take).
Then of course there is the stuff itself. A few items are things that we don’t want to get rid of but must due to space or other reasons. A few items are things of value that we do want to get rid of but because our goal is to “get rid of the stuff”, we price it very aggressively. The rest of the items are things we wonder why we had them in the first place and doubt anyone else wants them.
The people coming to a garage sale though surprise you. They value things you don’t and don’t value things you do. They want to haggle on things that are heavily under priced/discounted yet they won’t haggle on something that might be overpriced. Sometimes there are a lot of people and sometimes there aren’t so many. The customers are a confusing lot.
Of course, all the other garage sales (except for one which was in the down poring rain so no one walked into our garage to buy anything) we practically sold out of the stuff. Needless to say, me being a bit of a worrier, I still stress about people taking our stuff.
Wish us luck!
UPDATE: No rain so that was good. We sold much of our stuff though this time we had a lot of little things so not everything went. Overall, it was a good sale.