production

It's been a while since I've updated here.  Not much to say but I've been doing lots of drives when I'm not busy at work.  Here are a few videos I've made using a GoPro Hero camera I borrowed from a friend.








I've been playing around quite a bit with video editing as well and come to the realization that I need better software/hardware. Windows Movie Maker running on XP just kind of barely does the job, so I think I need something newer. Thinking about getting a MacBook or iMac or something like that too.

flow

Wow it's been a while since my last update.  I haven't been terribly busy with work but I have been keeping busy with other stuff.  I did get one business trip to DC where I managed to make one outing to Ben's Chili Bowl, one of my favorite spots in DC to get a couple of chili half-smokes.  Oh so good, oh so bad.

Notwithstanding the indulgent eating that is de rigeur for the holidays, I've been trying to exercise more, ride my bike, take more walks and do more time on the elliptical.  It's helped me lose maybe 8-10 lbs.  I'm going to try and keep it up with a target of losing about 15 more.

Still getting a lot of use out of my new iPhone 5.  The camera on the iPhone is decent but not awesome.  I get a lot of lens flare or reflections but maybe that's just poor technique on my part.  Anyways I do find myself using it out of convenience a lot more than the Nikon DSLR now.  I've been snapping away lots of pics and even started doing little videos.  Nothing worthy of the cinema or anything but it's kind of neat being able to hold the camera in places you couldn't normally squeeze your head, like under the car.  I also finally made some use of the Kensington phone/iPod suction cup mount I bought a long while ago, and mounted it in the windshield. Holy crap maybe they don't make the one I have anymore but why is it $149 to buy it on Amazon??  Trust me I did not pay that much.     Kensington Dash Car Mount for iPhone and iPod

Since things have gotten pretty quiet at work, I decided to take an extended time off from the office... I basically told them, I'm taking December off, I will see you in January.  And then added a week in January to top it off.  I have 37 days off starting tomorrow, which sounds pretty epic.  Helps me burn off a big surplus of vacation days I had banked.

So what am I going to do with all that time?  Hopefully a lot.  I need to make a list so I can remember to do everything and set some goals, but generally... a bunch of car stuff.  Go driving.  Go for bike rides.  Go for hikes/walks/runs.  Take more photos.  Listen to music.  Watch movies.  Play games.  Go shoot my guns some more. Exercise and lose weight.  Eat some good food (but not too much).  Cook dinner for wifey.  Bake some pastries or cookies.  I suppose somewhere in there I will have to do some holiday shopping (gag).  Wow I have a lot to do!  But for now, I'm going to bed.  Tomorrow is the first day of my vacation.

UPDATE:  I've started a  new blog to specifically cover this 37-day vacation.  Check it out at 37DaysOff.

lifecycle

The old and busted.

Today I bid farewell to my LG Chocolate II phone.  So long, old friend.  You served me well. Except for the miserably short battery life and lousy signal strength at the end. I'll let it slide, and just remember the good times.

Welcome into the household, the new iPhone 5. I got the black one.  It's oh so slim and sleek, and lightweight.  Very impressive.  The screen is quite sharp and a joy to stare at.  I've spent a good portion of the evening loading it up with apps, music, and pairing it to my cars.  Even paired to the stereo via Bluetooth and played a few songs.  I haven't had a chance to try out the new ear pod headphones yet though.

The new hotness.

I guess you could say I've finally joined the 21st century by giving up the basic phone and picking up a smartphone.  Though technically I've been carrying a smartphone for a while, the Blackberry I have for work.  I never used it for much more than checking my emails and the occasional photo though, it just wasn't all that appealing to me as a smartphone option.  I think in this day and age a smartphone needs a touchscreen, without it you are just not able to interact intuitively with your data and apps.  Just my opinion.  It works for other people I suppose.

It was a natural pick for me to go with the iPhone since I already have an iPod Classic and an iPad.  Since I've already poured dollars into the Apple iTunes and App Store, it didn't make sense to go Android.

Of course that didn't stop V from recently buying the latest hot Android phone as an upgrade to her old HTC smartphone.  She got the Samsung Galaxy S III in white.  We spent a few minutes on Skype video chatting each other from opposite sides of the house.  What a pair of dorks we are.

transmissive

I've been driving the BRZ for a week now, and here are my first week impressions:

Driving with a 4K RPM limit (during the break-in period) is a real bummer... I'd forgotten how difficult it is to baby a car in its early age.  This car revs really quickly and trying to stick between 2K and 4K all the time is not easy.  Thankfully the car has a programmable rev limit light that I set to 3800 and it reminds me when I hit that to upshift.  It really does feel like driving with one hand tied behind my back, knowing that the car should be revving up to 7400 RPM for the full experience.  Can't wait until the first 1000 miles are through with.  I can't really comment on performance and handling yet, as I haven't really pushed the car's limits very much... it's pretty much been just commuting to and from work.

Voodoo knob tested on BRZ.

Still getting used to the clutch and transmission.  Getting better with the clutch now but the 1-2 shift is still a little unsmooth.  All the other shifts seem fine.  Drove a few days sitting in stop-and-go traffic which is fantastic practice I guess.  I took the shift knob off to try some others I had available to put on there, and it is remarkable how heavy the stock shift knob is.  The Voodoo knob from my Spyder that I tried on there is pretty hefty but I think the stock one is pretty comparable.  The Voodoo doesn't fit perfectly so I am not going to use that one, but I might order another Voodoo knob specifically for the BRZ.  

The GPS/navigation is a bit of a letdown compared to the one in my Lexus.  The unit loses GPS signal often and it takes several minutes before it locks on again.  The voice sounds a lot more robotic than the Lexus lady's voice.  And the interface just isn't as smooth as the Lexus's.  You'd think after 6 years any ol' navi would be as good as a 2006-era Lexus navi.  But I guess it's not so.  Same with the phone/bluetooth function.  Maybe it's the old phone I'm using, but there is a 4-5 second pause when I get incoming calls and press answer, before the radio stops playing and I can start talking.  It's just a little unpolished and I expected a bit more from the 2012 technology.

Don't get me wrong, I think this car is pretty fantastic and it's definitely a step up from the basic feature set of the MR2 Spyder which it more or less is a replacement for.  Better seats, better stereo, better ride quality than what I remember the MR2 had before I modified the suspension.  Better information display and controls, better interior materials.  And more storage which is not hard to accomplish when you're comparing to the MR2.  One bummer I've found though is, my rifle case won't fit in the trunk without folding the seats down.  That could have some security implications, as I might not want to take this car out if I'm stopping anywhere else before or after the range.  Guess I should have just bought a big truck, eh?  No.

Well today's my birthday and I have to say I've got all the toys a boy could want.  New car, new rifle, and my  new iPhone is on the way.  Oh and my lovely wifey is making me stone crab for dinner.  Yummmy... OK gotta go!

targeted

Back in July I sent off an email to Automobile magazine, one of the car mags I subscribe to and read fairly diligently. I kind of forgot about it until today... when I was reading the latest (Nov 2012) issue and started to read a familiar bit of writing... I suddenly realized it was my writing! 

I was pretty pleased to see they had published nearly the whole thing, with very little editing... it came out to nearly half a page full of text! I am pretty stoked about that. Even more so because it seems to have inspired or at least coincided with the column that Ezra Dyer wrote for this issue -- also about the sleazy tactics that dealers employ on unsuspecting buyers.

Here is the full text of the email I sent them:

As a sports car enthusiast and fan of small, lightweight vehicles, it's been great to see widespread positive coverage of the Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ in your magazine and others as well. As you mentioned in your New Cars 2013 feature, they are meant to be a "low-cost, lightweight sports car". But as I began my pursuit of the Subaru BRZ by calling and contacting various Subaru dealerships in Northern California where I live, it seemed that the low-cost aspect of the car is being undermined by the incredibly greedy and sometimes ridiculously sleazy actions of the individual dealerships. Some of them are asking for as much as $5000 over MSRP, as "market value adjustments". And to add insult to injury, some of them add questionable options and accessories and price them at a point where you would have to be a moron or incredibly wealthy to be willing to pay their exorbitant markups. I attach a photo found on the internet, documenting one such dealership's attempt to gouge its customers: $7685 in addons and markups to drive what was originally a $27,000 car into the $35,000 range. Maybe that kind of thing is normal in the Porsche dealerships, but we're talking about a 2.0 liter Subaru here.

Now I realize that to some degree it's all about supply and demand, and dealerships are free to ask for whatever they think their customers are willing to pay. I witnessed similar markups and gouging when I bought my 2000 MR2 Spyder back when those first came out. Don't think that the Scion dealerships, with their "Pure Price" so-called no-haggling policy are any different. Several of the Scion dealerships I visited are adding ludicrously priced add-ons to pad their profits, like $700 window tint or woefully ugly $2000 chrome wheels. But surely the bigwigs at Toyota/Scion and Subaru have to realize that they are letting their dealers undermine their own marketing efforts here. You can't in good conscience be touting your new vehicle as the return of affordable, fun-to-drive sports cars, and then sit by silently as your dealerships extort their customers like this. I know from various media coverage that Subaru/Toyota plan to produce as many of these little cars as they can sell, and most likely in a year or two from now there will be tons of these cars sitting on the dealership lots, available for much less than MSRP. Thankfully there are still some dealerships I have talked to who are doing the right thing, right now, and offering the limited allocations they expect to receive at MSRP or less. In fact after searching and contacting numerous dealers throughout California, I finally decided to place my order and bring my business to a Subaru dealer in Colorado, who will let me order the car with only the options and accessories I want, and in fact are giving me a price so low that it is still more cost-effective to order from them and have the car trucked back to CA for me than to purchase it in CA.

To seasoned car guys/gals and purveyors of limited-edition or limited-production vehicles perhaps none of this is any news and I have no doubt that car dealerships have, and will continue to engage in this kind of behavior whenever a new, or rare vehicle hits the showroom floors. But I hope that letters like mine, and perhaps the occasional coverage or discussion by magazines like yours, will bring some exposure to what is almost universally agreed upon is part of the seamy underside of the automotive world -- the actual car buying experience. Perhaps you've done it in the past, but you could and should do a piece on buying a car and all the various tactics, shenanigans and practices that happen at a typical dealership -- in sales, finance, and even in the service departments. I still look forward to purchasing and driving my BRZ soon, but the whole overall purchasing experience will probably be tainted to some degree by the ordeal I and many of my fellow BRZ enthusiasts had to go through to get there. Subaru of America, are you listening?

the Editor's response at the end of my letter: "You might want to check out this month's Dyer Consequences on page 28. -- Ed."

I love Ezra Dyer's writing as well and feel pretty honored, that perhaps I inspired him to write this month's column. Or at least we are on the same brain wavelength...

Ironic that this just got published now, just as my new car is about to finally arrive.  Perhaps all will be forgiven once I get behind the wheel...

in other news, I have a few other new toys, on the way and just arrived!  One of the big ones is that I will be getting an iPhone 5, once Apple's backlog is caught up.  I've been carrying a Blackberry for work the past few years but this will be my first personal smartphone.  Finally gonna give up the old-school LG Chocolate II and move into the 21st century.

I also picked up another new firearm thanks to my gun-buddies showing me their toys -- fell in love with the SIG522 rifle and after shooting one I had to get one myself.  This is my first rifle (though I've spent a fair amount of time shooting friends' rifles).  The great thing is it has very low recoil and it fires the very economical .22LR ammo and will be lots of fun at the range.  

photometric

Congratulations to my brother-in-law JT and his beautiful bride Kim who had their wedding yesterday.  I of course brought my Nikon D5000 along for photos.  Yesterday was an awesome day of fun and love, topped off by a fantastic sunset dinner cruise through the San Francisco Bay, under the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge.  It was a small, intimate wedding day so it was truly special and full of emotional moments.

I think the D5000 takes great pics but for these kinds of low-lit and back-lit situations I am starting to wonder if I should upgrade and get a DSLR with a full-frame sensor.  At night there were definitely some times where the autofocus was not working too well in the dark.  I could probably also benefit from an external flash.  Oh what an expensive hobby.  But the technology advances so quickly now.  Nikon has the new D3200 DSLR now and it has a whopping 24 MP resolution (compared to the 12 MP of my D5000), and it costs less than what I paid for my D5000 new.  Of course it's not a full-frame sensor either, but it is tempting to make a small upgrade and still be able to use my AF-S lenses.

hyperdrive

The home office setup - it's where all (ok, most of) the magic happens. Excuse the clutter, I'm multitasking!

improvisation

Although they say "necessity breeds invention", I guess this doesn't really count as a true invention, because the idea is not original or novel. But I'm so dang pleased with myself that I just have to tell this story.

I've been playing around with my iPad for a while now and naturally I've tried some drawing apps to see how well they work with the iPad. To make a long story short, they're pretty neat programs and it's fun to do a little painting/drawing with your finger, but ultimately the finger painting technique lacks the kind of precision you want when doing anything other than, well, finger doodles and very rough sketches. Specifically, we've started trying to plan and sketch out what our back yard is going to look like when we are meeting with landscaping contractors and I've used the iPad a few times to show some thoughts and basic ideas. One of the cool things the app I use (a free app called DrawCast) can do, is use an existing image as a background and then you can draw on top of it (I'm sure lots of the popular drawing apps can do this). So I've taken a clean drawing of our backyard lot and imported it into the iPad, so I can use it as a background and draw sketches of our landscaping ideas over it. Sure beats using a bunch of paper to draw and redraw as we try to form our often-changing ideas about what the backyard should look like. The accuracy of my finger drawing was pretty rough though and in one of these collaborative sessions V. asked why didn't I get a stylus for the iPad? That got me thinking about it and I started shopping online for one. Turns out these things are like $15-$40!! What the frak?! They're just pieces of capacitive foam or rubber at the tip of a pen-like tube right? Well I kept reading about how great they are and how much people like them so I went ahead and ordered one through Amazon -- for $15.

Well I was hoping to get it today (Friday) just before the long weekend, so I could play with it all weekend long but to my dismay the Amazon Prime has let me down -- it's Friday evening and no stylus. So in my despair I went back online and thought, man it's such a simple design, there has to be a way to do it yourself and make one on the cheap right? Google to the rescue! I found a few links and apparently there are quite a few different ways to make one. But the one I ended up following, was incredibly simple and requires only 3 parts. A pen or stick (easy), some tape (easy), and a piece of capacitance-conducting material (erm... wha?). Turns out it was easier than I thought when the DIY instructions mentioned using the shiny anti-static packaging that internal hard drives come packed in. Every true geek (and maybe even the average experienced computer user) has some of this stuff laying around. I was at work and just looked around in my office and found some in like 2 minutes. 5 minutes later, with some scissors to cut a small quarter-inch wide by 3 inch long strip of the material, I was in business. Wrapped the shiny material around the tip, leaving a little bit of play between the material and the tip of the pen (I used a click-type pen so that the ball point was retracted for this). The idea is to let it compress or squish (yeah, highly technical term) a little when it is pressed down on the screen, so that it kind of emulates the touch profile of your finger when you touch or tap the screen. Taped it down, then wrapped the rest in a spiral up the pen, and taped down that end to the pen. Done. How does it work? Pretty dman well if I say so myself (and yeah, I think I just did). I tested it against the iPad screen to unlock, and it worked fine. Flipped through some pages to find my drawing app, perfect. Launched the DrawCast app and started writing, drawing, whatever. Worked like a charm. So much better than using a finger.  And no greasy screen smudges from my fat oily hands!  I'm so dang pleased with myself. I had to run around the office and tell some of my coworkers.

What makes it work? The touch screen is a capacitive screen, so it reads an electrical impulse from your finger. Using a plain old stick or pen won't work because they won't conduct electricity from your finger to the screen. The capacitive material at the tip of the stylus (yes, by my magical craftsmanship it has been transformed from a pen to a stylus, doesn't that sound fancy and worthy of $15?) does the trick, and by spiraling it up the length of the pen, it contacts your fingers where you hold the pen. I suppose the same thing could be accomplished if you have a pen with a metallic conductive tube, but I improvised with what I had in front of me, with all of 5 minutes effort. Like I said, magical craftsmanship.

So now I'm going to play with this over the weekend and see how it works for me. Who knows, maybe when my "real" stylus finally arrives in the mail next week, I might just return it and keep using my DIY stylus instead.

importation

We're about to move to our new place up in the hills but we have a few more days to go.  My vacation has begun though so that means ... Time to update the blog!

I know at least some of you have been wondering whether an iPad would make sense for their needs instead of a laptop.  So I plan to have several posts about using the iPad for different tasks that I've been doing, and how it has been better or worse than what I was using before, which was a laptop docked to a monitor, keyboard and mouse (essentially your typical PC). For this update I will focus on one of the functions for the iPad that I mentioned before:  managing and working with photos.  I have to say, that so far the abilities of the iPad are a little disappointing for me for this function.

Before I get into the details let me talk about what my typical photo workflow is in the context of the previous setup, using my laptop.  I take photos with my Nikon D5000, and I want to offload them from my memory card.  I use a USB card reader, and plugging in the SD card kicks open Google's Picasa image management software (which is free).  From there I can copy the images over to the laptop's drive, and back them up to      an external drive.  Then Picasa lets me review my images, delete the ones I don't like, and tag (star) the ones I like.  I can also adjust basic things like brightness, contrast, white balance, as well as rotate and crop the photos all within Picasa.  

Typically that's all I need to do with my photos, but if I need to, I'll open the photo up in PhotoShop if I want to do anything more advanced like touching up the photo, removing items from the picture, stuff like that.  If I want to use multiple photos together (for instance in my San Francisco series) to build a panorama I use Autostitch, another free app.  Save the file, and then it's back to Picasa.

From Picasa I can organize the photos into folders, and upload them to Picasa online so that I can share the photos with everyone.  I also have accounts with Photobucket and Flickr, but for those I just upload through the web browser.  And then I may publish the photos or links to them on this Blog or on Facebook.  That's about it, 99% of the time.  I very rarely print my photos but if I do I will pick them out using the Picasa viewer and export them to send to the printer.   

Ok, so let's move over to the iPad workflow.  I pop the SD card out of the camera just like before, and use the Apple Camera Connection Kit for the iPad.  Plugging it in automatically launches the iPad's Photos app, and it lets you select which photos to copy over from the card.  Like Picasa the app tells you if your images are duplicates of what's already on the iPad.  You can select everything with one button or tap individually on each photo to select it, and then start the copy process.  However in Photos you can't import the photos into a folder or name the folder.  They just all go into the Photos area.

Once they're imported you view them in Photos as well.  But you only have a few limited ways to sort or view them.  You can't actually move them into another folder or album on the iPad.  There are three views.  

1.  Photos view shows you everything you've got stored on the iPad, unsorted or grouped.  If you have 500+ photos loaded on your iPad, that's a lot of scrolling around through the thumbnails to find the photo you want.  
2.  The Albums view is misleading for me, because you can't actually organize your photos in this view or create any new Albums on the iPad.  It shows you any albums that you've created on your PC or Mac and then copied over to your iPad using the synch feature in iTunes.  In this view all your photos that you've imported through the Camera Connection Kit are    all lumped into an "all imported" album, and there's a separate album called "last imported" for the most recent set you imported.  Then there's a separate album called "saved photos" which contains all other non-imported photos, such as ones you save from the web while browsing, or images that are saved from other apps, whether they are drawings from a 3rd party doodle app or edited photos from a 3rd party editing app.
3.  The last view is Events which basically as far as I can tell, groups the photos you've imported based on what date you imported them.  Even photos taken on the same date, if imported to the iPad on different days, will go into separate Events in this view.

What else can you do in the Photos app?  Not a whole lot.  You can view and delete a photo, and you can email it, or copy it to the iPad clipboard.  You can upload a photo to your MobileMe gallery if you have an account.  No renaming files, no sorting into albums and no tagging.  And to back up the photos to another drive, you have to connect the iPad to your PC or Mac and do a backup through iTunes.  You can't connect the iPad to an external drive to back up the photos directly.  
    
Did you catch all of that?  To me it doesn't make much sense. The organizational function of the Photos app is very weak and I find it frustrating to work with.  It seems like the answer is to sort and organize on your PC or Mac and then synch over to the iPad but that kind of defeats the purpose of having the Camera Connection kit.   I guess if a good 3rd party app was out there that could take the place of the Photos app and add better functionality, that could solve this.  Or I hope that Apple improves the app with future updates.  

Well, let's take a look at the rest of the tasks I wanted to do.  I've been using Adobe's PS Express and Zagg Photo Pad for my photo editing needs. Both are very good for free apps.  The touch interface is kind of neat for adjustment sliders and for cropping photos, but sometimes lacks the precision of a mouse.  I also bought the IOS version of Autostitch ($2.99) for making panoramas.  These are all very cool but I do feel they fall a bit short of their PC counterparts.
  
I can't believe there isn't Picasa for iPad yet but I got the 3rd party app Web Albums which is ok for uploading pics.  There's also a Photobucket app which is pretty good for both viewing and uploading on the Photobucket site.    The closed nature of the iPad's file system prevents you from simply uploading a file through the web browser to sites like Picasa, Photobucket or Flickr.  You need to either have an app that supports uploading to the site or use tricks like emailing in a file if the site has that option.  Once you've got the images up there, linking to them in Blogger or Facebook is a little trickier on the iPad than on PC due to the wonky copy and paste functions, but it can be done. 

So most of the same abilities are there on the iPad, but there is that one glaring issue for me.  What I really want is a way to manage the photo albums on the iPad without going back to the PC.  Maybe this limitation is there by Apple's design, because the storage on the iPad is very finite and they may be trying to make the case for more cloud-based storage and sharing.  That's where the apps like Web Albums and Photobucket come in.  But coming from the PC world I can't help but think that so far, in this particular arena, the iPad falls short of the PC's power.          

formation

From 2010-10-09 Fleet Week Airshow

October is my favorite month of the year, for several reasons.  It has the perfect fall weather that I like, not too hot and not to cold.  It also happens that my birthday is in October.  This year it was a particularly unique date: 10/10/10.  I don't know if it has any astrological significance, but see my previous posting about the power of the number 10.

Anyways V. took me out to the city and we had a wonderful day of seeing the sights... We parked at Fishermen's Wharf and had lunch at Hooters.  Afterwards we went to the pier and watched the Fleet Week airshow including a performance by the Blue Angels.  That's the other reason I like October, it's always when Fleet Week comes to San Francisco.  I had my camera with me and got some nice shots -- click on the photo above to see the rest of the photos.  And then for dinner we went to one of my favorite dining destinations in SF -- Espetus, the Brazilian churrascuria.  If you love eating meat like I do, you are doing yourself a disservice if you have never had dinner at a churrascuria!  We ate so much we had to roll each other out the front door.

If you know my wife V., you know she always tries to get me the latest in fancy technological gadgets for my birthdays and Christmas.  Well I wasn't expecting anything grand this year because we are trying to save up for the new house that we'll be moving into next month.  So imagine my dismay and outrage when I unwrapped her latest example of utter defiance.  An Apple iPad 3G.


I have to admit I wasn't that impressed by the iPad when it was introduced by Apple.  What is it, really, beyond a jumbo iPod Touch?  And why would I want it when for the same cost I could have a full-fledged laptop?

Several people I know got one, and they all tend to say the same thing.  "You have to try it, and then you'll get it."  And now I have, and I think I get it.  There's a few things remarkable about using it.  It's about the touchscreen interface, and how intuitive it is to use and navigate through the Web, flip through photos, and other objects.  Humans respond favorably to the sensation of touch, and when tightly coupled with a strong visual presentation, this is a significant break from how we traditionally have used computers and technology.  It's not just moving a mouse with your hand, and seeing a cursor move on the screen.  It's reaching out and touching an icon that you see in front of you, and seeing it expand or react to your touch, instantly.  It's also about how small and thin it is, small enough to hold in one hand and walk around with it, or sit on your couch and lounge around while swiping your way through the news or playing a game.  And it turns on instantly and is ready for you to leap onto the internet or into an app, with little or no start-up time.  I don't know if it's as "magical" as Steve Jobs would have you believe, but it is, like the iPhone before it, a game-changer in the technology world.

Now that I have one, and I'm told that the return policy is, well, not an option, the next question is, what to do with it?  One thing I suppose is to flaunt my technological superiority and hipness among my peers by dangling the lightweight tablet around my neck as a medallion, like the supa-fly funky fresh young man on the left.  Couple that with some kind of huge clock app (I'm SURE there's an app for that), and I'm Flavor Flav for the 21st century!  Yeah, boyeeee!

Here are some of the options I can think of, and will be exploring in the coming days:

Web and Reading.  Obviously a major function of the iPad is for surfing the web and reading articles, books, and email.  I haven't bought any books from iBooks yet but I probably will dabble in that, and maybe sign up for some online magazines.  So far reading the web and social networking has been great, especially with this app Flipbook that helps make checking up on your friends' activities and goings-on much more interactive and visually slick.  In the mornings I can roll out of bed, turn it on and immediately check traffic, weather, or the news without having to turn on a PC, and wait for the device to start up, load the operating system, etc.

Work.  I've already got my work email flowing in on the iPad, which lets me switch between multiple accounts on Outlook, Yahoo! and Gmail pretty easily.  The built-in viewers seem to open most PDFs, Word docs, and other typical business documents with no problem.  If I want to edit docs I'll have to splurge on some real business productivity apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

Play.  Obviously there are plenty of games available for the iPhone and iPad.  There are plenty that are free to try out and they range from the simple like air hockey to more complex like Scrabble, and even to the highly complex like the turn-based strategy classic Civilization.  There are some racing games for the iPad that I will probably check out.  I just bought my first game which is a Real Time Strategy game called Land Sea Air Warfare.  I always thought a touch-screen tablet like the iPad would be perfect for playing a RTS and now I'll get to test that theory as I learn a new addictive game.  Oh, how many hours have I wasted playing RTS games?  A lot.

Photos.  Along with the iPad my family also got me the camera connect kit, which makes importing photos into the iPad a cinch.  So I am looking at the various apps available that will help me view, organize, edit, and share my photos more easily.  The view and edit parts are covered with a few free apps including a decent one from Adobe Photoshop, but I need to look for better ways to organize and then share my pictures online.  I've got the Photobucket app, but am considering buying another app that supports uploading to Picasa.  I'm a little suprised the built-in Photos viewer has no ability to really organize your photos on the iPad -- you basically need a Mac and iPhoto to do anything with them.  I guess it's Apple's not so subtle way of saying, "hey, you like the iPad?  Then you should buy a Mac to go with it."

Writing.  The touch keyboard is fairly easy to use especially in the landscape mode, but I might want to consider getting the wireless keyboard if I plan to do a lot of typing.  I am going to try doing more of my blog posting from the iPad to see how that goes.  A portion of this post was written on the iPad, but when it came time to add in photos and do some more writing I went back to my PC and keyboard.  For short posts it should be a lot more convenient.

Music.  Many have said or joked that the iPad is just a iPod touch enlarged.  So obviously it plays music.  The iPod functionality is nothing special, it just plays music like an iPod or iTunes.  It actually feels like something in between, it doesn't have all the same control features of iTunes like DJ mode or ability to edit ID3 tags, song titles etc.  But I'd rather just use my iPod Classic for playing music than have to plug in the iPad to speakers or use headphones with it.  I guess having iTunes and being able to shop for music is better, but maybe where it comes in handy is being able to run music apps like Pandora or Shazam.  But this functionality comes secondary to all the other functions in my mind.

That's it for this update.  Drop me a comment if you have ideas of other ways I could use my iPad that I haven't thought of yet.  After I have had a chance to use it some more I will give further impressions.

decade(nce)

Happy New Year and welcome to the new decade! Wow, I can’t believe it’s 2010. It’s one of those futuristic numbers that I thought when I was younger, it would be so far off. So I have managed to cheat death and apocalypse for another 10 years.

It’s pretty customary to take a look at the end of a year, at the past year and try to remember the major events. I suppose it helps you to know where you’ve been, before you plan where you want to go next. So bear with me as I recap the highlights of 2009, even though I am a little late.

I think the biggest personal development for me in 2009 was taking one of my interests and moving it up to the next level – if you have been following along on this blog you probably already know what I am speaking of – Photography. It had always been an interest of mine ever since childhood, but this spring I really went into advanced mode by buying a Nikon digital SLR camera and a couple of lenses. I am fortunate to have a supportive wife who always encourages me to go out and get the best equipment, not just the best deal. And as I ended up traveling quite a bit in 2009, I got plenty of opportunities to get out there and just shoot, learning as I went. Some of the shots even turned out decent, if I may say so myself. Of course due to the nature of my work most of my free time to shoot was at night, which made it even more challenging. But I have much to learn still. I have found I favor static shots like landscapes and architecture, and shooting portraits and action definitely are not my strong points.

Professionally, it was almost certainly the busiest year of my career. Almost immediately following the trial I had in September 2008, I jumped onboard another pair of trial-bound cases and worked virtually non-stop. We had two trials in Washington DC in the fall, which meant lots of travel and ultimately I spent over a month in the capital. I haven’t run the numbers yet but I think I have 2700 hours logged for the year. I also hit my 10-year anniversary with the firm which is both amazing and depressing at the same time.

Thankfully, I was able to take a refreshing 3-week vacation with my honey V. once the trials were over. It was also our belated celebration of our 5th year anniversary, since I missed it while I was away at trial. We traveled to Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia to soak up the sun and devour the cuisine. And to take lots of photos, of course. It was just what I needed to scrape off the battle scars and regain my sanity.

In the electronic gadgets world, I’ve continued to collect nifty toys to keep me occupied in the rare free moments I have. V. somehow always manages to find me the greatest gifts! I have a Sony PSP to play games on the go, and a new pocket-sized projector to bring giant-sized movies with me wherever I go. Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto IV (with their multiple iterations of great add-on content) continue to provide me hours of entertainment.

On the automotive front, not a whole lot has changed with my rides. The biggest thing to happen was I ordered, and after 4 months of waiting, put on some new rims and tires on my Lexus. I’m very happy with how they turned out, and doing everything I can to drive and park carefully to keep them in their brand new condition.

So what’s next for 2010? Well it is the start of a new decade and therefore a great chance to make big plans and aspirations. Personally, I hope to keep taking more photos and learn to take better shots. Learn to be a better husband. And if the economy starts to pick itself up, move to a bigger house. With a bigger garage or driveway. And drive bigger and faster cars. Take more vacations. Lose weight and get in shape. Eat healthy. Improve my quality of life. You know, live the American dream, writ large.

Professionally, I am kind of at a crossroads. What I see ahead of me where I am, is the same thing over and over. I’ve already been put on another new case that is headed for trial later this year. I might make more money each year but the same challenges and tasks await. Arguably, I am near the top of my game here, so perhaps it’s time for a change? But with the economy in the tank right now changing jobs or professions doesn’t seem like such a brilliant path.

Executive summary: it’s a new dawn, a new day, a new life. Time to get out there and start living it. I suggest you do the same.

portable

Coming back from two back-to-back trials, the return to normalcy is almost a bizarre and unsettling experience. After being accustomed after over a month away from home, to working 100+ hours a week and sleeping for a few hours during the daytime, returning to a regular work week and sleeping at night is somewhat difficult. My sleep pattern is still a little out of whack, but I am historically a fairly nocturnal person. I think I almost kind of thrived on staying up all night and going to bed in the morning. It's certainly nice to be back home but I almost don't know what to do with all the extra free time I now find myself with; it's like I suddenly gained back 40-50 hours a week that I didn't have. Well, sleep is certainly high on the priority list. But when I returned home my honey V. had also bought me a few toys and games to help kill some time with. Specifically she bought me both the PSPgo and the PSP 3000
"Slim" so I could try them both and see which one I liked better. She also picked me up a copy of the newly released Halo 3: ODST game for the X360.

The PSPgo is a real neat little device--all the abilities of the previous PSPs but in a smaller package. The slide-down controls allow most of the frontal area to be a screen, and it's about the same footprint as an iPhone when closed. Because it doesn't include a UMD drive it's ultra light and quiet. And with its launch in early October the online Playstation Network Store saw a barrage of new digital downloads added to the roster.

The thing is, the older PSP 3000 does everything the PSPgo does, plus it has a UMD drive to play the older sold-in-stores PSP games. They both have wifi to connect to the internet and a basic web browser. They both use bluetooth to connect with other players. And they both have large, bright displays which look great with games and videos. The downside is the 3000 is larger, bulkier, and doesn't come with onboard memory -- you have to buy a Memory Stick card in order to download and store games on the PSP 3000 whereas the PSPgo comes with 16GB onboard. Although when you add up the cost of a PSP-3000 and a Sony 16 GB Memory Stick card it still comes out to less than the list price of a PSPgo. And when you compare the 3000 with its predecessors (the original 1000 and the "slim" 2000, the 3000 is significantly thinner and lighter.

I downloaded several demos on both PSPs such as the addictive Patapon 2, the speedy reflex-testing Wipeout Pulse, and the slash-tastic blood-splattering God of War: Chains of Olympus. I played the same games on both so I could really compare and contrast the two, get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses. And then to really put them through their pace, I bought a digital copy of the newly released Gran Turismo for PSP, which the Playstation network gratifyingly allowed me to install and play on both handhelds at the same time. Sweeet. Some of my coworkers also had GT on their PSPs so we got together several times after work and had some hilariously fun racing parties. Plus with the game's ability to share cars we were able to give each other the cool rides we had been accumulating on our own. I highly recommend this game for any racing fans, it's like having the old GT4 game from the PS2 in your hand wherever you go. Good times.

So what's the verdict? Which version of the PSP did I choose? It was not an easy decision, but ultimately I chose the PSP 3000. Mostly for the way the controls just felt better in my hands, on the PSP-go my fingers felt a little cramped when playing for anything more than a few minutes. I will have some disadvantage from the fact that the 3000 won't fit easily into the pocket like the go does, but when you factor in the UMD drive, the lower cost, and better controls I felt the 3000 had the best combination of features.

That's not all in the gadgets department... in anticipation of our upcoming vacation trip to SE Asia (Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia) we also decided to also pick up a netbook for convenient portable internet access, and an HD camcorder. V. really wanted a pink laptop so I ordered her a ASUS Eee PC 1005HA 10.1-Inch Pink Netbook. And then we got a Sony HDR-XR200V 120GB HDD High Definition Camcorder to document our travels. So you can look forward to plenty of photos and video clips from our adventures in Asia! We're getting pretty amped up about it, we leave for Bangkok in just three days!

longshot

Long exposure shot, taken one night after work.

flashback

My dad's Nikon 35mm camera, taken with Nikon D60.

Over 30 years ago, my dad bought a Nikon SLR 35mm film camera and started carrying it around to take photos of our family and our travels. It was pretty big and heavy, and I remember one time as a kid we were in Las Vegas and somehow I got smacked in the face with the camera hanging from my dad's shoulder, giving me a bloody nose. After I got over the initial pain and commotion, my dad had me pick out numbers for Keno, saying that my bloody nose was "lucky". Ah, such a wonderful childhood...

Fast forward to present day, and I find myself retracing my father's footsteps. I started getting more into photography as of late, partly due to some work that involved digital camera technology, and decided to get an dSLR. After much research and deliberation, I decided on a Nikon D60... ordered it on Amazon and started clicking away. As far as entry-level dSLRs go the D60 is not the top of the line model (that honor goes to the Nikon D90), but I thought it would be plenty enough for me to learn with. When my dad found out I bought a new Nikon, he offered to give me the old Nikon body and lens. I probably won't use the body to shoot film, but the 50mm prime lens he had is in reasonably good condition (for being 30+ years old) and can be used with modern Nikon SLRs in manual mode.

Well, after nearly 30 days of shooting with it I decided to return the D60... and get a Nikon D5000 instead. In the last month I've tried to rationalize not getting the D90... after all it's over double the price of the D60. But Nikon just came out with the D5000 which has nearly all the features of the D90 crammed into a D60 sized body. Upgrading from the D60 to the D5000 gets me better auto-focusing abilities (11 vs. 3 AF points), slightly more megapixels (12 vs. 10 MP), a LiveView function, the ability to record HD 720p video clips, and a swiveling LCD display. I don't think I need the few additional features that the D90 offers (support for much older autofocus lenses and a better high-res LCD display) for several hundred dollars more, hopefully that money would be better spent on getting better lenses and other accessories.

My dad's 50mm f/1.4 prime lens should work fine with the D5000 in manual mode as well but as it totally predates autofocus technology, it has to be manually focused. I'm going to keep trying to use it and hopefully the LiveView with magnification will make manually focusing it on distant objects easier. Here is a photo I took with the D60 and my dad's 50mm lens, stay tuned for more when I get the D5000 in. I've also got some extra batteries and a tripod on the way, and eventually I'll start shopping for more lenses... at the moment I'm considering either the Nikon 35mm f/1.8G AF-S DX Lens or the Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor Lens ... wow isn't that a mouthful.