Monthly Archives: January 2010

Jan 21 2010
2 Comments
Uncategorized

Baking

So, in a complete and utter turnaround from what I had advised a friend, I am going to talk about my baking experience.

Short story.  This morning, I realized that hanging in the banana hanger were just about to be overripe bananas.  I also had a copy of How to Cook Everything.

I think you know how this goes.  I write down what I need and then go to work.

A workday, dinner, one grocery run, a new loaf pan, and about an hour of prep later, I pop the pan into the oven with the realization that this may be my first banana bread.  About thirty minutes in, the smell really starts to become apparent.  It’s great.

Twenty minutes later, the toothpick is clean and it’s out of the oven.  I’m waiting about fifteen minutes and then I’ve got a cooling rack ready.

Now I’m looking up beginner model stand mixers.

But maybe I should see how this turned out first.

Update: Delicious!

Tagged
Jan 19 2010
Uncategorized

My Other, Other Eye

My camera, well, maybe I should clarify, my serious camera, is the Nikon D70. It’s pretty old and secondhand.  By old, I mean It’s about six years old, and that in camera years is about one hundred and fifty.  Although I got a good deal on it at the time, I almost weep when I look at the capabilities of the entry level DSLR cameras today.  Ah, those young whipper snappers don’t know how good they’ve got it with their Active Dynamic Ranges and their ISOs above 1600.  But I make do.

It’s a heavy thing, a black polycarbonate brick that one hefts to eye level.  I both appreciate and curse that weight, depending on the situation.  The solid feel of the camera lends a credence to its existence in the real world, that it can somehow interact with light and make it permanent.  It can’t though.

All it does is take measurements and shift bits.  A lot of them.  In thousandths of a second.

There’s no chemical process that results in a physical object.  No negative, no paper, no developer, no fixative, no finished product.  Just more bits that get displayed on a screen, dependent on that screen’s size, and color depth and brightness to try to convey the moment through electric impulses.

It’s all an ephemeral stream of data.  Like the very moment it’s trying to capture.

In fact, the data is so ephemeral that it can’t even last a day on the compact flash card.  I am well aware of the fact that there are adult mayflies that have longer lives than some of the image data I’ve tried to acquire recently.  Looking up some open source tools, I guess that hope springs eternal in the human breast.

Tagged , ,
Jan 18 2010
Uncategorized

More Difficult Than You Would Think

When I was shooting film, I don’t remember self portraits being this difficult to do.  I’ve been doing a round of self portraits lately, where I’m juggling and then taking the picture.  The difficult thing is my need to tweak settings after each shot.

I guess that’s the whole point of the exercise though.   I’m getting a little bit better at looking at the lighting conditions and then making a judgment about aperture and shutter speed.  Ideally, I’d have the laptop out there connected to the camera so that I could see results right away, but that’s too much equipment so I eyeball it most of the time on the small screen.

I guess juggling isn’t really a good summary type activity for self portraits, although it does give me a chance to look like I’m focusing on not dropping things.

Tagged ,
Jan 17 2010
Games

Last time, on Star Trek: Online

In the pilot episode, Trill Karina Prax becomes captain of the USS Lockheed.  After a surprise Borg attack kills off all other senior officers, she is surprised to find out that she is the highest ranking personnel remaining on board the Lockheed.  Unfazed (or should that be unphased) by this development, she finds a way to repair the critically damaged Lockheed, save the crew, and take part in a counterattack against the Borg incursion into Federation Space by destroying several Borg probes, a cube, and a sphere.

Considering that she’s an ensign, it looks like Starfleet academy started offering courses in Astroasskicking.

Upon her return to the Sol System, Admiral Quinn expresses his confidence in her and in a surprise move that shocked viewers everywhere, promotes her to Lieutenant and assigns her as the permanent captain of the Lockheed.

It’s yet another Cryptic Studios product, (City of Heroes, Champions Online) and a lot of their usual design can be seen throughout Star Trek: Online.

The ship to ship combat is a lot of fun.  There is something satisfying about rerouting power to the starboard shields and coming about to give them a broadside from both phaser arrays that takes down the facing shields just in time for a high yield photon burst to strike the unshielded side of an enemy vessel.

Away team missions are your standard MMO fare, with a third person point of view and a the usual take out X number of enemies or interact with Y, then report to Starfleet.  The ground combat tends to focus on the various firearms and their abilities found in the Star Trek universe, although that may be because I didn’t roll a tactical officer.

I’m playing the beta when the servers aren’t flooded, but so far I’m having a good time.

Protip: Enemy ships explode, and can destroy your vessel.

Tagged , , , ,
Jan 16 2010
Games, Technology

Xbox Live vs PC

This is really more about the paid online service that comes with the Xbox and specifically, how it works with one game.

Specifically, in this case, Borderlands.

In order to start a multiplayer game of Borderlands on the PC.  I had to remember my GameSpy account.  And that was a pain.  Then there was something that I had to do on my end, either placing my game machine temporarily in the DMZ or port forwarding.  Then there was the bit where I had to double check windows firewall rules and it still didn’t work.  Eventually we figured it was the GameSpy network itself, because a couple of hours later, it was working.

I know it’s not the same, but the ability to send an invite in game and then just have the other person pop in is worth the $50 a year to me.  When I want to start playing a game with my friends, I don’t necessarily want to spend a half hour troubleshooting connectivity issues before we even get started. That’s what makes the xbox live work so well is the drop in and drop out functionality.  When you send an invite, it’s the same method for each and every game you play.  You hit the jewel, see if your friend is online and send the invitation.  They accept it.

I remember when that half hour troubleshooting was the first part of playing video games with your friends.  The half hour was spent was setting up the computers and configuring them to use the same network.  Additionally, they were all in the same room you were playing in.  None of this headset stuff, you just yelled at them for camping the spawn.

Or better yet, actually walked over and threatened bodily harm.

Ah, the good old days.

Tagged , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →