07.05.08
Happy Independence Day!
Sorry it’s a day late, but here’s wishing my American brethren a happy Independence Day.
http://view.break.com/530269 – Watch more free videos
03.22.08
Glad I Passed on the Panasonic
Last Fall, I found myself in need of a digital camera. I had previously intended to save up for one of those pseudo-DSLRs (my needs rarely extend into true DSLR territory), but I needed one right away, and I needed it to be portable. I ended up with a Canon PowerShot SD850IS, which has served me well. The image quality is pretty good, and it’s portable enough to occasionally forget that I have it with me. The main features I wish it had: RAW image support and exposure bracketing.
As of today, thanks to the CHDK firmware, it has both of those features and a whole lot more (including an always-present battery gauge, rather than an icon that only pops up when the battery is running low — a frequent complaint about the PowerShot line). Other interesting features include automatic focus bracketing (to combine three images into one with infinite depth of field), live histogram, exposure times ranging from 65 seconds to 1/10,000 of a second, a depth of field calculator, and the ability to write scripts for it in uBasic. It can even be set to automatically photograph lightning. The firmware works on most Canon PowerShot cameras, and it makes no modifications to the built-in firmware: reverting to the camera’s stock setup is as simple as deleting a couple of files from your memory card.
I think at this point the only upgrade that would interest me would be a true DSLR, and since there are so many other things for me to spend my money on right now, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. So, I’ll just spend some time exploring CHDK for now. Maybe I’ll get some good shots of Easter Dinner tomorrow.
01.22.08
Font Problems in Office 2008
A while back I managed to get a Beta copy of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. After installing it, I found that I was having a lot of font display problems, particularly on the web and in email: sometimes certain letters were missing; at other times, letters were present but overlapping to the point of being unreadable. I found a lot of other people having the same issue—turns out it happens to a lot of people who had a previous version of Office, because the installer updates the standard Microsoft fonts without cleaning up the old ones first.
What surprised me, however, is that the same problem still exists in the final version. What the hell was the beta for, if not to find and eliminate problems like this? Anyway, if you’ve recently installed Office 2008 and are having this problem, this should fix it:
- Open Font Book.
- Scroll through your fonts, looking for any fonts with a little black dot to the right of the name. Those are fonts with two different versions installed. Once you’ve found one, click the triangle to the left of the font name to expand the list.
- Click on one of the sub-entries and type Cmd-I to bring up the font info. You’ll note that there’s a new version and an old version. Right-click (or control-click) on the older one and select “Remove font.”
- Repeat the above for all duplicated fonts in the list.
- Reboot the computer.
01.17.08
150,000!
Granted, only about 26,000 of those miles were driven by me, but still … onward to 200,000!
01.01.08
Shakespeare and Burbage
I picked up a copy of Shakespeare & Co.: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story. I’d recommend it, but if the title doesn’t get your interest it might not be the book for you. Anyway, I like it a lot.
It contains quite a few amusing historical anecdotes. My favorite is a bit of gossip involving Richard Burbage, the most famous actor in Shakespeare’s troupe (The Lord Chamberlain’s Men), as related in the diary of John Manningham in 1602:
Upon a time, when Burbage played Richard III, there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard the Third. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained, and at his game ere Burbage came. Then, message being brought that Richard the Third was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third.
12.26.07
Christmas Cheer
On Christmas Day, Faith and I decided to see a movie. Naturally, being theater geeks, we chose Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street—which, by the way, I can’t recommend highly enough. It’s a bit abridged from the Broadway production, but still very much worthwhile. So anyway, about halfway through the movie, as Depp slit a series of throats with his straight razor, blood sprayed all over the dingy sets, and bodies fell down a chute into the bakery with a meaty thud, Faith leaned over to me and said, “This is the best Christmas ever!“
She was absolutely right.
Later that day we watched a documentary about the evolution of the English language and I cooked lamb braised in Guinness accompanied by mashed potatoes, green beans, and sautéed mushrooms. I can’t help wishing I’d had the foresight to bake up a couple of meat pies, instead.
I hope your Christmas was just as pleasant.
12.01.07
Why Do I Attract These People?
I was picking up a few essentials at Raley’s (at Watt & Marconi in Sacramento) a couple days ago, and the young man bagging my groceries seemed really intent on helping me to my car. Generally I don’t accept this sort of help — in fact, I’ve never accepted it before — but this guy didn’t ask if I wanted help: he just asked, “Which way to your car?” Since I did have a box of firewood in the cart, I decided to roll with it. I pointed toward one of the exits, and off we went.
He was maybe eighteen, with blond hair, a thick Russian accent, and a valiant attempt at a goatee. On the way to the door, he asked me how I was doing. I told him I was doing well, and asked how he was doing. “Very blessed,” he said. One of those. We continued walking.
In the parking lot, about halfway to my car, he asked where I was from. “Around here,” I said, not wanting to get into a discussion about my recent move away from around there. “Downtown.”
“Can you guess where I’m from?” he asked.
“I’d guess Russia,” I answered — then, gauging his reaction, added, “or maybe the Ukraine.”
“Nope,” he said, a huge grin spreading across his face.
“Where?” I asked.
He nodded up to the sky and said, “Heaven.”
“Fair enough,” I said. At this point I was hoping to head off a sermon about how we’re all from Heaven and have been put here on Earth for some special purpose. I needn’t have bothered.
“Only those whose eyes are truly open can see that I’m from Heaven,” he explained. Then he loaded my purchases into the trunk and told me to have a blessed day. I told him to do the same.
10.21.07
Some Tech Adventures
As most of you know, I’m the proud owner of an iPhone. What many of you don’t know, however, is that I’m currently on my third iPhone. I bought the first one the day they were released — June 29, 2007 — but after two or three weeks the rubber seal around the screen started to peel away when I was cleaning it with the included microsuede cloth. I took it to the Arden Fair Apple Store here in Sacramento, and was given a replacement in the store — no shipping back for repair, no loaner/rental unit. The replacement, however, exhibited the negative black issue that affected a certain batch of new iPod Touch and refurb iPhone screens. Today I took that one back to the Apple Store and, after a warning that this one might not look any better, was given yet another iPhone. Again, no charge and no waiting. It looks great — blacks are deep and crisp, and it’s noticeably brighter than the first replacement, too.
Despite the inconvenience of taking my phone in for replacement twice within four months of the day I bought it, I’m happy with the way my problems have been handled. Also, both replacements were fully charged when I received them, so I was able to place and receive calls right away, and upon getting home I just plugged them into my computer and was given the option of restoring from backup, which included all my settings (except passwords).
Oh yeah — we got Faith an iPhone, too.
Another adventure: I bought a region-free DVD player. Sort of. That is, I bought a DVD player, and then I made it region-free.
Specifically, I went to Wal-Mart and found the cheapest in-house brand DVD player they had — a Durabrand DVD-1002 for less than $30. The nice thing about cheap DVD players is that it’s not cost-effective to make multiple versions of them for different markets, so the manufacturers tend to make make the region codes software-configurable. Using my iPhone, I did a little online research while standing next to the store display, and after confirming that this model could be unlocked, I bought one.
The exact code for the DVD-1002 depends on the firmware version on your particular unit; this one worked on mine (purchased October 20, 2007):
- Turn the unit on.
- Open the lid.
- Press STOP on the remote.
- Enter 9753 on the remote. A setup screen will appear.
- Select the desired region using the arrow buttons on the remote. Region 0 means region-free.
- Press OK on the remote.
- Close the lid.
If you have a DVD-1002 and this code doesn’t work, search online a bit — there are at least two other codes floating around that are supposed to work with older firmware versions.
10.01.07
A Religious Experience
Last Saturday, Faith and I went to Berkeley for a performance of my favorite play, King Lear — good production, by the way. The next day we went to San Francisco to see Ty and his lovely girlfriend. Getting together with Ty on a Sunday these days means getting invited to Glide, and although I’m an atheist and Faith is an agnostic, Glide is a fairly enjoyable experience, so we went.
In this particular service, there were three separate sermons by three different ministers. From a dramatic perspective (it was, as Faith put it, a performanceful weekend for us), the order should have been reversed: as it stood, the first sermon was pretty good, the second was OK but unfocused, and the third was a bit of a mess. I won’t go into too much detail here, but the gist of the final sermon as far as I can remember was that it’s not enough for two people in a relationship to love one another: there needs to be a third party. “It doesn’t matter what you call it,” the minister explained. “You can call it the Spirit, or God, or Allah, or a mystery….”
Faith leaned over to me and asked, “Can we call it Spencer the Wiggle-Fishie?”
Praise Spencer, I do love that woman. Incidentally, those of you who know Ty should ask him to do the Wiggle Fish Dance next time you see him. You’ll thank me later.
