Well, seems my vacation has run into a tiny bit of a wet spree? While where I left roasts in 100+ degree weather, I’m enjoying a balmy high 60ish rainy day. I can take comfort in knowing that at least I’m not at work.
Road Trip!
Well, it is summer and the family decided to “take it on the road” so to speak. Our day started late as I still had to work, but we were able to get on the road around 1PM. I thought I’d snap a picture while driving through Utah and share it with everyone.
Nearing the End of an Era
Needless to say, one of the many reasons I started Reid’s For Fun was because of Yahoo!’s neutering of GeoCities: removal of ftp and a paltry 4.2MB hourly limit. It was, however, my friend in the hey day of Internet growth and I am saddened at its (un)timely demise.
Almost DTV Time
Well, less than a day left and the old NTSC-M broadcast signal will almost be gone. I say almost because a few low power stations can still broadcast and I’m sure a few places will get by. But, by and large, it’s all over for our old analog receivers.
All Ready for Digital TV, Are you?
Well, two days left and I’m good to go for the digital TV conversion.
Safari 4 Impressions and Disappointments
Okay, Safari 4 is out, showed up in my update today. I was a bit surprised as I thought I already had 4 installed, but it didn’t take more than a quick peek at my existing Safari to realize it was the non-beta version. Like a kid opening a present, I quickly cut out of what I was doing and hit the Install button. A short time later, I was ready to load the latest experience. That was when disappointment set in.
Second Chance Digital TV Coupon
Will wonders never cease! Looks like the coupons opened up again and those of us that let our coupons expire can try again! Yeah! I’ve ordered another at https://www.dtv2009.gov/.
Updated Analog to Digital TV Count Down Userbar
Well, the original date (Feb 17th) has come and gone and my Userbar is showing 33 days past. Since the conversion has been delayed till June 12, I thought I’d better update my application for those still brave enough to use it.
More Lorenz Attractor Fun
I was looking over my Lorenz Attractor images and wondered how the spiral would look close-up. So, I created another version looking down on the spiral with the tendrils coming up from the it. To make it stand out from the others, I changed the sphere colors to blue and added some filtered transparency to them. It makes them look a bit like beads of glass.
Getting a Little deviantART
I’ve been a lurker on deviantART for awhile now and decided to take the plunge and upload some of my ray traced images there. Since I tend to use the same alias at all my sites, you can now catch SafePit on deviantART. Normally I use Flickr for images, but since I tend to head over to deviantART for interesting wallpaper, I thought it worth the effort to join. I even uploaded a new version of my Snowman.
SafePit 30,000gs, the Zeros Are So Pretty
It seemed to take me forever lately, but finally made it to 30K. I blame my Halo 3 addiction to the lack of improvement in my gamer score. It seems silly tracking this stuff, but it is fun tracking each of these 5K milestones. It is also interesting looking back over the last few years and see what I’ve been playing and what gamer picture I was using. I’m obviously using NXE’s avatars now. Will be interesting to see if I bother updating it. Next up, 35,000. I wonder how long that will take?
BattlestaR Galactica Trading Card
Okay, let’s see how old you really are. Anyone remember these trading cards from ’78 back when the “original” Battlestar Galactica aired. I was cleaning out the attic and found this in a bag with some of my other childhood memories. I don’t remember keeping this card, but it sure is interesting to look back and remember a different time. Hard to believe this was issued thirty years ago. I swear, it was yesterday. Wasn’t it?
More Photosynth Fun
I’ve blogged about Photosynth before; however, that was when it was still a preview technology. Photosynth is now out for the general public to use.
Computer Fun
So, I broke down and bought a new laptop last weekend. No, I didn’t buy an Apple. I just couldn’t see myself shelling out twice as much money for half the computing power. I purchased one on sale with similar specs, if not the same OS and “coolness” factor. I was able to transfer most of my settings making it much easier to get up and running. It did take me a bit to get the “crapware” uninstalled. However, it did provide me the opportunity to try out some new software.
New MacBooks Out
Having never owned a Mac, mostly due to cost, the new MacBooks look pretty nice. All aluminum body, new graphics, new glass multi-touch trackpad, it all adds up to some nice looking notebook computers.
Okay, I was never a big fan of Apple. I made a decision over 6 years ago to use Microsoft’s Windows Media to encode and listen to my music and it worked well for me. That was, until my daughter wanted an iPod Nano (3G) for her birthday. Okay, that was what she wanted and they were on sale, so why not. Sad to say, I was hooked — and it wasn’t even my iPod.
Giving Up On Maps
Sad to say, but I’ve deactivated the Who’s Amung Us map widget I had been using. They’ve changed the way the pins are saved and it is pretty much useless to me now. I enjoyed seeing where I received visits from. Unfortunately, I typically only would have a few pins on the map, including myself. I still have the widget installed in case they ever change it, but for now the map itself is disabled.
25000 Is Where It's At
Well, it took a bit longer this time around to get 25000. Seems all the games I’ve been playing aren’t giving up much in points. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve mostly been playing Halo 3 during this time. In any case, I made it to 25K!
Random Stuff
It’s been busy of late. I’d been on vacation for almost 3 weeks with just a few days of work in between. My parents were in town (hi Mom) a couple of weeks ago. Then I was out of town for my wife’s family. That wasn’t really a vacation, though. But I’m back in town and finally getting around to checking my site and doing a little a blogging. So, here are some random thoughts for the day!
Fun with Google Maps—Where’s My House?
While my parents are in town this week we were reminiscing about old places we’ve lived. I’d been trying to remember where we used to live in Oslo, Norway. I remembered the street name, but my attempts in the past to find it didn’t find the street. I was pretty sure I just didn’t know how to spell it. I thought my luck had ran out.
Enjoying a Moodstream
Ran across this interesting site in my feeds and thought I’d share. Getty Images has combined their stock images with their audio stock to create what they call Moodstreams. They are billing it as a brainstorming tool, remember they are trying to sell photography and audio. The brainstorming concept sounded interesting, but I was skeptical. I gave it a try and it is actually pretty interesting.
Playing With The Lorenz Attractor
I was searching for some pov-ray liquid routines and ran into an interesting article on The Lorenz Attractor In 3D. The Lorenz Attractor is an interesting equation and surprisingly beautiful. Since there was a sample pov-ray macro on the site, I thought it would be fun to generate some pictures. I don't have much yet, but I think these look pretty cool. In some ways, these look like galaxies colliding. What do you think?
Busy Lately
I haven’t been updating much on the site lately. Mostly it is because I’ve been busy with other activities. My daughter’s Softball games still dominate most of my evenings. Between games, the youngest had a school concert on Tuesday. I’ve been trying squeeze in some GTAIV or HALO3 in the later evenings, but that doesn’t always work out.
Power Supply Woes
Well, I had a weird power outage here at the house today. Once of those drops that goes down a couple times before staying off. Seems most of my electronics made it through okay. However, my daughter’s computer took a powder. It wouldn’t turn on and the LED on the back was blinking. Ugh.
Fun with Article Images
If you hadn’t noticed, in addition to adding reflections, I’ve been updating the images I use for my articles. I did this once before, but I added a silly highlight that just didn’t look right. I decided I need to make some changes.