We're out vacationing this week in San Diego. I know it can be annoying hearing about the lovely weather in other places when you're sitting in cold weather, but... too bad. The picture should be linked to a few photos from our day trip yesterday to Julian, California.
Funny: Locomotive Horn in Your Automobile
What in the name of Clark Wilhelm Griswold, Jr. is this?
Hit Magnet: Intelligent Design
If you really want to jump the traffic on your blog site, start a discussion on Intelligent Design. Case in point:
Derek Lowe, a scientist who blogs at
Corante offered
his two cents on Intelligent Design this past week. His usually moderately commented blog became a busy discussion board over the course of the week. It's fair to say that this topic brings out the liveliness in people.
The frustrating thing to me is that while I believe that ID has it's merits and is worth discussing, I can understand the point of view of the scientist who just wants to stick to the evidence. If they allow the possibility of ID in their studies, it raises a lot of questions for them -- if we were intelligently designed, why did this designer create such-and-such in us that causes us to so-and-so? The ID'er will typically have a response which is based on theology, and at the point the scientist takes one step out of the laboratory and one step into the seminary.
So scientists generally stick with macro or Darwinian evolution, which is itself not without it's difficult questions but allows the scientist to keep some uncomfortable thoughts about God at bay.
Okay, so you're reading about the new iPod everywhere. I'll make this brief
1 and just touch on a few items that I didn't mention in my previous post:
- Battery. Actually, I did mention this previously, but I have a hard time believing the battery is going to make it to the rated 10 - 15 hour mark (playing audio). I use the unit periodically through the day, and when I have a good 15 hour chunk of time to kill...
- Screen. It's beautiful like everybody is saying, and it does scratch easily like everyone is saying. I've transmogrified one of those Palm screen protectors into an iPod screen protector. Just measure, cut, and stick. It works great, and provides an other wordly sheen to the screen.
- Video. I have to admit, it works quite well but sucks the battery quickly. Below are some trailer park screen grabs of the "Freedom" video by King's X. The iPod kept everything in sync, sounded great, and didn't look half bad. The video had to be transcoded, of course, which degraded the quality a bit. I have not had a chance (or the extra money for the cable) to plug it into the TV yet.
As far as video conversion goes, you can pay 30 bucks for QuickTime Pro and enjoy spending the whole afternoon converting a five minute video, or you can hop over to PSPVideo9.com and get it done in significantly less time. The whole MP4 vs. H.264 thing is lost on me, so don't ask. - I'm still rather steamed that another docking station/cable setup is going to be another 40 bucks. Maybe somebody like Belkin has a cheaper alternative.
In all, still pretty happy with it. There is a review over at dapreview.net which sums up the pros and cons nicely.
And while you're sitting there, surfing and using precious company resources, how about checking that video of Freedom2 out? I can't remember where I borrowed it from, so grab it here until somebody tells me to bring it down, or my bandwidth goes over it's limit3.
[1] This didn't turn out to be that brief, did it?[2] Plays on iPod, like, fer shur, totally! (tm)[3] Hah, if only.
Race: Boat vs. Motorcycle vs. Automobile
This could be known as a collection of audiophile equipment, but it seems more like the
museum of obscenely priced audio equipment.
Maybe only in that funny money world of the 1990's, where companies were hiring janitors to fix the Y2k bugs in their software and Arthur Anderson was doing financial audits.
Nerdville: Belt Buckle Roundup
What could be better than a DIY hard disc buckle1 than an LED buckle2 that can display a custom message (such as "run the other way") ?
[1] Via Gizmodo
[2] Via CNet
iLounge has
a catalog containing every iPod accessory known to God and man.
Now this is actually cool and brought a big, stupid smile to my face -- slot car video from the perspective of the driver's seat.