June 21, 2009

iPhone 3G S Video Star (the buster abides)

so here’s video of Buster tearing up a bone while I record his antics with the all new iPhone 3G S. Conditions were low light (only one cfl was running) and the subject was a tan puggle, lying on tan carpet covered by a tan blanket right next to a tan bed. also, the youtube-compressed-version compares fairly with the original quicktime .mov file, but there is noticeable compression artifacts in the YouTube version as compared to the original.

One last observation is the audio quality…it is superb. In all of my recording tests, the audio proved to be excellent. In this video, I’m playing “lonesome train” by ben harper and the sound is more than acceptable considering that buster’s bone-chomping is very distinct from the background audio.

still, having a video camera of this quality with one-touch publishing to YouTube made the iPhone 3G S’s cost of entry well-worth it for me…and Buster.

Verdict of iPhone 3G S Video Recording:
Video Quality = 7/10
Audio Quality = 9/10

P.S. Look at me! I’m like those kids from Engadget!

May 28, 2009

Mountain View Mausoleum

on monday, misty and i commemorated memorial day by taking a trip into pasadena to visit the mountain view mausoleum. remembering those you’ve loved and lost seems so much easier when you’re blessed to be in a place filled with so much beauty.

May 25, 2009

avoiding heartbreak (possessing your possessions)

so over the weekend, i decided a cool thing to do would be to spill a litre of tonic water all over my life. all the details are here…

what ensued was a series of classic “first world problems” that elucidate why the universe should hate me and want to smite my face. nonetheless, here are the updates:

FIRST: after taking off the battery cover, removing the battery, extracting the hard drive and popping out the memory DIMMS, I utilized my collection of micro-fibre cloths to dab everything as dry as possible. THEN, the hardest part was waiting almost 48hrs for any left over moisture to evaporate before attempting to power up the notebook. As the moment of truth approached, I pressed the cold-aluminum power button and held my breath until I heard the sweet-familiar *BONG* of a happy mac. All is well and I dodged a very expensive bullet.

SECOND & THIRD: so my Jetta’s keyless entry unit appears to be dead at the hands of the tonic water’s clutches. fortunately, the good people at VW give you two of these and I’m currently out of back up players.

Now the notebook: so I started the recovery-mission by separating the soaking-wet pages in an attempt to keep running-ink from getting freaky. once the warring factions were separated, I started drying the most critical pages with my handy-dandy vidal-sasoon blow-dryer. nearly half-an-hour later, all was well and anytime someone from my research team references this lab notebook, i hope they’ll remember the lesson I learned on Memorial Day Weekend, 2009.

after writing about my material-trappings TWICE in three days, i’ve learned that the best way to avoid a broken heart over possessions lost is to never let one’s possessions occupy one’s heart.

trying…

May 22, 2009

just add vodka with a twist of FUCK

hey joker!

remember that time when you totally fucked up and spilt an entire liter of tonic water all over your hipster-kitchen-bar and in doing so engulfed your most precious worldly possessions with sugared-seltzer-water?

that was rad! …here are some highlights that you may have missed when you were cursing and biting yourself…remember how:

- your new macbook was placed neatly at the bar in front of the barstool you sit at each morning while trying to solve the world’s heath problems? yeah! that tonic water totally fucked that up! dude, that macbook was LITERALLY floating on a river of hurt…THAT TASTED LIKE TONIC WATER! dude, by the time you got to it, the soda water was still fizzing! it was as if your hopes and dreams were fizzing away! HA!

- oh..DUDE…remember how you laid the keys to your Jetta next to the Macbook? and ‘member how you think driving a Jetta is something non-capitalist-pigs purchase b/c they want german-engineering but DON’T want to be seen riding around in a BMW? and then in all your stupid-fuck-wisdom you decided to IGNORE the hell out of the nice key hooks to your imediate-fucking-left? but instead you laid your keys lazily next to your (now dead) macbook? I swear to shit, when you picked up that fancy swtich-blade-keyless-entry-thing and watched as your vodka juice ran out of it I thought I was going to piss my pants! so fuck rad!

wait wait wait…the best part is that just TODAY you decided it would be a bad-ass-fuck-idea to bring home your super-important-top-secret lab notebook that contains ALL of your super-fuck-important data and read over it AT THE KITCHEN BAR…AND NOW…well, let’s just say that that son of a bitch is holding more tonic water than your poor fuck MacBook.

I could not imagine how tonight could get worse for you! …wait what’s that? not getting laid either? damn, bro….need a hug?

well at least you’ve got your novel, “…you know…the one you’ve been working on for ten years?”

May 21, 2009

graduating in B&W

this past saturday, my baby sister graduated from law school and once again continues to find ways to make me proud. she’s amazing that way.

welcome WSU…find your seats through B Door:

“stage dark, go lights in 5…4…3…2…”

draped in velvet, the class of 2009…

addressing the crowd from 35 rows back…embrace what the shot gives you and exploit it!

the grove in anaheim has that new-classic-look that Silver Efex Pro loves to play with…

more to come…

May 19, 2009

Apple Tech Porn

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the good fortune of being able to upgrade my primary machine. Replacing my 24″ iMac is the new Mac Pro with Xeon “Nehalem” processor.

As my computing needs have evolved, I’ve grown more and more power-hungry and the Mac Pro’s Nehalem-based architecture and expandability are the perfect fit. In addition, I flanked the Apple Cinema LED Display with two 24″ Dell LCDs that are suspended above my desk with Ergotron MX Desk Mounts.

All three displays combined, give me a functional width of 5,760 pixels…and I use each and every one of them. Those fancy Ergotron MX desk mounts are amazing and allow me to rotate each of the displays into either landscape or portrait mode, depending on my needs.

My handy Apple Student Developer discount made all of this a financial possibility and I am very much in tech-love. More shots of my setup can be found here.

May 12, 2009

buster makes me feel like a cheater

Buster makes photography wildly simple.

and the obligatory Silver Efex Pro version

May 10, 2009

under pressure *boop*

so by now, i can only pray to invisible-make-believe-jesus that you’ve had a chance to listen to the new record from ben harper & the relentless 7 entitled, “white lies for dark times“. (if not, it’s ok and we can still be friends if you promise to turn off american idol and listen to this.)

my little snowflakes, i know what it’s like to miss out on things that are rad.
case-in-point:
on the evening of december 8th 2008 i was probably dicking around in SoCal buying groceries, pumping gas or getting a braz-wax when at my beloved Spaceland…THIS SHIT WAS HAPPENING:

thoughts?

May 9, 2009

bashing ’star trek’

so the buzz surrounding the new ’star trek’ film is reaching epic proportions, however, there’s one group that thinks the new flick blows andorian space balls:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

April 24, 2009

Killer Attack Dog!

this shot was taken during an extreme “keep-away” session…

and now in holga-style…

Buster! Fear him!

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