We finally made our way to the infamous Hamilton Pool.  I had the opportunity to use the flip and to keep it simple, I only used the tools provided from the camera.  Here is the final product:

Not bad though the music provided was cheesy.  That will have to be fixed on later videos.  Also I need to figure out a way to keep the quality up to 640×480.  Other than that, carrying the little bugger sure beats the beefy digicam.

I know you cannot tell but I do enjoy photography when given the opportunity to pursue my creative interest. Unfortunately there are only so many photos I am allowed to display of my children and family, people who rightfully consume all of my free time for which I am more than willing to give. Though I do not take as many creative shots as I use to, that does not negate the fact that I still follow the industry with the kind of enthusiasm reserved for those 20 years younger than me. Case in point, Kodak just released their new 50 megapixel CCD sensor, the KAF-50100 for consumer application. What makes this astonishing is one of sensor’s first applications in the new Hasselblad H3DII-50. 50 Mpixel refined in one of the best medium-format camera manufacture in the world. The sensor itself is twice the physical size of a full-frame 35-mm sensor like the one found in my Canon 5D. Native resolution should be about 8,176 x 6,132 pixels which was achieved by reducing the size of each pixel from 6.8µMpixel, found on the 39MP sensor, to 6µMpixel for the 50Mpixel beast. Shrinking pixels and packing them closer together typically adds noise and reduce dynamic range but it seems Kodak has tweaked their amplifier design and increased data output from two pipes found in their older 39MP sensor to four pipes now utilized in their new sensor (spec summary gathered from EE Times Asia).

At $39,000, the new Hasselblad is for pros only. When a gadget starts to approach the cost of your primary means of transportation, you realize one thing, you need a more expensive car! Hmm, speaking of cars, I heard Tesla has started full production…

Worst-ahem-BestBuy has started to sell my favorite distro, and what I am using right now, Ubuntu for $20. To be clear, this is the same distro that can be downloaded for free. It is odd to see something like this during this day and age with the wide availability of broadband access. I mean 15 years ago, this would make a lot of sense as dial-ups were too slow to download the distro from the web. Should we scoff at those who spend money on something that is technically and legally free? Continue reading

At one point in my life I was an Exchange Administrator for a great little liberal arts college in Colorado. I was thrown into the fire and had to learn as much as I could on how to support our Exchange users. It was fun and there are times I do miss that kind of work. Can you imagine ramping up Exchange support for 1.3 million users, then deploy your solution only to have it reversed and use gmail instead? That is what happened to the folks at The New South Wales Department of Education and Training. I would imagine those users will not be using the same gmail accounts you and I have however the move is a huge loss for both Microsoft and resources trained, but moving the storage cap from 35MB to greater than 1GB is a big win for the users. I could see it now, I just wrapped up my exchange training, mapped the Exchange containers, setup my FE with OWA support and spent countless of hours testing the deployment to only have admin report back that they would like to go in another direction. Woo hoo!

Well it seems that the linux-uvc drivers are working as advertised and Adobe player support is just not in the cards. It seems, as far as I can tell, Adobe Flash does not support V4L2. The UVC drivers only work with V4L2. I guess if I need to record a seesmic session, I will need to boot into my Vista partition.

My Optoma HD72 is up and running minus the bright mode. It seems the bulb ballast is outside the tolerance for the projector to run it at full capacity. I still need to get a new bulb but I can hold that off for a bit as running the pj in low mode is not that noticeable. Blu-Ray movies are back!!!

On the gaming front, I have yet to get MGS 4 but intend to when I get a little spending money for myself. On purchasing PS3 games, I notice that Target throws at the end of the isle sales, a couple of games at astoundingly low prices. They are buried but so far I have picked up Ninja Gaiden Sigma, and Fight Night 3 for $14.95 respectively and they were new. I am not sure if this is company-wide but the local stores around here have them with the red stickers. It is interesting to see that a week later, those games return to the main display back at the regular sales price of $29.95. Keep an eye out when you are walking around the electronic department section of Target.