First 24 Hours with the Galaxy S7 Edge and Gear VR

So my prior phone was nearing its payoff point and so too was the brides, her’s was a LG G3 and Sprint announced a buy one get one half off S7 with the Gear VR on pre-order.  Being a fan of the SD card, this was a no brainer.

My phone arrived yesterday the 8^th and we set it up in the Oak Harbor Sprint store and since I was the first person to pick his up, they wanted to check out the Gear VR too.  After a bit of playing around and taking some pictures, I got to take my loot home.  First impression I had was how smooth, futuristic and sleek this slab of glass was, very sexy and curved and it felt like silk in my hands.  It came with a little tool to push a button on the top that opened up an almost invisible slot that pops out which holds an SD card and a SIM card. 

The camera settings are pretty impressive, in the pro mode, it even has RAW settings, 800 ISO, shutter from 1/24,000 of a second to 10 seconds, I’ll have to explore these more later.

I opted out of buying either of the two heavy duty cases they had at the store, one was an Otterbox and the other was another heavy duty model.  I don’t think either would have fit inside of the Gear VR and removing phones from these armored behemoths on a regular basis would have caused more wear and tear than anything I could have done.  If I decide to opt for a case, I’ll make sure it will fit inside of the Gear VR first.  As for the screen protector, they get marks and scratches on them which get magnified with the headset so no there too.

Okay, there is supposed to be a Gear game pack that comes with it but I have yet to figure out how to get it.  All of the stuff online is rather vague and doesn’t mention what the games are.  I’m not worried yet, I’m still exploring the 360 videos and pictures, haven’t touched a game yet (haven’t had time, cleaning the house and getting ready for a baby soon to be arriving).

I did notice a bug this morning when I awoke, last night I put the S7 on a Foneso charging pad and this morning, my alarm went off alright but the phone was acting funny and the keys weren’t working so I restarted it and when you restart, you have to manually enter your password or PIN if you went that route.  Here’s where I say the fingerprint reader is amazing compared to the S5, no swiping, you just touch it and it works, whatever part of that finger you scanned before.  Anyhow, the keys were locking up, so I shut down all of the way, let it sit for a couple of minutes and started it again and the keys worked.  I’m not sure if it’s a problem with the phone but I think the pad might overcharge it and cause it to heat up.  Something to watch out for, also, I noticed what reading white script at night, the white seems to pulsate, I’m sure it’s a software bug but Samsung if you are reading, perhaps it’s something you should check out.

I took the Gear VR to work today and let my coworkers take it for a spin and all of them were impressed, mostly, they saw the 360 videos which are unlike anything most of the world has ever experienced.  It is like stepping into the future but the resolution could be a bit better.  Improvements I would recommend are individual focusing per eye.  I had surgery in the 90’s to correct my vision and my eyes are a little farsighted and are slightly different so one eye is always a little worse.  But still way cool, offering in the bundle is a great marketing ploy.  Putting it out to the masses make people want to see how well it works.  Well, tomorrow, I’m going to research more on how to get the free games that came with the bundle deal.  Overall, even with the very minor glitches, I’m very happy with my little piece of the future and I think most of you will be too.

Juniper River Dustman

We have decided on a name for the little girl currently residing in the brides belly. Juniper McKenzie was a strong character from SM Sterling’s book Dies the Fire and over the years, as books come out, I have made a consistent pilgrimage to Mr. Sterling’s stories. She became known as The McKenzie, a leader, a woman who could see the things that lied beneath what was going on and carried everyone around her into a vision of what should be. When the bride came out with her picks for baby names, Juniper leaped off the list and neither of us actually know anyone named Juniper.

If you have visited the blog before, you know we are utter nerds. River is a badass in both the Firefly and Doctor Who universe and we want our daughter will grow in a land of endless possibilities without limits. The human race is at the cusp of something greater in the next hundred years, we have to be ready for change to come and move forward and embrace it. Not turn away, I want to install that sense of wonder into her operating system. She’s the future of my little corner of the world.

 I want to give it all to her on a platter, teach her to love life, be kind to others and never stop asking why.

Oh, and we have a baby registry on Amazon.

Juniper's Baby Registry

How to do a mass text list or mailing list on an Android Phone

I just came back from a trip to Key West and I set up a mass text list for the 68 enlisted people that were out there with me.  I haven’t heard of anyone else doing it and it worked pretty good so I'm going to share it here.  I used this method to send out the phone numbers of our daily duty drivers, pass info on and since I was the Det LPO, I needed everyone's phone number in case there was a problem or someone wasn't where they were supposed to be.  This saved hours of time and we were able to change plans on a moments notice, almost like we had modern communication equipment! 

This works if you have an Android Phone (maybe Blackberry too, not sure about iPhones since I don't own one).  If you have an Android phone, you also have a Gmail account, I’ll put it together is steps.

This method is if you plan on putting the phone numbers in by hand (which I did)

11,         Go to Gmail.

22.       Click on the Gmail button on the top left hand of the screen.

33.       It will bring down a pull down menu, click “Contacts”

44.       If the contact isn’t a contact yet, you need to add them as a contact by clicking “New Contact”.

55.       After they are added, open up their contact card, click on the little crowd of people under the search bar that says “groups” when you put the curser over it and click “Create new” and call it what you will.

66.       Add names like that by opening up the contact you want on that list, clicking on the group icon, and clicking on the group.

77.       To send out mass txt’s by that method, open Messaging on your phone

88.       Click New Message, then Group and scroll down to the group you want

99.       Click on the names of the people you want to send messages to after you’re done, click Add.

110.   Type a message and send it

111.   MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AN UNLIMITED TEXTING PLAN OR YOU WILL REGRET IT!

112.   If you need to send something to all of the same people, just type anther message to them on the same string, you don’t have to click on the individual names again.

There is another method which theoretically should work that I’m going to try next time if I have all of the numbers on an excel file, I’ll export a group into an Outlook CSV, open that file and change all of the information to the numbers on the excel and Import it back into Gmail.

Book Review of Robert McCammon's: The Five

First off, Robert McCammon is my favorite author bar none and I consider Boy's Life one of the best works laid out in the English language.  But that and the review below are both personal opinions, I wrote the below for Audible.com

"This story flows like a river"

With every word of this book, Robert McCammon builds an elaborate web that goes across the American southwest, an epic and yet still a personnel battle between good and evil, makes you question your decisions and lays the groundwork and the reasoning behind deeds done later. The heroes of this book are hugely flawed, and the villains even after doing horrible crimes, aren't beyond redemption. The book is magic but it's not quite a fantasy, there are magical elements. It's the magic of what lies under our perceptions and the movers that are behind the scene. 


The book takes place from the viewpoints of the band members, their manager and a damaged Veteran of the Iraq war who was at the point of suicide at the beginning of the book and see's a music video that the band made protesting the war and it touched him.... but not in a good way.

Like most of McCammon's work, at the end of the day, you'll leave after grieving, laughing with joy, shivering in the shadows, saying, "Oh no!" and falling in love with the characters and feeling hope for the next day.  Good job Sir!

Lenovo z570 Core i7

Back in 2008, I needed some more processing power to put together my squadron's deployment video and purchased a Toshiba gaming laptop which worked great for what I needed but lately, I've noticed that it struggled with processing HD movies and handling what my new camera put out. The thought of a new laptop was lurking in the back of my mind.

Well a couple of weeks ago, one of my dogs (I believe!), knocked over a beer onto the keyboard and my trusty Toshiba wouldn't turn on. So I field stripped it, taking everything apart and cleaning it with alcohol and put it back together and it worked well, except for the keyboard and had to plug in a USB keyboard. So I back up everything on an external and started thinking about my next portable brain.

Last weekend, we came up to San Jose for the Fourth and went to Fry's Electronics (if you don't have one in your area, it's a geeks Disneyland) and I went to the tech gal and asked, "What's your best deal on an i7 processor laptop this weekend", and she said, "we just got a truckload of these Lenovo laptops that haven't even hit the floor yet" and I said, "Sweet!"

So a grand later (the laptop was 799, got a two year doggie warranty and a CD for the bride), I was the happy owner of the laptop in the title of this post. Here's my Amazon review of the same system.

Great deal for the price, July 7, 2011

PROS-
At the time of printing, this might be the lowest price Core I7 laptop on the market, solid metal body which does not feel cheap at all. A huge 750 gig hard drive, keys were felt smooth to use and not too much bloatware. The sound is great and I was a little upset by the loss of a fingerprint reader until I realized that it had built in facial recognition software called Lenovo VeriFace which turns on the camera and it puts a Borg circle thing around your right eye and automatically logs you on (this StarTrek gear impressed me and my coworkers)

No USB 3.0 (at least I haven't found it yet) which should be automatically included with any I7 processor, the mousepad takes some getting used to with the pebbled surface, while I like the keyboard, the number keys and the keyboard are squished together. The metal surface is nice but a fingerprint magnet. No Blueray player and only 4 gigs of RAM. Also, finding stats on the Lenovo website such as max RAM, what exactly is under the hood, those guys need to do some work on their web development, a polished product like this should be backed by good customer support online and PR, instead, you have to fight in circles to dig out gold nuggets of information. Also the included documentation in the box is skimpy.

Overall-
A great buy for the price, beautiful and quick laptop with a top of the line processor for half of the price I paid for my last laptop. So far it seems to do my HD video processing well which is why I upgraded. For a big purchase like this, so far I've had little buyer's remorse and would likely make the same purchase again.

Soon to be a Second Class Sprint Citizen

I’ve been a happy Sprint customer for years, even though every time I go to my home town of Prescott AZ, until a couple months ago, they didn’t even have 3g service. Being such a good customer I was eligible for the Sprint Premier program with let me upgrade my primary device every 12 months and it was just recently that they got any devices that challenged the other networks.

12 months roll around, if there was a decent device, I would upgrade. Starting April 1st, the Premier program turns into a Gold and Silver Sprint Premier tiered program. Gold, stays the same, upgrade each year, Silver, you can upgrade after 22 months. For my demographic with a shared plan at 149ish a month, I fall into the middle of the Silver plan and the only way to get to Gold is to up my bill over the 169.99 hump. As of today, I’m eligible for an upgrade but if I wait till next month, I’ll have to wait an additional 9 months. If you’re a Sprint customer and are interested in all of the numbers and facts, go here.

So my hand is forced. With much arm twisting, I am the owner of a very sleek Samsung Epic. I’m justifying this because my Samsung Moment tended to lock up and crash whenever I was trying to do something important and honestly say, Sprint made me do it. Still a bit urked about the two tier system, I like the fact that Sprint was always the cheaper choice, while I’m glad that I fell into that window, I feel bad for all of the folk who didn’t.

Now, hopefully Sprint doesn’t take away my Premier card because I posted this but someone had to say it.

Also, I'm a little worried about the news story about Sprint might be switching to LTE instead of Wimax considering I just picked up a 4g phone and I'll be stuck with it an extra 10 months (not that I have 4g in Lemoore but still..)

Remember when..

I got my first cell phone in 1999 through Quest and they immediately lost all of my information and every couple of weeks or so, I would call asking for a bill and to be moved to a higher minute plan and they would say my number wasn’t on their system and they couldn’t help me. This went on for almost a year till eventually I got a monstrous bill for a couple thousand dollars. I had been keeping track of my calls, people who I had talked to and dates and told them that this was their screw up and worked my way up the chain of Quest till eventually I got satisfaction and a bill that was much reduced.

Since then, there has always been a cell phone in my pocket. Going to school, many long commutes, moving from place to place, having a constant contact with the world for a single guy was the way to go. My first clamshell phone in 2002, I was excited when I got a cell phone that would hold play MP3’s in 2003 (it did a lousy job), 2005 my first camera phone, first QUARTY keyboard in 2007 (I actually have a blog post from that phone someplace here, it’s the Rumor post). Now I’m on my second Blackberry much to the dismay to many of my IPhone using coworkers and my son who thinks how cool it would be if I could get him an IPhone. Face it, I’m a mobile electronics geek, connected, will travel.

Right now, I’m driving up with the bride to San Jose for the weekend and reached into my pocket to call my dad and it was empty. Oh man, I left the phone in my uniform pocket. I keep looking around and patting my pockets (for the fifth time). So, this weekend, I’m unconnected well other then this blog post and maybe a status update on Facebook.

When I discovered the phone missing, my brain seized, for a second, have you noticed how attached we have become to our electronic appliances? I remember the day when I used to keep all of my phone numbers on a single piece of folded paper that fit in my wallet that went through 4 separate generations over a decade and a half. I still have all of those pieces of paper but they’re now living in a photo album. I also used my brain, I had dozens of phone numbers floating up there waiting to be called up, patterns I could use to pull them up, now? I don’t even remember my dad’s number, over the years I’ve picked up so many numbers, just dropping them willy nilly into my cell phone with address when I was able and now, I can’t remember anything. My phone, like many of yours, has become part of how we recall information.

A decade ago, I couldn’t imagine how much stuff I use my phone for, I track all of my appointments, I keep numbers and notes about what I did that day, email responded to instantly, want to share a scene? Click. Need to find someplace? Press. A different ring for every event in my life, it’s not big brother who controls what I do, it’s a little slab of plastic and transistors which I keep in my pocket.

P.S.

I'm hitting 6 years of cyber babbling here next weekend

I might be in love

With something other than my bride, the new Canon EOS-1D Mark IV just came out. Over the past year or so, DSLR cameras have included the ability to shot video and I saw this video shot by the Mark IV back story can be found here. Wow, for someone who's taken some low light videos, color me impressed, the video was taken just using street lights, it sees better in the dark then the human eye. The entire video was taken at 6400 ISO.

Unfortunately I can’t afford to drop 5 G’s on a camera, no matter how cool and sleek it is but with this camera, oh man. ISO settings up to 102,400? I can’t even get a grip around that number. One of these days, I’m going to take up my photography reins again but for right now, I guess I’ll just have to make due with my old S3. But if Bill Gates is a fan of the blog, it’s in my wish list!

First Post from my Blackberry Curve

I'm still digging down to the bottom of this piece of tech goodness, my last phone was an LG Rumor and I wore out the cable in the slide which caused the screen to turn green. I'm with Sprint right now and to upgrade my phone, it would have cost close to 500 dollars. So I looked on Amazon and found an unlocked Blackberry Curve for 350 by one of their sellers Lux Case.

There was a small problem with my order, they were out of the Red so I opted for another color which did delay my order a bit. I finally got it turned it on and it was in spanish. With the help of an online translating tool, I soon had it spouting out english text.
For some reason I wasn't able to register the phone online so I went to a Sprint store and had it turned on and my contact information transferred.

My take after the first 48 hours? I really like the free google aps, maps work great, I have both the Myspace and Facebook aps but actually like them better going through the phones web browser but both come in handy for uploading photos and status. Sprint has a TV app that I tried out but it slowed down the entire system so I pulled it. For some reason the audible.com app doesn't run smoothly, clunky in the playing of books and slower in downloading so I deleted that too and plan on continuing to use my regular MP3 player.

I'm still working on making this second nature but as with anything, it will take a little time. My Rumor was idiot proof but slow, while this is a complicated toy that James Bond's Q would have traded his left something to own. (It also has spellcheck' bonus!)

Surgery on my Acer Aspire One

When I picked up the new computer, I noticed reading online that it said you could replace the installed 512 ram chip with a 1 gig module and since that gig module was only 12 bucks on Amazon, how could I go wrong and pressed the one click button. Then I started looking around for directions and ran into this YouTube video and cringed. And started going though the message boards. It was split 50/50 between the people who did it and the ones that were too scared to open up their machines. I was torn till the card showed up in the mail and I couldn't help myself, I'm no mouse when it comes to fixing gadgets (and my percentages for fixing them grow higher each year).

You see, you need to take off 8 screws on the bottom including 2 under the rubber feet, unclip the key board, unplug that, unplug the touch pad, then take out 7 tiny screws and pull off the top faceplate. The mother board is jammed and only held in by the shape of the body and two screws and 2 cables and the wireless card plug. When I got to this part, I discovered that my model was different, I had a regular hard drive that was actually attached to the motherboard and the edge shoved under another metal panel, so had to unplug everything and pry up a corner and pull everything sideways then up leaving the hard drive attached to the motherboard then turned the motherboard over to get to the RAM located on the bottom. RAM is RAM, I popped out the old one and slipped the new one in. Being an ex mechanic, I‘m well versed at taking things apart and putting them back together again, everything went back together smoothly and it turned right on. It took about half an hour, I don’t recommend doing it unless you‘re good with your hands and people call you geek behind your back. After putting it all back together, I’m thinking that I should have videotaped the entire process, oh well, next time.

As far as use of the Aspire goes, this thing is better then sliced bread. I’ve got used to the touchpad and between XP and Vista, XP has it for speed hands down. This boots up in under a minute, with my card, it takes around 2 minutes to get my wireless modem to configure on Vista, this, it’s about 10 seconds and XP hasn't jammed up with Facebook yet. I think Microsoft needs to come out with a patch that strips Vista the crap out of Vista. The netbook runs cool on the lap, I have a 3 cell model it lasted for 2 hours and 10 minutes playing movies, probably more if I had turned off the WiFi. It’s amazing that you can get this much tech for 350 bucks.

Google maps is a peeping Tom

I was at a friends house and google maps caught me in her front yard unloading my wifes car! I've only been there 2 or 3 times, I just wanted to show her how street view worked. Sheesh! What are the chances of that? Maybe big brother is following me around.


View Larger Map

More geeky tech gear

I'm sitting at home typing on a new Acer Aspire One netbook on Google Doc's, my shoulder was complaining about carrying around my behemoth of a laptop, multiple hard drives and assorted computer gear so I broke down and purchased a super small and light model. So far, the only thing that I've had trouble getting used to is the little touch pad, a setting on in it keeps on changing the zoom level of the screen as I'm surfing around, I'll have to figure out how to turn it off. I've tried Skype out with video using my Sprint wireless USB drive and it works great. I haven't had any issues with getting used to the small keys and typing unlike some of the reviewers. For a system with only a gig of RAM, it's perky and quick. I'm looking forward to being able to slip it into the small pocket of my backpack and watch entire movies without having to recharge. Enough about that, post coming up about the rest of the trip, maybe written on this computer.

Mario Kart Love Song

When you're trying to explain the why of playing video games to your wife, this guy does the best job I've ever seen, now if only I could carry a tune.

Yay, fixed my links on the side:)

but I killed my cool clock, I suppose some readers will rejoice:(

MCAS Miramar 2008 Airshow F-22 Raptor

I've seen many shows, I can't even count how many times I've seen the Blue Angels but the F-22 was something totally different. This plane did things I wouldn't have expected to see out of a Robotech cartoon. The thrust vectoring really does make a difference, while other shows showed off speed and power, this aircraft danced across the sky, making incredibly tight turns. Remember the movie Top Gun and the spin that killed Goose? This plane did that on purpose and it was a strange sight to see a big fast military jet doing the tricks that are normally reserved to aerobatic biplanes.

Zune finally adds support for Audible.com

I admit it, I like listening to audiobooks when I drive cross country and usually with my 1000 mile hauls and the cost of CD's, it can been an expense proposition. I did the Twilight series while driving 3000 miles over to Arizona and northern California which was a hundred bucks give or take. Which would have cost me a fraction of that if I could have downloaded it on my Zune which wasn’t compatible with the format at the time.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I downloaded the Zune 3.0 firmware. Wow, neat, games, down load songs directly from any public Wi-Fi through the Zune Marketplace and it labels songs that it plays through the FM receiver that you can download if you like. While all of that is cool, the best thing I found last week was support for Audible.com. Yay, instant gratification at the click of a button, 7.49 the first 3 months and 14.95 for each month after which gives me one downloaded book per month and 30% off all of my other downloads. Yes, it might be a lot spend for a non-reader but for me, it’s days off of my life searching through stores or waiting for something to arrive in the mail through Amazon.

Suddenly, that long drive doesn’t seem so long and lonely anymore.

BlogWorld & New Media Expo and the 2008 Milblog Conference

Myself and several thousand regular Bloggers and Milbloggers will be will be trekking across a vast desert (without people shooting at us) by plane, train and automobile till we arrive at a small southwestern town called Las Vegas this weekend for the BlogWorld Expo. Yes, it’s that time of year again for the 3rd annual Milblog Conference (small joke, the last one was May 07)where we have fellowship in person instead of across a cybernetic divide and people get to find out how much cooler we are behind a keyboard. Sponsors of the Milblog Conference include Military OneSource, Military.com and of course our trusty USAA. This year I am thankfully not on a panel (fear of public speaking) and can take part just enjoying the show and hopefully live blogging it (yay, Wireless internet!) Friday night I’ll be attending a pre-conference bash with my wife hosted by my buddies over at Blackfive at the world famous Penthouse Lounge. Here is a list of the schedule and hopefully see some of you there (you can also follow me live on Twitter.)

Panel topics/times are below:
Date: September 20th, 2008
Location: Blog World Expo, Las Vegas
Agenda:

10:30a – 11:00a: Opening Remarks and Presentation of 2007 Milbloggie Awards

11:00a – 12:00p: Are MilBlogs Still Relevant? In the wake of a successful military surge in Iraq, waning media attention and an election year, are MilBlogs as relevant to the national conversation on war as they once were?

12:00p – 12:15p: Break

12:15p – 1:15p: MilBlogging as a Community. A fascinating look at how the milblogging community was built, what it’s achieved and how deep and wide its reach has become. We’ll explore how milblogging gives a voice to supporters, parents and spouses of service members, and how that voice is effectively used to support an entire military community.

1:15p – 2:45p: Lunch Break

2:45 – 3:45p: DoD Live Bloggers Roundtable: We will be joined by Pete Geren, Secretary of the Army, and General George Casey, Chief of Staff of the Army, for a special edition of the weekly DoD Live Bloggers Roundtable. Secretary Geren and General Casey will take audience questions re operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other topics.

3:45 – 5:00p: Free Time (Sit in on other panels or stroll the vendor floor).

5:00 – 6:00p: The New Cadre of War Reporters. Reporting from the Green Zone is not an option for this gritty band of milbloggers. Today’s technology enables milbloggers and embedded reporters to report directly from the battlefield. We’ll talk with some of these milbloggers about their experiences in the combat zone.

6:00p: Closing Remarks

I cut the cord

No, not that cord, I mean I’ve gone all of the way and switched over to cellular wireless internet.  My days of stealing WiFi signals are now over and I’ve signed up to Sprints mobile broadband service.  After all of these years of complaining about finding internet service while on the road and the crappy quality of unsecured wireless signals, I’ve taken the fatal plunge. 

From my apartment, my download speed is 1175 kb/s through speedtest.net in comparison to the California average of 5288 kb/s which is nothing compared to Japans 16,019 kb/s.  Even Russia is faster than us with 6512.  I’m basically saying that my internet is slow but worlds faster than 56k that almost everyone used a decade ago.  Plus, I can drag this anywhere I want and not feel guilty for mooching off of my neighbors.

My first feature length film

As my time draws to a close out here, I had one more project to complete. The book form cruise book fell though because we couldn’t get enough people to buy them to make it economically feasible. So, the cruise book staff voted to make another DVD and me, being the DVD guru with a brand spanking new laptop to handle it was put in charge. We had less then a month.

First I needed to gather a game plan, we started brainstorming. All of the brainstorming somehow ended up coming out of my head for some reason, I had them gather up all of their personal pictures and video onto a cruise folder on the share drive, decide on a musical theme for their shop and teach them how to make movies so I could be more of a directing force behind them and focus on the extracurricular activities that I had filmed and taken pictures of, i.e., softball league, martial arts, field meets, etc. I would also go around the different shops and letting everyone from each shop give a greeting and intro.

So I went to work on my works of art. I started off with 30 hours of video and a couple thousand martial arts pictures and cut it down to less then 20 minutes. I knew what I had just had trouble finding the shots, I was overloaded with information, songs I had liked before became earworms with slideshows and video haunting my dreams.

After what seemed like an eternity, the Kung Foolery video was done (to be uploaded to YouTube when I get to the rear) and I turned away to check on the progress of my co-conspirators and found that only one shop had made any progress at all. The Military Intel guys had everything put together for their shop including the interview and it was nicely packaged (not quite as nice as mine) and ready to be added to the final product. One Cpl wanted to do the Kung Fu and her shop, I had to talk her out of it at the beginning because she didn’t know what she was getting into. I think I was a little harsh because she didn’t have anything ready but was willing to work on it.

Just about everybody else said, “we have no clue, please help us doc”. The hardest part of making a video for me is picking the music theme. After that, everything else flows into place, it takes a while but at least you have a rhythm to put a timeline. That gives you objectives on what kind of pictures or videos you want to match to the words or the tempo.

One shop kept turning in inappropriate songs for the family viewing audience and couldn’t agree on anything so I slapped their pictures together with YMCA by the Village People and stuck that on the share drive. They then came up with some music that worked and I redid it even though, YMCA did seem to work pretty well considering how little work I had put into it.

Anyhow, I’m tired and rambling, today, I finished the final product which ended up being 116 minutes. In two weeks, I had produced and published, almost totally by my self, a feature length film (other then the 20 minutes that 3 of the shops did). My last video which up to that point was the longest was 33 minutes.

Ack, it was a true bear but I’m glad it’s done, I’ll just have to see how what the responses are like since I was under a deadline, I didn’t have time for anyone (including myself) to edit any of my work (just like this post).

See ya on the flip side.

Playing with new toys

Sorry about the blogging hiatus, I’m in the process of shutting down my old laptop and getting my new one spun up and backing up everything twice. This is the first laptop that I’ve actually maxed out the RAM and it books. I’ve taken it though it’s paces and haven’t been able to find anything that really slows it down. Even when it had 2 gigs of RAM, editing a half hour movie only caused a few second pause and processing the movie? 15 minutes.

There still is a dent in my wallet but like everything, it’s a speed bump in the past since I did have the spare change sitting around. There were no loans or credit card payments to worry about.

I’ve also started of all things, water aerobics. Yes, there is a pull on this base with clean cool refreshing water. It’s a definite change of scenery being out in the desert and only a short walk away from the barracks. I didn’t know what I was missing.

Currently the weather is dusty and windy with occasional brownouts where you can’t see more then 10 feet away. Daily clean up is a necessity and I fear taking the new laptop out of the plastic bag I have it secreted in till the dust goes down.

My greatest money saving photographical purchase has been a lens filter for the Canon S3, I received the filter in the mail and originally thought, this thing is huge. It covered up the entire telescopic portion of the camera with a tube and the filter screwed on the end and gave it a larger footprint. In my head I was thinking “Oh man, when am I ever going to use this?”.

Then the first dust storm happened and the lens hood totally blocked out the dust and when I had the camera in my cargo pocket and accidentally bumped the power button, the lens wasn’t jamming against the sides of my pocket which is one of the top killers of digital cameras (broken gears and motors). Instead it would turn on, open up in it’s space then close when it timed out without me ever knowing. Don’t have to worry about scratched lenses and can take pictures in the midst of the gnarliest dust storm without the fear of my camera dying.

Other news, the real reason I haven’t blogged is because I’m suffering some serious writers block, I’d write a few lines and my thoughts would fragment. Maybe the 4 trips out to this place are getting to me? I’m up for orders in January and am still unsure of where I’m going, hopefully get a change to call my detailer tonight and be able to get an answer. Take care everyone and hope you are all safe.