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Monday, October 2,
2000
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It was a busy weekend for the Tucker household.
We spent more than 10 hours at the Dixie Classic Fair on
Saturday, arriving there sometime around one o'clock that
afternoon and not leaving until at 10:30 PM. We had
plenty of rides and an abundant amount of "fair
food."
Then it was up early on Sunday morning to head to
Charlotte for the Carolina Panthers vs. Dallas
Cowboys. Neither team should have won this game, but
we enjoyed the family outing.
The seats were great, club seats, right in the corner of
the end zone. They became available last last week
when some invited guests of the company weren't able to make
it. I was in the right place at the right time.
There was an interesting moment as we arrived at our seat
location. It was about 10 minutes before kickoff and
there was someone seated in two of what we thought were our
four seats. The usher came over to see what was going
on and we both produced tickets for the same seats. He
started scratching his head and then noticed two of my
tickets were for next week's game. Uh oh. What
do we do now? The usher was smart and there were other
empty seats in the area. He wisely said, hang out here
and if no body shows up for these seats (gesturing toward
the empty seats) then you're good. If they show up,
then we'll work something out. I was thinking he might
be about to kick us out. Thankfully he used his head,
made a compromise and no one showed up for the other
seats. It was our lucky day.
The game. Well, it was a terrible football game,
but it was a beautiful afternoon.
We were all exhausted by the time we arrived home about
6:30 PM Sunday evening. We had left about 10 that
morning.
My Olympus D-490 camera arrived today.
Haven't had much time to play with it. Got the
batteries in, the wrist cord attached and snapped a couple
of sample photos. I plan to play with it some more
this week and then head off to Orlando with it this
weekend. At this point I only have an 8 meg card, so I
guess I will have to take my laptop and download photos
every evening. Better practice some more this week.
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Tuesday, October 3,
2000
| When I posted last night's
update I thought it finished much quicker than it had done
so for the last couple of weeks so I thought I would fire up
ping plotter on \\coyote to see how Road Runner was
doing. I was fully expecting to see a slowdown once
again on the Atlanta hops.
Not so. Much to my surprise it
looks like RoadRunner may have rerouted its traffic to the
AT&T network and the times are back where they should
be. Of course I saved you a picture
of the traceroute.
I hope I am not yelping too early and
jinx this recovered speed.
I spent some frustrating time with my new new
Olympus D-490 camera tonight trying to get my notebook
computer set up for downloading pictures. Let me point
out quickly that it was no fault of the camera's.
We are heading to Walt Disney World for a long weekend on
Friday. The kids are out of school on Monday and
Tuesday (Oct. 9-10) and Andrew has been wanting to go to
Disney for a long time, so we planned the trip at a time
when (hopefully) Disney will not be so crowded. I've been
checking out this unofficial
guide to visiting Disney. The official Disney site
should offer this information and get rid of some of its
flash.
My new Olympus has arrived just in time for this trip, so
I thought I would get my Digital NiNote Ultra 2000 set up
from downloading of the pictures from the camera. This
way I can take my notebook along and download the photos
each night in the hotel room. Sounds like a good idea.
The problem came after I had installed the software and
then tried to communicate with the camera. Com 1
should have been the serial connector on the back of the
computer (it was) and Com 3 is the internal modem.
I must have tried 15 times to get these two devices
talking (the camera and my notebook) and tried everything I
could think of. Heck, I even went in and deleted all
com ports (except 3) and added them back. Same problem
continued. Then it struck me. There was this
little icon down in the system tray for a Palm Pilot Hot
Sync manager. The Hot Sync uses a com port and I
thought that maybe it was grabbing the port ahead of the
download manager.
That was it. I removed (exited) the HotSync manager
and fired up the camera software and presto, I was finally
communicating with the camera. The next problem was
fine tuning the connection speed. I started at 115,200
and the download would drop out about halfway through a
picture, so I adjusted to 57k and all photos in the camera
downloaded just fine.
Now I'm set to start snapping away at Disney.
The serial connection wasn't the only thing I
battled in the digital photography arena.
I also bought a SanDisk
USB image reader and first tried to install this
reader on my Windows 2000 Professional machine. The only
driver available for the reader is a beta and I never
could get it installed on my W2K machine, so I moved it over
to a Win 98 box and it installed effortlessly. I
didn't spend a lot of time on the W2K machine, thanks to a
warning last week form Mark Bridgers [markbridgers@yahoo.com].
Mark thinks this beta software ate some of his images and I
didn't want to take the chance.
It's amazing how fast this USB will transfer the images,
not to mention how much it will save on my camera battery.
I think the next accessory for the camera will be
the AC power adapter so I can save the batteries. A
serial connection download will eat the batteries up.
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Wednesday, October
4, 2000
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Now that I am armed with my new digital
camera I am concerned about battery life. I know that taking
a bunch of photos will suck the life out of the lithium Ion
batteries that come with the camera.
And since I plan to take my notebook
with me to Disney this weekend and download images on a
nightly basis with the slow serial connection...and since
the camera has to be powered on for this function to work I
became concerned about battery life. I always have the
option of replacing the current batteries with 4 AA alkaline
batteries, but that within itself could be more expensive
than the Disney admission. Therefore I turned to the web for
some research on rechargeable batteries. I already knew from
a few years of cell telephone and two way radio usage that I
wanted to look for Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH ) and not
Nickel Cadium (NiCD ) batteries.
My research ultimately led me to Thomas
Distributing on the web, who offers about anything you
might want in the battery and charger line, especially for
accessories like digital cameras and CD players which drain
batteries quickly. I took a look at the NexCell, Kodak, GP
and Quest offerings before deciding to give the newest
MahaCell brand a try. I decided on the Mahacell
NiMH battery because their newest cell (I guess you
don't call 'em batteries anymore) because they offer a
1550mAH cell, which claims to test out at 1650mAH to 1700
mAH on average. Kodak also offered a 1600 mAH battery, but I
chose the Mahacell
combination package, which also included a 12 volt car
cigarette lighter adapter.
Also knowing that downloading photos
would drain these batteries quickly I wanted a power adapter
that I could connect to the Olympus D-490 while transferring
the files to save my batteries. I chose the DIGIPOWER AC
Direct Digital Camera AC Adaptor, choosing the model that's
supposedly for the Olympus
Digital camera.
Naturally, I
wanted all of this prior to my trip to Disney, which is in a
couple of days so I sprung for the inflated 2 day UPS
shipping. I was tempted by the next day air shipping, but
since we are not leaving until Friday afternoon, I thought I
would take a chance on 2-day and save $10.
Most sites seemed to be competitively
priced, so I went with Thomas Distributing, a company I've
heard good things about in the past. I also considered Small
Power.com. This site is so similar to Thomas
Distributing that I wondered if they might be owned by the
same parent company. If not, they must share the same
shopping basket provider. They're that similar.
The countdown to our departure to
Disney is fast approaching, as is the excitement level at
home. We'll be leaving Friday afternoon around three and are
scheduled to arrive in Orlando at 6:30 PM. I hope the plane
is not late!
I have been using Pete
Werner's unofficial on-line guide to Walt Disney World
to map out our trip this week. In my opinion, this site is
more beneficial than the official Disney site. His site
includes some very useful information like park maps, hours,
ticket pricing options, exhibit rehabs and different sites
on the different parks. I used the Character
Meals / Dinner Shows page today to book a reservation
for Friday evening's dinner at the Contemporary Hotel --
Chef Mickey's Dinner. I chose a 9:15 PM seating, allowing
time for our flight to be a little delayed and give us time
to reach our hotel and travel to the Contemporary . At this
buffet, Chef Mickey, Minnie, Chip, Dale, Donald and Goofy
are supposed to make an appearance.
Another useful bit of info picked up
from this site was the scoop on the Disney FastPass,
a feature that will allow you to make a reservation for a
particular ride and not have to spend most of your time
waiting on line. Hopefully, this will not be needed this
time of year, but I was glad to learn of its existence at
any rate. Actually, Katie had mentioned this from her trip
with the school group last year and I assumed it was
something available for an extra charge. Amazingly it's
available at no cost.
I used this site tonight to prepare a
cheat sheet so we can map out our park strategy on the plane
enroute to Orlando.
Memory
prices are beginning
to head south, but there’s still not enough of the
stuff to go around for all of us.
Netscape is threatening to release
a new
version of its web browser and is moving closer to a
release date. Today, they opened the redesigned Netscape
site in a step towards the new Netscape.
Amazon.com isn’t just for books
anymore. You can now get everything from videos to
electronic games to cars to music to auctions, well, you get
the picture. Amazon is now adding a photo developing
service. You will be able to send them a roll of film and
they’ll prepare prints or make you up a set of digital
prints.
Here’s a site I’ve added to my
daily reading. OpinionJournal
from the Wall Street Journal site offers some interesting
editorials each day and not all of them seem to come from
the nation’s business newspaper. Now I drop a name
or two by saying around the office, "I read an
editorial in the Wall Street Journal that
said..." Turns a few heads.
If you watch the next Presidential debate
between George W. Bush and Al Gore, here’s a site you
might want to watch at the same time the debate it going on.
Debatefacts.com
will check what’s being said from the podiums against the
facts in real time. I'll bet they were busy last
night.
In the past there have been
discussions about the amount of radiation that cell
phones produce and how bad it might be to have what amounts
to a transmitting radio held close to your brain. In June of
this year the telecommunications industry said it would
start making the amounts of radiation produced by cell
phones made available to the public and that the info would
be disseminated in a consumer friendly way. Our friends at
C|Net have produced some helpful charts that’s show us
where our phones stack up:
Highest-Radiation
Cell Phones
Lowest-Radiation
Cell Phones
The
Complete Chart
10
highest-radiation cell phones!
10
lowest-radiation cell phones
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Presidential
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[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Thursday, Oct 5,
2000
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This may give you some insight into just
how much of a geek I really am.
Last night I decided to make Andrew
and Katie a Walt Disney World book. I went to Pete
Werner's unofficial on-line guide to Walt Disney World
unofficial sight and performed some major cut and paste. In
this book I included
- Maps
of the four parks we might attempt to visit
- Theme
park schedule
- Parade
and fireworks schedule
- E-Ticket
and FastPass info
- Height
and age restrictions chart
- Character
dining chart(we’ll eat with Chef Mickey, etc.) when
we arrive tomorrow.
- Overview
of the parks
- Thumbnail
info on each attraction
By the time I was done, this
information numbered almost 70 pages (and the word file is
4.5 megs!). I was calling it our definitive guide to
visiting Walt Disney World.
When Katie asked if we were going to
take this into the theme park with us I gave her the answer
she was looking for. No. I made this book mainly so Andrew
could read about Disney and map his strategy for visiting
attractions. It’s something we can look through together
on the airplane and in the hotel room.
I checked Orlando's
extended weather forecast tonight on the Weather Channel
site and it looks like we’re in for nice weather for our
long weekend. I am not scared away by those isolated
thunderstorm logos. Heck, it’s Florida. It’s supposed to
rain in the afternoons. Much better than it’s supposed to be
here at home. A major cold front is scheduled to move
through in the next couple of days.
The word is superstation TBS is
going to try something new during the broadcast of the
Winston Cup from Lowe’s Motor Speedway this weekend.
First there was the info crawl at the
bottom of the screen. TBS is moving to the next step. They
claim they’re never going to leave the race, not even for
commercials. When it comes time for a commercial they say
they’re going to a picture-in-picture mode, leaving the
race up in a small window and playing the commercial full
screen, rather, majority screen.
At first you might wonder if this
might diminish the impact of the commercial for the
advertiser. I think it will be better for the advertiser.
With the race still showing it will mean that we will
probably not surf away during the break. There might be a
chance for the advertiser that some who wouldn’t have in
the past, might actually see the commercial. And for the
race fan, we’ll more than likely disregard the commercial,
but we still get to see all of the race.
As you know there are no TV timeouts
in Winston Cup racing, so I think it’s a good idea and
will bet one that’ll be drafted as the major networks come
to the sport on a full time basis next year.
Here’s an interesting idea
heading for an airport near you. United, American and
Delta plan
to provide high-speed (11M bit/sec) wireless LAN for us
in airport lounges and at terminals and gates.
I would say they’re taking a page
from the major hotel chains who provide high speed web
access in hotel rooms for a fee. While I think this is a
great service, it’ll be interesting to see how they price
it. You’re typically (hopefully) only at a departure gate
for a little while vs. an evening in the hotel room.
This ought to be some interesting
reading.
Microsoft's dynamic
Online Annual Report can be download or online viewing,
featuring Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer's Letter to
Shareholders and translations in 11 languages.
Just when you thought people (like
me) talking on cell phones while driving were the only
menace to society. Now there may be
plans for the Internet in your car.
Adopting the Windows CE for Automotive
platform, automotive manufacturers have an idea to
deliver the power of the internet to your car.
Are e-signatures really going to
replace pen and ink? Analysts, software vendors and users examine
the impact of the new e-signatures
law on
e-commerce.
Gary M. Berg agrees that grabbing some
rechargeable batteries for the
digital camera is a good idea.
For a Nikon 950 here at work
we also chose the Maha batteries. I'd say the 950 must be
able to run for 2 hours or more on them, as I also used it
for a serial transfer. But the AC adaptor is a good idea.
The camera itself you won't leave on for long periods of
time _except_ when transferring.
You really need another memory
card; I can't imagine an 8Mb card is enough for a day of
shooting.
I
hope the battery pack and AC adapter arrive before I have
to leave tomorrow!
And you’re right. That’s one
place that Olympus dropped the ball when they included
only an 8 meg memory card. It wouldn’t have cost them
much more to include a 32 meg card. And while they were at
it I would suggest including the AC adapter. Sure it add
another $25 (their cost), but we’d be willing to pay
more. I guess they wanted to keep the price point under
$500.
Thanks to fellow daynoter Dan
Seto [mail@seto.org] for
letting me know the cell phone links from yesterday were
broken.
Thanks for the great links
you've been putting up (and I like your redesign also)!
One small problem with the ones pointing to the C|Net
article on cell phone radiation. The links point to your
domain, rather then to C|NETs. For example:
http://www.wakeolda.com/wireless/0-1923401-7-2651369.html?
tag=st.wr.1923401-7-2587640.txt.1923401-7-2651369
Maybe you could check the
links and point them to www.cnet.com?
Thanks!
Keep up the good work.
Aloha - Dan
PS - If someone has already
noted the problems, feel free to ignore this email.
Thanks for the kind words on the redesign.
And major thanks for the notice that the links are broken.
That’s what I get for writing my report in one software
package on one machine and pasting it into Front Page on
another. I hope they’re working OK now.
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Friday, October 6,
2000
|
We're
off to see Mickey and pals.
We'll
be returning here sometime around October 11.
Come
back to see us.
And
thanks for your continued viewing!
Okay, I admit it. I
am no Al Gore supporter. That makes my view of the
current election process somewhat clouded, but I feel
compelled to share some of this with you.
I mentioned recently that Opinion
Journal was a new reading source for me. It's also
provided me with some interesting reading about Vice-President
Gore and I just had to share some of it with you.
The reason that I mention
some of these things here is they have been the topic of
conversation around the coffee machine at work. While
George W. Bush seems to come off very credible while Mr. Gore
will say anything. Apparently, it's even a stretch to
say Vice-President Gore is loose with the truth. Will
this get any better if he happened to be elected
President. I don't think so. Here's
a site that lists some of Gore's better known mis-statements
of fact.
Maybe some of America is
catching on. The most
recent poll from Portrait of America gives Bush a slight
edge today. I hope America will wake up to Gore's
passion for embellishing facts...and soon.
If you would like to
check the facts vs. what was said by the candidates in the
two debates so far this political season, follow these
links. Ok, I admit it, it comes with a Bush slant, but
fact are facts.
In my quest to find the
best way to use a graphics program to help remove
"red eye" from photos I've taken with a digital
camera. I have PhotoShop installed here, which doesn't
come with an automatic red eye removal program. I have
been looking at a couple of different graphics programs which
would help with this operation I was hoping to find an easy
way to accomplish this with PhotoShop.
This led me to the internet
sight Ultimate
PhotoShop Tips and Techniques where I found some
interesting reading, including some tutorials. However, it was
at the Mayhem
Studios site that I found an easy way to use PhotoShop to
remove red-eye. This site will provide a PhotoShop
action that makes this process very simple and even gives you
some help if you're not familiar with installing actions.
C|Net must have been
thinking of me when they posted this
site on digital photography. The site includes tips
on perfecting your images, choosing the right camera, sharing
your photos and more.
I have mentioned several
times before that I am employed in the tobacco
industry. I think I have also mentioned what I think of
the extortion called the Master Settlement Agreement between
the industry leaders and the states. A settlement, I
might add, that is costing consumers, not the companies,
billions of dollars each year.
If the dollars from the
settlement were being used for what the states had originally
promised, then it would be one thing. But these states
have used these funds for everything except what they promised
when they took on Big Tobacco.
There is a story in this
morning's Winston-Salem
Journal that points out this fact. It even goes
further to say that only five of the states have met the
minimum recommended spending levels for smoking prevention and
cessation. Kansas, as an example, used a good portion of
their first check to make up a budget shortfall.
To say that this whole deal
frosts my ......, well, you get the picture.
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