RouseWorld | Main -- February 2004 Archives

New toy

I have been really fustrated lately. A while back my laptop went out on me and hasn't responded to treatment. It looks like the computer isn't talking to the hard drive — but who knows if that is a cable or a motherboard problem.

If it is a motherboard issue, that could mean a $400+ repair bill.

This weekend I finally decided that:

Still life with lamp

I've been working with Adobe's Photoshop CS "Camera Raw" import plug-in and comparing it with Canon's "File Viewer Utility" (which converts Raw images to TIFF files or JPGs).

Yellow submarine

Via the always interesting B3ta, a nice little submarine "sim." Nothing too heavy — just relaxing music, pretty fish and a few old ship wrecks.

It's a nice little demo and I can see this being made into an interesting game. Let the player try to find and recover some sunken cargo (or something) ... just add an inside the sub view, support ship (and variable weather), ability to build sonar maps and a little remote sub along with the manned version.

I'm thinking Myst — underwater with ROVs.

The Rockall Times

There is something interestingly alien about British humor. Brits are pretty much people like us, right — but there are enough cultural differences to create what Gibson has called a mirror-world. I think that is what draws me to British humor and things like Monty Python, Dead Ringers, TV Go Home and The Register.

Anyway, to that list I am now adding The Rockall Times — a website that in itself is a terribly obscure joke that doesn't make a bit of sense to us Yanks.

And if the site offends you ... just laugh, it's only serious.

We're getting the band back together

I've mentioned this before, but Apple has released (perhaps in the Klingon sense) an application called GarageBand. Wired (which is part of the Mac cult) has a good article on the application and the scene that has built up around it.

Hey ... so how's that for link dense and topical?

Odd searches

RouseWorld's webserver records the search string folks used to find this site — if they did make a search somewhere and click from the search site to this site. Sometimes these search strings make sense, sometimes they are funny and sometimes they are very odd.

How odd?

How about: "leucocytoplania or linkboy or kimbang or macrocythemia or ungouty." I mean what on earth do blood disorders, torch carriers, a Peace Corps volunteer and Little Lord Fauntleroy have to do with one another?

And how did someone reach RouseWorld looking for this stuff?

Well, thanks...

Today after work I went to check my (USPS) mail and noticed an oddly colored leaf on the porch. Um, no ... it wasn't a leaf. It was the well chewed head of a squirrel, sitting on my porch.

Of course my first thought was ... awww — one of the feral cats remembered me on Valentine's Day. I hope I didn't offend the cats, but I didn't bring the thing into the house.

Restoring the classics...

Remember those classic films — "A Boy and his Table," "Marvin the Mars Monster," and the cliffhanger "Machine?"

No?

That's okay, they are all Super8 films I shot in the late 1980s. I've recently started work on transferring them to MiniDV, and from there to QuickTime. Then everyone can see them!

It has been a bit more difficult than I though, however. I've gotten really bad flicker I'm trying to fix and the color balance is all wrong. But that said, I've released the first test transfer:

Life found on Mars!

Well, no — not yet. The following announcement is from Steve Popson over at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, where they are going to have another film playing.