Recently, as you all know, I built a new PC. It uses a 3Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 4Gb of ram. It’s a mighty machine and plays games incredibly. More importantly, it makes short work of photo editing, even when I apply multiple changes to RAW images.
I think with the copious time I have during the holiday weeks coming up I’ll start re-reading my photo editing books and see if I can’t pick it up. I’m already a member of several stock websites, and I know several people in my building that shoot weddings - perhaps I can spark up a deal.
I take some half decent photos, but with some photoshop treatment they could become exceptional photos.
This weeks topic at In The Loop was Charity: What Gives? Did you know that the US is #1 when it comes to donating money, but only #8 when it comes to donating time? Listen to this weeks show Sunday 6pm on MPR (91.1FM for those of us in the Twin Cities - Find your station). There are only 3 more episodes left this season - don’t miss what’s being called “The Prairie Home Companion for Generation X”! We’re taking next week off, so the next taping will be on November 29th. Then it’s December 6th and December 13th. Sign up and come give us your opinion. Curious as to what an episode of In The Loop is like? Listen to last weeks show, Bullying for Grown-Ups - the most packed show we’ve had to date!
First off - Vita.Mn has announced it’s one-year anniversary. What’s Vita.Mn you ask? Vita.Mn is a website owned and operated by the Star Tribune and bills itself as “your ultimate guide to what’s going on in the Twin Cities. Here you can connect with other locals to share thoughts and recommendations on Twin Cities hotspots and happenings.”
Project MBOT is a direct competitor to this. It’s for people that love music and art. It features a quick clean design and lets you subscribe to bands you like (Such as NOFX, Bad Religion, Deathcab for Cutie, etc) and you will be alerted to concerts happening within a radius you define. It’s running on an engine I’ve been working on called StarShine. StarShine is a highly adaptable screen scraper/XML reader that uses fuzzy logic to match band information.
Eh? Ok, but really, I don’t quite understand. Ok, after the jump I’ll tell you more about it.
Yesterday I bought Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare . Billed “The most photo-realistic game yet”, it actually delivers it. I played it, it uses modern weapons, and has several missions where you lead an assault on an unnamed country where the signs are in Arabic and the rogue leaders last name is Al-Asad.
It’s very realistic. So much so, that I actually feel guilty playing. There’s a mission where you’re a gunner in an AC-130 Gunship, guarding a squad on the ground as they approach a landing zone. Your view is only in the enhanced black and white of nightvision. It literally looks like I’m watching CNN footage as I fire my 105mm cannon at troops and watch them tumble like rag dolls. Watching building explode from the impact if incendiary loads.
I like my war sims as much as the next guy - but there’s a difference between fighting WW2, which happened a long time ago and I never witnessed first hand, to fighting a very realistic looking Iraq war. With scenes I’ve seen in the news.
I don’t know how long I can continue. But the physics do look damn good.
So I’ve been debating on saying screw it, and turning the front page into a new blog, keeping it more local, and seeing if I can’t stir up a few things. So I might be doing that, I’ve been messing around with MovableType - once I can get the damn 500 errors to stop, I can check it out.
I’m also working on an article about how Google is the new Microsoft and alternatives for everything they have. Coming eventually.
I’m an incredibly more ornate writer then I am orator. I can’t speak at all. The words, I try, but they all seem to jam together and want to come out at once. So alas, I write instead of speak.
I’ve been soul searching. It’s an interesting ride - I’ve stirred up a lot of sediment that forgot about.
Definitely not mine, but below is a video from the wonderful TAP Plastics on how to create your own strip heater to bend plastic. This particular one is created with the BriskHeat 36″ strip heater. They also make an excellent free standing heater if you don’t want to spend the 5 minutes to build your own. Both methods work well and heat the plastic evenly to ensure a perfect bend. Good luck!
