Tuesday, June 28th, 2005

As many may know (and no doubt have been anticipating greatly), I will be visiting Atlanta for the 4th of July and the week following. I plan on being in town the night of the 2nd, and will be heading back on the 10th.

July 3 - Bowling?
July 4 - Swimming @ Parents, shindig @ the D-rock homestead afterwards.
July 5 - ?
July 6 - Trivia Night @ Moe’s and Joe’s?
July 7 - ?
July 8 - Rafting trip/cookout
July 9 - Rafting trip
July 10 - Back to hoelando

Either the 5th or the 6th I plan on seeing a Braves game - But other than that, I’m wide open on the 5th and 6th. Also, I think a game of bowling would not only be fun, but seems like it’s tradition at this point and it’s silly to mess with that. I’m not sure if MJ still does trivia night, but if so, I’d like to give that a go and see if we can do a little better than last time. If you’re free one of those nights with a question mark, let me know and we can hang.

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Posted on June 28th, 2005 | No Comments »

Sunday, June 12th, 2005

I bought a new 12′ Powerbook yesterday, and just got done setting it up today. Apple has a .Mac promotion going on, so I decided to give it a try. I mainly tried it out so that I can sync bookmarks, keychains, address books, calendars, etc across computers. the new .Mac sync feature of Tiger makes it pretty easy to do so. The only thing that seems flaky is the 3rd party apps that also use this syncing API - Transmit 3.2 has built in .Mac syncing support as well, but it’s having trouble syncing my favorites to my Powerbook. Anywho, overall I like it a lot. Not sure if I’ll renew or not in a year, but I have a while to figure out if I like it enough.

We’ve been having brownouts all weekend here, and it’s driving me nuts. Thank god for my UPS on my G5, otherwise I would have simply shut it off. Having such a crappy on/off power supply is awful for computers, and really any electronics. The lights have been flickering every once and a while, and it seems like the power cuts off every 6 hours or so. I called the power company and of course they’re “aware of the issue”, but nothing has changed yet. Good times.

I’m hoping that the weather stays nice today - it rained on and off last night, but we have been planning on going to the beach today. I’m not all that willing, however, to drive 40 minutes each way when there’s a good 50% chance we’ll be seeing clouds and rain. The day is young (it’s only 11am) so we’ll see what happens.

I’ve been working on 2 projects for school lately, one of which is a TV commercial for a fictitious product called toastables - pre made, frozen toast that you simply microwave for 1 minute for perfect toast every time. It might be funny - we’ll see how it turns out. The other project is a simple video game for my Interactive Media class - I’m really liking how it’s turning out so far. It’s a pretty basic game, where you have to shoot falling objects out of the sky. You have a slingshot to do so, and it was pretty cool trying to figure out the physics of gravity and tracking the slingshot using Director’s programming language, lingo. I should be done in 2 weeks - as that’s when it’s due - so i’ll be sure to post it for your viewing and playing pleasure then.

I’m really excited about the July break we have @ FullSail. I plan on being in Atlanta from July 2 to the 10th. I’ve already got some good stuff lined up - namely the annual rafting trip and Ryan’s 4th of July shindig - and I want to try to see some other kids while I’m in town. The great thing too is, once I’m done with this little break, I’m really in the home stretch at school. I have one 2 month long class, and three 1 month classes left. Most of them look pretty laid back, too. I’m so ready to be outta here.

Posted on June 12th, 2005 | 3 Comments »

Wednesday, June 8th, 2005

Well, it looks like hell hath finally frozen over. The unthinkable, at least in the Mac community, has happened. Apple has chosen to migrate over to the x86 architecture. Rumors began to crop up over the weekend, and honestly I didn’t really believe that Apple would simply move over to a new architecture. I figured that Apple either was recruiting another chip maker on board to produce PPC processors, or maybe the rumors were pointing to some sort of new Apple device – a “tablet PC” has been in the rumors for quite some time. In any event, I never thought they would simply announce a wholesale change to a new platform.

I was wrong.

The reason that this happened, in my humble opinion, is IBM could not get a G5 processor into the PowerBooks. It’s as simple as that. People have been demanding a more powerful version of one of the most popular notebook computers for quite some time, and IBM could not deliver. The G5, while a very nice processor, does not scale down well due to its massive power requirements and equally massive heat production. Basically, if IBM were to put such a chip into a laptop, it’d leave a really nice 3rd degree burn on your leg faster than you can say emergency room. Moreover, I can’t see one of those laptops having a battery life of over an hour or so.

So, I think IBM approached Apple and said, “We can’t put a G5 into PowerBooks or iBooks. It’s just not going to happen for the next 2 or so years.” PowerBooks are one of Apple’s biggest sellers (I don’t have or know of any actual stats, but anecdotal evidence points to that), and without an update on the horizon, sales would plummet, killing a huge chunk of a company’s revenue stream. Obviously, something had to be done.
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Posted on June 8th, 2005 | 9 Comments »

Friday, June 3rd, 2005

I got a hold of an advance copy of In Your Honor, the latest album by the Foo Fighters. I must say, as a pure rock album goes, I haven’t heard anything thing solid from start to finish in quite some time. In Your Honor is a double album, with the first being more ‘classic’ Foo Fighters, heavy on the rock and filled with Dave Grohl’s signature vocals. The second disc is slower paced, acoustic tracks that compliment the first set of songs very well. I always enjoy bands that can rock as much as Grohl and company can, but still can write very beautiful songs as well.

In Your Honor starts off with the title track, and it’s one of the best songs on here. Very fast, very hard and it really gets you excited about the rest of the album. From the first minute or so I knew I was going to enjoy this 20 song CD. The pace slows down a bit, but I’m really impressed with this entire collection of songs from start to finish. I’m really looking forward to getting a hold of my pre-ordered copy when it comes out.

Pre-Order this album from iTunes and receive 2 bonus tracks and some other goodies.

Posted on June 3rd, 2005 | 3 Comments »

Wednesday, June 1st, 2005

NYT has an article about what life in Alpharetta, GA is all about. Anyone who grew up in suburbia will most likely feel a bit of nostalgia when reading this article, but it also accurately paints a picture of what I dislike so much about the area I grew up in. Quick background - Alpharetta is one of those megasuburban areas - about 35 miles north of Atlanta, with a population around a quarter of a million of people, it’s filled with strip malls, SUVs and soccer moms. Good times. The article is the story of one family who was transferred here for the husband’s work, and their subsequent adventures while living here.

It’s funny though, I do have one major difference from the family profiled in the article: while they came to Atlanta for work and have no ties there, the only thing that would make me want to move back to suburban Atlanta are my ties to the area - I grew up there, and most of my family and friends are from there. Ironic, I suppose, given a good 8 out 10 people I know from Atlanta did not grow up there. Heck, I can’t name more than 5 or so people I know that grew up in greater Atlanta. While most people come to Atlanta for work and are gone as quickly as they came, I’m curious to see if I could be one of the rare few who can be FROM Atlanta and still live there for the majority of my life.

I guess first step is moving back there, eh?

Posted on June 1st, 2005 | 9 Comments »