Trip to Ohio
Tracy and I took off a week and went back to Ohio to visit her family. We left last Wed night at 8pm and got back in this Tuesday night at 11pm. It was a good week. We stayed with her brother, who had recently remodeled his kitchen. He also had a cat...and my allergies were having a fit. I was miserable for a week, but it didn't really spoil the fun. We sat on his front porch and hung out with friends. The next door neighbors had a mother rabbit and her little baby bunnies living in their flower garden. It was pretty neat to see baby rabbits. I didn't manage to get a pic of the babies but did get a few of the mother.
We also took a road trip to Cincinatti to visit a friend of Tracy's from college. A pretty place. We visited Ohio State, where she went to school for a few years. A big campus, but also very pretty. I left the battery in my small digicam at home so no pics of that. D-oh. Almost contemplated driving down to TN to see my mom for her birthday, but since we only had the rental car for one day, if we left immediatly when we had come up with the idea, we would have been able to stay about 10 minutes and have to leave to make the 10 hour drive back. So, that didn't happen.
The next day we went to Mohican, an Ohio state park. Very pretty, reminded me of Fall Creek Falls in Tennesse, one of the prettiest places on earth IMHO. Lots of hills, cliffs, very green, winding roads, the lodge looked the same, etc. Didn't have a 180ft waterfall, but that's kinda rare anyway.
The
coolest part was the dam. It was erected after a giant flood destroyed
the valley. It had this giant spillway, that hasn't ever seen action
(because it was designed for biblical floods I guess). It was a giant
funnel about 70 feet across. You could hear the water from the dam
rushing below, I just wish I could have looked inside!
The next day we went to a family reunion. The weather was great and at one point, this huge black thundercloud was looming on the horizon. Very, very black cloud. But it went right around us and we continued to get sunshine the entire time. I listened to Tracy's uncle tell all kinds of stories about dogs. He told one about a dog of his in Vietnam that almost started a suicidal battle between the US and the Koreans, or something like that. He also told stories about shooting cats, which was good to hear considering cats had made me mildly miserable for most of the trip. Pretty funny guy.
Anyway, it was a good time. I miss the weather back east. They actually had spring showers followed by sunshine and birds chirping. Out here we have this gloomy weather for months during the spring/summer. And thunderstorms! Man! So cool, I forgot how much I love real weather!
I didn't get many pictures because I left that battery at home, but I did have my big cam with me so I got a few shots of other things.
Hamming It Up
Wired News: Hamming It Up at Radio Meets:
If you think you know what a nerd is, try visiting a swap meet or convention where amateur radio operators like to hang out.
Heh. There has been talk at work of 'nerd quotient'. I would like to point out that there are those of you who think that you are nerds. You're very nerdy, do lots of neat things and probably even have snazzy blogs. And then there are amateur radio nerds, who smash your nerd abilities to tiny bits. I've been a FCC licensed nerd for 12 years. :)
Lotus Elise
I want one so bad! Whoever owned this car drove it daily and hadn't washed it in what looks like months. Maybe 3-4 months. It had a scratched up Lotus logo and big rock chips up front. Greasy hand prints all over it. Made me sick.
I still love that car!
SyFy Portal Quoting me
SyFy Portal - NBC Universal Going After Internet Pirates: "Thanks to Mostron8 for the tip."
Apparently I've been quoted. Nice. But that user downloading BSG that got busted wasn't me. I swear. Just someone I know.
IP Cam Geekyness
So I set up the IP Cam yesterday. Pretty neato. The little device captures decent pics:
I am pleased. I bought the wireless model so I would only need power. Easy to set up, only prob is that the silly thing requires IE/ActiveX to configure. But once you've done that, you can access the stream with any OS. motion is set up and workin well. It records little movies and still frames whenever it sees motion, AND is recording a time-lapse of the entire day wrapped up in to a 1 minute MPG. Watching the mailman deliver mail, cats pissing, birds playing, kids riding bikes, my neighbors constantly driving in and out. Pretty neato stuff. When I get a cool timelapse, I'll post a torrent for download.
My only gripe with my current setup is that motion is downloading so fast from the cam that it's sending a 400kB/sec stream across my WAN. I may go to manually downloading the pics and compiling a time-lapse later. Or writing my own CGI that fetches the images with a configurable speed.
I miss my motorcycle
Dear TinkerBell,
I hope you are doing well in bike heaven, playing with the other Ducati Monsters and having fun. I miss you. It's a sunny day today, the sun's out, 3 nice bikes parked up front. Feel free to appear in my dreams sometime soon for a few wheelies.
Truly,
-Nathan
IP Networking Camera
IP Networking Camera: "VCenter IP camera NC1000-W10 features a standalone system, which means a camera and a computer combined in a small package. Built-in capture module and web server provide users to view images through IP network (e.g. LAN and WAN) with a browser on any computer connected to network."
I bought this from KingOfGadgets.com monday. Recieved it in a (very beat up) DHL box on Tuesday afternoon. Already have it set up. Pretty neato. I expect to be posting a few neat images and movies from it soon. Right now, I'm using motion to capture little movies of action it sees, along with individual pics of the action, along with a time lapse of the day. Pretty cool!
Dell LCD's are kick-ass
Pic of my new Dell 19" 1905FP LCD's. I love them. I highly recommend you take advantage of some of the deals on http://dealnews.com and go get some.
Flickr also kicks ass
"Have you ever wanted to post photos from your favorite group on your website? Or photos tagged with something? Or photos from your favorite group..."
So, I highly recommend you all check out Flickr. I've been playing with it for a while but didn't really have time to sit down and browse/play. I'm almost upset I didn't buy David/Joseph flickr accounts for their birthdays. Maybe next year.
Update: OK, why Flickr is cool...
It's kind of like del.icio.us for pictures. Flickr lets you freeform tag all your pics. It lets you surf the tags. So I can find other pictures of "124 Spider". Or whatever's out there. Very neat. They also have unlimited file storage. And a 20GB upload/month. And cool little apps to help you upload. If you have a modern blogging system that supports ATOM API's, you can blog your pic right from the Flickr interface. Go check it out.