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Breaking Ground

Carson — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:48:05 +0000

They’re scheduled to break ground on our house this Friday, and I’m getting pretty excited. We actually made a somewhat spur of the moment purchase to help us record the progress. I’ve been thinking about getting a camcorder for a while and seriously considered buying one for Amber’s last birthday, but a lack of knowledge and funds kept me from doing it. I figured building a house was a good reason to go ahead and buy one. Pictures are nice, but they can’t tell you the whole story.

I did some quick reading at camcorderinfo.com and played with a few cameras at Best Buy before settling on the JVC Everio GZ-MG330. It’s a hard drive camcorder that can store about 7 hours of video at the highest quality setting. It’s surprisingly small and light, so hopefully it will be easy to use. It’s not overly fancy, but it should do the job quite nicely. It came from Amazon today and I’ve spent some minimal time playing with it.

For the next several days at least we’ll probably be headed by our lot pretty much every day to take some pictures and shoot video. Assuming I can figure out how to get videos onto the computer, I’ll be putting some up on the web for all to see.

Oh yeah, I also joined twitter.

Update 5/2/2008 7:35PM: They didn’t do any digging today. It rained pretty hard this morning, maybe that caused the delay.

iPod Touch

Carson — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:51:08 +0000

I’m in the mall for lunch and I stopped into the new Apple store to check out the iPod Touch. That’s right I’m posting from one! Now if only I had some extra cash…

Makin’ the Switch

Carson — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 03:53:50 +0000

I never thought this day would come. I’m going to buy a Mac. Not just any old Mac, but an iMac. The same Mac I made fun of for looking like a giant deformed Jolly Rancher when it was introduced back when I was in high school. Only now it looks like this…

…and it comes with a very sexy 24″ screen.

I blame my iPod. Thank God for Epic’s computer loan program.

Nikon Really Likes the Future of Digital Photography

Carson — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 23:27:40 +0000

I understand that Nikon wants to capitalize on the success of digital photography. I love using my digital camera and being able to save just the pictures I want. The flexibility it gives you is amazing. But I don’t think they should stop making film cameras altogether. There are still certain things to be said about the quality of images you can get on film, and remembering where photography has come from. This is a sad day.

read more | digg story

More Revolution Specs?

Carson — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 13:53:06 +0000

IGN has gotten some developers to spill the beans on Revolution and it’s hardware. I think it’s a little early to know if this info will remain accurate until launch, but it’s interesting. I knew that Nintendo was aiming for a lower target than Microsoft and Sony, but this is the first news of any kind that the price could realistically be lower than people think.

Software houses we spoke with also waxed on the immediate advantage to Nintendo’s approach with Revolution, which is, of course, system price. Every developer was in agreement that Revolution should launch with a price tag of $149 or lower. Some speculated that based on the tech, a $99 price point would not be out of the question.

That’s pretty crazy, considering the Nintendo DS is currently $129.99. I’ll remain skeptical until closer to launch.

Xbox 360 Crashes

Carson — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 13:49:37 +0000

It’s hard to say yet how large a problem this really is, but it could be seriously bad news for Microsoft. Most users reporting problems are playing on default settings. Surely those defaults shouldn’t be too much for the system to handle.

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The Future of Optical Media

Carson — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:45:02 +0000

Can you imagine a single disc that could hold your entire music and movie libraries combined? It sounds like something out of Star Trek, but it’s not as far away as you might think. In fact, it’s already here. Maxell has introduced a new type of disc that can get it done - holographic media. The first generation discs will hold 300GB with a 20MBPs transfer rate.

“Holographic media makes it possible for millions of pages of information and high definition images to be held on one small, relatively inexpensive disc,” said Steven Pofcher, senior marketing manager at Maxell. “Imagine having a person’s entire medical history, complete with MRI images, or storing a broadcast network’s entire HD Library on a single disc. These are both possible with holographic technology, which has such large capacity that approximately a half million 300-page books can be stored on a single disc.”

Now how “relatively inexpensive” will each disc be?

Google’s Dark Fiber Plan

Carson — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 04:20:50 +0000

I found an interesting article that explains what Google plans to do with all their dark fiber. This whole thing is pretty incredible. It’s a really interesting read. I wonder how accurate this really is?

Update: Here’s a little expansion on Cringely’s article.

Productivity

Carson — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Recent research says a large monitor makes you more productive. Now I have some research to justify my request for a second monitor at work.