Hope that helps someone!!!

Good friend recommended the Cuisinart DCC-1200 12 cup maker, which had very positive reviews but I looked a little more and found a 14 cup model that looked like it had a nicer looking design. I ended up buying a ‘refurbished’ one from Abe’s of Maine for just $59.95 + shipping. Shipping was pricey at $12.19 but I still saved nearly $30. It came quickly and looked just like new. Note: It did say refurbished by Cuisinart themselves and that the warranty is 90 days. Perhaps a non-refurbished one has a longer warranty.
So how is it so far?

Great! The top opens from front to back (back hinges) which is more convenient than my old Mr. Coffee one but the place to pour the water is somewhat small in the back right, but it’s ok. The controls are simple enough and I like that the warmer temp can be set (L, M, H) so coffee doesn’t get burned. I’d personally rather re-heat cold coffee in a microwave than taste coffee that’s sat on a hot plate for an hour!
It came with a gold permanent filter as well as a few paper ones which was nice. It even incorporates a small charcoal filter cartridge (replaceable) so your water is purified automatically!
The 14 cup carafe is large, but light and EASY to put in and take out of the maker. The manual says if you brew a batch the coffee at the ‘top’ might be weaker than the bottom so giving it a stir before pouring isn’t a bad idea. Seems like a bother, but the first batch did seem a bit weak on first cup, and on the second batch I a) added a bit more coffee, and b) gave it a stir before pouring and the results were better, but I’m not sure if it was more coffee or stirring that did the trick!
Anyway, I like this coffee maker.
If I have one complaint it’s that the clock is tiny and digital and NOT backlit, which means if your kitchen lighting is often not that bright you might have trouble reading the clock.
Programming the maker to make coffee at a given time is simple enough.
Recommended!!

Highly recommended.

DVD and Blu-Ray – I watched the Blu-Ray version.

The description is as follows:

How many times have you been embarrassed by giving the wrong gifts? Or the wrong size? Or the wrong color? The new QuickGifter iPhone app takes all the worry out of gift giving by keeping a well-organized gift database of any and all important wish list information that you may need while shopping . Best of all, if you have a spouse, partner, relative, or friend that is shopping and needs the same info, you can easily email them QuickGifter wish list details for any person in your QuickGifter library.

Check it out at quickgifter.com or watch the video:

Watch the video:

In the case of web development as with many things, some people who use web sites, think they know how easy/hard it is to build them. (Hint: they don’t)

Check out this person who needs to hire a programmer yet they already ‘know’ how ‘hard’ the task is and how long it will take.  link.

A few months ago I figured I’d upgrade the display driver, and got a new install from the ATI (now AMD) web site. After the install, the ‘Catalyst Control Center’ (known as the evil ‘CCC’ to many) would NOT start automatically or run when launched – displaying some obscure error.

After so much wasted time researching the problem, finding hundreds of people with similar problems but no answers, or none that worked at least, I gave up, but wait, I couldn’t uninstall the new software either. So I had to use the system restore to go back to an earlier ‘time’, which worked, restoring the old driver and control center that shipped with the system.

Fast forward to recently, and my system has been crashing overnight a few times lately. Not good. Couldn’t find out why, nothing in Event Viewer, or anywhere else. I leave my machine on all the time because it backs up at night, plus it’s actually less wear and tear on the hardware to leave it on.

Recently after being frustrated further with the occasional out of the blue crashes, I upgraded to the latest driver, but did NOT bother trying to install the catalyst control center (ccc) as I don’t need it anyway. All good so far!!!

I’d looked around the internet for solutions and most described things I’d already done, plus the usual “they all do that, throw it out” unhelpful comments.

Then finally, I found solution #2 at fixya.com’s page on this and figured I’d give it a try.

It basically said open it up, clean out the dust, and then disconnect and reconnect every connector you can get your hands on. I’d already vacuumed out the inside (which wasn’t really dusty anyway), but proceeded to disconnect and reconnect every connector in there, and there’s a BUNCH. Some are electronic type connectors with tiny wires, and others are definitely power type connectors.

Anyway, did all that, fired it up, AND IT WORKS! I’m now testing with loud playback connecting my blackberry storm to an input (what an amazing phone that is!).

Anyway, sounds awesome. State of Trance 2008, Mosaik’s music… ahhhh….

Get involved!

Like many who love NASA and all it has accomplished, I was horrified to learn the Challenger space shuttle blew up a couple of minutes after launch as it rocketed into space.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4JOjcDFtBE

Later that day, President Ronald Reagan gave a speech to the nation, that was brilliantly written by Peggy Noonan, and brilliantly delivered. He talked to the astronauts loved ones, to all adults, to children, about loss, taking chances and bravery, why life isn’t for the ‘faint hearted’ and added a poetic line at the end that still gives me goosebumps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JKIZ7j20EA

Anyway, it can capture video, which is pretty cool.  So I grabbed a few tiny videos and wanted to see if I could transfer, edit, and publish on youtube.

Took two tiny videos, transferred them, imported to Windows Movie Maker (free), trimmed the videos, added titles, credits, transitions, and music, in, oh, 15 minutes?!

Here it is.  Not Oscar-worthy, but hey, it’s my first.

Trying to be a good developer I’m using ‘div’s more than tables these days, using CSS extensively, and trying to code to ‘strict’ page layout rather than ‘quirks’ mode or ‘transitional’.

If all the above paragraph makes no sense to you and you’re developing web pages, I can guarantee they won’t look the same across Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) or earlier (shudder), Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), and the about to be released IE8, FireFox (FF 1.x, 2.x, 3.x), Safari, Opera, endless mobile phones, oh and Google Chrome, etc.

First admission – I do not bother testing on all the above browsers.  That would be the first step toward insanity.  I look at browser statistics to see what the vast majority of people are using.  Anyone else?  Best of luck to you.  I refer to w3school’s excellent page on this.  As of writing, this shows IE6, IE7 and FireFox account for 91% of all browsers in use!  So that’s what I test.  I have an old computer I deliberately don’t upgrade to IE7 (it has IE6 SP1), I have IE7 and FireFox 3 on other computers including my main desktop.  IE6 is sliding down (thankfully) from 34% to 20% in one year but that doesn’t mean I can avoid the testing for a while yet.

<rant> The biggest headache by a long shot is IE6.  It has some BIZARRE behavior.  For one of the wealthiest and most successful companies on the planet to have its most widely used piece of software be so riddled with bugs and incompatibility with MASSIVELY documented web standards is inexcusible. </rant>  OK, I feel better now.

There are MANY web sites documenting IE flaws, but the biggest problems I’ve found are with IE6 and earlier, and specifically with its confusion and completely screwed up calculations relating to widths, margins, padding, borders, and even positioning.  Apart from that it’s great.

The page here demonstrates ‘default’ differences in browsers.  It looks different in IE6, IE7, FF.  Go ahead and look at the html/style tags – not much to it!  IE and FF have different default body margins, different default paragraph line heights, and a HORRIBLE bug in IE6 which DOUBLES the margin sizes of any divs that are FLOATED!  Ugh.

Fortunately, there are fixes that countless wasted hours have been spent discovering.

For the doubling (and worse) of margin sizes for floats by IE6, the fix is to add “display: inline;” to the style definition (or inline style value of the element) which since it’s a float should be ‘obvious’ and the default, and does seem to be for IE7 and FF, but IE6 needs this to get it right.  Thanks to this excellent web site for this solution!

For other problems, setting defaults are the main solutions.

The second page here has these fixes applied and looks pretty much identical in the 3 browsers.

I hope this helps.

No easy option to change this, but it IS changeable.

Great blog post here about it:

http://softwarex-nz.blogspot.com/2008/01/stop-vistas-update-auto-reboot.html

Thank you!

To me it contains parts of many science fiction books and movies, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, all of Isaac Asimov’s amazing robot books, even Rendezvous With Rama, my favorite book by Arthur C. Clarke.

The movie’s web site is also amazing.  Here’s a free embed they provide:

Little point and shoot digital cameras in decent light situations (i.e., outdoors) take great pictures in most circumstances. But they’re still slow, cannot do shallow depth of field, often don’t have a very wide angle field of view, and to me at least, are generally irritating (except for their size)! Once you’ve seen the quality of pictures and enjoyed the flexibility and range of options and control with an SLR, it’s hard to go back. I know, I tried. Got tired of lugging the Canon 20D and lenses around, sold the lot. But less than a year later, I was ready to throw my Canon point and shoot camera in a fire pit.

With my 20D though I felt EVERY photo file out of the camera needed some, and often a LOT, of post processing on the computer to look decent. I was often a little embarrassed to show people the shots out of the camera. “Yes I know it’s dark, but see how easy it is to fix?” “I know the color is kind of washed out, and it looks a bit out of focus, but see, upping the saturation and a little unsharp filter… makes all the difference… gee aren’t I clever?” I concluded, no Paul, you’re not clever, you’re just spending far too much time having to mess with shots many would consider boring no matter what, just to get something that I could print at 4×6 to stick on the refridgerator.

To get files out of the camera ready to use, that means JPEGs. RAW files can be converted but that’s an extra step. But the 40D lets you save a JPEG and a RAW for each shot, which is great for me. If the JPEG is good enough, use that. If not, use the RAW. The 40D also lets you save large, medium or small JPEG (small) at various quality (compression) levels, with a small or large RAW file. I use the RAW + high quality SMALL JPEG. ‘Small’ is STILL 1936×1288 pixels which is larger than most computer monitors and still a 1.5MB file!

Next is ‘Picture Styles’ which lets you tell the camera what sharpness, contrast, saturation, and color tone to apply to JPEGs. I set Sharpness to 6, Contrast to 0, Saturation to 1, and Color Tone to 0 and save that as a user defined picture style.

Next is exposure compensation. I think in order to protect against ‘blown highlights’ the camera (in my opinion) under exposes just about every shot. So I bump the exposure compensation by just 1/3 a stop.

Finally, I have turned on Highlight Tone Priority (Custom Function II: Image, setting 3, set to 1). This tells the camera to try to preserve some dynamic range (different shades) in bright regions of a picture by adjusting the interpretation of exposure and color. The only trade-off of this is it then makes ISO 200 the minumum ISO, but that’s never a problem for me with a fast lens (the amazing EF-S 17-55/2.8 IS).

Here’s an example of the results – this is unretouched, right out of the camera (click on this to see the actual picture):

U.S. gas prices have doubled and more in the past couple of years.  It must be hurting millions of people directly (getting to and from work or school for example), and hurting many businesses too, which must deliver things and have things delivered to them and so they must raise prices on everything in turn to make up for it.  It seems the U.S. government has totally distorted how it reports inflation because gasoline and food prices alone are skyrocketing.  Maybe the drop in house prices is counteracting that some!

The politicians are arguing over causes and remedies, but while they do NOTHING, quietly, millions of people are driving a little less, maybe trading in the old clunker or big SUV for something much more efficient, sales of hybrids have skyrocketed, and the American people are being very sensible about all this.

We’ve all heard it’s ‘greedy oil companies’ that are the cause but that really isn’t the case – they process crude oil and refine it, etc., and pass along the costs they must pay.  Now global demand for oil and gasoline has been climbing and is projected to climb a great deal more as prosperity increases in China and India in particular, as they hold almost half the world’s population!  U.S. gasoline consumption has not increased significantly in decades.  Increasing overall demand puts upward pressure on prices if supply is not increased.

With producers (particularly OPEC) choosing not to dramatically increase supply, and with constant worries of wars in risky parts of the world, those who actually BUY crude oil and related products in huge quantities for their customers (refiners, power companies, plastics companies, airlines, etc.) have been bidding up the price of future oil purchases, trying to lock in prices, but there’s also some hyping as well, all causing crude oil prices to jump in the last year in particular (to now over $130 a barrel).

But there’s another, bigger, underlying reason oil and gasoline prices are climbing fast: environmentalists.  For decades they have rabidly pushed an agenda to stop any and all efficient energy production, claiming initially it might poison us all or pollute everything, but now, in a much bigger campaign, they have convinced millions that energy production, particularly oil and gasoline will actually destroy the whole planet.  Al Gore declared the oil product powered automobile to be the greatest threat to the planet.

Al Gore is clueless.  Perhaps because the most ‘dire’ climate models predict the planet only warming by about 1 degree Celsius this century, the ’cause’ was renamed ‘climate change’ from ‘global warming’.  Well newsflash: the climate has ALWAYS and will ALWAYS be changing.  Ice ages and HOT spells predate human existence.  There’s many underlying causes, including varying solar activity which even Al Gore has no control over.

So the U.S. has banned itself from developing known vast oil reserves in the so-called ‘continental shelf’ and many other areas.  This ‘policy’ is finally coming back to bite the U.S.  I have no problem with developing ‘alternative fuels’ but to not seek additional oil sources in one’s back yard, and instead rely on oil from tyrants and Kings in unstable regions is madness.

With still no coherent and viable energy plan, the U.S. economy is being seriously hampered by increasing oil prices.  There is no end in sight.

So recently I bought a Microsoft wireless mouse 5000 mouse from Newegg. BIG mistake. First off, it’s junk – very cheap and light. I should have known because in fairness, it is cheap, as in inexpensive. Second, I have big hands and found the positioning of the forward/back buttons on the side way too far back so I had to make a very awkward move to get to them. Finally the middle scroll wheel ‘click’ was way too hard to engage and definitely gave me hand ‘ache’ after hours of use.

So I’ve been on the prowl for a new mouse. I’ve been eyeing the Logitech MX Revolution mouse for a while, which they claim is the “world’s most advanced mouse.” Lofty stuff, so I broke down and got one. Figured I could return it if I really don’t like it. Well so far I’m AMAZED.

First thing that’s different is the shape. Instead of a regular ‘big egg’ shape, this one has a concave area for the thumb which is VERY comfortable.

I like a mouse that requires VERY LITTLE EFFORT to click, scroll, move, etc. This mouse is very light in use, although not light in overall weight so as to feel like a piece of junk. It’s very nicely made as are all Logitech products I’ve found.

It not only has the usual left/right buttons, scroll wheel, and side forward/back buttons, it also has a programmable button behind the scroll wheel (which they default to a configurable ‘search’ function, and they also have another ‘thumb wheel control’ on the side that can be used for a variety of things, but by default it’s used to flip through the running programs, and is GREAT. The thumb wheel is not a continuously turning wheel but it can be rolled forward or backward to an extent, a bit like a one direction joystick. I set it to do forward/backward scroll and oh man, it’s great! But wait, there’s more…

The regular scroll wheel on top was a bit baffling initially, as it has the usual ‘detents’ or click-click-click positions as it rolls, but I could also press it down and it would engage into a ‘free spinning’ mode which is GREAT for fast scrolling through big documents – you can get it spinning like a top and just keep your finger off it and the doc keeps scrolling until the wheel stops. BUT, one I got the bundled software installed, I learned that the mouse can ITSELF engage whether the wheel is free spinning or ‘click-click-click’ (click to click is what they call it) and you can program how it engages or whether it’s always in one more or the other! Since I like a light touch I’ve told it to be in spin mode all the time but you can tell it to be in click-click mode up to a certain speed and then switch over to free-spinning – it’s amazing.

Even better, with the software, all functions of everything are programmable for EACH application you use if you wish. So you might have certain functions for gaming, and certain for web surfing, etc.

A couple of things I don’t care for:
1) it uses one of those tiny transmitter USB sticks and in my case that means it’s a long way from where the mouse is. It seemed to work plugged into the back of my PC under the desk in the corner, but I’d had problems with the crap Microsoft mouse interfering maybe with my Logitech keyboard I think so anyway, I have the mouse stick plugged into a USB extension cable to get it close to the mouse.
2) It has built in Lithium Ion rechargeable batteries and has a little cradle for recharging. Apparently a charge lasts a good long time (a few weeks? I don’t know yet) but my last Logitech mouse begun to only last a couple of days so we’ll see, while cordless mice I’ve had with AA alkalines seem to last MONTHS and MONTHS without changing.

So far I think I’m going to really enjoy this! Will report back if that impression changes.

More info here: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/mi…s/130&cl=us,en

Canon’s ‘digital rebel’ line is about to evolve once more with the new Canon XSi (or 450D as it is known in some parts of the world).

Just as the XTi leapfrogged in some ways the semi-pro 20D/30D with automatic sensor cleaning and more megapixels, the XSi brings features from the 40D plus some more into a smaller, more affordable package.

Canon’s optional bundled standard “kit” lens has also improved recently from the pretty weak EF-S 18-55 to the new EF-S 18-55 IS (the ‘IS’ means it is ‘image stabilized’ so you don’t have the be quite so steady in holding the camera).

One feature new to Canon’s DSLR’s is Auto Optimization. It adjusts exposure/brightness/contrast curves automatically to make for more ‘appealing’ looking images right out of the camera. Images from digital SLRs often look ‘flat’ or ‘dark’. Basic controls have existed to adjust contrast or saturation of all images but they’re too simple. Auto optimization appears to do a MUCH better job and will be a big win for those (like me!) who don’t like to spend HOURS editing images on the computer!

I have a 40D, which is a GREAT camera, but I’m wondering if I might prefer the XSi, perhaps with its optional grip to make it feel a bit more substantial. One thing holding me off though is that the 40D is a MUCH faster camera for burst shooting, doing 6.5 frames per second vs., I believe, 3. I don’t need this every day but for shooting horses jumping over fences, faster is better!

The 40D also has a glass pentaprism vs. the cheaper pentamirror in the XSi so the 40D should have a brighter viewfinder although I’ve not compared them yet.

The XSi is 12.2 megapixels (vs. 10.1 for the 40D) which will impress the easily impressed, but this is likely to be at the expense of a bit more noise in images at higher ISO settings.

Anyway, hat tip to Canon for delivering another EXCELLENT camera!

Came across a very interesting product recently called Starlite 7 from Starlite Lighting Systems. It consists of UV resistant translucent colored plastic pieces that fit into the aluminum pool enclosure beams and an optional fiber optic cable lighting system that provides lighting behind!

Looks great and comes in a bunch of different colors. Pretty neat!

Arthur C. Clarke wrote so eloquently, so clearly, and so creatively, that while he reached millions with his books and articles, it is a shame that more people haven’t read him, dismissing his works as just “science fiction”. But they’re really about so much more. They capture his hopes and dreams for future progress. His worries of potential catastrophes. He predicted many things that have come true. He conceptualized stationary satellites which provide so many great services today (television, phone, internet, GPS to name 4).

Clarke always kept busy, was always curious about so many things, and relentlessly searched for answers throughout his life. His writings in many ways are his speculations on answers to difficult questions about the future of humankind, whether and how we will venture into space to reach new frontiers, and the inevitable problems we will face.

One other work I must mentioned, is 2001: A Space Odyssey. He wrote this book and collaborated with famous and unique director Stanley Kubrick on the screenplay and movie of the same name. Both were milestones. The movie though made both very famous, and to this day still stands the test of time in its effects, painstakingly created, frame by frame, without the benefit of computer imagery. A story of our first contact with enigmatic alien intelligence and a computer named HAL on a huge spaceship that can’t allow the mission to be jeopardized by error-prone human astronauts.

Goodbye Arthur. You had a magnificent journey, and you will never be forgotten. Thank you.

Links:

• Wired magazine final interview with Arthur C. Clarke
• Final video message
• 1993 interview, also in Wired
• Obituary in The Times

• The digital picture
• wlcastleman.com
• Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

One last piece of advice, if you’re going to get a nice digital SLR like the 40D or better, don’t put a cheap lens on it. Without a good eye the brain of the camera can hardly see a good picture!