TimsBlog

Was one long bar hop. Hefeweizen after Hefeweizen. Went to a bar Sat that a friend of Andrews works at called the DNS lounge. There is actually a photo gallery from the show “Groovie Ghoulies” played that night. I noticed the were taking video of the show. Turns out the broadcast it on the web live.

I’ll post more on the trip as I slowly post process my photos and upload them to flcikr. I started with the ones of Andrew. I have around 300 photos.

We have to room booked. I should say my buddy booked the room. I saw that there was a good show at the Filmore on Sunday but it was sold out. I got to make a trip to the store tomight and then wait til 4am to get to the airport early tomorrow morning. Most likely won’t be posting or uploading pics till I get back.

heres the link to the hotel we got

http://www.sirfrancisdrake.com/ 

I was reading a blog and noticed they were using Hex in a post. To fuck with old fuckers like me I guess hehe. I thought they just pasted some random Hex for shits and giggles till I went and translated it. Found a simply site to translate binary HEX and BASE64 at http://www.paulschou.com/tools/xlate/

Anyways got me thinking about ANSI again and other freakishly geeky things from the days when things measured in 2 megabytes or more were expensive.

I heard the Red Hot chili Peppers put out a new 2 disc album. I check it out. I’m not sure if I like it or not. Might be one of those listen 4 times and then dig it type. In the last 15 years they always had a few songs that still felt like the eighties chili peppers. This one doesn’t have that feel.

The good thing was I remembered I wanted to find John Frusciante solo stuff. I had looked online a year or two ago and couldn’t find anything. Its online now and I’m getting into it. He a great guitar player and I always loved his backing vocals on RHCP albums.

Anthony seems to make better music stoned on heroin were as John seems to shine sober.

Well the more I fly the more i think about breaking down and getting an mp3 player. Things that keep crossing my mind why I ponder the thought of buy one are :

1)You need 40GB or more right? Well yeah if i want something that does video yes (60 to 80 GB preferred)

2)Could you get by with 1 to 4 GB and a Flash device instead of a hard drive model? (yeah if it was $150 or under)

3)When would I use it besides flying? Never since I find it ultra dangerous to ride my bike when using headphones. If there was mass transit (worth a damn) in STL I might have another use for one

Bottom line I only used Walkmans in the eighties when I rode the bus to school or in class. I used to break a pair of headphones so I had one ear piece running up my sleeve and into my hand which I’d cup to my ear. This is well before the ear bud invention (which will kill you hearing and is why kids today settle for low quality 128 bitrate itunes songs). I don’t jog or run. ( hehe I almost blew tea out my nose thinking of that) I uesed to use them when I sunbathed (man that sounds gay)

Well unless I find myself working as a mail man or study in a library I think I’ll pass till the bigger (widescreen 5 inch at least) video ipod comes out.

I’m buying my ticket tomorrow morning. I’ll be leaving for LA on Thur the 25th and returning on the Tues 30th. We decided I should fly to LA and we’ll drive up to San Fransisco. Never really wanted to see LA, but hey why not. I’ll refrain from taking a photo of the Hollywood sign.

Two pics you won’t see me taking

A friend of mine living in Bangkok is flying home in a few hours. He’s got a wedding in LA to goto. Hes also planing to goto San Fransisco and New York City while in the states. He asked if I wanted to hook up with him while hes here. I can’t decide which would be a better place SF or NYC. We have a common friend from high school living in NYC, but I’ve been there. Granted not a full fledged visit since I just drove threw it. Then on the other hand I have never been west of Kansas City. Both flights were about $330. Both places are down right expensive places to be. I’m just glad I’ll get to really use my camera now. I am wondering if the 222 photos I get on my 2GB memory card will be enough. I guess I can always pick up another one if not.

I got a thank you note in the mail from Creve Coeur Camera today.Wanted to buy it from a local store but this is strange

I was 2 seconds late in taking a picture of the neighbor across the street pulling her 4 year old daughter off the ground by her HAIR. I just happened to have my camera turned on and ready in my lap when I heard screaming and looked out the front window to see this fucking bullshit. Worst thing about it was that the mother had a look on her face like she was street fighting another adult woman.

This happened an hour after I caught the same boys across the street setting fire to something on the side of their house. It was a flame as big as a weber grill when you first light it. They just got yell ed at by the neighbor next to them for throwing big rocks from here bushes into other peoples yard and the street. I stopped the same boys from using a can of lighter fluid to set the limbs of a bush I just cut down in my back yard on fire. I swear with lighter fluid in hand the kid told me “thats not what we were going to do”

I feel I live a sheltered and isolated life on a lot of levels. I tend to stay in. Strange how even in a good neighborhood I can still look out my window and see some of the lowest forms of behavior.

I figured I better go search for a flickr api app that downloads all your photos now. I would hate to do it when I have over 1000 photos. I have a little over 500 now. I found flickr Down at http://www.greggman.com/pages/flickrdown.htm It is doing the job as I type. I have two 250 GB hard drives now. Ones for bit torrents and the other was meant for photos and extra shit. I’ll report how big the folder is when its done.

I was wondering how many photos flickr would let you have with the pro account. It say unlimeted. I guess they are right I found a person with 16,000.

UPDATE: 

total time took 2 hours and it was 350 MB.

Ok I wanted to do this a while ago but the script didn’t work for me. Now there is a site called http://www.blockrocker.com/ that allows you to Geo Tag you flickr picture. Geo what you say? Well it tags your photos using Lat and Log on a google map. Then if you goto http://flickr.yuan.cc/maps/tim7423/136687981/ It will show you on a google map where the pics were taken. You can zoom in and out and switch between map and satellite views. Totally fucking cool.

You’d think since yahoo bought flickr that they would incorperate this into flickr with yahoo maps. Guess the bandwidth burn that flickr caused yahoo is still stinging to allow that kind of research and development. Would be a nice way to cross market two yahoo services and maybe take some of google maps thunder.

Google maps is the best!….true that….double true!

Getting this camera is like learning how to shoot all over again. Well sort of. Its coming back to me, I just got a little spoiled with a small point and shoot camera. I surprised myself and got familiar with all the manual settings in about 12 hours. I’m flipping threw the buttons pretty fast and fairly confident finding the button/dial to use to change certain settings.

Having a built in flash is nice. It works better than I expected. I never used flashes much before with SLR cameras. Mainly because of it being a separate device you had to mount. Just one more thing to lug around. Worst of all you had to have 4 AA batteries and rechargeable of course meaning you need a charger too. Not to mention all that vertical space it added to the camera.

I started think today since it was nice out that I should get on my bike and take some photo’s. Then I remembered that I don’t have a bag yet. I don’t want to just throw it into my messenger bag since its not padded. I went looking for a small bag online and found a Tamrac holster bag. Its just big enough to fit the camera body with a 4.5 inch lens attached. I rarely use a lens over 3.5 inches anyways. It has 3 side pockets also. Tamrac has a belt system that this works with. It has belt loops on the back so you can wear it like a gun holster. They sell lens bags that fit on the belt too. That of course will look real geeky if I wear it with a lens bag.

I will not be sporting the water bottle.

I had 4 more episodes left to watch on the first season of Alias and accidentally deleted the entire folder. I was getting ready to download season 2 when I grabbed a slow torrent. I went to delete that torrent and files to try another one. I must have deleted the first season instead. I went to watch the last 4 episodes this afternoon and was like WTF? So I’m now downloading it again. Its taking me 8 hours to get it when I only really need the last 4 shows.

Now this is one of those rare times when I need to go dig into the windows trash can. Of course anything that size never goes into the windows trash can, it straight up gets deleted.

I also thought having 500 GB in storage on this PC would eliminate my need to delete on a daily or weekly basis. Which it has. I only “clean up about once a month. Some habits are hard to break.

I always considered Flickr a good place for “stock photos” Especially for websites since the image is hosted at Flickr. I got the idea to do a David Blaine search. I know tons of people go there and everyone with a cell phone has a camera. I’m not a fan of David Blaines but I thought I could find out what his latest stunt looks like quicker on Flickr than say a news site. Turns out I was right.

Flickr David Blaine Search

I also did a Britney Spears search looking for these “fat” pictures of her. Everyone says she really fat now. I know I really shouldn’t care, but I wanted to test the ability to find say celebrity photos on Flickr. I found a photo of the naked birth sculpture of her I posted about a few months ago. This time its a reverse angle. Yikes. Makes the piece of art even more interesting.

Or should I say substituted.

Watching TV (over the air/cable/satellite)

I used to get all my downloaded goods off of IRC. Now bittorrent came on strong in the last year and is fully feeding my needs for what I normally watched on TV. I can find all the popular shows and then some. I have been downloading PBS shows and even sunday news show like Face the Nation and The McLaughlin Group. I mean come on if I can download the The McLaughlin Group I can get anything.

Optical Drives (CD/DVD on my PC)

Started when my DVD drive broke. I had long given up my 3.5 floppy drive so why not get rid of the CD/DVD drive too. I only needed the floppy to install a RAID driver when I installed Windows because I use a SATA hard drive. (stupid hassle) I also only need a CD/DVD drive to install software. I don’t rip music CD’s or DVD movies to my hard drive (Duh I mean ARGH!) I just keep them on a the shelf for when I need then. I should really put them in an USB external case , but I’m cheap and lazy. I use my USB flash drive to transfer any files I need off of my hard drive for transport. Mostly to the media PC I built in an old CD player case thats hooked up to a TV in my bedroom for watching video files.

Soda (daily that is I have one a week average)

In Thailand I had started cutting back from the 64 ounces a day I was drinking a year ago. I only drank it in Thailand as a comfort sort of speak. I had maybe a 16 ounce bottle a day in Bangkok. Coffee sucked in Bangkok I was stuck with instant. Even at 7/11 then only had instant. I really should have bought a coffee press and brew it. Didn’t notice Big C sold them till a few weeks before I left. So I drank tea a lot. Now that I’m home I have been drinking hot tea in the morning to wake up instead of coffee. Then switching to hot green tea in the afternoon and evening since it has less caffeine. I also found a great place online to buy “loose’ tea

Ok I’m finally almost finished watching all 9 seasons of the X files. Thats 132 hours worth. I started in April last year. I have 8 more episodes left. I didn’t watch it in Bangkok so it really only took me 6 months. I only watch them before I goto bed too. I never watched the show when it was on TV. I’ve explained this before. I tend to wait till half threw a Tv shows lifespan before deciding to watch it or not. Then wait till its on syndication 5 days a week so I can watch it at a faster past. I hate being a slave to the “I have to wait till next week to find out who killed JR” thing. The exception is Lost I got suckered into that last year toward the end of the season. Franticly downloading Lost episode 1-17 before it aired again to get caught up. I’m now downloading Alias. I had to choose something and it was either alias or 24. i choose Alias. I just can see Keifer Sutherland in any role like that after Lost Boys. I dare you to tell me something hes been in between Lost Boys and 24 worth a damn. Also Lost Boys 2? Totally plausible. Lets drag the two Corey’s out of the gutter for christ sake.