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I think John mentioned this to me, but he’s right, the Greeks didn’t judge people by how they felt, but by what they did. In reflecting on the last three months, he is really right. People who I thought were going to stick with it no matter what turned out to be “Gone in 60 Seconds,” but people who I thought really didn’t care and were just in it for themselves ultimately, turned out to be as stuck as I am.

Funny thing is that recognizing that you don’t know what the heck is going to happen and also that there are many forces ruling you makes it a little easier. A big thanks to Jon for turning me on to “Man and his Symbols”. It is a dense read, but well worth it.

Darrell turned me onto this. Already 2M views on YouTube. The future is here

Nothing like going through a whole bunch of stuff that has been dumped into Hefty garbage guys to put a damper on your whole day. On the other hand, nothing like unloading a whole boxful of All Clad pots to lighten your day. It’s been one of those days or is completely a state of mind. As long as you are present.

Sign of the times. Got a few bucks off the new MacBooks from MacMall

13″ 2GHz MacBook $1299 retail is $99 off
13″ 2.4GHz MacBook $1599 off $100
15″ 2.4GHz MacBook Pro $2000 off $256
17″ 2.66GHz MacBook Pro $2800 off $189
1.6 GHZ MacBook Air $1800 off $80
1.8GHz SSD MacBook Air $2500 off $130

What an amazing weekend. Went to Sundance Film Festival. Not often you get to do something that is so different. Glad I love movies for sure. And the weather has been perfect. Watching all these movies has been really fun. And there’s even skiing.

Strange to be in Utah the day of the inaugural. Waiting now to watch it along 3ith just about everyone else

I has been a long time since I could just listen to really loud music and enjoy it. Thank goodness for Aerosmith, Kanye west and all the speaker systems in the world.

Stuck waiting for a two hour flight that will now take seven hours to get there. How sad, faster to get to Tokyo than Salt Lake!

Anyway, time to look through the latest at CES and also at the latest in projectors. AVSForum is a great resource for the high end systems

Christie HD6K-M seems like there are quite a few folks interested in that projector. It is a 3-chip DLP working at 5100 lumens with dual 200 watt lamps. It is 1080p with a dynamic iris so you get contrast of up to 10,000:1. They have an even brighter model that is call the HD10K-M with dual 350 watt lamps. Wow. Both use the DC4 chip. Main point is that you need someone who knows the system to calibrate it well.

Sim2 HT5000.

I’m an idiot. Major mail problems while traveling. My entire inbox and all folders were deleted. Blaming China Mobile, iPhone, Mac Mail.

Turns out I was trying to build a Entourage rule to “erase” some people from my mail. Delete anything they would ever send me and I accidentally set it to all messages delete. Arrrgh. I’m a dummy. So, sorry to everyone I didn’t reply to. Now instead of the entire planet erased, its just the two I wanted

Argh. Networks are such a pain. Conference call at 3AM then the network breaks. Traced to an old Linksys WAP54G which wouldn’t pass DHCP addresses. Of course, the Mac doesn’t warn you about this, so signal is strong, but you have to go to Preferences/Network to find out that you are not getting the right IP.

Upgraded the firmware for the WAP54G to 3.0.4 and it starts to work.

But how to see what is really going on with signal. I’ve used istumbler but it only works with 2.4GHz and not with 5GHz. Use Kismac which is way more techie but which tells you about 802.11n and 5GHz too.

The base range of the original 5D is 100 to 1600 ISO with expansion to 3200. Canon appears to have succeeded very well in matching and surpassing the low noise and superb resolution of the original 5D. In fact the 5D2, with a base range of 100 to 3200, is every bit as good in that range as the 5D in its 100-1600 range. Most will have no real problem shooting in the 50-3200 ISO range without much regard to noise. That range is a justified option in the Auto setting on the 5D2. The 6400 and 12800 ISO options are certainly usable in most circumstances, but the noise increases as you go up from ISO 3200.

Looking at the Canon 5D Mark II for a day hardly provides enough data to reach conclusions regarding the 5D2. However, the initial results are truly impressive. Unlike the exaggerated claims for the 50D, the 5D Mark II appears to perform as Canon claims. Resolution is as good or better at the same ISO as the original 5D, but the range is extended somewhere between one and three stops in a sensor with 65% more pixels.