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Another really cool video on Vimeo.com. In case you didn’t know Rendezvous with Rama is a classic science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. This video was done by student at NYU.Rendezvous with Rama
I wish Hollywood would make something this cool, instead of movies like Norbitt or Spiderman III.
Rendezvous with Rama from Aaron Ross on Vimeo.
This time lapse photography is done with a tilt-shift lens. These lenses are generally used for architectural photography to reduce distortion.
The reason that everything looks like miniature models is because of the unique and very shallow depth of field - if you look closely you’ll see that only a horizontal band in the middle of the shots are in focus.
Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
So I built a new Windows machine and installed Vista on it. A $500.00 Fry’s special (yah, yah, I could have got the parts cheaper elsewhere). The machine has a Intel DG45ID motherboard, a 3ghz Intel Core Duo processor, and 4gigs of RAM. It has onboard everything. Audio. Video. Cappuccino maker. Air compressor. Flare gun. Everything.
This should be a fast machine. Right? You’d think? Am I nuts to think this?
The experience of Vista itself is fine, I’ve come to grips with the look and feel (after making some tweaks to it), but here’s the thing - performance and sleep both suck chocolate salty balls. What I mean by this is performance ranges from sluggish to horrible (sorry about the juvenile balls reference, btw). Sleep has never worked properly on this thing and I’ve tweaked every Power option and spent a good hour going through the BIOS on my machine. Read that again. I spent an hour in my BIOS. Warning, Bill Gatesenson! Warning Bill Gateseson! (Mike waves arms around and scares all the dogs and small children in the vicinity).
Soooo…..
You can pretty much string together every curse word you know into novel and obscene combinations and you’ll only approximate an infinitesimal portion of the frustration that shot out of my nose (and elsewhere that shall not be mentioned) like coke mixed with pop rocks.
Sir, we’ve gone to defcon 1. Get the keys and standby. We’ve opened the missile silos. Big expensive stuff is steaming and vibrating.
I endured this because I want to get my machine to go to sleep after like twenty minutes. All the way asleep. No fans, no nothing. A tiny trickle away from dead as a doornail. My power bill is shockingly expensive. Trust me, shock would be experienced in its genuine form here. By you, pal. I don’t need another electronic gizmo pegging the power meter. Really. This is not needed.
To give you an idea of what I’m up against, here’s a little story. I was sitting next to it while it was sleeping (because I put the thing to sleep and hour before) and it kept waking up and then it would put itself under again. I was sitting at my Mac Pro, which I had just woken up. Because it was asleep. Ahem.
Anyway, the fans would spin up. Spin down. The monitor power light turned yellow then green then yellow then green. It would click on. Click off. There was loud clicking. Clicking was heard as far away as Juneau Alaska. Alaskans looked around and at each other - all the this clicking is a-boot to drive me a crazy as a bear in honey farm a-boot to overdose on a-boot two tons of honey… Ya’ll.
I sat there looking at this machine, with my coffee cup half way to my mouth, said mouth quite open and catching the proverbial fly, in utter and complete horror. I voided my bladder and forgot to keep breathing. Ok, that last part didn’t happen, but I was traumatized.
So what I did in the BIOS was pretty much turn off every goddamn thing that could possibly interfere with the machine sleeping. Same with the system power settings. It helped some. I think. Maybe.
By the way there smarty smart, yes, I installed the latest drivers and BIOS and all the updates. I actually have done this before. Once or twice or thirty times… (Feel free to insert your own banging head on wall joke here.)
The other problem is performance. The machine just goes away sometimes. Right now I’m running Outlook and Windows Live Writer (our Windows Live client applications rock, btw). Vista is in the midst of copying about 200gb of music from a drive on the computer to my server and I’m loosing keystrokes and Outlook stops responding (and turns white) for long periods of time. A-boot thirty seconds or a-boot a minute. And then it comes back.
The thing is staggering along like an intoxicated one legged pirate chasing an intoxicated three legged Yorkshire Terrier. A really mean, doubloon hunting, whale harpooning, piratey Yorky. Hop, sniff, shuffle, hop, yelp, yaaaaaar.
Sigh.
Should I add another 4gb of RAM? Would this help? I don’t think I really need it. Or, rephrased, I don’t think I should need it.
It chaps my hide that I might actually need eight gigabytes of RAM to make this flatulent tub handle like it should. Yes. My hide is chapped. Out back. My caribou and bear skins I’ve stretched out in the sun to dry. I’m making a leathery cape and a cod piece for my wedding if you just have to know there Nosy Nelly.
There, I’m done. For now.
P.S. There are no small children in the vicinity in case you were wondering. Which you weren’t. Until I mentioned it here, and now you’re wondering what’s up with the children thing? What’s he really saying? Just let it go… Just. Let. It. Go.
My new car is a 1997 Geo Metro. It has 195,000 miles on it. And I paid $1.00 for it. Everything is manual. Windows. Locks. It has thread worn (and loved) cloth seats. The drivers side mirror moves every time I shut the door. The radio doesn’t work (which I’m going to fix with some gear I have in the garage, including a couple tens and three amps and a new head unit off eBay).
But I like it. Surprisingly.
We “bought” it from Bunny’s parents, who didn’t need it any more. I financed it through my credit union. I had to pay 100% interest on the loan. I paid it off with a Stabucks Latte. Smogging it cost eighty times the cost of the vehicle.
I’ve been driving it because it gets over three times the mileage my truck gets. Up to 40 mpg. My truck gets about 13 mpg and costs about $100.00 to fill up. I filled the geo up the other day for $16.00.
If you know me, you know that this car is so not me. It has thirteen inch wheels for fek’s sake. As a good friend said, that car is so not you - your Volkswagen Bug was a cooler car than this. The Bug was my first car. It was a 1973 Super Beetle with a bent frame, heat that barely worked, and when it rained it would leak above the accelerator pedal so on those days I would take my shoe and sock off when driving. My right foot is still cold to this day. Finally it caught on fire, though it survived and poor me (financially and otherwise) drove it all scorched up for a couple years afterward. It smelled like wet moldy socks smoldering in an open fire. I truly hated that car, though it did look nice (well, before the fire) because it had a nice pretty navy blue paint job. The picture below is not of my Beetle, but other than the color it looked the same.
The Geo is actually fun to drive. Seriously. Well, within certain parameters of course. Now I know your Frappuccino just shot out your nose, but it is fun to drive when you have no expectations of said fun. When you expect horribility, and you don’t find it, you may find funnability. I did in this case. The fun comes from its size - its truly tiny. I’m pretty sure it would fit in my truck. In the backseat. It weighs around 1800lbs. As a comparison, my Corvette weighs around 3100lbs, my Titan weighs around 5000lbs, my ex-Hummer H2 weighed 6400lbs, and a BMW 335 weighs around 3800lbs. This makes it fun to toss around. It sports a burly 80hp. Acceleration is, well, not brisk, but its drivable, and it’s so easy to park its awesome. Try parking my truck sometime in a tight spot. Can you say fifty point turn?
What’s fun is the sensation of speed. You feel like you’re in a rocket car on the salt flats going for a world record when you’re cruising at highway speeds. When flying (and understeering) around corners, tires squealing, you can feel how light weight it is. Pure fun. Not like my Corvette which can be scary at the limit by threatening to oversteer and swap ends on you.
On the freeway in the Geo, you’ve mashed the pedal down and are screaming along thinking holy crap I’m going fast, look at me, and you look down and you’re going 63mph and someone’s gramdma in a thirty year old Caddy floats past you and flips you the bird. If you hit 75, things start rattling. If you hit 80, you’re in a Apollo capsule during atmospheric reentry and the leading edge of the vehicle is glowing orange, paint is ablating off and flying past the window, your glasses vibrate off your face and you get a little worried so you ease gently off and just let ornery grandma disappear off into the hazy distance. Honking the horn at Grandma doesn’t help, the horn would embarrass a moped.
Oh I’ll get you Grandma. Oh, yes I will. Just let me turn the air conditioning off and wait for a tail wind and a long downhill stretch of road, and I’ll get you. And I’ll get 40 mpg doing it.
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