by Matt | Jan 3, 2006 | Personal
Lauren and I, as I mentioned before the holidays, were saving towards a small personal digital camera for ourselves. Originally I had wanted a discontinued Canon powershot model (The sd40 I think) which has since been replaced with the infinatly more expensive SD80. Although it’s nice, at a “consumer” level, I’m not going to shell out $800 for a camera. If I had $800 I’d buy a lower-level pro-camera instead.
After playing with Ashley’s new camera, the Canon SD550, I was sold. It was everything I wanted in a small consumer camera, and had the big “pro” features to back up its Canon reputation. It also falls nicely into my $300-400 price range.
The SD550 is a whopping 7.1Mpxls in a frame smaller than my wallet. It also packs a 37 – 111 mm lens with 3x optical (not digital) zoom, a 9 point TTL auto focus, a macro mode, 14 shooting modes including an interesting “stich assist” for making panoramics, 7 white balance settings including a custom K temp setting, and a beautiful 2.5” LCD screen which looks very sharp.
Having done my homework, this little beauty really seems to be well liked all the way around. Having actually held it in my hands and played with it for a few minutes has me convinced that this will be a real solid camera to have around the house. I’ll probably give B&H a call this week. I’m excited. 🙂
by Matt | Dec 24, 2005 | Personal
Dear George,
Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.
Thanks for the wings!
Clarence
by Matt | Dec 21, 2005 | Personal
Damon leaves Sox for Yankees
And on my birthday too. Thanks Johnny. You could have gone anywhere. Was money THAT important to you? The WS bonus check not enough? Way to go. Hey, here’s an idea, go ask Clemens what it was like to walk back into Fenway in pinstripes. Yeah, have fun with that one.
by Matt | Dec 21, 2005 | Personal
Holy crap. Its that time of year again. In 2 minutes I’ll be 25. That’s messed up. That’s a quarter century I’ve personally be privvy to. Wow.
Time flies when you’re having fun. I was almost about to regale you with memorable exploits from the past 25 years, but, seeing as how its midnight, I’ll save that for over drinks the next time I see any of you. You’re welcome.
Thursday, Lauren and her family are taking me out to dinner, as I think I’ve mentioned before. Outside of that there really isn’t much planned. Lauren and I will have a quite dinner at home tomorrow, open some presents, that sort of thing. I’ll probably spend a good half hour removing/adding tiny weights to my new mouse and holding it delicatly, trying to see if I can actually “feel” the difference in 0.08 ounces. Probably not, but I’ll certainly try.
I want to say two big huge thank you’s already though. First, to Jason for sending me some fantastic CDs and a DVD. He sent me two split albums featuring his band Wicker and Jerry Has No Skates and $7Sox. Both kick butt, althought I’m leaning towards the $7Sox album as my favorite. The Wicker track “Kiss My Texass” however, is pure genious. I’ve also got to mention how cool it was for him to thank the “Sensative 8” in the liner notes. Thanks bud!
Another big thanks goes out to Paul for a pre-birthday gift of a StrongBad tshirt. It was completely unexpected and a pleasent surprise. I plan on wearing it to work tomorrow. Very cool. Thanks Paul!
Well, as I finish writing this it finally dawns on me that I was born in Mass, in the eastern time zone, so, technically, it’s 12:55 there. Way to go Matt, late for your own party. Lol.
Alright guys, I hope everyone is having a great night. Drink one for me…
Out.
by Matt | Dec 17, 2005 | Personal
I mentioned before that I had wanted to talk about CTF and BF2 and that I had already written a whole post about it. Here is that post, not 100% in its entirety, becuase I already mentioned some of it. Anyway.
I doubt you guys know (or care) but CTF was left out of the initial release of the game. Dice/EA felt that alternate game play modes were best left to mod teams. I got other that initial slap in the face because I knew it would only be a short time before mod makers cranked out all sorts of gameplay modes. I’m still waiting, kinda.
This bring me to Desert Conflict. A mod that is trying to recreate the feel of old school Desert [b]Combat[/b] for the original bf1942. Some have argued that BF2 IS essentially Desert Combat since its a modern warfare game and Dice bought Trama Studios who made DC. I’m under the belief that Dice took all of Tramas good ideas, used a few, then fired the whole dev team. Anyway, that’s not important. What is is that the DCon team, this weekend, releases a CTF mini-mod to satiate fans who were clamering for it. Its an early, early beta. Its not bad. What’s lame is that they refused, flat out, to release the server code. Meaning that everyone who wanted to run a CTF server can’t. What’s funny is that they releases this so that the fans would be happy and that maybe it would attrack some good press and support for the mod when they release the full version in a few months.
I feel like by releasing the server code to 10, yes, 10 servers total (world wide) that it does nothing but hurt the fans they were trying to please. Who wants to wait in line for hours to get on the one server nearest to them, which might be across the country, only to play with a shitty ass ping? That doesn’t make any sense.
Their reasoning is that the servers are really the only place where the gametype specific code is and they a) don’t want anyone to steal it and b) arrogantly believe that they are the only ones that can properly administrate their stuff. So, even if you were lucky enough to be a CTF server, you had to give them YOUR Rcon info. They wouldn’t even let you put it up. That’s taking it a bit far.
I don’t think I’d be jumping at the chance to give a stranger rcon access to my server.
…
And that’s were I left off, obviously, if you read the other post, you know that they’ll be releasing server code in the future, which does a bit to calm my anger at their initial decision.
Anyway, I’ve got to get ready for work today, we’re shooting a party (10-2am) tonight. Oi.
by Matt | Dec 16, 2005 | Personal
Almost everytime I try and write a post I’m interupted. At least, that’s what it seems like these past two weeks. I appologize for my absense. Christmas is a busy time for photo studios. People feel the need to flood friends and relatives with pictures of themselves and that’s where I come in.
There’s so many topics I wanted to talk about, there always is. One in perticular is CTF for BF2. That problem seems to have solved itself, or at least will shortly. I had this whole long post perpared (and saved in my “drafts” email box) about CTF, Desert Conflict and the aggrivations for the past two weeks. I’ll instead give you the incredibly abreviated version.
Desert-Conflict is a BF2 mod. They released CTF as an alternative game play mode and a “preview” of things to come in their mod last week. They only released server code to “trusted” servers, which was basically themselves and their friends. The rest of the community felt jaded and were more or less pissed off. Everyone had wanted to run their own servers, us included. Nasty emails and forum posted flew. Whether they had a change of heart or just didn’t want to take it anymore is up for debate, but today they announced that soon we’ll have a version 0.2 and they’ll release the code to the general public. “About effing time” was the general concensus.
Besides BF2 there’s also been a bunch of stuff going on. My car is having a few issues, mostly minor but annoying. Until yesterday I didn’t have the money to fix any of them. My left headlight it out and my break light has been coming on. The light is a quick (yet expensive) fix. Luckily my headlights are the “bulb” variety that simply swing into place and can be removed seperatly from the housing. My previous cars required entire replacement units (the entire plastic light, reflector bits, lightbuld, etc) and were far more expensive. The other problem, the brake light, is due to flow break fluid and the cold weather. A bottle of break fluid should take care of it.
Lastly, next week is my birthday. You all know by now how much I hate this time of year and my birthday. I can never really fully explain why. I just do. Most of you have been present for one (or several) so I’m being redundant. Maybe it’s the time of year, the weather, the general hustle and bustle of the season, I don’t know, but I’ve never been quite able to get into the holiday spirit and being in that non-mood leads me to appreciate my birthday far less. Lauren, and I love her for it, has tried to change all that and provide me with fantastic birthdays. This year she’s planned to take me to a place called Fantasy Island. No, it’s not porn. It’s actually a resturant/magic show. They have several small dining rooms where slight of hand magicians perform for small groups of tables before the larger show after dinner. I don’t know if anyone is aware of it or not, but I’ve always been a HUGE fan of magic and slight of hand. I’ve tried for years, though not aggresively, to pick up some slight of hand skills. I can appreciate the art. So, that’s where I’ll be next week. I thought that was pretty cool.
At my behest, my mouse problem is also solved thanks to a timely birthday present. Now, technically I haven’t received it yet, but there’s a shiny new Logitech G5 laser mouse waiting for me on Wednesday.
I’ve also got to say a quick thanks to Jake for hooking me up with a Fever Pitch movie poster from his theatre. That was very thoughtful of him and it’ll be going up in my study right next to the RedSox WS 2004 plaque. Thanks Jake!
I wish I could sit here and ramble on for hours, but that would be counter-productive, and my lunch break simply isn’t that long. Later.
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