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- Category: Philosophy
There are times we get ourselves into situations where we're giving every ounce of our strength to those we're taking care of. This to us is a selfless act and we can't ever imagine doing anything else. We eventually get worn down to the point that we just can't go on and we eventually fail. This is not an uncommon occurance and usually happens to those single parents who have the world on their shoulders or maybe the "unevenly yoked" people who care not only for the children but the other adult in the relationship. We may even extend this situation to total strangers who need help, co-workers, people from church etc.
We help until we've nearly destroyed ourselves because if we were to do anything for us it would be selfish which goes against our very nature. Or would it? That's where bus maintenance comes in.
Bus Maintenance
Let's assume for a moment that you live on the edge of death valley and you own a bus. You make your living by carrying passengers from one side of the valley to the other in this bus. You care a great deal about your passengers and you'd do anything for them. In order to keep them safe you need to take good care of your bus because if you neglect it at all you and your passengers could end up stranded in the middle of the desert and people could get hurt or worse.
Doing regular maintenance on the bus is a necessity to keeping those who you care about safe. Sometimes it's hard to put money into it because it's YOUR bus and it feels a little selfish. It seems like you're only thinking of your own possessions so buying parts and spending time tuning it seems a little self serving. However, you have to keep reminding yourself that if your bus breaks down people could get hurt so you keep it in as good a shape as you can.
The bus is you
This bus is YOU. You have to take care of yourself or the people who are counting on you will get stranded in the middle of the desert. YOU can't fail, it's not an option. The more people who rely on you the more you have to maintain your bus.
What does maintaining your bus really mean?
Maintaining your bus means different things to different peWhat does maintaining your bus really mean?ople. I personally have a desire for deep thought so I need to spend a certain amount of my time every week surrounded by people with like minds. This recharges me. For you it may be that you need to go shopping or go on a date or just get your nails done. It all depends on who you are and what you need to recharge but the point is if you don't do it you're bus will at some point break down.
Spending a little time on yourself is a necessary thing in order to be able to continue taking care of those who need you.
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- Category: Philosophy
So what does it mean to believe in yourself?
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- Category: Photography Blog
Regular visitors know of my obsession with finding the ultimate point and shoot camera and know that I bought an S90 which I've been very impressed with. It's two downfalls have been the ergonomics and the lack of improvements in video abilities. The former you can work around by adding a grip and just plain getting used to it. The latter you're stuck with. Canon appears to be listening and has released an update to the S90 aptly named S95. I think the update may be fueled as much by Panasonic adding more zoom to the LX series as customer demands.
According to dpreview they've added support for SDXC cards for larger than 32 GB (ho hum), some improvements in the image stabilization (yawn) and multi-aspect shooting (tapping my fingers here Canon). The ONE real new feature and probably the only real reason for the update is the improved sensor that does 720 HD video (at 24 fps) with stereo sound! Finally Canon is getting into the game. I don't care that much because I also own a Canon HF-200. The improvement is welcome though and shows that Canon is making the changes to be competitive in the Point and Shoot video market as well.
There are still limitations to the very design of most point and shoot cameras. They will say unlimited video recording until the card is full or the file size reaches 4 GB. In HD the S95 can record about 30 minutes of video non-stop. Sounds like a Fat32 filesystem limit to me. I think it's time camera manufacturers endorse a new filesystem.
They've made other small changes to improve the complaints about ergonomics. The small wheel on the back supposedly is less sensitive, the coating is less slippery than the old finish (listed as wet bar of soap in the catalog I believe), and the power button and ring function button have been swapped. Also it looks as if the shutter release is about the same size but the area surrounding the button is dished in to help you find it by feel. The button itself looks to have more of a bulge to it for the same reason. If you go back and read my S90 review you will see that they have directly addressed ALL of my major complaints except for the grip issue which can be fixed by buying the aftermarket grip. Since I've not used the S95 I cannot comment on whether they have been successful but it looks positive.
Read DPreviews press release.
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- Category: Tech Blog
I was digging through an old forum (OK I admit it, I googled myself!) and found a funny comic. I have always wondered how long I'd last on level 1 tech support - probably not long.
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- Category: Programming Blog
Sometimes if you know a few things about programming you can see mistakes other programmers have made. You could probably even find them in the code if you had it for review. A great example is of an email I got today from someone who supposedly saw me on a website. I'd assume this website was a dating site had the variable not been empty when the email went out.
Hello , I came across your profie in () and I will like us to have a good Relationship and to know much better .my name is Ann, i am single and never marriage.I will wait for your reply . you can contact me at this my email address (
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) so that i can send you my picture and more about myself. waiting to hear from you . PLEASE CONTACT ME DIRECTLY WITH THIS EMAIL (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. )
It looks like I must have been hanging out on the site called () or perhaps I'm supposed to insert something in there depending on my own online dating habits. Or perhaps the programmer isn't parsing his junk properly or maybe they got my name from some data mining source and there wasn't anything in the dating site: field so it came up blank. Interestingly the parenthesis were included in the email. In the spirit of this post I was going to include a picture of a shirt I once bought that had a very 1950s Hollywood TV looking blond woman with a tear in her eye and the caption said "I can't believe I didn't declare my variables". Funny but the t-shirt is now gone and apparently any trace of the design on the Internet has gone missing as well.
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- Category: Tech Blog
We all know that Android is a cooler geek OS than iphoneOS and let's not even mention Windows CE which is plain crap. However, the question may come up with who's getting the ladies - iphone users or Android users? Maybe a robot doesn't come to mind when women think of romance and love but still. Recently the popular online dating site OKCupid did the thing they're most famous for - analyze data and find patterns. The following picture is a result of that research.
It appears that mindless drones get laid more than businessmen or tech savvy geeks. Who knew?
I also find it interesting that 20% more women using iphones are getting laid then men who use iphones. Who are they waking up next to then I might ask? I'm not saying anything about iphone users but the statistics don't lie - they might be stuck on one cellular network but they appear to be fairly open with other choices in life. ;-)
If the original study interests you (it should) head on over to OKCupid and check it out. http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident/
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- Category: Food Blog
I was in Grocery Outlet the other day and saw something interesting. On most of their signs they'll have their price and then the price for that item in other stores to let you know how much you save. Common sense would tell you that if Grocery Outlets price was higher then the competition they'd just leave that off the sign since their entire purpose for existing is to sell junk. Apparently that little business strategy didn't make it into the weekly employee meeting as you can see by the photo I took.
I do have one suggestion for Grocery Outlet however... Could you give me a directions the next time some other store has a better deal?
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- Category: Photography Blog
After months (no years) of debate trying to find my perfect point and shoot camera that was good enough to be my only camera I bought a Canon S90. I thought since I've now been using it for several months I'd post a review of what I thought.
The choice really came down to the Panasonic LX3, Canon G11 and Canon S90. The G11 was knocked out in the first round because it really doesn't do anything more than the S90 and is larger and heavier. It's lens has a bit more reach but it gives up low light performance (f2.8 vs f2.0 for the S90) in the process. It has a hot shoe and even though that tempted me with buying the G7 I never ever used it. The deciding factor was that the S90 fits in my pocked comfortably and the G11 never will (nor did my G7 because of weight). The real comparison came down to the Panasonic LX3 and the Canon S90.
The real draw to the LX3 was that it has amazing low light performance. To be honest at ISO 80 and lots of light you can take great photos with a point and shoot as long as you have some manual control. At ISO 400 things change and the point and shoots are just about done. By ISO 800 you start throwing away photos but a DSLR is just getting started. The draw of having great low light performance almost made me choose the LX3 before the S90 came out. The biggest reason I didn't was that the LX3 has no lens! OK, it has a lens but what good is a 60mm reach? That's not a zoom lens, thats a "bring it in to normal field of view" lens. I was really hoping for at least a 2x - 3x zoom so I held off. When DPreviews did their premium point and shoot comparison and the S90 proved to have better low light performance and a 28-105 f2.0 lens I bought one. Now that Canon smacked Panasonic up side the head I see that Panasonic is coming out with an LX5 (what happened to the LX4?) with a longer reaching lens and a control ring, the two things that Canon has that Panasonic really needs. It looks like though they're trying to get even rather than leap frog Canon. Before I go on I will just mention just for the record that the Pansonic movie mode creams Canon. So on with the review.
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- Category: Gadget Blog
I've been a long time user of Nokia's Internet tablets and have been looking at upgrading to something that has a cell and/or wimax connection to the internet so today I started googling. I've heard of people getting iphones refurbished for under $100 and just signing up for a data-only plan at AT@T so they essentially have an ipod touch with a cell connection (as apposed to wifi only) for $15 a month. I considered that but have issues with Apple's policies concerning what *I can do with the device that *I own.
Anyway as you may remember from past articles I've also been looking at Nokia's n900 phone. It's more Mobile Internet Device than phone although it does make calls. This is very similar to the iphone being a better media player than phone. The n900 though is still pretty pricy and there's questions about it's future since Nokia and Intel have merged their mobile OS efforts into Meego. Some n900 owners don't know if the n900 will be able to run MeeGo or not so I'm undecided on it. However I did turn up this "N900 Style" cell phone device made in China. From a distance it's pretty convincing until you read the comments and the FAQ. I'm providing a link but also giving an excerpt.
Interesting Specs
- Support Extend (Memory) Card 2G
- Camera Pictrue Resolution 640×480/240×400/400×240/160×120/80×60
- Screen Resolution VGA(240×320 pixels)
Question and Answer
Can anyone tell me if the N900 style phone being sold by LightInTheBox has the linux based Maemo operating system like the actual Nokia N900? If so this is the tech deal of the century.
Sorry - this phone is based on the MTK operating system.
Does this have resistive or capacitive touch functionality?
Sorry, but this device does not have a touchscreen function.
Does this phone has a wifi ??
Sorry, this phone doesn't have WiFi.
Interesting device but there sure a lot of sorrys in the answers. It looks like an n900 down to the bulge around the camera bezel. However, where the n900 has 32GB of ram built in with support for another 16GB this pile of crap can be *expanded to 2GB max. Instead of the 5MP camera on the n900 this thing has a .7 MP webcam. Instead of Maemo Linux this has something called MTK operating system which nobody knows anything about and more than likely is also crap. The nice thing is it only costs $125 or so. It's even compatible with your Nokia charger.
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- Category: Tech Blog
No matter how fast your cpu is or how big your hard drive is you'll find a way of using it all up. Here I'm encoding videos to h.264 for my Archos 5.