Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Fri, 2005-02-25 (Feb 25)

Mazda6 Test Drive

Filed under: Blog,Cars,General,Mazda 6 — David @ 00:58

Took the recommendation of a friend and checked out a used car broker in town. Awesome Christians and they also have the best mechanic I’ve ever met in my life! Ask me if you’re interested in the name of the dealer.

The guy (the owner of the dealership/brokerage) took me and my Dad to the car auction place in Plainfield where we basically got to drive around and look at all their cars, and we could look at and test drive anything we wanted to on their test track! (It’s a nice “track” for testing but it doesn’t quite compare to the racing kind.) Got to drive four different “Mazda6”:http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/Mazda-6/ sedans. All essentially the same car, just different color/number of cylinders/trims. Here’s what they were (two were silver and two were black, but I keep confusing myself as to which were what color so I may be wrong here, but I think I remember…):

1. Black base trim 4-cylinder auto-transmission. This was nice, not too much different in feel than the Altima I had back in 2000.
2. Silver fully loaded V6 manual transmission. This thing just plain rocks! I didn’t get to drive it because I don’t know how to drive a stick shift (yet?). But the dealer drove me in it, and he, um, knows how to drag race cars :-) Very cool.
3. Black fully loaded 4-cylinder auto-transmission. Nice, felt like the manual V6 except for, well, the manual transmission and the V6! A little better accelleration than my Mom’s 2001 Infiniti G20 that her father gave her when he stopped driving last year (he’s in his mid-eighties), I could see myself with this one.
4. Best for last: Black, fully loaded V6 auto-transmission. I love this car. I want this car. Only problem? Should I get this or the silver stick shift with the same trim? I’m having a tough time deciding; making it harder is that the auto-tranny includes a nice little auto-manual-shifter feature over to the right of the Drive position (see “this photo”:http://photos2.ebizautos.com/1366/581667_29.jpg). But I didn’t realize that when I test-drove it, to see how it worked.

I’ve only driven a stick for one half-hour of my entire life. And that was an ’86 Ford Ranger tiny pickup truck that we had for a little while as an extra vehicle. First gear was kind of sticky, and I managed to kill the engine three times in that half-hour (well, it may have been more me than the sticky first gear, but even my parents had trouble with it sometimes. I don’t think they ever killed the engine though :-) But I think it might be fun to try a stick…only problem is, if I buy a car with a loan, and I get tired of driving a stick soon, I’m stuck for a while. But I think driving can be “boring” sometimes because it’s so simple (not that I don’t enjoy it!), so maybe a stick would make it more interesting. Then again, makes it a bit harder to use the cell phone and eat while driving! Six of one… :-)

Anyway, short post, need to get to bed. Nice “photo gallery”:http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/Mazda-6/Photos.htm of the car here, including the Wagon and 5-Door (Hatchback) models I’m not looking at.

Oh yeah, “fully loaded” means, in addition to stuff I’m probably forgetting:

Leather heated seats, premium Bose audio, auto-climate control, power moonroof, 17″ wheels with Alloy rims, bucket seats, 4-wheel ABS, Traction control, remote alarm system, 8-way power driver’s seat, and the Sport Package with optional Spoiler (see the first link above near the bottom for more of a description along with a better format of this list). Not sure if the Sport Package was on all the fully loaded ones I drove, some had spoilers some didn’t, all fully loaded had the 8-way power driver’s seat at least and most of the rest.

I still have some research to do (and maybe a bit more test driving :-) and some financing things to work out, but I really like the Mazda6 V6, fully loaded with either the manual or automatic transmission (once I decide :-) and I hope everything works out for me to get one soon!

While I’m at it…think perhaps this laptop would go well with either of the Mazda (silver or black) colors? “Envy m:870”:http://www.voodoopc.com/sellPage.aspx?productID=1019. Why yes, yes it would. And, if I don’t buy a car, I could probably afford it soon…so that would be a NO :-)

Thu, 2005-02-24 (Feb 24)

A Post In 133 Words or Less

Filed under: Blog,Funny,General,Origins,Worldviews — David @ 00:36

Short made it they, so shall I: ” The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less”:http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/hist/hist.html

Keep in mind: I haven’t actually read the whole darn thing so I can’t vouch for accuracy. One mention of “Religion” I saw. Looks like it fit in 2,000 years ago, hard to tell. Of course I can’t vouch for the earlier: “Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction. Fossilization. Land exploration. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Glaciation. Homo sapiens manifestation.”

But hey, anything that short’s bound to have some errors creep in there, I mean it takes so long to go back and check your work… :-)

Supposedly based on the book “A Briefer History of Time“:http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/bhtes/ which, of course, I put on hold at the library! Looks humorous.

Sun, 2005-02-20 (Feb 20)

Spoonman

Filed under: Blog,Entertainment,Funny,General,Movies,Personal,Tech (General),Videography — David @ 00:24

I really can’t say that I’ve ever seen any Anime beyond a minute or two of Pokemon here and there a while back. Can’t say I see myself getting into it. But, if you know me (and no, just reading this blog doesn’t count…IRL(In Real Life) is preferred…if you know me well enough you should figure it out pretty fast when you see it), you might figure out why this is hilarious!

“Spoonman“:http://daveschool.com/spoonman/

I like it for the same reason I liked the main character (and his nickname) in “I, Robot“:http://www.irobotmovie.com/ (in addition to that just being a cool movie!).

Anyway. Past bedtime!

Oh yeah, but I do want one of those laptops they have at “Boxxtech”:http://www.boxxtech.com (I customized to the “one I want”:http://www.boxxtech.com/products/configurator.asp?ModelSeriesID=98, starts at $2,985.00 and it’s only $5,068.00 when I get done with it :-) Oh yeah, plus I also played with customizing their high-end desktop system. With nearly every add-on and high-end item I could add (actually I picked my favorites instead of the most costly option a few places) it went from a base of about $3,000 up to over $24,500!!!!! I can’t think of a comparison to my salary that wouldn’t reveal too much, but let’s say I’m not going to be able to afford that system on mine any time soon! Actually, the $3,000 one isn’t exactly in my budget, either…

Okay, now it’s bedtime :-)

Thu, 2005-02-17 (Feb 17)

Fry’s opening (almost) in town!

Filed under: General — David @ 03:32

Scanning through blogs (yes, more procrastination from last post!) and found my “Topix Local News”:http://www.topix.net/city/meridian-hills-in linking to this: “Fry’s Electronics opening in Fishers”:http://www.thenoblesvilleledger.com/articles/0/045672-1540-114.html! Cool, I’ve heard lots of geeks out in California and elsewhere talk about buying electronics at Fry’s, but there’s never been one around here. Granted it’ll be a bit up north, but hey, I already drive to CompUSA! Big place they’re moving into (185,000 sq. ft. according to the article), I remember going there when it was the Incredible Universe electronics store (that was a cool place that closed almost before it opened! I think it was overpriced but it was years and years ago before I had money so I wouldn’t remember). Cool!

Well, I’m Back!

Filed under: General — David @ 03:23

Not that I really went anywhere. Just spent so much time working, relaxing, and reading new info, that I didn’t really have the time or inclination to process and organize the info enough to make it pop up here. So I appeared to have dissappeared, except to those I know in real life who saw me a few times :-)

I seem to have a knack for finding interesting (by my definition!) stuff that’s about the actual interesting stuff. For example, there’s a great entry at a blog I read called “Procrastinator, know thyself“:http://www.slackermanager.com/slacker_manager/2005/02/procrastinator_.html that has good insight, but links to another entry in another blog, called “Is Procrastination a Gift?“:http://monster.typepad.com/monsterblog/2005/02/is_procrastinat.html that, in turn, links to “an article in The Wall Street Journal”:http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB110790238799549268-IdjgINilal4npyrZYKHcaaHm5,00.html. The annoying thing? Reading the first, short article can lead to five minutes worth of reading! And that’s just following one link per page. See why I don’t have time to compose posts here, considering they take even longer with links like that? Not to mention it explains why I end up with, um, (let me count), nine browser windows open simultaneously, With a total of seventy-nine “tabs”:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/tabbed-browsing.html open at once across those nine “Firefox”:http://www.getfirefox.com/ browser windows! Including this post composition window, of course. I mean, I’m only using five tabs right now, in this browser window, to compose this post. Oops, I just went up to nine, finding some “good”:http://www.gmailforums.com/lofiversion/index.php/t1475.html “pages”:http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050114201044946 “tabbed”:http://channels.lockergnome.com/web/archives/20041222_italicise_your_unread_firefox_tabs_and_other_bits.phtml browsing…even after closing the Google window I used to search for them :-)

I could probably come up with some other stuff to talk about (this is where I was going to say, “but it will have to wait until later” until I finished the rest of the paragraph!). For example, a friend suggested some good books to grab, namely those by “Michael Crichton”:http://www.crichton-official.com/ (also see “Wikipedia entry”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton), specifically “The Great Train Robbery“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060502304/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2 (also see the “DVD”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0792839064/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2) and “Andromeda Strain“:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060541814/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2 (also a movie in “DVD”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00008438U/davidsworldva-20/002-2086300-3510456?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2). Of course while looking those up at “Amazon.com”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=http://www.amazon.com I saw that they are now playing the trailer for the movie “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”:http://www.hitchhikersmovie.com/ (see “the Amazon page for it”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=davidsworldva-20&path=tg/feature/-/556590/, too) coming the end of April, so I had to watch that and research it a bit. Took me up to 14 browser tabs. Actually, a bit more when I started looking up Michael Crichton books at the library to put on hold :-) And my point at the beginning of this paragraph, was that this post has mainly been me procrastinating to avoid entering the bills I just wrote checks for into “Quicken”:http://www.quicken.com/ and look, I’ve managed to spend a bit more time not doing that :-) Better go now…this post was supposed to be around three sentences long!

Oh yeah…camera is working out great, I love it! More on that some other time :-)

Theory of Relativity Explained with Short Words

Filed under: Entertainment,Funny,General,Science — David @ 02:11

Yep, I took the name of this post from the blog I read it at. Some nut case put this odd item on the ‘net. This post is in the same vein. Read it to find out more. It is very hard to talk this way for very long. I did not read the full post. It was too long, I may try on the next day in time to read it all, but I may not have time at all, when all is said and done. It does seem a bit dumb :-) I am not very good at this! I used a site that will tell me a word that can mean the same as some word that is not the same :-)

Tue, 2005-02-08 (Feb 08)

Considering Cameras (part Yipee! I mean…two)

Filed under: Blog,Digital Cameras,General,Tech (General) — David @ 00:51

(There’s also a “Part One”:http://www.existdifferently.com/archives/2005/02/05/considering-cameras-part-1/ to this post.)

See, “AbesOfMaine”:http://www.abesofmaine.com/ dropped their price on the “Fuji FinePix E550”:http://www.fujifilm.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/digitalE550Overview.jsp?item=I789908&dbid=789908&urltype=overview&NavBarId=I789908 to about $273 plus shipping. Overnight shipping would have been about $35 or so, ground would have been $20. CircuitCity.com was having a deal, web-only, “$314.99”:http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Fujifilm-FinePix-E550-Digital-Camera/sem/rpsm/oid/108877/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do but you could pick it up in-store. The store had it on the shelf for $349.99, but since I ordered online I paid $333.90 including tax. It was a tad more for same day-service, but not that much. And I put off the 512MB xD Picture Card until tomorrow because “eCost”:http://www.ecost.com/ was $25 cheaper even with (overnight) shipping! Hey, the included 16MB card holds a whole two pictures. But that’s at the highest quality; it holds like eleven or twelve medium-quality pics! I think the included rechargable hi-capacity AA batteries with charger is a much better included accessory, but I will have to get some more of these rechargables. At least it only uses two at a time instead my old one’s four.

It might be a dissected fetal pig for lunch...(click for full, 4MB version)What? You didn’t think I was going to go through all that and not give you a sample? Well…okay. I was dissecting a fetal pig for a snack earlier and grabbed this one (click picture for full version but be warned, it’s a 4MB file!). If you ask nicely, I might resize it down a bit (the thumbnail doesn’t show the whole picture), ’cause if you’re on dial-up you may want to just say no to 4MB!

Oh yeah, and I’m taking the afternoons off work all this week. If you know me, you might know the past weekend (Catalyst Vision Banquet) as being a bit long. Gotta have some recovery time sometimes. Photography takes time, after all… ;-)

(more…)

Sat, 2005-02-05 (Feb 05)

Considering Cameras (part 1)

Filed under: Blog,Digital Cameras,General,Photography,Tech (General) — David @ 05:09

I’ve been wanting a new digital camera for a while. My current, an Olympus D-450 Zoom, functions excruciatingly slowly, and only has 1.3 megapixels of resolution. It was top of the line for a consumer camera when I got it five or six years ago, and I’ve taken thousands of pictures with it (over a thousand in Holland alone last year). But it’s now old enough that it’s available on “eBay”:http://www.ebay.com/ for $50 or less.

I’m by no means a professional photographer, or even in the “amateur” category really. I don’t have time to develop those skills. But I like to pretend like I know what I’m doing, and maybe learn something when I have time. It’s an area of interest.

So, I want a camera that rocks, at a cheap price. Yeah, who doesn’t? :-) Well, my style tends to be, “develop composition mentally over a wide subject angle, test composition through camera (mainly LCD but occasionally viewfinder), shoot quickly before subject moves.” I take lots of pictures, fast. I don’t wait for the “perfect shot”, if needed I’ll take several in a row of the same thing to see which comes out best (quality-wise and in composition).

This style really seems to fit a point-and-shoot camera better than an SLR-like (or SLR, if that were in my price range). But I want the flexibility of as many manual controls as possible in case I want to do something a little more advanced, and have the time to set it up.

Also, because of my quick-composition and multi-pictures tendencies, I like to take some wide-angle shots in addition to closeups of the same thing, making a long and fast zoom very helpful.

I’m looking at three cameras, when I can afford one. I’ve been eyeing the “Fuji FinePix E550 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM for the longest. Earlier tonight I found three others that do that thing I hate — turning an easy decision into a much more subjective and time-consuming one! One is the “Olympus C-7000 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/C7000/C7KA.HTM, another is the “Casio EXILIM PRO EX-P600”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/P600/P60A.HTM, and the final one is the “Canon Powershot S70”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CS70/S70A.HTM. All those links are to reviews at a very awesome site, “Image-Resource.com”:http://www.imaging-resource.com. Another good site with lots of info and in-depth reviews is “Digital Photography Review”:http://www.dpreview.com/, which has info on most, if not all, of the same cameras I just mentioned.

Anyway, I’m going to go through each camera and give some highlights on why I like each. Then I’m going to go to sleep. And later, at a yet-to-be-determined time post more as part 2 of this post.

  • “Fuji FinePix E550 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM
    This camera is awesome (second “review at DPreview.com”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fujifilme550/ also available). It has nearly everything, the biggest downside is that it only has a 4x zoom, as opposed to the Olympus’s 5x. I don’t mind that it’s a 6.3 megapixel resolution (Olympus and Canon models have seven), six is plenty. A camera with five megapixels I might consider if everything else was awesome enough, but four or lower is a hard sell. It goes from point-and-shoot to full manual control, with lots of options. DPreview says that timing-wise, this thing goes from off to ready-to-shoot in 1.5 seconds, zooms from widest to maximum in 1.5 seconds, and takes a picture about 0.6 seconds after pressing the shutter release fully! That’s a speedy digital camera! All very suitable to my shooting style. Without the flash on, it’s also ready to take a second shot 1.5 seconds after the last, also excellent. My current camera takes 4-6 seconds to be ready for another, and it feels like an eternity most of the time, and it’s pretty bad in the other timing areas, too. But all these cameras here are faster than my existing one, so let’s go on. Oh yeah, it uses the xD Picture Card storage format: more expensive than most but not killer. Two other plusses include interpolated (before compression) pictures up to 12 megapixels from the 6.3 MP sensor, and (according to DPreview) “excellent color and exposure.” It’s also the cheapest of them all! Around $300; unfortunately a Fuji rebate of $50 just expired the end of January :-(
  • “Olympus C-7000 Zoom”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/C7000/C7KA.HTM
    I’m equally balanced between the Fuji and this Olympus right now (this one has “a review at DPreview.com”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympusc7000/ as well). For one, my current camera is an Olympus. Actually, that’s a downside :-) But DPreview says it goes from off to ready-to-shoot in 1.4 seconds, a full-shutter-release-press (in one motion) takes a picture in 0.5 seconds, and runs 1.7 seconds shot-to-shot. All of which are just barely on either side of the times for the Fuji E550. But, this thing is a seven megapixel camera. Downsides include low battery life (still sky-high compared to my current one!) and a two-second delay before showing the next picture when browsing through existing shots in-camera. The others here are supposed to be much faster than two seconds to pull up a preview. Note again, that in comparison my current Olympus D-450 Zoom can take 4-6 seconds to display a preview of a picture in the camera, which is again an eternity, especially when trying to “scroll” through the shots! Nicest thing about this one over the Fuji (I think) is that the zoom is 5x optical vs. 4x. It has a fast zoom, extending at startup in one second (not sure on speed while zooming but I would assume it’s equally impressive). Media is xD Picture Card.
  • “Casio EXILIM PRO EX-P600”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/P600/P60A.HTM
    This one isn’t directly reviewed at DPreview, but the next model up, the EX-P700 (substituting seven megapixels for this one’s six) has a “review at DPreview”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/casioexp700/ instead. The EX-P600 is about $80 cheaper than the EX-P700, and some of my info here is from the DPreview info on the EX-P700 instead of the 600. First of all, the timing appears to be very close to the above cameras, except it takes an extra second to turn on and be ready-to-shoot. Like the others (Except the Canon at 1.8″), it’s got a 2.0″ LCD display in addition to the viewfinder. I didn’t see the zoom speed mentioned, but shot-to-shot times were 2 to 2.5 seconds, a bit high. It’s got a 4x optical zoom, the minimum of these cameras. I haven’t gotten in-depth into this camera yet but it looks like a good backup option. Uses SD storage, just like my Treo 600!
  • “Canon Powershot S70”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/CS70/S70A.HTM
    Also has a “review at DPreview”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons70/ and it’s a seven megapixel model, like the Olympus C-7000. Optical zoom is only 3.6x, a downside. It does have lots of scene presets for different conditions, and looks cool, being the only black one of the bunch. DPreview says the camera is “not a particularly speedy camera” and focusing in low-light can cause a lot of hunting. Picture playback speed also suffers. Almost three seconds from off to ready-to-shoot. Shooting lag time is one second (higher than the others), and zooming full-wide to telephoto takes 1.8 seconds, admittedly not horrible. A good last choice with high resolution but less zoom and speed.

That’s it for my first roundup! I’ll follow up when I get the chance. And when I make the purchse, whenever I happen to save up the money (sooner if I get the Fuji! :-)

Thu, 2005-02-03 (Feb 03)

TiVo? Schmevo.

Filed under: Entertainment,Tech (General) — David @ 01:11

Tivo’s are cool. However, they’re not cool enough for me to spend money on. I’d rather have something better. One of the bloggers I read has an “article posted on Tuesday on the TiVo Home SDK”:http://www.ericburke.com/blog/2005/02/tivo-hme-sdk.html that seems to assume that Tivo’s must get more expandable and customizable because that’s the only way to do things. I don’t know if he’s aware of the alternatives or not. But if he isn’t, I let him know! And I liked my post enough to repeat it here:

Ever heard of “SageTV”:http://www.sage.tv? I put together a three-tuner computer system running Sage, I don’t pay TiVo’s monthly fee and I can add computer clients anywhere in the house that control the same unit with the same shows. I can add hard drive space. I can install extensions (including commercial detection that someone wrote that works reasonably well, and others that let me read RSS feeds, check weather…). And, they just released a Linux version to go along with the Windows version. I’ve never had a TiVo, but I can’t see the benefits over what I have.

They also have a device coming soon like a media center “extender” so you can put your server in a closet and just run this box near the TV to a network jack (maybe wireless? My laptop works fine as an 802.11g SageTV client) and plug it in. Did I mention it has a free TV guide subscription for two weeks in advance?

Apparently, although I didn’t pick it for several reasons, some people also like “BeyondTV”:http://www.snapstream.com for similar functions.

Microsoft even released their Media Center edition thingy as a copycat of all this.

Why do we need TiVo again? Well, maybe for the non-techies that don’t want the power I just mentioned…but isn’t that who these new TiVo features are geared towards?

Anyway, big Friday night church event this week, I’ll be setting up lighting/media stuff all day tomorrow (Thursday) and then I get a break Friday until about 4:30 pm. But by “all day tomorrow” I mean from 9 am to about 9 pm or so. All for a good cause! I’ll be glad when it’s over though. At least I’m off Saturday…I’ll need it, since it will probably take until 2 am Friday night to strike (that means “take everything down and clean up” in roadie-speak in case you didn’t know :-)

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