Winter Fun Food and Adventure Victoria - know your pets · Monday February 22, 2010 by colin newell
Fuji digital cameras have introduced the FinePix F80EXR 12 Megapixel camera…
With pet recognition…
Seriously.
For those times when you are sitting in the cabin with your loved one and your equivalent of mans best friend.
And you turn to your significant other and say…
“Honey, does that look like our dog snuffles to you?”
“Gee. Honey. I am not sure…”
“Lemme grab the Fuji FinePix F80EXR!”
The F80EXR features Pet Detection which detects the faces of up to 10 dogs or cats and automatically focuses on them.
Seeing that this process is notoriously difficult (to capture an expressive portrait of an active animal with a compact camera) why leave it up to your eyes!
Pet Detection allows the camera to shoot automatically as soon as it detects your pet’s face in the frame. The FinePix F80EXR also allows you to search for pictures of cats or dogs in playback mode.
Good thing.
Because I have never trusted my cat.
Winter all food, fun and drink marathon begins - Olympics full swing · Saturday February 20, 2010 by colin newell
Just in case someone thinks that I am rolled up in the corner like a cobra or glowering like a vulture as the Canadian sports Olympiad rolls out in all its glorious redness…
I can honestly say that I am enjoying the sports and athletes in colorful HD.
Nothing like the detail in pairs skating. Or the ‘nothing to the imagination’ of sliding events like luge , skeleton , and bobsled .
Don’t get me wrong. Like our participation in Afghanistan. I question the mission but I support the troops without a hiccup.
The Olympics is a 2 week plus party – and Vancouver – Whistler residents and visitors appear to be enjoying themselves. Awesome. Right there with you.
The protesters are well behaved, peaceful, getting their message across – and the lug nut Black Bloc are keeping out of the way, utterly discredited as the bone-headed thugs they are.
When it is all over, you will probably not hear another negative word about the subject – it’s done like dinner. Time to move on. Back to actual real life stuff.
So. Thanks for your patience loyal reader Jeanie. You have the patience of a…
well. You fill in the blanks.
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Two strikes into a red flag moment - troubles with twitter · Sunday February 7, 2010 by colin newell
The problem with words is… like baseballs and rocks, they almost always travel further than you expect.
One of the saddest moments of my life was when I was 4 or 5 and while playing in the front yard… I picked up a suitably sized pebble and hurled it…
…bouncing it off my mother’s forehead.
And protest in pain she did. I felt like a bag of crap.
That was in the sixties.
Now in her 80’s she seems fine. Fingers crossed.
She’s okay. But what about me?
I seem to be still throwing rocks. Which means I have a bit of a bullying streak.
Don’t like it much.
While mucking with Twitter the last few days, I made 2 discoveries.
1.) When you want to bug someone about something (particularly on Twitter – or any other media for that matter) – you can do it quite effectively when you know you have their attention… and
2.) No matter who is out there, great and small… everyone can be tuned into your comments… even if you are directing them to William Shatner or someone else.
And no, I did not bully Bill.
What I did do was make some comments, in a very weak form of jest, against one of my favorite radio personalities. And he called me on it. Sent me a message.
And that rock on my mom’s head came back in crystal clear memory.
My dear wife, whom I love more than life itself, advised…
“For the love of Pete, leave celebrity name deleted alone… what’s wrong with you?” “And you are on twitter probation…”
Two strikes.
She has me scrubbing Jeffries tubes and checking plasma conduit.
The next infraction: Her finger is on the warp core jettison switch.
I am a bully. Working on a cure.
Keeping my hands away from rocks.
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Fall Fun Food and Drink Chapter Two - A week on Twitter · Tuesday September 8, 2009 by colin newell
Twitter is like riding a bus. At rush hour.
And we all know how much fun that is.
People with opinions that you do not really want – and faces that you would rather not see. All at your fingertips.
In my one week experiment with this application… a week I will never get back…
I discovered the following:
Twitter eats time… faster than a hummingbird guzzles sugar-water.
Twitter can eat so much time, that is better spent working (or not) on something meaningful… or not.
Which is to say that Twitter equates to less than nothing – yes, such a thing is possible.
In the week that I have been messing with it, I have
-deleted about 100 unwelcome followers who are marketing gurus trying to convince me that I can make money on the internet…
Already figured how to do that thanks.
Blocked dozens of Britney Spears porn sites.
Blocked dozens of ego maniacs with 10,000 followers… whom are following 33 other ego maniacs.
Blocked people who really value their opinions on everything… very, very highly.
I one week I have fallen behind 2 to 3 weeks on projects I need to get done.
That’s 3 steps back folks.
The upside?
I did discover was that you can make friends really quickly if you want.
You can keep up on local events and trends way faster than conventional media.
You will meet folks who will readily meet up with you for a cup of coffee (a tweet up I think…) without any credibility checks, common sense or police background checks.
With folks who have really odd opinions on just about everything.
Kind of like a populist SCA (Society for creative anachronism) – good people actually.
Twitter breeds well dressed people with odd belief systems; “I think the poor need to be taxed on their bad eating habits… don’t you?”
“Nurse!”
Anyway. Experiment almost over and regular programming will soon continue.
Thankfully I escaped my first Twitter-fest or twit-sesh where people hang out (hoping to hook up I guess) with other folks talking in 140 character propositions…
About little of value.
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Fall Colors Canadian Style 2009 Back to school cry-babies! · Monday August 24, 2009 by colin newell
The B.C. government says school closures are not part of its plan to deal with outbreaks of the swine flu when classes return in September.
The province, in its wisdom is instead preparing for a possible resurgence of the H1N1 flu virus with a pandemic plan that includes new information and materials for parents, students and schools, according to provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall.
Note sarcastic use of italics above.
Before Gordo and his band of car-dealing liberals (sorry car dealers!) do anything, they first consult their 2010 Ouija board.
Examples: Gordo Ouija Board-o says…
• 10 to 15 percent of scheduled surgeries from September 2009 to March 2010, on top of the 2,000 that are being cut during the five-week Olympic slowdown. In total, between 6,300 and 9,600 surgeries and a layoff of more than 110 surgical staff as a result.
• Freezing of MRIs at last year’s budgeted levels, meaning each hospital will do fewer MRIs than last year.
• Eleven contracts ended for mental health services, including programs to assist victims of abuse.
• Ending 12 seniors’ programs in Abbotsford, Burnaby, Chilliwack, Langley, Maple Ridge, Mission, New Westminster, White Rock, and the Tri-Cities.
Gordo’s band of death eaters have decided that Elementary school children (if they are to live to pay off the 2010 Olympics [by 2099 anyway…]) will need to…
- suck it up and get your asses back in the classes!
- only the worthy future taxpayers will survive – also know as Gordovian Selection
Dr. Perry Kendall also pontificates…
“Closures early last spring were initiated out of an abundance of caution because we had very little information on the novel flu virus at that time. It has since become apparent that the disease caused by this virus is generally mild and does not warrant such severe measures.”
Right. If this coming pandemic was thought to be a threat to Gord and his band of merry parasites in industry and at VANOC, I assure you… they would spend whatever it took to turn off the Sun, switch off gravity and turn Vancouver into Oz.
Wait. They are already doing that.
Peace in 2010, out.
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