Yay! toys :D

I got my new 'helmet camera' today. I got it for my upcoming trip on zero-g. I will be playing around the next few days with the wiring harness and position of the 'guts' (the main recording camera, battery pack, wires, etc.) but it looks like it should do what I want it to do :) More to follow later.

Airfare = expensive *grumble*

*Rant*
Why is it that a simple $4,000 trip to ride a vomit comet can't cost $4,000?! Hasn't my wallet suffered enough? Apparently buying tickets to Las Vegas less than a month away plus hotel is not cheap O_o . *pout* Plus I am sure I will not get my coveted window seat on the trip to/from Las Vegas now. *double pout* I just hope it goes smoothly and they don't overbook (HA!) I just want to get where I'm going.
*/Rant*

Saturday in McMinnville

A long fun day involving gliders, airplanes, and lunch. I am sleepy now so instead of writing a bunch of boring things, I will do this in gallery form. yay! Pics are in slideshow at the bottom of the page.

Take that TiVO :P

I have been wanting for some time the functionality of a DVR without the annoying part of a DVR subscription. When I had pc's I had a tv tuner in one where I could record TV to the hard drive. Well, I run all macs now and have a lot of free HDD space and figured it would be usefull for storing tv shows. Recording tv shouldn't cost money. You could do it with VCR's why not hard drives? Companies like DirectTV and TiVO would love to sell you a lovely self contained recording unit that can record and store your favorite inconviently schedualed TV shows but they seem to think they need to charge you a monthly fee to do it. Screw that noise. Nothing much like rocket science, I went down to the local Best Buy (granted not *the* "best buy" in town but hey, they had what I was looking for) and purchased a TV tuner for my Mac Pro (Pinnacle's USB HD tuner stick).

So far, I have been really impressed with it. It's small, it doesn't take up much or any of my very limited desk space, it comes with this nifty remote that even has a windowed/full screen toggle, and the software seems pretty un-invasive and well laied out. EyeTV is the software that comes stock with the tuner and I can pre-program it with any of the shows and times that I want recorded. So back to DVR's. Mac Pro + TV tuner + wifi/AppleTV = DVR I hope. I am going to get an AppleTV next and see what happens. I can get the files into iTunes and so an appleTV should be able to play them without too much greif. I would much rather deal with a little file shuffling than pay for a DVR subscription. My only choices shouldn't be DVR subscription/ VCR tape/ or paid downloads for something I can watch for free.

Boeing Frontiers Magazine for July

I made it into the Boeing Frontiers magazine this month :D

page 46.
http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/index.html
(update: this is old now. Link goes to current issue. The issue I was in is now here: http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2008/july/index.html)

Zero-G Aug 16th!

Well Hopefully after being canceled twice and flip-flopping on the day/location of my zero-g flight on more than one occasion I think I will finally *actually* be going :D
It will be in Las Vegas this time. (I was originally supposed to fly out of San Jose waay back on May 25th but it was canceled due to low sign-up). This time they have enough people and barring a major set back (which would suck but honestly wouldn't surprise me at this point) I'll be going! Woohoo! Vomit Comet, here I come :D