This looks interesting. It's a bluetooth earpiece with a built-in always-on video camera. It buffers the last few hours of video, and has a button to save the last 30 seconds as a clip. There's editing software to pull clips from the larger buffer. Apparently you can do it from certain smart phones as well, and post to various places.
It looks like just the sort of thing to capture those unexpected special moments. Just this morning my son was leaning back against the seat of the recliner while drinking from his sippy cup. He slipped (as he often does when leaning on furniture like that) and fell flat on his side, cup still in his mouth. It was cute and I recalled seeing this device. Maybe once the price comes down and the technology matures a little I'll get one.
We spotted this shot glass checker set in an antique shop. I guess the player who gets jumped has to drink. Would you stack glasses when you're kinged, or make that shot a double?
Okay, maybe that's overstating things a bit, but we all do have our moments of genius and near-genius, don't we? Well, I'm hoping one or two of mine will occur through the lens of a camera because I've signed onto another print-on-demand site. This time it's Imagekind.com, which is focused on high-quality art and photo prints with a large assortment of frame and mat choices. If you have image files big enough, you can get prints up to 60"x45". The size selections for each image are automatically limited by the resolution of the image.
It's pretty easy. You sign up, pick an account type (they range from free with a 1-gallery/200M/24 image limit, to $11.99/month or $94.99/year unlimited Platinum plan,) create & name your gallery(s), and upload photos to them or import from Flickr. After that you can set names & descriptions and tags (if you want your images to be found in the on-site search,) and set your markup if you want more or less than the default 10%. And of course you should set up your profile and payment information so you can get the checks they should eventually be sending out.
It's fun! You can find my stuff, currently a dozen photos, here.
I'm not sure how I was struck with the inspiration to make this one. I think it may have been sparked after my wife and I had one of out occasional playful exchanges of numerous obscene gestures. Anyway, the concept came to me and worked as an eatin' out shirt so here it is: "Not An Obscene Gesture". The border around the text is a bread texture, and is not present on white shirts. The font was chosen because it looks a bit like it could have been drawn on in sauce squeezed from a bottle. (I may actually revise this a bit, adding some highlights to the text so it looks more like sauce.)
I was putting together a collection of sex feet designs (I believe they're "officially" called "happy feet") and was playing with the positioning of them. It occurred to me that it would be funny to do a bigfoot version. At first I had it without the text, intending to just say it was bigfoot in the product descriptions, but then I realized the large+small feet combination could be mistaken for a pedophilia design. I very quickly added the text.
The text is, by the way, in a font based on the title text in a Gamera movie. I thought it worked just as well for bigfoot.
Here's a silly little design I doodled tonight just for the kids. Well, playful adults can get it too. Who wouldn't want a ride in a rocket-powered monkey-driven car? Well, a shirt with one on it is the next best thing. This is already one of my favorites. :)
I just got a pair of SanDisk 2-gig MicroSD cards for my and my wife's LG VX8300 phones. I had some misgivings about buying them, since I had read a review somewhere on the interweb that noted that the phone only can read up to 1 gig. I had also read that they will format a 2-gig to 1 gig and use that. That was okay, since CompUSA had (and maybe still has, as of this writing) 2-gig SanDisks on sale for less than the same brand of 1-gig card, so I was still getting at least the same storage for less money.
Later I read in another review that it will actually format the card with two 1-gig partitions, but that if you format it with another device that supports 2 gig partitions and create certain directories (folders for those of you with no pre-Windows95 experience) it will use the full space with no problem.
When the cards came in I decided to see for myself what the phone would do with them if I didn't format them. Well, lo and behold it just created the needed directories on the existing 2-gig partition and used them without complaint. I checked the card memory through the phone's menu and it's seeing and reporting the full 2 gig. I have all my new pix, flix, and sounds bing recorded to it now, and have switched the camera resolution to its full 1280x960.
Another thing I saw in reviews was that Verizon had disabled playing MP3s on the phone, but that a menu trick would let you switch it on. You then had to create a specially-named directory just for MP3s for the phone to see them. Then others said that later versions of the firmware had disabled that trick. Still others noted that the latest version played any MP3 you care to place in the normal music directory. I am happy to report that on our phones the news is good: they will in fact play MP3s placed in that directory. I'm now listening to a shuffle of the several I've initially loaded on it. (With no headphone and on the lowest volume - decent little speakers for their size. Now playing: Lithium by Nirvana.) The headphone jack takes a smaller size plug than normal, but I should be able to find adapters at Radio Shack or somewhere so I don't have to limit my choice of headphones.
One additional caveat about playing music: if you are playing music and pause it the phone's battery will, for some reason, keep draining as if you were still playing music. Hopefully that's something Verizon can fix in a future firmware update, but meanwhile if you have one of these phones be sure to exit the music player altogether if you're done listening for a while.
Here is my latest design - an homage to the packaging of the classic GI Joe Adventure Team action figures - "Life-Like Hair And Beard". The perfect gift for that hairy child of the 70s. Also available in full-chest size.
I've got ideas for a couple series of designs for these shirts too, but I think they would work best with one of cafepress' premium shops. I've been making enough to cover the cost of that and then some, but I'm thinking I'd like to stick a toe in the water with them first, and maybe build up a bigger collection of maternity designs.
If you know anyone who's "preggers" and who would appreciate my taste (or lack thereof) tell them to take a look-see. Thanks, and enjoy!
And now back to your regularly scheduled programming...
I've added a couple more photographs of the scenery & plants in my yard to the slowly growing list of those slapped on items at cafepress.com. The latest additions are:
Apple Blossom - a close-up shot of a cluster of sunlit apple blossoms. These are from the smaller of two trees, chosen for their proximity to eye level and position in the sun. They were pretty nice looking too. (Pictured above on a mug. Also available on buttons, magnets, and a round ceramic ornament.)
Snowy Stream - a shot of the stream behind our house on a snowy day. Taken through our rear bathroom window. (Available on large & regular mugs.)
It's been a while since I highlighted the new entries in my list of links, so there's a lot of them here...
Gapminder World A very interesting interactive animated chart and map of various metrics of countries around the world. Choose any of sixteen different indicators to assign to the X & Y axes and the dot size. Or view the dots in their geographical locations and pick a single indicator for their size. Watch it all animated and see how the values have changed over a period of years since 1960. (Some dots disappear when data is not available.) Fascinating.
15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense Another in the bad/pseudoscience debunking genre. This time a Scientific American article that addresses the sometimes convoluted, sometimes simply willfully obtuse arguments put forth in favor of creationism/ID.
IMDB - old style (The new layout SUCKS. Switch all IMDB links to this URL and spread the word!) IMDB has changed their layout. Their research indicates that most visitors concentrate on the main portion of the screen and largely ignore the links to additional information in the left hand sidebar. Accordingly, they have moved much of what had been in the center section to the left hand sidebar. (Boggle!) IMHO, they should have simply changed the visual styling to emphasize the connection between the main section of the screen and the sidebar. While it lasts, use this link instead of their main URL to get the old style IMDB. If enough people do this, maybe they'll catch a clue.
PR Watch - See who's behind the message. A useful site that explores and exposes the real source of many messages & ideas you hear passed around on a variety of subjects. Is it the truth, or is it PR? That's the question this site asks and answers.
John's Secret Store at printfection.com John's Other Secret Store at printfection.com As you may have noticed (I've mentioned it here enough) I've been designing and selling shirts & gifts at cafepress.com. Recently I learned of this other similar site - printfection.com - with its own selection of goods. They allow "shop owners" to set up categories & subcategories in their free shops (cafepress charges) so I've begun putting up some of my favorites & best sellers to take advantage of their different selection of colors & styles. I've heard their print quality is good too. I have two shops there. The "other" one is the one I won't be showing my parents. ("Bad" words make conservatives cry.) I find that while they seem to have greater potential than cafepress in control of size & position & such, they lack certain controls that would allow easier editing and mass changes. NOTE: I've recently learned of a "wrinkle" in both sites' printing process for dark shirts that is forcing me to make alterations to many of my designs. If you plan to order one of my darker shirts pleas contact me first here and I'll let you know if the one you want is safe to order yet. Otherwise, you might get a white border around the design.
That's it for now. Hopefully I won't let the roll grow so much before the next update. Happy surfing!
Yes, that's right. I took the entire text of A Tale of Two Cities and ROT13 encrypted it. Then I scanned the blank back of an old yearbook of mine and used it as the basis for the cover design.
I case you don't know what ROT13 encryption is, it's a very very weak encryption scheme that's really only good for allowing people who don't want to read something to avoid it. It's often used in usenet newsgroups. (Those groups that Google Groups & others repackage in a web interface - they're much better read with a real newsreader.) Both encryption & decryption is accomplished with the same algorithm: rotate each english alphabet letter 13 letters over, so that instead of ABCxyz you get NOPklm. All other characters are left as-is. I actually wrote my own utility program to do the conversions, txt file to txt file. (Yeah, I'm that geeky. Not geeky enough to buy and read a book like this, but enough to get a chuckle out of it - and I hope bigger geeks than me will do me one better and buy the thing.)
Now that I've done this one, it should be relatively easy to do others. The time-consuming part is proofreading the formatting. The cover design was quicker than I anticipated, once I got the blank cover scanned. I'm scrounging around my book collection for other blank-backed books, of course. Can't have them all green, can I?
I've just started a series of designs for products on cafepress: Spam Haiku. Each haiku will be composed of specially hand-selected spam, scam, phishing, & virus email subjects. This first design, Watches, is rather simple, but I do plan to dress it up a bit if I can find some appropriate art.
I gleaned several five and seven syllable subjects from the list of spam subjects I had collect before (as posted in an earlier blog entry) and have collected a few since. There seems to conveniently be an approximate 2:1 ratio of five vs seven syllable subjects.
Since I last posted about my CafePress efforts I've continued to add new designs & items, lately focusing on original designs. (Or as original as I can manage.) I was planning to post each design set to the blogroll, but it's snowballed a bit. Instead, I've removed the individual ones and posted a link to a CafePress search that should show all my designs and products, with a day or so lag for new stuff. That'll be all I have of it on the blogroll unless I come up with something particularly good.
Also, I just got SeaMonkey 1.1, and I am loving this built-in web form spell check!
I've added a few more links, some of which are my own.
Sysinternals This site is an old favorite of mine that has since been taken over by Microsoft, so it's a bit more cluttered and less informative than it used to be. The utilities there, though, are invaluable. My favorites...
PageDefrag - I have it set up to defragment my registry, virtual memory, & hibernation files on every boot.
Filemon - A great hacking tool. Lets you monitor & log file accesses on your system, and filter it by program. Great for figuring out where the heck a program is grabbing a file from, or trying to if it's not finding it. Regmon - Similar to Filemon, but monitors registry access instead. Find those hidden settings.
Quackwatch A great resource for researching dubious medical claims. I know I've referenced it a couple times in Yahoo Answers.
John's Secret Stores
Shameless plug here! I've been going through my digital photos and picking out a few that might look good on mousepads, mugs, t-shirts, etc., and setting them up on cafepress.com. Free money, if anyone buys them. So far I've got four "stores" set up...
John's Secret Store - Gettysburg II: Lee - Based on the Robert E. Lee statue on the Virginia soldiers monument. This was at the same location as the path & fence. John's Secret Store - New York - Based on a couple pictures I took of New York and the Brooklyn Bridge lit up on a cloudy night, from across the river in Brooklyn. John's Secret Store - Roses - While visiting my brother and his family I spotted this rose in the back yard and snapped a couple close-ups. I cropped them down to just the blooms and tossed them up on a variety of items just to see what sells.
There will be more. I've got a shot or two of a duck figurine in the same flower bed as the rose that might make a good journal cover or mousepad. And I plan to dig through my older photos as well. It seems fairly easy once you get the hang of it. If you've got a high enough resolution digital camera or scanner, or a good paint program (The GIMP is free) and some artistic talent, you could make a few dollars yourself. They also let you self-publish CDs, DVDs, and books, but I haven't looked into those options.
Yes, that cute little guy is a plush orthomyxovirus, or flu virus to us laypeople. He's just one of the many cute critters produced by GIANTmicrobes. So next time you're laid up with the flu, or athlete's foot, or Lyme disease, or gonorrhea or any of a number of otherwise icky maladies, curl up with one of these cute little cuddly friends and let it take some of the hurt (or itching or burning as the case may be) away.
