Dec
01
2011
For those of you that are unfamiliar with 500px.com, it’s a little like Flickr for professionals. You’ll see some amazing images on the site, be able to follow your favorite photographers and participate in social media share of comments with other 500px.com users.
It’s free to browse and also a free option for creating your own account. You can also upgrade to their “Awesome” account for $50/year.
Here is my 500px.com info, feel free to browse and vote for my photos!
Nov
03
2011
Siri is stirring a lot of action on social media sites. User experience has been varied as to how well it seems to recognize a command and provide appropriate feedback. Apple still has this software as “beta” state, so that leaves room for improvement.
I’m very interested to see how your experience has been so far with Siri. I’d love to get your vote and comments!
Loading ...Nov
03
2011
What’s that saying? The best camera is the one you have with you.
I just happened to be hiking in Shades State Park in western Indiana and suddenly found myself with some perfect light, a still Sugar Creek and lots of winter foilage. All I had with me was my iPhone 4, several iPhone photography apps and my imagination.
Here are some of the shots:
So, you can still get some pretty good shots with an iPhone. I’ll talk about some ways I maximize the images when using the iPhone with settings and apps in a later post.
Jun
09
2008
I spent Saturday, like most people in Indiana, checking TV reports to see all the flooding in Indiana. Although I live in Carmel, IN and we managed to miss the heavy rains on Friday night and Saturday morning, I also have a house on Sweetwater Lake in Brown County. Also, my parents and many friends and family live in Franklin, IN which got over 8 inches of rain Sat. morning. I had heard from my folks on Sat morning that they had 2 feet of water in the road in front of their house, but managed to keep their house dry. I tried to call my neighbors down at the lake, but could not reach anyone. Could not drive down because the entire area was under a state of emergency and almost every road in that part of the state was under water and impassable. So, I just waited all day Saturday watching the news reports and hoping my house, boat, and little lake community had survived.
After a few calls we decided that maybe there were roads open that we could get down to the lake. We first stopped in Franklin, where we picked up my Dad and surveyed the damage to the area there. Many homes were under water and badly damaged, but thankfully, the water had already subsided. However, the yards and sides of roads were littered with wet carpet, furniture and other family belongings. Really a sad site to see. But there were people everywhere pitching in to help.
We pushed further south through Amity and US 31 was closed at SR 252. That was fine, as I usually turn there to head into Nineveh. We encountered Young’s Creek flooding through the SR 252 bridge:
Utility crews trying to clear trees off lines
Next we went through Nineveh, IN and had to skirt some road closed signs to reach Prince’s Lakes. This was as far as we could get on this road, the road was gone and they had it closed. We did get a few pictures of the busted East Lake dam and washed out road into the housing addition:
We turned around and headed back into Nineveh. Rumor had it that Peoga Rd into Peoga, IN then on to Sweetwater Trail may be open, so we tried it. It was open, but we could see the damage from the tornado that had hit the area a few days ago. This was the same one that hit Camp Atterbury and Edinburgh, IN. Here are a few snapshots of the Tornado area, looked a lot like someone just clear-cut through the woods:
Indeed it this route was all open all the way to Sweetwater Lake. We crossed the dam and had to drive through about 3-4″ water that was crossing the road on the beach side of the dam. Then up the road and down to my house.
I didn’t know what to expect, but fortunately, there was no major damage inside my house or out. A little water down in the lower level, but nothing major. I was most worried about the boat with the rising lake water. Since I don’t have a boat dry dock, I just tie-off to my dock and the boat floats. I keep it fairly close to the dock to keep if from bouncing in the wakes. However, when the water level rises, the boat is secured to the dock and essentially the boat gets pulled under water as the water rises. This was the case and the boat would be under water now if not for my neighbor. The dock, which normally is about a foot above the water level, was about 3 feet under water. Joe, who lives down there full time, managed to untie the boat and let it pop to the surface, where it sits now. When we got there the water had gone down and was only about a foot above the docks. See the pictures below:
I will have some deck clean up to do as soon as the water drops to normal, but considering in the span of less than a week we had a tornado and almost 11″ of rain in the area, I think I am pretty fortunate. However, the weather forecast is calling for 1-3″ of more rain on Monday and Tuesday.
Who pissed off Mother Nature?
May
23
2008
I’ve now had a couple of days to play around with the Wii Fit software and accompanying Wii balance board. So, now on to games. It’s going to be interesting to see what kinds of games develop that really utilize this new controller device. Skiing seems like the most obvious, but what other activities mostly involve your feet and/or balance?
We Ski
It’s pretty cool to be able to hit the ski slopes in Indiana in May. In fact, you don’t even have to leave your living room. My daughter and I have had a chance to shake out this game a bit and overall I would give it a thumbs up.
Just like most of the Wii games, you get an animated representation of skiing. If you’re looking for a realistic simulation of skiing, this is probably not it. However, it does do a pretty good job of simulating alpine skiing. You can use your own Mii to ski, but the options on gear are more limited.
The slopes
The layout of the game is pretty much what you would find at a traditional ski resort. You have trail maps and the trails are marked in similar fashion with green, blue, black to represent the difficulty of the runs. And, just like some resorts, you get some runs that don’t seem to match the coding. Some of the runs also have jumps, some are narrow runs, some have banking. I haven’t hit any with moguls, but we haven’t been through the whole game yet.
Jill tearing up the slopes!How to Ski
The biggest thing to remember when playing this game is to ensure you calibrate the wii balance board for each user playing. If not, the skier does not react appropriately. Once it is set up for the user, it operates by leaning right to turn to the right and vice versa for the left. You can also use your wii remote and nunchuck controller to move your arms to use your ski poles. You can also do aerial stunts in midair jumps such as twists.
Sidebar rant: Speaking of the nunchuck controller, I just don’t get why this is wired to the wii remote. Everything about the Wii is wireless and makes for great fun, but that damn wire connecting the nunchuck controller is just cumbersome. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten it caught on something while playing or even worse, have it fly up and slap me in the face. When pumping your arms to move yourself with the ski poles, that cord does some serious smacking. I really wish Nintendo would have figured out how to make all the controllers wireless.
Summary Overall, the game is well integrated with the Wii balance board and a good use of the device. Like most Wii games, you are an active player and after a while you feel like you’ve gotten a little exercise. I can’t wait to see what other games come out that take advantage of the balance board. Some obvious activities: surfing, skateboarding, skating, water skiing, motorcycle racing. I’m not sure how sensitive the board is or exactly how the interface works, but something like karate or kick boxing might also work. What other activities do you see coming to the Wii?
Turn off Bluetooth if you are not using any bluetooth devices. This will turn off the BT radio and save your battery. Also, turn off WiFi if you aren’t conneect to a wireless network.
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