High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Sea

What do you do when your ship full of 4,703 Mazda's is tilted to one side, taking on water and is about to capsize? You call these guys. Wired has written an excellent article about this anything but normal salvage crew. It's a must read.

150 miles per gallon car for $22,000

Man I love my '05 Ford Mustang, but everytime I head to the pump I cringe. My car slurps down gas, like its going out of style and this bothers me. I love the performace of my car, I enjoy having all that power beneath my right foot, but I feel guilty for not having a more fuel efficient car.

The new Loremo has plenty of fuel economy, 150 miles to the gallon kind. Thats rediculous! You can travel from New York to Los Angeles and only stop for gas 3 times. ...and its affordable at $22,000. However there is no performance, with stats like 0-60 in 15 seconds i'm unimpressed (they will be releaseing a GT model that has more performance 0-60 in 10 seconds for $30k). I really want to jump on the fuel economy band wagon, really I do. ...but I gotta wait for something that has the same feel as driving my Mustang.

It does make me wonder though how will hybrids and hydrogen fuel cars affect the muscle car. Mustangs, Corvette's, etc are known for the purr of their engines, the way the car vibrates. The muscle (or simply sports) car manufacturers spend lots of money to make sure that when a Mustang owner opens up the throttle they are rewarded with the roar that everyone is familiar with. Will the performace of current sports cars be able to transfer over the fuel efficent technologies of tomorrow?

How to make $400

1) Buy World of Warcraft play with friends and have lots of fun.

2) Get tired of playing World of Warcraft and sell account.

3) Profit!

I sold my character finally for $400. While originally I was hopeing to get a lot more, I realized that getting anything for something intangible like a MMO character should be celebrated. I think i'm going to put this $400 towards a PS3, it doubles as a HD blueray player and well I guess I could use one. :) ...or I could put it towards getting some new furniture. ...or I could put it towards upgrading my tv which still not sure if its the problem or my cable box.

Regardless its nice to have options, and to be rid of the money sink ($15/month) that is World of Warcraft.

New devilrays stadium

New stadium for the Rays. Man it looks sweet. Its going to cost $450 million and hopefully completed by 2012 thats a long time to wait, but it looks like the Rays aren't looking to leave Tampa anytime soon.

The Rays have been playing out of probably the sorriest excuse for a ballpark in the entire league, Tropicana Field. If I was Tropicana I wouldn't have put my name on it, its that bad. Everything about it is lame. First its enclosed, not that that is a bad idea in Florida, especially with our humidity and rain, but the building from the inside is actually uglier then the outside. Second, the turf is so sad. Yeah its astroturf but the stuff I see at other stadiums looks way better then the green carpet they have there.

To be honest you could make a long list of reasons why Tropicana Field is not up to snuff, but they all have to do basically with one thing. That stadium, is not a real baseball field. The new proposed one above is.

More HD woes

I'm not sure now if its the TV or my cablebox that is causing all these problems. This weekend i'm going to borrow my dad's ps3 and watch a blueray movie like spiderman or something and see how it looks. ...because last night I was watching all night on it and had no real eye strain. I was watching a Terminator 3 which clearly has a lot of action sequences and didn't have any of the stuttering I thought I saw on Monday, though it was a low def signal. Also on the hi-def side I didn't see any real problems watching mythbusters, other then that it seems that after a while watching a saved show on my DVR the video will freeze up but the audio will continue. Also sometimes when i'm in guide view, the preview window in the top right doesn't expand to full screen when I leave the guide (that definitely sounds like a bad box to me). Could these problems be a sub par HDMI cable? Hmm I dunno. Hopefully some of these questions get answered this weekend?

Smoking is bad mmmkay

Being in IT I get an interesting look at how bad smoking really is. Last night I worked on a co-workers computer and his live in daughter smokes cigarettes in the house. Check out the picture, see how the tobacco just cakes on stuff? Your looking at the fan which is directly above the processor. The fan's job is to blow cool air across the processor to keep it cool. Look at all the tobacco dust on that fan. Computers can actually die from the ammount of tobacco dust that cakes on everything.

Just imagine what peoples lungs must look like? They have to look alot worse. Your lungs are getting a direct hit (yes filtered but whatever) of smoke dust and then exhaleing it. This PC fan is getting second hand smoke. I highly doubt the chick exhales the cigarette into the PC's intake fan.

I had to blow this thing out before bringing it into the house, and it created a huge smoke cloud everywhere. After I turned it on still remenants of smoke dust was in there and it made my computer room smell like a bar.

I know smoking is a tough habit to break, believe me there are a few people that I love very much that want to quit but they cant. After seeing pictures like this why do people still start this awful habit?

My new HD TV

So this past weekend I bought a 42" HD 1080p (with lots more acronyms) from Costco. It was on sale for $950. Last night I setup the HD box from my cable provider, so I started getting in a true HD signal and I’m unimpressed.

I kind of feel it’s the TV’s fault. I can feel my eyes are straining, sometimes my eyes feel like this before I get a migraine so I dunno perhaps that’s going to happen and it’s not the TV. ...however Brighthouse (my cable provider) has lots of HD content on demand, so I started watching the live performance of the Gorillaz in 1080p and well thinks just didn't look as crisp as I was expecting. ...and then of course there was that eye strain. ...and as I was fiddling with the menu for the TV it froze. The menu froze on the screen and I couldn't get rid of it. I couldn't even turn the TV off I had to pull the power plug out the back.

I'm getting together with my mom who did a ton of research before buying her TV, and I think I’m going to need to borrow a blueray with movie to see what the TV really can do. Normally I’m a pretty frugal guy. It wouldn't bother me that I’m not getting the best picture in the world. ...but if I can’t watch my TV cause it gives me headaches, well its useless to me and I may have to upgrade to a better TV. Luckily for me, Costco offers a 90 day return policy.

Toshiba calls it quits, HD-DVD loses Blueray wins...Felix rejoices!

As reported here. Looks like Toshiba is finally calling it quits. They've had way too many "partners" jump ship over to Blueray. Off the top of my head I can think of Warner Brothers, Walmart & Bestbuy. This will most likely boost PS3's importance in the home of tomorrow. As its the best bang for your buck, being both a blueray player (that is updateable, and a next-gen console).

In related news...i'm buying a PS3 soon. Costco is bundleing the 20GB version for $500, comes with an extra controller, the movie remote, Spiderman 3 Blueray (who cares), and the new Ratchet and Clank (which I just love that series).

Edit:
BBC's take on it.

Flash Drives getting so big its going to change the way we share information

...well at least I think. I just read an article that is talking about how flash drives are about to have a serious jump in capacity. Just so were on the same page i'm talking about all sorts of flash drives, from solid state drives (flash memory for your pc, replacing your hard drives), to SSD cards (memory for your cellphone, camera, etc) all the way down to usb flash thumb drives.

This is a huge deal. Right now you can go to bestbuy and buy a 16GB thumbdrive for $186. Just think about this, 16GB's is a lot of space. Hell at work I still have computers that have only a 20GB hard drive in them. Now this article doesn't go into detail about how this will affect the usb flash drive market but there is definitely going to be a trinkleing effect. ...and with everything now a days having USB ports we wont be reliable on things like ipod's, dvd/hd players, or even current computer storage mediums.

Lets take the maximum I could find (16gb's) and double it, what could I do with that? Well for one I could carry a complete operating system install on it. Get to somebody's house want to check my e-mail, just boot off of my USB drive and then check my e-mail. Or maybe i'd have a couple high def 1080p movies that I want to show one of my friends. Take it over to his house, plug it into his PS3 and start playing the movie. Or I could have an entire ipod's worth of mp3 music and just plug my USB drive into my car stereo and bam i'm listening to Shiny Toy Guns.

USB flash drives are going to become the new way for people to share information. Easily portable, cost effective, speedy. There are just a ton of reasons why this medium is going to do for information, what mp3 did for music.

NiN Remixed

Trent Reznor once again has proven that he loves the fans, by giving them something for nothing. Trent is hosting a website called simply Remix. Remix allows NIN fans to share their NIN remixes, and when I say share you can stream and download tracks you like. With a rank system you can quickly find some really good quality remixes. A few of the fans remixes have appeared on his latest album, Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D. The album is a 2 cd set, 1st cd is remixes, 2nd cd is the software and the original tracks to remix yourself!

It's great to see an artist encourage his fans like this, now if only someone could teach me how to remix I'd be set!

More drama but it ain't Britney's!

Why on earth would I comment on Britney Spears life? Its kind of hard not to read about whats going on in her life, every news organization is writing about it. However i'm not here to comment about the drama Britney creates but about those around her.

The girl is out of her mind, no doubt. ...but honestly ask yourself have you ever had a time in your life where you were not proud of your actions? Thank god you didn't have a legion of paparazzi photographing everything you do right? It cant be easy being Britney, on top of that she is going thru some personally hard times and she's not handleing it well.

Just today I read on CNN that Britney is seeing a psychologist, this "news" broke because Britney's manager and longtime "friend" called Barbara Walters to set the record straight. Um dude?! If you were her real friend you wouldn't be calling Barbara fucking Walters to tell her that she's going to see a psychologist!

Dont forget about Dr. Phil telling everyone about how he thinks Britney is mentally unstable and shit. Remember he said he was visiting her as a friend, not as a therapist. The woman has enough problems, she doesn't need these people adding to her drama.

Honestly I think Britney's biggest problem is all her so called friends.

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

So this guy on the right is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole of Hawaii. He was known as Iz. Iz passed away back in '97 from respiratory problems due to his weight. The man at one point weighed 758 pounds!

I just recently heard some of this guy's music, BJ Penn the newly crowned Lightweight Champion of the UFC, is a hawaiian and was playing Iz's music as his entrance. ...and it was beautiful, I had to have it. Saddly I cant find a decent copy of the particular song, however his myspace (yeah even long dead musicians have myspace profiles) has some selected songs that can give you an idea of how beautiful this man's voice is. Specifically listen to his renditions of "What a wonderful world", "Twinkle twinkle little star" and "Over the rainbow".

Now clearly this kind of music isn't for everybody but I really dig it. The man believed in racial equality, something that there is a lot of animosity with in Hawaii. ...and you can just hear in his voice how much he enjoyed life and singing. In short this guy fucking kicks ass! I'm buying the album "Facing Future" which has the particular song that BJ Penn used, and I was unfortunately unable to link to.

Heath Ledger dead at 28

What a shame, Heath Ledger has died and it looks like he overdosed on pills.

"He was found unconscious at the apartment and pronounced dead," the New York Police Department said, adding that pills were found near the body.

This eerily reminds me of Brandon Lee's death before The Crow.

Spineless people

I try to be understanding and accepting of all people. ...but I cant possibly understand why any individual would key another man's car. My car got key'd this weekend, and it pisses me off, actually it almost brought me to tears, but now i'm pissed. It causes me to reflect on cars and their importance in our culture.

Take for example a fridge, some people (I'm one of them) would gladly go to a scratch and dent sale to get a sweet new fridge, you know one of those stainless steel ones with the ice and water built into the door, but noone buys cars at a scratch and dent sale. Why is that? I think it's because for people the car is such an important and reveloutionary piece of technology that it gets incorporated into who we are. Noone wants a scratch or dent in their car just like noone wants a slice in their arm or a broken bone. When somebody decided to key my car, they didn't just key my car, I kind of feel like they key'd a part of me.

I dont know how easy it'll be to fix, this is a first for me. I'm going to try some touch up paint, and then a few weeks later (after the paint has cured) try to buff it out. Hopefully that will take care of it.

...and while i'm talking about music

David Bryne(pictured right) of WIRED Magazine writes an interesting article on a record companies role in music. In short it talks in detail about why and how artists are less dependent on big record companies in today's internet savy world.

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that's not bad news for music, and it's certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

If you've ever wondered how much of your $15 goes to the artist vs. production costs this article can finally shed some light on those type of questions, not suprisingly though things aren't cut and dry in the record industry. There are a lot of people getting a cut of that $15. After reading the article it seemed unfair that an artist gets so little in a typical contract.

And the best-selling album of 2007 goes to...

Josh Groban. ...Josh who? This is what I asked myself as I read BBC this morning. Certainly this was the top selling artist in the UK, nope its for the US. Evidently Josh sold 3.7m copies of his "Noel" album which was released in October for the christmas season.

The next biggest seller was Disney's "High School Musical 2". Yup our musical world is definitely going to shit when a soundtrack becomes #2. ...or maybe its always been going this way for years.

This all falls under that pop genre that I just cant stand to listen to, so maybe thats why I have no clue who this Josh Gorban guy is. ...but am I the only one that is suprised when he reads stuff like this?

New Blog, old thoughts.

So here's my first post. My buddy Felix started a blog and I thought, "Hell why not me too? I got something to say!" Truth be told I've had a blogger account now for a full year, I used it to create a workout journal, you know the kind of thing you do to help you see your improvement as you workout? Yeah well it never really happened, the whole working out thing. The journal kicked ass though! :)

I've got plenty to blog about. I'm in the middle of renovating my living room. Some major changes and a ton of cash is getting dropped into this room. Already spent over $500 so far, and I still have furniture, and a HD tv to get still. Got a Killswitch Engage concert coming up on the 15th, and then there are my normal ramblings about music, movies, and cool and not so cool people in my life. I like to bitch, and this is where I do it.

Enjoy! :)