This August Iain and I will be going to Apple’s WWDC in San Francisco.
After WWDC, instead of flying home, we’re going to rent a car and
spend a week driving southeast-ish to Las Vegas.
We’re planning to hit the sights along the way, like Yosemite and Death Valley, so the Google Directiosn linked to just then aren’t quite right.
See the map above for a closer approximation.
The map isn’t actually very representative of our exact route, since wayfaring.com only creates straight lines between waypoints.
Seems silly not to use Google Maps’ directions API.
Posted by rae in Reid, hardware at 8:52 pm on Monday, 31 July 2006
I have found that none of my audio/video software can properly parse the audio from the MPEG files produced by my Sony CyberShot camera.
From my days on PhotoSuite, I happen to know there is scarce code out there for de-muxing MPEG-1 streams into separate audio and video.
All my apps just rip out the video and ignore the audio.
“mux”ing means that the data in the file mixes up the audipo and video together in one bunch o’ bytes.
Most other formats (DivX, MPEG-4, WMA, what-have-you) have separate streams for audio.
It’s like muxed MPEG-1 was a first attempt at an audio-video file format, and they made some big mistakes.
Now I haven’t tried all possible pro tools, but I have tried iMovie HD, QuickTime Pro, and the DivX encoders.
Maybe I should give Final Cut a try.
We went to Andy’s annual BBQ tonight, and I brought along our camera. There were a series of “drop the mentos into the bottle of Diet Coke” experiments. I dutifully recorded them all and herein are the links to the videos on YouTube:
Experiment #1.
And here’s an alternate viewpoint of the same event:
Experiment #2 wasn’t very successful, possibly due to the Coke being cooled down.
So we warmed up a bottle and performed the most successful experiment, #3.
Posted by rae in family, friends at 3:07 am on Saturday, 15 July 2006
This year, unlike most years, we were not sharing the cottage with anyone.
So, we sent out an invitation to ask people to drop by during the week we were there.
The Shaos
Our neighbours down the street, the Shaos, dropped by first.
They came up Saturday and spent the night, leaving on Sunday night.
John and Jamie
Then John and Kristen came up with little Jamie Tuesday and spent the night, leaving Wednesday afternoon.
David
They did manage to overlap with David for a few minutes on Wednesday.
David had never been to Wasaga before.
Or at least, our cottage.
You can tell by his stunned expression
Rita and Luisa
And finally Rita came Thursday and both she and David stayed until we all had to leave on Saturday.
So with all the guests, it made things much more lively.
This is good, because the week was not as good as it could have been, weather-wise.
On Wednesday it managed to only reach a high of 18 degrees C!
Wind surfer
The water was pretty wavy most of the time, and the wind surfers had plenty of wind to work with.
They performed some impressive jumps out of the water.
Some of them were about 20 feet up with their sail pulling them up in a strong wind.
It looked like a lot of fun.
We should try it some time.
A game of Power Grid
This year for the first time, we managed to bring up (with David’s help) a real German boardgame.
I’ve gotten very addicted to German-style boardgames over the last year or two.
To see many more, check out BoardGameGeek.
David, Michael, Ronnie and I played for about an hour.
However, dinner time came and we needed the table, so we had to stop.
Michael was ahead, but of course I had a master plan to victory in the end game!
For the first time, we actually drove through Wasaga Beach proper during Canada Day weekend.
For non-Canadians, Canada Day is July 1st and is a national holiday in Canada.
it’s one of many holidays we almost-but-not-quite share with the U.S.
(c.f. Memorial Day/Victoria Day).
It wasn’t on the 1st itself, but rather on Sunday the 2nd, but even so, it was a mistake.
It was stop-and-go traffic for about ¾ of an hour!
We were planning on just showing the Shao’s “downtown” Wasaga Beach on the way to having dinner.
It turned out to be a very slow and drawn-out cruise indeed.
Fortunately, all was forgotten over a nice meal.
This year the owners of the cottage made yet again some “improvements”.
I use quotation marks because in our eyes, they were mostly downgrades.
They painted the front deck a horrid greenish yellow.
“Who wants to see brown?” they exclaimed. (We do!)
They removed a couch and a table from the kitchen.
Both were put outside.
Yes, they put couches outside.
We moved the table back inside, but not the couch.
It was too nasty.
The problem is that the cottage can easily sleep eight people.
This means they should keep as much comfortable sitting space as possible, not get rid of it.
*sigh.
There was also a wooden, Muskoka-style double-chair which they had almost discarded by the left side of the house.
I found it and moved it back onto the deck, for which Luisa gave me a huge hug of thanks.
She was worried we would have to sit on one of the two couches that had been sitting outside, exposed to the elements.
I hope they make real improvements for next year, like:
get a DVD player and a nice HDTV
get two new couches: one for the kitchen and another for the living room
wireless internet would be nice, and cost-effective
Posted by rae in entertainment at 11:21 am on Friday, 14 July 2006
Wen to see it last night.
Enjoyed it a lot.
It’s a notch below the first one, but still very enjoyable.
Tany wrote the best review of it, but it contains spolers, so .. be spoiled.
