for the last two days, i’ve been in lancaster, running through my computer class and attending the annual edwards airforce base open house. in the high desert, some 45 km away from lancaster, sits the most famous military testing facility in north america. more pilots, experimental aircraft, and legends were born at this dry lake bed, than any other place. chuck yeagar was there, along with other military platforms like the B1-B, global hawk, V-22, F-117, F-22, C-130, and the JSF. the crowd i estimate at 500,000, since this secret base only opens once a year to the public. i enjoy reminding myself of the awesome force the USA has, along with the awesome responsibilty that we as citizens know what our government is doing and what we are capable of doing.
Ismael Rosales
standard time
a new day has come, and a new time zone. for all those around the world today we celebrate daylight savings time ending, so our clocks go back one hour. my body feels like 5 AM, but the clock says 4 AM. time differences from los angeles to new york stay at the constant 3 hours, but japan goes to 17 hours time difference ahead. i hope this means i will find my japanese brother more frequently via IM.
DVD+R
i suggest the new sony dual format drive. it will burn both DVD+R and DVD-R, the best of both world at 4x on -R and 2.4x on +R. who will win the format war, who cares when you are covered? if FCP or DVDSP does not support the drive directly, get a copy of roxio toast. it supports all formats and drives, and you just export you project to a file, instead of using the drivers directly from FCP or other tools. my bet is the DVD+R/DVD+RW camp is going to win over pioneer. i’ll know more after comdex in vegas. the model is the 500A.
PHCC
being out all day is very taxing. this week i’ve been away nearly every day for over 10 hours. what a bear. first a couple hours in lancaster on monday, yesterday all day in buena park at PHCC, and today all day at the final cut pro user meeting and the education expo. i guess it’s only one week a year.
PEX piping
in little under three hours i became certified as an installer of natural gas piping, along with revolutionary plastic PEX potable water piping. this means anywhere in the country i’m licensed to purchased these specialty equipment. it’s rather scary that anyone can take the seminar and walk out with a license. now i can “rewire” the natural gas lines for greater efficiency and appliance servicability. remember these little events called earthquakes in CA? with flexible water and natural gas lines, it less likely that they would blow up, or punch through a wall. i’ll let you know when i draw my first 10 meters of tubing next time.
new ical calendar link
i update the name of one of my online iCal calendars. find the updated tradeshow schedule.
imaging models
i like when i can predict the future. almost three years ago i wrote articles on the growth of PDF and imaging models, now with the maturity of the web my dreams are becoming reality.
CSST
i think i’ve found a solution for my early waking up. why not go to sleep early! if i’m in bed by 9:30 PM to 10:00 PM, then if I’m awake by 4:30 AM, i’m getting 6.5 hours of continuous sleep, mostly terrible for an adult, who probably needs 8.25 hours of sleep, but much better than 5.5 or 4.5 hours of sleep. lately i’ve been building in long commute times to my school site in lancaster, and again sometimes i go to long beach, that’s a perfect opportunity to nap. at the end of the day i’m probably approaching 7.25 hours of sleep, but like any good sleep researcher would tell you, it’s the continuity of sleep that is most important, not the duration. this morning i’m off to buena park, about 1.5 hours away by subway, to learn about CSST. you ask what is CSST? this is the technology to deliver natural gas over corrugated stainless steel tubing. rather than wrench together black iron (conventional) why not deliver, using a manifold, natural gas to each and every appliance equally (homerun piping)? this is what CSST can do, along with added flexibility of the tube, which hopefully will last longer than iron (no rust), and not break in a earthquake. take a look at one major supplier gastite.
talk back without ical
does anyone actually respond to a blog? does the format lend itself to e-mail discussion. i think i must post my e-mail every week or so.
PDF is the web
every page is a web page. wouldn’t it be interesting if anything you created could also serve as a document on the internet. currently we have several technologies to deliver media to the web, the big three are HTML, SWF, and PDF. in mac OS X, we get quartz, the graphics engine that allows spontaneous PDF generation from any screen, quartz, based on the PDF standard, gives any user easy assess without the cumbersome tool of adobe distiller. PDF is totally cross platform for macintosh, windows, and UNIX OS’s. i hope you move to mac OS X soon, because it’s here to stay.