election 2002

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the election in los angeles is over. the democrats keep the seats in state government, and the schools get their money to build classrooms. the los angeles county museum gets its money to destroy the LACMA campus, and install a new vision that is earthquake resistant. in 2014, the new LACMA will rise from the rubble, and a new day will be born. in the national side president bush gets control of both the senate and the house, hopefully to keep the USA in peace, but it seems that his war advisors want destruction.

have you followed the military buildup in western asia? do you want a summary? the USA, us, the military has established a war machine at diego garcia in the indian ocean, along with a massive base in qatar. last week several aircraft carriers, including the battle group USS constellation, left their bases in san diego, and the largest transport vessels, including the USNS bellatrix, also left fully loaded from military sealift command. drone aircraft are murdering terrorist suspects. senators are dying in plane crashes. this war on terrorist is going full bore, with the murder of russian citizens in moscow, a bombing in indonesia, murder of diplomats in lebanon, and now bush has control of congress. messiah come!

s class anew

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on 27 march 2003 saturn corporation launched the successor to the s class of cars with the ION class. with two body styles, the sedan and coupe, saturn wanted to re-enter the small car market with a popular configuration of a small car with a big 2.2 liter ecotec engine. they succeeded. i tuned into saturnfans.com and saturn regularly to find updates. i broke into the corporate auto journalist sites like saturnmedia.com to download pictures and more press releases and specifications. i read the usenet postings. i had eight months to prepare and research every detail of the car before it even went into production. on 29 august 2002, in spring hill TN, the s series went away, and the ION was born. initially only the sedan would leave the factory floor, and sometime in march 2003 the coupe would come. even though mom is single, she needs a four door model, to take her daughter-in-law around town when she comes to visit (hint hint). the trunk from the picture seemed very large, and the details fine this was the car i recommended to mom, but she would have to wait an entire summer and a little bit of fall to get to market. it was worth the wait.

ion car options

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there’s been only one good experience in my lifetime looking for a car. usually it’s at a public auto show, where the booths have corporate sponsorship. if GM is selling chevrolet, then as a consumer you get to see every chevy and every color available in a certain product line. when it comes down to it, a automobile is nothing more than a bar of soap with a particular scent. if you like how it feels on your body, and you don’t mind the slimey film and lather, you get the car.

on our visit many years ago with dad, van nuys chrysler plymouth (now called center) tried to upsell mom into a cirrus or sebring, even though she came into see the breeze or status. she’s always had a weird, but accomodateable request to have a fully functional top of the line model, but with conventional rolldown windows. why spend $1000 extra for a power window package, when you just bought a very complex device, and here are four more motors that can go bad? unless you live in a fastfood hell or never get out of your car, when does anyone leave the comforts of the air conditioned bliss of a car interior? who rolls down a winder anyway? if you go through a toll booth daily, maybe power windows make sense, or if you park in a secure garage with a parking ticket machine. so, she’s will not buy a car with a power or convenience package, and that pretty much eliminates 95% off all available cars.

mom would love to drive a volvo or BMW, but when they come over from europe, they only come in power. honda’s only come in power above the stripped version of a car without HVACR. now who wants a stripped car? mom could afford a $40,000 car easily, maybe two at that price. this is the accomplishment of a lifetime of thrifty living, and sound financial planning (i had a hand in some of this good planning over the last ten years).

file naming convention

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classic and OS X file naming conventions are changing. with the limitation of 32 character file names in classic, one had to fine tune file name. up came programs like portfolio and cumulus to making sorting file and images easier. with OS X we get 128 character names, so file description are much nicer. ever since OS 8.6, the HFS+ filing system allowed long file names, but it was never implemented.

OS X solved all these issues, and now i make an effort to make long file names. if i have a link file name, it may be called “www.greenconcepts.com tradeshow listing”, instead of the classic way of “greenconcepts.com shows.” now that most of my files originate on the web, i name most of my files with “apple.com white paper on dual processor platforms” instead of “apple.com dual G4.” so i’ve included the URL where i’ve found the original content, so i can go back in the future to download updates. my next class might be OS X secrets. maybe it should be a book?

web expansion

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teaching is fun. for now nearly five weeks i’ve been doing a three hour computer platform class. my students are doing relatively well, but my greatest success is developing the software for the course. maybe course and curriculum development should be in my future. i have several interests: computer science, energy efficient and resource efficient residential contstruction, and DVD production. i’m developing a website for my course, now with all the links filled with correct information (still typos), and soon will renew greenconcepts.com for take advantage of future technologies like PHP and dynamic database linking. i know there are many groups and individuals looking for a competent web architect, along with a good thermodynamisist.

mike bonin outreach

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in the last five days i’ve put out some leads to make contact in the offline world. i’ve written letters to mike bonin, deputy chief of staff of the sixth council distict, to see if he needs help improving citizen outreach on the city of los angeles. i’ve written mike horton of the los angeles final cut pro user group to see if you needs a presenter on troubleshooting mac OS X, so final cut and DVD studio pro can run, and lastly i’ve written the DVDA to work with their website and update since the july 2002 meeting. i have lots of skills that have matured enough to make a dent in the bricks and mortar world. i’ll keep you abreast of what the outcomes are.

sigma SD9

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at just 3.3 MP, the sigma SD9 might seem like old technology. both nikon.con and canon.com both have 6 MP cameras, but no one on the planet has a full color imager other than sigma, a silicon compliment to film. a new sequence of SD9 images recently appeared on a german website. now under studio conditions the lighting and exposure can be very well controlled, but the hair detail and othe facial characteristics would translate to my type of photographs. i can’t wait until this foveon X3 chip is in a better camera!

foveon and mac OS X

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for now foveon only exists in one product, a still image camera from sigma-photo.com, but soon this imager will be in a video camera. the chip premiered february 2002. as a still imaging system, the $1600 SD9 from sigma, is the greatest camera ever made. it has an effective pixel count of 6 MP, and the images are stunning. take a look at some samples:

there have not been any announcements of the progressive video camera version yet, but in january/february 2003, expect something from foveon.

i think every videographer and imager need the heads up on this upcoming technology.

i’ve been using mac OS X since september 2000 (public beta), and then bought into the lie that in march 2001, the OS was ready. only since september 2001, did apple have a functional OS, and now with 10.2, i can do some work. the audio apps and video apps are mature, but the arcane command line is still here to stay. running “fsck -y” is like rebuilding the desktop. “top” in terminal to see system performance. fix your permissions regularly.

faith walk

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we live in a nation state founded on judeo-christian values. the community of presidents, and most nearly everyone else prayed to a higher power for guidance and strength to start a civil war against the british empire now over 200 years ago.

for over 2000 years most westerners believed that God sent a messenger, a Christ, in the form of Yahushua of nazareth, now known as Jesus (a greek/latin combination of the original aramaic). the Father Yahweh sent his only son Yahushua as his human representative to warn and teach on the coming of the imperial rule of God. now we live under and in the imperial rule, and i’ve taken it upon myself to learn the teaching of Yahushua since august 1998.

under the teaching of dale bruner, a retired professor from whitworth, i’ve had the pleasure to walk through the gospels of Yahushua, starting with Matthew, then Mark, and now in Luke. as long as my teacher has breath, we’ll march right on through the entire Christian bible. reading word by word, multiple translations, along with the original translation from greek and latin of dr. bruner, i have come to my own conclusions of what the gospels of Yahushua really mean to humanity, and how it relates to my life. as a test of devotion, my personal tranlation is from the jesus seminar, a left wing group striving to recognize the historical jesus, but also appearing to discount everything that this historical figure said and did. recently a tomb dig uncovered a coffin with the words, “here lies james, brother of Yahushua.” i would suggest that if you start your own journey into the ancient religous texts, this is the starting platform along with other texts of Funk. goodluck on your own spiritual journey.

apple financial Q4 2002

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i’m hearing the apple financial report and thinking about what is to come in the technology industry. i’m following the progress of the danger hiptop and expect that apple.com will brand something similar in january 2003. on wednesday i got a hands on tour of OS X server, and gazed at the 17 inch imac along with the dual G4 tower. this month four exciting things happened: sony.com introduced the DVD everything burner, panasonic.com introduced the first progressive imaging DV camcorder, sigma-photo.com introduced the SD9, and DSL is once again returning to NoHo. i should be back online at 256 kbps by 1 december 2002!