Sometimes weird/cool things just happen!

Posted by on June 4, 2012 No comments

This weekend was a pretty productive weekend.  We had a great “Guy’s Night” where we introduced @NeuralClone to [amazon_link id=”B0051E9INK” target=”_blank” ]Highlander[/amazon_link], since he had never seen it. (I know, right?) After which we watched Iron Sky.  You know, the Nazis on the moon movie.  Seriously, go watch that.  It’s one of the funniest movies I have seen.

Saturday the weather was amazing so I spent the time outside replacing the thermostat on my truck.  This is a big accomplishment for me since I am still convinced that the engine in most cars runs on magical wishes and unicorn dreams.  Now if I could just get a starter that works when I shout “ENGINUS COMBUSTUS!”  So you can understand that doing any sort of work on a car is a big deal for me.  Having finished up this feat of manliness, I decided to take Sarah out for dinner for a nice evening.

This is really where the weird/cool stuff happens.

We drove down to Old Town Manassas to go to a small restaurant called City Square Cafe.  It’s a nice little place with outdoor seating.  Dinner was good, the company was great. (But then, that’s why I keep her around right?)  After dinner we thought we would try our hand at a few GeoCaches that were close by.  It made for a good excuse to walk around and enjoy the evening.

No luck on those, by the way.  It was dark and we just couldn’t find anything.

When we returned to the car we found this note on the windshield.
Now, you probably know this, but I wear my geek on my sleeve.  The back of my MINI has the plate “WIZ-POD”, since my truck has “W1ZZER”, and I have lots of stickers of geeky things.  This would have to be one of the first time I have ever been hit on due to my car being geeky.
Sarah and I had a good chuckle about the event and, while I thought it would be weird if I emailed her, Sarah took the initiative and sent off a note to say “Hi!”  Clearly it takes a lot of Chutzpah to drop a note like that to meet someone so, you never know, she may be a cool person to know!

Sadly, as of today, no reply has been seen.

Life is short!  Make new friends! Say hi to people!  You never know who you may meet!

P.S. the car behind me was a PT Cruiser

A swirl of emotions

Posted by on May 22, 2012 4 comments

It’s not often I write about family things on the blog here.  Usually it’ all about me.  Ok, it’s almost always about me.

FINE…. it’ all about me.  Except when it’s not.  This time it’s about Andrew. (and a little about me)

Sunday we dropped off Andrew so he can step off on the next leg of his journey through life.  He joined the Marines.  Now, if you know me at all, you know that me and Marines don’t typically get along.  Lots of experiences from my past years in the military have led to that.  But, I understand why Andrew decided to go that route (for the most part) and I respect his decision.  I am always proud of him when he sets his mind to something and works to accomplish it.  He set his mind on becoming a Marine, and through hell and high water (and a stubborn old father set in his ways) he went off to accomplish just that.

The picture you see here is the last picture we took of him as we dropped him off.  I have no doubt that he will return triumphant, and very different from how he appears now.

Last night we received his arrival phone call, albeit at 2am, of:

  • I have arrived safely at Parris Island.
  • Please do not send any food or bulky items.
  • I will contact you in 3 to 5 days via postcard with my new mailing address.
  • Thank you for your support.
  • Goodbye for now.

At least, I think that’s what he said.  It was 2am after all.  I squeezed in a “Good Luck”, but I am not sure if he heard me.  His voice was stressed and I could hear lots of other recruits behind him making the same call.

In the meantime, Sarah and I are now DINK’s.  We have divided up the chore list and are De-”Kidding” the house.

It’s kind of surreal sometimes.

—————————————–

Some interesting info for recruit parents at http://recruitparents.com

Panning, Lessons from the fail book.

Posted by on May 9, 2012 No comments

This last weekend I was out at a MINI event with lots of cars and driving and great outdoors.  In talking with my friend Paul, we figured this would be the perfect chance to try a technique known as “Panning”.  This is where you set your camera to a lower shutter speed (to keep it open longer) and you move the camera at the same speed as the target you are shooting.  This gives the illusion of speed to the target.  It’s great for shooting cars as they go past.  The car stays in focus, but the background becomes a blur of speed.

This is NOT an easy trick to master.

Bad Bad Bad Bad

I decided to stop mid way on the Tail Of The Dragon to test out this technique.  There were lots of photographers on the road so my setting up camp for 30-45min wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary.  I understood the principle of the technique, now to just practice.  Something I learned quickly was that location is a huge part of this.  I set up near a turn, and not far off from the road.  This was two-fold of a problem since most of the cars were coming towards me, instead of past me, and it was hard to see them coming.  With the cars shortening the distance to me, I had to work on my focus as well as the panning.  If I got the focus right, I may not have the whole subject in the frame. If I got the panning right, the subject would be out of focus.

All totaled, in 45 min of practice, I took around 100 shots.

Of those 100, I ended up with 4 that were close to what I wanted, and only 1 really good one.

Needless to say, this is something that I will be working on.

10th annual MINI’s On the Dragon 2012

Posted by on May 8, 2012 No comments

I am beat.

Last Wed. I set out for the MOTD event in Deals Gap NC.  It was a good 9 hour drive from Manassas to the Tail of the Dragon.  Since I was going by myself there was no real need to stop aside from emergency bathroom breaks (3 total).  I made great time and arrived at around 2:30pm to the event, which was well underway.  Over 700 MINIs signed up and just blanketed the area.  Driving around with lodge was like I had visited MINItopia, with a MINI in every driveway.

I finally met up with Clint (my buddy from Vegas) after wandering around in a cell dead zone with no internet access either.  It was amazing being so disconnected from everything.  We were relying on the FRS radios I brought with me.  It’s amazing being as internet connected as I usually am to go to nearly black out comms.  I am still slowly getting used to being connected again.

Overall I had a blast!  Lots of great driving, hanging out with incredible people, enjoying the great outdoors!  I had a bunch of stuff done to the POD including, Pulley wheel reduction for the supercharger (I hear that’s a rite of passage at the dragon), new brake handle, [amazon_link id=”B0073XO404″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]stubby antenna[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”B002VB8TIG” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]chrome bonnet scoop[/amazon_link], and a LightInSight.

I even got to practice some photography tricks.  Check out my gallery for all the pics I took.  I am really looking forward to attending next year!

On the road again!

Posted by on April 30, 2012 No comments

So I took a break from posting last week to stop and breath in between travels.  I got back from Vegas and had some down time before my next trip.  This week I will be making the trek down to Deals Gap North Carolina to participate in the MINI’s on the Dragon event.  Each year the MINI groups descend on the “Tail of the Dragon” to enjoy a cool drive and hang out with other fun MINI owners.  I will be meeting up with some local friends and some from across the continent.  I am packing all of my camera gear to take lots of pictures, and will even try and experiment with a few new techniques specific to auto photography.

After that I will be driving out to Fayetteville NC for work related stuff.  Not as exciting, but I am heading straight there from the Dragon so that’s gonna be fun.

One of the projects I hope to work on for this trip is a Video log of the journey.  I am heading out for this trip by myself so I think it would be fun to document the trip and anything I may see along the way.  I have my GoPro mounted inside the MINI (Top Gear style) to record the trip logs and will be editing it all together when it’s done.  That mixed with some of the various tech tools and gear I have for the drive, should be fun!

Stay tuned!  Next post may be from the road!

Xbox Live online while at a Hotel

Posted by on April 16, 2012 1 comment

So I ran into an interesting hurdle while here in Vegas this week. As you know I brought my Gaems Xbox case with me to get some gaming in while not at the conference. Well when I arrived at the hotel, I had unlimited Internet, both wired and wireless, (Thanks TI, you guys rock) but, to access it you have to fire up a browser and select the “I accept” option. This is usually the case with most free wifi locations. (Starbucks, Panara, etc.)

Well, with my iPad and my laptop that’s not a big deal, but the Xbox doesn’t really have a web browser to allow you to accept that proxy! This was a problem. When I connected the Xbox, it pulled an IP address but, of course, it couldn’t get out. Without accepting that proxy, it’s a no-go.

Well, I poked around in the Xbox settings and noticed that in the advanced network settings I have the ability to switch to an alternate MAC address. (the MAC is a hardware address for the specific network card). The fact that this was there blew me away. They allow the Xbox to essentially spoof its MAC address20120416-142118.jpg

So I thought, If I accept the proxy and use my Laptops MAC address as an accepted address with the hotels server, then I should be able to tell my Xbox that it’s that MAC address. Sure enough, by “Borrowing” my laptops address, the Xbox popped right up on Live and I was good to go!

Seeing as how there is a good chance I will be in a hotel a lot through out the rest of the year, I figgured this was good info to know, and, who knows, maybe some of you might need to know it!

N7 Gaems G155 Case

Posted by on April 13, 2012 No comments

It’s GADGET TIME!!!

Yup, it’s finally here!  I spent the last 3 weeks refreshing the Bioware store website.  Now it has finally arrived.  My Mass Effect N7 Branded Gaems G155 Portable Gaming Case.

So let me rewind a bit here.  This year I have a TON of travel coming up for work and personal stuff.  With Mass Effect coming out, I really wanted a way to carry my xbox with me on these trips.  So weeks ago I started looking at the G155 case.  It was inexpensive and had great reviews.  It was just a matter of pulling the trigger.  Then my friend tweets out a link to this.  My eyes went wide, pulse raced, cheeks flushed…..wait a sec here…ummm.  Yeah, so, the fact that I had just been looking up this very case, and this one is N7 BRANDED!!  It was a no brainer.  Trigger pulled.

Click to Embiggen

Then began the waiting game.  I didn’t realize that the shipping would take 3 weeks.  I had hoped to have it before PAXEast, but alas, that did not happen.  Thankfully, it did arrive yesterday so I will have it for my Vegas trip.

The case itself looks great. It’s not overly heavy with a system in it and it holds, in its side pouches, the power supply for the Xbox (which is ginormous), power for the screen, 2 HDMI cables (a short one it comes with, and a long one in case the hotel I am in allows for an input), a single controller, and a play-and-charge cable.  I can set two games on top of the Xbox and close the lid with no difficulty.

Click to Embiggen

Overall, I am very happy with how the case works.  I was surprised to see that the screen actually will do 1080p.  Everything fits great and works perfect.  What I wasn’t that pleased with was that the N7 branding was a sticker skin……that I had to apply myself.

So let me throw some things into perspective here.  The case I had started looking at is the listing on Amazon.  At the time I was looking at it, the price was listed as $269.00 (prime shipping).  The N7 Branded one on the Bioware store was $260.00 (with $8.50 shipping).  I was like “Sweet, I am saving $0.50 AND getting the N7 brand!”  Meanwhile, in the past 3 weeks, the Amazon listing has dropped to $249.00, still with prime shipping.

Grand Scheme, I love the case.  If I were waiting for 3 weeks for it, I would have liked for them to professionally apply the skin.  That’s it.

If you are interested in the G155, or the N7 Skin, you can find them Both at the Bioware Store, Separately at the Gaems site, and the Amazon listing is still the best for fast shipping.  The Skin by itself is $29.99 from Gaems only.

PAXEast 2012

Posted by on April 12, 2012 1 comment

I am back from PAXEast 2012 and I have a few days of recoup before I have to head out on another business trip! (oh the life of a jetsetter #notreally).  I wanted to throw out some thoughts on PAXEast before I had to run off again, and I am finally awake enough to do so!

First of all, PAXEast has gotten HUGE!!!!!!! (Seriously, it could use some more exclamation marks, it’s that huge.)  They expanded this year to include more of the convention center.  So much so that I didn’t even find some of the show floor until Sunday, because it was hidden behind some of the crazy big displays.  I followed my basic rule of “No standing in a line for 2 hours to see a demo/trailer that I can just watch on Monday”. Which means, or course, I hardly got to see any of the good demos on the show floor.  Seriously, if I can’t see the demo from outside your booth, I am not going to waste 2 hours of my con to watch 5 min of footage!

Aside from all of that, there were some great things to see there!  Borderlands 2 looks amazing as usual.  Assassin’s Creed 3 was there, but the only thing they had on the outside of the booth was the same trailers we have already seen.  Those were my two big finds.  Lots of small booths and little games to see, but I think it was a bit overwhelming due to the glut of booths and the overpowering of some of the big names.  Farcry actually has a bus!  A FULL BUS!

I attended the show with a friend and Podcast Co-Host, RetroNick, so there was lots of visits to the Retro Gaming rooms.  After all these years I learned that if you have a second controller hooked up while playing Duck Hunt, you can control the duck!  Also, I apparently can identify the sound of the atari 2600 game Surround from across the room.  You guys remember how hard Space Ace was?

The Table Top area was also kind of screwed up.  Last year there were tables everywhere and you could pop down and play whatever you liked.  This year the Magic folks and the D&D folks had ½ the room reserved for their games.  So you would go in and see tons of tables open, but couldn’t sit unless you were playing an “Authorized” game.  The open gaming area was very small and always packed.

The main theme of the con, at least from our point of view would have to be Mass Effect.  Tons of great Cosplayers from ME there. The panel was great with awesome information, and the chance to sit and talk with some of the writers was outstanding.  I swung by one of the rooms and just asked about the time of their signing and the person I asked was the lead writer for Mordin.  We talked about the script and choices.  Big highlight to my trip.

Overall, great trip.  Looking forward to next year!

If you want to see some of the various media I took at PAX, check out these links!
Walkthrough of the PAX East floor

Mass Effect Photo Set
PAX East Photo set

I’m just gonna leave this right here for you

Posted by on April 2, 2012 No comments

This:

Yes, I used to be one of those kids in school.  I was faced with the mortifying trips to gym class, and could relate with almost all of the situations presented in the video.

Now? I get compliments on my geek collections, costumes, and games.  I have a great job, incredible wife, and wonderful friends.  So I think this song speaks volumes.

(especially loved the ending)

P.S. Please subscribe to Felicia Day’s channel Geek and Sundry!  It’s what TV should be like!

Praying Mantid!

Posted by on March 29, 2012 No comments

Sarah is very happy with the garden she has in the front yard.  On occasion I have taken some pictures out there of some cool looking flowers.  Lately, though, there has been a flood of pesky bugs that have moved in.  In order to combat this, Sarah has ordered an army!  Well, an army of praying mantids.  What I was expecting was this:

But what we got was these VERY tiny little mantid.  They will grow to be larger, (maybe not a rideable size) but in the meantime, I get to do some Macro photography!

You guys would tell me if I had something on my helmet, right?

So Tiny!