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Y'know, I think I wish there was a setting.

The raw MP4 file uploaded to YouTube for this video is 9.2 MB.

The raw video as pulled from my iPhone via the sync cable is 71.2 MB.

That's just a wee bit more compression than I'm happy with… I think that, in the future, I'll pull videos off of my iPhone and upload them from the computer rather than this.

Oh, and I was using my home's WiFi, not AT&T's 3G. How about a variable compression setting based on your connection method?

P.S. YouTube needs a "replace video" feature. Vimeo has it. 😛

Some quotes followed by brief commentary.

My Box of Cruft:

Remember way back to January 2007, when the iPhone was announced? Oh Internets, you wailed and gnashed your teeth endlessly. No 3G network? No MMS? No apps on the iPhone? No replaceable battery? Oh, your complaints were endless. You were sure that the iPhone was doomed because it didn’t meet all your requirements.

And what happened? Well, Apple has sold 40 million iPhones. FORTY MILLION. They have become the largest mobile device company in the world.

So today, you moan on and on about all the features you expected and demand in the iPad. What no Verizon? No two-way camera? It’s not weightless? A full half inch thick? Only 10 hours of battery life? You make tons of predictions on the success and failure with scant details and without ever actually trying one.

Well, I am lucky enough to have been at the Apple Event today. Deep within the Reality Distortion Field. I saw the demo live, not snap shots on a web site. I got to use the iPad and see how it worked in person. I talked with other people that had tried it.

And you know what, just like Steve Jobs said, you need to hold it for yourself. It’s a different computing experience. It’s intuitive and simple. The device is blazingly fast and obvious how to use. It is a third kind of computing between a smartphone and a laptop.

3G, MMS, and apps came. That doesn't render the gnashing of teeth irrelevant. In fact, it does more to prove the opposite - that they were necessary features. And now that we have them, it seems silly to roll out an iPad that lacks some key features.

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I like to host little group chats using the AIM network. Today's was in the "AppleTablet" room. If I had known what was to come I'd have told everyone to join the "ZzzzzzzzzzPad" room or something.

The full entry contains the text from the chat.

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If you'd like to sign up to be considered for inclusion in the semi-public DSLRU beta period, which will begin on February 15, 2010, please head on over to http://udslr.com/ to sign up.

The official site is and will be at dslru.com, but for now udslr.com - the old name for the site - has a simple sign-up page.

We're working hard on this and think it's shaping up quite nicely.

Users in this beta will not only get a sneak peek at the site, but we'll ask three things of them primarily: a) point out any bugs you find, b) suggest possible feature enhancements, and c) seed and use the forum with some good topics and discussions.

We don't have well defined plans in place for any sort of "prizes" or "compensation" right now, but we'd like to take care of our "early adopters." It may not be in February or March, but sometime we'd like to thank them - particularly the good ones.

I've been rather… let's go with "blasé" about the Apple Tablet to date.

I own a Kindle and find that it's a perfectly good way to read books. It doesn't need charged frequently because the e-Ink screen sucks up so little power. It's small, light, etc.

But it's not a good way to read anything but books. Not websites, and not… magazines.

If the Apple Tablet will let me convert my subscriptions - to golf magazines, Esquire, Outdoor Photographer, Maxim (I think I'm still subscribed from some ten-year plan I bought for like $39.99… ???), and a few others, I might be up for it.

The things I hate most about magazines are that they're bulky as heck, don't let me copy/paste or "bookmark," can't be easily searched, and are slow to arrive sometimes due to the mail.

If the Apple Tablet does a great job with magazines, I may very well buy one. And I'll probably still keep the Kindle for books.

Update: Meh. Don't want one. Not even at half the price. Seriously.

I've been busy lately so I haven't made time for reading like I normally do.

I considered setting aside time specifically for reading - say, 10pm to 11pm every night - but somehow I don't see that lasting too long. I lose track of time later at night when I'm working and I doubt I could actually put off working on something just because the clock says 10:00.

Do you make time specifically for reading?

From a friend:

In honor of the 44th President of the United States, Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream has introduced a new flavor: "Barocky Road."

Barocky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and is surrounded by nuts and flakes. The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient.

The nuts and flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow.

The cost is $100.00 per scoop. When purchased it will be presented to you in a large beautiful cone, but then the ice cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you, who didn't have the money to buy ice cream.

You are left with an empty wallet and no change, holding an empty cone with no hope of getting any ice cream.

Are you stimulated?

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Heh. I asked on November 10, 2009 if anyone still cared about the Apple tablet:

Does anyone still truly care about an Apple Tablet? Either it'll be an underpowered computer running Mac OS X or it'll be an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch running mobile OS X, right?

Originally I thought it might be nice to have one simply if it acted as a remote desktop screen. That'd still be nice to have, without the bulk a laptop, but I don't think we'll ever see anything like that.

On January 9 I yawned and said:

I'm still leaving open the small possibility that whatever he announces in a fortnight or so will separate my money from my wallet. I just don't think the odds are very good.

So I imagine you can guess which option I voted for…

For decades, the PGA manual of instruction said that a golf ball, when struck, started "on the line of the swing path and then curved back to where the clubface was pointed."

Common sense tells you this makes little sense: how could a ball rebound off a clubface anything but square? Sure, the ball is compressed against the clubface and is carried a brief distance by the "swing path," but so much so that it starts on that line?

Turns out your common sense was right. New science - within the past few years - has revealed that roughly 85% of what determines a golf ball's flight at impact is the clubface angle - where it's pointed right or left (similar rules apply vertically, but it's slightly different due to grooves and the effect of loft on the clubface) - and the rest is determined by the swing path. Where a ball curves to is still a result of the clubface's orientation relative to the swing path, but science tells us you can't simply point the clubface at the target, make any old swing, and have the ball go there.

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For a few years now I've wanted a video camera that can record decent video at a high framerate and a good resolution.

About a year ago I bought a Kodak Zi6 and liked it. The Zi6 does 720p at 60 frames per second. It works, but it could be a whole lot better.

My ideal sports camera:

• Resolution of 800 x 600. If you want a horizontal mode, rotate the camera, but virtually every motion in sports is taller than it is wide - a tennis serve, a baseball player hitting or throwing - because people play sports upright and are taller than they are wide. 800 x 600 is plenty of resolution for high-speed analysis.
• An aperture of roughly f/4 or f/5.6 - enough to get the athlete in focus while open enough to allow for even 1/300th shutter speeds indoors. Why 1/300th?
• Records at 300 FPS. Maybe it could include 150 and 60 as well, but I don't really care.
• A large enough chip that noise is minimized, even in reasonably well-lit indoor facilities.
• Includes a remote control that clips onto clothing without getting in the way. This would allow students to stop and start the camera's recoding.
• Includes WiFi so you can control the camera (record, stop recording) from a computer. Should also include the ability to easily copy movie files from the camera to the computer for analysis.
• A simple, easy, basic interface. No still camera capabilities, no ISO adjustments, no aperture adjustments - just record high-speed video at a good exposure with as little noise as possible. No zooming, and even the focal range only needs to be 5-25 feet. It wouldn't need to be super small.

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I had ten minutes to kill so I put together a Cyndicate style that resembles the look of The Sand Trap. You can download it here.

Work on Cyndicate 2.0 continues. We've shipped a few alphas that speed things up and remove some memory leaks.

It's always embarrassing when something like this shows up on such a main-stream site, isn't it?

I've gotta remember to check out the CBS site on Friday to watch this CSI because some golfers make cameos and my two DVRs are recording too many things at 9:00, so I won't be able to record it.

I stopped watching CSI:Miami when I realized it wasn't actually set in Miami at all, but Los Angeles. Kinda ruined the only thing the show had going for it - that I might see something I recognized from the time I lived in southern Florida. The only thing I'd recognize occasionally was the aerial shots they cut into various scenes.

In Taco Bell the other day I saw a sign about how a woman had lost 55 pounds or something over the span of two years by - if you failed to read the smaller print - eating at Taco Bell for lunch. I forget the name of the low-fat or low-calorie foods Taco Bell is pushing now, but they're apparently "healthy" as far as fast food goes.

The small print said something like how the woman had reduced her caloric intake by 500 calories slowly and that Taco Bell drive-thru isn't considered a diet plan.

I've heard of all kinds of diets. The Atkins diet says "don't eat carbs" but you can eat all the butter you want? What? Butter's not great for you either. The celery diet says to eat more celery (more on this in a bit). Other diets say "just eat less." Weight Watchers combines that with drinks that have reduced calories. I've never been on one because, well, I've never needed to be.

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So a few months ago I ran out of the Mexican Coke some people kindly mailed to me. It was great, and I saved it for special occasions. I drank it a little faster towards the end since it was just starting to get flat, but the 36 (I think) bottles I received were yum yum yummy.

Natural sugar has a smoother taste.

The other day I spied some "Throwback" Dr. Pepper at Wegman's and bought it. Same positives - a much smoother, more caressing rather than biting taste. Goodness.

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I have two confessions to make.

First, I use Entourage for email. I almost never open Word or Excel, but I use (and quite like) Entourage.

Second, I use POP. Really don't like IMAP, though it's a weak opinion since I've not used it very much.

From 2003 (yeah, I know), this just about captures it:

First, here is some context to make my reply understandable. I've always been a POP user, never IMAP, thought I've fiddled with it on many occasions. I have the biases of someone who has a long, successful experience with POP, and no such corresponding experience with IMAP. Since I've already unconsciously adapted around the limitations imposed by POP, I'm not really aware of them. When I have tried to use IMAP, I've been put off by what I experienced as extra burdens without experiencing compensatory benefits. I never stuck with IMAP long enough to get over the learning curve and get used to it, much less enjoy it. In addition, various of the IMAP clients I've used haven't implemented the protocol in the nicest way, which further colors my experience negatively. So what follows is very intentionally not trying to be objective or claiming it is anything other than my own experience (which is certainly a driver of what I think of as good design, but at 52 I'm no longer so egocentric to think one size fits all or that my personal needs are the trump card in what gets into the spec.).

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