The Events that are: My Life

Every four weeks on the third Wednesday of every month, geeks from all around Seattle flock to Ralph’s Grocery and Deli for a few hours of social interaction. I think Phillip Torrone is the coolest guy ever. He brought some very neat gadgets including an old authentic Western Electric rotary phone that had been modified into a GSM cell phone. Absolutely ridiculous, but also absolutely cool. Phillip is also the Assoc. Editor of Make Magazine that, although somewhat expensive ($14.95 an issue, but published quarterly), looks to be very worthwhile to read. Phillip brought a few copies of the latest volume and in thumbing through it, seemed like something I would actually read cover to cover, a rarity for me. I’ll go on Amazon.com and order a year’s subscription when I go back to Colorado.

Back to the event though. It was very cool and I will have pictures posted soon.

I don’t very often rave about customer service. However, I am now. One of the main reasons I decided to go with Nikon and not Canon was in talking with Tad Schuldt. He’s Mark Schuldt’s older brother and works at the Kits Camera in Westlake Center Mall (where the monorail runs to). We talked about cameras (well, he talked about them, I listened and asked questions) a few nights back when we were at the Schuldt’s. He did this on his time and only knowing one thing: I had some level of interest in DSLRs. So I dropped by Kits Camera today, picked his brain a little more, and purchased a Nikon D70 from him (and camera bag, and 1GB CF card). That’s how a business/customer relationship is supposed to work.

I finally decided on the Nikon D70. I’m going to go pick it up now!

Went over to Quinn’s around 4 yesterday. Then headed back home around 6. There were some plans to have some fun with Jeff’s car at Annie’s prom, but I really wasn’t that motivated. So Ben came over around 10:30ish and we hung out until Quinn came by at just after 11. Then we headed over to “Drift on Inn” and “Goldie’s Casino” for some late night fun until about 2am, which brings me here: another late night.

Andrew Boyd sent this email out to a few of us:

I’ve had this cool song for a while, and I don’t know who it’s by, but I’ve heard it many times before. Maybe Quinn knows since he’s the major cd collector lol.

A perfect test candidate for Acoustic Fingerprinting. AF is pretty much what it sounds like: a unique (almost) “fingerprint” is created based on characteristics of the sound file. This is matched against a database of known prints and the information for the music file is retrieved. I ran the file and reported that “There is a 72% chance that it is Tainted Love by Soft Cell from their album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.”

Call me a flip flopper I guess. I talked with Tad Schult, Mark Schult’s older brother. Tad works at a camera store and talked to me about the differences between the Rebel XT and the D70. So I did some more research and I think I’m going to go with the D70 now. The D70 doesn’t have as many pixels, but it does use a CCD (the Rebel XT uses CMOS) that, for my purposes, is a superior choice. The D70 does weigh more, but the lense is of higher quality (Tad said that the Rebel XT uses plastic instead of glass, ouch). The battery life on the D70 is also a LOT better (up to 2000 pictures compared with the Rebel XT’s 600), that is an important factor.