Facebook is better than Myspace...

I got dragged into these social networking sites because it seems everyone under the age of 30 has a Myspace or Facebook account. Please, use Facebook. Myspace seems buggy, cluttered, and it's full of spam. Facebook's interface is standardized and it integrates to other web services I actually use like Flickr and Blogger. It's quite incredible how large these sites have become.

I guess one cool thing about these social networking sites is reconnecting to people I haven't seen for the last 10 or 15 years.

Microsoft Live Maps Birds Eye View...

Check out Microsoft Live Maps Bird's eye view. I love mapping software. This combined with Google Street View means that it can go virtually anywhere! Or at least, you can have a pretty good idea of what an area looks like before you get there. If you love traveling like I do, this is really cool!

Triple Monitor Setup...

I've been playing with my three, 24" monitor setup for a couple weeks now. It brings the computing experience to another level. Being able to see so much at once just makes thing so much easier to look at things. It can mean looking at multiple pages or documents at once at life size or looking at just one thing huge. One of my favorite applications is mapping software. Running Google Maps or Earth is just an amazing experience! It's the same with Microsoft's or Yahoo's site too. You can see just so much area in a level of detail which is not possible with just 1 or 2 monitors. Everything from data visualization, to office productivity is improved with a multi monitor setup.

Here's how you get your computer set up for multi-monitors. First, I have the 3 monitors laid out vertically. Horizontally, it would be too wide. This brings up another issue with the monitors. Viewing angles. Most of the less expensive panels are TN, which have a very limited viewing angle, especially in the vertical direction, which become the horizontal direction when rotated. You at least need to get a VA or IPS panel monitor. Otherwise, the narrow viewing angles will make the images go black if you are sitting even slightly off center or move your head in one direction. My 3 monitor setup are a Dell Ultrasharp and 2 HP LP2475W monitors. The HP's are IPS panels, which do look slightly better than the Dell which is a VA panel. The colors on all 3 monitors are slightly difference, so I'm still trying to get them to match.

The other issue is that you need 2 video cards with 2 DVI ports to drive 3 monitors. I'm using 2 GeForce 9400 GT cards. I needed to custom build my system in order to get this configuration. You may be able to use the built in video card on your monitor and an additional card, but this does depend on what kind of motherboard you have. Also, you really need to turn down the brightness. Three monitors at their default brightness is too bright. I had to turn the brightness way down because my eyes hurt after about an hour. Lastly, all these monitors put out a lot of heat and you can definitely feel it sitting in front of these.

Triple Monitor Setup...

I just finished setting up a brand new workstation. Here are 3 24" monitors laid out vertically. I can now finally have all my windows open and see them without switching! Now I just need to get my Mac attached to this. There are 2 HP LP247w IPS panels and a Dell Ultrasharp I picked up off eBay. Powering these monitors are 2 Nvidia 9400 GT graphics cards. With 25% off courtesy of Microsoft, it wasn't as expensive as it seems. Now I need to get a bigger desk and figure out how to connect my Mac to my monitor array.

San Diego as cheap as Austin?

No, overall, not quite, but at the rate prices are dropping, it might be true by the end of next year. The real estate market in California and Florida has been obliterated over the past couple years. It seems like it is now possible to get a condo in downtown San Diego about the same price as downtown Austin, especially once you factor in the much lower property tax rates in California compared with Texas. Not everywhere has dropped, but there are sections of the city that seem to have been cut in half. The northwest part of the city such as La Jolla seems to have held up very well, while the downtown condo market seems to have gotten destroyed.

Austin was not my first choice of cities to move to if cost of living was not a factor. I would probably choose to move to southern California or Hawaii if I had unlimited amounts of money. San Diego would be my first pick. But now that prices are rapidly coming down, I might actually considering moving again. Prices seem to have come down a lot, but rent still seems to be much more expensive than Texas, especially out in the suburbs.

New Camera and Lens...

So in the last couple weeks, I got a new camera and lens. I got Nikon D60 and the 18-200mm VR f3.5-5.6 lens. This lens is incredible! No wonder it was sold out for the last 3 years. It combines 2 of my lenses. Previously I was using the 4 year old 18-70mm lens and often found myself wanting more reach than maximum 70mm. Nikon's image stabilization (VR) also works really well. I find that I can shoot around 2 stops slower now. The image quality seems just as good as my other lenses.

The D60 works much better than my 4 year old D70. It's got a 2.5 inch screen and is smaller and lighter with more resolution. There are some features that are missing like the depth of field preview (which isn't that useful with digital) and the inability to auto focus my older lenses. It's got Adaptive Dynamic Range (ADR) which does seem to improve dynamic range, but slows down the camera significantly. My 18-200 mm does seem to be a little large for the body, but it's still manageable.

Eventually, I want to get the D90, but settled on the D60 for its smaller size and cheaper price. It seems to do 95% everything I need for 1/3 the price. I'll probably still get the D90 or D700 eventually for autofocusing my non AFS lenses, shooting sports, the D90 for its movie mode, and/or D700 for its awesome low light abilities. 

The baby Nikons (D40/D60) and this 18-200 mm super zoom seems to be all I need for the most common situations. The Nikon D40 is also great, but those are hard to find just the body without the lens. The D60 also has some nice features like ADR, anti dust system, 10 vs 6 Mega pixels, and an eye sensor, and 100 ISO which is useful when you want to shoot large apertures at slower shutter speeds.

Scooting Around Miami...

One of the cool things I really enjoyed doing in Miami was riding a scooter around town. I rented a small Yamaha scooter that are widely available. These are very light weight, very maneuverable, and don't go much faster than what I can ride my bicycle at when I'm in shape. They are far less intimidating than a motorcycle such as my Suzuki SV650 that I had until last year. Unlike a motorcycle there are only 2 controls you need to worry about; brakes and throttle. There is no clutch or shifting to worry about. The fastest this thing will go full throttle is around 35 mph. They are very good on gas. I spent 2 days riding all over Miami Beach and used less than a gallon of gas. They are extremely popular in South Beach as it is almost impossible to find parking at any of the more popular destinations. It was great for taking photos as I could stop any time and shoot in any direction unlike being inside a car. I have been considering buying one of these for some time now to get around downtown. But they are not cheap. A brand new 50-150 cc scooters seem to run $2,000-$3000. I can almost buy a full motorcycle for that amount of money.

Random Miami Rants

I have been in Miami for nearly a week now. I have to say, it is a very different place. Spanish is commonplace here, perhaps even more than Texas. But unlike Texas, there are relatively few Mexicans here. Most of the population seems to be Cubans or from other South American countries like Argentina, Venezuela, etc. There also seem to be quite a number of Europeans here that are visiting on vacation or work here. For some reason, this seems to be a popular spot for them.

I also spent the time to drive down to the Florida Keys. I made it all the way to Key West, the southernmost point of the United States. The main street is known as Duval Street. It is sort of like 6th Street in Austin, but with more shopping, many art galleries, and various other stores besides just bars and clubs.

I am staying in South Beach, which is the southern portion of Miami Beach. Miami Beach is an island off the coast of the mainland and is separate city from Miami. Supposedly there is a big social scene here, but I didn't really find that to be the case. Maybe it's because it's not in season yet. 

The beaches here are topless. Many women can been seen sunbathing topless. It's not as glamours as it sounds and the novelty wears off pretty fast. I never quite understood the idea of laying under the sun to cook yourself. Sun exposure is necessary to get vitamin D, but exposing yourself to the sun for hours at a time can't be healthy for your skin. I saw a few women with bronze, leathery, wrinkled skin from too much sun exposure. Not attractive at all. I guess that just isn't the look I find attractive.

Parking is very difficult in Miami and it almost always cost money to park anywhere. Another thing you will notice is that the tips are almost always included. They will automatically add 15% to your bill. Apparently, it is not the custom of South Americans to tip, so they add it to your bill automatically.

The buildings are built in the Art Deco style. It's very similar to what I've seen in the Caribbean. There are also many high rise luxury condo buildings. Apparently the real estate bust doesn't seem to have affected the real high end stuff as they are still ridiculously expensive.

The weather of course is warm and humid. It's a bit too humid for me.

Last night, I spent the evening in the Design District doing the Art Walk. It was actually fun. There was a good crowd, free drinks and appetizers, and some really nice stuff on display. I wanted to check out the night scene, but I got really, really tired after being out all day, so I decided to go back home and sleep.

The more I traveling throughout the United States, the more I appreciate being in Austin. My next favorite city was northern Atlanta. I've only been there once in 1996, but I remember everyone being extraordinarily friendly. It almost felt awkward. I don't think I would want to live here. The culture is very, very different than mainstream American. It almost feels like a foreign city in many ways. It just doesn't have my type of "vibe". I don't know how to describe it at the moment. 

That's it for now. I will write more later.

Photo: Wooden Roses

Wooden Roses
Originally uploaded by lcf1976

A couple weeks ago was the Pecan Street Festival. The most interesting thing I saw were these wooden roses. They were made out of these paper thin slices of wood and painted in bright, pretty colors. They were really pretty...

Olympus LS-10 and Bob Schneider at the Saxton Pub...

I just received my Olympus LS-10 audio recorder. This is a a high end digital audio recorder that can record CD quality audio in the field. I have been attending many events such as concerts and have wanted to make audio recordings. My $50 Sony IC recorder just didn't have the quality I was looking for. The only thing that thing was good for was making personal audio notes for my own purposes. It wasn't even good enough for archival purposes and I had difficulty getting clear recordings in noisy environments. Music sounded awful. This $300 recorder can create 96 kHz/24 bit .WAV audio files which are beyond CD quality. It includes 2 GB of built in memory with an SD card for expansion. The quality of this recorder is beyond anything that I have tried and will take documenting events to another level.

I went to the Saxton Pub to hear Bob Schneider do his weekly Monday performance to try out this recorder. It was great and it captures the feel of being there. I recorded this in WAV format and converted it to MP3 through iTunes.

Here is a short 1 minute clip of the Saxton Pub so you can get a feel of the atmosphere.

Here's an mp3 audio clip of the first few songs from tonight.