LadyCrimson

You and me both. I had a lovely day pestering people I haven't seen in a long while, and I'm going to do it again tomorrow. I also spent an hour poking my finger at one of my cats and trying to take pictures while holding the camera and it's 5.5 inch lens with only one hand. A feat that's never wise when one has the wrist strength of wet spaghetti. But some were still pretty darn cute.

I have flat feet and they give me trouble sometimes with walking/running, even with arch supports. But that's mostly an excuse. I'm kind of odd, as I find exercising outdoors - for the pure sake of exercising - too distracting. ie, I'll start a vigorous hike up a hill, see some insects, or a cool cluster of massive bamboo, or people doing something weird, and next thing I know I've spent 15 minutes in one spot watching/exploring instead of exercising. So I usually exercise in the garage or something, where I keep my focus and don't waste time.

Since you read it in four hours or so, I assume it's not a very long book? I see they're making a movie already. :D

Sounds like good news, Walsh. Must feel good to achieve goals like that. Lately I do enough exercises to keep the muscles that help support the spine limber, but my cardio capabilities the past year has gone into the toilet.

Some of the bits of the character jumping/flying around were cool. Kinda frenetic for my tastes - by that I mean, it gives my eyes a headache. Still pretty cool tho. And ... "Funded by No One." Haha, that made me laugh!

I'm not sure? There was a guy who said his whole personality changed and he lost most of his friends because of it. And the kid who was knocked out of his shoes while wearing an ipod and mowing the lawn. They did some recreation tests and think the ipod saved his life.

I was going to say that. The Disciple/Atton cutscenes in Kotor2. Dungeon Keeper1's intro movie. ...I know there must be others I enjoyed when I saw them, but my brain usually stores such things in a temporary storage folder and then deletes them after a few days.

That's a horrible anchorman.

Tonight I watched some show about people who've been hit by lightning. It made me glad I don't live in a place that gets much of it. Got some 11x14 and one 16x20 test prints back from the printer today, which was a lesson that I need to sharpen my photos a bit more when it comes to larger printing. I'm still such a dufus when it comes to figuring out all the digital-development end of things. It was easier when you just sent in a roll of film with no digital steps required in the middle. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time post-processing for printing than I do taking pictures. Edit: 16x20, btw, for some reason seemed bigger than I thought it would be. Which is cool.

Decided to split the discussion from the Community Resources sticky to its own thread. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The 2nd and 3rd pics are very nice. Yeah, I said there was more to it than just fstops. The true technique-geeks - of which I am most assuredly not one - can go on and on about formulas and all that. But there are three basic factors: the apeture setting, the focal length of the lens in use, and shooting distance. With that in mind ... if any two of these things are equal, then the third is what you'd want to change to try and achieve a desired DOF. In this day of digital cameras, another factor appears to be coming into play, and that is sensor size, which varies from full-frame SLRS to 1.6 SLRs to consumer cams. You can read all about the tech jargon on that on this page. But I think it essentially boils down that digital DOF is inversely proportional to format size - many smaller digicams, for example, have sensors 1/6 the size of 35mm film, which can result in such a large depth of field that's it can be almost impossible to get blurred backgrounds from them. The following are examples of my own, showing how if focal length is the same and your distance from the subject remains the same, the f-stop does affect DOF. I hope it's obvious these aren't meant to be examples of fine photography. All 4 were shot using 100mm focal length.

Well, most of those are new to me, so I find them entertaining. Poor kitty. The seagull one makes me think I'll skip breakfast.

Sounds like a complaint about the round-based combat and computer AI, not graphics? I do agree that it's always a bit odd when enemies are standing around "waiting" for their attack round. But altering that would affect other things about how the game is played/feels - might be good, might not. Hard to say.

Well, I certainly don't see much point in a move like that. If they're concerned about patrons getting too excited/drunk and raising a ruckus or accosting the dancers, or something to that effect, a 6 foot rule isn't going to change much of anything, unless the dancers are enclosed in safety cages. But if they were in cages, then the 6 foot rule wouldn't be needed for that purpose anyway.

That's awesome. I think Bruce Campbell's desk should sport one.

"Who wants to be bulletproof?" I'd rather be drown/suffocation & shark proof. Then I might go windsurfing and stuff.

I don't have any facts, which I know y'all like *grin* but I think that the "me" generation concept isn't likely the real root of the problem. I'd suspect there have been "me" generations in other civilizations of the distant past, just not ones with cell phones, video games, and Porsches. There may be other possible explanations for increasing noticable incidents such as these - overpopulation/city-crowding, better news media coverage/record keeping of incidents that makes percentages vs. "the far past" seem inflated, increasing stressful 'modern' lifestyles/restrictions/financial pressures that may (emphasis on may) trigger violence in people who under milder circumstances might not have their internal "time-bombs" go off. Anyway, definitely a tragic event. My sympathies for the families of those lost.

The worst of the series, but I still kind of enjoyed it. But then, during that time we were on a heavy TR kick, buying 2 copies of almost all the TR's so we could play at the same time etc. Maybe it's more fun when you can holler/laugh to your spouse about something in the game.

I spent 30 minutes touching up a cropped section from a photo, where I thought I had managed to catch a "smiling" cow chewing a piece of grass. Seriously. But then I went away for a bit and when I came back, my eyes shifted focus or something, beause I suddenly realized what I thought were teeth was a reflection off the cow's wet nose. I actually freaked out a for second - the illusion of smiling cow has been so convincing I thought my files were suddenly all corrupted. Moments like those make for weird mornings.

The Fox maddness started with Al Bundy ... :D American Idol is a Fox production too, which I'm sure gives them plenty of funds ...

Not a movie, but I've been watching the Planet Earth series on DiscoveryHD. Gorgeous stuff, narrated by Ms "Alien" Weaver. It gives me serious camera gear envy. Videocameras that do 1000 frames per second. Yeah. I want one of those. But I wouldn't want to camp in the desert for 4 months trying to get video of camels, or go swimming with piranhas.

He'll always be Darkman and Rob Roy, to me. Re: palpatine - I liked him a lot, myself. I mean, in that hammy hall of fame kind of way. It's not bad acting so much as "hamming it up." Re: Obiwan - I thought poor Ewan was shafted ... he was so excited, in interviews, to be picked to be in the films, but then ... watching him in the movies, it felt like he knew how riddiculous the lines he was speaking were and was wincing inside as he said them.

Shallow DOF - need a wide-open f-stop (smaller number - like 2.8 ), if your camera will let you. There's other factors but DOF is the place to start. If your camera uses a lot of auto-exposure modes, try increasing to a higher shutter speed, which should set the f-stop to whatever it's minimum may be.

Isn't Samsung kind of the same thing for Sony? I can't remember. 50"plus LCD tv's are still not very common, either; plasmas dominate (or the projections), tho that may change before too long. Again, I'm not a huge fan of LCD, and Sony is the only LCD that went above 46" that I liked at all, of the ones I saw. Gorgeous color and picture from good viewing angles, assuming an ideal signal. But it was $4-5K vs. a plasma's $2-3K. So maybe in a few years.

I don't have an answer but you could try the lucasarts kotor2 support forum. They appear to have a technically knowledable person or two often in attendance there, re: possible game/pc issues & solutions. Listing your system specs is also always helpful.

I guess I'd have to say Sim ThemePark. Couldn't stand it. It's no Roller Coaster Tycoon ... There's some games I hardly played because I could tell right off I wasn't going to like it, like DungeonSiege2, The Last Express, etc. so maybe they'd qualify, but hard to say based on 30-60 minutes of gameplay.