Bob Givnin

To say that I'm ready to fly home is the understatement of the year. T-minus 14 hours and counting...

Waiting for Kevin Smith!

This rainbow showed up after it DUMPED some serious rain in Burien.

Saw Surrogates tonight. It was "meh" at best. Great concept, but poor execution in some crucial parts.

Gorgeous.

I was briefly considering getting the new Zune HD, but my Zune 80, for my needs, is way better, so I'll stick with it until it dies.

I was also briefly considering getting the new PSP Go, but they made way too many changes that I'm not a fan of to spend $250 on it. I'll stick with my PSP-1000, TYVM.

I'm going Guitar Center to see what "crazy" deals they have for this "huge" sale they're having this weekend. Should be interesting.

So Friggin' Awesome.

My cat decided that my job this morning was to keep her company. I
obliged.

There is a food color additive called “carmine” that is a red color. It is used in many products such as Dannon Strawberry Yogurt, Ocean Spray Pink-Grapefruit Juice, and others. Guess how they get it?

“it is made from the desiccated bodies of female insects harvested in Peru. The bug feeds on red cactus berries and color from the berries accumulated in the females and their un-hatched larvae. The insects are collected, dried, and ground into pigment. It takes about 70,000 of them to produce one pound of carmine, which is used to make processed foods look pink, red or purple.”

It was really good! It's on the interwebs if you want to see it. Under a cut cuz some people want it that way.

( Read more... )

It is. I don't care what you say.

I just finished watching Taken. What a fantastic action/adventure/thriller movie. Holy crap. HIGHLY recommended if you're into that sorta thing.

Totally ganked from fixerbard:

I just got back from Best Buy with a new Linksys WRT54G2 router. Here's hoping this fixes all my Internet problems!

My router is shot! 2 hours troubleshooting and 2 calls to Comcast later, my router's toast. It won't accept hard ports or any wireless signals, but when my PC is plugged directly into my cable modem, it works great! Time to go to Best Buy and upgrade!

It's really interesting reading forums and listening to people talk about the price point of iPhone apps. The perceived difference of an iPhone app's price versus a DS, PSP, Wii, PS3 or 360 game's price is amazing and I'm guilty of this as well. I was just having an IM conversation with a friend when this came up.

For example, I have no problems running out to Best Buy and purchasing a $60 game for the PC or any console I have. I *think* I'm getting a better deal on a better console because I'm spending a lot of money on it. Some have been worth it (Dead Space, Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Max Payne and many more) and some haven't (a majority of Wii titles, basically, plus some PC games thrown in for good measure). However, that $60 price gives me the ILLUSION that I'm spending a lot of money and I'm getting something back in return.

On the other hand, there are iPhone apps... games specifically. No game is over $10 at this time and the cheapest you can get is 99 cents. Since I got my iPhone last year, I've purchased two games: One was 99 cents (Hidden Expedition: Everest) and one was $3.99 (Power Pros Touch baseball). Last night, I was going to buy DOOM Resurrection for $2.99, but didn't because I was worried it was going to be a POS. It's on sale this weekend for QuakeCon - it's normally $10.

So, let me see: I have no problems running out and spending $60 on Gears of War 2 (I haven't yet, but I've been considering it because some friends at work play co-op and it sounds really fun), but fuck spending $3 on an iPhone game.

W T F. That's less than a Mocha at just about ANY coffee shop and will give me way more entertainment for hours, plus replay value, because it's fucking DOOM.

I have no idea where I'm going with this... I just think it's interesting that my perceived value of an iPhone game is that it'll be crap, even though it's only $3, but my perceived value of a $60 console game is much more lenient, when it could be even shittier than the iPhone game.

Oh, and now that I think about it, I enjoy the hell out of both iPhone games I have. Go figure.

Time to buy DOOM on the iPhone.

GI Joe rocked. F- the critics.

Looks awesome! I hope we get a cleaner version soon. Jon Favreau posted a message to Twitter yesterday that he's working on it.

http://gizmodo.com/5333347/iron-man-2-comic-con-leaked-footage-sets-my-pants-on-fire

I really want a flash camcorder, but I can't decide how much I want to spend on one or which one to get. I'll probably get one around Black Friday,so I can have it for Christmas, but I want to start researching and saving now.

There are the cheapy $130 "webbie" camcorders, which can hold anywhere from 4gb to 32gb of video (in HD, of course), but they're more meant for "off the cuff" recording at parties and stuff, but not really for keeping real memories, like weddings, birthdays and the like. Depending on which way I go, I might get both a real camcorder and a "webbie" so I'm covered on all occasions.

Sony has a webbie, but it uses their proprietary Memory Stick Pro Duo memory and that's crap, plus the battery isn't removable. It's $150:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830179222

Creative has one that a friend at work has that I got to use last night that seems pretty cool. The only problem is there's no external memory, but it's only $130:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830106003&Tpk=vado%20hd

Flip made these popular, but I've heard that Creative and Sony made them better. Similar to the Creative, there's no external memory slot, so the 4gb is all I have to work with:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830246015

There was another brand that uses SDHC cards, but I've never heard of the brand (Aiptek) and that scares me a bit, but it uses SDHC cards and that means my Mac could read the cards natively without having to buy a USB adapter:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830234004

If I was to get a real HD camcorder, I'm seriously looking at the Canon HF200. It's the same as the HF20, except $200 less and I'd have to use my own memory sticks. There was one review where the reviewer couldn't get his memory card to work, so it might be worth spending the extra money (a whole frickin' lot of extra money, too) to get 32gb of onboard memory.

Here's hoping that these prices drop around Black Friday.

Does anyone have any experience with web or flash camcorders? Care to comment? Want one? Care to comment on what you're looking at?