Michael Jackson was an inventor

Who knew?  Michael Jackson had a patent in his name.

6a00d8341bf67c53ef0115706cd502970c-320wi

It was a design that allowed his feet to go into the floor of the stage and stay locked in place for a dance move where he leaned out over his center of gravity.  The normal way of doing it would have been to use stage hands and cables, but I guess that was just too clunky.

Here’s the dance move on YouTube.

From: Discovery News

Bookmark and Share

Bullet at 1,000,000 frames per second

Sure, your fancy new digital camera does 10 frames per second. Sometimes that just isn’t fast enough.

bullet1mfps

Be sure to head to Kurzzeit.com and watch the video.

Bookmark and Share

isPalindrome function in Python

I've started playing around with Python, and the more I do the more I like it.  Python makes it very easy to do simple, scripty type stuff, but also has the ability to do OOP if that need arises.

Here's a quick little function to determine if a string passed is a palindrome or not.

PYTHON:
  1. def isPalidrome(theWord):
  2.     return (theWord==theWord[::-1])

Bookmark and Share

Live action kalideoscope

I'm halfway between this being funny or mean to the animals.  Doesn't look like any of them get hurt though.

Bookmark and Share

5 Photoshop brush sets to add to your collection

Sure, there are a bunch of brush set for Photoshop out there.  The hard part is knowing what to get.  To help, here's 5 sets that I came across that would fit in pretty much anyone's collection.

Hi resolution tree silhouettes

Need a tree?  Head over to BestDesignOptions.com and download a set of 25 tree brushes.

free-photoshop-brushes-2

Read the rest of this entry »

Bookmark and Share

A lesson on why it’s important to update drivers

I've been repurposing an older notebook to become a media computer for the past couple of days.  Since it's a notebook the sound is stereo only, and that's just not going to cut it.  So I went out and bought a Creative Labs X-Fi USB at Best Buy for about 60 bucks.  Turns out Amazon has it for $40, but Best Buy is down the street and I didn't have to wait.

Plugged it in and after a little fidgeting got it outputting through an optical digital connection to my receiver.  Then I noticed the problem.  Movies had about a half second delay.  Not a good situation since it made it seem like I was watching everything dubbed.  Fortunately it was an easy fix.  The drivers on the CD were from '07.  A quick visit to Creative's website and a fresh set of drivers were downloaded and installed and the delay was gone.

So I've got some movies to watch...

Bookmark and Share

Apple Remote – How did I now know about this?

As geeky as I am you would think I would have heard about Apple Remote before this week.  Maybe it's because I haven't been an Apple geek until a few weeks ago.

For those of y'all in my shoes, Remote is a program that you run on your iPhone that connects to iTunes on your computer through the network and lets you control what's playing. You can pick playlists, albums, artists, whatever.  Right now I've got it playing the soundtrack to Robin Hood through my media computer.

Screen shot of Apple Remote

Screen shot of Apple Remote

Turns out it's really good when you've got a baby too. Load up some lullabies into iTunes and you'll be set for those crying spells.

Bookmark and Share

How to get a screen shot from an iPhone

It's come up a few times where I've needed to get a screen shot from my iPhone.  Turns out there are two ways to do it, one of which is built into the phone.

Easiest way is to hold down the home button and press the power button.  You'll hear the shutter sound and the screen shot will be saved into your camera roll.  Piece of cake. You'll still have to get it from your phone to your computer, but that's not too tough.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bookmark and Share

iPhones are great for new dads

Found a great excuse to buy something useful about my iPhone a few days ago. My 4 month old daughter was crying like she was sleepy, but not quite ready to give up and go to sleep.  I started playing some classical music on my iPhone and she stared at it for a couple of minutes before closing her eyes.  So I've now got a growing collection of lullaby type songs for her to listen to.  Last night she got fussy at the restaurant and it gave us enough time to finish eating.

It also works really well with the Pandora app.  The mini-geek seems to like Enya.

screenshot-20090615-120519

Bookmark and Share

Real life Twitter

Can't say I've ever seen the point of Twitter. But it does make for a funny video.

Bookmark and Share