Kodak Z712 is

I'm really falling in love with photography. I find myself wanting to shoot all the time. And I am fascinated by cameras and I'm always looking for the right one for me. I'm not to worried about the megapixel race, as I could easily do what I do with with a 4 or 5 MP camera. Thing is, from The Wild Animal Park and Sea World to Point Lobos and Monterey Bay, I tend to be far from what I am shooting. Black Friday let me get a little closer to being a serious shooter. Best Buy had the Kodak Z712is on sale for $168. It features a staggering 12x optical zoom. Bad time for me to buy, but such a good deal. So, I am unloading some gear as we speak to pay the bill. (Adding a 2 GB SD card and a 15 minute NiMH AA battery charger took it a little out of my budget) Thanks again to my wonderful wife for letting me be a little irresponsible (within reason). I've only had it for a day, but I really think I've finally found the camera I'll have for a few years. I've attached a few of my early experiments. I like the image quality.

	This is Chani, one of my cats. She gets into moods where she likes to be photographed, and today was one such day.
	This is, of course, my daughter Katie. If you don't know her by now you should read my Dad Blog.
	The night before a full moon and a 12x zoom got me pretty close to our closest celestial neighbor.

I love the night sky. Some day I'd love to shoot long exposures through a telescope to watch the distant stars come out. Anyway, I'll try not to bore you all too often with this kind of stuff (and I'm sure I won't be buying any more cameras anytime soon), but snapping pics is my current obsession. And isn't that what a blog is for?
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And that's enough for now.

Brian Norwood

Platypi Online: The Platypus Portal

Oh happy happy, joy joy

I, in all my cheapness, am spoiled rotten. For example, I have 3 iPods. Small, Medium, and Large. But, I've never bought one. They were all gifts. And my first one was old and used. So what? I loved it.

Anyway, I've been off line for a while, as Katie has learned to roll all over the floor, greatly increasing the amout of attention she requires. Also, I've had family in town, and unlike most, I actually love having my family in town. All this has kept me away from the desktop. So, what happened to the laptop? I sold it! For about 200 bucks. So, that plus some savings and a gift from my mom gets me this, my "new" 800 MHz G3 iBook from Powerbook Guy.com. I love it! Yes, it's not very fast compared to a Macbook, but it blows the doors off of the Toshiba I sold to get it. And, it's a Mac, so I can get some real work done on it. After I redirect Katie's roll, that is.

If I am bragging about anything in this post, it is that I got rid of the lametop and got a laptop I really like without taking any money out of family funds. Yeah, I'd have had to wait a few more weeks if mom had not stepped in, but all in all, I have and iBook, and I still keep my "Cheap Cred". So, theoritically, more posts to the blog, but we'll have to see what Katie says about that.

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And that's enough for now.

Brian Norwood

Platypi Online: The Platypus Portal

Sick geekery.

Occasionally I use this old Toshiba notebook to do some web surfing while relaxing on the couch. It's a bear though, cause while it has a 1 GHz P4 in it, it only has 128 MB of ram and a slow hard drive. By the time I run all the anti-virus and anti-spyware stuff I need to safely use a Windows box, it just crawls.

To make a long, geeky story short(er), I set up an old PC in the office. I run it headless (No monitor, keyboard or mouse) and I remote access it from the Macintosh, mostly to dump backups to. That right there is geeky enough for most people I know.

Now, mostly out of morbid curiosity, I decided to tunnel into the office PC from the laptop. That worked fine, so I fired up a web browser. So, to be clear, I'm using remote desktop to access a PC in the office and using Firefox on THAT PC instead of Firefox on THIS PC. Sadly and strangely, I am browsing much faster. I guess that the machine in there is more capable of doing the heavy lifting, and is just blasting pixels over here for me to look at. This will probably be the way I do it from now on.

Now suddenly I am wondering, if I throw an old copy of Photoshop for PC on that machine, can I suddenly do production work lying on the couch? This could result in a whole new level of laziness for me. Or would that be making my laziness productive... I dunno. The whole thing seems awful weird though.

(Honey, if you are reading this, all this tom-foolery could be stopped with a new Macbook.)

UPDATE: You Tube is unusable over the remote connection. Bummer.
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And that's enough for now.

Brian Norwood

Platypi Online: The Platypus Portal

Syncronicity

Today is my last day of work before I become Mr. Mom and stay home with my kid. Now, I actually enjoy what I do quite a bit and have mixed feeling about leaving, but I woke up and my favorite tech diva Amber Mac posted a video on her blog. This is what they call an Anime Music Video. The editing is great, and I love this song. The sone is, of course, Code Monkey (link opens iTunes) by Johnathan Coulton. Possibly my favorite indie song EVER. I think there is a little code monkey in all of us. Have fun with the grind today.

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And that's enough for now.

Guitar Monkey, Brian Norwood

Platypi Online: The Platypus Portal

My new toy. (Music geek warning)

Well, life has been crazy for me the last couple of weeks. My wife has gone on maternity leave. I've been asked by a ton of friends to work on their guitars (and even been offered a little scratch for it).
I've been doing a lot of design work for Conspiracy of Thought with their new album cover and surrounding promotional material.

But, in all this madness, I thought I'd talk about a new toy I picked up, because I'm really liking it. I picked up a Rocktron Big Crush compressor pedal. I would link to their site, but when I go to it it demands I install Flash 6 of later, despite the fact that I have Flash 9 installed, which tells me that their Safari support is crappy. (quick note, spell check would prefer I use "crappie", how funny is that? Maybe the British spell it that way.)

I currently have 5 Basses, and I use all of them for various things. Their output is all over the place, with the fretless strangely being the hottest output of all. So, I have been relying on a Digitech BP200 floor unit to give me some control over the family. So over the last 2 years I've come to notice, I've been writing patches for the BP that involved various levels of compression, the volume pedal, and as little coloration as possible. And, more to the point, I have never used a distortion pedal on my bass for any purpose other than to get a laugh out of another musician. And I think the BP has about 5 million distortions built in.

So, it occurs to me, I already have a fantastic volume pedal in the Dunplop High Gain Volume pedal. Surely I could get better results with that and a dedicated compressor than running through a floor rack where the compressor is only one of a ton of effects they tried to cram in there.
In short, I love it, It is very clean and quiet. It tames my thunderous slapping and aggressive plucking, to the point where my more delicate fret work is not lost in the mix. (I know, you are wondering "What delicate playing is he talking about?"). So, while now I am running 2 pedals instead of one, I am carrying a lot less baggage. Not to mention I can no longer accidentally step on the patch pedal and bring up the "cosmic distortion space echo" patch in the middle of an R&B tune.

I may work the BP back into the mix somehow someday, but for now, less really is more.
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And that's enough for now.

Brian Norwood

Platypi Online: The Platypus Portal

Nation States

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Nation States. I think I may not have given it it's due. Nation States is a simulator where you run your own government. But instead of say Civilization or SimCity, you don't have to pour hours and hours in the the sim. You steer the political direction of your country by proposing legislation on issues that come before your government. This is done by clicking on the argument you most agree with, or dismissing the issue entirely (which, to me, isn't as fun). You can literally spend minutes a day, like I do, or spend hours engaging in diplomacy through the forums, like others do. It's entirely up to you how you play and it's fun either way.

I represent The People's Republic of Platypus Rex. I've been called a New York Times democracy, although currently I am an inoffensive centrist democracy. You can check out my nation to see what everything looks like. I'm a junkie, but it's such an easy habit I'm ok with it. Just keep me out of the forums.

If you join up, shoot me a message letting me know who you are so I can spy on you.

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And that's enough for now.

Brian Norwood

Platypi Online: The Platypus Portal

Rumsfeld Resignation Summarized as a Mac OS X Screenshot

I could have just stole this jpeg and posted it, but this guys site deserves the traffic.
Any of you who have ever used Mac OS X will immediately get the joke.

Here's The Link | Here's the post on digg

Tortured Artist or Happily married man? (the long way to an open source rant)

I remember agonizing for hours and hours about loneliness and my inability to attract a mate. This was the driving force for many a song and many a painting. I mean, it was my artistic obsession. And when I did manage to briefly have a relationship, it was usually more agonizing than the loneliness. I mean I had BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD relationships. I could write books! By the time I was 27 I was convinced that no woman would ever openly love me. And, my senior art exhibit was a huge success.

So, here I am. And man, I met a wonderful woman. And somehow, I convinced her to marry me. So where does that leave me as an artist? I mean, I lost my source of PAIN! Well, for a year of dating and almost 2 years of marriage now, I dried up. I made a few images here and there, but nothing like before. And, it's really not just the love thing, I mean, I'm almost 32 now. Rock Stardom was a long shot even at 27 (or 25) So, music took a back seat pretty easily too.

But, lately I've noticed it's still there. There is in me still, that urge to create. It really had nothing to do with pain after all. It was simply that I felt I had something to contribute, and I still do. Our society is not kind to the arts. If what our artists are creating can't be thrown down at the alters of Sex and Money, we don't want it. Oh, I'm sorry, Sex money and the alleviation of boredom, which seems to be a chronic recurrence in our times. Well, I think I have ideas to communicate that do not sit comfortable within our fast food frame work. In fact, I am critical of our present culture on many levels.

I'm starting to think it's these same rebellious (revolutionary?) tendencies within me that inform my technology choices as well. I've loved the Macintosh from the day I met it, and even have a warm spot in my heart for my Elementary school's Apple IIe. I love them, because to me, Apple's philosophy has always been, "Make it better". Excellence. Arete, to use the Ancient Greek word for it. Sure, they've let loose a few stinkers (Lisa, The 20th Anniversary Mac, Flaming Power Books...) but they have also always been committed to innovation. The Newton predated the Palm OS by years. They introduced the GUI to save me from BASIC and DOS, and then reintroduced me to the command line 18 years later, when I was ready for it, but even then, OS X is light years beyond the plain ole *nix it sits on top of. OS X is beautiful! I've also always been kinda partial to Netscape and it's descendents, because I always felt they were trying to make a great browser, while Microsoft was just trying to conquer a market. Sure, they failed on occasion. Netscape 6 was the most bloated crash prone piece of crud I ever used. But I always give their new releases a look, because I believe in their Vision. (and yet I HATE AOL, but that's another rant)

Anyway, what I'm getting at is, this is why I think I'm starting to fall for Linux. Hell, I can't use it any better than my mom can use Windows XP. But, the idea that there is this mass computer culture out there who is struggling to find a better way is so appealing to me. Open source, as an idea and a community is beautiful to me. And, some of the things they come up with... Mozilla Firefox is WONDERFUL. Sure, I use Safari on the Mac for the most part, but I have Firefox on every Mac, Windows, and Linux machine in the house. It's fast and accurate and, just a much better internet experience that IE was for me on ANY platform. I find my current distro, Fedora Core 1, to be just rock solid and a great user experience. Even for the Linux novice like me. So now I am hearing Fedora Core 2 blows chunks. That's ok. I won't upgrade, but I still believe in the ideas that drive any Linux distro, and I am grateful to the programmers that give so much time and effort to the cause. Maybe some day I'll learn to code, maybe not. But I have to admire the community, communication, and cooperation it takes to make a movement like open source, and thus Linux work. And I am proud that, in my own little way, I am somehow involved with it.
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And that's enough for now.

Brian Norwood

Platypi Design

A Geek Farewell

With everything going on in the world right now this is the last thing I thought I'd be writing about.
Never the less, I'm going to miss Tech TV. I know, it's "evolving" and not dying, but I don't think it'll be the same. I have an insatiable appetite for Tech News, and Tech TV went a long way towards satisfying my jones. I began my extremely satisfying journey into Linux with the guiding hand of The Screensavers keeping me steady. (As a side note, my sister is frustrated by the fact that I cannot "conform" and that I have to be a rebel with my Mac and my Linux notebook).
So yeah, some of the stuff was for beginners, but you have to realize I came to geekdom through the art door. So I was in the interesting position that I was proficient on Photoshop long before I knew how to set up an email account in Outlook (or Entorage). The little tips I picked up on The Screensavers and Call For Help helped bring me up to speed on the rest of computing. While now I've grown up a bit, enought to be a Slashdot junkie, I've never stopped watching Tech TV. Now it will never be the same. And for the first time in YEARS I will be without the guiding voice of fellow Mac Addict and all around nice guy Leo Laporte. G4TechTV, if you have a brain in your collective head, you will give Leo his own show. He's probably the most recognized Tech comentator in the world next to that pompous wind bag John C. Dvorak , who's website, I should mention, is broken on Mozilla Firefox For Linux as I type this. (Don't mind me, I don't like John becaused he has signaled the doom of Apple Computer more times than I can count, and yet swears an OS decended from the Amiga will be the next big thing.)

Anyhow, farewll Tech TV, you will be fondly remembered. I'm afraid that I have little use for G4, as the only games I play on my computer involve the Atari 2600 emulator Stella and the only contest show I watch is MXC.

UPDATED It's 11:20 and I'm gonna go curl up next to my sleeping wife, but I just had to say something about this . If ever there was a single thing on this earth I thought could not be charged with controversy, surely it was Bozo the Clown!!!!! What is this world comming to? What is next? A Mickey Mouse sex scandal? This sucks. I'm going to bed.

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And that's enough for now.

Brian Norwood

Platypi Design