Well, it seems I was the victim of some Halloween mischeif.  The air was let out of my left, front tire.  I have not yet determined the cause, but noticed when I attempted to back down the driveway.  My guess is that someone propped a nail up behind the tire, since this happened to Becky's car a few years ago while we were in the apartment.  It was pouring rain this morning, so I got a ride to work rather than get all nasty in the rain and have to get ready all over again.

This evening, I'll put on my spare donut and take it in to see what is the trouble.  Hopefully, it will be covered by hazard insurance, although it probably won't be that expensive.

Ok, so you've figured out that my post about collecting background information was really a cover for being able to fake information.  In Alias, they're always needing to alter pictures or surveillance video to cover their trails, so I figure that's important in the spy world.  It's also alot of fun.  Since my last posts haven't gotten much of a response, here's another for your enjoyment.

I mentioned earlier that my monitor was going out.  Also, Becky's mouse was a piece of crap.  She didn't even have a scroll wheel.  I ended up getting the Sony SDM-HX73/S for a new monitor.  As per usual, I managed to find an "open-box-buy" at a reduced price, so with that and the rebate...I was very happy.  Those who know me well know that as an educated consumer, I really like the open-box buy.  They also know the consequences of your friend buying a 300 pound television without a box and having to haul it up 3 flights of stairs with only the help of your friend and a pregnant woman when it's 105 degrees outside...but that's another story, which I will tell only if there's enough interest.

Anyway, the monitor is beautiful, I turned on "ClearType" and really like the extra "fake" resolution.  For those who don't know, LCD screens are composed of lots red, green, and blue "mini-pixel triplets".  Microsoft has a technology that exploits this fact and increases horizontal resolution 300%.  It really is a neat trick, and sometimes you can see color "edging" around certain fonts, but overall I like it.  Microsoft has a site that allows you to tune ClearType and make it look the best to you.

I also got a new wireless optical mouse.  It has a scroll wheel that turns vertically, as well as "tilting" from side-to-side.  I've seen lots of attempts at 2-axis scrolling, but this is the best.  I tend to write lines of code wider than my editor, especially at my now-reduced screen resolution (1280x1024 as opposed to 1600x1200 with my old monitor).  Becky inherited my old mouse, which is still pretty good and about 1000x better than her old one.

Well, Peter wants to develop his spying abilities, so I thought I'd brush up on my own as well.

I think that before the fighting, shooting, skydiving occurs, it's important for a spy to be able to gather background information on enemies or assets.  So I decided to do some digging.  Let's just say I uncovered some rather disturbing things.  I'll be posting some more of my results in the coming days.

Check it out!

Well, my monitor appears to be failing.  Even as we speak, I'm being wowed with a beautiful assortment of flashing colors.  Unfortunately, this time the cable is not the culprit.  I fear the worst...

Looks like I'm gonna need a new monitor sooner than I had hoped.  This is probably as good a time as any to jump headlong into the LCD flat panel world.  I went to Fry's to check some out this evening to check some out.  To keep me in my current feature set, I would need 1600x1200 resolution.  This doesn't appear to be possible for under $1000.  My LCD-related requirements are:

• At least 500:1 Contrast Ratio
• At least 400 cd/m² Brightness
• DVI AND Analog (VGA) inputs -  This way I don't have to upgrade my video card immediately
• At least 1280x1024 resolution

Fry's got a nice 19" Sony and a 19" Samsung that meet my requirements.  I'll have to figure out which one soon.

I'm going to try to explain this as concisely as possible.  For a long time now, I've wanted to do a video where a character does really dramatic slow motion things to the music from "The Natural" specifically the part where he hits the home run and the stadium lights explode.  Then, as the video progresses he does more and more mundane things until at the end he's doing something really stupid like dramatically eating cereal in slow motion.

I've never really had a good ending or any kind of real plot to it...until today.  He needs a partner, one who at first is completely obsessed with being as dramatic as he is, but whever he tries it, he fails miserably, falling on his face or running into something, or dropping/breaking something.

Then, as the dramatic character does more and more mundane things dramatically, the roommate (or however he's related) gets more and more annoyed that he's not as dramatic as his roommate.  Then, during the one-upsmanship, the lesser roomate dies somehow, like leaps to catch a falling knife and gets stabbed.  Then, the final scene is of the dramatic guy reading the newspaper in slow motion with some stupid headline like, "Non-dramatic man dies".

So, what I need are some things that would be really funny in dramatic slow-motion with "The Natural" music, and some things that could go wrong if the not-dramatic guy tried to do them.

I've updated my PDC Wishlist.