Las Vegas Does Not Call You or Me
No, Las Vegas doesn’t just simply call you or me. So if you receive calls from 702-815-7601, don’t answer. They’re bogus, but these telemarketers are relentless.
Made using Imgur’s new meme generator.
Life
Amazon Deal of the Day, Binoculars!
Is this purely coincidental? After spending hours looking up and learning about binoculars, I finally made my pick with Nikon Aculon A211 8×42. One day later, Amazon’s special deal is the Vanguard Endeavor ED Binocular (8×42)
The timing of this deal can’t be coincidental, can it?
When You Need Stronger Peepers
When you need to augment your peepers with something a little stronger – Nikon 8245 ACULON A211 8 x 42 Binocular (Black)
Google Street View Trekker Hits Hawaii
The popular Google Maps service has a simple goal – to make the perfect map. With views from space to views on the street level to views underwater, you gotta be passionate, dedicated, and just a little bit crazy to get the “perfect map.” And that’s what the team at Google Maps is, a little bit crazy (crazy good, not crazy bad). From a car to a trike to a trolley to a snowmobile and now a wearable backpack version of the Street View Trekker, their passion for the perfect map is crazy.
Partnering with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB), Google launched its third party Street View Trekker program. If your organization has amazing visual stories to tell, you can now apply to borrow a Trekker to capture your geographic stories. For the Hawaiian islands, the Big Island will be first to get mapped by Hawaii Forest & Trail whose focus is on popular Hawaii trails.
So what’s the Google Street View Trekker like? Well, it’s like this.
The backpack version is about 40 pounds heavy (with the batteries) holding a ruggedized rig of 15 cameras. Taking pictures every 2.5 seconds to compose a 360-degree view of the surroundings, you’d think this high tech gear is fragile. Not in the least. Constructed to take a fall, this rig is tough and is designed to be exposed to the elements. It raises your profile about 18 inches and along with its weight, your body’s center of mass is significantly altered. You have to be a little bit crazy to take this on a hike! I felt like I’d topple over with every turn, and you can’t lean over otherwise you’d surely topple over. A strong back and strong legs are definitely recommended.
How much does this backpack Trekker cost? A million dollars? Probably not. Buku bucks? For sure, and Google is letting you borrow it. Supposedly it has no comms although I find that highly unlikely since Google has the ability to remotely update and troubleshoot the packs. Images are stored on media cards which are then sent back to Google for processing. The cleaning and stitching of all the images could takes months before they’re live on Street View.
Street View collections recorded with this Trekker should be available in September and who knows, soon enough you may see this Trekker pack roaming the scenery of Oahu.
More pictures from today’s announcement.
Thanks to Nathan Kam for this invitation.
What Happened to the Dried Cherries?
Seems like both Costco and Sam’s Club both stopped carrying tart dried cherries. These are a good addition to morning oatmeal, but I haven’t seen them in months. Let’s see how these Stoneridge Orchards Whole Dried Tart Montmorency Cherries
Scratch Magic Draw
Fun for ages 5 to 95. Acid and lignin free. Make sure you get the “boards” versus the sheets. Lots of complaints that the sheets are just too thin, making them easy to mar simply by handling them.
Buy the Scratch Art Magic Draw
Making the Sony HT-CT260 Sound Bar Work with Oceanic Cable
My pops wanted better sound to match his HDTV broadcasts from Oceanic Cable. But when The Wire Cutter says no to home theaters in a box and endorses Sony’s HT-CT260 sound bar then you heed their researched advice. Unfortunately, the CT260 was out of stock at Amazon.com. Fortunately, Best Buys in Hawaii just received their shipment, and the regular price is the same as Amazon’s. So there we have it, an instant Father’s Day gift.
Now the setup… The Wire Cutter is correct. Setting up the sound bar was easy since the subwoofer is wireless. Configuring the sound bar to work with the television and cable box was another ordeal. The Oceanic provided Scientific Atlanta cable box has a digital optical out that connects to the Sony sound bar, but sound is still sent to the other outputs as well. This causes problems with the television’s audio. With the sound bar in play, I don’t want sound coming through the tinny television speakers. The television’s volume needs to stay at 0 while volume control needs to go to the sound bar and not the television.
The solution is two-fold. Configure the cable remote to control the sound bar and change the channel volume lock. On the remote, I configured the AUD button to control the sound bar. I believe the Sony code for the CT260 is 1759. If you can power on/off the sound bar and control the volume from the cable remote then you got it right.
Next, remap the remote’s audio controls from the television to the sound bar. That’s the function of the channel volume lock. Follow the instructions for “Locking Volume Control to One Mode.” When you change the volume, the remote changes control to the AUD configured device. When changing channels, the remote switches back to TV (or CBL). And that’s what we want – audio exclusively through the sound bar and one remote to control it all (television, cable box, sound bar).
A Belated Father’s Day Surprise from LEGO
Well, one day post Father’s Day, but as a LEGO fanatic, do you really care? LEGO VIP members can now purchase the massive Tower of Orthanc from Lord of the Rings. With more than 2300 pieces, it may take the rest of June to finish this set which becomes publicly available starting July. Five minifigures, an Ent, a Great Eagle, and all the black bricks a LEGO Dad will ever need.
As part of this early release promotion, you’ll also get a Tower of Orthanc poster, and since this set is $200, it qualifies for the free Superman Jor-El minifigure. Bonus!
SharePoint 2010 Event versus Reservation Content Types
For every good thing that SharePoint 2010 brings to the table, seemingly it equals itself out with something wrong. Case in point is the new Group Calendar site feature in SP2010. Activating this site feature brings a new way to handle events and reserving resources for the events. This is a very good thing.
Now for the bad part. Activating the reservations, enables new SharePoint content types of “Reservations” and “Schedule and Reservations.” These supplement the default content type of “Event.” On their own, the Reservations and Schedule and Reservations content types add useful functionality commonly associated with dealing with events. But try and view them on a simple calendar view. You can’t.
The graphical calendar view is limited to showing content types of Events. You cannot extend or modify the view to also display Reservations or Schedule and Reservations.
I found two workarounds for this lameness. I’m not quite following this workaround, but I think this is relying on SharePoint not cleaning up after itself. Once the reservations function is enabled to add the new content types then the reservations function is disabled. Then you set the default content type to Reservations (from Event). I guess this default impacts what is displayed in a Calendar view? Not sure.
I understand this second workaround better where the columns/fields that distinguish Reservation content types are copied into the Event content type. So in essence, we’re mimicking the Reservation type. But since Event content types display in Calendars then we get the best of both. You still have to disable the Group Calendar feature however.
Ala Moana Unveilings
In the upcoming weeks, there’ll be some “unveilings” done at Ala Moana. Of course, there’s the grand opening of the new Microsoft Store on Thursday, June 13, 2013. Following the store’s launch is their exclusive concert featuring Macklemore & Ryan Lewis + Neon Trees (at Kakaako however).
The following week on June 19, this mysterious Lexus will be uncovered. It’s a reddish maroon IS model that’s completely covered over, including the wheels. Kinda gimmicky but if the car looked as is, then it’s kinda fascinating.
Even with these unveilings, do not forget the titans.
Where Titans Once Stood
It’s somewhat saddening to see these locations vacated and boarded up. Both stores were long time tenants at their respective shopping malls, Sears at Ala Moana and Cinnabon at Kahala Mall. Now, both are mere shells of these ancient titans.
DreamPress, Should I?
Dreamhost just announced their new high-revving WordPress hosting service called DreamPress. Sounds like a “dream” come true if you’ve been maintaining your own WordPress install and balancing its resources and performance against cost. DreamPress seems to hit the right price point but initially, the cost is per site. I wish it were for several sites, well, at least more than one at the same price.
But I am confused about the overall pricing. I joined Dreamhost ages ago using a special promotion. Over the years, I changed to VPS, upped my server’s memory, added CloudFlare, and more. Most of the changes incurred additional costs which I think I could dump if I signed up for DreamPress. But I’m not certain if that’s “allowed” for the DreamPress pricing.
Anyways, DreamPress is an attractive option if a few more concessions are made. I gotta keep watching this…