This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Brilliant idea, though I probably wouldn't have the guts to use it.

Sorry, I've been slacking. I've been meaning to add a new entry, but just haven't had the motivation to do it. Really, I just haven't had much to say.

I've finally decided on a digital camera for myself. It was a really tough decision for me. In the end, I decided small size was more important than lots of pixels. I ended up getting the Canon Digital Elph S200. It's a 2MP camera, but it's tiny (3.4"x2.2"x1.1") and will fit in my pocket. For another hundred dollars, I could have gotten the S230, a camera the same size, but 3.2MP. I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and finally came to the conclusion that I didn't need that resolution, and it would only disappoint me. With only 2MP, print quality probably won't be terribly good. I think with 3.2MP, it would get to the point where'd I really want to try to print, and then be disappointed with the results. Since I want this camera just for web related things, and didn't want to be tempted at all to buy a printer, I decided the S200 was the way to go. The only 4MP+ (the minimum I'd want for printing) camera I've seen that's small enough for me is a 5MP Contax, and it costs $1k. I'm sure it's very nice, though.

As usual, UPS tried to deliver the camera today and I wasn't home, so I don't have it. It's been redirected to work, and I should have it tomorrow.

I'm sure there's probably other stuff I could talk about, but I can't really think of anything at the moment. So that's all for now.

Update (12/31/02): Damnit, UPS doesn't deliver today or tomorrow. I hate them.

If Jack Valenti had been around at the time of Gutenberg he would have organized the monks to come and burn down the printing press.

--Harris Miller, President ITAA

This is going to get expensive. But it's worth it, and needs to be done.

I was sitting in my office working last night at around 6, when Roy comes in and asks me if I want to go see a midnight showing of The Two Towers. In Camarillo, 45 minutes away. It's over 3 hours long. I have to work the next day. So, of course, I decide it would be a good idea. A big part of this decision was the fact that everyone else around here is planning to see it tonight at 7:45, and I can't make it because of my bowling league. I call Andrew in LA and ask him if he wants to go too. Unsurprisingly, he agrees, and we buy three tickets online, and we make plans to meet at the theater at 11:20.

The drive down to Camarillo was awesome. It's such a wonderful drive when there's no one on the road. We got to the theater, and Andrew was already waiting in line, around the back. I'm glad I went home after dinner and grabbed a sweatshirt - it was cold. While waiting in line, I used my Treo to find the nearest Denny's and get directions. For some reason, GPRS wasn't working, so I had to resort to dialup, which worked fine. I even got a color map with the directions. Cool.

The movie was absolutely awesome. Everyone should go see it. If you haven't seen the first one yet, rent or buy the extended edition of it and watch that first. Then go see this as soon as possible. I mean it. It's that good. It was well worth getting home at 5am and having to be up for work that morning. Definitely.

So, I've now seen two movies this month, and also ordered the Back to the Future trilogy on DVD. I'm giving far too much money to the MPAA. I think I'm going to be taking up Lessig's Challenge shortly. It's going to be tough (and expensive), but I think it's something I should do. I'll probably work out the details this weekend, and post more about it here when I'm ready.

So, there were the "equivalent of 421 CD burners," right, meaning actually only 156 burners. Well, the AP obviously misunderstood the phrase "equivalent of."

From an AP article, via CNN:

Last week, Secret Service agents in New York arrested three men and seized 35,000 illegally copied music discs, 10,000 movies on DVD and 421 compact disc burners that are used to make the counterfeit products.

Article: http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/17/music.piracy.ap/index.html

That statement there certainly looks like it's supposed to be taken as fact. Apparently, it seems the RIAA spin was successful.

Quote from The Register:

Yesterday [the RIAA] issued a press release announcing a piracy bust in New York which unearthed 421 CD-R burners.
Only there weren't 421 burners, but "the equivalent of 421 burners."
In fact, there were just 156. How did the RIAA account for this discrepancy?
"There were only 156 actual burners, but some run at very high speeds: some as high as 40x. This is well above the average speed," was the official line yesterday.

Article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28574.html
Press Release: http://www.riaa.org/News_Story.cfm?id=592

Given this, I don't see how we can believe that they lose "$4.2 billion to piracy worldwide" every year (http://www.riaa.org/Protect-Campaign-3.cfm.'>http://www.riaa.org/Protect-Campaign-3.cfm">http://www.riaa.org/Protect-Campaign-3.cfm.)
Granted, what these people were doing was wrong and they should have been stopped, but there was no reason to exaggerate the numbers. I'm still not convinced P2P filesharing, even of copyrighted material, is wrong, and I certainly don't think making a copy of a CD for a friend is in any way immoral.

I saw Star Trek: Nemesis Friday night, in a theater in Woodland Hills. The theater was very nice, beautiful screen, stadium seating, and a food court downstairs. It was pretty much empty, though. Granted, it was a late showing (10:30PM), but I was expecting at least a mostly full theater. Instead, it was about half empty. This doesn't bode well for anyone hoping they make another ST:TNG film. I have no doubt there will be more Star Trek films, though. Also, the impression I got was that all of Wil's scenes were cut, but it turns out it was just scenes he had lines in. He was still in a few scenes at the beginning of the movie, but didn't say anything. As for the movie itself, anyone who said it was the worst of the series must not have seen Insurrection, or The Final Frontier, or the first movie, either. It just wasn't as bad as those movies. I'm not recommending everyone go rush out and see it, but I enjoyed it, and feel my money was well spent.

Treo update: UPS tried to deliver it to me Friday afternoon, but of course, I was at work. So they tried to drop it off with the apartment manager, who was there but rejected it. She finally got sick of accepting packages for other people, and said "it's not my job." If that's not part of an apartment manager's job, what does she do, when there are no apartments available? It can't just be collect the rent...

So I called the UPS 800 number and gave them my infonotice number to see if there was a possibilty I could still pick it up that day. This was already after 6, the closing time for the UPS location near me. I wasn't hopeful. I was told by the operator that she would send an "urgent pickup request" to the location, and they would call me back within an hour.

About an hour and ten minutes later, I finally got the phone call. They checked to see if that truck was already back at the location, and it was. They pulled the package for me and let me drive out there to pick it up! As much as I complain about UPS not letting me sign a waiver so they'll just leave stuff at my apartment, they have redeemed themselves. For now.

I thought I just wanted the color Treo for the backlit keyboard. I was wrong. Color is so cool! I love it. And the backlit keyboard kicks ass too. My old Treo (and some other stuff) is now on eBay.

Last night, I wrote another little app for the Treo: RingerFix.

That is all for now, it's time for me to get to the company holiday party.

A few days ago my third Treo broke! It's not just me, lots of people have them fall apart, but it's just such a great device that I'm willing to deal with constantly getting replacements from Handspring. I don't want to think about what I'll do when the warranty runs out.

So I called customer support and told them what happened: the power/hotsync connector came lose and no longer charges/hotsyncs reliably, the same problem I had with my first one. The CSR tells me he can't issue a replacement because I've already had two. He has to contact a different department, which is closed for the day (this is around 8pm PST.) I would get a call before 1pm the next day.

That call never came. Big shock there. I called back again that night and was told a replacement had been issued and shipped. They just forgot to tell me about it. Today, I get the replacement and as a wonderful surprise, it's brand new, not refurbished! Pretty damn cool. The refurbished replacements I had gotten were just the Treo, none of the accessories. This one came with everything included.

No shipping label came with it, though, to send the old one back, so I get to call them again tomorrow. Maybe they don't even want me to send it back. More likely, since it was a new one and not a refurb, the return box shipped from elsewhere. Either way, I've been very happy with Handspring's customer support and replacement policy.

Topping all of this off, I decided I'm sick of not being able to see the Treo keyboard at night. The Treo 180, which is what I have, has a grayscale screen, and the keyboard isn't backlit. The Treo 270 has a color screen and a backlit keyboard. The 270 I got on eBay should arrive tomorrow. Then I swap the SIM card out of my 180, and have a nice new one to sell on eBay. I haven't really actually used the new one I got. I opened it up, and installed the GPRS patch on it, because that will possibly get a little more on eBay, but that's all I've done. I'm just going to keep using my old one, even though it's a pain in the ass to charge, until I get the 270. This is probably going to get me an extra hundred dollars back selling the new one instead of the used one, plus I get to keep one set of all the accessories. I'm very pleased.

Oh, and I bowled a 131 (ugh), 176, and 182 last night. Not a terrible start to the season.

Zodos is the name of the local bowling alley here in Santa Barbara. It's actually in Goleta, and they seem to think they're a separate city over there, but as far as I'm concerned it's in Santa Barbara. They've been remodeling since the middle of August, and were supposed to reopen October 1st. Well, just over two months late, the bowling alley is finally open again, and I start in league again tomorrow night!

I can't wait.