Was messing around looking at some stuff on Bing maps and saw a link to a new beta version of the maps, so I clicked it.
Wow! Really nice stuff. The map now changes from map view to aerial to bird’s eye automatically as you zoom in and they’ve added a “Streetside” feature that viciously crushes Google’s Street View. The whole thing is ridiculously smooth and intuitive – it just feels right and it looks damn good.
Definitely go check out the beta.
(note: this is the 600th entry to my blog)
Click over to watch the biggest version (HD) and skip ahead to around 1:30 (right after I use the Diamondback logo to fill space) and watch the track after the train passes over. I never realized it moves that much on the drop. Crazy stuff that I only noticed when I slowed the shot down.
Just saw this over at Tyler’s blog:
“No problem douche”
This was the response from Mark Meadows at MVM Data, mark@mvmdata.com, when I contacted www.shawneeshuttle.com to remove a photo of mine they used in a commercial setting and without attribution.
That’s so much bullshit. I’d drive to that dude’s house and punch him in the mouth. I hate the way the net has spawned this “everything is for the taking” mentality.
Two pieces of advice for all of you photo-taking types out there:
1. Register your photos with the US Copyright Office.
It’s easy to do electronically these days and depending on the nature of willful infringement, the payout to you as a photographer is anywhere from $750 to $150,000 plus fees per photo.
2. Put a copyright watermark on your photos.
If you find the need and/or effort to register your photos to be too much, at least put a copyright mark on them. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal for someone to remove your “copyright management information” from your photos to disguise infringement from unauthorized use.
Even if you haven’t formally and legally registered your photo with the US government, the DMCA still allows for fines starting at $2500 and runnng up to $25,000 if you can prove removal or alteration of the copyright mark/info on the photo for unauthorized use.
Don’t let people just take the things you work hard to create. Whether you expect full professional licensing fees or nothing more than a simple acknowledgement, it’s still fucked up when someone takes what isn’t theirs.
Scary that unprofessional assholes like the one Tyler had to deal with are able to make a living in this world. Maybe if that guy created anything worth stealing, he’d understand.
I just realized that this past week marked two years of this blog/website thingy I got going on here.
I have this weird preoccupation with time. More specifically how things change over time. From being interested in how my old hometown evolves all the way down to watching all game shows from the 70’s and 80’s on GSN and wondering what those people are doing today (or in the case of eldery contestants, figuring they’re probably dead).
Hell, I even think it watching Funny Home Videos. You’ll see some silly pet video from 1991 where a dog does something fucked up and I’ll be thinking, “That dog’s dead by now.”
I’m currently finishing up a pretty big reworking of the coasterimage photo gallery and aside from the misty-eyed nostalgia of seeing my kids grow up before my eyes in photos (I’ve been doing this 8 years now!), I also notice other people on the rides and just can’t help seeing some 10 or 12 year old kid on a ride and thinking, “Christ! That kid probably went off to college this year.”
Sure it’s 8 years, but some of those photos feel like yesterday.
Time marches on…
An alarming number of people find this blog after searching for “Lord Gonchar” – what is up with that?
I would appreciate feedback. If it flat-out sucks, there’s no reason to spend time on it.
Today marks the one-year anniversary of lordgonchar.com and this blog.
That is all.
As much as I would have liked to get a new camera this year, I’m not going to. I’ve had the XT since 2005 and this spring will make 3 years – the longest I’ve used a single camera since I bought my first Pentax SLR back in late-2000.
The truth is, there’s lots of little things I want/need to upgrade, but have better thing to do with the money. I want/need a new camera. I’d like to upgrade the video camera to an HD model. My computer is becoming woefully underpowered with each passing day and it’s time to build a new one. Hell, I even want to upgrade the audio half of the ‘home theatre’ – we’ve had this receiver and speakers since May of 1996 – how fucked up is that? It’s not even 5.1 – it’s old school basic first gen dolby surround.
Anyway, I decided to try to hold off on all of those things (and more) in lieu of some responsibility – mainly paying down some debt we’ve been riding on various things.
But then Canon drops a little advertisement into my inbox. The Rebel XSi drops in April – right around my birthday. Granted, it’s far from top of the line stuff. In fact it’s pretty much bottom of the line shit. But the old XT has worked just fine and in the three years since I got it – it’s paid for itself time and time again. Why drop more cash on tools I don’t necessarily need? Why buy the $50 hammer when the $8 hammer will drive the nail in?
I passed on the XTi as it offered only marginal upgrade over the XT – not enough added or cheap enough to make me bite. But now another generation later and the XSi offers enough over the XT to pique my interest. I clicked on the email from Canon and start reading through the info on their site.
Amazon has it listed for $799 (body only) or $899 with the 18-55mm kit lens (which is now apparently an IS lens). Shit, that’s chump change for this thing. It looks to be a hell of a camera for that price.
Hmmmm….that’s a pretty tempting cheap upgrade. One that I could score just in time for the summer.
I just noticed the the MSN maps have Bird’s Eye View available for the Beavercreek area.
That was a colossal time waster for me this afternoon.
Still surprised that it’s available as Beavercreek seems too small to waste the resources on.
Slow times lately. Mostly doing the holiday thing. Working on getting everyone gifted. We should have the tree up in the next couple of days. We made the switch back to a real tree last year after a long, long run of artifical trees. The last one was pretty ratty so we ditched it when we moved. Turns out that finding a decent, fake tree that’s not pre-lit is a pain in the ass.
Scoring a real tree is just easier (and it makes Al Gore sad – I dunno, aren’t I fucking something up by cutting down a tree for such a silly reason?).
(speaking of which, how great was the South Park a few weeks back where everytime he moves he puts his arms out like he’s a superhero flying around?)
Half the fun is finding a tree with ‘character’ – not all fucked up, but goofy enough to be endearing. A mildly retarded tree, if you will.
Maybe I’ll post a pic or two of the tree once we get one.
Other than that, I got nothing. I think I have the least updated active blog in existence…then again I’m not here to sell you anything. (the right people got that)
Oh yeah, go visit coasterimage (smile)
Even though lately I update that about as much as this blog – and it’s a shame. I just don’t have the time I used to to really keep on top of it like I wish I could. I still have a ton of shit to add. I’m such a lame-ass.
Well, it’s technically not fixed, but I have a workaround.
I have no idea why the e-mails aren’t being automagically sent when someone registers for the blog. I can’t find a single thing that should be stopping it. So rather than waste too much time digging into things I don’t fully understand, I figured I’d just change things up.
Now when you register you choose your password as well. Nice and simple. Make sure you pick something you’ll remember because you can’t change it. (actually you can, but then the automail still won’t send and things get ugly)
Not perfect, but workable. So those of you having issues (and there were a few), try to register again.
It just came to my attention that anyone trying to register to comment on my little ol’ blog here hasn’t been getting the e-mail with their password. Actually this problem has existed since August when the blog had it’s little meltown. (Yeah, 3 months now – who says I don’t care!)
I looked into it and it’s on my end. The database is adding you guys, but not sending out the e-mail with the password you need to login.
I took a quick look but don’t have the time to sort it out right this second. Give me a little bit to get it fixed.
So my DVD & Book were delivered on Monday.
The DVD was great. Watched it Monday night. Amazing how a guy who is generally known for having his shit together can fall into a bad situation and get caught up in it. The saddest part of the whole thing was when he had to sell his sweet ass DW drum kit (valued at $8000) to his drug dealer for $3000 so he could pay rent. It just made me miss that fact that music was such a big part of my life for so long. I’m a rock star at heart.
The book on the other hand did little for me. I read a bunch of it yesterday afternoon and finished it up last night. The basic concept is valid to some degree – and that’s the idea that intuition and initial impressions are more valid than we often give them credit for and that too much info and thought process can acually adversely affect our decision process. The problem is that that idea is laid out in the first 8 pages. The other 278 pages just repeat examples (and add details) ad naseum. If I had read just the introduction that would have been enough and I’d have agreed with the idea in theory. Unfortunately, I read the whole book and while there’s some good ideas and things I do agree with to various degrees, I think this excerpt from Steve Sailer’s take on the book sums it up best:
But as far as I can tell, his book reduces to two messages:
-Go with your gut reactions, but only when they are right.
-And even when your gut reactions are factually correct, ignore them when they are politically incorrect.
So, it’s a promising idea and I believe in a certain degree of validity to it, but the book presents the concept in a way that sucks.
Today I’m getting all the directions and reservations and info and stuff together for next week’s trip. Well, we’re gone for next week, but we leave on Friday. It’s mostly a trip to visit the in-laws. We haven’t been to their house since we lived in Florida ourselves (6 years!) and they moved between the last time we visited and now – so essentially this will be our first time at their place. So of course I’m piggybacking a few park stops onto things. We’ll hit Atlanta briefly to check out Goliath at SFOG, we’ll hit Waterville USA while we’re down that way. The kids will dig the waterpark and I can get a new credit (and the pics for coasterimage). On the way back up we’ll stop by Alabama Adventure and Lake Winnie (finally! third try’s a charm).
Then I have about 48 hours to bust out something new on coasterimage before we go, otherwise I’ll have one of those month-long lags with nothing new. It’s not hard, just tedious. It’s hard to find the motivation to get started, but once I do, I usually bust it out. I have Celebration City pics processed, so that’s probably what will go up.
As for right now. It’s the 4th. No days off around here. The plan today was just to go see the local fireworks this evening, but it’s seriously looking like it’s going to be rained out. Based on what’s happening outside the window (err…sliding glass door) and what the weathermen are saying…I’m guessing no fireworks tonight.
Oh yeah…I got new shoes last night too.
I’m the world’s laziest blogger. I’ve reduced this whole thing to one post to cover my weekends. I suck.
This weekend with CP canceled, we headed out to Indianapolis and hit the zoo. (the last missed stop from the two week trip in 2005)
We left late afternoon on Friday and hit I-70 west and noted that this was the first time we ever traveled this particular stretch of highway and vowed to hit any weird-ass roadside thing we could along the way. Little did we know that unless you’re in the market for an RV, that I-70 west from Dayton to Indy is a useless stretch of highway.
We did pull over and check out the Warm Glow Candle Outlet off of exit 145. A little too ‘country’ for my tastes. The only time I really tend to dig that sort of thing is around the holidays – once Halloween hits and the chill is in the air until New Year’s Day. That time frame puts me in the mood for the whole ‘down-home’ thing. Fireplaces, home cooking, the country scents…but other than that, no thank you. Blew a little time there and continued on to our room waiting at the Hilton Garden Inn.
Nice hotel, although we’re convinced we were the only ones staying there. The parking lot was empty and we never saw a single person in the hotel other than employees. Weird.
Went across the street to Bennigan’s for dinner. Haven’t lived near one since Florida which means it’s been almost 6 years since we’ve eaten there. Good stuff. They had a dude going around table-to-table doing magic. I noticed on the ’specials’ sign when we entered that Dan The Magic Man was scheduled from 6:30 to 8:30, but didn’t think much of it, but sure enough right after our appetizer came, so did Dan. He was everything you’d expect from a magician at Bennigan’s – we’ll leave it at that. We weren’t sure of the etiquette involved though. Do you tip someone like that? I’ve never gone to a chain restaurant and had a personal magic show and I doubt it’ll ever happen again. But after the guy kisses your ass, does some wacky card tricks, cracks some jokes and pulls a rock out of his shoe then thanks you – are you supposed to tip the guy. It felt kind of awkward, but we didn’t even have any cash on us, so Dan got dicked. Fuck it – I’ll never see the guy again.
Had fun at the zoo. Got there nice and early and didn’t really see crowds until mid-afternoon. Nothing special, but a decent enough zoo. Tons of big cameras and bigger lenses walking around. Usually I’m a bit self conscious because it feels like everyone is staring at the guy with the big ol’ camera, but here I felt like such a schlub. Lots of folks with much nicer cameras and lenses. The Canon SLR’s have gotten so cheap that everybody seems to have on anymore. Sigh. If I’m going to continue to compensate for my shortcomings with my camera, I need to go bigger. Luckily, that’s my plan for the offseason.
“Do you see this $2800 camera!? Clearly my penis is not small! Duh!”
Just as fun were the White River Gardens which are included with Zoo admission. Lots of good stuff and the butterflies thing they have going on is really neat.
Got way too many pics, even got a few nice ones. I’m not going to post them here though. You’ll have to watch for the update on coasterimage for those. However, one that I don’t really think fits over there is this vertical panoramic shot of the entry to the gardens building and I wanted to share that:
On Sunday we continued our quest to piss off car salesmen by wasting their time with no intentions of buying a new vehicle for at least another 6 months. Today’s big winner was Honda’s CR-V – nice vehicle for the price. Also slowly convincing the wife that Mazda’s RX-8 fucking destroys. After seeing them in person today, I could probably talk her into seriously considering one. Is that a reasonable choice for a married couple with 2 growing kids? Of course not. Would it be fun? Fucking right it would. How can you not love a car with suicide doors? (even if they’re technically quasi-suicide)
And DQ’s Kit Kat Blizard still kicks ass.
Yesterday my webhost was doing something goofy with the server. One went down or they switched or something. My cute little blog was down for much of the day. Worse yet is that when it came back up the database backup they had was a week or two old.
Oddly enough, I just happened to do a backup of my own on Sunday night (which I never do) so after getting it all back together I only lost one post – the one with the shot of Monday morning’s sunrise. In the interest of completeness, here’s that photo again:
Last week I started offering my coaster vids on DVD. (Roller Coaster DVD) I’ll spare the thought process behind it except to say everything I mention on coasterimage about it is true. I just couldn’t see how I could charge people for something they could do themselves.
Maybe I should have tried the route other sites take. If I sold them for $10 each and still moved as many as have been downloaded, I could’ve bought a new car this week.
I mentioned a while back that I was pushing for a Texas trip this year thanks to some dumb luck circumstances. We finally got around to really considering it and it just won’t work. The original plan before that was Dollywood/Ghost Town, but to be honest the more I think about it, I’m not that thrilled by the idea.
So here we sit on the cusp of the 2007 coaster season with no solid plans for any ‘big’ trips. The weird thing is that at this point I have to consider what makes sense for coasterimage as well as what I’d just like to do. Sometimes one dictates the other and sometimes it’s vice versa. There’s no rule. But I do know one thing – after last years weak park schedule I need to hit some bigger parks this year.
So with Texas out of the picture and Dollywood not sounding like something that needs done right now, we don’t have much on the board.
Kings Island opens this weekend and it’s a cool enough park. We figured we have to hit it 4 times this year to make the passes worth it. In addition we should be using them at Cedar Point twice (opening day and BooBuzz) and at Geauga Lake sometimes during the year.
At any rate we have Kings Island this weekend, then in three weeks opening day at Cedar Point. Then three week later it’s Memorial Day weekend. I’m thinking a small park and a return to Kings Island for Firehawk’s debut.
Three weeks after that is mid-June and the spot we’re currently trying to fill with something. (the odds on favorite at this time seems to be Missouri parks – who the hell knows?) Then in another three weeks we have to visit the in-laws. It’s been years since we visited them and everyone (except me) seems to expect it to happen soon. I plan on turning out a few park stops along the way. Mostly southern stuff. (the in-laws live in Gulf Breeze – you figure it out!)
Three more weeks (see the pattern here?) lands in late July/early August. Probably a good time to get back to visit my side of the family and conveniently Geauga Lake lands relatively along the beaten path. Good enough.
The next three week stop is early September. That’s always a goofy one. The kids are back in school, real life in general tends to creep to importance. Usually a small simple trip to cover something different.
Three weeks lands on Fall Affair weekend, so that’s a gimme. Then three weeks later looks to fall on BooBuzz (if my calculations are correct), so that’s a gimme too.
Fill in with return trips to Kings Island on those lazy summer evenings.
All in all that’s our coaster/travel plans for 2007. Just got to fill in the details for mid-june and we’re good to go. It’s fun and annoying at the same time.