I will find my way from your lost wheel....

I know the weather has been way to good when I've been spending more time out doors then I have indoors. I'm move just as much when I'm outdoors (little to none) but the bright side is that I'm way more motivated to write.

And I can hear the clicks of like 3 maybe 4 mice right now as they all close their web browsers and go do something constructive rather then sit there and read this drivel.

Cool now that everyone has left lets turn the geek up to 11 here.

-- OSIRIX a DICOM VIEWER

OK chances are 99% of you have never dealt with this application before. It's a Open Source application for the Mac OS that is capable of advanced diagnostic image manipulation and reading. Translation, it's a program for looking at X-rays in digital format.

Nothing special in my world.

It's actually a pretty nifty program and I do have it loaded on my Mac and it works as advertised. Now normally something being either;

A. Open Source
B. DICOM Capable

Would not warrant mention on their own. Heck even together they barely merit mentioning. Then why talk about them? There are two versions of Osirix one being 32bit and the other being 64bit. The main difference other then the processing bits that the program utilizes is that you have to pay $149 for the 64bit extensions on a Open Source program.

I gotta say I'm having mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand they are doing nothing different from Redhat/Suse/Mandriva and the other big Open Source vendors if you want their "product" you can pay for it. Here's the rub though, every one of those products is available to freely download and use if you choose to. When you buy a license you are in effect buying support for the product. Which has been common practice for years and will continue to be. With Osirix this does not appear to be the case. You download the product and their is no support option if you would like the same product with 64bit extensions then you get the privelage of paying for it. Which when your spending $8k on a Mac Pro processing station $149 doesn't seem like much. To me though it seems dishonest from the Osirix group and flies in the face of everything that Open Source stands for.

Point is this, I don't care if a company/group/gang makes a product under Open Source and then tries to make a buck off of it. They have that right so long as the source code and all of it's pieces parts are available to whomever would like it. My biggest thing with this project is that Osirix is distributing under a GNU license yet I can't find anything on their site about the status of their 64bit offering.

Most frustrating.

Of course these are things that only I would worry about.

-- Blackberries

I'm talking about the cell phone email machines that run on celluar networks and not the fruit.

Though the fruit is most delicious.

A while back I traded my Treo 700P for a Blackberry Pearl on the Verizon network. It was a good trade. The Treo was/is a good phone, but the best way to describe smartphones is one of two ways. Those that are PDA's with phone functionality (Treo, Most Windows Mobile devices) and those that are phones with PDA functionality (Blackberry, iPhone, Sidekick, Symbian). For a while I figured I was after a PDA with phone functionality so I picked up a Treo. And while it was a good phone the speed and parts of the interface left alot to be desired in my book. Also the fact that it could be used as a defense weapon was not helping it's cause either.

The Pearl defiantly falls into the phone first category. The interface moves much more smoothly then the Treo did and sound quality is excellent (it was on the treo as well). For me the best part has been the size of the device which is very small and can be fit into most any pocket. Unlike the Treo which while it could go into a pocket it really felt much more comfortable on the outside in a holster like device. But why is this worth writing about? Simple the Blackberry works flawlessly with my 64bit Windows Vista. The Treo never as able to pull that trick off.

I flirt with the idea of letting the contract expire and then buying a iPhone, but I have a couple of qualms with this. First it's the AT&T network in Phoenix which has never inspired much faith in me (and reading reviews on the gadget blogs it seems like Phoenix isn't the only place where the AT&T wireless network would appear to be having issues). Second paying full price for a phone and still having to sign a two year contract? Bullshit I will do that!

So as I sit here waiting for a stable unlock of the iPhone from AT&T's network in the States so I can take it over to T-Mobile where their network may suck just as bad but at least they have great customer service!

OH and I won't have to sign one of those pesky contracts either. Of course a CDMA iPhone would be even sweeter, and I'm sure that will come with the flying pigs.

Reqium for a morning show....

I never had a morning show until I moved to Phoenix.

We got Vegas radio in Kingman, but I was never up early enough to listen to it and when I was my total drive time was all of 5 minutes (10 if I was going to the other side of town)

I never got up before noon when I lived in Flag.

When I first got down here Scott recommended the morning sickness to me... and I didn't care for it fart jokes and all. I instead drifted to Chuck Powell's Morning Ritual. It was smart, funny, and they played music (which at the time for me was a big deal). That was 2005.

So in the 2.5 years since I moved to Phoenix, a few things have changed like for instance The Morning Ritual. It is so canned and pre-formed now it makes me sick... 7 to 7:30 is the topic of the day call in (todays was worst daytime soap opera story line ever) after that I stop listening because it takes me 20 minutes to get into work. When I listen in work it's the same kind of drivel interviews and other things, but nothing substatinal and it all fits very nicely into the space of a 3 minute chunk of time.

I think the start of the long down hill slide was last year when Vince left... Yeah I'm pretty sure that was it. They started cutting corners here and there (the call in thing) news from the edge at the bottom of every hour (used to be twice once at 6:40 and 9:20). I think the thing that finally killed the Morning Ritual for me was last friday...I was listening to the Morning Sickness during their "Easter Keg" hunt and that is when I realized I was listening to the wrong show.

Well maybe that and Guadalupe Squares as well....

Yesterday I decided to give the Morning Ritual one more chance... and Chuck kept saying "Chuck, Colin, and Sam with you" oh no problem... Cori and Drew are just out sick they will be back tomorrow. I tune in again this morning, same thing weird, normally Chuck says something about people being sick. Don't ask me why but I decided to swing by the morning ritual myspace page and no mention of Cori or Thrillride... I bounce over to Cori James's personal myspace page and sure enough she was let go due to "budget cuts". A little more digging around the intertubes reveals that Drew is gone too.

/sigh the least they could have done is announced it maybe they did and I just missed it. Sadly the morning ritual is no more for me.

I've never given up on a morning show before.

At least it didn't become a Mariachi station on me.

The Song Remains the Same...

It's not often I get a text message that says "fuck you, I'm going home" it's even less often when I get that very same text message from my own phone. Needless to say my liver is not real happy with me and hasn't come out from under the bed for a couple of days now.

The reason?

Oh that's easy, I spent the weekend in Californa for Kinsey's wedding. Which I have to say as weddings go is one of the better ones I have been to. The personal highlight for me was the "Super C" theme as done by the "Minibosses" which if you haven't checked out well you will know very quickly if you will like them or not. As always the groom looked his damn goofy self and the bride looked stunning... Congrats guys.

And is true for all people in their late twenties when someone gets married it's a reason to spend money and abuse your liver... Which is why mine is snoozing rather soundly under the bed. Along with the drinking there was much discussion on everything under the sun, but the discussion that sticks with me the most is the one about music.

Basically it went something like this....
Nick... I usually give the iTunes store $12 a week, but I haven't been lately since nothing good has come out.
Tom/Scott/Cody.... it's not you nothing good has come out recently.
Curtis was there but he was more interested in the either the magazine or the basketball game it's hard telling with him.

That one conversation sent me down a deep dark path of thinking of what have I bought recently that is good?

The last album I bought was Bauhaus, which is a 80's new wave band that has put out their last album ever. It's ok I don't like it as much as I thought I would. This was all in the last two weeks.

Before Bauhaus, the last album I bought was the remastered Led Zeppelin Collection "Mothership" which I have been listening to alot since I bought it in November.

And as I look at the iTunes emails from the last year or so with very few exceptions I have mainly been buying "Bests Of" Talking Heads, Social Distortion, Led Zeppelin. Along with some older stuff... Pink Floyd and a couple of missing pieces parts in my Soundgarden/Pearl Jam collection.

The new music I've picked up has been real hit and miss....

The Raconteurs... not as good as I expected, but not bad
Silversun Pickups.... Crap
Chris Cornell's new album..... mostly crap
Chemical Brothers.... weak compared to their older stuff
Smashing Pumpkins.... weak and completely forgettable (in the interest of full disclosure I find 98% of Pumpkins stuff to be crap)

Mind you I had to look through my old email receipts from iTunes to tell you what I bought. So on the whole pretty forgettable.

The only band I have nothing bad to say about is "The Yeah Yeah Yeahs" and that is pretty much it.

Of course looking at the new music on iTunes I saw that "Fall Out Boy" has covered "Beat it"

I really hope that works out as well for them as it did for that band that covered that other Michael Jackson song a few years ago.

Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go try and coax my liver from out under my bed.

Where I decide California isn't all bad.

A few moments that make think California is kinda nice. Shocking since I'm from Arizona.

You know while I'm at it...

This story isn't helping my love of airlines....

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/03/love-it-or-hate.html

Edit #1

So while I'm sitting on the public Wi-Fi at Sky Harbor I going to blog some more... this part is really more for Eve (the woman not the game) because she was somewhat intersted in the kind of people that goto a NASCAR race (and Eve if you want to go just let me know we will goto the fall race).

Here now I give you my running observations of technology at the airport....

Laptops.... Including myself there are 7 laptops that I can see in about a 50 ft radius... three of them are Macs (two white iBooks and my Mac Pro) two are Dells and one is a HP... not surprising the users of the Macs are all under 30.

Cell phones... ususal suspects.... lots of razors and mid to low range flips from a variety of carriers... highest concentration of "smart phones" was in the bar... and it was a 3 to 1 ratio of Blackberries to Treo's. A couple of random windows mobile smartphones and only 3 iPhones the whole time in the airport. I expected there to be more iPhones. The Razor is still the worlds favorite cell phone probally because the world is two cheap to upgrade out of contract.

There seem to be a unusal number of people wearing Balitmore Ravens Shirts... I haven't figured this out yet.... I bet if I look on the departure board I will see a flight to Balitmore.

Cell phone talking is the favorite past time of people in the airport... reading is second... strange guys blogging on their Mac's is third.


OK I need to find the little bloggers room my beer is catching up with me.

A Post we've all read before....

Flying to San Diego (Spanish for "The Whale's Vagina") for a California wedding.

As usually happens when I fly what can only be described as my own personal version of a anxiety attack. So I give you now the three reasons I hate to fly... and if you have been reading for a while you know these reasons already. Please feel free to review there will be a test when I see you next.

Unless your pregnant in which case you get a free pass.

1. If the seat cushions turn into a floatation device in the event of water landing why doesn't the plane turn into a boat?

2. I'm pretty sure the plane will take me directly to the scene of the crash... I'm also going to bet we beat the paramedics there.

3. I'm not happy that Southwest does not provide parachutes.

I personally only take credit for #3 the other two I stole from other "things"

At least the two $8 24oz Air port beers are helping.

Pigs (three diffrent ones)

So with the recent demise of HD-DVD as a viable High Definition physical video format I've been kicking around the idea of making the jump to Blu-Ray and all of it's glory. This thought was helped when my brother bought a PS3. And since he is not a game one can only assume that he bought it for Blu-Ray movies. And over the course of the last month or so as I've mulled this decision over in one form or another I kept hearing about how integrated the PS3 was and all of the other normal chest thumping when the users of one particular technology smell blood and indecision in the water.

I honestly had not been bombarded with so many reasons as to why the PS3 was superior to every other platform out there since Jr. High when Donny Witt and I used to spend hours on end taunting each other as to which was the greater the 16-bit system Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. Hey when your 13 these things make a difference. And just for the record the Super Nintendo still kicks the Sega Genesis's little white butt!!!1!11!!0ne

However I digress, so through some weird combination of coworkers, an alignment of stars, and a promise to not hack or break anything I have been loaned a PS3.

Que jaw dropping... for those of you keeping track the last time I owned a Sony system willingly was 1996 when I bought the then state of the art Sony Play-station using money from my job at Albertson's. I had sold it within a year and bought a N64 which I still have to this day. I do have a PS2 that my brother gave to me, however I have not hooked it up and have made no attempt to. In the ten years since I sold that first Play-station I've bought two other Nintendo systems and when I've played them I've enjoyed them immensely. Key phrase "when I play them". I'm a PC gamer and I hold a special place in my game playing heart for all things Nintendo as I've often stated here I don't care much about games other then are they fun? And my general experince with Nintendo games is I often find them to be immensely fun!

So what gives with the change of heart? First off, at $400 the PS3 is a bargain of Blu-Ray player right now and will be BD 2.0 compliant when that spec comes out. And since Blu-Ray is a Sony format you know damn well that any future profiles will be supported by the PS3. Second it's backwards compatible with that gianormous library of PS2 games and more then a few are sure to classics when we look back on them in 10 or 15 years (classics in the way I see "Super Metroid" and "The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past" as great games of my youth). Finally all of the new gaming platforms support some sort of link to your PC so you can play movies, show pictures, and stream music to your living room (sorry Windows only apparently Mac/Linux et all don't want to support or just don't care to support anything that would make their platforms accessible to the box in the living room (yes Tivo does run a Linux Kernel, but it's heavily modified and we will get to why that is not a media platform in a bit)).

So for the past 5 days I've been playing with a PS3...

It's more fun then I expected so it's got that running for it. The downloadable games from the Play-station Network makes ALOT of sense and I do I really like it. Even if the selection is somewhat limited at the current time. Hooking up with my home network was no worse an experince then the Wii or the Tivo was. It's a good media server for the front room of the house and I could see me streaming things to the PS3 with out to much of a stretch of the imagination. The games were "OK" I had a couple loaded onto the Hard Drive (Teken 5 being the closest thing to a "A" title and unless your a 12 to 18 y/o male a fighting game won't hold your interest for long). Teken has held up suprisingly well over the last decade or so and I have to give the the developers credit it's still the fighter to beat. "Call of Duty4" was a abysmal experince.... the game looked good, but I've never liked FPS type games on a console with the loan exception being the "Metroid" games. I'm a PC gamer first and foremost and "COD4" on the PS3 reminded me of why this is in spades.

So what finally turned me completely off to the PS3? My cable provider! One of the big points of the PS3 is that you can stream music and videos off of it onto your PSP over the wireless network in your home or the internet! And the PSP can play Tivo To Go files too! Imagine my utter dismay when I was presented with the following screen.



And this is true for about 85% of the shows on my Tivo, there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason other then for some obscure reason Cox sees fit to set the copy protection flag on certain programs. Ultimately this what led me away from the PS3/PSP combo more on principle then problems with technology. Since if you look on current TIVO and PSP advertising they each tout how you can transfer tv shows from your Tivo to your PSP! This killed it for me right here.

That and after watching "300" on Blu-Ray I could not tell a difference in picture quality, but the sound did seem improved. Not enough of a reason to switch physical media formats. But enough to give me faith that Apple may be onto something with the Apple Tv.

Good night and good luck.