Gotta love it. Apple just released a trailer hyping up the upcoming release of a trailer, for the Total Recall remake. That marketing department is workin' overtime I tell ya. Snark aside, it looks pretty damn cool. I thought the original was great. But like many SciFi films getting the makeover, I think Total Recall could really benefit from the higher production value possibilities. Given the enclosed nature of most of the shots in the original I thought it was interesting the trailer (of the trailer) opened with a nice broad expanse shot of the (assumed) hero looking out over some jacked up city of the future.
March 2012 Archives
We've had our wii fit setup for almost 2 years now. And over the course of time, we have seen some unexplained weight gain "incidents". Aside from the occasionally accurate shaming questions "have you eaten too much recently?" or "are you snacking at night".. we noticed that the weigh in was just not accurate. Finally figured it out last night. The weigh in wasn't happening when we thought it was. When it first says "starting up ... step on"... THATS when it weighs you. Not after. The 2nd with the count down is just for finding your center of balance. When it is asking you for a modifier for your clothes... its already taken your weight. So if you have a sweater or pants to shed (for consistent weigh ins!) or if you plan to quickly toss the remote to the side (for accuracy sake!) then you need to do it before you first step on the board.
For christmas I decided to finally treat myself to a telescope. Sure its much easier to go on the internet and find some awesome images of the cosmos. I'd be able to skip the hassle (stuff starts moving fast at +200x), the lost time (dang weather) and best of all, the cold! But my thinking was that I'd learn a few things and gain some inexplicable satisfaction from actually seeing it with my own eyes. I was right.
I picked up an Astromaster 130EQ Telescope from Costco. It seemed to be a good starter telescope, with minimal cost. It came with decent recommendations on a few of the astronomy forums. Good sized newtonian reflector, equatorial mount, and a motorized tracker option. For less than $200, it's an amazing deal. I ended up also buying the extra eyepiece and filter kit, but skipped the motor mount. I'd read that it was a little coarse. The finder scope leaves much to be desired. I just rough point, and use the 32mm eyepiece to center what I'm looking for. Then I just swap finer and finer eyepieces to "zoom" in on the target.
The local weather report is the first stop before a night of viewing. The Clear Sky Chart is an amazingly valuable tool for that. I can plan when I should be out for optimal viewing, or if I should just find something to watch on Netflix ;-) and call it an evening.
For planning I use Stellarium. Its open source (free), cross platform, yada yada. A quick look at Stellarium before I move the telescope outside lets me know what I might be able to see, where it will be, and by changing the time, even get an idea of what I might see if I wait an hour or two.
Jupiter is amazing with the included eyepieces. Even better using the eyepieces in the kit. A few of Jupiters bands are visible, as are the 4 Galilean moons around it. I tried to max out my setup: the 6mm eyepiece with the barlow lens (2x) but Jupiter was just too hazy. That and its a pain to keep aligned. I occasionally wonder if the motor mount would be worth it.
Yikes. Just for kicks I had a peek at my activity logs. Haven't been posting much so I didn't expect anything. Noticed a large number of 404 errors. Digging deeper turns out that the vast majority of them are attempts to find timthumb.php, a popular php script used to resize images. Judging by the mass of queries, it must be quite popular with the wordpress crowd.
Edit: Looks like it was public knowledge back in August of last year!
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