burnaby t wallace

This weekend, I got to see the 300 movie. Again. But in IMAX. 5 story high screen IMAX. It was the same movie, but bigger and with better sound.

It does make a difference.

So I have many engineering colleagues. We came from all different walks of life, come in different shapes and sizes, and engineered in very different things. However, one thing for sure that we had in common…

The Ti-83.

It was such an important part of our everyday schooling life. Imagine the shock I felt when one (who shall remain unnamed) liberal arts major took some trig class and wanted to borrow my Ti-83. Seriously.

Well, Texas Instruments is changing the way it looks. It is awesome.

Hopefully it still plays Tetris.

It appears to me that Flock’s already slow development may be halting. Many generations ago, people have been asking for particular features of Flock–and it still hasn’t come to fruition (where’s the Zooomr integration and the Mozilla 2.0 engine?). I don’t even use the built-in blog writer any longer.

However, on the Firefox side of things, that browser has been adding feature after feature and is quickly catching up to Flock.

Despite the benefits of the new Firefox, I have still been using Flock for one very important and big reason–it’s RSS feed reader. However, Google Labs came out with Google Reader.

While not as nice as the Flock built-in RSS reader (and clearly not as integrated), it is far easier to add feeds. What I wish it didn’t have was that standard Google logo in the corner and a dual column display. It is free and keeps the number of unread feeds in the title (handy for when multiple tabs are open).

All Firefox needs is Zooomr integration and that’ll be the final nail in the Flock coffin.

Just thought I would let you all know, you can now get to my blog by simply typing “my.spoontr.com.” To get to my fiancee’s blog, type in “mrs.spoontr.com.”

On Friday, I went to (with the exception of the first row auctioned seats) the best concert ever. It wasn’t a rockin’ band or some mosh pitting group–it was Josh Groban.

Granted, I missed the opening day for the Padres (and they lost anyway), though I sported the retro Padres jersey all day–all sporting events were forgotton as soon as I sat in the comfortable lodge seating of the iPayOne Center.

Unfortunatly, my camera phone is not that good, but I managed to get this picture.

He seemed funnier than you expect someone like him to be. What was cool was right before his last song, he left the stage only to return in a Padres jersey.

Seriously–Josh Groban rocks. The opening act was an African musician–also very good. He also had the same violinist he had the last time he was in San Diego.

 He also performed a song from the musical Sweeney Todd and did the chicken dance for everyone.

Many of my friends know that about 97% of my furniture comes from that fantastic blue store (know…not Best Buy, ahem, read the previous post). It comes in a thin box and it put together with love and care. But that’s not what I mean by “Ikea home.”

Apparently, Ikea is selling pre-fabricated homes in the UK.

I have to admit, it’s not too shabby. Unfortunately, I don’t know of it happening anytime here, in the US.

If it did, though–sweet! I’d get my house in beech.

So there I was, like any normal guy, standing in front of a row of motherboards, and I happen to overhear someone talking about (wait for it…) a motherboard with (get ready…) built in HDMI processing.

So, as any self-respecting nerd/geek, I expressed interest in it. Finding that it has onboard video processing (that’s what HDMI is), someone who also expressed interest in it says that the motherboard has onboard RAM for the video. Hmmm. Interesting, indeed. Not really believing this, I picked up a box and looked at it. Can you imagine? A motherboard with on-board video, and with built-in memory? Yeah…I’ve never heard of one.

Now, just because I haven’t heard of it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

The fine lad who seemed very interested in it (and mentioned several times that he was going to buy it) said that it does have built in memory. 128MBs to be exact–though we couldn’t find that number anywhere on the box. And, in looking around the board itself, we couldn’t even find the memory itself. I mentioned that it might actually be shared memory.

“Oh no!” says the man. “If it was shared memory, it would explicitly say so. This one doesn’t mention it.”

But that’s not the best part, oh my nerdy friends who read this entry. The best part is when he continues.

“I should know because I used to be a Best Buy Geek Squad tech.”

When I still stood there not convinced that it had it’s own memory (which it doesn’t–it is shared, I looked it up later), he had the look on his face that screamed “why don’t you believe me? I told you I had the geek cred that gets me in all the clubs. Stupid consumer.”

Sorry Best Buy, but you need to change the name of your group to Stupid Pumpous Never Wrong Idiots who drive around in Bugs.