.: blog :.

In this interesting article, the author describes how “The human brain is almost infinitely malleable.”  The internet and other innovations have shaped the way our “very plastic” minds work.  Has technology in effect reduced our critical thinking?  Our contemplation?  Our deep insights?

And at the bleeding edge of the internet’s evolution and its transformation of our gray matter we find Google.

I took the plunge, swallowed the red pill, joined the cult, <insert metaphor of choice here>. I bought my first iPod, which also happens to be an iPhone. This was very much premeditated since my Treo 650 was lost back in February of 2006 and I’d been avoiding cell phone contracts and using second-hand phones ever since. In fact, on iPhone Day 2008, I got to an AT&T store early enough to be one of the first to have an iPhone 3G — probably a good idea since they’re still in short supply.

I was holding out for a smartphone that could provide some level of mobile computing, and I must say that the iPhone is holding true to its promises. And for $199 it’s not a bad deal either for a phone, iPod, PDA, internet browser, etc all in one.

I’m working towards a slight career shift sometime in the future, hopefully with the help of the MPD grad program I’m currently enrolled in at Carnegie Mellon. I’d like to work in product design and development, but I’m still not crystal clear on what that will look like in an actual job. To start building more momentum in that general direction, I’ve revamped my website a bit and created a profile page on LinkedIn. If you know of someone who might be interested in talking with me, be sure to let me know!

I wanted to get my wife a CD for her birthday, but couldn’t decide on one.  I’ve made poor choices in the past, so I thought I’d find a way to “give” her a CD but still let her choose.  So I found the cover art for some artists she listens to and used it to make a graphic to go in the front of a CD case.  I also made faux album covers with pictures of Ian and me (taken by my Apple laptop with the built-in camera… very convenient) and included those too, just for kicks.  She had no idea that I had included these phonies, and still feels guilty for not recognizing Ian *at all*!  I found it funny and thought I’d share…

CMU won the DARPA Urban Challenge this year, and a cool $2 million in the process.  I have to say that they certainly earned the right to be the champs.  After being favored but not quite pulling off the victory in past years’ races, the CMU team was overdue for a win.  In past years, the unmanned vehicles raced through desert terrain but this year it was a mock urban setting with traffic and all.  It’s impressive that these vehicles can drive themselves flawlessly on urban streets, but a little chilling when you think that we’re paving the way for robotic armies in the future.  Still, the technology could help the disabled or elderly become more mobile or help make everyday driving safer in general.  I for one would appreciate autopilot for those long road trips!

Call me a late bloomer, but I’ve been recently discovering some of the really amazing applications that have been catagorically called Web 2.0. (Check out Time magazine’s 2006 person of the year article if you’re as slow to the times as me.) Starting a blog was my first foray into the wild wild west that is the second generation of the world wide web. It’s a fun way to share experience and thoughts with friends and family, as well as anyone else who cares to read.

Recently, I’ve started to listen to music through Pandora, a one-of-a-kind music listening experience. Tim Westergren, its founder, is a poster child for startup ingenuity and persistance. He started the Music Genome Project, which evaluated thousands of songs by determining different “genes” that identify characteristics of each song. With that information, the Pandora interface was born. It has a great interface and allows you to search for music and listen to custom “radio stations” that play music similar to particular artists or songs of your choosing. It’s a neat way to discover new artists and expand your musical horizons. If you have an iGoogle homepage, you can add Pandora to it. Visit my Pandora page here:
http://www.pandora.com/people/asp360

Just today I signed up for Flickr. This site is a very popular photo-sharing website that also allows people to connect with one another as mutual contacts but also to join groups of people with things in common (i.e. where you live). I’d been using Snapfish in the past to share photos and order prints. This worked fine, but I’ve learned that not only does Flickr have a better interface and the community aspect to it, but you can also link it with iPhoto (more on that in a sec) and I can link it with my blog. So I’m looking forward to exploring what all I can do through Flickr and seeing if I can take any photos that are worthwhile enough to share with a broader audience than just fam and friends. Check out my Flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aawaken

With Pandora and Flickr, be sure to link up with me if you get signed up, ok?

And last but not least, my wife and I are going Mac. While using a Mac used to be something you’d have to make sacrifies for (not as much software and device support available), I see it now as the better choice over a PC and Windows Vista or XP. I don’t know of anyone who is a die-hard Windows enthusiast. It begs the question: why are so many people anti-Apple? Since nobody is crazy about Windows (and are possibly getting sick & tired of the hassle of using it like I was), why not try an Apple? Take a bite… you’ll like it! Ok, I’m not trying to tempt you (although I couldn’t resist the tease), but rather am trying to point out that there are other options out there and they’re not too hard to learn.

The Canon PowerShot A70 was my entry to the world of digital photography, back in the summer of 2003. The camera was state of the art back then, with 3x optical zoom and 3MP resolution (a lot can change in electronics in four years!). Having no education or training in photography, it was great to make the switch from film and be able to experiment and develop my interest in the art. See my OBX post for some photos taken with this camera, or look here for some wedding pictures.

With our baby on the way (and to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary), my wife and I decided to upgrade to one of the latest and greatest superzoom cameras, the Canon PowerShot S5-IS. It is a more versatile camera and will hopefully help us get some wonderful photos of our family’s antics for years to come! After looking all around for a minimalist case for it, we ended up ordering the leather Canon-branded case. It could be a little easier to open, but seems to be very nice overall. Perhaps in another four years we’ll have the interest and means of upgrading to a digital SLR camera, but for now it’s nice to have the convenience and versatility of a superzoom.

[As a side note, if you find an especially low price on a camera, a trick a fly-by-night web store might be playing is to send you a camera packaged for sale in Japan so you end up with a photocopied English instruction manual and a box that says "for sale in Japan only". But don't ask me how I would know anything about that! And if they claim to offer a $150 accessory kit for free, it might be a typo that should say $1.50 instead.]

For my birthday a while back, my wonderful wife gave me a coupon for a gadget of my choice. I recently redeemed it for a Garmin Forerunner 205, a GPS watch that can track your running (or cycling) pace, distance, elevation, etc. It has allowed me to better know how far I’ve gone in my runs. So I can go anywhere and not have to worry if there are mile markers or guess my pace in order to calculate my distance traveled. It’s a great training tool, and I’m looking forward to taking it on my jogs when we vacation at the beach this summer.

As a side note, my training is going well. Last weekend I finished a 6 mile jog in under 42 minutes (<7 minute pace), and the weekend before I finished a local 5k in 2nd place! It wasn’t a big race, but it was the first medal I’ve earned since high school. Woohoo! I’d like to maintain my fitness level at about where I am now, so it feels good to finally be here.

Wow, can’t believe it’s February already. Erica and I have been looking into buying a new digital camera that we can use to take lots and lots of pictures of the new baby (and other things, of course!). She took a photography class in high school and enjoys taking pictures. Her old camera was a Nikon SLR I think, but it’s broken. As for me, I’ve gotten more “into” graphic design and photography as time goes by.

We got a Canon Powershot A70, our first digital camera, in 2003 and it has worked really well for us. Digital cameras are truly revolutionary, and it’s nice to be able to take all the pictures you want. It enables you to be more creative, capture more things “on film”, and have better photos all around. Not to mention being able to play with them on the computer. So that’s helped us to enjoy photography more and we were looking forward to upgrading since digital cameras have come so far in 4 years.

Enter the Panasonic FZ8. We’re not up for spending big bucks for a digital SLR, but would like more zoom and features in a camera than we have now. So we’ve been looking at some with 12x optical zoom (Olympus just announced one with 18x zoom!) and models by Canon and Panasonic stood out. The Panasonic is less expensive and has the same features more or less, except that it has a better movie mode. You really don’t need a camcorder if your camera can record movies well, and with memory cards up to 16GB this year, you’re not really limited on space. So unless Canon announces a big step up from their S3-IS camera later this month, we’ll probably be getting this bad boy when it goes on sale!