Category: stuff

Software, toys, gadgets and computers

LEGOs of things past

Scott Beale notes the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick.

Burka asks, what is our preferred LEGO theme?

Does it show my age when I mention that pretty much the only theme available at the time was SPACE:

LEGO SPACE Model 442 (1978)

LEGO Space Shuttle (Model 442—1978)

Just so you know, the antenna in the back turns into a long range gauss gun. 😉

Look up the legos from your childhood on the LUGNET LEGO Set Database.

In 1977, there was a popular series of LEGO-like kits that allowed you to snap together models battleships, destroyers, and such. I don’t remember the name, but given the timing, they were the reason LEGO started to make themes. Here’s to that forgotten piece of toy history.

Posted on by tychay 4

The open office

See our open offices with free food, beer, and t-shirts at Lunch 2.0 today!

Photos of my workstation are like photos of “What’s in my bag”—they seem to draw a voyeur-like fascination just short of a shot of a pretty girl.

Well since we recently tore down the cubes, I finally set up my workstation. You can come to Lunch 2.0 this Friday and see for yourself, but just in case you happen to be in Mexico drinking Corona’s that day:

My new open office setup

My new open office setup
North Beach, San Francisco, California

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/16sec, iso 320, 35mm (47mm)

Click on the photo and mouseover the image for some tagging goodness.

[Inventory and open office after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 12

Perfect Ringing (This iPhone)

At work today Mark Kater and Sarah were joking that I’ve been as sick as long as I’ve had my iPhone. I guess my iPhone has bad Feng Shui.

Then Mark mentioned that the song in the iPhone television commercials, gives him the classically Apple 38 seconds of “all is good in the world” before he wakes up back to reality. I hadn’t heard the song, but when I mentioned this to our graphic designer, he said he hears the song in his sleep. The song is “Perfect Timing (This Morning)” by Orba Squara.

Hmm… that would make an awesome ringtone. 😀

Perfect Ringing

Perfect Ringing
North Beach, San Francisco, California

Nikon D70, Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D, Canon 500D close up filter
1/45sec @ f/1.4, iso200, 85mm (127mm)

It was indeed “Perfect Timing” because today was also when someone posted a desktop app for customizing the iPhone ringtone.

Some notes:

  • To get the song, there are a lot of ways. I purchased it in iTunes Music Store, burned to CD, and reimported as MP3
  • Intel Mac binary only. No PowerPC, No Windows
  • “There is no Step 1.” 😀
  • If your unlock fails, you have to click the “skip” button the second time around. Else it will keep playing the pig zapper sound.
  • The “Put the iPhone into Recovery Mode” means to hold the home and sleep buttons on the iPhone for 25 seconds until you see the recovery mode icon
  • Just kill “iTunes Helper” so iTunes doesn’t start up on you
  • Remember to select the ringtone (a green + appears next to the ringtone)
  • The iPhone speakers have a shitty bass

Have fun!Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

A shure bet I’m getting this

I read this today on iLounge.

Is there any question given this post and this one, that I’m getting one of these? (Where is the Amazon link…you bastards!)

I love the new Shure SE series. Get the SE-210’s in white or black , or splurge on mine.

Lunch moo-point-oh has arrived

Lunch moo-point-oh has arrived
Tagged, Financial District, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX
2sec @ f/14, iso100, 16mm (24mm)

You can see my headphones attached to the iPod in the background.

Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1

The iPhone

I was talking to Dru about that today. He said he’s not worried. “Apple says it’ll be fine as long as you go to a Cingular store and not Apple Store on the day of launch.”

Web 2.0 lunch

Web 2.0 Lunch
Chinatown, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX
1/640sec @ f/2.8, iso100, 16mm (24mm)

“Maybe in podunkville. This is San Francisco, the geeky New York City. I don’t think is enough space in the stores to house all the phones people are going to want to buy. I love it when pundits say that the iPhone is going to bomb. More! More of that! I wish more would say that so I’d actually have a chance at getting one.”

*laughter* “I have an engineer who said it was too expensive and all that. And then this morning, he downloaded the guided tour. I haven’t seen it yet, but he has—it’s like twenty minutes. After he watched it he said, ‘Blackberry is going to get crushed.’”

:-O

When I got back from lunch, I so had to check out the video. When we were watching, Gerry kept saying, “That’s sick!” The demo of the new earbuds are especially impressive in its cleverness.

When the video got to this fictitious SMS conversation between the speaker and Johnny Appleseed about having a drink before going to Sushi Ran. The place?

Let’s meet at Kell’s

“Let‘s meet at Kell’s.”

Coincidentally, my last SMS message reads… 6/21/07 09:51PM. A: “Kels, jackson and montgomery.”

Yes, I just got drunk there yesterday after the RockYou! party.

Morgan and Jia

Morgan and Jia
Thristy Bear, SOMA, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX, SB-800
1/25sec @ f/3.2, iso2000*, 16mm (24mm)

Maybe God is trying to tell me something…

I read you loud and clear, Steve. 😀

(Speaking about New York and San Francisco, I went to my first baseball game in 18 years and it was between the New York Yankees and the San Francisco Giants. Last time I went, I saw Barry Bonds play also, as my friends heckled him from the corporate boxes. This time, I noticed I had no reception on my cell phone and I thought to myself…hmm, I’m switching to AT&T soon. Bonds hit his 749th home run.)

Posted on by tychay 9

Community prime

So Andrei gave me a great idea to share some of my Amazon prime lovin’ with my (trusted) friends.

Amazon Prime is $80 a year. For that subscription you get free two-day ordering, $4 next day air, and orders fulfilled so fast you can’t cancel them. However, there are only so many times you can free-two day a spatula and not get bored.

So here is a idea I have to get some more value for my friends from Amazon and get my Prime account more usage.

[Amascam after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 6

Back to Safari

(No, I haven’t tried Safari 3.0.)

At work yesterday we were talking about how slow Firefox has become. You’re chugging around, opening a few tabs and then, after a few hours, you notice that everything takes like a second to respond. Has anyone else noticed this? It’s also been crashier of late—to the point where I’m actually depending on the Restore Session feature.

I decided I’d set Safari set as my default for personal use and Firefox for work. Rasmus does this for security reasons, I’m just doing it because I need Firefox for web development.

And while I’m wishing that Mozilla move back to their core and fix their shit before they talk about features in Firefox 3.0 that I and nobody else in the world are interested in—besides the three people using microformats. Why don’t they fix things so that when I drag the bookmark to the desktop it uses the page title as the file title instead of part of the URL?

u-whines about Safari: It needs real debugging. Add session restore, how come I lose my block popup settings? Why open “safe” by default? Has the Mac world become that lame? Now that I’m using it again, is it time to Pimp My Safari?

Posted on by tychay 5

Aperture supports Panasonic/Leica

I noticed in the release notes of the Mac OS X 10.4.10 update today:

  • Adds RAW image decoding support for the following cameras: Panasonic DMC-LX1, Panasonic DMC-LX2, Leica M8, Leica D-LUX 2, Leica D-LUX 3, Fuji S5 Pro, Nikon D40x, and Canon EOS 1D Mk III.

Since Apple Aperture uses the same RAW decoding. That means that I no longer have to do that crazy hack to get my LX-1 RAW files into Aperture. I blogged about this earlier, so I’d like to say, “Thanks, Apple!”

Coincidentally, I almost purchased a Fuji S5 Pro. I bought lenses instead. You really have to have more lenses before you can justify a purchase of a second body, right? 🙂

I think the Leica M8 is a sweet camera for the photo buff who has gobs of money to spend. I mean besides the body, the lenses are astronomical. Or is it just me? I don’t know. I’m just thinking the days when I shied away from Nikon because I thought, “their stuff is too expensive.”

Aperture Users @ Flickr discussion

Posted on by tychay 1