Category: Uncategorized

You probably don’t care, but …

I’ve been following this tech for a while, across a couple of companies… and if you know anything about current and up-coming (ie: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) techs, the following press release should make it clear that most of the manufacturers are a bit behind the curve (ie: they can do 100Gb with red lasers, are launching with 50Gb discs, and project to be able to do over 1TB with blue lasers w/i a few years) and really just trying to make money on the NEXT switch… which, considering that this company basically has an agreement saying it is the Chinese gov’t’s choice for the new disc standard, will probably be VMD… Anyway, here you go:

NME to Launch 1920/1080 Complete High Definition Solution on USD 150 Red Laser Players at CeBIT
LONDON, Mar 02,2006

New Medium Enterprises and its strategic partner Beijing E-World Technology (E-World) will announce the commercial launch of their red laser High Definition (HD) standard at CeBIT, March 9-15th. This marks the world’s first HD (1920×1080 resolution) optical disc solution using existing red laser technology and its current industrial infrastructure.
NME will unveil Versatile Multilayer Discs (VMDs) with pre-recorded HD content and varying storage capacities up to 40GB, which will be demonstrated on red laser players using E-World’s HD EVD technology. Several feature-length films in 1920/1080 HD format will be shown on one side of a single VMD disc in players retailing at USD 150.

Continue reading You probably don’t care, but …

And because I seem to be writing more frequently there than here…

…the following is the bulk of my most recent version of an OKCupid profile. Not as much a “what’s going on in my life” as about who I am and where I am as a person lately. A lot of my … emotional … situation of late has had to do with my “dating life” and/or extended singleness. I will certainly try to go into more details this year than last year about this and … everything else.

My self-summary:
I’m a romantic, through and through. I believe in love and I believe in true love and if I get my way, someday I’ll share and reciprocate true love with someone. Oscar Wilde is attributed with saying this, and when I first read it it rang true as something I had struggled long to gather: “Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.” When I was 16 I experienced this but did not understand it, and when I was 26 I understood it but could not articulate it, perhaps by the time I’m 36 I’ll have internalized it enough to make it irrelevant. For now, suffice it to say I am not looking for friends, enemies or idols. The former is not possible and the latter two are not desirable.

Continue reading And because I seem to be writing more frequently there than here…

Baby Oil

Peanut oil is made by crushing peanuts. Olive oil by crushing olives. Whale oil by crushing whales. Is Baby oil made by crushing babies?

Yes, I bought a car. No, it doesn’t run on air.

Pontiac Vibe - click to enlarge (~110kb)
(Click to enlarge :: ~110kb, popup)

Before I took my 5300 mile road trip to Washington DC and back to protest GWB&c., I bought a car. It’s a 2005 Pontiac Vibe, and as you can see from my slightly-retouched-cameraphone-photo, it’s not only red, but it sure looks like it’s going fast, even sitting still. Unless you’re my sister, and then you think it looks like a station wagon. Whatever, I like it. Good mileage, built from Toyota parts and based on a Toyota basis, plus lots of room (ie: I fit in it nicely) and based on my calculations I should have no trouble affording it (and the insurance et al). It doesn’t run on any alternative fuels, but cars that run on air don’t seem to have materialized in the USA quite yet… …so I’m still waiting on that one. But perhaps, sometime after my extended warranty runs out, I’ll work on modifying this thing to run on wasted potential and unrequited love and I’ll never have to stop for gas again.