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March 2010

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Ptw @shatteredhaven with Mona Lisa Smile at Penquin house John Ball Zoo

Ptw @shatteredhaven with Mona Lisa Smile at Penquin house John Ball  Zoo
It's a camera phone picture. And I removed an extra person from the
background. But the Jenn's smile is completely authentic. :)
Flickr: Sun 03-28-10 18:02:55 -0400



Sun 3/28/10 12:58am #

• Saturday was a good day.
• I did some cleaning
• I had some pizza
• I played with a robot that I drove around the apartment with a wifi camera
• Jenn and I took a walk outside
• We went and got some groceries
• We watched the Season finale(?) of Caprica
• It was a good day.

I want to hear your



Ptw Traded the ferret for the cat. Lots of hanging out tonight.

Ptw Traded the ferret for the cat. Lots of hanging out tonight.
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
Flickr: Fri 03-26-10 20:13:15 -0400


Ptw Mutant Green Jelly Bean looks like Peas! Peas!

Ptw Mutant Green Jelly Bean looks like Peas! Peas!
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
Flickr: Wed 03-24-10 14:31:57 -0400



Mon 3/22/10 12:42pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

Monday is zooming along pretty quick. Caught up on a bunch of emails this morning, since I was out last Friday.

Looking forward to the evening.

And is it too early to say, looking forward to the weekend?

Videos

Incase you missed them, here's some recent videos I've upladed.


Tue 3/16/10 Walk on Path (above)

Thursday 3/18/10 Walking around the parkinglot


Friday 3/19/10 Leki foot Wrestling (above)

Saturday 3/20/10: Where'd my spring go?


Saturday 3/20/10 Leki is indifferent to the Roomba (above) (Jenn shot this one)

Sunday 3/21/10 Leki at the table

Sunday 3/21/10 At Celebration North to see Repo Men the Republican Health Care plan documentary

Sunday 3/21/10 Repo Men was abit dark

Let's Go Surfing

- Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers: Is It the King of Ereaders?
source: TechCrunch

Kindle Aps for Tablet computers (including the iPad) it's a mouthful, but nice to see this will basically be ready at iPad launch. They need to get the prices back down again though. There have been a couple books I've wanted to buy and read on Pre recently but $14,99 is just too much for a digital book for me. They need to get the price back down to $9.99 for new stuff at least.

I want to hear your




Mon 3/22/10 7:13am #

Let's Go Surfing

I just stumbled upon this PC list of 23 freeware video and audio programs. Lots of good stuff

I want to hear your



Ptw Leki is disapointed that the C in C-Span doesn't stand for Cats

Ptw Leki is disapointed that the C in C-Span doesn't stand for Cats
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
Flickr: Sun 03-21-10 22:45:18 -0400



Sun 3/21/10 11:17am #

Good Morning Sunday.

Had Friday off this past week. Four days is enough work. It's not enough to get all the work that needs to be done, done. But 4 days itself, is enough time for work.

Went out to a office function of Jennifer's at Peppino's downtown Friday night. Had a good time there. It was good to put so many of her workplace people's face's with their names and stories I've already heard.

Saturday, we ran some errands, and did some shopping. Checked out the new Hobby Lobby that moved from Jenison to Grandville. Huge store. Surfed a lot of internet, but really came up short on much interesting.

Saw this week's Caprica. At the end, the promo said that next week is the season finale. Only 9 eps, that's a bummer, would be nice if there were more, as Caprica is the only show we are watching in anything close to real time (ie: the day of or the next day after it plays.) Not really any shows I'm major excited about currently airing.

Read the first 3rd of Adam and Comfort's new comic project that they are working on as a brief hiatus between the first and second “seasons” of The Uniques. It's good stuff and it's going to be a fun story visually for sure too. I also listened to a 40 min interview with them this am. Scroll down to the player and then jump to the 1:20:00 mark and give it a listen.

Finally gave up on inkjet printers this week. Ordered a Color Laser Printer. We'll see how that goes, at least the ink cartridges won't be dried up when I need to print. Gotta, love toner that way.

Ordered a robot, Wowee Rovio too. It was up on Woot! Last week and I couldn't pass it up. Will likely terrorize the cat a little with it soon.

Let's Go Surfing

- Facebook Kicks Off Implementation Of QR Codes
source: TechCrunch

Facebook is going to make an easy to use QR code feature that will give you a QR code that will link back to your Facebook profile. This is an interesting preview of the future I think. I can imagine a world soon where people and business will have these QR codes on everything and some phone driven camera will be constantly scanning for the code images and layering on relevant information about the people and places around you through something like this. Of course, GPS might beat QR to the punch for places, but you could certainly imagine a party or convention where everyone has a QR Tee-shirt of some kind, so that people could look up info on the attendees, etc. It'd be a novelty but I could see it happening in the near future.

I want to hear your



Ptw Checking out the new Hobby Lobby in Grandville

Ptw Checking out the new Hobby Lobby in Grandville
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
Flickr: Sat 03-20-10 12:47:22 -0400


Ptw Walking around the parkinglot

Video Post
Click the Picture to Play the Video
Ptw Walking around the parkinglot
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
Flickr: Thu 03-18-10 15:13:17 -0400


Ptw Leki in @shatteredhaven lap while she checks her phone last night

Ptw Leki in @shatteredhaven lap while she checks her phone last night
Flickr: Mon 03-15-10 12:37:44 -0400



Sun 3/14/10 8:42pm #

Toys
Played around with Jenn's SLR. I really don't know my way around it much, and it shows on some of the below photos. But it was a good excuse to take some pics of some action figures I hadn't taken yet.

Of the below, Green Lantern Katma Tui was a great get. Shark is silver age fun. And even though I'm not particularly a fan of the Skittle Corp concept, the Sinestro Corp figures do look nice. And if I can eventually have all the Metal Men, that would make for a nice display as well.

Katma Tui
Katma Tui

Korugar and Katma Tui
Korugar and Katma Tui

John Stewart and Katma Tui
John Stewart and Katma Tui

Shark
Shark

Green Lantern and Shark
Green Lantern and Shark

Sharks
Sharks

Aquaman and Shark
Aquaman and Shark

Mantis
Mantis

Mantis and Darkseid
Mantis and Darkseid

Metal Men Iron
Metal Men Iron

Iron Man and Iron
Iron Man and Iron

Hal Jordan vs Sinestro Corp
Hal Jordan vs Sinestro Corp

Hal Jordan vs Sinestro Corp
Hal Jordan vs Sinestro Corp

Taste the Rainbow
Taste the Rainbow

I want to hear your




Sun 3/14/10 5:00pm #

Video Blog 3/14/10


The text
3/14/2010 I want to do something different with my blog.

It's not very useful the way it is.

I've been using it as a twitter/facebook style newsfeed, but you can view my commetns in Facebook and twitter for that.

I'm not quite ready to drop that realtime stuff from the blog, but there needs to be something here that isn't in twitter, otherwise, why bother with this?

I'm thinking I might try some daily audio and video blogging.

Keeping the total time to 3 or 4 minutes. That should be about 25 sentences.

Even that seems like alot of sentences to do.

To the side of the audio or video, I think I'll do short links to things I find interesting, or to photos etc.

So with that set-up out of the way, here we go for Sunday.

Jennifer and I watched Creation yesterday. It's the Charles Darwin movie with Jennifer Connley.

Overall I liked it, although abit of the way through, I thought it started to lose a little direction.

It's worth seeing on DVD.

We also watched this week's Caprica.

Series is a little slower paced then I would've expected at this point.

It'll probably play back fantastic on DVD at some point, but I'm not sure I feel enough happens each episode, week to week.

Probably just a side effect of the large cast though.

We got our chinavasion Wirelss Keyboard for the living room in the mail Saturday.

It's really cool, makes using the mac mini in the living room, much easier.

Plus now we don't need the full sized keyboard or wireless mouse near the couch, so that saves room.

Well worth the $40

I also got a small Digipro USB Tablet to carry with me in my netbook bag.

Only $25, so it was a pretty good deal.

Works well with my Linux Eee PC

Let's Go Surfing

I saw an article that Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator, and Dollhouse) is going to be in a new NBC Superhero soap called Capes.

I also saw a really interesting demo video of some software called Pad Notes for the upcoming iPad.

Still not sure if I'm going to get an iPad. I'm sortof looking to see if any Android or Linux knock-offs are going to make it to market soon for even cheaper.

But demos like PadNotes and Apples reputation for well thought out software, does make it very tempting.

You might want to check out Jenn's Blog for 3/13. She goes into some more minutia of our Saturday.

I'll leave it there for 3/14/2010, See my blog at Chris dash karath dot com for links to go along with this post.


Links to go along with the post:
Creation
Caprica
Wireless Keyboard
DigiPro Tablet
Summer Glau in Capes
PadNotes
Jenn's Blog for 3/13

I want to hear your




Sat 3/13/10 6:29pm #

Let's Go Surfing


- Review: Seidio Innocell 2600mAh Battery
source: PreCentral.net

I recently bought a small portable booster that works well, so I don't really need something like this anymore, but this does look like a nice solution for someone who doesn't mind the extra bulk who want's their Pre to go all day.

- TheUniques: We're interviewed on today's episode of @ComicGeekSpeak, sponsored by The Uniques! How cool is that? http://tinyurl.com/yffwyjx
source: Twitter / Favorites from ckarath

Adam and Comfort, a little bit at the open and then an interview at 1:16 min mark.


- zefrank: my fav tilt shift movie so far :: http://bit.ly/c0rGo5
source: Twitter / Favorites from ckarath

Very cool tilt shift movie.


- emilychang: new ipad commercial http://bit.ly/bnJYzL
source: Twitter / Favorites from ckarath

Apple does nice commercials


I want to hear your



When I read articles like this, it really sounds like they might be making this Green Lantern movie. *sigh* Sent to you by Chris via Google Reader: Ryan Reynolds? Green Lantern Costume Is Snug In All The Right Places [Green Lantern] via io9 by Meredith Woerner on 3/8/10 Last night at the Oscars, Ryan Reynolds let slip a few superhero details about working on the Green Lantern film in New Orleans. Specifically about his Green Lantern Corps uniform, and how it hangs on his new superhero figure. [Ryan Reynolds?] trainer Bobby was telling me that you?re really really working hard in New Orleans [/end quote]


Best bet, click the link at the top of this article. No link at top? then try this link
Tumblr: Tue 03-09-10 14:47:07 -0500

Ptw Jenn and Leki playing new Final Fantasy

Ptw Jenn and Leki playing new Final Fantasy
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
Flickr: Tue 03-09-10 10:32:19 -0500


Ptw @Dee_roy and Angel

Ptw @Dee_roy and Angel
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
Flickr: Sat 03-06-10 22:01:21 -0500


Ptw @Dee_Roy wife, Angel Birthday girl in center.

Ptw @Dee_Roy wife, Angel Birthday girl in center.
-- Sent from my Palm Pre
Flickr: Sat 03-06-10 19:45:30 -0500



Sat 3/06/10 11:32am #

Apparently there is some new Buck Rogers Web Series coming. Above is a clip from it. Gil Girard and Erin Gray play Bucks' Parents.

Sure this is very Luke/Owen/Beru... but still for a web series, it looks pretty good.

I think I posted the teaser trailer before, but if not, here's that:

I want to hear your




Fri 3/05/10 12:32pm #

Random Non-Sequiters

- Unless I tweet this, you won't see this.

Today is March 5th. This months blog page has been up for 5 days and has 4 unique viewers. Since I check my blog periodically from home and work, I probably account for two of those views. I'm pretty sure Jenn reads this as well. So that leaves 2 people out there who have been to this new blog page this month so far.

Now it's not all doom and gloom. 591 unique people have viewed at least 1 of the 4 or 5 years worth of pages on my blog this month so far. So this blog is definitely helping google answer some queries. But for the latest posts, well there's been two of you so far this month! So to both of you, I say thanks.

Now some of my blog's declining viewership proably rests with the fact that it's probably pretty boring of late. Sure there are occasional cat photos, and you'd think that'd be enough, but content has been sort of slim other than that. I'm willing to wager though that Facebook and Twitter are more the real cause of the decline. I think the tide has turned and people have now shifted their attention away from personal blogs and now get their information exclusively from the social sites, where the information comes to them and they don't have to go to it.

Which brings me back to my original statement: unless I tweet this, you won't see it.

People's time is valuable, and there is alot of social online content they need to keep up with, so in the new world, you've got 140 characters on twitter, or maybe sightly more, plus a tiny picture to make your pitch on Facebook.

There's probably a lesson in their for business too. People are busy, get to your pitch and get to your pitch quick. If its interesting, people will dig deeper, but if it's not, it's just one more thing in the stream.

Penguin books on the iPad

Watch this video below.

Have you watched it? Are you back? Great.

WTF? Isn't the above just that cheesy Interactive CDRom stuff from the early 90s? didn't we get rid of all that when the web came along? Is the above really what the upcoming iPad future is? I really doubt it. Stuff like the above is alot of work to create, and frankly it's just not worth it. You've been able to do all the above on the web via Flash for years, and rarely anyone does anything in this sortof interactive format. Don't get me wrong, some of the chat and social features are interesting, being able to leave comments on a given page, etc. But unless that's going to be policed you're just waiting for trolls to get nasty on something like that. But otherwise... color me unimpressed.

Video, where's the video

I got the WebOS 1.4 video upgrade on my Palm Pre this past weekend. I've posted a few so far. I want to do more, but video is so much more time consuming both for me to film and you to view, isn't? Still it's nice to have a mobile video option back.

Indy comics

My friends Adam and Comfort have launched their The Uniques comic spinoff web series: The Uniques Tales. There are a bunch creators line-up to contribute to the seriesnine issues avaialble the last of which is double sized, for only 99 cents each. There worth a read if you're interested in a smartly written and very nicely drawn superhero yarn.

Blue skies ahead

Second day in a row of blue skies in West Michigan. I'm looking forward to going home and taking another quick walk outside later on this evening after work. it's been cold and gray too long again in Michigan. this is a welcome change.

Blue Skies

Have a good Friday! And if you are one of the two people who view this post without seeing it on Twitter, give me a shout out in the comments!

Lets Go Surfing

image - Coby $85 smartbook feels like a hundred bucks (hands-on)
source: Engadget

$85 Netbooks. Even with Win CE that could still be useful.

- Weird Al Sex Tape. SFW sortof.


- Easy Poster Printer
source: MakeUseOf.com

Useful.

- ColorHex: See RGB, HSV & HSL Values For Any Color
source: MakeUseOf.com

Actually has CMYK values which you almost never see on these.

- OpenShot Finally, An Excellent Free Video Editor For Linux
source: MakeUseOf.com

I need to give this a try.


I want to hear your



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