Let the good times roll

Life seems to be passing so quickly; people around me, places, just zooming by. I pause, and take a brief moment to think about my life, reflecting about where the time has gone and the distance I've covered. Wow, I'm 35, maybe this is the onset of an early midlife crisis? Happily married, beautiful new baby boy, successful career, but something suddenly feels different, lost. I feel empty. I'm waiting for something to happen, and feeling anxious. Something is missing, I know it, and I want it back. I take a big sigh, my head resting on my hands. Warm air suddenly rushes over me, and then I sense the change coming. Oh yes, there it is, that happy moment when the traffic lights change to green and the acceleration of a 130 hp Kawasaki brings another giant smaile to my face.

Not all memory is created equal

With upgrading the photography gear, I’ve also learned that not all memory is created equal. There’s a lot more to it than just size. In particular, SD (Secure Digital) cards in SD, miniSD, and microSD card sizes come with different speed ratings. The speed is important for photos and videos as it needs to be fast enough that the memory card can be written to without the camera stalling or freezing trying to wait for the write process. There are class 2, 4, and 6. I have class 6 cards in both cameras. The SD cards also come in different types. The SD card is available up to 4 GB, the SDHC is available up to 32 GB, and the SDXC will be theoretically available up to 2 TB (terabytes)! Wikipedia has a nice explanation on all the details.

Memory has both read and write speeds, which may be different, along with lots of other specifications. USB memory sticks are also not created equal. The speeds of USB sticks aren’t as generally published, as they are for SD cards, but try to find USB sticks that have read and write speeds close to 30 MB/sec, which will be close to what a portable hard drive would read and write at across USB 2.0. One of the fastest USB sticks I’ve run across is the OCZ Rally2 Turbo USB 2.0 Flash Drive, but I’m sure others can be found with a little surfing.

Upgrading the photography gear

With over 6000 pictures taken on my Sony DSC-P8 digital camera, it’s had a very long life. I bought it in 2003, and it’s lived with a 256 MB memory stick the entire time. It’s a 3.2 megapixel, with a tiny little 1.5” LCD screen on the back and a view finder to look through. It’s worked well, but my one complaint the whole time I’ve owned it is that unless you hold it really, REALLY still the picture will come out blurry. I’ve learned to shoot clear pictures with it, but anyone who has taken a picture during a party with it, or someone taking a picture of Dena and I while travelling has managed to take a fuzzy picture. During the first week Andrew was in the hospital, I took a few pictures and after seeing about half of them blurry, decided it was time to upgrade, as I just don’t want pictures of my son to be blurry and ruined. I’ve actually been looking for a replacement for some time, but nothing stood out until just now. Samsung has released the very first digital camera with a second forward facing display. This immediately caught my attention, as I take a lot of pictures of Dena and I when we’re travelling with my arm out stretched. We normally have to take several pictures to get the shot composed correctly. Now, I’ll just be able to look at the front screen and compose the shot the first time. This camera is the Samsung TL225 in the US and ST550 in the UK. Some of the other features are 3.5” touchscreen on the back, smile shutter (which is cool), dual image stabilization, microSD card, and is HD movie capable. I also love how easy it can be to use, as there are just 4 normal buttons: power, capture, zoom, and review. The touchscreen is nice to use and the camera has plenty of advanced features I’m sure I’ll grow into.

About two months back we also invested in a camcorder, to capture all the fun and special moments when our son arrived. After doing a bunch of research and comparing, I decided on a Canon HF100. I wanted a Full HD camcorder, but with memory being as cheap as it is, I wanted to record on SD card. This would be cheap and easy to upgrade later. I also did not want a built in hard drive, as this would likely be the first thing to break at some point in the future. The camcorder is plenty small, but not too small as to make it difficult to hold. I’ve just started to use it, capturing both videos and stills, and the built in still camera actually takes better pictures than the old DSC-P8. I have Adobe Premier software to burn the HD DVDs, but I’ve been reformatting Dena’s laptop, and the CD/DVD drive broke (good timing at 2 months before the warranty expired) midway through the reformat, so the movie making and DVD buring is on pause until the new drive arrives. The extended length battery is a must as the stock one lasted just barely 1 hour, and the extended battery will last over 4 hours.

Andrew_Stirling_30_Aug_2009

Andrew_Stirling_30_Aug_2009
Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

Please welcome Andrew Stirling to the world. He was born on Sunday, 30 August 2009. He weighed in at 10 lbs, 8 oz and just under 23 inches long. Yes, I know this post is almost 3 weeks late, but a lot has happened. Dena required a transverse C section because only his head and one shoulder would come out, so they needed to make a second incision to make more room to get him out. This led to Dena loosing 2.5 liters of blood, which led to several transfusions, monitoring, complications and a total of 2 weeks in the Aberdeen Maternity Hospital. I must commend the staff and say that they did a great job of taking care of her and Andrew.

I had only planned to take 2 weeks off of work, but since the first 2 were spent in the hospital, I took another week off of work, and the three of us have been adjusting to life at home fairly well. Dena is breastfeeding, and Andrew is sleeping 3-4 hours at a time during the night, which means that we are not getting the sleep we used to. I'm amazed at how many diapers (nappies in the UK) he fills. We went through over 27 diapers during the first 4 days at home. Andrew is now just at 11 pounds and completely adorable. He only seems to cry when he's hungry, needs to be burped, needs his diaper changed, or just wants to be held, hugged and cuddled; other than that, he sleeps.

Yes, I'm still alive and almost a family of 3

Wow, I just looked at the date of my last post, which was almost a year ago. I guess the newness of moving to Scotland had started to wear off at that point. There have been plenty of times that I've meant to post on here, but truth be told, I was just too lazy, and a tiny bit sick of being behind a computer, as I am for most of my work day.

I'll give a nod to Joy for prompting this post. It's actually a pre-announcement of my son's birth. Yes, part of the last nine months have been spent witnessing the grown of my unborn son. What a magical experience. So, due to that, there will be more regular updates to this blog.

I've also set up a twitter account @mechanicaldan I'm just getting started, but if you have a twitter account, let me know so I can follow you.

Google Chrome scroll fix

I downloaded Google's Chrome internet browser and it's been really sweet for a first attempt. Overall, I like the layout and have become an instant fan. It's definitely FAST!!! It loads so much faster than Internet Explorer 6, and you can surf faster also. If you take the time to read the Google Chrome comic book, you'll get an understanding of why.

My one big complaint has been that I could not scroll up with the trackpad on my HP laptop. I wasn't the only person. Fortunately, with some time, PaulusDev has come up with a working solution. I downloaded it here and now I have scroll up. Yea!!

Finally went motorcycling in Scotland

As you may know, I've been really bad about not posting anything for a few months. There have been things goind on, so here's some highlights. I went back to the US for couple weeks at the end of June, Dena and I took a weekend trip to Paris the first weekend of July, then two weeks of vacation in France mid July, and then a weekend trip to London the first weekend of August. I have lots of pictures that I need to get uploaded to my Flickr site. I just haven't had anything REALLY exciting to post about until now. Well, maybe I have, and I've just been lazy. :) Back to my motorcycle ride.

Yes, I've been here for over a year now, and Dena and I have been for little rides on both bikes out of and around Aberdeen, but I have not been on a serious motorcycle ride. I haven't had any business trips planned for a couple weeks, so on Monday, I asked one of the guys at work with a brand new 2008 GSXR 1000 if he wanted to go riding this weekend. He agreed, so all we had to do was hope for good weather. It rained all week, but finally on Saturday things started to clear and the sun came out. I cleaned the Kawi, and Sunday was looking good! I wanted to get my TomTom set up to record the route we would take, but I didn't download the software in time for this ride, and I still have to wire an adapter for 5V power.

We met up at work this morning, and he brought another friend of his along with a '06 GSXR 1000. Both of them were in leathers and both had scuffed knee pucks, so I knew I was in for a good time. WOW, could both of them set a pace!

The ride started about 11 am and I just got back at 5:30 pm. We put on roughly 250 miles. The roads over here are incredible! Very few truely straight stretches. The pace was close to the ton most of the time, and quite terrifing. I was probably riding at about 90% of my ability most of the time trying to keep up. I was always following because as long as either one of them was in front, I could jugde the corner speed. Most of the corners are blind, but somehow they just knew how quick they could ride through them. Unlike the US, the corners are not posted with a suggested corner speed sign. Here, there were really just 3 items to help judge corners, and they were "SLOW" painted on the road, and either a sign indicating a corner or a sign with black and white alternating arrows pointing into the really slow corners. In my opinion, not really helpful, but with all the corners, they'd have to put up a LOT of signs.

I just about ran off one of the corners early in the day. After a series of 80+ corners, this one was much slower, and I braked really hard for it leaving a nice black skid mark from my rear tire. I did get slowed down in time, but ended up jamming my right foot down as I skidded with the front tire briefly on some gravel as I was almost stopped. My right big toe is now purple from jamming the nail to the inside of my boot. Then, about midday, I ended up running a little wide on a corner, but luckily there was no car coming. Overall, I had a blast! The roads over here are excellent. I just wish the corners were marked a little better. I'm hoping there are a couple more sunny weekends to go out riding. Everyone keeps telling me I need to go ride some of the roads on the west coast. So, I guess I need to go plan and ride some of the roads on the west of Scotland. :)