I’ve been doing a little online spring/fall cleaning. With all of the changes Facebook keeps making to its security settings and policies, I have been debating closing my Facebook account finally. I am not sure if I will end up doing that, but we will see. I also noticed that Facebook keeps track of connections to your account and I found one that didn’t appear to be from me. That kind of freaked me out a bit. Needless to say, I’ve gone through and changed a lot of my passwords . I’m also heavily debating making my Twitter feed private now, but I’ll let the “freaked out” feeling hopefully pass before I decide on that.
Many iPhone, Blackberry, and Android smartphones are now equipped with high definition video cameras. Most smartphones, however, lack a standard tripod mount connector.
Camera Tripod Mount
GorillaPod Flexible Tripod
I recently needed to mount my iPhone to a tripod to help a friend shoot a show. This made me remember the GorillaPod Flexible Tripod I had seen at the store. For approximately $17, I was able to create a tripod mount for my iPhone 4 that worked great for stationary filming. Granted, this mount is not suited well for a moving camera. All you need is a a GorillaPod Flexible Tripod and a 1/4-20 Coupling Nut. The nice thing about this mount is that it will hold most any smartphone or camera.
Here’s my iPhone 4 mounted using this quick and easy rig.
A friend today posted on Facebook that the Admiral Twin Drive-In Theater had burned down before she ever got around to going. She was unhappy that she would probably now not get to see a drive-in movie. I decided to go on Wikipedia.” I searched for “drive in theater” and was instantly brought to the page for Drive-in theater. Skimming through the article, I found nothing about current theaters, but the “See Also” section of the article contained a link to List of active drive-in theaters.
This list contained theaters for Australia, Brasil, Canada, United States (broken down by state), and India. Listed under Oklahoma were Admiral Twin Drive In Theatre in Tulsa (uh-oh, this is out of date), Beacon Drive-In in Guthrie, Chief Drive-In in Chickasha, Corral Drive-In in Guymon, Tower Drive-In in Poteau, and Winchester Drive-In in Oklahoma City. Now, I was afraid this list was outdated since they still listed the Admiral Twin, but then I read the small description under Admiral Twin which stated “Note: The Admiral Twin burned down on 9/3/10, no word on if it will be rebuilt.” So short a time after it happened and Wikipedia has already been updated. Almost any other website listing something as random as current Drive-In Theaters would have been out of date much longer.
Is Wikipedia always accurate and update-to-date? No. But I have found over the years that it has given me far more right correct answers than incorrect answers. When everyone can edit everything (basically) on the site, it is bound to have inaccuracies at times. This same editing power, though, is what has allowed it to become one of the most vast and up-to-date repositories of knowledge I’ve ever found.
I recently found the files from my Senior Design Project at the University of Missouri – Rolla. Unfortunately, this was in 2005, before the era of cheap high-definition cameras. I really wish I had a better video of all of this! I will be posting a fair amount about it in the next few days. We attempted to create an autonomous surveillance aircraft. Here are a couple of videos of the flight.
Here’s the video we put together for our final presentation. The first few minutes are spent testing out all of the electronics before flight.
Here is the raw video from the onboard camera.
I hope to post a lot more about this project soon.
Starcraft II looks beautiful with all graphics settings at high, but many people have computers that are a few years old and cannot handle these higher graphics settings. While I was messing around earlier today I decided to get a screenshot of the same scene with high graphics settings and then low graphics settings.
Starcraft II with High Graphics Settings
Starcraft II with Low Graphics Settings
Even at the lowest graphics settings, the games was easily playable. In some ways, the lower settings were easier use because everything was very basic and it was easier to see many of the units against the background. At times, I have found myself distracted by all of the extra details and colors in both the background and the units of Starcraft II. I plan to play with my settings until I find those which give me the best gameplay.
A friend has been successful in playing Starcraft II on Windows XP with just a 2GHz AMD Athlon processor. His computer does meet the bare minimum for video card and RAM. I do not know his exact graphics settings, but they were a mixture of low and medium. According to him, the gameplay was smooth and he had no issues. So, if you have a computer that is close to, but not quite, the stated “minimum requirements,” you may be surprised at just how playable the game is without having to shell out $100s for a new computer right now!
As a final note, to those that look at the difference between high settings and low settings and think, “the low settings look horrible,” how many times did you play (and possible recently played) using the graphics settings shown below?
Here is a sample video using the rear facing hi-definition camera of my iPhone 4. Make sure to set the video’s playback resolution to 720p and watch it in fullscreen mode. The non-fullscreen video only has a width of 480pixels.
Here is a sample video of the same location using the forward facing camera of the iPhone 4. Make sure to set the video’s playback resolution to 480p. The non-fullscreen video should be wide enough to show full detail at the camera’s resolution, but watching it fullscreen will give a better appreciation of the differences in the two videos.
As soon as I heard “iPad,” my initial reaction was to dislike the name. However, after seeing the device, I wonder how much the iPad name was influenced by the “PADD”s in Star Trek TNG and DS9.
Regardless of possible name influences, it is nice to see more technology go from Star Trek to reality. Now, bring on the Holodecks!
. I’m also heavily debating making my Twitter feed private now, but I’ll let the “freaked out” feeling hopefully pass before I decide on that.
