Tvindy

My Room

Jenny has asked me to post photos of my dorm room this year. You've all seen it before, of course. And if you've been reading me long enough, you'll remember my room from last year. Now, by clicking on the above photo, you can see pictures of my room as it looks now. Next year it will be even more fantastic.

Orionoir's Camera, the Better Rooms Contest, and Four More Hours of TV

The auction for Orionoir's old camera has ended, and I lost. Less than four hours to the end I was in the lead with $61.01, but then, after I went to bed, there were sixteen more bids which almost doubled the price to $117.50. If I hadn't gone to bed early that night, I might have been able to fight my way into the lead. I certainly hope that dflinker appreciates what he's getting. I was going to ask Orionoir to autograph it in permanent ink, so I could display it with pride on my bookshelf.

Today was a big day for me. The U of O Housing Department has an annual "Better Rooms" contest in which students in the residence halls can compete for the best-looking room. I first learned of this contest last year. Back then my room was in no condition to compete, but I've had a year to plan, and, while I haven't had time to implement all of my decorating plans, I've accomplished quite a bit. The judges who visited me today expressed genuine admiration for certain aspects of my room. I doubt I won, though. There are about 40 contestants competing in three categories, and, like I said, I haven't had time to do everything I wanted to in terms of decorating. Still, it was nice to have guests to whom I could go on and on bragging about every tiny aesthetic nuance of my room. The results will be released tomorrow. When I have more time, I'll post photos of my beautiful room.

It's Friday once again. In just a few minutes, I get to lie down for four hours of spectacular scifi action (about which I will no doubt complain tomorrow). Highlights:

• After all these years, tonight we will finally learn how and why the klingons lost their ridges. Actually, they went a good way to explaining this last week, but tonight we get the full story. (If you're not a hardcore Trekkie, the issue is this: Why in Kirk's time did all the klingons look so ludicrously human and act so deviously rather than warriorishly, but then in the movies they started having ridges as they continued to do in Picard's time, yet on Enterprise, which precedes the old series, they have ridges, and, yes, I know this isn't actually a sentence?)
• Boomer (the one in space) realizes she is a Cylon. This should be good.

The Camwear 100

Nearly a year ago I blogged about Microsoft's experimental SenseCam, which is a small digital camera that you wear around your neck and that takes hundreds of pictures throughout the day, allowing you to document your life. So far, Microsoft has yet to announce any plans to actually release it onto the market, thus depriving mankind of one of the greatest inventions ever made.

But there is some good news. Another company has released a nifty gadget that works in a similar vein. The Camwear 100 by Deja View is a wearable camera that captures video. You wear it on your eyeglass frame or the brim of your hat. Everything you see in front of you is recorded continuously into the buffer. Whenever you see something interesting, you just press a button, and the device dumps the 30-second content of the buffer onto a 64MB SD card. The genius of the device is that you don't have to worry about not being quick enough to catch the action, since you only need to push the button after the action has finished. The SD card that comes with it can hold sixteen thirty-second clips.

Lisa's SAR video blog has a great entry about it complete with downloadable clips she took with the device. I was really impressed with the quality. You can also see a good review of it by PC World.

Unfortunately, it currently sells for $330, which is a bit out of my range, especially considering the battery is only good for four hours. I would want something I could wear all day long.

If you've ever read Earth by David Brin, then I'm sure this product looks quite familiar to you already.

Book Stuff

As I said yesterday, I got the introduction to the book done, and I e-mailed a copy to the contributors who gave me a lot of helpful feedback. Wil found a typo that everyone else missed. Michael pointed out some stylistic issues and also made the point that I should inject more humor into it. I definitely agree, but nothing funny came to mind when I was writing it. Alicia gave her general approval. 'Mouse sent in his blurb in which he explains in far more detail than he ever has before why he doesn't want to get a blog of his own.

I really appreciate all the helpful responses. It looks like people feel the intro is generally good. Michael's view that it lacks humor was my main concern. My writing usually contains far too much humor, so it's a bit strange that I've run out. But I am happy that I said everything that needed to be said in the intro. It may not be fun to read, but at least it serves its purpose.

School is really overwhelming me right now, so I'll have to wait a few more days before I complete the assembly of the book. Once again, I apologize for all the delays. I didn't mean to draw the project out this long, but it should be done soon. In the meantime I'll be getting back to my regularly scheduled blogging.

Delayed Blogging

Sorry for my inactivity of late. I'll start posting again tomorrow. I finished the book introduction and have received a lot of really good feedback from the contributors, which I will write about tomorrow.

Four Hours of TV

Friday is a big day for me with all the new episodes of scifi programming. Here are my thoughts on what I saw tonight:

Enterprise: I can't believe this is the last season, especially now that they've finally got some competent writers. It amazed me that they're actually tackling the issue of why the Kirk era (pre-movie) Klingons looked so different and so human. This is something fans have been upset about for years, but the writers didn't want to deal with it, except once with a very cryptic comment by Worf in an episode of DS9.

Stargate: Was there a point to this episode? It was an above-average flashback episode, but that's not saying much. I like that the Furlings were finally brought up again. I was afraid the writers had given up on ever introducing them, but, if they're being explicitly mentioned, that must mean we'll soon be seeing them. Oh, and that remark at the beginning about apes and gorillas being two entirely different species made me cringe. I really don't want to have to go into this again.

Stargate Atlantis: The Ancients just keep getting lamer. And why were they returning to Earth? Aren't they supposed to have ascended? Why wasn't the time-traveling Dr. Weir even slightly interested in asking her alternate self for a recap of everything she had missed? You'd think she would take an interest in how the mission had progressed.

Battlestar Galactica: The bathroom scene went on too long and was just annoying. Also, why would it take people with that level of technology so long to enhance an image? I could do it in seconds with Photoshop Elements. That whole speech about the Cylon ship being alive and needing to be treated as a living being before it worked had one tiny flaw: Starbuck tore out its brain in last week's episode. It is obvious at this point that both Cylon versions of Boomer will go through some process of redemption whereby exposure to humans causes them to abandon their evil ways. One of them will die in an act of self-sacrifice.

I'll be spending the weekend getting the book fully assembled. Hopefully I can do that fairly quickly, but I'm taking a couple days off from blogging to free up extra time for the project.

Lauren the Amazing Two-Headed Girl

I went to another Eugene Weblogger Meetup. As always, Michael brought his fast-moving daughter.

Wow

Various Things

This entry is composed of various unrelated tidbits:

• I haven't forgotten about the book. The last few days have been very hectic, but I'm hoping to have the preliminary version compiled and available for the scrutiny of the contributors this weekend.
• I somehow hurt my arm playing this game, and now I can't lift it without intense pain. I skipped trampoline class this afternoon to keep from making it worse, but I was able to work on my skills online.
• Tim of Reality Sandwich is planning to tear down his blog. I certainly hope he reconsiders.
• I've been enjoying the comments (157 in less than a week) to this entry of Hacking NetFlix.
• That's all I got.

Dinner

Tonight there was a special Valentine's Day dinner in the dining hall. I've been trying to avoid refined sugar, but I was helpless before the pink.