The Geek Review

Well it’s that time again when I look back over the year so far and see how I am doing on the New Year’s Resolutions. As I look at the post from the fist of the year all I got to say is none of it really happened. Why? The layoff. After being let go from my job I kind of got into a funk and didn’t really work on anything. Six months later and I am still looking for work. While the national unemployment rate is approaching 10% in California it’s over 11% already. It’s worse around where I live with the counties here having unemployment rates between 13-17%. I have applied for jobs were there were 20 openings that had over 2000 people apply. But, thing maybe looking up as I have a job interview in the morning. I have also gotten gotten some items ordered to complete one of the projects on the list. So hopefully the second half of the year will be better then the fist half.

image via moe.imouto

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Well I had managed to get a little money saved up thanks to in part getting one of my monthly bills paid off and partly do to three unemployment checks in one month do to the way the weeks fell. So I use part of the money to pay off another small bill, increased my savings buffer a bit, and lastly went with my mom today and while she was in a meeting ran over to the books store and got me some more reading material. ‘Cause you can never have too many books laying around waiting to be read and beside I am the guy who has a shirt that reads “Who needs drugs? I go broke buying books.”

I got a couple of photo magazines, one Black & White film photography and one on Photoshop. That’s right I cover the whole spectrum from old school analog to new school digital. I got the latest issue of Nuts & Volts electronics being one of my way to many hobbies. I’m thinking I might get a subscription to Nuts and Volts it would be cheaper then buying it at the newsstand and I wouldn’t have to drive to get it.

I got two sci-fi books, one fantasy, and one historical naval fiction. The naval fiction book is Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian. Which was kind of an impulse buy. I’ve read several of the Horatio Hornblower books and had hear good things about O’brian from a friend that was really into naval fiction. Plus it cant be too bad seeing how they made it into a movie.

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In my random wondering over the net I can across a nice little site thanks to Dancing Queen. The site is Myfigurecollection.net (formerly Tsuki-Board.net). My Figure Collection is part inventory system and part social networking for figure fanatics. The inventory system appears to be pretty complete and if you can’t find your figure you can add it to the database. You can even add your own photos to the collection. I haven’t looked in to detail of the sites features too much yet but, I did get my little collection up. I’ll work on getting some more of my pics up there later. It is a nice way of seeing other collections and maybe meeting people with similar tastes.

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It’s started again. I’m once again trying to learn Japanese. I took a couple of semester while I was in Junior College and been trying on and off for the last several year to learn more on my own.

This time around I’m using a multi-prong more of attack. I have some Kana Flashcards that I have used in the past to learn hiragana and katakana and once I have those down I have some Kanji Flashcards around here some where to use. The second prong of attack is Smart.fm they have a lot of different ways to help learn Japanese and other languages. Then there are the Pimsleur Japanese I CD set that I have. On top of that i have a few text books laying around and I’ve ordered some blank flashcard to make vocabulary cards. I figure if all that doesn’t get me going good I don’t know what will.

I figured that as long as I’m unemployed I might as well get something done, I should have started back in January. I do have a job interview this Friday but even if I get it the job it shouldn’t interfere with my study. As I will have a 30 commute to work to listen to the Pimsleur CDs, which worked out pretty well when I was going to University. We’ll just have to see how things go this time. If I can stick it out I might get good enough to take the JLPT.

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The Roland Jupiter 4 was the fist of Roland’s famous Jupiter line of analog synths and was among one of the first poly synthesizers. The Jupiter 4 is a four voice polyphonic synth with 1 VCO per voice. It also has a built in arpeggiator and and a pitch wheel that could be assigned to the VCA, VCF, VCO or all together. The 49 key synth has 10 preset sounds and 8 user programable memory locations. The strange placement of the preset buttons below the keyboard along with the fact that the preset sounds are unlike the piano, brass or strings they are labeled are among the few drawbacks of the Jupiter 4. Produced in 1978-79 the Jupiter 4 is still sought after for it’s unique Roland sound but not as much as it’s bigger fatter brother the Jupiter 8.

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Well since we had the review of of the Galgrease Juliona Trans figure yesterday, I figured we would have a Galgrease Symmetrical Docking today. So I started digging though the Galgrease posters and only found one Docking image. Which is weird since the Galgrease series is pretty heavy on the female/female action in the second series. And just for that extra layer of meta I used the Laughing Man image from Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell for the censor block. (Just click for the uncensored image.)

I have a few of the Galgrease poster books in my collection. While I would like more they have been out of print for a while and most people that have them for sale on the net want an ungodly amount of money for them. Hopefully they will do a reprint someday.

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Finally got around to do the figure shoot of Art Storm’s Juliona Trans from Masamune Shirow’s Wild Wet West GalGrease series. I did something a bit different this time as a bit of an experiment. I went with a black background and used the camera flash for most of the lighting. The only other light in the room was a 60 watt bulb on the other wall that gave me just enough light to see to frame my shots. Over all the experiment was ok. I would have been better off with a small spot lighting the figure instead of the flash as the lighting changes from one pic to the next a bit depending on how far I was from the subject. But, I don’t have a small enough light to get the effect I was looking for. So I think it turned out ok for the setup I was using.

The usual unpacking porn is also missing from the pics below, but is included in the flickr gallery. If you want one for your own, it look like she is still up for sell at HLJ, J-list, Kidnemo, and Hobby Search.

Some pics after the cut are slightly on the NSFW side.

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Ok this may sound nuts but it is true. A professor at Columbia University, Klaus Lackner, and his company Global Research Technologies, are working on an Artificial tree that collects CO₂ at a greater rate the the real thing.

The “trees” uses plastic leaves that capture the carbon dioxide in a chamber, it is then compressed into liquid form. The “trees” can capture the CO₂ without the need for direct sunlight, unlike traditional trees. Allowing them to be used in enclosed places such as factories and power plants. For every 1,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide collected, the tree emits just 200 kilograms, and are projected to be able to collect 90,000 tons of carbon per year. The trees are still in prototype phase and capture carbon about 1,000 times faster than a real tree. They are not cheap thou with each one costing about the same as a new car. But the rate at which they can capture carbon it more the justifies the cost.

via Ecogeek and Popular Science.

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It use to be that you were not fit to leave the house unless you were wearing a hat. Nowadays most people on a rarely wear one and if they do it is most likely a ballcap. For the longest time I did wear a hat on a regular basses. I rarely wore on for several reason the main two being that I look like a dork in a ballcap, trust me on this one it’s not a pretty sight. The second be that adjustable hats that say one size fits most, well they don’t fit me. When I was working in the restaurants ended up buying my own cloth chef hat as the paper Toque they provided didn’t fit. Well that plus putting a foot tall hat on a guy who’s 6′3″ to begin with.

Any way I did start wearing a hat last year to protect my balding noggin after getting my scalp sunburnt twice. After much searching I found the hat on the left and it worked out but it had a slight drawback. You can tell from the sweat stains that it’s kind of a hot hat to wear. It was ok when I was working indoor and short amount of time it took to mow the lawns. But this spring being unemployed and all I’ve been working in the yard more and the fedora just wasn’t cutting it. So I shopped around for a while and ended up getting the boonie hat on the right. Which after a few day of use has worked out much better. It’s a lighter hat and it is vented on four sides. So it is much cooler to were.

Now all I got to do is get the old hat cleaned up so I don’t look like a slob when I go to town, and maybe fork out some buck and get a nice hat for dress occasions.

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Well it’s the end of an era as Kodak announced today that the will stop production of Kodachrome film. Kodachrome was introduced in 1935 as one of the earliest color films. Professionals loved it for the colors it produces plus it’s incredible storage lifespan. Kodachrome was different from other transparency and negative color films. Instead of having dye couplers incorporated into the film the dye couplers were introduced during processing enabling the film to give better brighter colors and darker blacks.

Even if you have never used Kodachrome film you’ve seen the results, as almost every National Geographic cover photo from the 1950s to the 1990s was done with Kodachrome film. Even that most famous cover of all of the “Afghan Girl” was Kodachrome. If you want to see some great examples of Kodachrome the Library of Congress has a great set of pics from the 30s & 40s up on flickr. Kodachrome is possibly the only film that has both a song and a national park named after it.

Now you may think that Digital Photography is the cause of Kodachrome’s death. While digital may have put the final nail in coffin Kodachrome has been dying for quite some time. While it give great color it does have some disadvantages. First off it’s slide film not print slide film use to be common for both professional and consumers. Starting in the 70s the consumer started moving away from slides do to both cost of film and processing plus it’s easier to look at prints then slides. Because of the nature of Kodachome it’s a fairly ’slow’ film so it was never good for action shots and worked best under bright outdoor sun. Also because of the way it’s processed Kodachorme is more expense and complex to processes the other slide films. In fact there is only one place left in the United States that still processes Kodachrome. All of these factors plus the fact that Kodachrome is less then 1% of Kodaks business lead up to its cancelation.

Now a lot of people are mourning its passing. But I’m thinking there is a 50/50 chance that some specialty film company licensing the tech from Kodak and producing the film again.

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