Better yet is Wii Alerts. Sign up there (free) and they will send you an SMS whenever Amazon (or other stores if you want) get the Wii in stock. That happens about once a week for a few minutes.
Get the SMS. Buy. Easy.
That's how I got my Wii, and also how I got one for my sister's family a couple weeks before Christmas.
Principal Skinner: There's no mystery about what happened to Groundskeeper Willy. Why, he simply disappeared. Now let's have no more questions about this bizarre coverup.
My only mod so far is to replace the bass drum pedal. I'm a "real" drummer (though I don't play much)... and I couldn't stand the included drum pedal. It has a huge springy travel, and it triggers somewhere in the middle of that travel (rather than right at the end like a real pedal would).
I have a Yamaha DTXPress electronic drum kit, and was able to use a cymbal pad from that, mounted (on a cymbal stand) right in front of the DTX's bass drum trigger. The bass drum trigger itself doesn't work for some reason, but it does have a nice mount point for the real bass pedal. I had to remove one of the crossbars at the bottom of the Rock Band kit so that I could have all the stuff under the kit where it should be -- the remaining crossbar passes between the pedal and the vertical part of the bass trigger, right on top of the clamp.
To actually connect it, all I needed was a 1/4" female --> to 1/8" male mono adapter (which I already had for playing guitar into the computer).
The Rock Band drum kit seems a little flakey when first hooking up another trigger. I even thought I had broken it because for a while, the included pedal didn't work. I was able to fix it by repeatedly unplugging and plugging it into the port on the main drumkit.
Important tip for testing the triggers... go to the song list in quick play. It lets you change the sorting of the list by hitting the bass drum.
Google mostly uses NAVTEQ data for maps.google.com (they seem to use TeleAtlas when it's an embedded map).
For NAVTEQ data, you can use their Map Reporter to submit information. Once they get around to [1] incorporating the new data, it may then take another few months to filter back to Google and all their other customers.
[1] My street (built circa 2000) is missing from NAVTEQ, so I submitted a report describing the street, and all the house numbers about a month ago. It doesn't seem like anybody there has looked at it yet though.
Burns: Yes, I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?
Squeaky Voiced Teen: Uh, I better look in the manual.
Burns: Ignorance!
... later...
Squeaky Voiced Teen: This book must be out of date: I don't see "Prussia", "Siam", or "autogyro".
Burns: Well, keep looking!
Brian Greene's 'The Elegant Universe' is awful. There is around 10 minutes of actual content, stretched, repeated, repeated, and repeated to three hours. The animations are nice, but almost meaningless. What's left is very vague and according to other posters here, mostly incorrect.
Everything is repeated many times. "Coming up on 'The Elegant Universe'... [clip of physicist talking]"... five minutes later... [the same clip]... twenty minutes later "Earlier on..." [the same clip]." [Next DVD] "Last time on..." [the same clip]
Oh, and did I mention how repetitious it is? Well... it's repetitious.
Actually, a green filter would only allow the green components of the cyan and yellow light through.
And the rest of the cyan and yellow will be picked up by the Blue and the Red filters respectively. You are still just getting 1/3rd of the color wheel with each filter in either case. They should be basically equivalent. The reason they are not really equivalent (and why RGB is better) is that the human visual system has most of its sensitivity in the green area of the spectrum. That's why there are two greens in the Bayer pattern.
Does the clear array have a flat sensitivity level across the spectrum? Where it will give the same data value for the same number of photons striking it with a 700nm wavelength as it would for photons striking it that vibrate at 400nm?
Probably not... but the sensor will have some known characterization and the Bayer->RGB(->jpeg) conversion (that is done in-camera or on the computer if you handle RAW files) will account for this when it reconstructs the full RGB value for each pixel.
If the sensor (for example here) was more sensitive to red, then this would skew the picture results significantly, especially if it picked up and added infrared light to the picture's data which isn't visible to the human eye.
Most digital camera sensors have a infrared filter over them to prevent this. Canon sells a version of their 20D called the 20Da which is specialized for astrophotography. I believe the primary change compared to the standard 20D is the removal of the IR filter.
But does anyone know why sensors use RGB and not CMY? a Cyan filter would let green and blue through, but keep red out, instead of blocking two parts of the visible spectrum for each pixel. This way, by simply switching color space, the camera becomes twice as sensitive to light.
Let me just turn that around for you...
A Green filter would let cyan and and yellow through, but keep Magenta out, instead of blocking two parts of the visible spectrum for each pixel.
The color spaces are complimentary. Each color in one space is halfway between two colors in the complimentary space.
___R___ _Y___M_ _G___B_ ___C___
A filter of any color will, in one color-space allow one color and block the other two, while in the other color space allow two colors, and block one.
RGB is the color space usually used for additive color (i.e. light -- More/different light means brighter). A sensor is capturing light. CMY(K) is usually used in subtractive color (i.e. ink -- More/different ink means darker).
As of tonight, my order for the Apple TV from the Apple Store online is now set to ship on March 20. It had said Feb. 28 until at least this morning. I ordered the day it was announced, so I should be one of the earliest buyers.
I saw Burt Rutan (the craft designer) talking at the Oshkosh EAA convention a couple months ago. He explained how they plan to allow exactly that. The typical SpaceShip 2 Flight will have 8 people on board... That's one Virgin pilot, and 7 "revenue" seats. 6 passengers will typically show up just a day or two before their flight for some brief training. The seventh guest will pay a lot more, and will arrive 2-3 months before the flight for extensive training. They will be the official co-pilot for their flight.
I'm sure you will need to be a licensed pilot going in, so start working on that training now!
When a comment that is a little longer than the "maximum" length gets modded up to +5 informative or insightful, it should not be truncated, requiring an extra click and page load for the 'Read More'. Thank you, have a nice day.
A friend of mine was buying a printer at Best Buy a few years ago and needed a USB cable to go with it. The sales drone tried to convince him that he needed to buy one of the "gold" cables... and that going with a cheaper "silver" USB cable would result in blurry photograph prints. My friend (a computer engineer) almost started to explain about digital signals and all that, but decided it was pointless.
I mean one or two guys used to code/write entire games! Now I don't think anyone of those games listed has less than what? 50 people in the credits?
Check out http://www.experimentalgameplay.com/. It's game developers working by themselves and taking a nugget of a game idea and working on it for no more than a week.
I've been wasting a lot of hours on Tower of Goo Unlimited during the last few days. Many of these games have surprisingly good/sophisticated production design. The gameplay is simple, but very fun.
Of all my Xbox games, the Dead or Alive fighting games are the only ones my wife has ever wanted to play. (Not Xtreme Beach Volleyball though... that would be too much, I'm sure).
It has a good handicapping system in that you can do a team battle, and each pick a different number of people on your team. Her 5 players can usually do decently against my 2 or 3 players.
Slashdot Mirror
Better yet is Wii Alerts. Sign up there (free) and they will send you an SMS whenever Amazon (or other stores if you want) get the Wii in stock. That happens about once a week for a few minutes.
Get the SMS. Buy. Easy.
That's how I got my Wii, and also how I got one for my sister's family a couple weeks before Christmas.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/20/026241
Principal Skinner: There's no mystery about what happened to Groundskeeper Willy. Why, he simply disappeared. Now let's have no more questions about this bizarre coverup.
My only mod so far is to replace the bass drum pedal. I'm a "real" drummer (though I don't play much)... and I couldn't stand the included drum pedal. It has a huge springy travel, and it triggers somewhere in the middle of that travel (rather than right at the end like a real pedal would).
I have a Yamaha DTXPress electronic drum kit, and was able to use a cymbal pad from that, mounted (on a cymbal stand) right in front of the DTX's bass drum trigger. The bass drum trigger itself doesn't work for some reason, but it does have a nice mount point for the real bass pedal. I had to remove one of the crossbars at the bottom of the Rock Band kit so that I could have all the stuff under the kit where it should be -- the remaining crossbar passes between the pedal and the vertical part of the bass trigger, right on top of the clamp.
To actually connect it, all I needed was a 1/4" female --> to 1/8" male mono adapter (which I already had for playing guitar into the computer).
The Rock Band drum kit seems a little flakey when first hooking up another trigger. I even thought I had broken it because for a while, the included pedal didn't work. I was able to fix it by repeatedly unplugging and plugging it into the port on the main drumkit.
Important tip for testing the triggers... go to the song list in quick play. It lets you change the sorting of the list by hitting the bass drum.
SlagheapIsn't Slashdot violating O'Reilly's trademark by using an image of a Camel in association with Perl?
Just sayin'...
Google mostly uses NAVTEQ data for maps.google.com (they seem to use TeleAtlas when it's an embedded map).
For NAVTEQ data, you can use their Map Reporter to submit information. Once they get around to [1] incorporating the new data, it may then take another few months to filter back to Google and all their other customers.
[1] My street (built circa 2000) is missing from NAVTEQ, so I submitted a report describing the street, and all the house numbers about a month ago. It doesn't seem like anybody there has looked at it yet though.
Burns: Yes, I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?
Squeaky Voiced Teen: Uh, I better look in the manual.
Burns: Ignorance!
... later ...
Squeaky Voiced Teen: This book must be out of date: I don't see "Prussia", "Siam", or "autogyro".
Burns: Well, keep looking!
Brian Greene's 'The Elegant Universe' is awful. There is around 10 minutes of actual content, stretched, repeated, repeated, and repeated to three hours. The animations are nice, but almost meaningless. What's left is very vague and according to other posters here, mostly incorrect.
... five minutes later ... [the same clip] ... twenty minutes later "Earlier on..." [the same clip]." [Next DVD] "Last time on..." [the same clip]
Everything is repeated many times. "Coming up on 'The Elegant Universe'... [clip of physicist talking]"
Oh, and did I mention how repetitious it is? Well... it's repetitious.
http://www.rialian.com/agentelrond.jpg
And the rest of the cyan and yellow will be picked up by the Blue and the Red filters respectively. You are still just getting 1/3rd of the color wheel with each filter in either case. They should be basically equivalent. The reason they are not really equivalent (and why RGB is better) is that the human visual system has most of its sensitivity in the green area of the spectrum. That's why there are two greens in the Bayer pattern.
Does the clear array have a flat sensitivity level across the spectrum? Where it will give the same data value for the same number of photons striking it with a 700nm wavelength as it would for photons striking it that vibrate at 400nm?
Probably not... but the sensor will have some known characterization and the Bayer->RGB(->jpeg) conversion (that is done in-camera or on the computer if you handle RAW files) will account for this when it reconstructs the full RGB value for each pixel.
If the sensor (for example here) was more sensitive to red, then this would skew the picture results significantly, especially if it picked up and added infrared light to the picture's data which isn't visible to the human eye.
Most digital camera sensors have a infrared filter over them to prevent this. Canon sells a version of their 20D called the 20Da which is specialized for astrophotography. I believe the primary change compared to the standard 20D is the removal of the IR filter.
But does anyone know why sensors use RGB and not CMY? a Cyan filter would let green and blue through, but keep red out, instead of blocking two parts of the visible spectrum for each pixel. This way, by simply switching color space, the camera becomes twice as sensitive to light.
Let me just turn that around for you...
A Green filter would let cyan and and yellow through, but keep Magenta out, instead of blocking two parts of the visible spectrum for each pixel.
The color spaces are complimentary. Each color in one space is halfway between two colors in the complimentary space.
A filter of any color will, in one color-space allow one color and block the other two, while in the other color space allow two colors, and block one.
RGB is the color space usually used for additive color (i.e. light -- More/different light means brighter). A sensor is capturing light. CMY(K) is usually used in subtractive color (i.e. ink -- More/different ink means darker).
It seems the Apple TV is delayed.
As of tonight, my order for the Apple TV from the Apple Store online is now set to ship on March 20. It had said Feb. 28 until at least this morning. I ordered the day it was announced, so I should be one of the earliest buyers.
Star Wars is good. Star Trek sucks.
Is that enough of a difference?
The Miracle Mile is in L.A.
I get the shotgun seat!
You can have it.
I saw Burt Rutan (the craft designer) talking at the Oshkosh EAA convention a couple months ago. He explained how they plan to allow exactly that. The typical SpaceShip 2 Flight will have 8 people on board... That's one Virgin pilot, and 7 "revenue" seats. 6 passengers will typically show up just a day or two before their flight for some brief training. The seventh guest will pay a lot more, and will arrive 2-3 months before the flight for extensive training. They will be the official co-pilot for their flight.
I'm sure you will need to be a licensed pilot going in, so start working on that training now!
Okay... I admit, there's new information here, so it's not exactly a dupe... but still. Observe:
Note that the second and third links were actually duped in the same day.
Sure that's what you think now, but if you watch enough tampon commercials...
Maybe next time you are at the store you'll think to yourself, "Maybe I *do* need some tampons."That's Reaver territory.
Sorry for the off-topic meta-comment.
When a comment that is a little longer than the "maximum" length gets modded up to +5 informative or insightful, it should not be truncated, requiring an extra click and page load for the 'Read More'. Thank you, have a nice day.
A friend of mine was buying a printer at Best Buy a few years ago and needed a USB cable to go with it. The sales drone tried to convince him that he needed to buy one of the "gold" cables... and that going with a cheaper "silver" USB cable would result in blurry photograph prints. My friend (a computer engineer) almost started to explain about digital signals and all that, but decided it was pointless.
This is some deep shit.
Check out http://www.experimentalgameplay.com/. It's game developers working by themselves and taking a nugget of a game idea and working on it for no more than a week.
I've been wasting a lot of hours on Tower of Goo Unlimited during the last few days. Many of these games have surprisingly good/sophisticated production design. The gameplay is simple, but very fun.
Of all my Xbox games, the Dead or Alive fighting games are the only ones my wife has ever wanted to play. (Not Xtreme Beach Volleyball though... that would be too much, I'm sure).
It has a good handicapping system in that you can do a team battle, and each pick a different number of people on your team. Her 5 players can usually do decently against my 2 or 3 players.
GET READY! FIGHT!
Here's the link to allow two-finger trackpad scrolling on older PowerBooks and iBooks:
http://www-users.kawo2.rwth-aachen.de/~razzfazz/i