Connor Bevans’ Personal Blog

Yes, that’s right, a few days ago Sony announced that they would be releasing the DualShock 3 controller (which includes rumble, a feature the SIXAXIS didn’t have) for the PlayStation 3 in April at the price of $55 USD. That’s $5 more than the old controller, and still retains the existing SIXAXIS technology, which enables motion sensitive controls. In general Sony seems to be dong well, with the Blu-Ray victory and games like Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Metal Gear Solid 4 coming up, Microsoft and Nintendo might actually worry about losing sales this year. We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? Source: Sony’s Press Release on the subject 

Well, if you’re like me, you shoot a lot of stuff at high ISO because you don’t want to use flash as it will give you too much specular light (making things look super glossy), and want to be able to get more natural lighting. The problem with a high ISO is it gives you a lot of noise and grain, and trying to remove it with Photoshops built in tool is terribly inefficient, but I’ve got a GREAT plugin for Photoshop, which patches it right up. Noise Ninja sells for $44.95 for the home version, and 79.95 for the pro version. 

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Well, Creative Zen dropped the price of their 8 GB music player to $150, the same price as the 4 GB iPod Nano, yet which one should you get? Pretty obvious choice here, the Zen has a bigger screen, more memory, an expandable memory slot, longer battery life on music, and pretty much everything the iPod has, except for one thing; iTunes. While it’s not ALL about iTunes, it does make it a bit of a harder sell. Now that I’ve moved to mac, iTunes has become my hub for music, video, and podcasts. Not necessarily because I purchase songs online (I usually prefer a physical format), but because everything is already in there, and instead of pressing sync, I’d have to drag everything into the folder on the desktop. If I was going to get one of the two, I’d probably choose the Zen, but I’m also wondering what everyone else thinks, so give me a comment, and tell me what you’d use.

From NewsBlog on CNET  

Sorry, Just thought that that was SOOO hilarious. And sorry for forgetting to use lens correction…

Well, yesterday I decided to look around for some mac software, and I found MainMenu, find out more about the program in the video. 

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What is with everyone using the expression “buck” as a dollar? Example: “Dude, Final Cut Express is like, 200 bucks!” Really, Final Cut Express is the price of 200 male deer? Never knew. How much would that be in dollars? Probably millions, I mean, going out and capturing 200 deer, and then if any of them weren’t male having to find more would probably take a lot of time and money, and probably violate animal rights, so I guess that would make it an illegal buck smuggling act? Maybe there’s a huge marketplace for that somewhere, like, I dunno, wherever ONLY male deer are needed. Yes, as the title suggested this is the first post in a series which looks into the deeper side of everyday expressions, see, this post really made you think, didn’t it? No? Well, it made me think…Of writing, and a deer in a golf shirt! *Chuckles* I guess that this series is partially about not taking things so seriously, but lets not make it more than it is.

Apple updated the MacBook lineup today, but the MacBook was the most changes was the MacBook Pro. What the Pro received today was the multi-touch trackpad of the Air, faster CPUs and Video Cards, and the option of the LCD being backlit on the 17 inch model. I do appreciate that they now have 512 MB of video memory in the Pro, and a slightly faster CPU, but, I have to say, what’s so good about multi-touch? “Rotating photos is easier than ever.” Woah! Do you mean that when I take a photo into aperture I no longer have to click the rotate button! “Easily move back and forward pages in Safari, without ever leaving the touchpad.” OH MY GOD! Are you serious? I don’t have to move my aching fingers to the keyboard and press command+(left or right) to go back and forward, thank goodness, ’cause I’m so lazy I can’t move my fingers a centimeter or two to go backwards or forwards! Thanks Apple. Well, in case you didn’t realize, I’m being sarcastic. Multi-touch is cool, but not really more effective in this scenario, and its hardly a breakthrough in technology for a trackpad. The old MacBook Pros had multi-touch, it just wasn’t being utilized in software. Hopefully Apple will do something to help those guys.

So, we’ve all heard about the 3 red lights of death, and the whole thing about how the Xbox 360 is incredibly unreliable. Heck, maybe it happened to you once or twice, but not for me! No it has not happened once! It has happened FOUR TIMES! And no, it’s not even giving me the lights, meaning that as soon as Microsoft gets it they’ll say, oh…It’s not broken…Yet, even if they do give me a “new” one, it’ll be one that they didn’t ship of the older, less reliable version. I guess that’s business with Microsoft. So finally, after four times, I’ve started to consider upgrading to an Elite, hoping that it will be better. But what I’m wondering is what you think, so please, leave a comment and tell me what you think.

 PS - I haven’t called Microsoft yet, and I don’t know when I will, but the Scientists in the Bevans Extra Lucid Lab (BELL Labs)  have calculated that the chance of me doing so soon is approximately 1.32 percent.

Not until just a few days ago did I realize how difficult it is to build a website when you’ve never done it before. I had several problems with the WordPress installation, mostly due to the fact that WP was auto-installed with Media Temple’s tool, giving me an out of date version, and forcing me to go into FTP and update. FTP has been fairly slow, although the internet in general has been slow lately, however the client for FTP was excellent, as I was using Transmit. But at least once it’s done you don’t have to do the whole thing again. You might be wondering why this post is written as if it was to be said in a monotonous voice. Why? Because…Me=Tired…If you’re wondering what I’m using for hosting it’s a Media Temple Grid Server.

  Well, I just got back from the last day of Podcamp Toronto, and I had a Blast! Among the people I met in person were definetheline, Chris24, NichM, Chris Brogan, and many more. Most of them were on twitter, so here is a page with many of the people’s twitters. I met a lot of new people this year, and had a fantastic time. Visit the Podcamp Toronto Wiki for more information, and if you were there, PLEASE add your twitter to the page or comment.