Category: Life

Thunderbirds

The valley in which we live has once interesting quirk: we are in the flyover path for Air Force Academy celebration flyovers. This morning, the familiar sound of jet engines directly overhead on a practice run had Jack and I wondering about just when the graduation ceremonies are going to take place this week. According to this KRDO News 13 story, this year’s AFA graduation is Wednesday and the Thunderbirds will be performing.

Sometimes they fly so close overhead that one expects to read the numbers on the fusilage. It happens just often enough to be exciting, and not so often that I get tired of seeing them (and being pummeled by the noise.)

Kodak EasyShare DX7590 Zoom

Here is a review of my new Kodak EasyShare DX7590 Zoom camera, which is an early birthday present from Jack. It has lots more features than my DX3900, but the most important one to me is the 10x optical zoom. I was sad when I couldn’t find it on the list of gphoto (used as a driver by gthumb Linux photo software) supported cameras. However, it finally occurred to me to check dmesg, which usually reports whether Linux is “seeing” a USB device that has just been plugged in. When I didn’t see any messages for my camera, I checked and found that I hadn’t seated the USB cable properly to the docking station. The next time I attempted to access my new camera via gthumb, it was recognized as a USB PTB Class Camera and I was able to download my test photos.

So far, the only downside of my new camera versus my old camera is that most of the surface of the camera is filled with the controls, back LCD and lens. I am used to holding my old camera with my left hand and adjusting the controls with my right hand, and the new camera has to be held with the right hand. I imagine I will adjust.

Trickle Down Palm

Last week, my sister wrote and asked if I wanted her Tungsten T3 Palm, which had been superseded by a machine one of her clients had given her. Since I guessed the T3 would be miles better than my ancient Palm III, not to mention being in color instead of green and black, I wrote back “Yes!” My sister is one of those incredibly organized types who mails the same day she promises to do something, so it was delivered today.

I used the Palm OS Desktop HOWTO to find out how to sync the a USB Palm to my Linux desktop. It is much quicker than the serial sync process I was used to: in fact, I thought at first the sync must have failed it took so little time.

I was hoping that the screen of the T3 would be easier on my middle-aged eyes, and it is. I was also delighted to see what Bejeweled looks like in color, as I was not sure if my registered copy would install on the T3. Bejeweled comes in very hand when I am stuck waiting for the train to pass, or am standing in a long line at the store.