when i was shooting those moon pictures the other night, i noticed a red pixel against the black sky in the pics when i zoomed in, and came to learn that it was a “hot pixel”, or a pixel that’s always red on the ccd. i had never noticed it before, because it blended in well enough on pictures with normal lighting.

since i’ve had my camera for less than a year, canon said that they’d repair it for free under the warranty, although i have to pay shipping there. luckily the service center is in irvine, so shipping is only going to be a few bucks, and hopefully they’ll get it back to me quickly.

the way to check to see if your dslr has any hot pixels, is to take a photo with the lens cap on with a long-ish exposure, and then carefully look at the black image for any colored spots.

on sunday i took dave and his russian cohorts out wakeboarding. marine stadium was closed, but the water out in the long beach bay was a warm 75f. we spent about 5 hours out on the water, and today i was hurting pretty bad. this weekend’s supposed to be a bit cooler but i’m sure i’ll take out the boat on either saturday or sunday, so if you wanna get out there let me know.

the wife is getting up on just about every go, and is ready to start jumping the wake. well, maybe not yet, but at least she let’s me pull her fast :)

i get to watch all kindsa good 80’s, 90’s and current music videos on the DTV channel “the tube” 5-5. it’s an over-the-air digital channel that just plays music videos 24/7, which you can’t even find on cable these days. if you have an HDtv, you should try hooking up a regular tv antenna to it. the local hd channels look better (compared to long beach charter hd), and there’s a few sub-channels (like 5-5) that are good, and all for free.

anyway, in the video for “it’s my life”, the singer mark hollis is totally just doing an impression of cameron from ferris bueller’s day off, doing an impression of principal rooney (when he’s pretending to be sloane’s father) it’s fantastic if you are familiar with both references, smirk-worth if you know of one, and pointless if you’ve never seen either. =p

i started and finished it (on normal mode) this weekend. i didn’t like it quite as much as COD2… there were too many cut scenes that you couldn’t skip through, and it just seemed more cartoony, like instead of just planting bombs, you had to press a series of buttons and rotate the sticks in certain ways to simulate putting in and arming a blasting cap. i did like that you can “cook-off” grenades though, that is, pull the pin and hold it for a while before you throw it so it’ll explode when it lands.

so on to the next game. any recommendations?

there was an awesome full moon out tonite, so i pulled out the dslr and snapped a few pics. thanks to eric for explaining to me the adjustments that i needed. this is with my digital rebel xt with a 300mm lens and no tripod:

Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0/2 EV
Flash: Flash did not fire

there’s a few different ones on my flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentomatic

so i’m watching oprah and some guy that read all 32 volumes of the encyclopedia britanica is answering the audience’s stupid questions, and one of the was: “what do the numbers in your SSN mean?”

i always thought it was just a serial number that is issued in order, but apparently there is some significance to it, although it seems this oprah guy wasn’t completely correct.

but anyway, the first 3 numbers represent where you are geographically from. the oprah guy said that the two numbers in the middle represent the age you were (in a coded form) when you got your passport, but according to wikipedia, it’s only a group number that doesn’t have to do with age, or according to another theory your race.

the final 4 numbers are just a serial number that is issued in order.

an interesting read if you’re bored:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number 

[nelson] ha ha! [/nelson]

can you tell which sites are real and which ones are scams? i got a 9/10:

http://www.siteadvisor.com/quizzes/phishing_0707/ 

A Jamaican wants a job, but the foreman won’t hire him until he passes a little math test.

“Here is your first question”, the foreman said. “Without using numbers, represent the number 9.”

“Without numbers?” the Jamaican says, “Dat is easy.” And proceeds to draw three trees.

“What’s this?” the boss asks

“Ave you got no brain? Tree and tree and tree make nine,” says the Jamaican.

“Fair enough,” says the boss. “Here’s your second question. Use the same rules, but this time the number is 99.”

The Jamaican stares into space for a while, then picks up the picture that he has just drawn and makes a smudge on each tree. “Ere you go.”

The boss scratches his head and says, “How on earth do you get that to represent 99?”

“Each of da trees is dirty now. So, it’s dirty tree, and dirty tree, and dirty tree. Dat is 99.”

The boss is getting worried that he’s going to actually have to hire this Jamaican, so he says, “All right, last question. Same rules again, but represent the number 100.”

The Jamaican stares into space some more, then he picks up the picture again and makes a little mark at the base of each tree and says, “Ere you go. One hundred.”

The boss looks at the attempt. “You must be nuts if you think that represents a hundred!”

The Jamaican leans forward and points to the marks at the base of each tree and says, “A little dog come along and crap by each tree. So now you got dirty tree and a turd, dirty tree and a turd, and dirty tree and a turd, which makes one hundred.”

“So, when I start?”

so i clearly underestimated her ability. before yesterday, taka had never even tried the wakeboard, having failed getting up on the water skiis twice last season, and having seen so many other peeps get yanked around by the boat to no avail. but yesterday, shali, sanam and me and taka took out the boat for some nice, non-pressure runs, and on her 4th attempt was up, and by the end of the day, she was up on just about every start.

it seemed we all figured a few things out yesterday… sanam almost got up, and probably will next time out. i think two instructions that i figured out in helping a beginner get up is 1. don’t lean back so hard and 2. turn your board immediately in the direction of your front foot. and shali’s getting pretty good at towing a skiier, and is finally letting me pull her fast enough so that a jump-able wake forms :)

around 4pm, the weather started getting pretty cold and it even started to sprinkle a bit. the water was cooler too at around 70F, so we dropped off the boat and had margaritas at acapulco, which is becoming the standard post-boating place to be.

we saw jen and james riding their cruisers right past us when we pulled the boat out of the water. that’s two weekends in a row. weird!