Elliot Sadler Pocono Burnout!

Elliot Sadler Pocono Burnout!, originally uploaded by Daytona24.

I was at the inaugural Camping World NASCAR Truck race at Pocono Raceway on Saturday with my dad, my son and some friends oh and of course my camera. Did I mention I had my iPhone4 along as well, of course I did. I took 150 photos, 30 of which took place during this burnout. Of course that means I didn't take this video but I did take quite a bit of video with my iPhone but this was the video I wanted the most, no matter who won the race we were sure to get a burnout, Elliot Sadler won, and he made good on the burnout.

Little Duck, Big Fish

Little Duck, Big Fish, originally uploaded by Daytona24.

Ok, sometimes you set up a shot, look at what your going to take a photo of, check the lighting and your focus and you get a great shot. Of course sometimes you just get lucky. I'll admit when I took this photo I didn't see the fish. I didn't know the fish was in frame, heck I didn't even know the fish was in the water! However when I returned home to look at my shots I was pleasantly surprised to see I got a photo of the duck AND a fish! This particular photo was taken at Hersheypark in Hershey, PA.

Fly Away

Seagull Ocean Flight, originally uploaded by Daytona24.

As someone who is attempting to learn more about photography and the camera I spent oh so much on I was pleased when I took this photo. Over the course of just two days I took ALOT of photos, many of family but also to my families dismay I took photos of rocks and stuff. Where we were sitting on the beach at Ocean City, NJ I had access to a group of seagulls eating on the rocks, I knew this one was going to take flight, I'm just glad when it did I got the shot I was hoping for.

A couple hundred photos and about 5 I was pleased with, I guess you can call that progress.

Game Room Arrives!

Its tough to think back to 2005 when the Xbox 360 arrived on the scene, for a full year after that I didn't even buy one, now I don't know what I'd do without one (or two or three). The Xbox 360 has changed so much since 2005 that its just a fragment of the system it was back then, and we keep saying, what more can they do?

The most recent addition is Microsoft's Game Room, its basically 360's answer to Sony's HOME. You download Game Room for free and it acts as your central hub, there are also two "game packs" to start that you can download, in total about 30 games. The trick is each game costs either 50 cents to play, $3 to own or $5 to own a version you can play on your 360 and your PC (if you have Games for Windows Live on your PC). Its should be said that each game comes with a 10 minute trial version which you can play either for 10 minutes or until you get bored whichever comes first, once you leave a game you forfeit whatever remaining time you had on that game. You also get about 20 tokens to start which you can use to get more play time on games you chose. I'm not exactly sure how the token system works just yet.

I spent some time yesterday getting hooked on Game Room and here's what I found. Its actually alot of fun, the games themselves range from poor to pretty cool, they are all retro games and play much differently than what we play today. All the games are from the original ROMS and include games from the Arcade, Atari and Intellivision game systems. The Atari and Intellivision games really show their age but some of the arcade games are actually still fun! I found myself spending more time than I thought I would in Game Room.

Game Room itself also allows you to decorate your Arcade and if you purchased any games on day one you earned a free Mascot for that game which will walk around your arcade (mascots can also be bought). There is a Medal system for earning new themes etc and you can Challenge friends and visit friends arcades as well.

Your avatar does not walk around Game Room, while I thought that would be cool I realized that not having to walk around makes moving around Game Room alot easier, sure it would be cool but most people would have complained about it. Its really all about the games here.

I don't mind the pricing, it could have been lower but if they keep the pricing at $3 a game max I could see myself buying more (I've bought 3 so far). The other thing is if you have two 360's you can buy on one and then bring your memory card over to your 2nd and essentially have the game twice, once on each 360. My wife will never play any of these games, but I like knowing that she could!

The PC cross platform play is cool, and you get a $1 break if you buy it for "Play Anywhere", I opted not to do this after playing a bit on the PC, I have never been a keyboard gamer and its not going to change now. What I do like is you can still Upgrade later for only $2 if you chose to go to "Play Anywhere", they really could have made you just pay the $3 again.

Achievements are for Game Room itself, not each game. You can earn Medals by playing your games, but its really designed to get you to buy more games. The controls are pretty solid and options in Game Room are plentiful. One of the coolest options is the ability to REWIND while playing a game in non ranked mode, on and role and just got killed, don't worry just rewind a bit and do better next time!

After thinking of the types of games and the fact that these are actual Arcade and game ROMS in Game Room its crazy to think of where this thing can go, there are HUNDREDS of cool games they can add to this thing, and I'd love to see some Colecovision games added VERY SOON! Just thinking of games like Mr. Do, Zaxxon, the Star Wars arcade game, all those Coleco games I had, Q-Bert - the options are endless!

Right now based on my friends list there are not a lot of people taking advantage of this, and if you haven't you should, its loads of fun and not to be missed. For those people that are complaining about the pricing lets remember that games these days cost $60! Give it a try, go ahead and buy a game, decorate your Arcade and just have fun, after all that's what its all about.

On and BTW, the retro Arcade sounds that play while your browsing the Showcase Arcade and your own Arcade ROCK!

iPad

Although it's late I felt perhaps I should get my own thoughts down as it pertains to Apple's announcement of the iPad.

Let me first say that I was not overwhelmed nor underwhelmed by the device I am simply interested. Maybe it's because I don't have many of the hangups that others have such as no multitasking or video conferencing and that it's not based on OSX. Right now I am more focused on what I can use it for and comparing it to other devices that do similar task such as the Zune HD and the Kindle. I bought a netbook and while I like it I agree it's underpowered and I don't use it for even browsing the web on the couch like I thought I would, actually I tend to use my iPhone instead.

I won't go much more in depth because after all I am typing this late and on my iPhone and sending it via email to my blog. So will I buy an iPad, the answer is simple, I am not contemplating if I should get one but which one should I get? I like the idea of 3G but not the monthly cost and I question if I'd ever really be using it outside of Wi Fi range (I do after all still have that iPhone). So at this point I just need to figure how it will work for me and be used in my technology world and take it from there.

I'll close by saying that while there is a lot of dislike out there I ask you to remember when the first iPhone was released for $600 without an app store. At that time it was hailed as the second coming and if I've learned anything since then it's that Apple makes cool stuff that's fun to use and right now that's good enough.

Why So Sirius?

I love it when I mull over something (especially technology) forever and when I finally take the plunge and buy whatever it is I'm buying I realize that yes indeed it was the right decision. This time it is of course Sirius Satellite Radio.

My interest in Sirius began this summer, however by the time I figured out how much it was going to cost me I decided that I could probably pass on it. At the time it seemed like one of those things I just "wanted" which is often the case with me. Not set to just leave it be I found a way to enjoy Sirius without that major cost, Sirius Internet Radio. I used Sirius Internet Radio for most of the summer while outside and it was pretty good, a very good selection of music without commercials.

There are a variety of alternatives to a paid service like Sirius, two which come to mind are Pandora and Last.fm and of course your own mp3 collection is a pretty good alternative as well. While I use both Pandora and Last.fm they tend to play artists and songs that you know already and your own mp3 collection is songs that you already own. The bigger issue with your mp3 collection is that it can be pretty large and unless your going to spend time making all the right play lists you can spend allot of time skipping songs rather than listening to songs.

Listening to Sirius Internet Radio was a pleasure and the song selection on your channel of choice is usually good enough to keep you listening and enjoying it. When the summer was over I switched to listening at work and with football season in full swing began listening to ESPN and Sirius NFL radio.

Just last week while listening a banner popped up on the web player with "great deals on radios" so I decided to give it another look and it turns out I found a pretty good deal. Sirius was offering me a Stratus 6 with Vehicle Kit AND a Free Home Kit for about $65 so I took the bait. I figured at that point that the radio was pretty much free and if the home kit would work in my office at my work I could get Sirius NASCAR coverage (which you can't get online) just in time for the new season to kick off.

After just a few days of listening I can say that I'm hooked, you just can't listen to normal radio after listening to satellite radio. Thankfully the home kit install was easy and the one window in my office faced the right direction and the car install was pretty easy as well.

I already have my favorite channels and my daily listening schedule of CNN in the morning then off to ESPN with The Herd, then NASCAR around 1 p.m. and music after 3 p.m. As for the music channels, I'm still sampling the various channels (though I already have my favorites) and I just discovered "The Pulse" channel 12 tonight!

The radio that I bought is your basic starter model and I'm already planning to upgrade to the Starmate 5 so that I can get the ability to pause and rewind and program the radio to switch to programs at certain times.

Needless to say I am enjoying Sirius very much at this point and while I can't really say that I should have done this a long time ago, circumstances were different with it a few months ago, I kind of wish I did. If your contemplating Sirius check it out at the very least online to sample the channels and my guess is you'll get hooked just like I did.

2010 - The Year I Completely Abandon the CD.

To be fair I can't remember the last time I actually USED a CD other than to rip it onto my hard drive and I can't remember the last CD I bought for myself, but up until now they've still kind of stayed around.

When I began to rip my CDs onto my hard drive I started putting them away, so most of my CDs have already been packed and placed out of the way. Yet a bunch still remained, mostly CDs of artists I don't listen to anymore or ones that I have 5 CDs that have been replaced happily by a Greatest Hits compilation, however up until today they were simply just taking up shelf space in the office (okay toy room).


This past weekend I packed up the balance of those CDs, leaving behind a small stack that needs to be ripped onto the hard drive and leaving out a few of those "collector" case CD's for display. One bane of existence remains however - my wife still uses CDs!


How is it that someone such as myself has allowed this to happen? Well to be fair we tried once to rectify it with one of those FM Transmitters but really do those ever work? So with no real way to connect an MP3 player to her car stereo she continued to use "gasp" CDs. This is evident with one of the remaining stacks of empty CD cases of which the CDs are in one of those cases that hold CDs on the go (really why do they even sell those anymore, actually do they?).


This year I am determined to change her life! I guess we'll need to look into replacing that stereo finally but at this point at least they don't cost as much anymore. We already have an available MP3 player for her to use, and of course she already has her phone as well.


So yes its about time to get this done.

It's much easier now to abandon CD's since most places you can get music digitally you can now get it without that pesky DRM. Both places I use which include Zune Marketplace and iTunes offer DRM free purchases so no matter which store I buy it at I can easily play it on the other stores player and/or software. I also really enjoy the convienence of the Zune Pass on the Zune Marketplace (but that's another blog post).

It's funny I alway's worried that my CD's wouldn't last forever, that something would happen to them and they'd become unplayable. Turns out something did happen to them, they became irrelevant.