David's Blog

I saw the new Pixar movie Ratatouille tonight.

Visually, the movie is stunning. The animation is just fun to watch.

The villain (a food critic) in the film is so well done (Peter O'Toole does the voice).

This is a great film. I certainly liked it better than Cars...but not as much as The Incredibles.

The movie opens with a very funny short called Lifted about an alien taking his "abduction" exam.

Ratatouille and Transformers are the movies to see this summer.

Technorati Tags: Ratatouille, Pixar, Lifted, Movie, Review

Posted on June 30, 2007 11:07 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

This is sooo painful...but so much fun! Watch Tara as she realizes she is not as popular as she used to be (with a guest appearance by Paris Hilton). Thanks to my bro for the hookup.

Technorati Tags: Tara Reid, Paris Hilton

Posted on June 29, 2007 2:10 AM | Permalink| Comments (1)

Jessica came to visit me a couple of weeks ago. She brought a great Texas-attitude to San Francisco that I really missed and appreciated. The pictures from the weekend are here.

We crammed a lot into a weekend visit. I took her on an ILM tour first (of course). Then I forced her to walk up Lyon street to see how serious the hills are in San Francisco (your calf's will be begging for mercy). We walked around Pacific Heights checking out where the rich people live before returning to the Marina.

On Saturday, we headed to the Francis Ford Coppola winery in Napa Valley, Rubicon Estates. For $25 a person, you get to try 5 wines and get a tour of the winery. The tour included a visit to the wine caves. After the fact, I learned I get to bring a visitor for free with my Lucasfilm ID...oh well. We had lunch across the street at the Rutherford Grill, which was great.

When we returned to San Francisco, we did the 49 Mile Scenic Drive, which gives you an amazing view of many facets of this city.

On Sunday, we had clam chowder at Tarantino's in the Fisherman's Wharf. We had a great view of the ocean, but we spent most of our time watching the World Famous Bush-man scare people. Last thing we did was visit the seals on Pier 39.

Technorati Tags: ILM, San Francisco, Rubicon Estates, 49 Mile Scenic Drive, Fisherman's Wharf

Posted on June 24, 2007 11:38 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)

Thanks to my main man E-Dog for keeping me edumacated. This is a very inspiring video...it gives you some ideas about the new directions computers are headed. I love this kind of stuff!

I had some issues with the video playing from its source site, so I switched to the youtube version.

Technorati Tags: Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Seadragon, Photosynth, TED

Posted on June 21, 2007 10:20 PM | Permalink| Comments (5)

This phone looks awesome!

• 3 inch 800x480 screen - Can show a full web page without zooming
• Slide out QWERTY keyboard
• Touch-screen
• Password entered via Fingerprint Reader (also doubles as 4-way direction pad)
• Uses Windows Mobile 6 Professional
• 2 Megapixel rear camera and a front facing camera for video conferencing
• WiFi and Bluetooth
• Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint
• Opera Web Browser and Internet Explorer
• About the size of a Motorola Q, but thicker (119 x 61 x 21.5 mm,
  198g)
• Works with Microsoft Exchange (wirelessly syncs your email/calendar/contacts/task list...no need to connect to a desktop and sync)

Not sure when it is coming out and who will offer it, but this is the phone I want!

Technorati Tags: Toshiba G900

Posted on June 19, 2007 1:15 AM | Permalink| Comments (5)

This weekend I did the 49 Mile Scenic Drive around San Francisco.

I noticed the "49 Mile Scenic Drive" signs around work, so I looked it up on the Internet to find out what it was and where it went.

I haven't met a single person in San Francisco that has driven the 49 Mile Scenic Drive. Most people didn't even know what I was talking about! That's a shame because it is an amazing drive. Highly recommended!

We tried to use this map combined with the street signs to navigate.

The map is terrible. Many of the streets are not labeled. It does not have enough detail to help in some of the more twisty areas. Some of the map is just plain wrong if you follow the street signs.

Not so fast street signs, I'm not done with you! The street signs are hard to find because most of them are washed out and non-distinct. They are also missing in many key intersections.

I created a new map for the 49 Mile Scenic Drive using Google Maps that is much better. It has all the detail you need and it is in agreement with the street signs.

There are lots of sights to see along the way. Here are a list of 49 points of interest to see along the route. The crummy map mentioned earlier has the 49 points labeled.

When I go again, I'm going to use my map for navigation and the crummy map and the points of interest list for seeing the sights.

If you want to take a "virtual" drive on the 49 Mile Scenic Drive, try the new Google Street View. I'll get you started...click here to begin at the Civic Center. You can actually follow the entire route and look around along the way. It is more fun in person, but this gives you an idea of what to expect.

Here are some of the sights brought to you by Google Street View:

• Telegraph Hill
• Chinatown
• Fisherman's Wharf
• Lombard Street
• Palace of Fine Arts
• Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge
• Twin Peaks
• AT&T Park
• Chestnut Street (my hood)
• Alcatraz
• Fort Point
• Letterman Digital Arts Center (LDAC) in the Presidio (where I work)

Posted on June 18, 2007 10:49 PM | Permalink| Comments (1)

I was having some problems with Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 locking up under Windows Vista. I tried reinstalling, but it didn't help. I tried various compatibility modes and that didn't help. After running out of options, I decided to just start over and do a clean install of Vista and then install Premiere Pro.

Unfortunately, that didn't help either. Further investigation revealed that Adobe knows that Premiere Pro 2.0 does not work with Vista and has no plans to fix it. The follow on to 2.0, CS3, will work on Vista. I guess I have to upgrade to CS3. :(

BUT...along the way I noticed something different about installing Windows on top of Windows. Previous to Vista, if you did a clean install on a system that already has Windows installed, you had to pick a different folder name for the OS because "C:\Windows" is already used by your previous install.

Then when you pick your user name, Windows can't create a folder (user profile) with the same name as the user because the old one already exists. So instead of using "C:\Documents and Settings\Dave", behind the scenes, Windows would create "C:\Documents and Settings\Dave.COMPUTERNAME." I *hated* my stuff stored in "Dave.COMPUTERNAME" as opposed to just "Dave."

Vista works differently. When I did my clean install, my Windows directory was moved to Windows.old, so the new install went in "C:\Windows." The user profiles were also moved under Windows.old, so my new user profile is the same as the old one..."Dave." Nice! I like this much better!

Another change related to user profiles is the path. Instead of "C:\Documents and Settings\Dave", Vista uses "C:\Users\Dave". That is much better because...

• More concise
• Less letters to type
• No spaces...so no need to use quotes around a path name if you are accessing files without spaces in them (mainly a command line issue)

Posted on June 16, 2007 1:32 PM | Permalink| Comments (7)

I never get sick of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Here he is at the Tony Awards...

Technorati Tags: Triumph, Insult Comic Dog, Tony Awards

Posted on June 16, 2007 1:47 AM | Permalink| Comments (0)

The hits just keep coming from E-dog...

Posted on June 16, 2007 12:51 AM | Permalink| Comments (3)

I have been using the beta version of Windows Live Writer to write my blog posts for a while now. I love it. A new beta recently arrived with a few new features:

• Support for tables
• Spell checking as you type
• Format text and hyperlinks via right click menu

Get it here.

Posted on June 15, 2007 1:44 AM | Permalink| Comments (2)

Big ups to E-dog for sending this in. It has some cuss words in the captions, so it may not be work appropriate.

Posted on June 15, 2007 1:14 AM | Permalink| Comments (0)

I ran across this today. It is subtle, but good to know.

An escape character (backslash '\') is handled in two ways in C++:

1. The C++ preprocessor ignores escape characters
2. The C++ compiler respects escape character

In Windows, the backslash has a dual use: it is used to separate files and directories and it is an escape character. This can lead to confusion.

So this line...

#include "c:\test\newfile.h"

...would treat the backslashes as file separators instead of the escape sequence "\t" and "\n" because it is parsed by the preprocessor.

This line...

system("type c:\\test\\newfile.h");

...requires two backslashes because it is handled by the C++ compiler. The "\\" is an escape sequence for a single backslash (a complete list of escape sequences is here). If you only used single backslashes, the "\t" would be treated as a tab and the "\n" would be treated as a newline.

Now, just to make it a bit more confusing, consider this...

#define COMMAND "type c:\\test\\newfile.h"

system( COMMAND );

...you have to use two slashes because the preprocessor will just replace 'system( COMMAND )' with 'system( "type c:\\test\\newfile.h" )', which will be processed by the C++ compiler and thus respects escape characters.

So...backslashes are always treated as escape characters EXCEPT when they are used by the preprocessor exclusively (i.e. the compiler never sees them) like the preprocessor directive '#include'.

The more you know!

Posted on June 6, 2007 1:03 AM | Permalink| Comments (3)

This is a bit crude, so don't play this at work.

This clip is from the 2007 MTV Movie Awards...Sarah vs. Paris. I'm all about Sarah Silverman these days...I think she is hilarious...and easy on the eyes. I started watching her show, The Sarah Silverman Program via Xbox Live Marketplace this weekend...good stuff!

If you haven't seen her roast of Pam Anderson, it is worth a viewing...

Technorati Tags: Sarah Silverman, MTV Movie Awards

Posted on June 5, 2007 11:42 PM | Permalink| Comments (0)