Work Comments & More Photos

I’m in College Station, Texas for the next two weeks running my experiments for my dissertation.  I met with everyone at Disaster City today and with Robin’s new students and got most everything worked out as far as basic logistics.  Tomorrow I’ll be setting up SARGE in the computer lab and thoroughly testing the entire system I’ve built for data collection with some real users.  While I was wandering around Texas A&M campus today I found some nice flowers (1) and then after it got dark I attempted some astrophotography (2) with the T1i.  And of course a post wouldn’t be complete without an Alex photo (3).  This one is from the morning I left, he had a fun breakfast.

Photography and my Bulldog Cookie

So I got a new Canon T1i today. I love it. I really missed the SLR form factor since I got rid of my Minolta D7 and A1. They were good, but awfully noisy at night (and I wanted to do night/astrophotography). At that time my little Canon P&S produced pictures as good as the A1 (and I sold the D7 to get the A1) so I ditched the A1 on eBay. After 2 years I have come to realize just how the P&S for factor limits some types of picture taking. Sooo….. after 3+ years of looking into a real DSLR, I took the plunge. I was just doing some test shots around the house with Alex and Cookie wanted to butt in. I managed to get her looking completely ridiculous and like Cujo in the same sequence. Here is the combined shot for your viewing pleasure.
dumbasscookie

E-Book Publication, Take 2

Well, Amazon has announced the Kindle DX today. It’s got a near-full-page sized display and native PDF support. So, no longer is there a need to create a smaller e-book screen sized version of our scientific publications as I mentioned here. (Thanks Amazon!) The price for the DX is not too much higher than the Kindle 2 either, so it seems pretty attractive to me. After it’s released we’ll have to see if the PDF support is as good as Amazon claims.