Kristie is home!

Kristie has returned from her trek. Back from Alaska, with a newly minted Master's Degree and ready to start whatever comes next. Welcome back, Kris!

New Hawk Camouflage

Was driving out today - stopped at a traffic light. I happened to browse up at the electric wires. I glanced at what appeared to be four standoffs where normally there are only three.

A closer look revealed a hawk hidden amongst the standoffs waiting for prey to appear.

PSAC Winter 2013

We went to Kellie's PSAC Winter 2013 meet yesterday. Here are the videos.

• Jump 1
• Jump 2
• Jump 3
• Jump 4
• Jump 5

Off to the tundra

For those who don't already know my daughter Kristie Bresz is heading to Alaska for the next 5 months.

I am putting this to help her blog get better scores in google search.

Her blog is here:

A Tundra of Fun

Good luck Kris.

F1 and Speed to split

This is upsetting news. I've been an ardent follower of Steve Matchett , David Hobbs and Bob Varsha. Their knowledge of the sport is wonderful, their teamwork is top notch and they have just enough sarcasm and wit sprinkled into the broadcast to keep it interesting without making it silly. I sincerely hope that whatever NBC does with the broadcasts we don't end up with an entire season of time shifted nonsense. Back a few years ago when Fox broadcast a few of the races in time shifted fashion they changed broadcast crews, and they were terrible.

mint.com - Hello and Goodbye in 24 hours - Ads gone wild

Yesterday I tried mint.com. Today I deleted my account. Quicken was asking that I upgrade to the 2013 version for $60, but mint.com was free to try and could be lower ongoing, with a better interface to iPad. My account is now deleted for the following reasons:

1. Unable to set goals - I loaded all my accounts, everything, including mortgage. When setting up the goal to payoff my mortgage the tool was unable to recognize that I had a loan. LOSE
2. Too many ads - Switched to the iPad to see if perhaps it was better. Unfortunately, all that happened was a boatload of ads.
   • I see you paid an ATM fee, here's a bank that doesn't charge those
   • I see you are a good saver, ING has a great rate I have an ING account so that is a pointless ad
   • Quicken loans has great rates on your mortgage, perhaps we can save you money

Goodbye!

Mutant Alien Butterfly

Yesterday we went downtown to eat at Station Square in Pittsburgh. After eating we were walking down the steps and saw what appeared to be an alien mutant butterfly.

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Note when looking from the side those bolts next to it are those heavy duty 1" bolts used to hold buildings together.

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I did some research and it appears to be a Royal Walnut Moth. I think my pictures look better!

F1 Series so far

6 races. 6 winners. Great competition. Alonso atop the leader board. Interesting qualifying. Michael P1 in Monaco, only to be sent back to 6. Can't wait for Austin.

2012 Formula One Season Starts Now

Sitting and watching qualifying for Australia. Since some of my faceboook friends may now know results, I will post my thoughts here.

Should be an exciting season.

Six former world champions in the field.

Qualifying

Q1

Kimi failed to make it out of Q1. Put a wheel on the grass, did not make it to start/finish in time to turn a final flying lap.

Red Bull fairly far back in the pack, hopefully they are waiting for later rounds to turn it up a notch, but they are struggling for down force.

Q2

Alonso beached the F2012 half way through the session. Yellow flag then red flag.

5:00 to play - top of the time sheets looks like last year. Hamilton, Button, Vettel, Webber.

Mercedes seems to be the engine to beat.

Alonso time held for a while, but just as the session ended he was pushed to relegation. No Ferrari in Q3.

Q3

4 former champions still in the hunt: Hamilton, Button, Vettel, Schumacher.

Hamilton P1. All McLaren front row Red Bull pushed to 5, 6.

More tomorrow when the season starts down under.

2011 Canadian Grand Prix

2 plus hours of red flag. Lots and lots of rain. But a great exciting race. Vettel showed a flaw in the last lap and Button took advantage. Last 10 laps were ultra exciting. Always fun when cars switch from full wet to intermediate to dry tyres. Very glad that Fox kept the tried and true broadcast team of Varsha, Matchett, Hobbs, and Buxton. Guess that is the benefit of Fox owning Speed TV. Over to Speed TV for interviews.

Riding the rails

On NJ transit the conductors are much like many metropolitan train conductors I imagine. The one interesting thing is that they have pads of paper and hole punches. They seem to do strange things with these. For instance this morning a young lady was paying for her ticket with cash. I was too distant to hear the interchange with them, however after she handed him a 5 dollar bill he reached into his pockets and produced a pad of pink pages. He took his mighty hole punch and punched 9 very specific holes on the paper before handing it to the young lady, I think he retained a copy of the punches but I cannot be sure. When he came to me I handed him my ticket (a piece of paper with printing on it) and in exchange he handed me another piece of paper with printing on it. This paper had the numbers 2-23 printed on it. At some point further in the journey he came and took this paper from me. Odd.

The Event

So far I have been enjoying this program. It is of course far fetched, talking of aliens, teleportation and other such things. Today however a very stupid thing happened - not stupid in the scientific sense, but rather in the "how stupid can a character that is supposed to be the Chief of Staff for the President" be stupid. For those that haven't yet seen the April 4 episode this is a very minor spoiler. Agent Lee is discovered as a sleeper, upon discovery he searches frantically for a way to escape, only when he is almost out of the white house does the CoS order a lockdown of the building. To quote Bugs Bunny: "what a maroon!"

A few iPad frustrations

Overall the device is handy. Here are just a few frustrating things about the iPad:

• the email search capability only searches header fields and not email body
• iPod and iTunes seem to be lacking a few details like I cannot easily connect to my iTunes server I can't be sure if this is due to the new home server utility or not either way I don't like it this should be simple
• I still hating the autocorrect - the blackberry shortcuts are by far better
• I still can't find a task list manager I like - outlook task list manager is marginal, lotus notes is a disasster, I've tried appigo todo and a few others none seem to be quite what I want
• I don't like that many of the apps are buy now use later, not enough trial versions

Life with the iPad

Have loaded a few handwriting applications. Don't have one that in like yet. I was speaking with a friend today and we were lamenting the fact that Palm Pilot writing capability or similar wasn't included. The auto-correct is a bit dicey. Maybe it's jut my fat fingers but I seem to always be moving the cursor around when typing. While typing this post it disappeared and I had to go looking for it again. Once again the I wasn't capitalized. The shortcuts I have in my blackberry are very cool and I wish I had then here. I like the financial apps but they always seem to be just a little lacking.

New iPad

A few weeks ago I finally picked up an iPad. So far it has been interesting. I've loaded apps to take notes in meetings although the OCR isn't quite there, track my 73932 todo items, read mail and surf. Still experimenting, not sure if I could use it as my only device but it is fun. I notice spending in dribs and drabs has increased as apps and iTunes hit me for $2.99 here $1.99 there. I just loaded a blog reader which fortunately pulled in my google reader rss feeds. The facepad app is a little clunky. I don't really like the auto spell check it frequently guesses wrong and I still cannot quite get the keyboard to work quite right. Overall I'm happy but not ecstatic with it. I do think that this device or ones like it could help turn the bend on *stupid* applications that user cannot possibly understand. The CNBC and Bloomberg apps were great.

Astronomy Pic

You are here! Read more about photo.

Another Big Race Day - Sunday May 30

Time to fill up the DVR!

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F1 - Turkish Grand Prix - Looking forward to the 4 apex turn 8 and to see if Red Bull can continue its domination. I have both drivers and their chassis in my Fantasy F1 Team

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Indianapolis 500 Not quite as much fun as when it was Monaco, Indy and Coca-Cola but a lot of racing nonetheless. I haven't really followed the time trials for the Indy, which I normally do. I still recognize quite a few of the names - many are now 2nd and 3rd generation racers - Andretti and Rahal at least on former F1 racer - Takuma Sato and Sara and Danica are back in the pack away. Could be an interesting race.

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Coca Cola 600 Haven't really been watching a lot - looking forward to being in Charlotte later in the year.

Rebuttal on Game Zone Review for Wii Formula One 2009

Here's a review of the game. And here is my rebuttal.

I found your review interesting - although I don't have all of the controllers (I am anxious to get a Logitech wheel) yet I have found the game quite entertaining. I've logged about 12 hours so far. I think there is so much more that could be done with steering controls and am hopeful that the wheel will allow me to run at expert mode and be competitive. I currently use Wiimote/Nunchuck pairing.

A few rebuttals - by the way I am firmly in the camp of those seeking a "....a challenging racing game that was built for a very specific hardcore audience....".

As an avid F1 fan I can tell you the game is quite authentic.

On your comment about the arcade style of speed boost: " This is most apparent with the speed boost feature, which is an element you’d typically find in an arcade racing game. " This is in fact 100% Formula 1 authentic - this year in Formula 1 allowed KERS in certain cars - I suspect your testing was with either Ferrari or McLaren, I drive BMW which doesn't have it. This allows a driver to get a speed boost for up to 6 seconds per lap at the expense of 80 kilos (I think) of weight penalty. Turns out it was mostly a bust and will go away next year.

To your comment: "While it’s true that the finish line is your goal in F1 2009, you are prevented from driving consistently because every turn forces you to brake nearly hard enough to stop. " This too is a very accurate representation of F1 - I have spent numerous hours trying to nail the turns and establish the right line from turn-to-turn, this is the art and excitement of Formula 1. With the anti-skid turned off and the traction control turned on - I've managed to solidly nail some of the tracks after a few hours of practice. Many turns in F1 require 225mph to 50mph in 50 meters or so in order to be competitive.

On "Sound: 5.0" Not music to anyone's ears. You are sitting in a race car - with a 900bhp engine running @ 19,000 RPM engine screaming behind you - the engine is all you will hear - as it should be - I would put it on "11" if not for the rest of the family. It sounds exactly as it should.

The championship weekends are quite good - with all of the appropriate sessions. I haven't tried full weekend at Monaco so don't know if they correctly have "Friday" testing on Thursday - but knowing what F1 licensing is like - I suspect it is "spot on".

In general I struggled a bit in the beginning and it took me quite a while to get get any sort of decent position in qualifying when I put in on "Medium" opponents. I've played a lot of racing games - and I would go at least 7 rather than your 5.7.

Wii F1 2009

Well I picked this up last week. Definitely better than Ferrari Challenge but still a few quirks. Controls are still a little dicey. They still don't take full advantage of the disconnected nature of Wii. The steering wheel mode doesn't work all that well. I may need to invest in a Logitech Wii Wheel to see if it is better. Tried setting up a new player and it told me my name was "invalid", unfortunately I can't quite remember what name I put in - but it was Italian-like - Dinataldo or some such and it didn't allow it. I eventually managed to set up a player and start a career. There were three settings: Beginner, Advanced, Expert. Beginner was far too easy - secured a ride on the first or second lap, took pole in my first attempt, and easily took the win in Australia and Malaysia. Decided to wipe that career out and try Advanced. This proved much more difficult, in fact I couldn't get a ride with either BMW or Torro-Rosso and had to settle for racing for Force-India. The good part is the braking is very crisp, but as mentioned, the steering is a bit hard to manage. I hope to have some fun with this.

Some things I hope get fixed in W7

In Vista if you want to make the mouse activate on windows in "hover" mode without clicking you need to go to the "Ease of Access" menu then look at how to make the mouse easier to use. If you however choose to go into the "mouse" control panel there is no evidence of how to make the mouse activate windows via "hovering". Why oh why aren't there consistent ways of finding information? Just truly amazing how difficult they make stuff. I'm sure the entire control panel interface will be completely different for no real reason.