Tokarski

We spent a few days in the UK on business and were on our way back yesterday (Thursday, January 17,2008). All was going as planned – we even pulled away from the gate early – only to be held up for an evolving ’situation.’ I happened to be listening to the communications channel on board when I heard about a plane ‘landing short’ on the arrivals runway – forcing arrivals to use the active departures runway. We were in the 777 that was first in line to leave when the BA flight (also a 777) had its incident. Miraculously, that harsh landing only resulted in injuries.

(Images via CNN video).

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Some nasty weather blew through last night, immediately followed by some strong sunshine. This yielded a beautiful full end-to-end rainbow right behind the house – there’s no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, only a weathered playground roof cover.

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The chairs for the cast of ‘The Return‘ spent the night in our garage (along with a load of other filming equipment). It was interesting to watch some of the filming last night – on the surface, making movies seems like such a glamorous profession – but in reality it looks like a lot of waiting around and repetition. I must have watched Tim Robbins do the same scene about 5+ times – and, from the distance, I couldn’t see any discernible differences between each. I guess it’s a bit of risk management – capture as much as you can so you can sort it all out later.

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A few moments before this picture was taken, these four horses were galloping around, rearing up, nuzzling each other, and just “sowing their wild oats” (it’s too bad I wasn’t able to catch them “in action”). While out on my Sunday morning drives, I pass by many stables and farms and see lots of horses out and about, but these guys caught my attention. Not a care in the world, they seemed to be working hard at play.

I guess I was engaged in a bit of horse play of my own – I love when I can get away for 90 minutes or so and just drive – not with the intent to get to a specific place, but just for the pure joy of experiencing the scenery, enjoying my car, having some thinking time, and today, being able to really listen to the new Rush album, start to finish, without any distractions or interruptions.

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I remember being amazed at the satellite views available via Google maps the first time I saw them. Yesterday, I read a post on Download Squad that mentioned Microsoft had added about 3.8 terabytes of image data to its Live Maps.

Of course, the first thing I did was load my home address to see what kind of views of the house I could find. Amazing (and a bit scary even). In addition to the incredible image quality and color, I was floored by the ability to change the direction of the view.

While Google has been soundly beating Microsoft from an innovation standpoint, here is one instance where the old lumbering giant seems to be fighting back and making some headway. Of course, expect Google to respond in kind in short order.

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So, after being all excited yesterday about the first single off the new Rush album being available for streaming, I checked back again in the evening and saw that the steaming player was gone. All that was left was a message that said “New single at radio March 12th.”

!?!

And here I thought my favorite band ‘got it’ – build excitement for the new album on the Web by not just making available a sample / clip for playback, but the full song. After less than half a day….it was apparently pulled. Too good to be true – and I resigned myself to having to play radio lotto to hear it again.

After a bit of searching, I read on one of the Rush message boards that some folks were able to extract the location of the source MP3 file from the page flash code and it was already making its rounds on the Web. Disappointing. As a result, the streaming link was taken down until they could patch things up a bit and encrypt the source music file.

Sure enough, the streaming link was back up on the site later in the day.

Much of this could have been avoided by just offering the single on iTunes. That was the first thing I checked – it would have been much easier to drop $0.99 and support the band, rather than to skulk around in the page source looking for the file.

A few minutes ago, I found out that the track is indeed available on iTunes – but only in Canada. It hasn’t escaped notice that the record company listed on the Canadian iTunes is Rush’s own record company, Anthem….. why, again, is it that Atlantic is needed?

Short of creating a new Canadian iTunes account, does anyone know of a way to get this song (legally)?

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So, it’s been a week since Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at Macworld. I wanted to take some time to let the hype wear off and the reality distortion field to dissipate before making the decision to start saving up my pennies for a possible purchase in June.

It certainly still looks as interesting and drool-worthy as the day Jobs made his compelling sales pitch in his demos. But, what would it feel like in regular use – how would it feel in my pocket?

Since I had a hard time visualizing 61mm W x 115mm H x 11.6mm D – even with all of the pics circulating – I cobbled together a quick physical prototype from a scrap of wood to see how it ‘felt’ (sure….I know I’m missing all of the nice rounded and smooth edges).

Compared to my trusty Sony-Ericsson T610, it’s wider and taller, but considerably thinner. Popping it in my pocket, it just fits between the end of my pocket and the crease in my pants while sitting.

I’ve always been a fan of candy-bar style phones as opposed to clamshells, but I’m not too sure the iPhone will hold up to the wear and tear of normal use. It may look like a piece of art suspended in a Lucite cylinder, but it probably won’t hold up over the long haul unless they’ve done something special with the screen. Also, I’m not all that concerned about the lack of tactile feedback from the interface since I’ll be looking at the screen whenever I’m interacting with the phone bits – iPod feature interactions may be another story (a physical next button would be nice for quickly skipping a track).

From an overall features and functionality standpoint (based on the Apple pages and all of the Web discussions in the last week), it’s probably a bit more than I need. I really don’t need a ’smart phone’ – I’m wondering what a nano tier of the phone would look like….

Still, it’s an iWant but definitely not an iNeed.

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Our first measurable snow arrived on the 1st of December. The girls reveled in a snow day (no school!) and everyone just basically hunkered down inside and stayed warm. I also took this as a sign to change to my snow tires on the wagon.

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Boy, for a few moments, it was really coming down this morning. But, once the sun came out a bit later, all traces were gone.

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I recently met a consummate car-guy who’s had the good fortune of owning over seven Ferraris (obviously, he’s friend of a friend, since my circle of friends is more likely to be proud of owning a string of Hondas…).

He’s also very active in the Ferrari community and seemed to be the kind of passionate Tifoso you’d expect behind the wheel of such exotic machinery. So, it was with great surprise that I learned that this certified Ferrari nut was currently driving a Lamborghini Gallardo. (???!!!)

When I asked what prompted the switch of loyalties, he explained that Audi’s ownership of Lamborghini had imbued the car with a combination of Italian passion and Teutonic precision – maybe an optimal balance between the right and left hemispheres.

And, he followed this up with a priceless quote that spoke volumes about the switch: “…and because owning a Ferrari is like dating a super-model with syphilis.”

(I just knew I had to write that one down and share it).

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