RCNevada

I took my newest camera, a Nikon D90, for a walk out at the wetlands park on E. Tropicana.

There are gravel trails leading into the brush, but for the less adventurous the paved trails make for an easy meandering stroll to the ponds, where there are always water birds to see.

You hear a lot more wildlife than you see because most of the other critters stay low in the brush.

Be aware that there is no shade over the walkways, so while this is a comfortable walk this time of year, but come summer it’s going to be an early morning event.

While I’m on the subject of Wetlands Park; did you know that the Park Service has a sense of humor?
This is their sign pointing the way to a Scenic Overlook

This is the walkway to the Scenic Overlook.

And this is the magnificent vista you can overlook.

I know people love their pets, but Fujifilm’s latest feature: dog and cat face recognition in the FinePix F80EXR is……. er, strange.

From the Fujifilm site.

Incorporating the world’s first Auto Dog / Cat Detection function, the FinePix F80EXR is able to detect dog or cat faces*, optimizing focus and exposure for pet photos that will delight everyone. An auto-release function can also be selected to automatically shoot the photo when the pet is looking directly at the camera.

* *Up to 10 dog or cat faces per photo; cannot detect pet faces in profile; cannot detect faces in scenes with both dogs and cats.

Here is the link to the list of detectable dogs and cats.

I was going to poke fun at Fujifilm, but I got to thinking about how many people treat their pets better than their human relatives and I think somebody just hit niche market pay-dirt.

It won’t be long now before some breeder starts advertising their animals based on how photogenic the parents are, and a whole new industry will be born. –Plastic surgery for dogs.

An old house here in Las Vegas.

I’ve known Mike from the Hostility blog for something on the order of twenty years, but I didn’t know he had written about his paranoia until I edited the post on Madness Beckons about it.

I couldn’t get any explanations from Mike beyond, “I’ve been watching closely and I know I’m right!” So I decided to post his original, and the post from Madness Beckons in their entirety.

First the unedited post from Hostility (for a nominal fee I’ll translate it in to English):

Power bill
Posted on February 18th, 2010 by Mike

So let’s talk about our power company would have been done but the increase of our power bill payment by changing the frequency range of the power and 60 Hz hundred 90 Hz so makes everything run faster but still using the same power so what is it mean everyone k I’m being charged three when I use one

Then the post from Madness Beckons:

Mike over at the Hostility Blog thinks that the local power company(Nevada Energy) has raised the frequency of the power coming in to our homes from 60hz to 90hz, so the meters will run faster and they can charge more for the same amount of power. –He thinks he’s being charged for 3k every time he uses 1k.

According to a mutual friend, Mike is a systems administrator and programmer for a local finance company. He does his job well. Keeping the network up and making whatever changes are needed to the program. Proving that he’s not stupid.

Why then does he believe what anyone can disprove with an O-scope you ask?

Because, through the use of his superior intellect and phenomenal reasoning capabilities, he has managed to prove, using logic well beyond the ability of the common man to understand, that his power bill on his poorly insulated mobile home is “too high.” Therefore the power company, the source of all evil, has implemented a nefarious scheme to overload our circuits, burn out our motors and make our meters spin faster in order to collect three times as much money as they are entitled to. –It couldn’t be a rate increase or crappy insulation making his bill higher and it couldn’t possibly be happening to him alone, so it must be some kind of a conspiracy.

The human race: Providing endless entertainment to logical people everywhere, since the beginning of time.

What’s left to say? Madness is right, about both the human race and my old friend Mikey. –They’re both batshit crazy…. But funny as hell.

I’m a little behind the curve on game technology, so I just heard about Microsoft’s Project Natal.

What it is, is a motion sensing camera setup that attaches to the Xbox 360 and takes the place of the traditional controller.

With this unit in place you become the controller. Like a Wii, but without a physical device in your hand.

The up side of this technology is that you won’t have to worry about losing or breaking your controller or having flat batteries.

The down side is that if you don’t remember to keep your drapes closed, the neighbors will see you playing air-handball or air-racing and probably start avoiding that “crazy” next door.

Infinite Wisdom is finally more than a dream. From their website: “Our first assignment for our company, Infinite Wisdom, launches an iconic German Brand to America.”

“KINZO AIR combines kinetic origami with intense workplace studies to not only increase efficiency, but do do it in an elegant and streamlined fashion.”

This is the sort of furniture they make.

It’s definitely upscale, but it would look cool in an architect’s or graphic artist’s office.

Two German women rented a “Wicked” van in Alice Springs, Australia for a 17 day sightseeing trip.

The problem was that whenever they hit a puddle the van would quit. This combined with the vehicle running out of oil by 800km and then again at another 400km, made them call the Wicked hot-line. They were told to take the van to Darwin so a company mechanic could look at it.

When they got to Darwin the company said they could return the van if they were unhappy with it.

Let’s review: The van dies whenever a dog pisses on the tires and it sucks down oil like cold stubbies on a hot day. Now why wouldn’t they want to keep it?

At any rate they asked for a refund for the unused days on the rental and were told it just ain’t happening.

The representative for Wicked did have a brief comment for the press.

The Wicked depot boss yesterday would not talk to the Northern Territory News.

“It’s all good and I don’t care, so f… off,” he said.

Wicked spokesman Stephen Sealey was not available for a comment.

Ah, yes. Customer service at it’s best.

I’m on Twitter and so far I’m following a grand total of nine people. And I’ve got 4 followers. Yippee!

–Tell me again why I’m doing this?–

Lonely Planet #lp has links to blogs and articles I wouldn’t find under other circumstances, but the bloggers I follow on Twitter rarely have anything to say that I can’t read on their blog. The only advantage I can see in using Twitter instead of bookmarks is that you get a heads up on the current subject matter so you can decide if you want to read it or not. –Unfortunately, this isn’t really an advantage for me, because I usually read the blog anyway.

Some of the tweeple? I follow, are on my list just because I was curious. Two of those are with the Whitehouse press corps, including press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who just started, which means I’m going to stop following them soon. –They-are-boring!
Let’s face it, most tweets are boring, some are just more boring than others.

I’ve have also discovered that most of the tweets, in most groups, are nothing more than a collection of “me too’s.” –You want to talk about boring.

I have a a number of things that annoy me about people on Twitter, but far and away, the most annoying thing I run into, so far, is the number of self promoters who don’t understand how much I, for one, dislike seeing the same tweet from the same source over and over and over. –In the last 12 hours I have received 12 -count ‘em- 12 tweets, on the same blog post from the same source via friend feed, twitter feed, twitter meme, et al. —Come on guys, re-tweets from other people are good, they indicate a degree of popularity, but to tweet yourself endlessly? Why? —-I saw it the first time, and the second time, and the third……….

Because of this I stopped following the tweets of two twits within a few hours and I’m about to stop following a third.

I really and truly think I’ve missed the entire point of this exercise. I can see it’s use in letting others know about traffic accidents, fires or parties and I can even see the point of tweeting about free pizza –especially free pizza. But why would so many people insist on tweeting what they are having for lunch? and why would anyone who’s not invited to said lunch care?

I guess I’ll stick with it a while longer, (It’s sort of a morbid fascination thing) as I try to figure out the fascination some people have with it and more importantly what’s in it for me.