imroot.com

Contributed by Filterman

Youtube.com, Google and some of the other more popular streaming sites have gone to using a lot of .flv video. It is a flash based video compression mechanism that is pretty light, starts streaming very quickly, and works across platforms with little effort. Anyway, the problem is if you want to save a video, it can be a bit of a pain. But there is a cool little Firefox extension available from videodownloader.net that does it for you.

I stumbled across this video the other day of this new interface technology that Microsoft is working on. It is an interface like they use in the movie Minority Report, which Tom Cruise was moving stuff around on the computer with just his hands in mid air. Pretty cool stuff. Like most new technology it still has it’s quirks, but it looks pretty cool.

http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6096513.html?tag=cnetfd.ld1

Cingular has had some interesting advertising campaigns over the last few years. I have kind of enjoyed the unique ways they have come up with to picture the cell phone signal in the “Raising the Bar” commercials. But now, this latest “Least dropped calls of any network, and Cingular isn’t just saying the leading research company proved it.” As soon as I hear that I thought it was Consumer Reports, because I know from experience that you aren’t allowed to use the Consumer Reports name in advertising. But it wasn’t them, it was some obscure company I had never heard of called telephia.

Now I’m sure Telephia is great at what they do, but I have had friends with Cingular…most of which have switch to Verizon. Most of the talk about the poor coverage on Cingular. I guess when you have to stand under the tower to get good reception you tend not to drop calls.

I use Verizon. I have very few dropped calls. I have had some phone problems, which I tend to blame on Microsoft and Samsung more than Verizon, and my replacement XV6700 has been pretty good.  There are four places however where I am guarenteed my call will drop.

1. On “Old Alabama Road” at the first stop sign in Emerson Georgia.
2. Again on “Old Alabama Road” when I go past a mountain.
3. On Highway 61, south of the Carterville Regional Airport, again going through a pretty good valley.
4. On Dabbs Bridge Road, right after I drive over the bridge and round the corner and go behind a rather large hill/mountain again.

The last one I am experimenting with speed. I hoping that if I drive fast enough, I might loose audio for a few seconds but still keep the call up. So far no luck though.

With Verizon I have litterally made calls with clear quality when my phone show no signal bars. While I have been writing this I have been trying to remember the last time I was somewhere where I didn’t have a signal. I really am having a hard time with that. I think it might have been when I took Hurricane relief supplies down to my parents in Pensacola after Ivan. Since the trees weren’t standing, and there was no power I really couldn’t fault the network. BTW…how did I find my parents after the hurricane….they got through on a VERIZON cell phone.

I really went on quite the rant about this one. What cell phone company do you use? If it is Sprint you can now switch carriers and keep your number….even Cingular would be better.

I got my nephew Chase a shirt from thinkgeek.com for Christmas. Unfortunately, I had to wait for him to grow into it because it was a “6 months” size. He finally made it. And boy is he happy about it.

On my way home from watching fireworks on the 4th I met a truly considerate driver.  This is a pretty rare occurance in Atlanta.  I was in bumper to bumper stop and go traffic heading out of Cartersville.  This rather large Dodge pickup truck ended up behind my car.  One of those, that has been specially engineered with headlights that hit every mirror you have, blinding you.

So I was holding my hand out my window posistioned just right to block at least one mirror (at least my rearview is auto-dimming).  After a minute or two the guy in the truck realized what was going on and turned off his headlights!  So after about another 5-10 minutes we end up close to this intersection where police are directing traffic and he of course has to turn his lights back on to avoid being pulled by the cops.  So now evertime we stop he hangs back about 5-10 feet and angles his truck slightly to the right so the lights are hitting me directly.

I will never get to thank the guy (he did get the all important thank-you wave), and he will most likely never read my post.  But I was so impressed with how considerate he was that I felt others should know there is at least one considerate driver in Atlanta.  Are you a considerate driver?  Do you have an interesting Atlanta Traffic story?  If so…leave comments.

So last night I watched the fireworks at Dellinger Park in Cartersville, GA. The show was put on by the “Optimist Club” and the city. Lets just say after watching the display I have no reason to join the Optimist Club….although, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to join on account of not being an optimist. Anyway, that isn’t the point of this post.

Next year I would like to go watch the best fireworks in the Atlanta Metro area. So where are they? I have heard that Lennox and Stone Mountain are really good. So where did you go? How was it?

I was listening to the radio today (I have been forced to listen to the radio since my Ipod adapter started doing strange stuff to my car) and I heard and ad for the new “Southern Style Chicken Sandwich” from McDonalds. It is a simple chicken filet two pickels and a bun. Is it just me or is that an obvious knock off of Chick-Fila’s Chicken Sandwich?

Well, my chicken sandwich money will continue to go to Chick-Fila…sorry Ronald.