Kendall Giles

Some friends took me to visit The Arboretum, in Arcadia, California. Located on 127 acres, The Arboretum is a tranquil botanical garden and historical site.

We saw lots of birds there too, including geese, ducks, and peacocks. This one bird was perched on a branch above the water and sat there for minutes with its wings spread out, looking at you with one eye - kind of creepy. An informed source tells me that this was a double-crested cormorant. Here's a pic of him (the bird, not the informed source):

While the many plant varieties are winding paths are reason enough to visit, movie-hounds may find it interesting to investigate where some of the many movies and tv shows were filmed on the grounds.

Johnny Weissmuller swam in Baldwin Lake for decades as Tarzan:

A local news story reported that he, in fact, set an unrecorded Olympic swim record when a cage of crocodiles was accidentally opened during filming (Weissmuller beat the crocs to the lake shore).

Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour were here for the Road to Singapore in 1939. Douglas Fairbanks was here for Safari also in 1939.

Perhaps most interesting is that the long-running tv show Fantasy Island was filmed here in the 1970s, and the Queen Anne Cottage, built in 1885, served as the tv show's manor house. In fact, you can see the spire of the cottage just over the shoulder of Herve Villechaize in the First Season DVD cover.

Here is a picture of the same spire that I took today:

Alas, I looked for de plane, de plane, but couldn't find it.

Technorati Tags: travel

Congratulations to Virginia Tech - in the latest DARPA autonomous robotic vehicle challenge, which required autonomous vehicles to navigate sixty miles in an urban environment, do three-point turns, park, follow the rules of the road, etc., Virginia Tech's vehicle won third place.

The DARPA Urban Challenge is an autonomous vehicle research and development program with the goal of developing technology that will keep warfighters off the battlefield and out of harm's way. The Urban Challenge features autonomous ground vehicles maneuvering in a mock city environment, executing simulated military supply missions while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections, and avoiding obstacles.

Appropriately - their robot vehicle was named Odin.

Read more about the team and the contest on their blog or the team website.

Technorati Tags: academia, science, technology, virginia

Michael Yon, who has spent far more time embedded with combat troops in Iraq than any other writer or photographer, has part 1 of an article discussing his recommendations for cameras that can take excellent photographs under extreme conditions.

This dispatch is in response to requests like the ones above. This installment will focus on digital still cameras. My opinions are well-informed on the specific products I describe, but I am no camera expert. My opinions on the cameras described lack a detailed field comparison with other products. Although I conducted careful research, I have not tested dozens of models. I try to select the best gear on the market for the conditions expected. As the saying goes, sometimes the magic works.

Technorati Tags: review, technology

I've been on walkabout since June, and have finally returned. Now I know a little what Bilbo & c. felt like after finally coming back to the Shire. And just in time too, for the trees are turning their fall colors -- here's looking down my driveway:

Technorati Tags: living, travel, virginia

THE COMMENTARY BELOW IS FOR THE ORIGINAL KINDLE.

Amazon has introduced an ebook reader -- the Kindle.

While many people have been longing for a competent ebook reader for some time, to date no one has been able to produce an ebook reader with the right features:

• read files (books, magazines, newspapers, documents, text) in a variety of formats, including open ones, such as .doc, .pdf, .txt, .rft, .html, etc.
• allow the easy addition and deletion of books from the device
• display the books competently
• have an interface suitable for book reading, browsing, searching, and note-taking
• don't overwhelm me with fees and crippled file formats

Is the kindle the iPod of books?

While Amazon seems to have done OK on the display part, and the book reading interface seems to be OK, unfortunately the kindle seems to fail on the other points. The words of Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos gives you a hint of why the kindle is not the device we have all been waiting for:

This isn't a device, it's a service.

Basically, Amazon is selling you a $400 device that you use to rent digital books from Amazon and then read them on that device. You are not actually buying a digital copy of a book from Amazon. You are renting the book because Amazon encodes the book in a proprietary (DRM) format that does not work with other devices or software. Further, that crippled book can only be read as long as Amazon wants you to be able to read it. From their terms of service:

Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without notice to you and without refund of any fees. Amazon's failure to insist upon or enforce your strict compliance with this Agreement will not constitute a waiver of any of its rights.

And, unlike real books or digital files that are not crippled (DRM), you cannot share your rented Amazon book with anyone else:

You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.

Other deal-breakers include the fact that, while you can read Amazon-selected files with the kindle, you must pay a few dollars per month to do so - you must subscribe to read a blog that you can read for free using your computer. Also, some files can be transferred to the device via USB, but some must be emailed to the device via Amazon - Amazon "converts" the document into a kindle format (applies DRM) and charges you $.10 per document for the privilege.

If Amazon included a digital copy of each book I buy from Amazon, I think the kindle would work. But as it currently is configured, especially without support for at least .pdf files (a really big deal -- I have a lot of .pdf files on my laptop, and I would pay good money for a viable device to read them with) the kindle business model does not make sense to me. I currently do not need an expensive device that basically allows me to read rented books on it, and where I am nickle-and-dimed with monthly fees for the privilege. It seems like a step in the right direction for a useful ebook reader, but Amazon has more work to do. Maybe in version 2.0 they will do better.

Other commentary on the kindle:

dive into mark
boing-boing gadgets
kottke.org
wired
macworld

Technorati Tags: book, review, technology

I've started a page for my audio projects, and the first entry is the preface to Anderson's The Younger Edda.

The Younger Edda is a 13th century collection of stories about the Teutonic Gods and Goddesses from the traditional, pre-Christian religion of the Northern Europeans. Rasmus Anderson translated the Old Norse Prose Edda, or Snorri's Edda, into English in 1879. Since I am a fan of tradition, history, and ancestral culture, I decided to make audio recordings of this work. I also wanted to learn more about recording technology and audio engineering.

The first entry is an MP3 of the preface from Anderson's translation.

Technorati Tags: academia, culture, religion, spirit, technology

Entry number two for the Younger Edda audio project is chapters one and two from The Fooling of Gylfe.

Technorati Tags: culture, religion, spirit

THE COMMENTARY BELOW IS FOR THE ORIGINAL KINDLE.

Andy Ihnatko has a very interesting article on the Amazon Kindle:

So here's what Amazon went and did. Metaphorically, the company invented a humanoid robot capable of autonomous action. Every day at 4 a.m., it gets in your car and drives all over the state, buying fruit, milk, butter, eggs and other staples straight from the farm. By the time you wake up and trudge into the kitchen, there's a steaming plate of waffles waiting for you, made from scratch, and topped with fresh-picked strawberries and whipped cream.

It's one of the most awesome consumer products ever. It might even be a landmark moment in technology. ... and Amazon is promoting it as a $399 waffle maker.

Technorati Tags: book, technology