The original article

3 Tips to Maximize iPod Battery Life

I’m a heavy user of Apple products; more specifically the iPod nano and my lovely Powerbook, so I thought I’d try something new and throw some tips out there on how to maximize the battery life on your iPod.

1. Turn off Backlight — The most resource intensive mechanism in the iPod (except the shuffle for obvious reasons; and the hardrive in the 30GB and 60GB iPod is probably a different case) is the backlight so turning it off or even minimizing the amount of time it stays lit to two or five seconds can increase your iPod’s battery life. Head onto Settings > Backlight Timer > Off
2. Use Smart Playlists — Of course, every time you use the scroll-wheel to navigate or skip songs you’re using battery power and Smart Playlists exist for a reason, so use them! Instead of skipping songs often, utilize Playlists to create collections of songs you love and further extend your battery’s life. You could use Tangerine, which is currently in beta and free to create playlists for you. Paul Stamatiou wrote a review of Tangerine. And here are some guides as to how to construct Smart Playlists.
3. Adjust Volume Limit — The higher the volume, the more power the iPod uses and thus keeping it at a normal level will lengthen the battery life. Since the introduction of Volume Limit, you could set how loud the volume will go before it reaches its max. Now, I realize setting it at a ‘normal’ level could sometimes cripple you in certain circumstances like riding a loud bus. Play with it and see what works for you. Besides, it’ll help save your hearing! Head to Settings > Volume Limit > adjust accordingly

I caught on to these tips myself by requirement as my aging iPod nano forced me to

Plants with Eyes

Ok..it isn't real...but it is still cool

Making a list..checking it twice!

This was taken from a forum I visit: (it may take a while to sink in)
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Ima Dreemin
Gov. A White
Chris Muss
Jess Lyke
D. Juan Swee
Hugh Sterno
Wendy Treetop
Glyss Anne
Chill Wren
Liz-Ann "Two ears" Leigh
Belle Cindy Snow
I.M. Dreem
Ingo Ferwyte
Chris Muswitt
Avery Chris
Miss Carr
Dai Wright
Mayor Dazeby
Mary-Ann Bright
Anna May
Hall York Rhys
Mrs. Bea White

Playstation 3 vs. XBOX 360 - A Game Developer's Perspective - hardCOREware.net

As I suspected, the Xbox wins.

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Playstation 3 vs. XBOX 360 - A Game Developer's Perspective - hardCOREware.net

As long as consoles have existed, discussions, debates, arguments, fights, and all out WARS have taken place over who makes the best video game units. Growing up, I was always a Nintendo fan boy; I didn't want to hear anything about Sega Genesis... In my mind, Nintendo had Mario, Zelda, and other great first-party titles. Sega had Sonic, and red blood.

Things are slightly more complicated these days however. Console makers are taking different approaches to designing their products; some go for hardcore processing power, others focus more on online gaming. We already have a heated debate going on in our forum about which console is better, PS3 or XBOX 360.

I thought it would be a good idea to ask my friend, who is a lead programmer for a large gaming company that produces games for both PS3 and XBOX 360. He has also worked on PS2, XBOX 1, and PC games in the past 6-or-so years. Obviously, considering his position working with both consoles and both Sony and Microsoft, he doesn't want to step on any toes, so wishes to remain anonymous at this time. Here are his thoughts on the subject:

PS3 vs. XBOX 360

Being a video game developer (I develop for both, Playstation 3 and XBOX 360) people ask me almost daily which platform I think is better. These are my personal feelings, in no way does this reflect my employer.

Short answer: XBOX 360.

Long answer: Price, performance, visual quality, game selection and online support. I think the XBOX 360 wins in every category.

Price: This is obvious; the XBOX 360 core is only $299. The PS3 is around $499 for the 20GB version. It comes with a hard drive, but you don’t need a hard drive to enjoy a lot of great games on the 360 so I think it’s fair to compare both core systems.

Performance: On paper, the PS3 is more powerful. In reality, it’s quite inferior to the 360. Without getting into too many details, the three general-purpose CPU’s the xbox360 has are currently FAR easier to take advantage of than the SPU’s on the PS3. I suspect a few years down the road some high budget, first party PS3 exclusive titles will come out that really take advantage of the SPU’s and do things the XBOX 360 can’t, but I don’t think the console is worth buying based on this speculation (for some it will be though, we'll have to wait and see how these games turn out).

Graphics: The XBOX 360 is a clear winner. The GPU is more powerful. It has more powerful fillrate, and far more pixel and vertex processing horsepower. Part of the reason is their choice of memory, and architecture of pixel and vertex procesing. I can’t get into details but the same vertex shader will run much slower on the PS3 than the XBOX 360. The 360 also has a clever new way rendering high definition anti aliased back buffers. To accomplish the same effect on PS3 is prohibitively expensive. For this reason I think many games will have no choice but to run in non-HD resolutions on the PS3 version, use a lower quality anti aliasing technique, or do back buffer upscaling. The end result in all cases is going to be noticeably worse image quality.

Game Selection: The XBOX 360 has a huge head start here. 1 year is an eternity in gaming. Almost all multi-platform developers have made the XBOX 360 their primary platform due to timing of release-to-market, this means the games will look and perform better on the 360. The PS3 versions will be ports of the 360 versions. (The opposite was true for XBOX 1 vs. PS2). The XBOX 360 is also far faster to develop for due to better development tools (massively popular Visual Studio .NET vs. proprietary, buggy PS3 compiler and debugger), better documentation, and easier architecture (3 general purpose CPU’s vs. 8 specialized processors that require DMA). Timing has also caused all next-gen middleware developers to make XBOX 360 their primary platform, and they will ‘add ps3 support’ as needed. This support will probably be inferior to the XBOX 360’s due to manpower and more importantly, demand. It’s this catch-22 now that will continue to drive the 360 forward and hold PS3 back.

The other obvious point here is that right now the Xbox360 already has a very impressive line-up of titles on store shelves; the ps3 just launched, and has virtually nothing of interest. Also, many 360 games are already discounted ($35 for Fight Night 3 on Amazon). PS3 games are all full price since it just launched.

World's Rarest Big Cat Captured

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061116-russia-leopard.html

Photo in the News: World's Rarest Big Cat Captured

November 16, 2006—In the remote forests of southeastern Russia, scientists have captured what's believed to be the rarest big cat on Earth: a Far Eastern leopard.

The animal is so scarce that only 30 are thought to survive in the wild.

The team, led by biologists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, caught the 100-pound (45-kilogram) male in a snare last week while studying Siberian tigers in the Russian Far East, 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Chinese border (See Russia map).

The chance capture gave biologists a priceless opportunity to study the elusive feline, and Melody Roelke (below), a specialist in big-cat genetics with the U.S. National Institutes of Health, wasn't shy about getting a closer look.

She and other team members conducted a thorough series of tests on the leopard, from studying its teeth to collecting sperm samples, before releasing the animal back into the wild.

Among the scientists' main concerns is whether Far Eastern leopards, also known as Amur leopards, can continue to sustain their tiny, isolated population, or whether disease and inbreeding may eventually wipe out the cats.

"This capture represents a milestone in our cooperative efforts to save the Far Eastern leopard and Siberian tiger from extinction," said Dale Miquelle, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Russia Program, in a statement.

"With the information gained from these animals, and others to come, we will be in a much better position to determine appropriate conservation actions."

—Blake de Pastino

If women ruled the world

If women ruled the world.......... (all in good fun of course ;) )

See it Here

Plasma caught in a bottle

This is pretty cool. I suggest not trying it at home though.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Here are some Halloween related stuff. Enjoy!!

Time Lapse of a Rotting Pumpkin

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It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

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Garfield's Halloween Adventure (parts 1, 2 & 3)

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Disney's Halloween Treat: Merlin vs. Mimm

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Lonesome Ghosts (Mickey, Goofy & Donald)

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Very OLD Disney Halloween Cartoons w/ Monster Mash

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Classic Betty Boop Halloween Cartoon (This was eventually Banned)

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Guide to Halloween

Click here

Carve a pumpkin!

Get in the Halloween spirit with online pumpkin carving.

Click Here

Engrish? You Like?

I find poorly translated English by Asians (Engrish) to be funny. Maybe you will too. Click Here

Matt Damon gets pissed off at Jimmy Kimmel (old..I know)

I'm not sure if it is staged or not...but still funny

Bet on the Future

Like to bet? Like the future? Why not bet on it? Do you think that by the year 2150, over 50% of schools in the USA or Western Europe will require classes in defending against robot attacks?? Go to this site and vote yes or no...look at other predictions...or create your own!

Long Bets

Protestors provide online support for a demoted Pluto

Protestors provide online support for a demoted Pluto - Newsday.com

Protestors provide online support for a demoted Pluto

BY BRYN NELSON
Newsday Staff Writer

October 29, 2006

First came the petitions.

Then the angry mnemonics, like "My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums." And, inevitably, the bumper stickers: "Honk if Pluto is still a planet."

The United States is arguably a much noisier place, judging by the sheer volume of protests lodged in the two months since several hundred members of the International Astronomical Union voted to define what constitutes a planet, booting Pluto in the process.

Pluto orbits the sun and is nearly round, but the majority ruled it hadn't cleared the celestial "neighborhood around its orbit." The diminutive world just didn't have the oomph to rid its orbit of interloping ice balls in the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system.

'It's an oddball'

"Ridiculous!" responded Richard Fienberg, the editor in chief of Sky & Telescope magazine. Scores of astronomers joined him in calling the decision process so flawed that it has rendered the definition of a planet all but meaningless.

"Practically, there's a lot of people who are just going to ignore it," said Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., and a driving force behind an online petition that has said as much.

Gonzalo Tancredi, a planetary astronomer at the University of Uruguay in Montevideo, disagreed, defending the "good agreement" as one based on the best available science.

"Maybe it's not a perfect one, but it's the one that reflects better the present knowledge about the solar system," he said.

Far beyond the astronomical dispute, though, the demotion of Pluto spurred an upwelling of public sentiment in editorials, petitions and blogs, and spawned a Web-based cottage industry devoted to defending a distant orb one-fifth the mass of the moon.

Amid the frenzy, schoolchildren repeatedly lodged the same tearful query: "What happened to Pluto?"

As educators are discovering, though, the question may have opened the door to teaching the public about science -- and a dirty iceball that clearly holds some sentimental value.

"It's the littlest planet. It's way out there. It's an oddball," said Mark Bullock, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. In short, Pluto embodies the underdog. And, of course, it shares a name with the sidekick of a beloved Disney icon.

But what, exactly, defines it?

A questionable definition

A working definition of "planet" -- essentially, a roundish object that orbits a star -- would have expanded our solar system's planetary clique to 12.

The effort had been necessitated by newly discovered orbs such as the Pluto-plus-size Xena (since renamed after Eris, goddess of discord). But on the last day of a turbulent meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, the International Astronomical Union's general assembly did an about-face and dropped the planetary tally to eight, relegating Pluto, Eris and an asteroid named Ceres to the status of "dwarf planets."

Charon, another would-be planet and Pluto's main moon, didn't even make that cut.

Less than a week later, Sykes' petition decrying the decision had been signed by 305 scientists and stargazers from 34 states and a dozen other countries.

Richard Wagener, a Brookhaven National Laboratory atmospheric physicist, said he signed out of dissatisfaction with the fuzzy definition rather than unhappiness that Pluto was excluded from the club.

Especially troubling for Wagener and many other petitioners is the "vague" new requirement for a planet's orbital path to be cleared of debris.

Technically, even Jupiter hasn't managed that feat, as it is both led and followed in its orbit by a legion of asteroids, he said. And if Neptune's neighborhood was truly debris-free, others point out, periodically trespassing Pluto would have been swept away long ago.

Petitions for Pluto

If the back-and-forth had been limited to, say, the Pluto-like body 2005FY9, perhaps few outside of academia would care. But onlookers say Pluto's demise has revealed a large reservoir of cultural attachment to the littlest planet -- and much of the public has refused to accept its new status quietly.

Almost overnight, petitions invoking outraged Disney fans to the presumed immutability of "four seasons, four Beatles, three Stooges and nine planets" popped up online, with sentimentalists adding personal notes ("Get your grubby hands off of Pluto!") or hawking T-shirts with phrases like "Save the Planet" above a lonely-looking orange blob.

In an election, Pluto would have reclaimed its lost status in a landslide, judging by the more than 10,000 votes on one Web site, plutopetition.com, or the overwhelming attachment cited by the Discovery Channel Store's (admittedly nonscientific) poll of schoolchildren.

But science, as scientists are fond of saying, is not a popularity contest. "I don't think that we can do much changes to what has been approved," Tancredi said, adding that he would prefer to move on.

Others beg to differ, and Sykes hopes a soon-to-be-launched Web site inviting researchers to provide input and work on consensus papers will reinvigorate the scientific process while arriving at a more useful planetary definition.

Whatever it is now, Pluto is unlikely to go quietly into the night. If nothing else, Sykes and others muse, the dialogue can only help educators tap into a teachable moment that has seized the attention of so many -- or at least given them yet another reason to honk.

One Click...All Jobs...Canada's Largest Job Search

Looking for a job? Save yourself the trouble of going through mountains of websites, and just do a simple search here.

Canada's Largest Job Search Engine

25 Scary Halloween Stories for Free Download

Just in time for Halloween, you can download these stories for FREE via Google.

listvine.com - » 25 Scary Halloween Stories for Free Download via Google

British to US English Translations...

Pretty interesting the differences. Just as interesting is how we (Newfoundlanders) are a combo of both...but more like the British.

Click Here

Detonate the bomb (puzzle)

If you like solving puzzles, then you may like this little game.

Eerie!! - Abandoned Hospital Webcam.....

Wow..check this out.........just in time for Halloween..

Go see it!

Dress Up Mel Gibson

I loved Braveheart.....but Mel has gone off the deep end IMO.

So why not dress him up? Click Here

Music Quiz

Ever see those images of a ton of different things going on, and they all mean something? Well here is one that deals with bands

i.e. a guy beating up pumpkins would be "Smashing Pumpkins"

Try it for youself by clicking here.

When you want the answers, click here.

My Favourite Podcasts

Alright...now that it appears that Blogger will allow me to publish posts (if only for a minute), I'm going to share with you some of my favourite podcasts. I had a real nice post done up about another classic TV show but due to the blogger issues....I wound up losing it.

Anyway, for those of you who don't know, a podcast is an audio broadcast that can be downloaded from the internet. They are referred to as podcasts due to many people using their Ipod's to play them, but they will work in any MP3 player, on Audio CDs, or on your computer.

I didn't start listening to these things until recently as I have been traveling from Grand Bank to St. John's and back for the last little while as my girlfriend is attending University while I am working at home until December. During these drives I get sick and tired of listening to the Kelly Clarkson and 50 Cent crap that is on the radio, and I would much rather listen to Talk Radio. Most of the time when I drive the Open Line shows aren't on the air.....the next option is CBC Radio...and 90% of the time I don't feel posh (stuck up?) enough to listen to it...so I started burning off Audio books and Podcasts to listen to on the way.

Well....this takes up a ton of CDs...and I dislike wasting the discs..and dislike wasting my time burning them even moreso. Therefore I bought a nice green Ipod Nano to listen to my podcasts on, and I have been pretty happy with it.

So without further adieu, here are 3 podcasts I am currently listening to..and what it is about them that I like.

1. Keith and The Girl - This is the top rated podcast out there. You can view their website here, and also download episodes there as well. This podcast is a basic 'talking about nothing' show. The content is funny...but be warned as it is filled with immature themes that should probably only be listend to by "mature" (adult?) audience.
2. LOST Podcast with Jay & Jack - I admit..I was a big reality TV junkie. Keyword here is "was". I have since moved on to more awesome shows such as The Office, Desperate Housewives (what?), and the best show on TV....Lost. This podcasts offers a nice recap of the episodes, as well as some commentary as to what certain things in the show may, or may not, mean. You can download these podcasts here.
3. Pro Photography Show - Well as some of you may know, I am a photographer. As such, I like to listen to shows about photography. If you feel the same way (and don't mind the slight nerdiness of the host), check out this podcast here.
   

Issues with Blogger

It appears that www.blogger.com is having some big problems as people are unable to publish anything. I had to switch operating systems just to get this one post through, and I don't think I'll be able to update anything else for a while. Since this is on their end I hope they will see to it ASAP.

Classic TV #2 - Count Duckula

I am dissapointed and upset at the number of people who don't remember Count Duckula. So for those of you who do not...here are some videos.

The opening clip



An clip from the episode "Whodunnit"



The End Credits

Classic Tv #1 - Sesame Street

Ok, I admit..I was a huge fan of Sesame Street as a kid..and I was pretty pissed off when they went with the "Canadian Version" (The polar bear and shit), and now I'm told they don't even have the cookie monster or big bird anyway.....I hate the extreme politically correct people.

Anyway...here is one classic in particular that I have been wanting to see again for some time now. If you are reading this Jon...FINALLY we can hear it again eh?


Fat...Cat...Sat....



Anyone remember Forgetful Jones??



And now a funny clip from Dave Chappelle (Language may not be suitable for kids)

Newfoundlanders Against Student Debt

Well for the few of you guys who don't know, I have spearheaded a movement that will hopefully see interest diminished on Newfoundland and Labrador Student Loans.

The website is here