Fort-Knight Tonight, Episode 4

The biggest news since Katie Kouric's new job! The latest episode of F0rt-Knight Tonight is done! I'm sure to get lots of feedback from my growing army of critics, er I mean fans. It's always welcome. This show's theme is, "Outer Space", where I review Celestia, talk about Trek's Big 4 - 0 and the latest news on the Space Station.

I HEART my Canon S500

Back in July, my Canon DV camera and S500 Digital Still Camera took a dunk in a river. As initially reported it looked as though only my DV camera was dead. After a few more tests it was determined to be dead although, only mostly dead. The camera wouldn't operate with a compact flash card inserted and would promptly turn off on it's own. Over a period of a few weeks, I tested the camera again. Same results. I did this processed one more time a week later. Again, same result. By this time I could be deemed insane by expecting the same results, however...
I loved my Canon S500 and did not want to accept that it's life was over so soon. It's my second Canon camera and I'll admit (and a few of you know this) that I'm really hard on electronics. Let me restate that, I really expect my consumer electronics to be near military specification but be affordable at the same time. I know, I am insane. So tonight, while filming the next Fort-Knight Tonight episode, I dusted off the S500 to test it once more. An emotionaly driven action, one part fanciful hope and one part scientific theory based on humidity and time to air dry. I may be nuts but, LO AND BEHOLD the S500 works!!!! That's right baby, the camera works just fine!
All I can say is.. NEVER TAKE YOUR ELECTRONICS IN A CANOE or...

give up hope!

John

Amazon UnBox Review, Part 1

Ok, I've been downloading videos from iTunes since they started allowing it and so far I've benn happy with the service. Now I know this is supposed to be a review of Unbox, but I have to compare it to what I know first. So far, my only gripe with iTunes has been the resolution of the videos. The price, and the software have both made me happy even with the poor resolution.
Now on to Unbox...
First, the install gave me trouble (ie it locked up). This happens from time to time and at first I simply let it go. However, after downloading a video (an Episodse of Star Trek Enterprise), I soon started to see lots of problems in the software player. In simply trying to play the video, It stopped run (just stopped playing at dissapeared) about a half dozen times within the first few minutes of the video. I then went through the typical ritual of rebooting and eventuall (after an hour of fiddling) reinstalled the application. I then tested the video in Media Center and found that the video would not play after about 6 minutes which is the time that I could get the Unbox player to crash at everytime. So, in doing my civic duty, I deleted the video and have just now redownloaded it to test.
First pass, I the software IS WAY UNSTABLE with horrible (as in no appearent) error handling.
Media Center at least gave me a sense that there was a problem with the video file.. oh that's another thing.. a corrupted video file? Oh come on...
So far, I am NOT HAPPY. If this file plays at least I will have my $1.99 worth out of them. I don't think I'll be spending another dime there after this.
Part 2, Later..

Update: Oh, I just found out, this video player is phoning home a WHOLE LOT. Great.. it keeps getting better....