My friend Melissa and I went to the Garfield Park Conservatory near Chicago on Saturday. It was a very cool place so I took lots of pictures and have posted some of them on the Photos page of the site. I wish that it could have been a tad bit brighter because I had to use some slow shutter speeds at higher than normal ISO levels to get the shots that I wanted.
I did get to use my new camera, though, which was great. It is a Canon Rebel XSi that came with an 18-55 image stabilized lens. Thank goodness for the image stabilization because it really helps in those low light situations.
Go take a look at the photos.
August 17 2008 | Personal and Photos | No Comments »
Sorry about the lack of new posts lately. I have been really busy this summer since I’m working full time. When I get home I either like to just relax or go see people. That doesn’t leave me a lot of time for blogging.
I hope that I will have some time (and the resources…like internet) to do that while I am in France for the next 8 or 9 months. I will at least try to post my pictures.
August 01 2008 | Personal | No Comments »
I added a few pictures I took on my most recent visit to Wheaton Bible Church. Maybe they aren’t as interesting as the last ones because the building is almost done and we are moving in to the new building in about a week. But anyway, go over the the photos page to check them out.
July 11 2008 | Building and Church and Personal and Photos | 1 Comment »
I will admit this off right the bat: I have grown up using Windows machines my entire life. Having said that, I also want to say that I have nothing against Apple. In fact, I recently purchased a MacBook Pro and I am loving it so far (though I’ll love it more once Vista is on it too). But now to the point of this post:
The MacBook Air is not a great product. At all.
First though, the design is fantastic and unbelievable and very far ahead of anything in its class (The VooDoo Envy 133 is close). Aside from that, it is a ho-hum machine lacking in the features that other notebooks in this class have (think Toshiba and Lenovo/IBM). I read a c|net article today that included this little gem:
Apple made a very studied decision to exclude certain features. This makes the Air an Air. Apple could have included more ports and a little more of this and pinch of that–but then it would have been just another subnotebook.
So, I expect Apple to maintain the uniqueness of the Air for the next refresh.
But improvements are always welcome. And here are a few things that potential buyers can expect to see when a new Air is rolled out.
Really? Really??? She just implied that less features and lack of capabilities is what makes the MacBook Air unique. Adding more features would have made it “just another subnotebook.” She is so far into what some call the “Steve Job’s reality distortion field.” Somehow through a cool looking design and a big keynote speech, Apple was able to convince people that having less features was something to be desired. Wow. That is an impressive feat.
The MacBook Air is not fast, and it doesn’t have enough memory or hard drive space. It lacks an optical drive and an ethernet port. It only has one USB port that has to be flipped down and won’t fit some USB drives. It also lacks a standard connection for an external display and the battery only lasts 5 hours. That is the same amount as my MacBook Pro that could run laps around the MacBook Air. But look on the bright side: it starts at just $1,800…wait…that price sucks.
The moral of the story: don’t just assume that everything Apple does is pure awesomeness. It’s not.
July 08 2008 | Personal and Technology | 1 Comment »
I went downtown yesterday with my friends Melissa and Brooke for the Taste of Chicago. We also visited Water Tower Place to do some shopping and then we came home. Just a note: on the weekends, the trains at night run every 2 hours…not every 1 hour. We had to hang out in the train station for a really long time to wait for the 10:40 train home. Oh well; now we know for next time. Go to the photos page and click on “Chicago Day” to see them.
July 06 2008 | Personal and Photos | 1 Comment »
