Enter the camera mount. I forgot which brand it is, and it’s in my car in the garage so I’m not about to go look to see. What I can tell you is that it works great and using the camera in my car is quite fun now. For now it’s living inside the car mounted to the windshield. Come summer it will probably spend some time on the left front fender.

So where’s the footage? Patience, I have a master plan. It requires more than just uploading raw video to YouTube. It will also require me to get going on my drum machine and recording programs. Yeah I think you know where I’m heading with this…

When things are working correctly computers are great. Entertainment, work etc etc. Plus, there’s that little thing called the internet.

I must say, I really like my current laptop computer. MacBook Pro works great and it looks great too. My main dislike for computers comes into play when visiting family and at work.

Both places are dealing with viruses currently. It’s a shame because they are so easily picked up without knowing, even when careful. At, at both places, it’s not like they weren’t protected. Things just happen and those things cause problems.

There are many days where I wish I could just unplug and move to the middle of nowhere and not deal with anything modern. Sadly, I’m sure I would get bored reading books for entertainment, and I’d be really bummed without electricity to play electric guitars.

Delay pedals:

First is the Empress Effects Vintage Modified Superdelay. This thing is somewhat of a powerhouse…able to do more things than a guitar player could even think of. Sadly, it comes at a somewhat of a powerhouse price as well…$449. Ouch.

I’m also interested in the Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Boy. It’s quite a different animal in that it’s analog delay, and EHX isn’t considered “boutique”…whatevs. Why do I like it? Options like tap tempo. It’s also quite different in price…around $179.

The third is the TC Electronic Nova Repeater. It’s sort of the middle between the first two…digital with a few different settings like the Superdelay, but cheaper like the D.M.B. at only $169.

Interface:

I want to record music using my computer. I need an interface to do that. First option is the Presonus Firestudio Mobile. It’s a firewire interface. It comes bundled with StudioOne Artist software, which is made by Presonus.

The second option is Focusrite Saffire Pro 24. This is also a firewire interface. It’s the same price as the Presonus…actually the only difference I can find is the bundled software. To be honest, I have a feeling the Presonus software is better…I’m not sure why I’m still debating this.

Car:

I want a new car. I wanted a 2010 VW GTI. I had all my options picked out and was ready to order one at my local dealer, only to find out VW stopped orders on the 2010 and only started 2011 model orders. Problem is, I’m hearing rumors about package changes and this and that, but nothing has officially changed on VW’s website. I keep telling myself I can’t order a car until I’m exactly sure what I’ll get.

The other option is the VW Golf R20. This car may very well not exist…I’ll explain. It was at a car show…basically it’s a superpowered Golf (the GTI is also a tuned up Golf…but the R20 is more powerful even). Every online publication I can find claims the R20 is coming to the USA summer of 2010 (NOW!). Sadly, my local dealer says there’s no such thing coming. hmmm, what now?

My third option is say screw VW for adding stress to my life and start my search all over for something else.

Phone:

I need a new phone. At first I was waiting for the new Apple iphone. It looks quite nice. But then of course there were all the opening day problems: discolored screen, people holding their phones wrong (WTF), etc etc. Not to mention, I’d need to switch to AT&T (not a huge problem…just annoying switching to another carrier…if there’s even an AT&T store in this town). But, I do think Apple has the best designed App store.

My other option is the yet-to-be-released Motorola Droid X. It’s on Verizon (no changing stuff). It’s also a Motorola…not that I love the company, but I’ve had 3 mobile phones in my life, 2 of which (including my current phone) have been Motorolas. Also, the design is everything I wanted the original Droid to be: a phone without a keyboard! I think I like the actual phone better than the iphone, but I don’t trust the Android market as much as Apple’s ap store. ugh.

I know something’s changed when I type a magazine or a band name into search and the first 8 or 10 things are all “shops” where I can buy things related to what I searched for. Yahoo! used to give me the official site of the searched item, or bands’ myspace pages, or something useful.

I will now rely on Google for my searching. Why couldn’t Yahoo! just keep with the good search product they had? booo…

Formula 1 does knock out qualifying. All cars on track for 15 minutes, and the 7 slowest cars at the end of 15 minutes are out and take the last places on the starting grid. Then a 10 minute 2nd session…again the slowest cars are done. Then a final session for pole position.

I like to watch qualifying on TV. I also like to keep tabs on things on the Formula1.com website with their live timing. Until now I haven’t yet been able to log onto the live timing due to them updating their site’s timing. Well, it’s working now, and I’m not happy.

On TV we have 6 minutes left in the 2nd session. According to the website’s live timing, session 3 started 2 minutes ago.

I understand delays and all that…I work in TV. I guess I’m just bummed by the huge delay. I remember last season when I’d watch the race and watch the live timing at the same time. Hopefully the race tomorrow night will be better (as in no delay).

For awhile now I’ve had Kasabian’s song “Empire” as my ringtone, the chorus part. In the past I’ve used the intro to Bloc Party’s “Banquet” and a couple other songs. For a couple days now I’ve been wanting to use one part of the last track on Battles’ album. So I opened Phone Tools. Oops, updates, so click yeah.

While updates are installing I get a nice little message saying software isn’t confirmed by Microsoft and if I continue it will harm my computer now or in near future. Choices are continue anyways, or stop. I clicked stop…the installation kept going. huh? oh well.

Updates installed, connect phone, find song on computer, crop song…good. Save cropped mp3 to computer: NOPE. file is invalid (or something like that). So I try skipping the save to computer part, I’ll just transfer the file to phone. ERROR…invalid codec. umm codec what? So I tried another approach. Save the cropped file as a .WAV, then go into the file transfer part of Phone Tools and transfer it to phone. For some reason saving as .WAV works fine. Next, transfer to phone. Ugh, files must be mp3, not wav.

After about an hour searching Motorola’s poorly designed help sections I learn a lil bit about codec and that there are many kinds. It says Phone Tools relies on codecs from Windows Media Player. If I’m having problems, make sure WMP is up to date. So next step, I check my WMP expecting to find updates I didn’t know about available. What do I find? “All updates and codecs are up to date”. hmmm, if I have the codecs, and Phone Tools uses codec from WMP, why won’t the program work?

After searching through help forums for the majority of the night (about 5 hours) I gave up. I still don’t know what I’m looking for, or where to find the specific codec I need. What’s really frustrating is that I’ve used Phone Tools before and it worked. Then I remembered the updates.

In a last ditch effort I uninstall the updates. Program still doesn’t work. So why not, I uninstall Phone Tools and reinstall the whole thing. Still doesn’t work and now half of the menus don’t even appear. Crap, things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse. Ahhh another idea…the HP.

I remembered I put Phone Tools on the HP desktop computer. I sent my original mp3 files to myself on email to transfer them to HP. Open Phone Tools. Install updates? NO THANKS…continue. Find my song, crop song. Save song. What? Yep that’s right, worked first try. Next I click “transfer to phone”. No error comes up…brilliant. A simple window appears for me to name my file and within 3 seconds my new ringtone is on my phone. Hooray!

The main problem here is 1. I primarily use my laptop. 2. the one computer Phone Tools won’t work on is my laptop. 3. I have no idea how to fix the problem.

/rant

1. First there was the band Kill Hannah. Now a band named I Hate Kate. If I were to name a band after a girl I’m upset at, would I keep changing the band name as the years went by? On the other side of things, at least the Bouncing Souls have a song titled “Kate is Great”.

2. Which would you rather have: a guitar that is known throughout the industry to be the ‘standard’ for which everything else is judged (Stratocaster, Telecaster, Les Paul for a few examples), or would you rather have a high-quality instrument that noone else is likely to have which you’ll probably end up describing to everyone that “it has the clarity of a Strat but with the fullness of a Les Paul, yet retains that trebley jangley sound of a Tele”?

3. Formula 1 is about to start. Driver lineups have changed at nearly every team (except BMW Sauber and Red Bull). It will be a great season no doubt. I just remembered I forgot to write my annual Preseason preview. I still have a day or two to do it…

4. When will Yamaha release sound clips of their new Pocketrax 2g mini recorder? it looks so nice and small and portable. Yamaha, are you really going to make me wait until April for sound reviews? booo. It’s still the Pocketrax vs Zoom H2.

5. My computer sounded like it was about to blow up tonight the fan was running so hard. Then it started working super slow. Makes ya wonder when I’ll break down and buy a new machine.

6. Thanks to the WIAA state basketball playoffs last week I still haven’t watched last week’s episode of LOST. I’ll bet $100 it won’t be aired again tomorrow thanks to the girls WIAA basketball. blah.

7. DIY effects pedals seem so fun at the moment. Too bad the easy-to-build pedals are a bit useless to me….boosters and fuzz pedals. How bout a DIY phaser, flanger, or delay…but make it easy to build. I guess that’s why there are pedal companies that build pedals haha.

8. NRL (rugby league) starts this weekend too. My Warriors travel to Melbourne to take of the Storm…who just happened to win the title last season. To make matters worse, one of Warriors’ key players got injured during a preseason game and is out for the season to recover from surgery…and the season hasn’t even started yet. It will be a long season.

9. Keeping with sports, Premier league is getting towards the final part of the season. Fulham better start winning…NOW.

10. That’s all for now. Just as I’ve said every other time…photos and new features etc etc are coming soon haha.

For awhile I considered making the switch to Apple via either a MacBook or MacBook Pro. Now there are a few reasons I’m leaning against Apple. For one: internet browsers. Apple doesn’t have IE, which is the browser I usually use. I also use Firefox, Safari, and on occasion Netscape, and when I can get it to work, Opera. If getting an Apple, Safari and Firefox would be my browsers. I like Firefox, except my current computer has trouble running it sometimes, which is why I tend to stick with IE. I like the looks of Safari, but there are a couple small things that bug me. One example: when you click in the address bar the current address doesn’t highlight which would allow you to just type new address in without deleting the old one first. With Safari, I must click and drag over the address to highlight the whole thing, then type the new one in. Small issue? Yes. Picky? Yes. Another bothersome thing: it takes forever to load java based games while IE and firefox load quickly…is that Safari, or just the windows version of Safari?

The other thing about Apple is I’m a sucker for Microsoft Office stuff. These days I’m not sure what Apple has that compares with office programs…maybe they have a full Apple version…I dunno. And yes it’s true, I don’t use Office programs very frequently. But I compare it to this: I don’t ride skateboard very often anymore, but I’d still feel naked if I didn’t own one.

There are currently two computers I’m debating between, both made by Dell. First is the Dell XPS M1330. It’s small, fairly light, available with a great looking LED screen. Being an XPS it has it’s own dedicated Dell support team. It has a full size keyboard and slot CD/DVD drive. To be honest, the only thing I’m worried about is that it only has 2 USB ports in poor locations…one on each side.

The other computer is the Inspiron 1520. Many of the features are the same. It may have a slightly worse screen, but in trade off has 4 USB ports…two on the near the back right side and two in the back…better locations than the M1330. The problems with it: it’s over an inch wider than my current laptop. The other problem, it’s not one of the exclusive XPS series computers, but rather one from the general, much advertised Inspiron series. booo.

One more factor…price. Equally equipped the 1520 is roughly $500 cheaper than the M1330. The 1550 has a 256 video card available while the best only video card for the M1330 is 128. After reading reviews I’m not too worried bout that though, given that the M1330 doesn’t need the bigger card due to its smaller screen.

All in all I guess I must decide what’s more important…2 extra USB ports or a smaller overall size. And if having a “cool” looking laptop is worth an extra $500. Ugh, I hate decisions.

Sadly my laptop and yahoo don’t mix. On my laptop, messenger signs out/in every minutes if it’s on and i’m not using it. I’ve reinstalled, tried older versions, different settings…everything. I can’t use Gaim because I like the emoticons available on real Yahoo.

So what, big deal? Well, this brings on a few problems. 1) the friends on my list that have to watch me sign out/in every 10 minutes. 2) if I have a “busy” or “brb” status showing, when it logs out/in I automagically come back with an “available” status. If I’m away from computer, this can be bad.

Recently I found a way to combat the problem: Yahoo LAUNCHcast radio in messenger. When playing songs messenger will stay on forever. Hooray. What if I don’t want to listen to Yahoo radio? I fix that by turning the volume on the radio off, letting songs play while listening to other stuff. Brilliant, eh?

Still, things would be easier if Yahoo just worked fine on it’s own. word.

Day One: Picked up in Shanghai, CN
Left Shanghai, CN
Arrives in Anchorage, AK
Departs from Anchorage, AK

Day Two: Int’l shipment release to Indianapolis, IN
Departs from Indianapolis, IN
Arrives in Memphis, TN
Takes a rest in Memphis, TN

Day Three: Departs from Memphis, TN

Day Four: I have a brand new 80g black ipod which is engraved just for me on the back. woohoo.

Let the fun begin…