Starlink on the Revel

In 1985 I invested in a startup company that went broke  that was trying to build satellite uplinked internet access stations that ran on Solar Power,  The million dollar concept was to enable third world countries with no internet backbone to provide internet to everyone corner of the world . At the time it was…

The Mavic Pro Drone

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner…. Hall of Loosers…. Last week I received one of the rare Mavic Pro Drones forom my preorder made hours after its announcement.   I ordered directly from DJI.    The Mavic Drone is the newest generation of 4k video drones made by DJI.  It has all the capabilities of the Phantom…

The VR Revolution

Back in the 80s, I worked with a bunch of talented kids on the WINAMP project. Little did they know that they would be the catalyst to an explosion of computer and internet technology escallation that continues to this day.   At one time, 2/3rd of all the internet bandwith in the world was trading…

Drones and Groans

Long Screws Screwed me The Vision 2 that I was preparing to sell lost 4 motors to my negligence when I accidently put some long screws into the short holes while  placing prop guards on the bird before selling it to a friend.  Its very easy to mess a motor up just by pushing on…

Unboxing the Phantom 3

I am still on the honeymoon phase with the Inspire 1 quad copter which is an engineering marvel.   The Klingon Bird of Prey Drone has the best camera and operating system of any drone to date.  Its a truly professional camera and it has been wonderful to shoot.  Just when you thought it couldn’t get…

One Badass HTPC Computer for under $500

I haven’t built a computer for awhile since all has been quiet on the digital front.   It seems Im always building computer to repair one and I have’t messed with HTPCs since XBMC on the old XBOX.  After putting the finishing touches on the outdoor backyard theater,  I decided to research my options on…

Home Theater part II

Atop the roof of my house stands a 50 ft mast with an array of High Definition Yaggi Antennas pointing towards Suttro Tower in San Francisco. On the South Wall are 6 satellite dishes–all artifacts of the advent of High Definition over the air programming and my early attempts at building the ultimate home theater…

I thought I was going Looney spotting that UFO. Turns out I was….

I received and interesting post from a UFO expert that sovled my UFO over San Luis Reservoir Mystery last year April.  Thanks to Harold Daniel, the site admin fro UFO Sightings Report, it appears that the floating Pants UFO I photographed fishing San Luis on 4-16-2012 was actually google project called LOON. Google is proposing a…

Eye Socket Extasy

High quality IPS displays are no longer extortionately expensive, particularly if you buy them directly from Korea. Currently, most of my monitors (and yours) are Twisted Nematic (TN) monitors with maximum resolutions of 1080P.  They are cheap and big and adequate for High end blueray playback, and photo\video editing of 1080p content.  If you are…

Adobe Premier CS6 – First Impressions

I think “Game Changer” is an over used cliche but her we go again, and Im not talking Facebook hype either. I’ve been using Premier Pro CS6 on a MAC for about ten hours and already I can see that this will now be my goto editing software. This is going to hit the FCX…

Hackintosh 2012

The Lion OSX upgrade of my old Snow Leopard Hackintosh turned out to be harder than expected due to the effort to install an NVIDEA GTX 470 into the dual booting WIN7\OSX Intel I7 970 build that would run 64 bit and dual screen in both Win7 and OSX 7.1.3. The GTX470 is the beefiest…

The Golf Simulator

My son is officially  a better golfer than I.  I think it might now be more beneficial to aim for a Division II golf scholarship versus an Ivy League College for him.  The other day,  I bought a used P3Pro Swing golf simulator which we can now use to accurately get feedback about our swings.…

The New Hackintosh…

Its been three years since I attempted to load OSx on a PC.  Why is apple so against this.  After browsing Lifehackers ten best videos of 2010,  I found  the Tonymacx96 Blog.  Putting OSX on an Intel I3, I5 or I7 has never been easier. Finally ,  I can say that I have a 100…

Foobar and Bitperfect Sound

I remember back to 1997 when we use to transfer  WAV files via 1200 baud modems through “Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley”–our BBS pre internet.  In those days, its was about size and not quality (thats what she said)  and thus WINAMP grew out of the need for a better way to play back compressed…

Star Trek at the TECH

Last night, Mark, Gina and I were guests of Michelle Duncan –IMAX THeater Manager at the TECH Museum in San Jose –where we toured the Star Trek Exhibit and watched the latest Star Trek movie on the big IMAX screen. It was Mark’s first IMAX movie and it was a thrill to see his reaction…