Clinton may challenge Texas vote rules - Yahoo! News: “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign has raised the possibility of a challenge to Texas’ primary and caucus rules just days before the contest, drawing a warning against legal action from the state’s Democratic Party.”
Well, I suppose if you can’t win legitimately…
The Audacity of Hopelessness - New York Times: “The insults continued on Tuesday night when a surrogate preceding Mrs. Clinton onstage at an Ohio rally, Tom Buffenbarger of the machinists’ union, derided Obama supporters as “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies.” Even as he ranted, exit polls in Wisconsin were showing that Mr. Obama had in fact won that day among voters with the least education and the lowest incomes. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Obama received the endorsement of the latte-drinking Teamsters.”
It should be noted that, while I do drive a Prius and drink lattes, I do not wear Birkenstock’s or have a trust-fund. Just for the record.
This is why it was a bad idea of Clinton to play the plagiarism card…
The Democratic primaries have been the most interesting that I can recall having followed, certainly more than the current Republican nomination battle which the media keeps trying to insist is still a contest.
On the Democratic side, Clinton and Obama have waged a competitive battle for the nomination, though with his recent string of 10 victories, it looks as if it’s all but certain to land in Obama’s lap. It’s no great surprise. All you have to do is listen to the post-Wisconsin speeches from the two candidates last night to realize that Hillary has a problem. Though Obama can be rightfully criticized for an excessively lengthy speech than ran over 40 minutes, it was telling that I was able to contain my hunger for Nature’s Path FlaxPlus Granola to hear it in its entirety. Unlike previous Obama speeches I have heard from Obama, this combined both his usually inspiring oratory with specific policy pledges. I was so moved by his call for change, that I decided to have some of the Kix that my son had rejected earlier that day in favor of my usual nightly cereal.
Hillary is in desperate need of a new speechwriter. Her speech came across as meandering and flat. All the talk of “working hard” harkened back to Bush’s ‘04 debates about how he was going to solve America’s problems by working harder. Then again, Bush got elected. Her campaign seems to be a mess recently, relying on attempts to create bogus charges of plagiarism instead of promoting her own strengths (note to Wolfson: it’s hard to make a charge of plagiarism stick when the person credited with the original speech is campaigning for the person using the words). Each day seems like a new attempt to find a message and a strategy, each less successful than the previous. She’s not out of the race yet, but I just cannot see her turning this around.
But the real reason for my endorsement is the following from a recent Newsweek article:
“Michelle recently bought two MacBook laptops, one for Barack and one for the kids, so they could have video chats over the Internet.”
Done.
(Note: the author of this post is not a super-delegate, but often pretended to be one as a child).
Why? I’m not sure. But if you use Twitter, feel free to add my stream (infobhan).
If you don’t use Twitter, give it a try.
On the Mac, Twitterrific makes this easy.
I’ve never been a big follower of sports. The reason I usually give is that I don’t want to make the initial investment needed to get to know the teams and players. The real reason is probably that I love competition and can get easily worked up. The few times that I have gotten sucked in (e.g. the 2004 Red Sox World Series victory), it has not been pretty.
I have found a (?) more productive outlet for my competitive tendencies: politics, and it seems I am not alone. Interest in the election, and voting more specifically, is on the rise. I found myself continuously reloading CNN’s Super Tuesday primary results web last night and realized that it’s going to be a long year.
That said, there are still people who manage to maintain immunity to the whole process. Yesterday at work:
Me: Hey, [name withheld], happy “Super Tuesday”!
[name withheld]: What’s “Super Tuesday”?
Me: Are you serious? It’s the big election day.
[name withheld]: Oh, um, I don’t really know much about the local elections.
Me: (Wondering if by “local” he means “national”) You do realize that it’s the presidential primaries I’m talking about.
[name withheld]: I’m an independent…
Gives a new meaning to independent!
Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC? - New York Times
Interesting take on the Democratic campaigns, though it really seems to focus mostly on the candidates’ websites.
How to create custom ringtones in GarageBand 4.1.1
This takes “custom ringtones” to a whole new level. Can’t wait to try this out.
Many cafés and restaurants present seasonal offerings in an attempt to boost sales, and the holiday season is a particularly popular time for this. I’m not a big dessert aficionado, but for some reason doughnuts (or donuts, depending on whether you’ve adopted the lean modern spelling) have always piqued my interest. It’s not that I particularly like them; they’re certainly not a staple of my diet. That said, every once in a while a new variety will prompt me to re-explore these tubby treats.
The latest such example has been a new addition from Starbucks, the Peppermint Snowdrift doughnut. Starbucks often includes doughnuts among their array of coffee accessories (at least, that’s how Starbucks likely views them), but this one stands out from the others in that it’s a unique variety. The concept is simple. It starts with a standard chocolate doughnut but leaves off the usual sugar glaze. Instead, the top is coated with a white, peppermint infused icing that adds an alpine freshness to the deep chocolate base. An additional dimension is added by scattered sugar crystals, which give the treat a unique crunch. Perfect with a dark cup of coffee.
Bottom Line: This convenient SD-card based camcorder offers excellent outdoor video quality, reasonable indoor quality, and compact design at a reasonable price.
Verdict: Recommended
After much debate and deliberation about which HD camcorder to purchase, I finally settled on the Panasonic HDC-SD5. Other considerations included the now discontinued HDC-SD1 from Panasonic and Canon’s hard-drive based HG10, and various Sony models. I ruled out the Sony models because they didn’t seem to have any advantage over the Panasonic and because the solid-state media models used Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick instead of the more popular SD card standard. Canon’s model reportedly does better in low light though is less vibrant than the Panasonic outdoors. This was tempting, but the HG10 was more expensive than the SD5 and I still prefer the idea of simply popping the SD card out and using a card reader instead of rummaging around for the right cable. Also, you can easily replace a bad SD card, but a hard drive crash could wipe out a large amount of data. Some have said that Panasonic’s earlier model, the SD1, might theoretically have better low light performance because of a larger sensor. I don’t know if this is true or not, but there are enough ergonomic improvements that the SD5 seemed to be worth it
I shot some video of my son in various lighting conditions using the 1080p setting. I then imported the video into iMovie ‘08 on the Mac. There had been some early reports that iMovie ‘08 was horizontally stretching video from the SD5 that was shot at full 1080p resolution (which had not be available on the earlier SD1). I’m happy to report that this is not a problem - all my video imported flawlessly.
One surprise is that, even though a transfer from digital media should theoretically be faster than that from a tape, it’s not with this camera. In fact, my video upload was SLOWER than real time - 20 minutes of video took roughly 30 minutes to upload, despite the fact that I have a relatively powerful quad-core (dual Core 2 Duo, 2.66 Ghz) Mac Pro. The reason is that iMovie converts the video from the highly compressed AVCHD format to a more compatible video format for editing. This conversion takes time. That said, it’s still more convenient to be able to shoot an arbitrary amount of video, upload it, and continue shooting without worrying about tape position, etc.. I should note that the SD-card reader built into my monitor didn’t work - I had to buy a new reader that was compatible with the SDHC format used by the large-capacity SD cards this camera needs.
Video quality was dramatically better than my old tape-based Sony DCR-TRV22, and this was particularly evident when I blew up the image to full screen on my 24″ monitor. Indoor shots in a reasonably well-lit environment looked brighter than with the old Sony, but video noise was clearly evident at a close viewing distance and the colors were a bit washed out. That said, the detail was impressive and the video was smooth. I have not yet noticed the AVCHD motion artifacts that some complain of, though some motion seemed a little less smooth than I might have imagined it could (this may be due to the camera auto-adjusting frame rates). I have not yet watched the video on full-size HDTV at a more typical viewing distance. It may be that the indoor noise is not as evident in this environment.
Outdoor video was simply outstanding. There was no noise, colors were bright, and the image detail was truly impressive. Audio was fine and was basically what i expected from this camera, though I did not shoot in extremely windy conditions. I did sometimes wish the camera could “zoom out” to a wider angle, but the compact size makes it easy to maneuver. The mechanics of use are well thought out, with the camera automatically turning on and off appropriately as you open or close the LCD.
I have not yet seen the video on my HDTV from a typical watching distance.
So to summarize, the camera is a huge leap in quality over my previous Sony DCR-TRV22, both in terms of video quality, convenience, and ergonomics. Outdoor video quality is excellent. Indoor video quality, while better than other cameras I have used, is clearly inferior to the outdoor quality. That said, those in the market for a solid-state camcorder would be will served with the Panasonic SD5.