Miscellaneous Ramblings....

Took in the Mn State Fair today. It always seems to be the true end of summer marker for me.
(I do always make sure that I always pick up a four pack of Fortner's Spices - searching through the world of the internet, I was only able to find Healthy Market Online store that sold these).

Google Book Search went live today. In addition to allowing searches of books, you can also download PDF formats of books that are out of copyright protection.

Trolling through the DPReviews Pentax Forums, I came across a thread that had some nice pointers to some beginning digital photography sites:

(For those Pentax owners, here is a nice description of the difference between TTL and P-TTL flash).

Over the past weekend, the family took a quick mini-vacation up to Alexandria to lounge around in the Arrowwood Resort. A childhood friend of my (older) nephew's also came along and brought his family, which was nice.
Even though I didn't arrive until after everyone else on Friday, we did manage to squeeze a pontoon ride (complete with fishing for the kids), numerous Jet ski rides, a round of golf and a speed boat ride (I like having the marina just a short walk from the hotel), as well as numerous visits to the indoor waterpark . The weather was ideal for the weekend: sunny and around 75 degrees.
Nice!!

It looks like Steve Wozniak's long awaited autobiography will be coming out in September. Wired.Com has an interview with Woz.

An undocumented feature of iTunes allows you to control iTunes from your Windows Taskbar. Of course, there is always iTunesControl, which is a lightweight plug in app.

For all of you Photoshop users out there, here are some sites that have free Photoshop plugins:

Plus an ExtremeTech article detailing 10 useful (and free) plugins to enhance Photoshop.

Interesting article regarding the Linux Desktop with interesting links at the bottom of the page.

It looks like I haven't been paying close attention to the Serendipity release cycle, because on June 15, 2006, Serendipity 1.0 was officially released. According to the documentation, upgrading from previous versions of Serendipity is supposed to be painless.
(I'll have to get in gear and get my blog updated).

Ubuntu 6.06.1 has been released, which contains over 300 bugfixes according to the release announcement. Also, over at OSDir site there is a Ubuntu 6.06 screenshot tour. Note: There is also an interesting article over at TechNews (via Digg) comparing the Ubuntu and Debian distros. Update (8/20/06): Evidently (according to Digg) the official Ubuntu book has been published as well.

Good Digg article leading to the Tweak 3D website detailing how to optimize your Windows XP OS.
One of the nice tools to come out of the article, CCleaner seems to work pretty well for cleaning up misc files(tried it on my laptap, which is always tight for space).

I guess there is one small advantage to always making mistakes as a digital photographer; you are on the constant lookout for tools that helps you correct your mistakes.
Which is how I heard about NeatImage, a good noise reduction tool from our informal photography group at my job. There is also Noise Ninja, which is also supposed to be a pretty highly rated noise reduction tool. And while I am on the subject of tools, I have been hearing that the Wacom tablets is an enormous help in touching up pictures (still waiting for one of my coworkers to bring in his tablet to demo it ).

Ethereal has become Wireshark, due to the Ethereal developer Gerald Combs moving to a new job and his former employer holding the trademark rights to the name Ethereal. (Note: There is also a Wireshark Wiki as well). Also, for those packet-sniffer enthusiasts, here are some additional packet sniffers that are available.

You knew it was just a matter of time. There is now a LOTR Wiki.

Firefox 1.5.0.6 has been released. The main purpose of this release is to fix an issue with playing Windows Media content.