In the interest of Gettin' Stuff Done, I haven't posted here in a month or so. We got so much done, didn't we? Oh, my- yes! Our accomplishments... staggering.

You all finished that book that nobody will shut up about, and that's neat. I got a lot of work done and played with my phone that nobody will shut up about, including me. This thing has been reviewed all over the place by too many people, and I don't have much to add to that except to say I can't live without it, and if anything ever happened to my iPhone, I'd actually drop dead like a coal miner's canary. It isn't because I even use the phone much. I get 450 minutes of daytime minutes to use a month, and over the first month I used just over 60 of them, which was tremendously shocking that I even talked on it that much. They roll over to the next month- by the end of the year I will have approximately 58,000 minutes to burn. And it isn't because of some cell-phone culture coolness factor- I'm actually very self-conscious about pulling it out in public, and as you know, I normally have no problems pulling most anything out in public. People are really curious about it though, that's for sure. But no- for me, the big deal about the iPhone is that I've got it rigged to give me step by step directions to get through my day. I have little messages and helpful warnings pop up all the time with pleasant beeps and buzzes. "Don't forget your ad deadline!" "Remember to take the double stroller to Na-Na's!" "Don't leave the house without pants!" And, amazingly, I have not been outside without pants since I got this thing. The neighbors are very impressed, they think Becky has finally "trained me" somehow. WHATEVER. You can't train ME. No WAY. I am the Alpha Male. I do what I want! But you can tell me what to do and I'll totally do that without question or hesitation.

On the autistic kid front: Still extremely autistic! Now with random, uncontrollable rage filled shrieking! Yikes. I said before that Casey was all calm and easy to take care of. Not so much anymore. He's upset a lot, like very. He's also started slamming his head into things when he really gets going. All this PLUS he's extremely difficult to settle down! We think it is because he's being faced with all these new challenges with his various therapies that he gets frustrated quickly and doesn't handle it well. It's been disheartening and sometimes soul-crushing. [BIG SIGH GOES HERE]

But, on the positive side, they've set up a spot for him at this great special needs preschool that deals specifically with autistic kids. He'll start in November, won't even have to get on a waiting list or anything. Getting him in isn't the only good news, however- the actual good news is that our city will be paying for it. This is what happens when the child in question has issues that the public school system is unequipped to deal with. Since it's the law that every kid is entitled to an "appropriate education", they refer these kids out to special schools. And pay for it! Which is about the greatest news ever as The Achievement Center costs FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR. That was in all caps because it pretty much has to be, doesn't it? So, in many ways, Casey is lucky to be as majorly impaired as he is, since if he were one of those poor suckers who is only somewhat autistic, he'd have to stick it out in public school with all the grinks and groinks.

MY COMPUTER HAS A CAMERA

That's about enough of that. On to our recurring feature, God Plates. I have one to show and one to tell, and you will not believe me when I tell it.

First, the show:

I think it was P@ that mentioned he thought it was weird that I'd find all these God Plates on cars without God Stickers. Well, I give you Stickers. You're welcome.

Now, the tell. Becky called me at work (on my iPhone [/jerk]) and told me she was driving behind perhaps the greatest God Plate of all, but she didn't have a means by which to photograph it, something we all regret instantly. I have to take her word of course, and though I have no reason to think she would make something like this up, we all need to take it as rumor at this point. However, this plate is my White Whale- I'll die trying to find it. But find it I will, for this Holiest of License Plates reads- and I'm giggling as I type- "HOT 4 GOD". Really. Really. Hot 4 God. I think if I can shoot that one I can quit.

And now what the hell- some cute children who happen to be mine. And yes, they need haircuts. No, I won't have anything to do with haircuts. I've learned my lesson well. The kids- they don't like having their hair cut. At all. So screw 'em. Shaggy a-holes.

MY PHONE HAS A CAMERA


MY PHONE HAS A CAMERA


MY PHONE HAS A CAMERA

I had some other stuff to yak about, but maybe I should save it and then there will be something else to post later. Pacing, it's all about pacing. And dick jokes.

P.S.- what's with all the huge boobs in anime these days? Man, in my day we were hard pressed to find so much as a B cup in Star Blazers or Robotech. And dude- we pressed. We pressed hard.

Tags: Gadgets Autism License Plates Pictures Kids Geekery

I have never owned a mobile phone, or even desired one in any way. I detest them. Yet all day so far I've been going over my finances to see if I can justify the $60 a month it'll take to use the new iPhone I want SO BAD.

The hype is too compelling. CAN'T RESIST. I almost want to go to the Apple store and stand in line with all the sweaty nerds right now. I said "almost". Ick.

A side note: some people are hung up on the price of the phone, but it is a non-issue for me. For tax purposes on the freelance work I need to spend a certain amount of money on equipment every year to write off or I take a major hit on April 15th. I'm nowhere near that magic break-even point, so I've gotta buy something. Yay Capitalism At Work!

Tags: Geekery Gadgets

Camera at work.

Tags: Pictures Kids Geekery

Today, for lunch, I ate a hot pocket and three donuts. BANG-POW! I am INDESTRUCTIBLE!

For the record it wasn't a real Hot Pocket™, it was something they sell at my new Dunkin' Donuts which is basically a really fancy hot pocket only bigger. Plus, it was not frozen in the middle and it was not cooked in a dirty microwave (with apologies to Jim Gaffigan).

Here's a closer shot of the now famous Matt's Dunkin' Donuts. I'm probably going to jail for this because they have signs all over the place that say, "PLEASE... Do not take any pictures!" I think it's so they don't give away any secrets that terrorists could use to make tainted pastries. My God, just think of it.

I shot this yesterday with my brand new (SEGUE ALERT) digital camera! In the coming months I have an alarming amount of photography work to do, stuff that actually pays and that I will make money on and that people will hand me checks for. That means "professional" in my book, and my book is better than all your books put together. After three years of struggling to make my Nikon 5700 take decent shots, I just couldn't face going into another job with the uncertainty that pictures would turn out any good. Hell with that- I'm kicking it to the curb. Nikon- you suck. After much research and the activation of my super low APR Business Use Only credit card, I bought a sexy new Olympus E-500 digital SLR. I had considered the offerings of other manufacturers in the price range, but settled on the Oly for a few reasons. The Nikon D-70 was well reviewed, but it turns out that it won't use any of the gear I bought for the 5700 (including the TTL external flash), and there was the aforementioned Nikon Suckage issue. Next up was Canon and their very poopular Digital Rebel (whoops! Did I say "poopular"?), which at least statistically blows away just about everything in the class. Until you actually pick one up, that's when you realize it is built like a baby toy. If I am dropping major cash on a camera, I'm gonna need this thing to last for more than a couple hours. I'm not sure the Rebel makes it out of the box intact. After digging deeper I found that as far as digital SLR's go, Olympus has the nicest lenses available. For people who already own an SLR camera, this is not a great thing because Olympus cameras only work with Olympus lenses (for now), thus making upgrading hard because you'd have to basically scrap all your old gear. Since I didn't previously own another company's SLR and a bag full of old lenses, this was not a problem. I'd rather start fresh with nice stuff that is meant to work together.

And then there is the love aspect. THE finest photographic experience you can have is to go on vacation with an old Olympus C-2100 UZ. Light, fast, a whopping 10x optical zoom ("Ultra Zoom") that is electronically stabilized so even far away shots are always sharp. I got mine when it was new back in 2000, but you can still get them on Ebay. This camera has an incredible cult following, especially among nature photographers. People who use the 2100 simply call it the "Uzi". I will never part with mine, I'm even considering buying another used one just so I'll have another when this one dies. If I could get away with only 2 megapixels for pro work I would never have gotten another camera, but sadly the Uzi isn't great for studio stuff. For everything else though, there will never be an easier to use camera that takes better pictures. It never misses a shot. My much more expensive and higher resolution Nikon did nothing BUT miss shots. Live and learn.

Because of how much I love the Uzi, I went back to Olympus. My hope is to recapture some of that Uzi magic with a professional level digicam. To that end I didn't get the kit version of the E-500 that comes with the two lenses, I just got the body and some different lenses separately. One is a 14-54mm f2.8-3.5, which is faster than the smaller kit lens so it works better in low light situations, which is very important to me. But then I also picked up this badass zoom lens, an 18-180mm super compact beast. Because the E-500 forces 2x on any lens attached to it, the actual focal range of this "Ultra Zoom" lens is 36-360mm, or 10x. That's the same range as the Uzi! It lacks the electronic optical stabilization (Olympus had to discontinue putting that into their cameras because they lost some patent infringement case in court), but since the E-500 is overall a faster camera, the quicker shutter speeds make up for a lot of what that did. And this camera has 8 megapixels to the Uzi's 2!

I think Olympus realizes that a lot of folks are trying to relive old times with this new lens, because I just saw that they have put together a new kit that combines a silver version of the E-500 (the Uzi was silver) with the 18-180mm lens. That's just good marketing.

I've had the new camera a little over a week now- and it is GREAT. Even better since my tax guy says I can write it off on next year's return. WOO! If you're in the market for a very fun to use digital SLR that's very affordable (by D-SLR standards), I think you can't go wrong with the Olympus E-500.

Here's some more pictures! The zebra is not one of my children, but the others are.

Next time on Matt's Nerd Blog we will talk about computer monitors, which as it happens I also had to buy last week. Holy crap, what a wake-up call that was.

Tags: Lunch What? Kids Pictures Geekery

We have TiVo boxes, which are normally the best things on this or any other planet. However, sometime last week TiVo flashed them with some software update, and now our boxes won't record the end of TV shows. Like, it stopped four minutes before the end of 24, so I don't know what happens there. And the box upstairs cut off the last 7 minutes of The Office last week, so I had to buy the whole frickin' episode from iTunes just to see the end. Lost also got the shaft this week, but we were actually watching that during the recording so we got to see the end of it.

I checked on the TiVo forums, and it looks like lots of people are getting the same thing. SHENANIGANS! If we can't count on TiVo, the last good thing there is, what can we count on? Religion? The Government? The Power of Love*? I think fucking NOT. I don't care how much George Bush and his brother Jesus love us, I still can't see the last three minutes of The Shield.


* I think Huey Lewis seems like a solid guy though. Maybe he has 24 on tape!

Tags: TV Geekery