Category Archives: Fun

The new Star Trek

Fun


My family hit the new Star Trek movie this past week and I have to give it two thumbs up. I really enjoyed it.

The great thing about the movie is that you don’t need to know anything about previous Star Trek movies to understand it, but there is a lot of fun things to see if you are a Trekkie, too. J.J. Abrams directs it, and I enjoy his style, as we are huge Lost fans, another one of his projects.

I also enjoy Leonard Nimoy and he does makes a cameo appearance in this episode. I was curious to see if Bill Shatner was going to also be in it, but I remembered after the movie that his character dies in Star Trek Generations. The writers stay true to most of the proper story line, but there are a few differences, especially with Spock’s mother.

No spoilers here and if you need a break from the summer heat or like Sci-fi at all, this movie is worth it and I hope you enjoy it.

TobyLaura.com

Newest Mac owner

Computing, Family, Fun, Internet


Congratulations goes out to my dad, the newest Mac owner in my family and the most recent to see the light about cruddy windows. He already had a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, so he went with the Mac Mini, the most affordable way to get a Mac. It’s just a tiny box that has a lot of USB ports on the back so you can plug in your monitor and accessories, and viola: new Mac.

The new iMac’s are sexier, but the Mac mini is no slouch and allows for more versatility. It’s going to take him a little while to get used to how easy and comfortably a Mac runs, but a steep learning curve can be fun, too, if he looks at it like an adventure, where new computing tricks lay just around the corner.

He was fed up with all the garbage that windows is: “Program not responding”, “Program has performed an illegal operation”, “End this program now?”, “Your virus software is out of date”, “A new software patch is available.” And on and on. He was ready for something that just works. He wanted to find a computer that could run windows and Apple software on the same machine. He found it, in the new Mac mini.

Intrigued? Learn how easy it is to switch from windows to a new Mac and why, here. The Apple store is here.

TobyLaura.com

Vladimir Photo

Aviation, Fun


One of the last flights that I flew at Chautauqua, I brought my camera along to take a few cockpit photos. It was also the flight that Laura came along on, so that she could be my passenger. The blog about that story is here. Anyway, I took a photo of the co-pilot Vladimir Naskovski and sent it to him.

A few months later, he got a call from a Macedonian Magazine that was doing stories about Macedonian airline pilots around the world. He sent them his story and included my photo. My photo of him showed up on the front page of the story! Now I can say I’m published, sort of. I don’t get hung up on photo rights and all that stuff and am just happy for him and that the photo worked out. Now, if I could only read the article. Clicking the picture may increase its size for you.

TobyLaura.com

Photo Gear

Financial, Fun, Photography


If you are looking to buy a new camera this holiday season, look no further than Ken Rockwell’s website for advice on choosing the right camera. He is an avid photographer that buys and then reviews just about every camera on the market and does a great job of explaining what is important, and what is marketing fluff.

Wether you are a novice, or a pro looking to buy a $10,000 camera system, Ken’s site is the place to start. If you love photography as much as I do, you’ll really appreciate his site. Click his photo to be taken to his “Recommended Camera’s” section, updated for November 2008. You can see his entire site, at KenRockwell.com

Enjoy.

TobyLaura.com

P.S. This is the camera that I want. Yikes, I better start saving!

The new MacBook

Computing, Fun, Internet


The new MacBook laptops from Apple have arrived and they are awesome. Built from a single piece of aluminum, they are seamless, have no screws or drill points, are blazing fast, have great features like backlit keys updated touch pad, and maybe best of all, a new LED screen that is much brighter and sharper than the traditional LCD screens of today.

There is even an option for a solid state hard drive (only 128 gig though). Solid state is lights years ahead of the hard drive in the computer you have as you read this, (2008) because it has no moving parts. It is basically a huge flash drive. What kills hard drives and makes them lose data, is the spinning and spinning. After a while, a spinning hard drive will fail. Solid state will probably out live us all!

When you want to combine computing power and style, Apple is the only way to go. These laptops also run Windows operating systems (who’d want to?) so that if there are any programs that are considered a must have, but only run under Bill Gate’s tyranny, then that issue is solved. Honestly, being able to run both systems together leads me to wonder why everyone doesn’t have a Mac. They are more user friendly, don’t require virus protection, don’t shutdown due to programs running an “illegal operation” and just simply work.

After all the heartache of updating my virus software, losing my work from a program shutting down, and being hassled with endless error messages when trying to add a printer or unplug a flash drive, I made the switch to Mac and haven’t looked back. Actually, because so many people use Windows, and because of Microsoft’s notorious attitude for hostile domination, many hackers and virus authors target Windows. That’s fine with me! Apple viruses hardly exist because people who want to cause large devastation with a virus pick on the software maker with the largest market share. With Apple, that’s less than 10%.

So all you Windows sufferers out there, please continue to buy that terrible junk sold by Microsoft, because it is keeping the viruses aimed elsewhere, instead of at my solid Mac! For everyone else who is tired of the endless troubles and updates that has plagued Windows for decades, come into the light. Afterward, you’ll wonder why it took so long. Just remember, with Mac, it’s “plug and play” but with Windows, it’s “plug and pray.”

To post comments and more, visit TobyLaura.com

Boomdeyada

Fun

If you are a Discovery Channel geek like me, you’ve seen this great ad. If not, then I submit that this is one of the best commercials on all of TV as the show hosts sing together. (See if you can catch the Hong Kong skyline in there.)

Enjoy.

To post comments and more, visit TobyLaura.com