Author Archives: ayn

a couple more photographs of my BA Coax GMT

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With the bracelet disconnected it was easy to get shots of the display back, so I snapped a few pics. I forgot to clean the crystal for these pics, so the ones of the display back look a bit foggy; part of it was due to the reflection of the white wall next to where I was too… So these pics are kindda mediocre, hehe… In the first one you can see the hairspring, in the second image you can see the column wheel for the chronograph. The last pic is a snap of the entire watch coz I realized I didn’t actually have a shot of the whole thing.

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Bob Davis’ bracelet resizing tools

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Both my Speedy and SeMP’s bracelets are slightly too loose, instead of bring them to a jewelery repair shop to resize, I decided to DIY it. After a bit of research, I found Keith Downing’s recommendation on Bob Davis’ resizing tool, it looks super easy to use and with shipping it’s only $20 or so, so I ordered one and it came in today. Here’s a picture of the tool from Bob’s website.


With this I resized both bracelets in no time, this thing is awesome!! The cost of getting one bracelet resized you can own your own resizing tool! Next time I’m gonna pick up his spring bar tool, coz it was a pain to change straps on my RXW MM20 after I changed the screw-in bars to spring bars… 🙂

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The Perrin “shorty antenna” on my Evo finally got stolen

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Well my Evo’s Perrin “shorty antenna” got stolen, it was bound to happen, took almost 2 years for it to get stolen, so not bad… I am pretty sure it was taken when the car was parked at the Sunnyvale Caltrain station last night, Sherry had to go to SF to do some stuff and car was parked there til like 21:30, I didn’t notice it was gone until tonight at around 9 when I walked to my car at my work garage.

Good thing she removed my Valentine One from the windshield, otherwise I would probably be looking at a broken windshield and stolen Valentine One, that would cost a lot more than a Perrin antenna… Whoever stole it also knew exactly how to remove it and didn’t cause any damage to the base or the paint, so not bad at all!

Just ordered another one from LancerShop, hehe, should be hear next week…

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Electric MINI, 0-60 in 4.5 seconds!!

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A British engineering firm has put together a high-performance hybrid version of BMW’s Mini Cooper. The PML Mini QED has a top speed of 150 mph, a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds. The car uses a small gasoline engine with four 160 horsepower electric motors ? one on each wheel. The car has been designed to run for four hours of combined urban/extra urban driving, powered only by a battery and bank of ultra capacitors. The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles (1,500 km). For longer journeys at higher speeds, a small conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) is used to re-charge the battery. In this hybrid mode, fuel economies of up to 80mpg can be achieved.

mini_hybrid.jpg

Treehugger: Electric Mini: 0-60 in 4 Seconds: It Has Motors In Its Wheels

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Bush goes retro to avoid prosecution

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Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The U.S. Supreme Court also exposed Bush to war crimes charges under both the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against the Bush administration’s military tribunals and inhumane treatment of detainees.President Bush and his attorney general agree that under existing laws and treaties Bush is a war criminal together with many members of his government. To make his war crimes legal after the fact, Bush has instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft changes to the War Crimes Act and to U.S. treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions.One of Bush’s changes would deny protection of the Geneva Conventions to anyone in any American court.Bush’s other change would protect from prosecution any U.S. government official or military personnel guilty of violating Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Article 3 prohibits “at any time and in any place whatsoever outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff observes, this change would also undo Sen. John McCain’s amendment against torture.Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, says that Bush’s changes “immunize past crimes.”Under the U.S. Constitution and U.S. legal tradition, retroactive law is impermissible. What do Americans think of their president’s attempts to immunize himself, his government, CIA operatives, military personnel, and civilian contractors from war crimes?

Bush Goes Retro to Avoid Prosecution – by Paul Craig Roberts

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EOS 400D

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I like the sensor and the dust cleaning thing. I like the new 50/1.2L also!! It will make a badass portrait lens for the 1.6CF bodies. I think I’m still gonna hold out for a full frame body and the 85/1.2L though.

Here’s a quick glimpse at what’s new in the Rebel XTi/400D, relative to the camera it replaces:

  • It produces 10.08 million pixel photos from a 22.2mm x 14.8mm CMOS sensor
  • The sensor cover glass includes a piezoelectric device designed to apply dust-clearing ultrasonic vibration during camera startup, shutdown or manually at anytime
  • The camera can create a map of any stubborn guck not removed by the sensor’s self-cleaning action and embed that into JPEG or CR2 metadata. Digital Photo Professional v2.2 will be able to apply the dust map for one-step removal of unwelcome dust blobs from pictures
  • Rebel XTi/400D autofocus is the same 9-point system used in the EOS 30D (and EOS 20D before that)
  • The twin LCD displays of the Rebel XT/350D have been replaced in the Rebel XTi/400D by a single 2.5 inch (diagonal), 230,000 pixel, 160 degree viewing angle TFT rear LCD
  • A sensor beneath the viewfinder eyepiece detects when the camera is brought to your eye and shuts off the rear LCD automatically (the lone rear LCD is the entry-point for almost all basic settings except exposure mode)
  • Burst depth is a Canon-specified 27 Large Fine JPEG and 10 RAW CR2 frames
  • The Rebel XTi/400D is the latest Canon digital SLR to incorporate a Picture Style menu for extensive control over colour, contrast and sharpening, including the ability to turn off sharpening of in-camera JPEGs entirely
  • The camera offers an extended range of printing controls when linked to a compatible Canon photo printer

Rob Galbraith DPI: Canon announces 10MP Rebel XTi/400D

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Second BA GMT is here, and I love it!!

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The first one not working out made me want this watch even more!! It is absolutely gorgeous! I saw a ton of watches in Vegas last weekend, including the other “contenders” for this price range (well, very broadly): El Primero, Daytona, “regular” BA, Rattrapante, Panny chrono, PO Chrono. I really do like this one the most, not to mention it is a hell of a deal if you compare it to the Daytona and El Primero. I know, the calibre is questionable, which is kindda a big deal to me, so we’ll see… Played with the chrono A LOT tonight and it always reset to zero, so far so good. 🙂

Here are some images of the watch, enjoy!

BA GMT

BA GMT

BA GMT

BA GMT

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More stuff from my alma mater: hardware speed recognition

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Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are hoping to do for speech recognition what graphics cards did for gaming — that is, make it better. The idea being to use specialized computer chips in order to overcome the problems inherent with software-based solutions, which’ll also lower the power consumption required and allow for better speech recognition in things like cellphones. And according to the researchers, it’s working, although currently limited to a not-very-practical 1,000 word vocabulary. The technology isn’t just for dictating your email though; one of the many possible noted examples of applications is making search available on a specific piece of dialog from a movie. Wonder if they’ve been having any secret back room meetings with a certain rumor-happy video game company?

Better speech recognition through chipsets – Engadget

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