Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has reviewed the new Intel Core Duo-based iMacs.

His conclusion is that the iMac is by far the best available computer for the average user. The convenience and reliability of Mac OS X, and the brilliant design of the Apple / Intel hardware make this a machine that’s a pleasure both to own and to use.

Will I hope the tobacco-chewin’, duct-tapin’, gear-jammin’ hillbillies of Numb… sorry NASCAR are happy. My highly enjoyable ‘Legends of Motorsport‘ on Speed was pre-empted again. The upcoming schedule looks great, with the Alpine Rally, Niarobi Rally, Le Mans all coming on.

For those who haven’t watched it, the program features a varied set of archive footage with either updated commentary or the commentary of the day. many times the old commentary is absolutely hilarious. My favourite so far has been a deadpan Tony Pond racing a Nissan against the much more powerful cars of larger factory teams.

When interviewed and asked whether, like the other drivers, he would be off to warm baths and masseurs, the laconic Pond merely replied that he just ‘fancied a cup of tea’. Understated by highly able guy.

Thanks to BW3 and a local radio station, I won free tickets to the TCU Horned Frogs game against Iowa State at Reliant Stadium here in Houston. Had a pretty good time. The game when I left it was 24 – 24 in the 4th quarter.

Here’s a shot of a horn frog going down right near to getting a touchdown.

I just managed to replace 3 of our remotes with a RadioShack universal remote. The universal remote has a cool light-up screen that lights/shimmers the appropriate selected device, and allows key functions to be controlled. It’s trial and error to program, since you have to try a bunch of codes from the manual for each device. So far, the Phillips TV, the satellite receiver and the Panasonic DVD player are working. I couldn’t find a code for the Phillips DVD player, or the HDTV tuner, but I think these can be programmed by recording the actual remote controls.

But dumping three remotes (so far) for one (cooler) remote is a pretty good start. This is a great piece of hardware.

I proclaim today leaf day !!

We spent the morning raking leaves from the huge tree over the backyard. Then we ended up with huge leaf piles all over the lawn. Most of the effort was spent putting the leaves into bags, the second picture shows the 22 or so trash bags full of leaves that we collected.

The attached pics on this post are of a squirrel that the cat was attempting to stalk. The 80-200/4 is an AI lens, so it was manual focus and non-metering on the camera. However, with the instant feedback of having a digital camera, it was easy to home in on f4 and 1/400 sec for these exposures. Since the light didn’t change, I stuck with the same exposure for all the shots.

Duckpond at Fairlane Woods

View across to the Trees

Working in Detroit this week, and experiencing quite a lot of snow. I went out this evening and took a few pictures in the last dying of evening.

Spent Sunday morning at Houston’s downtown aquarium. This is a pretty cool attraction. Here are some of my pictures:

I have the Tokina 12-24mm/4 ultra wide angle lens for my Nikon D70. I’m not sure about the color rendition though.

This picture was shot at 1600 sensitivity so you can see some noise, but it’s still better than having no picture at all. I think I like this lens a bit more than my 18-70mm Nikkor. It’s actually the first non-Nikkor I’ve purchased.

The big drawback for my shooting is that if you want to use fill flash, you have to zoom in to at least 20mm otherwise you will get a big shadow in the bottom of the picture. I guess I’ll be able to work around this, maybe by keeping any foreground detail away from the shadow, but it’s annoying if you permanently have slow/rear/-0.7ev (my fill flash settings) always in the camera. Actually this problem would be even worse with larger lenses like the 2.8 aperture lenses.

Had lunch at Pei Wei on Sunday. Haven’t eaten there for a while. Quite enjoyed the coconut curry and pork.

The picture is taken with my Nikon D70 and the Nikkor 18-70/3.5-4.5 lens. I’m really enjoying this camera, and the only downspot is the fairly large (conspicuous) size and fair degree of complexity.