Did this for the first time last night. Movies look great on the mac but the import process is dog slow, basically happening at something close to regular playback speeds.

This software may be worth trying – iMovie & iDVD Visual QuickStart Guide: Import AVCHD Later with Voltaic

Quad-CF PCI Controller from Addonics – Brett mentioned this in his comment on my macbook air, what a cool little product, add an SSD to any PC.

* “The Ghost Brigades”:amazon by John scalzi. Ok most of the way thru, kind of “Forever War”:amazon -ish. The denouement is a little weak, a little too much falls into place. But solid story in a much more densely occupied galaxy than ours appears to be. * “Borden Chantry”:amazon by Louis L’Amour. Great tale, first L’Amour I’ve read. Classic American west hero. Politically incorrect in so many ways but well told. * “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded”:amazon. Given to me by a very smart left-leaning person, not something I would have ordinarily stumbled across, but I am glad I did. A collection of essays from authors with very different experiences and worldviews than mine – typically minority, typically low income. The basic theme is a criticism of 501c3 funding for charities: the structure prevents in many ways recipient organizations from attacking structural problems in society due to gift limits on political activity, reporting overhead, etc. There is a lot of needlessly pejorative anti-capitalism and anti-white talk which distracts from the message, and a lot of whining about the burdens of fundraising, and a lot of “revolution for revolution’s sake” talk. And only a few hints from some of the writers about proposed solutions. But still thought provoking – there are real problems in society that require policy solutions, not just amelioration. If you give a lot of money to charities, this is not a bad book to read as part of your overall education process.

Apple - MacBook Air – very happy so far. Don’t miss a spinning hard drive at all.

* Toolmonger ? Blog Archive ? Jabsco Drill-Powered Pump – love things that leverage drill motors * Plastic razor blades – what a great idea, i totally get it * Coin-size screwdrivers - a simple yet useful idea. I actually ordered some of these.

Just ordered Amazon.com: Advance Wars: Days of Ruin: Video Games based on the NYTimes review today. Have to wonder – when will we see a DS with wireless integration like the Kindle? I don’t buy games that often, cartridges and manuals are a pain, why can’t I just download the games wirelessly?

The Best: Extinct Animals, From an Elephant Bird to a 10-Foot-Long, Four-Eyed Spider – a 7 foot long centipede. a 4 eyed spider-like thing. eek.

Recently had some new GFCI outlets installed in my house like these – The Phantom GFCI - Popular Mechanics – the addition of an LED letting me know if the outlet is live is brilliant! And then I saw this prototype – a light switch that responds to smoke alarms. I love the idea of embedding cheap electronics into our electrical system – I’d really love it if somehow my switches and outlets could all report current energy use; that would help me start to change behaviour re conservation.

Harvesting the Sun’s Energy with Antennas – it sure seems like at some point we may see a “moore’s law” type effect in solar cells – dramatic increases in efficiency with dramatic cost drops. Will never be as longlived as the Moore’s Law phenomenom since efficiency is capped but still seems like we will see great improvements.

Like many people I have a mess of extra cables – displays, ethernet, usb, sound/speaker of many flavors, firewire, etc etc etc. I used to just keep them in a tangled mess in a drawer.

But I had an unused shoe rack like this one – Chrome Over-the-Door Shoe Rack – it is pretty great for storing cables. Lots of ways to hook them over the shoe holders, easy to keep them organized by type, etc.

LiTraCon™ via toolmonger. Pretty awesome.

* Completely Uninstalling Windows Applications – sadly necessary * svchost processes – this is very helpful. * Google Docs Uploader – I am shifting all my doc storage up to google docs, this is helpful