Recycle Your Polystyrene

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In Delaware, there is a very good volunteer recycling program that got just a little better. You can now recycle using “single stream (except if it's batteries, corrugated cardboard, plastic bags). They've never accepted polystyrene. I've always felt guilty about stuffing the light as a feather but bulky stuff in the garbage.

Luckily, there's a company that will accept polystyrene (solid or peanuts) and recycle them into, well, more packing material. At least it gets a second chance at usefulness.

Link.

Video: SHITDISCO, OK

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Glasgow School of Art trio SHITDISCO have made a really clever video for this song OK. It's the kind of video that makes you smile because you know it's a great idea and you wish you'd thought of it first but you didn't so you just enjoy it instead. Oh yeah, the music ain't bad either.

Link.

Canon Vixia HF100: First Impressions

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I recently obtained a Canon VIXIA HF-100 HD camcorder. The first thing I noticed is the unit is extremely light, even with the tiny battery installed. You can look up the exact weight, but spec sheets can't replace holding the unit in your hands.

It has a nice solid feel, the interface isn't overrun with buttons everywhere. There is a simple finger-tip joystick interface for all of the obscured menus to change functions of the camera. It has 16GB of internal flash memory with an SDHC slot for an additional card– I used another 16GB card. Over the weekend, I never came close to running out of space. It always displays the recording time left both for the memory available and the battery life. There are four recording “speeds” that translate into resolution and data rate changes.

It has an AV/headphone out port that is selectable in the software as well as an external 1/8″ mic port in which is really nice to have.

The biggest problem I'm running into is it's very unfriendly to use with a Mac. Despite the fact that AVCHD (the format it records in) is MPEG-4 H.264 standards based video, Quicktime doesn't recognize it, no fault of the recorder but instead of Apple for not providing double-click view of the .MTS file format in Quicktime. The provided software on CD-ROM is only for the still image capabilities of the camera, not the video side (really, who uses their camcorder as a still camera?). You can use it with Final Cut Pro 6 and iMovie 8 provided you have an Intel Mac, something which I lack at the present moment. Hopefully this will be forthcoming and you'll be able to double-click and view the videos right off the card.

So, I'll update later once I'm able to scrutinize the picture quality after I'm able to view it on my 30″ monster screen.

New Music: You might also enjoy

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It's the 80's all over again! These artists bring the nostalgia back like a boomerang. You'll want to get out your leg warmers, neon colored sunglasses and your Atari 2600 and relive the best decade evar.

Crystal Castles self titled debut album. ($6.99 MP3 from Amazon!)

Cut Copy's new album In Ghost Colours. They also have a fantastic “mixtape” called So Cosmic.

Studio: Yearbook 1

Justice's first album unpronounceable (kinda like Prince when he changed his name but then everyone called him “love symbol” ) but is generally referred to as “Cross.”

VHS or Beta: Bring on the Comets

Real yogurt is making a come back

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This New York Times article confirms what I've always known. Americans have an insatiable appetite for sweets– they want candy. So when yogurt was first introduced in the early 1940's, it flopped until sweeteners and fruit were added.

Things are changing, thank goodness. FAGE is opening a factory in the states to make their delicious strained yogurt. I've always enjoyed plain full-fat yogurt. I eat it for breakfast, strain it and use it as a replacement for sour cream, use it to make salad dressing and use it as a marinade base. I've even made my own yogurt using Stoney Field yogurt as the starter culture.

A year or so ago I was turned onto FAGE greek-style yogurt after seeing it in the grocery store. It's an extremely thick strained yogurt with a great tangy taste. Highly recommended. You can get single serves with a side of honey– food of the gods.

Link. Thanks, Jeff!

Fire sale: Griffin FireWave adds surround sound to Macs

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If your Mac doesn't have optical audio out, you can still enjoy Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound from your system. The Griffin FireWave is a firewire connected breakout box that delivers six discrete channels as 1/8″ mini jacks. These in turn get connected to your amplifier and then to your speakers. This unit is great for quick impromptu setups using existing desktop computer speakers. It works with DVD Player, VLC, and even Traktor DJ Studio where the 3 pairs of stereo outputs can be assigned to headphone, main, booth or record.

Best of all the unit is currently $29.99 with free shipping.

Link.

Create your own iPhone ring tones

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It's incredibly easy to now create your own ring tones for your iPhone without paying the 99c. Here are a few different ways to accomplish it.

1. Use GarageBand to load a track from CD or an MP3 file. Trim the song down to a reasonable length. If it's short, it's a good idea to loop it a few times and make sure the loop point sounds natural. Export the song as a “.M4A” via the share menu. Rename the file with the .M4R extension and drag into iTunes. Sync your iPhone.

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2. Use Quicktime Pro to edit/copy/paste the ring tone. Export as MPEG-4 audio. Rename the file with the .M4R extension and drag into iTunes. Sync your iPhone.

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3. Locate an existing song in your iTunes library that is .M4A format by right-clicking (or control-clicking) on the song and choose Show in Finder. Copy the song to your desktop and rename the file with the .M4R extension and drag into iTunes. Sync your iPhone.