Vitamin Funk

It’s Heee-er! New Stone Vertical Epic

Alex Funk — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:35:31 +0000

New Camera – Testing the Limits of Point and Shoot!

Alex Funk — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:30:24 +0000

It wasn’t until I was at Burning Man this year that I really felt like I was doing the art, landscapes and people injustice capturing stills with my old Casio Elixim. Took about a week back of investigating various makes and models and a 10min trip to Best Buy to settle on the brand new Canon Powershot SX20 IS. This baby really has it all, or enough for an amature enthusiast like myself. Canon have always been great cameras for me with ease of use and amazing picture quality right out of the box. Lets hope this one goes the same way, for those who are also looking here’s a quick overview:

12.1 megapixels
20x optical zoom (super zoom!)
Face detection
2.5 swivel LCD screen (super bright)
Takes 4 AA batteries for easy swapping on the go
HD Video (720p)
Mini HDMI to HDMI port for easy viewing on your big screen

What it doesn’t have that the SX1 IS does have:

1080p video (found this to be useless since you’d need a gigantic SD card to shoot in that high resolution
RAW support (Not being at the level of pro photographer yet I can’t see the application to get all of my images uncompressed, non-jpeg format)
CMOS sensor (this one probably effects the image quality for the better since its found in Canon’s EOS Rebel cameras)

Photos:

Flying Humans, well almost anyway

Alex Funk — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:09:30 +0000

Just watch the video. I’d love to see this on the big screen or IMAX. (hint, hint)

Like Roundup? Think Again

Alex Funk — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:34:58 +0000

The World According to Monsanto – A New Documentary. Questions and Answers about Monsanto, FDA and

Lead, PCBs, GMOs, rBGH (Bovine Growth Hormones), Cancer & Chemicals…. All things you want to stay away from.

Electric Bill Got You Down?

Alex Funk — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:19:23 +0000

Ever since buying our house I have been amazed at the increase in gas and electric we are paying each month. When we lived in the city we paid $35-$45 per month on energy for our apartment. Since moving to the quasi-burbs our SDG&E bill has gone up 600%. Now I know there are a few things that really tips the scale (the biggest being the pool and hot tub) and we do have more space with lot of lights in each room that I try to keep off. But I have really been motivated lately to try to bring the bill down.

Here are a few things that I am implementing: I’ll check back in a month or so and see if it made a difference:

I’ve purchased 2 Belkin Conserve 8-Outlet Surge Protectors with Remote Switch. These babies have a remote that turns off all but 2 of the plugs letting you cut that vampire standby power consumption. One for my entertainment center and one for my office.
I purchased a bunch of CFL (compact fluorescent) from Henry’s Market for the outside lights that stay on all the time. I have them on mainly for safety, but there is no off switch that I can find so I had to figure something out.
I just purchase a set of some automatic light controls to screw into my outside lighting so that they will automatically turn on at Dusk and off at Dawn, I had no idea they even existed or what they were called. It took me forever to find them through Google.
I’ve turned my pool filter to only run 3-4 hours per day in the winter. I am still pondering the thought of turning down the 105 degrees on the hot tub but I don’t know if that will make a difference. The hot tub is kind of a necessity in winter too, Maybe it will even out then summer comes and I can turn it down/off.

Now we wait and see…

Low fuel prices doesn’t mean go back to our old ways

Alex Funk — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 16:47:13 +0000

I’ve got a VW Jetta that I love and I filled her up for $23 yesterday at Arco which is just crazy. In the 10 years I’ve lived in San Diego I’ve never filled up for less than $30. I can remember getting my license back in 1996 and gas was $0.99/gallon then (oh the good old days – no talk of recession then right?)

But just because we are paying less at the pump, I hope companies will still try to pursue alternative energy solutions. I think we all know oil is not the future and renewable is (even the big car companies are saying it now!- thanks Congress . In this recession there are hopefully going to be some entrepreneurs with some great ideas that rise to the top and really set this country strait.

Aptera Motors is one of those companies – they have a long term goal in mind which is to put more fuel efficient and renewable energy cars on the road. They just launched a new website today – check them out at www.aptera.com.

Education Matters!!!

Alex Funk — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:51:19 +0000

A friend posted this on Facebook and I wanted to call attention to it. If you want to be President of the United States I think education matters just a little bit don’t you? We are not talking about geeky software engineers who drop out of prestigious colleges to create internet startups, we are talking about Commander In-Chief of the greatest nation in the world

Obama:
Occidental College – Two years.
Columbia University – B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations.
Harvard – Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude and President of Harvard Law Review

Biden:
University of Delaware – B.A. in history and B.A. in political science.
Syracuse University College of Law – Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain:
United States Naval Academy – Class rank 894 out of 899 ….(5 from the bottom.)

Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University – 1 semester
North Idaho College – 2 semesters – general study
University of Idaho – 2 semesters – journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College – 1 semester
University of Idaho – 3 semesters – B.A. in journalism

Search Engine Rap Battle

Alex Funk — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:29:03 +0000

With Google dominating the search engine wars over Y! MSN and some new (fading) startups like Cuil it only figures now if there is going to be real competition let them battle rap it out.

from http://searchenginerapbattle.com/

New and Improved: Google Maps for Moble

Alex Funk — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:23:43 +0000

Twitter allows me to find out things as they are happening in real time like a conversation you would have with a co-worker or friend except it is happening all around the world with millions of people, some you know most you don’t. Some of the useful things that pass through my twitter stream are product announcements like we have had over the past few weeks. Its how I first found out about Google’s new browser Chrome and how I found out yesterday that Google released a new version of its mapping software for mobile phones and I have to say it is amazingly better than the previous version. Now there is transit and walking directions as well as street view and the ability to find your location even if you don’t have GPS. The look and feel has been updated somewhat as well to be more 2.0 sexy. Thanks Mashable!

Informative video from Google. Disclaimer: Slightly Corny

Government Bailouts – the interest goes to…

Alex Funk — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:28:59 +0000

So the U.S. government sweeps in rescuing poor AIG with $85B taxpayer money. I get it we don’t want to see what’s further down the spiral, but if we the people are lending these big corporate giants money which they need to repay – shouldn’t we share in some of that interest being payed back? I mean aren’t a million+ Americans using AIG for some reason paying them premiums and service charges and all the other fees that they collect?

And should’t AIG feel thankful to the government and the American people for coming up with the cash to bail them out?