Greedo didn’t shoot first

I ran into Greedo this weekend and we had a little chat about who fired first in Star Wars. It seems that Han is a bit fat liar and made George (the man behind the curtain – think wiz of oz) change history.

Greedo feels like he has a bad rap now and can’t seem to get any jobs else were after Star Wars revised edition went out. So as you can see now he has a job in Sci-Fi museum, where he spends the rest of his life encased in glass.

Poor guy, gets a bad wrap and not cant get any decent jobs. You can visit him at the Seattle Sci-Fi Museum. Feel free to read more about this conspiracy here.

I have been on the long quest for a great gps logger to carry around on my hikes and travels. I am a shutter bug by nature and on my last trip to Europe Took over 700+ photos and I would of taken more but my 8 gig memory card took a dive 2 day into the trip. Over the past 6 months I have tried out my combination of hardware and software solutions (original post) before finally buying a GiSTEQ logger to take on my trip to Europe with me. I originally saw a link on Engadget a few days before my trip and quickly contacted the company and ordered one.

My experiences with the GiSTEQ device was pretty positive over all but I did find one annoying factor and that was the time it takes to sync up with satellites and start logging data. Every day of our trip, I had to stand outside for what seemed like a few minutes for it to finally sync up, some times this was faster and im sure it was the various locations I was standing at that didn’t help. This is probably due to a lot of the tourist places are in locations where a lot of buildings tower over you. Now I don’t know that much about satellites but I’m guessing that was one of the issues.

The software that comes with the logger is still what I call it in the early stages, while it works most of the time it lacks a lot of the features that I use (Google earth/maps exporter). I have been in contact with them and they assure me they are working on versions to add some of the features that I use and as of the June 7th a new version is out but I haven’t had time to check it out yet.

Never fret though, You can export your gps logs to .nmea format and use software such as RoboGeo to take advantage of more features for geo tagging your photos such as export to Google Earth/Maps, Shape file, DXF file, Mapoint and many other options.

Their is a new gps logger in town I’m trying to get my hands on as well QSTARZ BT-Q1000 GPS which incorporates also bluetooth technology. The GiSTEQ is just a logger but the QSTARZ is both a logger and can be used with other mapping software for trip/route planning.

Over all i pretty happy with the GiSTEQ and as they improve the software I might use it more and more, but for $99 you cant beat the combo of hardware and software that comes at that price.

Seattle Skyline

Last weekend I took a quick unexpected trip to Seattle to visit some friends and do a surprise visit to my biz partners. This was my second trip to Seattle and I do have to say I really like the area how ever I don’t think I could deal with the weather so much. Out of the 4 days I was there the sun only came out for 2 and boy it was like a celebration for everyone.

I guess living in sunny California we take the nice sun for granted, when the sun comes out in Seattle its as some miracle has happened. While on my visit I was able to swing by Valve Software, take a small tour and play test a bit of Team Fortress 2 which I had a blast playing.

I’m headed back up that way at the end of June so if anyone has any recommendations of things to check out, bars to visit, hidden Seattle gems or anything else hit me up or leave a comment in the blog.

This photo was taken from my buddies balcony during one of those rare sunny days in Seattle.

Looking though some of my pictures from Europe there are a few odd ones that stand out that I have labeled “WTF”.

I figured I would share some of my odd photos of signs, items, places and ads that I think you guys might get a kick out of. If anyone has any ideas on the last photo of the bunch I would love to know, just drop a comment in the comments section below.

While in Budapest its worth taking a small trip outside of the city to see Statue Park. What is Statue Park? Well during the rain of communism in Budapest a lot of statues where placed in and around the city. After communism fell 1989 in Budapest and the government of the city decided to have all the statues moved to a park which is located outside of the city instead of destroying them.

Visit Gigantic Memorials from the Communist Dictatorship in south Budapest. Cubist busts of Marx and Engels and a bug-eyed 15-foot statue of a triumphant Soviet soldier are among the surreal highlights.

I highly recommend taking a short trip out to see this park and It will only take about 45 minutes to view all the statues. You can take public bus but we where told that can take you over an hour and it isn’t easy. We took a cab from our hotel, it was about $40 US, and the cab driver waited an hour while we looked around which worked out perfectly.

Here are some photos I took of Statue Park during my trip to Budapest in May 2007.

You can see more photos at my Flickr account here and the actual Geo Locations where I took these photos since I traveled around Europe with a gps logger that allows me to tag the exact spots where I took my photos.