I went last night with Snow’s family to this exhibit, and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience (unless of course you happen to travel to the other cities where it will be exhibited). Every “display” was at one time part of a real human body. I’d have to say that at least 50% of the visitors there last night were in one way or another related to the health sciences field. If you’re into character design, etc, it’s not to be missed–most of the models are in incredible positions (ballet dancer, runner, skateboarder, etc.). If you live in or near the LA area, check out the exhibit before it leaves on January 23, 2005.

Link: California Science Center

Link: 2-for-1 coupon

While I was away at the MXimize Conference in Orlando, my order from Amazon.com for a Philips 23″ LCD (Model 230W5VS) arrived. I don’t have the DVI input active yet, but even the analog signal quality is amazing. I also ordered a VTBook PC Card that handles DVI from my Tablet PC, which should be coming today. I was tempted to get the Samsung 243T–it’s got an inch extra on the diagonal, and is the successor to the 240T which Snow (my partner and co-author on the Flash Bibles) uses. Oddly, Samsung removed the extra inputs for S-Video and RCA video from the newer model, so I went with the Philips, because it was slightly cheaper and had built-in speakers and memory card slots on the front panel. Both monitors have a 500:1 contrast ratio as well. If you’re looking for a nice write-off on equipment for your taxable income this year, nothing like a nice LCD monitor! I was pretty surprised that Amazon.com had the best price for the Philips monitor as well. If you find a place that has a new (not refurbished) unit cheaper, please post it.

Philips Magnavox 23IN LCD 500:1 1920X1200 60HZ (230W5VS/27)
Sale Price: $1858.19 @ Amazon.com

Samsung SyncMaster 243T Widescreen 24″ LCD Monitor (Silver)
Sale Price: $2,070.99 @ Amazon.com

Do you know someone (maybe yourself!) who needs a little more speeed out of their laptop, notebook, or Tablet PC? Chances are, the laptop you’re using (or he/she is using) has a slow hard drive, either 4200 or 5400 rpm. For around $200, you can get a nice 60GB 7200rpm hard drive *and* USB 2.0 enclosure for your old drive. I just did this with my Acer Tablet PC, and startup times for everything have drastically improved. I thought the Universal EZ upgrade kit was incredibly fast and efficient–you get a boot CD-ROM (Windows only) that enables you to copy your existing drive to the new drive, and then you swap the new drive with your old drive. It took about 3 hours for my old drive (40GB worth of files) to copy over to the new drive.

Hitachi TravelStar 7K60 – hard drive – 60 GB – ATA-100 7200RPM
Price: $164.99

Universal EZ HDD Upgrade Kit For All Notebook Computers
Our Price: $61.82, Price After Rebate(s):  $46.82

On Monday night, just after leaving Laurel Canyon Park (the dog park) off of Mulholland Drive, I saw the infamous Pussy Wagon* in front of me, waiting at the stop light at the corner of Mulholland and Laurel Canyon. I pulled up beside the Pussy Wagon, to get into the right turn lane, and low and behold! Quentin was driving the Pussy Wagon! YEE HAW!

*The Pussy Wagon was featured in Kill Bill Vol. 1.

The folks at DataRide.com in Minneapolis, Minnesota, are now hosting the FlashSupport.com web site. DataRide.com was one of the only service providers I could find that offered both ColdFusion MX 6.1, ASP and ASP.NET, MS SQL Server, and LiveStats support. I’m also hosting www.nielsalpert.com there. Previously, I was using our home office’s business class SDSL line (1.5 Mbps up and down) from Covad to connect FlashSupport.com on our Windows 2000 Advanced Server to the rest of the world. In anticipation of our move to Portland, Oregon, I wanted to get the public sites off our home server, lest they be down for two or more weeks during the actual move–tentatively planned during the month of March. Let me know if you think the site seems to load faster on the new DataRide.com service. And thank you for visiting FlashSupport.com!

Today, my latest (free!) article was released on CommunityMX.com. This tutorial walks you through the process of adding ActionScript 2.0 class files to a SWC file that you can distribute to other developers. You can also use this process to quickly add commonly used AS2 code libraries to your Flash projects. Check it out at:

http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=dc2c0

Thanks to my co-worker and buddy Peng Lee, I’m posting two great deals on 200GB internal hard drives. We all need more storage these days for all of those video clips and images that we’ll never look at again. Check these out! I bought the one at Staples.com because I didn’t want to deal with mail-in rebates.

Maxtor 200GB 7200rpm Internal EIDE Hard Drive
Staples.com price: $179.99, after instant discount and check-out rebate: $99.94

Western Digital 200GB 7200rpm Internal EIDE Hard Drive
CircuitCity.com price: $149.99, after mail-in rebate: $89.99