I was at my local Costco the other day, and checked out their photo lab and was surprised not only with their prices for prints, but that they offered scanning services, from negatives and slides. The price for a low-res is only $.29 each, and hi-res (their hi-res is 3139px x 2048px) is $.79. Compare that to the local “pro” photography shop’s prices of $3.95 for a 1024×768 scan from a 35mm slide! So, I decided to have them do hi-res scans of 27 of my slides. Most of them came out better than I expected, although there were a couple that made it look like the slide was over-exposed. Anyways, the image above shows the complete slide, while the detail below shows the scan at 100%.

Not bad at all! Next I am going to have them do a couple of 8×10 prints. One from the scan ($1.79), and one from the slide ($1.96) and see how they compare. The examples they have at the store are great quality. I am curious to see how it turns out.

Some of the most interesting photos in baseball are taken when the pitcher is in the middle of a pitch. There must be some special name for it that is used among sports photographers. I mean, you can’t go wrong with a photo like that. Usually, the facial expression is totally contorted, and often you will see an arm that looks like it is bending the wrong way. The other day there was a picture of a pitcher whose legs looked like they were about to snap… too bad I didn’t save that one. There must have been hundreds that made the front pages of the baseball sections of the major sports websites; I wish I had saved all of ’em from this year, but I only have a few…. Click the link below to see the ones I did save. (and I will add more as the season progresses)

Tonight Mariko made an awesome quick sushi, which was sushi-rice, avocado, and smoked salmon. She just layered them in a plastic wrap-lined baking dish. It was yummy! We also ate karaage (fried chicken nuggets) which are always good. Plus, I had a beer.

The other night we made Okonomiyaki at home. The special ingredients in one of them was yakisoba and bacon. The other one was “kim-cheesu”, kimchee, cheese and bacon. It was super yummy! It’s so awesome to have tasty Japanese food several times a week. I am so glad that Mariko enjoys cooking so much. 🙂

I think it’s cool that there’s gonna be a $2.4 million blimp outfitted with cameras and chemical detection systems hovering over the Olympics this year. I knew airships would be coming back.

Speaking of airships, there is a zeppelin cruising across Asia right now… Awesome! My mom once took a ride in the Goodyear Blimp a while back… lucky!!!

We sometimes have NHK news (Japan) on the tv in the evenings, and the Mitsubishi story has been pretty big. Mitsubishi cars and trucks have always been kind of sketchy, but the safety cover-up is just too much. It seems sales in May of 2004 dropped by 60% in Japan because of it. You can read a little about it here: Safety Scandal Shames Mitsubishi (Washington Post)

ESPN has a really cool “Tour Tracker” (click on the link at their site) so you can follow along live with the goings-on in France. It’s pretty cool. There’s tons of talk on the local (Austin) sports radio shows about Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France, and doping. I guess that’s to be expected in Armstrong’s hometown. At least it’s a small break from hearing about the Longhorns…

Well, the Dodgers finally lost last night after winning eight in a row. So, I guess I can’t jinx them by posting. Well, unless they go into one of their six-game losing streaks, which is entirely possible. Anyways, they are still holding onto first place. It’s a great season so far! Unfortunately, my fantasy baseball team hasn’t been doing so good the past few weeks. I started off strong, but have dropped from 2nd place to 4th… Oh well, hopefully my team can pull it together. I am about to complete a trade that will send Ichiro away for Burnitz. That should add a little power to my lineup, at the expense of batting average and steals.

In case any of you want to put Takoyaki.org into your RSS Feed reader thingies, the URL is http://www.takoyaki.org/takoyaki.xml. Thanks Chris for pointing out how to do this. I guess after I upgraded pMachine to the “Pro” version, I didn’t set the rss generator up.