nathan jara

As I alluded in an earlier post, I’m an avid golfer. With the latest positive developments in my golf swing, I have decided that this is the year I purchase a new set of golf clubs. This evening, I went to a local GolfTEC for my first professional golf club fitting. It was great! And so much fun! I was able to hit a number of different club/shaft combinations while “hooked” up to the computer which recorded a plethora of information about my swing. The system uses a high-speed camera to record the rotation of the golf ball off the club face in order to provide ball spin and launch angles along with recording club head speed and various shaft kick angles. The fitting system was really cool. After hitting many a golf ball, several different clubs, and good conversation with the pro, I finally made the big decision. I’ll be getting the new Mizuno MP-58s. They are sweet! Needless to say, I am pumped. And the guys at my work golf league are in serious trouble. ;)

These guys at Adobe really have outdone themselves with this content-aware feature.

This video of the newest Photoshop CS5 feature is absolutely insane. It’s so crazy, I almost have to question the validity of the video. The new feature is called “Content-Aware” deletion and fill. It allows you to roughly select parts of an image and totally remove them without having to do any additional touch up work. This feature ultimately takes the place of what would normally be hours of work. I know I won’t be shelling out the bucks for the new Creative Suite, but I’m sure for many designers, this feature alone would be worth it.

I took advantage of the beautiful weather this week and hit the links for the first time this year. This was the definitely the earliest I’ve ever been able to get onto the golf course. It was awesome. It felt so good to be on the course. And I think my trips to the indoor golf range definitely paid off over the past month or so; I’m hitting the ball great for it being the first time out. I definitely don’t have the rust I usually do when playing for the first time of the year. My summer league will be starting up as soon as the weather stays consistent. The boys at work are in trouble :)

I also had my first experience at a casino yesterday. I met up with some friends to check out the new Rivers Casino on the North Shore in Pittsburgh. It was certainly an interesting experience. It felt almost fake as we walked around the giant hall watching and listening to the repeating sounds and lights on the countless “money” machines. I’ve never been a gambler and don’t plan on starting either, but it was fascinating to watch the many people staring uninterruptedly as the slot machines spun endlessly in front of them. To think that all of these people just sit for hours and hours feeding their money into these machines waiting for the siren above to go off signaling their wildest dreams. It’s crazy.

I also found that the layout of the casino was very disorienting. Everything looks the same and you can easily feel like you’re not sure where you came from as you walk the floor. The layout made sense though from the casino’s perspective. The more people are forced to walk around, the better chance they’ll stop to spend more money.

We stood and listened to a live jazz band that was playing near one of the four main bar areas. They were pretty good. I enjoyed the live music. It also really reminded me of the movies. I felt like Robert DeNiro or Al Pacino would be walking through to check on the high rollers at any minute.

I don’t think I’ll be frequenting the casino very often, but I would like to go back to try the buffet. I definitely think that would be money well spent.

If you liked that, this one is cool too.