Saudi officials saying that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will be unable to meet projected western demand in 10 to 15 years. This is a bit of a surprise, considering how optimistic OPEC usually is.

I found this 3 part interview with Matthew R. Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert, very interesting. He goes into depth on the technical questions of oil production and our current situation. He has also posted a pdf presentation on the basis of his book.

Speaking of sustainability, the Wall Street Journal compares our housing situation with Japan’s lost decade.

On the 1st Anna, Rodene, Bean, and myself went to a night game at Petco Park. (Photos here) I’ve lived near downtown for almost 3 years, but this was my first time at a game. Not much of a ball fan to be honest. It is about the most boring sport out there for me. Going to the park for a game is a fun experience though.

The 2nd we drove up to Encinitas to watch the red tide. It was fairly bright, but was moving further out because of the tide and was elusive to photograph. Red tide is always fun, stamp your feet, kick sand, and watch the show.

On the 4th we celebrated up north with Anna’s family, then headed back home to watch the fireworks. We were watching Spike, Bill‘s cat, so he said we could use his balcony. He was a great view, so it was nice to just sit back and be able to watch fireworks from Coronado, 2 on the bay, and Ocean Beach.

Yesterday Anna and I went for our first snorkel to the cove in a long time. The surf line (221 8824) said the visibility was 15f, so we were really excited. Unfortunately, by the time we got there the water was pretty churned up and there was a lot of surge. But, we were already there, so we hopped in.

I brought my WP-FX701 (my notes here) to take some under water photos. I’ve been pretty impressed with the case so far. Easy to use, all of the buttons are available, and it seems alright at resisting fog. The only gripe I have is that it is slightly uncomfortable to take photos with my index finger, as the case is too wide for a standard grip. But if I switch my standard grip and use my middle finger it is alright.

There was a lot of stuff in the water, and I was fighting the surge most of the time, so photography was a bit frustrating. Photos with scuba gear would be much easier, since you aren’t on a time restraint to stay still. You also don’t have to move around as much since you are buoyancy neutral. I will definitely have to work on my breath capacity for snorkel photos. I found that you need around 20 seconds of not moving much at 10 feet for the fish to not be freaked out by you. At that point you can get closer to them for better photos. Needless to say, this was not easy when fighting the surge as a lot of my oxygen had been used up by the time a good photo op presented itself. I still managed to get a few photos worth keeping and a fun movie of me chasing some fish around. I can’t wait to try it out on a clear day.

I was curious about getting a Super Tangent (Apple Shuffle rip-off) as an el cheapo USB mp3 player. But no one seemed to be selling them on eBay anymore. In the search for the product under a different name, I stumbled on emanufacturer on eBay selling Visual Land’s imported mp3 players. They are bling bling generic asian electronics that one would see featured on dapreview. But, they were cheap. How cheap? Well, I purchased my VL-540 for 50 bucks (buggers charge 14 for shipping though). And just what did I get for 64 bucks?

A stick of red metal USB gum that holds and plays 1GB worth of music. Slightly bigger (3.5″ x 1.2″ x 0.4″) and heavier (if you can call 2oz heavy) than an Apple Shuffle, but the player has 96×26 pixel multicolor LCD. Multicolor? Yeah. Seems like every time you push a button the backlight changes color. Bling! (I later figured out how to set the LCD to one color) It seems to be a decent little player. It supports ID3 tags, lyrics (must be for the karaoke crowd), a voice recorder, and FM radio. Not too shabby for almost 100 bucks less than a shuffle.

The headphones if came with are quite el-cheapo, but I haven’t even bothered with them. I thought I would need them for FM, but my new pair of ER6i’s seems to work just fine as an antennae. Not so sure it would work with my grado sr60s though . How’s it sound? Not too badly. It isn’t going to top the sound quality of something like the Cowon iAudio X5L (which I lust after) but it seems to be quite accurate. It certainly isn’t muddy – I can instantly tell if an mp3 was recorded at 128k, or even 192k compared to my own anal retentive 32-320k VBR setting. It has some built in EQ modes, but I just have it set to normal. One interesting thing is that you can set the tempo – speed up or slow down the music.

The battery life seems to be around 8 or 9 hours and a charge takes a couple hours. One thing that is a bit of a pain is that the player has to be in the on position to charge from the USB port. So there is no way to charge the player without windows opening the drive as a storage device. Not a big deal, but a bit awkward. Of course, I could always get a USB charger, but I’m just lazy.

Though chip identifies itself as USB2, the transfer speed seems to be more on the USB1 side. I suspect the problem probably lies with the write speed of the flash memory. This means that filling the whole thing up at one time will take longer than I like. But I can’t see me doing a full purge and refresh of the player very often. The USB interface allows you to drag and drop files and folders, and the player’s screen lets you play by folder – making it much easier for me to work with than iTunes & playlists. I know, some people are big iTunes fans, but I couldn’t care less. Their implementation is much more trouble than it is worth if you already organize your music.

The UI is fairly uniform and intuitive once you figure out what buttons call what menus, and at what time – most of the menus of context sensitive. Navigating songs and folders is quite easy, and the radio implementation is well done. I tried some basic voice and radio recording and it seemed sufficient, but I haven’t explored it fully. As one might expect, the manual is pretty engrish heavy, but gets the job done. For some reason the player can’t play my copy of The Grey Album mp3s, but everything else I throw at it seems fine. I’m not sure what the problem is, they report as MPEG1 L3, so the player shouldn’t have a problem with them (Layer 1 or Layer 2 support is sketchy).

The player has some warts, but it seems to be a decent bit of a gear. How can you go wrong for a 1gb mp3 player with a screen for 64 bucks?

Now I just have to get a car deck that plays USB and SD cards. Or get/make an aux jack stereo. I guess I could always do the radio trip thingies, but they seem to get a bad rap.