According to researchers at the University of California at San Diego, smoking marjuana doesn’t permanently harm brain functions. This meta-study of other studies covered 704 cannabis users and 484 nonusers.

The studies tested the mental functions of routine pot smokers, but not while they were actually high, Grant said.

The results, published in the July issue of the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, show that marijuana has only a marginally harmful long-term effect on learning and memory.

No effect at all was seen on other functions, including reaction time, attention, language, reasoning ability, and perceptual and motor skills. […]

The findings weren’t particularly surprising to me, as they anecdotally coincide with what other people have told me. In other news, a drug based on marijuana may help curb brain damage (to be clear, Dexanabinol is a synthetic drug intended to treat traumatic brain injuries).

I bought some Mrs Baird’s Sugar Free Wheat Bread yesterday. At the time of that entry, I hadn’t tasted it yet, so I couldn’t comment on that aspect of it. Well, I tried it today and I&rsuo;m pleased to say that it’s very much like regular bread.

I wanted to be sure to write about how it compared to regular bread (since the target audience presumably already likes regular bread but is just looking for something with fewer carbs). However, I found that comparison more difficult that I expected since I haven’t had regular loaf-bread since sometime last year (not counting the occasional bread or roll served at a restaurant).

I was really jonesing for a tuna sandwich this afternoon, so that was the sandwich du jour. I removed two slices from the bag and prepared the tuna. However, before applying the tuna to the bread, I made sure to take a bite out of one slice (plain) just to get an idea of the bread’s flavor and texture without the tuna influencing my perception.

As I chewed the bread, I noticed that it might have been just slightly chewier than regular bread. If anything, it wasn’t overtly chewy. And on the chance that I wasn’t remembering regular bread correctly, perhaps it was no more chewy in the first place.

Texture aside, it tasted very much like regular wheat bread. At the time, it seemed to have an elevated wheat flavor, but maybe that was just because I was eating that bite as plain bread. I was also concerned that the Aprartame (Nutrasweet) might get in the way (since that’s one of the ingredients), but I detected no Aspartame taste.

I then proceeded to apply the tuna to create the sandwich. It was a rather pleasant afternoon as I ate the sandwich while watching some Wimbledon (ahh, Sundays). Perhaps the tuna moistened the bread or maybe I was imagining it all in the first place, but the chewiness wasn’t an issue in the context of a sandwich. And the bread still had a distinct wheat flavor but that was definitely a Good Thing (there’s no point in flavorless bread, after all).

I bought two loaves of this Sugar Free bread on a lark, but I’m glad I did. It costs about the same as regular bread ($1.87/loaf - 18 slices) and it tastes about the same as well. I think it’ll be a part of many tasty tuna sandwiches to come.

I needed some mayo, so I stopped by Target on the way home from the gym this evening. On my way to that area of the store, I ended up walking past all the breads (since they’re in the same aisle). What caught my eye was some Sugar Free 100% Whole Wheat bread from Mrs Baird’s.

I wasn’t even aware that regular bread had an appreciable amount of added sugar (I just figured that all their carbs were due to the flour). At first, it came to mind that maybe this was like the labeling of some peanut butters as “cholesterol free”. Of course, because only animal-based products can contain cholesterol, all peanut butters have no cholesterol (since they’re made from peanuts). Along those some lines, I considered for a moment that maybe this was just a new labeling initiative.

But, I then went to check the labels themselves. I compared the Sugar Free bread to some nearby rye bread (also from Mrs Baird’s). The rye bread had 14g carbs (with 1g fiber) while the Sugar Free bread had 9g carbs (with 2g fiber). So, discounting the fiber, the Sugar Free bread had an effective carbs of 7g per slice — which is about half that of regular bread.

It came to mind that it could be mighty tasty to have a tuna sandwich from time to time (just like old times), so I picked up two loaves. I’ve transcribed the ingredients below, and it looks like there’s nothing egregiosly bad in there:

Whole Wheat Flour, Water, Wheat Gluten, Yeast, Wheat Bran. Contains 2% or Less of the Following: Soybean Oil, Crushed Wheat, Extract of Corn and Barley Malt, Maltodextrin, Wheat Fiber, Calcium Sulfate, Salt, Datem, Grain Vinegar, Corn Starch, Mono and Diglycerides, Ethoxylated Mono and Diglycerides, Calcium Prorionate, Aspartame, Soy Lechtin, Enzymes

And, yes, it apparently contains Aspartame (Nutrasweet). Perhaps breads normally have token amount of sugar to round out the flavor (as opposed to conspicuously sweetening it) and the Aspartame was needed to fill that role. And if Mrs Baird’s website didn’t suck so much, I’d compare this with the ingredients of their other breads (but, their website doesn’t list the ingredients for any of their products).

In any case, I’ll write more about the bread once I’ve had a chance to taste it. And, if you’re looking for this bread on your own, the most easily noticed design element is probably the words “Sugar Free“ which are written in white text against a green banner.

So, I’ve been thinking about web hosting since my current host doesn’t offer me quite enough space on my current plan (100 MB but just $5/month). There were several suggestions in the comments and my choice is becoming harder (or even whether I should switch at all).

Supposing that I choose to go with a new web host, I’d have to move my data over. Moving the static bits (such as my portfolio) is easy and even moving Gallery shouldn't be that hard (since their FAQ specifically addresses how to migrate Gallery).

However, I’m having some trouble finding solid information on migrating Movable Type to another host. Sure, I could just export & import the entries, but I think I’d lose my comments that way. The Movable Type documentation addresses some troubleshooting issues when moving servers, but doesn’t seem to describe the move itself :-/. And their support forum has a few posts about moving servers but they’re hardly the definitive answers that I was hoping for.

In any case, if you’ve moved Movable Type from one server to another (entries, comments, and all), please let me know.

As one of the comments to my entry about my new digicam, Gary asked about budget cameras. I e-mailed him about what he had in mind, and he clarified that he was looking for something around $200-$400.

I read camera reviews all the time, and I was happy to offer a suggestion. I narrowed it down to the Canon PowerShot S230 (about $345 shipped), Canon PowerShot A70 (about $312 shipped), Nikon Coolpix 3100 (about $301 shipped) and the Nikon Coolpix 3500 (about $338 shipped). I was expecting tough decisions, but it was easier than I expected to narrow it down further.

As it turns out, neither the Coolpix 3100 nor Coolpix 3500 offer ISO locking. ISO, of course, refers to the camera’s sensitivity to light. But, higher ISO settings lead to graininess. So, it can be convenient to be able to use low ISO settings with long exposures for night shots (resulting in proper exposure without the film grain). Unfortunately, those Nikons automatically crank up the ISO when the lighting gets low. Don’t get me wrong, I still think highly of Nikon as a company (I have a Nikon myself), but I think it was a mistake to leave out this feature on their low-end cameras.

So, it came down to the Canon PowerShot S230 vs the Canon PowerShot A70. Both are 3.2 MP cameras and their prices aren't that far apart ($345 for the S230 and $312 for the A70). In the end, I prefer the A70:

• The A70 has a 3x optical zoom compared with the S230 which only has a 2x optical zoom.
• The A70 supports add-on lenses. After buying a lens adapter, you can use wide-angle, telephoto, and closeup lenses with the A70. (The S230 doesn't support add-on lenses).
• The A70 supports aperture priority and shutter priority. With shutter priority, you can specify a shutter speed and the camera will choose the right aperture (f-stop) for correct exposure. Likewise, with aperture priority, you can specify an aperture and the camera will choose the appropriate shutter speed. This degree of control can be handy, for instance, with action shots where you may want to force a slow shutter speed to blur the background or force a high shutter speed to freeze the action.

The only disadvantage to the A70, if you could call it that, is that it uses four AA batteries. Personally, I prefer the convenience of a single battery module as it can be less bulky than a set of batteries. However, AA batteries have the advantage of being widely available (you could easily buy a new set while on vacation). And, they’re much cheaper than proprietary camera batteries which can cost $25-35 (or more) each.

So, Gary, I think the A70 would work well for you. B&H Photo is one of the cheapest retailers on PriceGrabber to have it in stock. B&H is also highly reputable with an 8.87/10 score at ResellerRatings along with Gold, Platinum, and Platinum+ Elite Customer Excellence Awards (the awards are given out by ResellerRatings for exceptional retailers).

The camera comes with a 16 MB CompactFlash card, but that’s just about useless. Taking full size pictures at the Superfine quality settings, you can only get about 8 pictures on the card. So, you’ll want a bigger card right away (not to worry, you’ll still be under the $400 mark). You can get a 256 MB CompactFlash card for $54 from Crucial (with free 2nd day shipping).

Other than the CompactFlash card, I’d also recommend picking up a set of NiMH AA batteries and a charger. Steve’s Digicams has a thorough review of NiMH batteries and chargers — some of the better chargers can charge a set of batteries in about an hour. In particular, the iPowerUS set looks convenient as it includes “[the] Charger, AC and DC cords, 8 AA-size iPowerUS 2100mAh NiMH batteries and two battery carrying cases”.

I’m on the mailing list for The Gadgeteer — they review gadgets of all kinds, though they specialize in mobile gadgets and accessories to go with them. Anyhow, their latest review was for the Oyster Portable Computer Docking System.

It’s a bit hard to explain, though I’ll try. It’s not so much a traditional “docking station” as a USB hub within a stand :). You open up the laptop all the way so that the screen is parallel to the keyboard. Then it goes in the stand such that the screen is upright and facing you. After that, it’s just a matter of plugging in the mouse and keyboard into the Oyster — it has an internal USB hub which connects to the laptop.

If that doesn't quite make sense, check out the pictures in the review and that should clear things up. Initially, it didn’t seem to me that there was much use for this. But, it started to make sense to me after a while. It was like having a universal docking station with the screen at a convenient height (and no monitor needed).

The Gadgeteer really liked it as well saying that “I can not recommend the Oyster highly enough!” (though I’m not sure I’d go quite that far). Of course, it is $200, but that’s still about half the price of a real docking station (I checked Dell’s site and they’re listed for $399).

I saw an ad for GreenCine in a recent mailing of the DVD Talk newsletter (DVD Talk features news and reviews of new DVD releases). Anyhow, GreenCine is a DVD rental service (like Netflix) but with a focus on availability of alternative DVDs such as foreign films (including Hong Kong cinema) and anime. Not to worry, their site confirms that they have plenty of mainstream flicks as well.

GreenCine carries a select collection of over 10,000 titles, with an accent on indie, art house, classics, foreign, documentary, anime and Asian cinema. You can check out three titles at a time, with no due dates, no late fees...and we pay the postage! Hang on to them as long as you like. Return one...we send you the next one on your list. Only $21.95 a month, flat fee, with a portion of proceeds benefiting film arts organizations. […]

I’ve been thinking about trying a DVD rental service, though I had only heard of Netflix for the most part. I do enjoy anime and kung fu flicks, so this caught my interest. It's priced a bit higher than some of its competitors, but not tremendously so. Still, I checked Google for reviews just to get a second opinion. And, Stark Raving Normal has a thorough review of various DVD rental services. GreenCine was received favorably there as well:

GreenCine is my current favorite DVD rental service. The customer service people have been great, they have the best selection of anime that I have seen from a DVD rental place, lots of cult movies, sci-fi, horror, indie films, foreign cinema, and even a cool little online community of San Francisco movie geeks.

In terms of Things To Buy, I still need a couch and a DVD player before I commit to a DVD rental service (those were both Jason’s, which he took with him). But, if I get to that point, perhaps I'll consider GreenCine.

I bought my new camera (Nikon Coolpix 5700) ostensibly because I needed a new camera anyway, but I especially wanted to be able to make use of it on my trip to Greece with my family.

I had a hectic project at work during the week preceding my trip, so I didn’t have a chance to read the manual. However, I took it on the plane and that provided plenty of time to read through all of it. I also brought along National Geographic’s Photographic Field Guide and the companion books on “People and Portraits” and “Landscapes”, which I started reading on the plane and continued reading throughout the trip.

Since digital cameras basically have no overhead costs after buying the camera, I made a commitment to myself that I would take pictures whenever it struck my fancy. After all, I couldn’t let 1 GB CompactFlash go to waste ;). In general, I also dislike posed pictures — I find that candids are almost always more interesting. So, I made the executive decision that I would take no posed shots, either. And I didn’t — every shot is candid.

So, over two weeks, I took 272 pictures. I narrowed them down and 80 of those are posted in the Gallery. I also created separate sub-albums for each leg of our trip.

Some notes on the photographs:

• You’ll see that each filename ends with “_smaller”. This is because I resized each image to 1024x768 before uploading it. I did this out of disk space concerns; for instance, the full-size Santorini pictures are 32 MB but 6 MB in their smaller form. Besides, it can be tough to get your head around a 2560x1920 image ;0.

• Though I resized the images for upload purposes, I’ve kept the full-size versions of each image as well (which in most cases is 5 MPixels). So if you want a full-size copy of any image, just let me know.

• And, all images are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. In short, I give everyone the right to “copy, distribute, display, and perform the work”. In return, you must give me credit if you use an image and commercial use is not allowed unless I separately give permission. But, be a chum and go to the link yourself — the page linked is a “Commons Deed” and has no legalese :).

Why pictures were rejected:

Since 80 of 272 pictures are in the Gallery, that means that I tossed aside 192 of them. In some cases, this was an effort in brevity (some shots were basically the same, but from different angles). Others were technically fine and properly exposed but they weren’t interesting enough for me. However, as a beginning photographer, the bulk of the rejected photographs were due to two issues.

Bulls-Eyeing — this is the term I use for subjects placed right in the middle of the frame. I consciously made use of the rule of thirds whenever I could — sometimes even to the extent of centering a subject and then panning the camera to one side to get the shot.

However, sometimes it just slipped my mind and ended up centering some subjects without even realizing it. As I looked over my photographs to decide on which ones to include in the Gallery, I’d often think to myself “Whoops, bulls-eyed that one” as I crossed it off my list.

Overexposure — you might think that overexposure or underexposure would be equally likely, but not in my case ;). I liked the control that center-weighted metering gave me and I often made use of it. That way, I could ensure that my subject would be properly exposed — even with a differently-lit background.

However, it would often be the case that the background would be a very bright sky. So, the camera would diligently obey and overexpose the sky in order to properly expose the foreground. And, I quickly learned that while PC-tweaking can correct for a surprising number of anomalies, once your sky approches FFFFFF, you're up a creek. That is, even underexposed backgrounds can be “brought back to life” inside the PC, but a “white” sky simply has no blue information in it anymore.

Looking forward:

I hope that both through further photography experience and the Dallas Camera Club that I’ll be able to avoid those kind of mistakes in the future. In the case of overexposure, in particular, I suppose that matrix metering might help me there (?). At least that way, if the subject ended up underexposed, I’d still have a chance of correcting that in post processing.

From the gallery-announce mailing list, I learned that a new version of Gallery (1.3.4) has been released. It seems to be mostly a maintenance release, though there are some new features as well:

New features for v1.3.4 include: the ability to download your gallery to burn to CD or browse offline, additional photo print services, auto-rotation of JPEGs when possible, and the ability to add new customized description fields to photos. […]

I’m almost ready to post my pictures from my trip to Greece and, along with this new Gallery release, I’ve been thinking about my web hosting.

I currently have hosting with Logjamming and it’s been fine so far. They do Wil Wheaton’s hosting and that’s what drew my eye to them in the first place. I have their Standard Account plan and for just $5/month it includes 100 MB space and 300 MB transfer/month.

That used to be adequate, but I find that I’m now bumping into those monthly limits regularly (both their space and transfer limits, as their quota-daemon is only too happy to remind me). I could upgrade to their Advanced Account, which allows for 200 MB storage and 1 GB transfer. But, especially with the digital photography and my new camera, I can only imagine that those limits may not be enough in the long run either (?).

So, I’m open to suggestions on web hosting (or even if you think Logjamming’s Advanced Account will be fine after all). I’d like to keep it to around $15 or less per month, which is why I’m not really considering Logjamming’s Deluxe Account ($25/month x 12 months/year = $300, yikes).

The two main web apps that I used on Hand Coding are Movable Type and Gallery. So, I’d need a web host that would work with both of those — Movable Type isn’t much concern, but Gallery is another story ;).

Sure, Gallery can probably be installed on most web hosts. But, even on a decent hosting provider (like Logjamming), it can quickly become almost more trouble than it’s worth if any library isn’t in its default location.

However, the Gallery project has a list of “Gallery certified” web hosts. And it’s not just lip service either — the Gallery team does a test-install on each host before approving them. And since an Easy Gallery Install(TM) would be a godsend, I figure that list could be a good starting point.

And, looking over those hosts briefly, OpenSourceHost caught my eye. For $14/month (when paid annually), they offer 350 MB storage and 7 GB transfer/month (that takes into account their Gallery Special which adds an extra 100 MB storage and 1 GB transfer when using a Gallery referral code).

Well, let me know what you think. When I started with Logjamming, I paid for a year in advance, but my year is just about up. So, this could be a good time for me to switch, if I were to do so.

The DFWBlogs Cocktail Event was held at The Meridian Room this month. And, though The Meridian Room’s source code is slightly atrocious (generated by Dreamweaver), I like their site design — the photographs scattered throughout are better than I would expect for this type of site.

Of course, their full menu and drinks list are online. Earlier in the day, I selected the Bleu Cheese Burger along with Spaten Franziskener (on draught!). Unfortunately, upon arriving, I realized that their website was out of date since I couldn’t find the Spaten on the paper menu. So, I ordered my burger and went with a Newcastle instead.

The burger arrived shortly, along with a heaping portion of fries. All of it was steaming and very hot (a good sign, for sure). I added a dab of ketchup to the burger (as usual) but, after tasting the fries, decided that they only needed a dash of salt & pepper.

The burger itself was above par and very good. It’s likely among the top five burgers I’ve had here in Dallas. The blue cheese wasn’t just sprinked on top, but melted — so, it must have been added while still on the grill. Melted or otherwise, they probably could have fit more blue cheese on there. I would have preferred just a touch more (that is to say, as much blue cheese could be crammed on there).

The only letdown with the burger was the bun. The menu listed it as a honey-wheat bun and I could taste the honey and the wheat (no surprise there). But, the bun was not only a bit tall — the top bun may have even been a little taller than the 1/2 lb patty — but the honey flavor was too intense such that the bun resembled a distant cousin of a Cinnabon. The bun wasn’t super-sweet, but it was more sweet than it should have been.

The shoestring fries — presented in a heaping pile next to the burger — were great. Too often, other restaurants overcook their fries into hard sticks; but these were pleasantly pliable. They were steaming and still moist with oil, so they absorbed the salt & pepper easily. Fries don’t get much better than this, and they were probably the best fries I’ve had in Dallas.

The service at The Meridian Room was also very good. Not a moment after finishing a glass, a server appeared and asked whether I would like another beverage. With such attentive service, I had three beers there (I more often go through two beers at other Cocktail Events). Rest assused, I tipped them well for such service.

From when I first saw their quaint website, I had a good feeling about The Meridian Room. And, it didn’t let me down. I had a good time, and I would look forward to going there again.