Here is video and a money shot of the Space Shuttle Discovery as she takes one final victory lap around the Washington Monument. Discovery will soon be on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center next to Dulles International Airport in Virginia, taking the place of test vehicle Enterprise (which is heading to the Intrepid Museum in New York City).

Quite a sight… and a bit of a sad one at that.

It's coming right at us!

UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter is confirming this story. HOORAY!!!

Meanwhile, a teaser for 2012!

Yeah baby, yeah! Star Trek 2012!

Five bars on the AT&T 3G MicroCell

Yesterday I happened to stop by the AT&T store near my house, and they had just received a shipment of these bad boys. After a couple of minor setup hiccups, I now have five full bars of signal strength even in the farthest edges of the house (even the basement, which was a “No Service” dead zone until this morning), and all it costs me is a negligible hit on my Verizon FiOS 25/25 broadband connection.

Guess who’s a valuable AT&T customer?!

I am now the proud owner of a piece of paper redeemable for one AT&T 3G MicroCell

Yup, that’s right, I am now the proud owner of a sheet of paper, redeemable for one range-boosting femtocell device. I almost threw out the letter without even opening it—the envelope looks like 99.7% of the rest of the junk mail that clogs my snailbox these days.

Here’s the funny thing, though…

• Yeah, I have shitty cell phone coverage in my house—if I’m not near a window at the front of the building, incoming calls go to voicemail and outgoing calls almost never go through—but I’ve never complained to AT&T about my lousy service…. not once.
• I’m the only person in my household, and my monthly bills only average out to about $100/month.
• I’m only a little over eleven months into my two-year contract with AT&T. The earliest I can bolt is July 2011.

So why the out-of-the-blue corporate largess? Surely there are thousands—hundreds of thousands— of customers more “valuable” than l’il ol’ me… one lonely $1,200/year revenue stream at one location (with only another $1,300 of revenue guaranteed over the next thirteen months). And don’t forget, I never complained about the service, ever. I could understand if AT&T was sending Golden Tickets like these to families in my neighborhood where there are several subscribers, especially if said households were only a couple of months from the end of their indentured servitude to Ma Bell. But one dude suffering in (literal) silence? It just doan add up!

Oh well, who am I to look a gift femtocell in the mouse (wow that’s a strained pun)? If AT&T wants to gift me with more reliable service and all that it costs me is a little leeching off my broadband connection to the intertubes, who am I to complain? I’m lucky to live in a neighborhood where Verizon FiOS is redonkulously fast—I’ll probably never even notice the drain on my bandwidth.

After years of waiting for the right camera (a digital SLR that shoots 1080p / 24 fps video) at the right price (under $1,000), the photography gods heard my prayers and bestowed upon me the Canon EOS Digital Rebel T2i (known mostly outside the United States as the Canon EOS 550D):

Hello, beautiful

I’ll be posting an in-depth review, sample video and stills the coming months, but that’s not what this post is about. Later this summer my partner and I will be heading to Europe for a tour of Italy and Greece, which is one of the reasons I decided to pull the trigger now on the T2i—I wanted a DSLR and HD camcorder for all the places we’d be seeing, but I also wanted to take only one camera, not two. For this trip of a lifetime, I need a good all-around performer telephoto lens that doesn’t weigh a ton and has superior imaging performance.

After doing a ton of research, I’ve pretty much settled on the Canon 70-200mm EF f/4L IS USM, an image-stabilized, ring-type USM autofocus telephoto lens:

Hello, gorgeous!

Only one small problem: this little lovely clocks in at about $1,200 retail… $300 more than the camera body itself! I’m already in the doghouse with the missus for having bought the T2i, so what to do? Simple… rent the lens. That way, I only spend a fraction of the cost of buying a high-quality Canon L-series lens, I get to try it before I buy it, and I’ll won’t be TOTALLY in the doghouse with the better half. Win-win-win!

It’s been almost 30 years since I last bought an SLR camera or lenses—yes, I truly am older than dirt—and online camera equipment rental companies didn’t exist back in the Stone Age when my Canon AE-1 Program was brand-new. Fortunately, we now live in the golden age of the instant-gratification Internet, and there are several online companies that rent high-end photographic lenses and camera equipment. Here are the deals I found as of March 25, 2010 for the Canon 70-200mm EF f/4L IS USM. Unless otherwise noted, all prices shown are for a four-week rental that includes damage waiver insurance and round-trip second day shipping:

• Pro Photo Rental (http://prophotorental.com) – $??? (see comments section below)
• MJ Memories (http://www.mjlensrentals.com) – $250*
• Photo Lens Rental (http://www.photolensrental.com) – $242**
• Rent Photo Stuff (http://www.rentphotostuff.com) – $218
• Lens Pro To Go (http://www.lensprotogo.com) – $200
• Lens Rentals (http://www.lensrentals.com) – $196
• Camera Lens Rentals (http://www.cameralensrentals.com) – $180
• Rent Glass (http://www.rentglass.com) – $171**
• Lens Giant (https://www.lensgiant.com) – $146 (note–updated with corrected shipping cost… see comments section)
• The Lens Pro (http://www.thelenspro.com) – $143
• Borrow Lenses (http://www.borrowlenses.com) – $139

* – This company doesn’t rent the Canon 70-200mm EF f/4L IS USM. The price shown here is for the Godzilla-sized Canon 70-200mm EF f/2.8L IS USM, an even faster (and LARGER) f/2.8 L-series zoom lens that retails for around $1,800.
** – This company only rents lenses for a maximum of three weeks. The price shown here was calculated by pro-rating for a fourth fictitious week.

If any of my readers have any experience (good OR bad—especially bad!) with any of the companies listed above (or know of any companies not shown above that I should check out or avoid), please reply in the comments section below.

(Please note: This post was edited on 03/26/2010 to remove the pro-rated estimated calculation of Pro Photo Rental’s price and to correct the Lens Giant price, which originally didn’t include shipping. Thanks…)

Careful Sulu, you might scorch the paint if you leave that thing on too long

This is an actual frame grab from Decker’s near-suicidal attack on the doomsday machine. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I’m nearing the end of Act II… it just means that I skipped ahead several scenes and have been working on this particular sequence since the beginning of the month. The Enterprise attack on the planet killer is one of the “money shots” in “The Doomsday Machine”, so I’ve been lavishing a LOT of attention on it. Not to give away everything, but one of the things I’ve been spending a lot of time on is extending the soundtrack during this sequence to make the phaser barrage last a little longer. And ooohhhh, it’s a barn burner. I think when you see the finished product you’ll agree it was worth the wait. (Well, I hope you will!)

*yawn* Off to bed… see you soon!