What was shaping up to be a great Tour de France has now turned into a nightmare. Riders are being ejected left and right from the race a day ahead of the Strasbourg start as part of the fallout from Operation Puerto. Ullrich, Basso, and Mancebo, three of the top five finishers last year have been suspended from the team for being on a list of riders suspected to have been part of an elaborate Madrid-based doping ring. Other people on the list include Joseba Beloki, Oscar Sevilla, and Tyler Hamilton, who has steadfastly proclaimed his innocence since getting thrown out of the Vuelta Espana in 2004.

This is far worse than the Festina Affaire of 1998 and will produce a horrible cloud over this year’s Tour. I was really hoping to see fireworks between Ullrich and Basso. Instead, we’re going to see legal wrangling, a protesting and down peloton, and most likely a suicide or two before all this is over.

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I’m trying Flock for the first time. It has integrated a lot of other web properties into the browser, such as Flickr, Wordpress, de.licio.us, and others. How many of you have tried it and what do you think? Still on Camino, FireFox, Safari, or IE?

Blogged with Flock

Here’s a photo that I blogged using Flock. It’s when I dislocated my right elbow while playing Ultimate.

Is this the future of web applications? Borg-like interoperability of various third-party applications?

It was just a few years ago that Microsoft purchased what was previously a Mac-only shop in Bungie. History repeats itself with Microsoft’s purchase of iView Multimedia. I thought a bomb was dropped the other day when Adobe acquired the technology assets of Pixmantec, the makers of the popular RAW convertor for the PC, RawShooter.

This one hits closer to home, since I’ve been a relatively happy customer of iView since the software’s early years. It’s very interesting to see how large software companies such as Adobe, Apple, and now Microsoft are investing in-house or purchasing companies in this marketplace.

• Open letter from the iView founder
• Acquisition FAQ
• About iView Multimedia

I received and installed my new Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX 512MB video card from rubytuesday. For those of you who have not been following the saga, the stock Nvidia 6600 video card that most Dual-Core G5 PowerMac owners have purchased is dog slow when performing any Core Image tasks. CoreImage is used throughout Mac OS X but especially in apps such as Motion or Aperture. The 6600 was in fact removed from Apple’s list of recommended cards for Aperture a few months ago.

Since Apple isn’t offering any aftermarket video cards, people have had to purchase reflashed PC video cards. The 7800GTX has been reviewed and given a stellar review on the Mac performance website BareFeats. At $750, it’s not cheap. Given the speed increase over the 6600, however, the 7800GTX will pay itself off with my next photo job.

I’ve posted a couple of videos on YouTube that demonstrate the speed differences between the 6600 and the 7800GTX below the fold.

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Title says it all.

We’ve been using several bug trackers at the office, including Bugzilla and Jira.

With all the things happening in my life, I need to get a better system to track tasks. Maybe I’ll have to get a copy of Alex’s TasksPro installed.

Of course we timed it like this. Just one week after Rae and I celebrated our one-year anniversary, we got to celebrate another annual event, Randy’s birthday! Our friends planned a host of events this weekend, starting with a steak dinner at Cattlemen’s in Sunnyvale, continuing with a water polo pool party at our house, and concluding with clubbing at Studio 8 in San Jose.

The highlight from Friday evening was bashing open the Mexican/Korean pinata doll, Joon-Mo and Min Seun brought over. The girls softened the pinata up for the killing blows from Felix, Daniel, and Randy!

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Party pics from our one-year anniversary and housewarming party are now up!

It was nice to see such a broad cross section of our lives at our place. Stanford classmates, Newton alumni, Wushu and dance friends, post-college buddies, workmates, and neighbors made up the guest list.

Entertainment at the party included Guitar Hero, pool floats, Mahjong, World Cup Soccer, NBA Finals (congrats to the Heat!), and lots of yummy food!

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When I bought the Quad, the only video option around was the entry-level card, the Nvidia GeForce 6600. The 7800GT was a BTO and would have taken an additional month or two to arrive. Had I known how dog slow the 6600 would be with applications that rely so heavily on CoreImage and the GPU, such as Aperture, I might have held out.

This morning, I sent in an order for a reflashed Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX 512MB. From the review on BareFeats, it’s the fastest video card for the Mac today. In a few months, when Apple releases the new MacPros, that will likely change. That’s tomorrow, however, and I need faster performance now.

This afternoon, I swapped hard drives out of my PowerBook. It was a harrowing experience the first time I did it a couple of years ago, and it was harrowing today as well. The “new” hard drive in the PB is actually the original 40GB hard drive. The “old” hard drive was an 80GB model that has developed several bad sectors. Disassembling the laptop is not was the faint of heart, and I am very glad that there are several websites that detail the process. Thanks to Vin and Chris for their help today!

We’re celebrating our one-year anniversary at our new home in Santa Clara with friends and family this weekend!

We’re having a Battlestar Galactica theme for the party and have designed an appropriate poster for the event. If you’re a veteran of Dia de los Mojitos, In Da Clubertino, Hide Your Daughters, or Pre-Heat, you know what to expect!

Party attendees, bring your swimsuit, goggles, towel, and your favorite beverage/snack/food for the grill. Free inflating/deflating service for all pool toys. Party starts at 2:00 pm and goes until 10:00 pm!

Rae and I are off to San Diego for John Blake’s wedding! See you in a few days!