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Aliciana, my brother Nick, his girlfriend Jessie, and I went to the circus today. I don’t know about it being “The Greatest Show On Earth” but it was definitely entertaining. I would have to say the highlight of the show for me were the elephants who would stand on each other’s backs. It is amazing to see such large animals in action.

On the way to my Aunt Susie’s house for some great barbecue and a fireworks show we decided to stop by our future home to record the progress. It is completely trenched and the builders should be pouring the foundation any day now. It really is starting to feel like we are getting a house now that I can walk on the lot and see actual progress.

Today was my first day of work at my new job as a Web Systems Analyst at The Bakersfield Californian. I will be working on web related projects and doing other software development as needed. Everyone at the paper has been great and the work environment is awesome. Everyone is really open to my ideas and my suggestions seem to be genuinely valued. There is no shortage of interesting ideas being kicked around as future projects, so I am really looking forward to the coming opportunities to apply my skills. I also get to run Linux at work, which is a big plus!

We spent all weekend in San Luis Obispo celebrating Nick and Jessie’s graduation from Cal Poly. Below are my pathetic attempts to take photos from the nose bleed section of the gym their ceremony was held in. The organization of the ceremony seemed pretty bad considering there wasn’t even enough chairs on the court for all the graduates to have a seat. I guess architects leave implementation details like that to us engineers

Just thought I would pass on some good link mojo to a couple great Internet media projects ran by former TechTV personalities.

The first such project is SYSTM, with is a video based technology show produced by Kevin Kose and Dan Huard. You can watch their latest episode, which is about setting up a free (and more powerful) Tivo like DVR system, by clicking on one of these formats (XviD, Windows Media, Theora, Quicktime).

The other great content I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention is This Week in Tech, also know as TWiT, which is a podcast staring Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, Robert Heron, David Prager, Roger Chang, and John C. Dvorak. Other guest also frequently pop in. They spend about an hour every week talking about the latest news and trends in tech and is always a interesting and quite funny show to listen to. You can find links to the different formats of podcasts here.

A few days ago Nokia and several Gnome Project related companies announced the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. The device is only 5.5 x 3.1 inches in dimension and 0.75 inches thick, making it about the size of your typical PDA. It includa a 800×480 touch screen in full color, 802.11 b/g WIFI, and a nice brushed metal case. But, the best part about this device, is that it runs Linux and Gnome!!! Nokia has even completely open sourced all the software on the device and is supporting it as a community project called maemo.

The device is expected to go on sale within the next few months and cost $350. Anyone want to buy me one so I can start hacking on it? With such an open platform, the possibilities for this device are limitless. Lots more information about this device can be found on Nokia’s web site.

Before leaving town Aliciana had Jenny’s mom do I trial run on her hair. She will be doing Aliciana’s hair the morning of the wedding. I think it turned out very beautiful… I was blown away when I saw her later on in the day in person. Jenny’s mom is very talented!

Aliciana went down to San Diego for a bridal shower thrown by her mom. She left Saturday morning early and only stayed in town for about 36 hours. Below are some photos taken before the shower.

I have had my new Tungsten E2 for several days now and I think it was worth the upgrade. The main reason I bought it was so Aliciana could have my old Tungsten E. That way she can keep her work calendar and contacts on it. Plus, I wanted a new toy.

The first thing you will notice about the Tungsten E2 when compared to the older Tungsten E is how much more responsive it is. The E has a 126 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP311 processor while the new E2 has a 200 MHz Intel XScale processor. Don’t let the similar sized numbers fool you, a 200 MHz XScale is much faster feeling than the 126 MHz OMAP.

A lot of reviews on the E2 make a big deal about the new screen, which is brighter than the older one found on the E. But, in my opinion and having the 2 devices side by side, I can’t tell much of a difference. I think that the biggest improvement in the screen is that it doesn’t suffer from the high pitched buzzing sound of the older screen.

The Palm OS is the newer 5.4.1 version of Garnet, which includes newer versions of the PIM apps. It also adds a “focus” highlight around the current control in the application that has the navigator focus, which I didn’t like at first but have been getting use to. My main complaints with the new focus feature is that it gets cut-off around many of the buttons where it doesn’t fit and it’s color scheme doesn’t change with the selected theme. Hopefully, they will fix both and make the fix available to current owners.

My biggest complaint is the new “Universal Connector” on the bottom of the device that replaces standard the mini-B usb plug. This is a typical move to a proprietary interface instead of an industry standard. While I like that the cable now has a ‘hotsync’ button on it, I hate that I can’t use the same cable with between my digital camera and PDA. Until I see some useful devices come out that take advantage of the proprietary that couldn’t have been implemented using standard USB I will remain convinced that this change is just a scheme to sell additional expensive cables.

The E2 includes some other new features, such as the integrated bluetooth, which is totally insecure and will remain turn off. It also has better photo integration which allows you to finally place a photo of a contact with his info. Still no WIFI, which is sad and makes the included web browser pretty useless.

Overall, buy an E2 over the E because of the much faster processor. It is still a great device, relatively inexpensive (around $250), and does information management very well. If Palm PalmOne Palm ever combines it with built-in WIFI it will be a killer device. We can only hope that happens at some point.