Posted on by lhl

LA Approves $5 Million For Police Device To Record Racial Data

The Los Angeles Police Department is required to collect race and other information on every police stop. It’s part of an agreement with the federal government aimed at ending racial profiling and other civil rights abuses.

Found this while trying to find out about the apparent bomb at the Felix Dealership (Jefferson / Figeuroa), but so far there doesn’t seem to be coverage (the whole area is sealed off and there are lots of police helicopters flying around though.

Posted on by lhl

Added a few notes to my earlier MP3 player post. It looks like I can choose to forget decent MP3 recording for now and just get the NEX ia for $120 when it comes out, or spend $130 for the RipFlash TRIO which should do decent recording (8-192Kbps) w/ mic and line ins, but is limited to 128MB of memory (90min of recording @ 192Kbps). I’ll probably go for the former, as the latter is still missing some basic features I want for recording.

Here’s what I want in a reasonably priced consumer MP3 recording unit:

  • adjustable mic/line level input (and level meters)
  • ability to monitor recording
  • high quality, high bit-rate MP3 encoding (compressed lossless would be a plus)
  • compact flash support
  • smaller than MD player
  • standard usb mass storage device interface (not as important w/ a separate reader, but still, makes drivers much less of a hassle)
Posted on by lhl

Saw Better Luck Tomorrow last night. It’s not a perfect movie, but it really is well worth seeing for so many reasons (if I were a film critic, I’d probably label it as ‘significant’), and I’d definitely recommend it. Hmm, I wonder how the ending was changed…

“Better Luck Tomorrow” did get a face lift after Sundance, thanks to

MTV money that allowed Mr. Lin to tighten the editing, insert some

new scenes and tone down an ending that some viewers found too

cynical. “Just things that Justin said he would have done the first

time if he’d had the money,” Mr. Gale said.

Apparently there’s been a lot of grass-roots promotion going on for the movie, which at last in Los Angeles, seems to be working out. All the showings were sold out when we tried to catch it on Friday, and even last night the movie played to a full house.

Posted on by lhl

Whoa, is Thermal Depolymerization the future? From this month’s Discover: Anything into Oil

“This plant will make 10 tons of gas per day, which will go back into the system to make heat to power the system,” he says. “It will make 21,000 gallons of water, which will be clean enough to discharge into a municipal sewage system. Pathological vectors will be completely gone. It will make 11 tons of minerals and 600 barrels of oil, high-quality stuff, the same specs as a number two heating oil.” He shakes his head almost as if he can’t believe it. “It’s amazing. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t even consider us waste handlers. We are actually manufacturers—that’s what our permit says. This process changes the whole industrial equation. Waste goes from a cost to a profit.”