Orvis

What was your first high end rod? Mine was Orvis. Orvis is one of the oldest fly rod manufacturers in the world. Founded by Charles F. Orvis in 1856, the company grew from a rod manufacturer to a full service mail order company.

I bought the Tippet and later the Western Tippet (which I regrettably sold). Orvis was when I started fly fishing the only high end US brand known here. I remember drooling over the Orvis ads in the fishing magazines. I just loved how the Superfine grip on their rods looked.

The Tippet (7.5ft, #3) is still my favorite rod to fish small to medium size streams

Thanks to Zach Mathews for letting me use the picture he shot during his visit to Orvis.

Web page grabber

While you're at the TastyApps site, check out this amazing application called WebSnapper.

I've seen web page saving applications (saves web pages as PDF) before but I've never seen one that also preserves the links in the PDF document. So, if you click on a link in the PDF document, your browser will open the URL! 

To make life easier, WebSnapper can also add a button on the Safari browser (it's the button right to the printer button) for instant access to save a web page.

I just bought it right away. At only $8 it's a steal! (Same as VideoBox)

Jobs vs Gates

Not a very common sight: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates together in an interview.
These gentlemen have been in the computer arena since the start of the personal computer. They both run a very successful company. In spite of the domination of Windows, Apple and Jobs are considered THE innovative company and mind in the industry.

This is a really interesting interview. In this interview you get to hear how the most influential parts of the computer history was written from the men themselves! They even give you a peek to the future developments.



The video above is a high light of a long (1.5 hour!) interview between the two captains of industry. If you want to watch the whole interview, check it out here.

Almost here

It's pretty impossible to film a video and fish at the same time. Unless you have someone walking next to you. Yet my guess is that the ideal fly fishing video camera is almost here. With the camcorders getting smaller and smaller thanks to the high capacity memory cards, it's just a matter of time that camcorders are the size of a cellular phone. In fact, maybe the next revolution in video recording will come from a phone company.

The camcorder I'm waiting for is one that has a small lens on a wire to the main device. The lens on a wire should be small enough to be attached to the visor of a cap. Together with a decent wide angle lens, a large capacity SD memory card and you got an amazing camcorder which records every thing you see! Kinda neat huh?

It isn't here yet, but there are a few developments that comes close. Here is an idea on development for a device which connects to a cellular phone to 'film what you see'. Here's a (video)camera that can be attached to a helmet. I've never seen a fly fisherman wearing a helmet. But if we do see one, he might be a pioneering with the first ever first person fly fishing movie!

In the mean time, the Canon Powershot TX1 might be an interesting alternative to the fly fisher's camcorder. This hybrid camera/camcorder is really tiny!


Update 28 dec 2007:
This is the Samsung SC-X300L. This nifty little camcorder (also) has an external lens that can be clipped to your cap to shoot hands free. This camcorder is probably the closest thing that comes to my idea. The price tag is around $350.

According to some reviews the image quality from the external lens is very much a fish-eye view and a much lower resolution than the main lens. It's a very nifty little gadget still. Unfortunately this device doesn't have a Mac driver yet...

Classic Mac TV ads

It's pretty funny that some 20 years ago we used to use personal computers by typing in commands like DIR and MD FOLDER for simple tasks we today do it by a click with the mouse. Here are some classic TV ads Apple made for their new Macintosh in 1984.

Don't forget to notice how many applications basically haven't changed since. For instance: did you know that Microsoft Word and Excel were originally Mac-only applications? These professional business applications were the Mac alternatives against PC (Dos) applications WordPerfect and Lotus 123.



Here's a great little application called VideoBox to capture & save Flash movies (like YouTube movies) into Quicktime MOV files. Sorry, Mac only!

Goiserer traun Dec 2007 - Mixed bag

The recent trip to the Goiserer Traun turned out to be a mixed bag. Basically it was a get together with my friend John, enjoying the amazing (winter) scenery and mediocre river conditions.

We decided to give it a try to head down to the Austrian Salzkammergut region since I had a pretty nice trip last winter. We had our hopes to catch some nice big graylings and we had some catching up to do.

Days before our departure the forecast looked pretty unstable: rain and probably snow in the higher elevations. We arrived at our destination and it was covered with about 10 inches of snow. The snowy condition stayed until the second day. Although we both had excellent protection from our gear, I prefer a more warmer weather for my fishing.

The fishing was mediocre at best. The river was higher than last winter and the fish were there but not the amount and size we hoped for. The first day turned out to be the best day. We also tried the Ischler Traun the second day for a couple of hours. I lost a nice rainbow during a long run while John caught two nice fish near the shore.

We decided to head home on the third day due to fishing conditions getting 'worse': clearing skies and warm temperatures... The warmer temperatures caused snow to melt causing higher water levels as well getting murky. The rain during the previous night didn't help either.

Well, not the epic trip as we hoped for yet a very enjoyable trip still.
Next time, we'll try fishing in shorts!