03.30.04
Posted in Geekdom at 1:52 pm by Leopoldo
I have wanted a new camera for quite a while now. At the time I have a little 35mm point and shoot instamatic and a Polaroid camera both of work fine but are feature poor and do not provide very high quality images. I made the decision to go digital during a trip I took to Hawaii in 2001 where I took a set of photos of the beautiful Hawaii beach not realizing the film in the camera was leftover Kodak Tri-X I had used to capture grainy black and white low light snaps of New York subways and buildings. Imagine my delight when I developed the film to find twentysomeodd shots of noir style tropical flowers and beaches. At that moment I resolved that my next vacation would be captured in a digital instant-gratification format.
I have had a good idea what kind of digital camera I wanted since then but have not been able to justify the expenditure because 1. The cameras were improving so quickly in 2001 that it seemed worth waiting for prices to come down and pixel resolution go up and 2. I did not have a good ‘reason’ to chuck out that much cash. Earlier this year I became convinced that you could get a hell of a lot of camera for under $600 at the same time as I was reading a filmmaking book, which seduced me with the idea of exercising my artistic muscles. Some research on the web and talks with friends who had their cameras led me to a short list of important features:
* Ability to override aperture, shutter speed and any other features I can
* Good quality in low light shots
* Compact and Light
* Decent resolution (defined at the time as at least 3 megapixels)
* Good value
Which quickly led to a selection between the Canon PowerShot A70 and the PowerShot G5, a choice that the G5 quickly won because of it’s swivel LCD (good for overhead crowd shots as well as Macro photography) and the remote control (necessary for stop motion animation). Months of wanting but not justifying were settled by a tax filing which suggested a healthy enough return to cover the camera, media card, tripod and carrying case.
Last week I started the price hunt and found that while the G5 can be bought for as little as $400 the web sites with these prices are commonly shunned as ’scam artists’ or just plain bad business. I started looking for a local reseller willing to sell the camera for $500 (the suggested retail price is $600) and came across something unexpected: Best Buy did not carry the camera. This was quite odd and a bit disappointing because I had decided that if the price was in the right range I would drive out to the Clackamas store on my way home and pick me up a new camera and because I know that Sven picked his camera up at a Best Buy. Suspicious I decided to call the store and was notified that they DID carry the model until recently but had sold off their stock in anticipation of a new replacement model.
Did someone say NEW MODEL? As in all new features for probably the same price? Of course my gadetius-ganglia (the part of the brain responsible for inciting desire for gadgets in Homo Sapiens Geekedus) got all twitirpated imagining the possibilities (what you say, ANOTHER megapixel?! Surely this cannot be so!) or that failing the possibility of the G5 price dropping even further. Back to the web and a round of visiting the usual suspects (http://www.dpreview.com/, http://www.powershot.com/, http://www.dcviews.com/news.htm, http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/) which gave me a big fat nada on news or expected product releases. At this point I am at a bit of a loss. I have decided that the wise course of action is to wait and see if I can find out what the G5 replacement is and when it will be released, but I don’t know a good source or that kind of information short of weekly visits to the PowerShot web site. Anyone out there knows what is up with Canon or care to direct me to a good digital photography news source?
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03.28.04
Posted in Humor at 2:08 pm by Leopoldo
Yay! The Pinball song (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12!) is now online! See it and other Electric Company classics at The Electric Company Digital Archive: Videos.
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03.19.04
Posted in Humor at 1:42 pm by Leopoldo
In case you have not seen the original movie The Exorcist (1973), here is a brief version… well actually more like The Exorcist in 30 Seconds (and re-enacted by bunnies)
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03.17.04
Posted in Geekdom at 10:52 am by Leopoldo
An article praising the relatively small size of modern viruses posted at The Register had a quote that got a good laugh out of me:
Consider an analogy on the size of modern malicious code: if Windows XP were the size of the Empire State Building, then the little barking Beagle virus - the size of a small dog - can come in through the front door, lift its leg, deliver its payload, and somehow cause the entire building to come crumbling down. Or, Beagle can simply hold the door open automatically, so that a large cement truck can drive in and deliver its mystery payload to the base of the operating system as required.
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03.11.04
Posted in Geekdom at 8:38 am by Leopoldo
In an astounding show of jackassedness Yahoo deleted my Yahoo ID last year with no warning and no explanation. The Yahoo ID was the owner of 4 Yahoo groups including a humor list I had been operating since 1991 (I moved it to Yahoo in 2001) all of which are orphaned. I have sent numerous requests for an explanation, for the list of members of the groups, to have the groups transferred or at least to have them killed to Yahoo all of which are answered with a ‘We care about you, here is your case ID’ email and never another word. Earlier this year I even called the Yahoo office in California and spoke with a nice young lady who was unable to help me and told me to email the same address I had been trying to contact for the last few months.
I had pretty much given up on Yahoo (I will not use any of their services any more) until today when I saw a virus infected message appear in my inbox sent to (you guessed it) the largest of the groups I had set up. I am not sure how this happened since that group was only supposed to distribute emails sent from my account and Yahoo Groups had supposedly deleted the group but somehow the 800 member group seems to still be in existence and is accepting messages from some virus infected source masquerading as me. By now I know that trying to get any cooperation from Yahoo is impossible but I have to wonder if there is anything to be done. I hate to think that the members of my old list could start getting infected messages because of Yahoo’s mediocrity.
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03.08.04
Posted in Travels at 1:22 pm by Leopoldo
Monday, March 8th, 2004
1:18 PM PST, 4:18 PM PST
Bradley International Airport, Connecticut
Bradley Int. Airport has a free wireless network with strong signal. Once again I just opened my iBook, it said ‘found this network, would you like to join?’I said yes and voila I am online. How cool is that? The people at the airport have all been very nice.. and I mean VERY nice (go Connecticut!) though I just saw an example of what looked like total profiling. Two hippy-looking guys (beads, beards, loose soft cloth pants) were trying to get through security and getting total scrutiny. They got checked, double-checked, metal detected, frisked, had their bags go through the X-Ray multiple times and then dug through. Distasteful.
And now to our previously scheduled episode of Buffy (got to love a laptop with a DVD player when traveling.)
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Posted in Travels at 11:37 am by Leopoldo
Monday, March 8th, 2004
11:26 AM PST, 2:27 PM PST
East Granby, Connecticut
Woke up this morning to a view of near horizontal snow viewed from the 34th floor of a Manhattan apartment. Truly a beautiful view. Breakfast was your standard New York café breakfast with a tiny shot of OJ, a bottomless cup of ‘coffee’ (I think the term cup of Joe is more appropriate) and food that greased my gullet on the way down. Getting out of Manhattan was a bit of a challenge. I missed my turn off the Hudson Parkway and onto I-91 and ended up having to pay two tolls and do a turn around the Bronx to get back. I was very glad that car they gave me at the rental was a Pontiac Transam (which I hated at first having to squeeze my 6′3″ body into that little sports car); the V6 engine makes a HUGE difference when merging into a freeway with 15′ of merge lane, and 18-wheelers kicking up sleet. I must say though that the toll operator I asked directions from on the way down and both Toll operators on the way back were very gracious and polite. So much for the rude New Yorker theory.
I listened mostly to CDs on the way up (glad I remembered to pack a set of them) but was thinking about the radio I heard on the way down. Channel surfing in Connecticut I at one point came across no fewer than 6 radio stations playing Rap. Amazing. Of course I also came across two playing classical and two playing 80s, so overall the impression was one of more selection.
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03.07.04
Posted in Travels at 9:34 pm by Leopoldo
Sunday, March 7th, 2004
9:33 PM PST, 12:33 AM EST.
Manhattan, Upper West Side.
Received a surprising and very pleasant call from my dad letting me know he was in his apartment in Manhattan for the weekend. I decided that the two hour drive down and two hour drive back were wroth the visit so I hopped in the car, checked out of the hotel and headed south. Driving into New York sucks big pickle. Exits are often only marked right where you have to turn (and me without a map). Had a great dinner with that though and am looking forward to having breakfast with him tomorrow as well.
And oh yeah… while I could not pick up a wireless signal anywhere around East Granby all I had to do was open my laptop on 70th and Broadway and OSX picked the strongest of all the local networks and asked me if I wanted to join it. Hehe… the answer is you betcha!
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Posted in Travels at 4:25 pm by Leopoldo
Sunday, March 7, 2004
4:16 PM PST, 7:16 PM EST
East Granby, Connectticut.
Drove down to New Having this afternoon. There was no real reason I had to go down other than to touch the Atlantic Ocean. Now if I can get myself to the Oregon coast over the weekend I can say I went ocean to ocean in a week. I did not stick around the bay because.. well honestly because I was afraid of getting mugged. A quick drive into downtown changed my fear to afraid of getting mugged and shot.
Next I went north to Hartford and drove around East Hartford then downtown. It is hard to get a feeling for a city with a weekend evening but I must say I did not see much going on. I decided to do a bit of war driving and found a number of wireless networks, some unprotected but none in an area where I could stop long enough to send / receive email. In my travels up and down I-91 I did notice one thing though: For some reason people in Connecticut seem to understand a basic rule of driving that eludes northwesterners: Stay right except to pass. Yup, that is correct.. Whether you are traveling 45 or 85mph the left lane is open for passing. Very nice.
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03.06.04
Posted in Travels at 9:14 pm by Leopoldo
Saturday, March 6, 2004
9:14pm PST, 12:14am EST
Hartford, Connecticut
I got another exit row for the second flight and did fine for the first hour and a half but as we approached for a landing we got into turbulence. The plane was not just bouncing but swaging and rolling. I feel lucky to have landed with my lunch still in me. Speaking of food, I was told that dinner would be served but their idea of ‘dinner’ was to sell tiny sandwiches for $10 a pop. Suckage for Northwest airlines.
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