And then the Nikon took a tumble

Sorry to say it, but the camera took a bit of a tumble the other day. Thankfully the body came away undamaged (I believe), but the 18-55mm lens is now hit-or-miss. A bit of plastic near the aperture adjustment arm of the lens broke off and is causing some intermittent jamming, keeping the lens from opening up. Looks like I will have to adjust to the 50mm prime or my 55-200mm until I can afford to get a replacement. Le Sigh.

 

I don’t suppose anybody out in the blogosphere has a wide-angle lens to fit a Nikon DX sensor they would be willing to sell for cheap?

 

Beyond all that, life is good in Prescott. I’ll be hanging out here for about another week. There will be some time in Phoenix, Wickenberg, and Jerome mixed in this week as well. Should be lots of good times.

A new toy

A new Asus K42-F showed up on my doorstep a few days ago. I’m still getting used to it, but here are my thoughts so far.

 

I like:

- Windows 7. Lots of unnecessary little things, but overall this OS is worlds better than the Vista install I had used for a few days.

- Pretty darn quick. Running an i3 550m processor with 4GB of memory, Photoshop CS4 64bit has no issues, even when loaded pretty heavily.

- Comes with an OS partition and a storage partition. I usually setup my computers this way anyway, because eventually I’m going to mess up the OS enough to need to reinstall and I don’t like copy all my data when that happens. Another plus of Windows7 is that I can easily change the location of all the ‘Special’ folders that my profile uses to the storage drive, so documents/music/pictures etc. function just fine, but are safe in case of OS implosion.

- LOVE the touchpad so far. Normally these things are the bane of my laptop experience, but this little guy has a multi-touch interface which rocks. Click, scroll (horizontal and vertical) and right click can all be accomplished without using the ‘button’ at the base of the touchpad. It’s also textured, which I dig for no apparent reason.

- Nice and bright screen. Makes things look purdy.

 

I don’t like:

- Windows 7’s lockdown on administrative functions. Constant pop-ups for anything that requires any amount of system access. Easily fixed by activating the Administrator account and using that as your primary account. It’s just a hassle

- The finish on this machine is a magnet for fingerprints. It looks like I gave it to a six year old after they mangled a PB&J sandwich.

- The ridiculous amount of pre-installed software that took me about an hour to uninstall from the machine. From your usual MSOffice trial and Anti-virus trials, to the useless suite of ‘Asus Utilities’, there is enough bloatware on here to choke a horse.

- All the ports are located on the sides of the machine. This is a personal preference, I prefer them on the back. No real biggie.

- Only three USB ports. Realistically not a problem since I only generally have a mouse+flash drive plugged in. Some people might take exception to this though.

Friday Fun

Just two fun videos for today:

 

Awesome robot that balances on a ball… but is also remote controllable… and awesome:

(via)

 

And a cupcake cannon, for pure entertainment:

 

(via)

Friday fun

AWESOME race simulator. Who needs cheezy force feedback in the controller? Not this guy:

(via)

 

Use your sweatshirt as a laptop case:

(via)

 

Russian apocalypse vehicle (site in Russian, but TONS of pictures):

 

(via)

ROBOPLOW!!

Geeky? Yeah. Pure awesome? Also yeah.

(via)

My mind is still melting

Ummm… chain-based gearing running through hydraulically controlled swing arms gives this truck about 7ft of travel on each wheel. Unbelievable. One question though, what happens when this guy gets stuck? Nobody can get anywhere close to where he goes to get him out.

(via Neatorama)

Buckets of photography gadgetry

Okay, just stumbled on the Photojojo site again. Look at the awesome:

Shippable picture frames.

White balance lens cap.

Bottle Cap Tripod. (genius!)

Crazy, stick to anything tripod.

90 Degree spy lens attachment.

Tiny little zumi digital camera.

Panoramic tripod attachment.

Great idea

Resilient Technologies creates design for non-pneumatic tires. Talk about being able to take a licking.

 

Read the article here.

(via Neatorama)

Daddy got a new pair of shoes

I’ve been trying to learn to jog. I figure it is a good way to start the day, and gets both Scrappy and I some much-needed cardio. It has been hard though, as my joints end up hurting after a mile. Shin-splints, knee pain, a hip that has been aching for the three weeks I’ve stubbornly been trying at this.

 

To say I was disheartened about this would be an understatement. Eventually the thought occurred to me that problem wasn’t with my body, but instead with the shoes I was attaching to it. A rockin’ $10 pair of wal-mart tennis shoes that I’ve had for four years. Yeah, that might be the problem.

 

So I meandered to Swift Feet, the only specialized running store in town. I told the proprietor what I was looking for, the problems I was having, where I wanted to go.

 

He had me jog on a treadmill as he watched my ankles, looking for pronation. He gave me a basic run down of why my joints hurt when I ran, told me the type of shoe I needed to buy, and then had me try on a million different pairs.

 

By a million, I mean about ten, which meant a whole heapin’ lot of shoe-tying on my part. But I appreciated it, and eventually whittled down the list to a single pair.

 

Last year’s model of the Aisics GEL Kayano. On sale for $100.

 

Yesterday I finally had the chance to try out my new duds, and I have to say: I am seriously impressed. I headed to the Peavine trail early in the morning with Scrappy. I warmed up and started down the path. Half an hour later we turned around and started jogging back to the truck. All told we covered around six miles.

 

And my legs HURT like the dickens. But not my hip. Not my knee. Not my shins. Not my ankles. My MUSCLES hurt, just like they should when a new guy tries jogging too much. It feels great! Finally I can start pushing myself without feeling like a cripple afterwards.

 

So for anybody out there trying to get into jogging; do yourself a favor and get some decent shoes. They’ll make a world of difference.

 

And if you are in town, swing by Swift Feet. You will pay a little more, but you will get a pair of shoes that you know will work with your foot!

Transfixed

That’s the only adjective that comes to mind when I watch this, which I definitely recommend you watch in HD:

Fluid Sculpture from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.

Fluid Sculpture, created by Casual Profanity.

 

(via)

What have you torn apart lately?

DaNece and I went out to play with flash photography over the weekend and I found a huge limiting factor to my setup. The SC-28 chord that I purchased only lets me get a few feet away from the flash. That’s great if I am just holding the light off to the side with my hand, but when I set it up on a tripod and go to move around D it was severely limiting.

 

I almost dragged my flash over a number of times, which got me thinking that there must be extension cables out there. And surely, there are. For the cost of a whole ‘nother cable I could put the two together to get a 6’ cable… not exactly what I had in mind.

 

So I browsed the internets and found an article about hacking this $50 cable to bits. I got out the knife and cut right through the cable. I hoped this would work.

 

A trip to Home Depot to pick up a couple of female network jacks, and a few minutes of separating wires and punching them down into the jacks. I was done:

 

I plugged it all in, threw a 25’ network cable on it, and turned the camera on. The cam showed a flash connected, the flash showed connection to camera, and I fired off a test:

 

SUCCESS! And instead of a $50 cable for three measly feet, I spent $10 on some jacks, and about $10 for the cable!

I, for one, choose to stimulate the hell out of the economy

The UPS packages have stopped coming. For now at least. And as I sit here with a whole plethora of new material belongings I hear my dad’s voice cautioning me to save my money.  I never was very good at listening to common sense.

 

So I took a big chunk of my tax refund and spent it needlessly during these hard economic times. And I’m about as giddy as a schoolgirl about it. :)

 

So what the heck was in the multitude of boxes that arrived with my name on them?

Camera gear!! Oh yeah. I did.

 

A new Nikon D90 to be more specific. With some goodies. Okay, maybe I should say lots of goodies. So of course the first thing I had to do tonight was go out and start snapping away. And boy am I impressed.

I’m loving the depth of field on the 50mm 1.8 lens, and the D90’s ISO performance is AMAZING compared to the G9!!

 

Take this photo for instance. It’s noisy, sure. But this is at ISO 6400!!! The G9 would look like this at ISO400! Talk about a difference:

 

Of course there were shots of DaNece, since she makes such a lovely subject:

 

While we were out we even ran into Rich as he left the office:

We sat and chatted for a bit before deciding to head on home.

 

And once there I was able to make the dogs my guinea pigs of photography. With my new flash to boot. Lola looks a bit dazed:

 

Scrappy just looks like he wants the ball (as usual):

 

Of course, no new camera would be complete without flashing me a few times, so I handed the rig over to D and had her fire off a few rounds in my direction:

 

All in all I am just tickled pink at the new purchase, and I’m sure I will be submitting all of you readers to more learning-curve photos for the next few days.

 

All D90 photos from the day (all shot with the 50mm f/1.8 so far).

The excitement builds

UPS boxes have started arriving with my name on them… the excitement is building into something which should be blog-worthy by the end of the week.  :)

Friday Randomness

- How to build a snow cave. WOW. (via)

 

- The greatness of xkcd finally explains the ‘Base’ system.

 

- Rough turn of events in life? This guy got fired, divorced, and diagnosed with a brain tumor. He got happy by working at Starbucks. (via)

 

- Joe McNally continues to amaze with his posts from lighting workshops.

 

- Kitty knitted breasts. HAHAHAHAHA. Totally makes me laugh in a 10-year-old boy kind of way.

 

- My new shoes are freakin’ SWEET! Been wearing them for about a month and a half now and they are tons more comfortable than my Merrell Chameleons (which busted a sole after a year of ownership…. let down!).

 

- The pirate bay maps torrent seeders. USA accounts for only 20% of shared files.

 

- Sony comes out with a very silly pocket netbook.

Dreaming in North

Very cool article about the brain’s ability to accept simulated stimulus.

Friday Fun

- Microsoft admits that Vista was a practical joke. (via)

 

- An old dog singin’ the blues:

(via)

 

- A bike lane that travels with you. Definitely a good idea for the night riders (not Knight Riders) in Prescott.

(via)

 

Have a great friday everybody!!

Wireless power

The wave of the future:

A table saw that won't separate you from your digits

The blade carries a small electrical charge, which your body partially absorbs when your skin touches the blade. When that happens a brake stops the blade and pulls it under the table surface lickety split.

 

In high school a friend of mine cut off a big chunk of his thumb using a table saw, so I'm betting he would love this. I'm doubting it works if you are wearing gloves though...

 

(via)

Zotero

After reading this boingboing post about the EndNote company suing the creator of the [free!] Zotero firefox plugin, I of course ran out and downloaded/installed said plugin.

 

After playing with it for a bit I think that this is a TOTALLY rockin little tool for researchers. It has the ability to create different collections and sub-collections so you can track multiple research projects at once, automatically download available source info from websites, create links and snapshots of online resources. You can create notes and annotations for a page or book so that you always know what goes with what.

 

So anybody who's in school, or anybody who does research on their own should give Zotero a try. It might just be the best thing you don't spend a dime on. :)

I'm officially old-hat

Canon has announced the new Powershot G10 will be released in October, meaning I now have an out-dated piece of equipment. :)

 

The G10 has a few neat features compared to my G9. It has a wider-angle lens (28mm vs. 35 on the G9), which is probably the feature I would like the most. It also has iContrast, which increases the dynamic range of your images. It features some new blur-reduction items which are always nice.

 

And it has the new Digic IV processor inside, which means even faster pictures, better noise reduction at high ISO, and slightly better battery life.

 

Oh yeah, and a new grip due to all the complaints of users, and so many people buying aftermarket grips for the G9.

See an in-depth review HERE.

 

So will I be switching? Ummm.... NO. As nice as all those new features, they just don't justify a $500 upgrade.

 

Rich - now is the time to buy! :)