Absurd Singularity

title="Wordle: Collective Absurdities">

For you bloggers out there (who haven't heard of it already), you may want to run your site's RSS feed through Wordle to get a nifty graphical representation of what you've been blathering on about lately. Fun stuff. ;-)

One of the two Pixar movies I haven't seen yet. One down, one to go.

Rat in the kitchen
Anyone can cook indeed
Except Linguini

Excellent movie in every way. 9 out of 10.

Dev's been a bit under the weather this past week, coming down with a fever and then an odd rash (leading us to believe it might be roseola) which made him rather clingy and ornery. But then I process photos of him when he's having fun like the one above and that makes memories of the bad days disappear quickly. =)

So recently I was able to get my grubby mitts on a black MSI Wind. WTF is a MSI Wind, you say? Why it's only the best EEE class laptop available (somewhat) today. Which may or may not be saying very much since a new model of this laptop class seems to pop up every couple of days. =) Weighing in at a svelte 2.6lbs and packing a 10" backlit LCD, 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor, 1GB RAM, 80GB hard drive, built-in 802.11b/g and 1.3MP webcam, and most importantly (pay close attention now you wanna-be subnotebook manufacturers) an almost full-sized and correctly positioned right shift key, this lil' plastic wonder rocks and rocks hard. Did I mention it was black? =)

But it's not all hugs and kisses. The trackpad could have been made larger and the single clicker below is a bit too thin and too close to the bottom edge of the case. Apparently something happened between the older batch of Winds manufactured and the newer one (of which mine is part of) where the trackpad chipset is no longer from Synaptic (much to the surprise of even MSI support) so the Synaptic drivers that came with it doesn't recognize the trackpad properly and some functionality is crippled (like scrolling). Personally I never scroll using the trackpad so it's not a big deal.

But besides that, so far everything about this cheapo notebook is pretty superb and it works perfectly for my use: having a small, long-lasting (battery-life-wise) computer downstairs that I can surf around with while watching the boob tube. Originally that role was fulfilled by an ancient Apple Powerbook G3 Pismo that I had picked up off of eBay a few months back. But the Pismo has one fatal flaw: it's processor and video card aren't powerful enough for today's video so no Youtubing and such. The Wind and its Atom processor handles video with aplomb. Watching Quicktime vids at 720p resolution works fantastic but it's chop-chop city when we tried to run full HD 1080 vids on it.

The backlit LCD on this thing is superb. Much, much better than what I was expecting for something of this price. LCD technology has definitely come a looong way in the past few years. The 6-cell battery lasts possibly a good 4-5 hours. I haven't extensively tested battery life but from what I've experienced so far it's been pretty good. They sell a model with only a 3-cell battery for $50 less that shaves .3lbs off the weight but it's better to spring for the 6-cell as the 3-cell only gives you 2-3 hours worth of charge.

The only other niggling concern I have is regarding the potential longevity of this machine. When I was installing another stick of 1GB RAM, I wasn't particularly impressed with the sturdiness of the internals. Cramming so many electrical components and boards into such a small package makes for pretty confined quarters and it was a bit amusing to see some circuitry board flexing underneath my hands while I was pressing down on the RAM chip to seat it.

Plus it's also annoying that you void your warranty just by opening up the case. They have this "your warranty will be void if removed " sticker right over one of the screws on the bottom of the case that you have to break in order to get to the screw. And the sticker itself is annoying as hell. Not only is it not the easiest thing to remove, it leaves a sticky residue that you have to wipe off separately. I hope MSI comes to their senses and modifies their policy like ASUS did for the EEE. They already did so for their units sold in the UK so it's mystifying to me why it's still in effect here.

Anyhoo, the MSI Wind gets a two big thumbs up from me. I wasn't expecting too much out of it truthfully but it's turned out to be quite a pleasant surprise. I've so far kept it running the stock XP Home that it came with but thinking about replacing it with Vista, making it the sole Vista-only machine in the house. Crazy people around the world have crammed other OSes into it (one guy is quad-booting XP, Vista, OS X AND Linux) but I don't feel the need to be that adventurous with it. But if you're looking for a cheap and light, take anywhere laptop to use for lightweight computing activities (word processing, email, web surfing, music listening, video watching, etc.), then this one's for you.

Now I've been a regular user of My Yahoo for eons and eons and stuck with it through its redesign and 2.0-ification. So I was a bit perplexed the other day when I was doing my usual news reading and noticed that the news article links I clicked on were now opening up in new tabs. Which most developers would agree is a major no-no. Although they did seem to have stopped a previous irritating practice of displaying only part of an article in a popup layer, forcing you to click on a "more" type of link to continue on to reading the rest. While this new development is less irritating, it's no less wrong. So seriously Yahoo, WTF?

So ever since I read Gizmodo's In Ear Headphone Battlemodo article a little over a week ago, I was intrigued by their praise for the Etymotic hf5. In the comments section I had asked the author if the hf5 was just the hf2 without a microphone and he answered in the affirmative so I didn't give the hf5 much thought after that since I already own the hf2.

The other day though, on a whim, I decided to google around for more info on the hf5 and surprisingly there was very little to be found, even on Etymotic's site. Oddly enough, Amazon already has them in stock. So I decided to try out a pair. In cool cobalt blue. ;-p No news flash here, the 3 models: hf5, hf2, and ER-4p sound pretty much the same to me. At first I thought I detected a bit more fullness of sound with the ER-4p's but I discovered that the cause was the rubber triple-flanged eartips. The default ones that the hf models come with are a bit smaller than the ones that are standard for the ER-4p so I had to insert the hf models deeper to get a better seal (or replace the hf tips with the ER-4p ones). So yes, with Etymotic's, creating that seal in your ear is critical for maximum performance.

Spec-wise, the hf5 is a tiny bit lacking in the high end of the frequency response: 20 Hz -15 kHz compared to 20 Hz -16 kHz for both the hf2 and ER-4p. I don't even think you'll miss much with that 1 kHz difference. Besides that (and the cord length), every other spec is identical. So I'll most likely wind up replacing the ER-4p with the hf5 for at-home use because I prefer the looks, fit and cord. You can't really go wrong with any of the three though.

Took a few days off last week to take Devon and his cousin on a trip to Amish & Hershey country. Kids had a blast, adults were exhausted. ;-)

Gazing out the window of the train at the Strasburg Railroad. It's an old-style coal engine so he was scared by the belching smoke.

Rocking and relaxing with Mommy after dinner outside of the Hershey Farm restaurant. They serve a really, really great Grand Smorgasbord dinner. I'm not usually a big fan of buffet-style meals but I was pleasantly surprised by their food.

Ascending in the Kissing Tower at Hershey Park. The only vertical moving ride that didn't scare the crap out of him. =)

Taking a quick breather in-between runs down a slide at Zoo America. The longest slide he's been on by himself.

Devon spent a good 15 minutes here in the Hershey's Chocolate World store moving candles around. He'd move them from one shelf to another or stack them on top of each other before finally putting all of them back on the correct shelves.

Hand-holding any lens > 100mm is always a challenge and the AI Focus mode on the 5D seems to be pretty unreliable and/or slow (or most likely I just need more practice) but every now and then you hit one that makes it crystal clear why the 135mm is such a beautiful outdoor portrait lens. But still have a lot of work to do on my technique.

For the past few weeks I've become pretty disappointed with the Canon 5D's AF performance, particularly with subjects on the move. Yes, I know it's not a body that's geared towards that type of photography but because that's the type of photography I need to deal with (chasing a toddler around should be made an Olympic sport), the shortcomings of the AF system is painfully evident. Performance of the outer focus points become inconsistent in decreasing light, the AI Focus mode takes too long to realize that the subject is moving, and while there's the option to turn on those extra tracking points around the center focus point to help with AI Servo tracking, that doesn't help when you focus using the outer points most of the time.

So while I (and I suspect a fairly large contingent of other Canon owners) sit around waiting for Canon to announce the specs for the 5D's successor, I figured I'd test the waters in the opposing camp again. To that end I got rid of my Canon zooms (only had 2 to begin with, although it was tough giving up that 70-200 f/4 IS) and a couple of other knick-knacks and I picked up the Nikon D700 and a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G lens. The main attraction of the D700 to me (besides the FX sensor) is the pro-level AF system in a non-pro sized body. I'm eager to test it out to see how well it does tracking down a boy in flight and in low light conditions.

Preliminary usage over this past weekend proved favorable and I'll probably post a few samples later on when I have time to process them. The 24-70mm lens is quite nice and paired to the D700 makes for a pretty excellent, if somewhat heavy, combo. Unfortunately my Canon 24-70 f/2.8 sold quicker than I expected so I'm not able to do a comparison between the two but I'll be testing sharpness against the Canon 35mm f/1.4. We'll see if this Nikon zoom is really as prime-worthy as Nikonians always like to tout. Also have a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D lens coming in tomorrow which means I'll get to see first-hand how little light I can get away with while using a fast prime on this high ISO machine. That should be pretty exciting. =)

As far as ISO performance is concerned, from the little I've seen so far, I think I'm comfortable with the D700 up to ISO 3200 without much of an issue. ISO 6400 has to be pretty correctly exposed to do well. On the 5D I didn't think about anything up to ISO 800. ISO 1600 usually was ok but could look really nasty if exposure wasn't correct. ISO past 6400 won't be something I use often on the D700 though. Unless the exposure is perfect and all other stars are in alignment, there's not much use for 8000+ unless you shrink them down for web use or something.

But so far the D700 is really an excellent, excellent camera. It's going to take me awhile to figure out every aspect of it though which probably won't happen unless I decide to keep it. But in the meantime I'm looking forward to see how it fares against the 5D.

Alright, the following are some shots taken with the D700 starting from ISO 200 up to ISO 12800. High ISO noise reduction in camera was set to low, photos shot as RAW, converted to DNG before importing to Aperture (since Aperture doesn't support D700's NEF yet) and then converted to JPEG via Adobe PS3 with no post-processing besides some auto-contrast/color/level if I thought it looked better with it. No noise reduction run on these (my regular photo workflow includes a pass through Noise Ninja at the end). Clicking on the photos below will display the full-sized JPEGs which may be a couple megs in size so you have been warned.

ISO 200, f/3.2, 1/80s, 35mm

Devon, who pretty much ignores me these days when I'm taking photos of him, took an odd liking to the D700's shutter sound. I suppose because it was different from the 5D's that he's been hearing forever now. So the morning this shot and the following two below were taken was different because he would stare right into the lens with a goofy smile and then not move until he heard the shutter go click. Then he'd giggle and continue doing whatever he was doing.

Alright, I received a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D lens today so how could I not try to pair it with the D700 and try to see what kind of result I would get in a room with minimal light. So I went downstairs into Devon's play area tonight with no interior lights anywhere turned on and the only light source being the street lamp outside that was dampened by our shades that were fully down over the windows. At first the camera wouldn't autofocus because there simply wasn't enough light. So I turned on the built-in autofocus illuminator which solved that problem. And the result is as follows. Focus was on the "F". This first shot is unprocessed besides conversion to JPEG and full-sized if you click through:

ISO 25600, f/1.4, 1/15s, 50mm

This next shot is the same as the first but I've run it through Noise Ninja before exporting as JPEG.

ISO 25600, f/1.4, 1/15s, 50mm

And this last photo I'm putting up to show how it would look as a regular pop-up photo on this blog. Meaning I sized it down to a width of 1024 and ran it through Noise Ninja before saving as JPEG.

ISO 25600, f/1.4, 1/15s, 50mm

So, yeah if you really needed to you can pretty much shoot in next to no light with the D3/D700. You can't shoot in absolutely no light (yes I tried) as the sensor needs something to work with. You obviously won't be using any photos taken in such conditions at full size but shrunken down to around a quarter of the size (which still makes it 1024 pixels wide) and then post processed for noise, the results are more than acceptable in my eyes.

As for the Nikkor 50mm lens, man it's freakin' tiny. So far it seems decent but further testing is needed. Stay tuned.

We first came across this tabby late yesterday afternoon while riding around the neighborhood. Devon followed it around for some time and wanted to touch it but we wouldn't let him because we figured it was a wild/stray. But I found it odd that in the midst of being followed the cat suddenly flipped over onto it's back in the middle of the sidewalk for a few minutes. Thinking back on it now I think he wanted to be petted. But it was also rather bold as we saw it venture right in front of a Samoyed puppy as if to check it out (the puppy was being restrained by its owner) before wandering off.

Actually we had encountered this tabby twice before. Once wandering around the riverside pathway by itself and another time it was actually being walked (on a leash even) by its owner which was a first for me. Although during each of those encounters, I don't think I realized that it was most likely the same cat. But earlier this afternoon, while Devon was playing in the playground, the tabby shows up again. But it stays outside of the playground and another family with two kids are paying attention to it. Devon's trying to get to the tabby but is restrained by the fence surrounding the playground. So as everyone in the vicinity is focused on the tabby, the father of the other family tells me that this tabby is usually here around this time waiting for its owner to come home (the bus stop is right next to where we are). I was pretty amazed to say the least as I've never heard of a cat doing anything like that before. I wonder if the owner just lets it outside in the morning and then brings it back inside at night. And it doesn't run away. So it's a cat that roams around freely without running away, but also doesn't mind being walked, and is apparently rather bold and sociable. I don't believe I've ever heard of a cat like that before.

Anyhow, after we let Devon out of the playground, the cat's still lounging around in the area so Devon started following it around again. At first the cat would keep moving away but Devon kept tracking it down so eventually it just gave up and flopped onto the ground to continue its wait. So Devon got to stroke it and pet it and push it and grab its tail.

He was pretty happy after that. =)