In hindsight I should have used ISO 800 instead of 1600 and one of my faster lenses, but given I finally have a working battery on my D60 now, on a whim I headed down to the park adjacent to Sydney Airport and just shot some stuff. I could have phrased that better, particularly given you're not supposed to make jokes about airport security near airports.
Enjoy :)
This spring’s major security breach has blemished the reputation of Sony’s fledgling subscription-music service, Qriocity. And Sony already had plenty to worry about even before the intrusion. ~ CNET
Nervousness about security and privacy of Sony data aside, they were most likely worrying about what their marketing department was smoking when they called it Qriocity. Can't be good for the corporate health plan.
So here’s my brilliant new idea!
I bought my Nikon D60 in 2009, and it was my first foray into SLRs. I’ve had so much fun with it; exploring lens shops, experimenting with different settings, every time I use it I learn something new. My beautiful late mum helped run a photographic processing studio in Sydney (Parrot Photo, any of you heard of it?) and I suppose her enthusiasm rubbed off on me. When I take a picture I’m proud of, I get tingles. But I digress.
Given its budget positioning, the D60 does have some shortcomings, but they haven’t ever really been a problem. It doesn’t autofocus on any lenses other than those with AF-S/AF-I motors, but often I find I’m faster at manually focusing anyway, and find it easier to do so for choosing subjects. It can’t shoot RAW and fine JPG simultaneously, but I rarely want to. ISO sensitivity is low compared to my old man’s D90 and some of the newer models, but the larger sensor size was such an upgrade from the bridge and compact cameras I used before I’m not complaining!
One area where I’m jealous of my old man’s D90 is battery life. Whereas he can go for almost a week without swapping batteries, my D60’s Nikon EN-EL9 battery barely gives it enough juice for a day of RAW shooting, and after owning it for several years I’ve noticed a shocking decline in its capacity. This culminated in my Supanova experience on the weekend, where I was barely able to take five photos.
Talking to other D60, D40 and D40x users, I’m inclined to believe I may have had a dud unit, but the rated 1000mAh does seem a tad low, particularly when my old man’ D90 battery is barely larger than mine and holds 1500mAh.
At the last COMEX (link to an older one)… or was it SITEX? I forget. At an IT convention in Singapore I bought a stack of ultra high capacity 3200mAh NiMH AA batteries. The packaging says they need 16 hours to charge (which I even believe is optimistic!) but when charged they last for an age. In my FujiFilm bridge camera, I was well into my second week of daily shooting before they gave out, and that was with using the LCD on full brightness!
So this morning on a whim, I was browsing for replacement D60 batteries on eBay when I noticed a pseudo-camera grip for the D60 that can take two regular Nikon batteries, as well as six AAs! I figure if a 1000mAh lithium battery isn’t enough for a full day, then surely six 3200mAh NiMH AA batteries and two 1000mAh litihuim Nikon batteries should, right?
(I use the term "pseudo-camera grip" because Nikon doesn’t make them for the D60/D40 body, the D60 doesn’t support true camera grips with faster motors or extra shutter buttons, and even though it has the texture and styling of a real camera grip this unit is really just a glorified battery pack. Still, that’s good enough for me… I couldn’t afford a real one anyway!)
As with regular camera grips I probably wouldn’t want it attached to my camera all the time for the extra weight and bulk it introduces, but for all day events such as anime cons and trade shows, it might work a treat! And hey, if it turns out to be more trouble than its worth, at least I can keep it as a backup. Being able to power my D60 with AAs bought from a shop in a photographic emergency might come in handy one day :).
After skipping Saturday for personal reasons, yesterday I went to day two of Supanova Sydney 2011, the first ever sci-fi and anime convention I've been to in Australia!
As you’ll read below, my D60 battery was shot, but I was able to at least get that photo above… click to zoom in and see all the stalls and people ^_^. And watch me attempt to make up for it with several terrible and pointless photos below!
Supanova Sydney 2011 was spread out over the Dome building in Olympic Park, the sprawling city within a city in Sydney that looks eerily similar to Putrajaya. When my terribly awesome sister and I noticed not one but two Hatsune Mikus attempting to jaywalk in the strong wind while holding down their skirts and trying not to trip over their bright teal hair, we knew we were getting close!
Inside the dome was row after row of absolute nerdishness in stalls, from Marvel and DC comics, Dr Who, Star Trek and Wars, Dr Who, Serenity and Firefly, Dr Who, and tables of players of Dungeons and Dragons and Magic The Gathering. Punctured between these stalls were more stalls for Dr Who, and anime and manga. I think I even saw a few Dr Who stalls.
For someone who often feels isolated for nerdishness, it can't be overstated just how wonderful it felt to hear people talk about which Magic deck colours were their favourites, how silly Kirk's two deaths were, and how cute and/or awesome character XYZ from series ABC that I recognised was!
Despite a last ditch attempt to get my Nikon D60 battery re-jiggered with a week of being plugged in, the dang thing barely held enough charge to take a few photos before dying. We got just enough juice to take some blurry photos of the Q and A (qanda for the Twitter folk) with Tom Felton, the terribly attractive and friendly portrayer of Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, and of the dome building from the second floor you saw above.
This was most tragic, for there were some absolutely stunning cosplayers! As I eluded to above, there were a fair share of eerily good David Tennant Doctors walking around and a fair share of Star Wars characters and Starfleet officers, but also so many anime cosplayers which were just as good if not better than any I saw when I was in Singapore! There was an even mix of Caucasian and Asian people getting involved, some of the best seifuku wearers were Aussies, go figure!
I kept my spending in check given I'll be going to SMASH (the Sydney Manga Anime Show) next month, but I still was able to pick up a few figs of Mugi, Yoko from her Sweet Stars music video and Donkey Kong… for $35! We just started playing our Wii again and I'm always that character you see ;). My sister picked up more handmade rings and badges than she could ever wear, and the stall owners were super friendly and helpful.
I was told by friends from Canberra we met up with that the crowds were insane on the first day and that it was their biggest turnout yet! Compared to the conventions I'd been to in Singapore Supanova felt tiny, but there was enough to see and do that my feet were aching by the end, and there wasn't any shortage of enthusiasm or wares to spent [needlessly] large amounts of money on!
One observation my sister and I made was just how polite and nice everyone was. It was crowded enough that we were bumping into people regularly, but every single person apologised! The owners of the stalls, the volunteers checking wristbands and making sure queues for events were kept in check, everyone was just lovely.
In a scene reminiscent of the Revenge of The Nerds, Olympic Park was also hosting an NRL event to coincide with Supanova. My sister made the observation that after all these guys in their Harry Potter costumes and the girls in their (granted fairly skimpy) cosplay outfits were able to walk around with each other with impunity inside, it wasn't until the drunk rugby fans saw them that we heard jeers and cat calls. She claims the jocks were just stunned and jealous that the nerds have cuter/hotter friends ;).
One thing I would add, the sight of the sports fans in their team colours walking alongside the cosplayers and nerds as we all headed to the train station and car parks was surreal!
Overall an amazing experience, though I'll remember to withdraw fundage BEFORE going to the event, and I'll make certain I have a working camera battery this time! The fact I didn't have one for this was more tragic than the times I watched Star Wars I, II and III and couldn't get my money or time back. I'll have some serious catching up to do :).
In conclusion, as I wrote on Twitter:
Girls dressed as Miku and Sailor Moon in front of the carriage, people playing Magic Cards in the back. This train is made of win XD
From Engadget. Not to harp on about Mr Ballmer, but his enthusiasm for his new Windows Phone devices seems… muted? Is he frustrated that his marketing department have embarrassingly started naming his mobile OSs after food as well?
Presumably there's a button on the devices to fix that. See what I did there?
Two machines I've installed the Xfce spin of Fedora 15 on hang after logging in with GDM after the second boot. I haven't the foggiest idea why, but creating a new account fixes it.
In a nutshell, after logging in with GDM on the second boot, the Xfce desktop loads including the panels, but then the system freezes. The cursor can still be moved, but all clicks are ignored.
Multiple restarts later, and Xfce is working just fine.
This leads me to believe that for some reason on my hardware (a homebrew MSI system and a ThinkPad X40) the Xfce preference files are somehow corrupted when being installed. By creating a new account those files are necessarily recreated when Xfce is started from that account, and those files are free of the bugs. I have no proof of this, but its all I can think of right now.
I use FreeBSD and Arch Linux on some systems because I like building things from scratch, but for getting up and running with full drive encryption, SELinux and [generally] graphics hardware, nothing gets up and running quicker than Fedora, from my experience. Of course by seeding design decisions to someone else, it also means tracking down the reason for bugs like this is harder, though I suppose one could level the same arguments against Mac OS X or Windows even more so.
All you need to know. Or you can read my vented frustrations!
This Victorian number (03 9945 7300 in local Aussie number reference) has called my handphone once or twice a day for just shy of a month now. Granted they're more considerate than other marketers, at least they don't call during dinner or in the wee hours of the morning like I used to get on my old Aussie number. It's still unwanted though!
Doing a quick Google search returned these results. When I read the number is allegedly from telemarketers working for Insurance Line, I wasn't surprised. The bane of morning TV with their painfully scripted "infomercials" I've had to sit through while in offices or cafés that play TV, Insurance Line are the exploiters of more individual fears that I've ever seen from an insurer. Cancer insurance? contains rage.
Needless to say, their insidious telemarketing will insure (see what I did there?) that even if I were considering them for insurance before, I wouldn't now. I suppose companies that indulge in this behaviour can justify it financially otherwise they wouldn't do it, but next time they call, I'll answer in silence. If they want to call me, they can waste their money.
Aside from the frustration this number is causing me, what I'd like to know is how they got my number in the first place. The only organisations I [knowingly] gave my number to are DBS/POSB, NUS and SingTel in Singapore, and Westpac and UTS in Australia. I've never entered "contests" (aka: marketing gathering exercises) nor have I ever called a "premium" number with it. I'm on the Australian Do Not Call list. The Bird is The Word.
I tell you what, I love my iTelephone, but a webOS or Android phone with third party software to block certain numbers sounds awfully appealing right now. Optus won't let me block numbers.
I had feedback from a reader of my QEMU Ad Lib MIDI in Windows 3.1x post asking how I got Sound Blaster working in it. I give people what they want! ^_^
Creative and Sound Blaster are from Singapore, I’ve been to their offices! I always liked their 1990s-tech logo :). But I digress.
QEMU has Sound Blaster support in its default configuration, and Windows 3.1 has drivers that can be used by default, which makes our lives much easier.
You can download drivers from the Sound Blaster support website which will give you a mixer, but I’m a fan of minimalism and I didn’t notice any real performance or quality benefit from doing so. If you elect to use these drivers instead, remember the installer needs to be run from DOS BEFORE you launch Windows.
As a caveat, as I mentioned in my Ad Lib post, I’ve yet to find a way to allow both emulated sound cards to coexist in Windows 3.1. When Sound Blaster drivers are installed before or after Ad Lib, Sound Blaster assumes the roll of MIDI, which isn’t supported in QEMU (hence the use of Ad Lib in the first place). As soon as I know a solution to this, I’ll post about it.
1. Fire up your QEMU DOS VM and start Windows 3.1. Launch Control Panel and choose Drivers. Have a sudden urge to play Wii golf. No wait, it would have to be Microsoft Golf 2.0 MME ;). Why do I bother blogging about anything else other than retro stuff? I missed my calling.
2. Click Add…, choose Creative Labs Sound Blaster 1.5, and hit OK. You’ll be prompted for your Windows 3.1 setup files.
3. In the Sound Blaster Setup window, choose Port 220 and Interrupt 5.
4. Windows will tell you the driver is installed, however we should "contact Creative Labs for a driver specific to your card". Just hit OK. How did people live without the WWW?! I suppose one could have got drivers from a BBS, right?
Now you can go into Sound in Control Panel or launch Sound Recorder and play all the chiming chord dings that you want! :)
I love travelling through Sydney's Museum Station, partly because it's the quietest one on the City Circle, but also for their classic advertisements from decades past, and their monthly displays. The Singapore MRT was only built in the late 1980s, so its a novelty for me!
A simple display for winter, but I like it! Can I get a print of this for our house? :D
I'm unreasonably excited! And the art is beautiful! From the official mailing list:
Hi Everyone,
Michael’s new album, "Time Together," was officially released officially yesterday. It is available online from most retailers including Amazon.com as well as in music stores around the country. Digital downloads are available from most services including iTunes.
Michael Franks has been my favourite singer/songwriter since before I could walk; my beautiful late mum passed on her enthusiasm of his offbeat, interesting and just a little cheeky lyrics and unmistakable smooth jazz sounds. This will be the first of his albums we won't be sharing together, though I'd like to think she approves that I'm carrying on the family tradition :").
I just ordered his album on CD so I can rip it as FLAC and Apple Lossless. They estimate shipping to take two weeks; I hope I can survive that long without it! I suppose I could buy a few digital download tracks, just to keep me going, right?
