|
Articles and ReviewsRecent Reviews
Future Review Items
Edwin's Potpourri of Thoughts Books currently on the night table for reading:
Being a regular mass transit user to commute to work, I’ve noticed certain behaviours from other bus riders. The thought process began a few years ago when I read of Stereophile editor, John Atkinson’s comments about commuting on mass transit in New York City. While waiting at a stop, Atkinson will see people coming and congregating around in a mass with no particular structure. However, when the bus arrives, he noticed that in just about every instance, people shuffle on in the same order as when they arrived at the stop, i.e., people don’t cut in. I found that surprising and refreshing that in NYC, a city that often gets a bad rap for its citizens’ behaviour, its commuters are orderly and respectful of each other. In Vancouver, most of that also happens, but only in the afternoons when everyone is getting on to head home. For my bus, a line forms naturally in one direction and it’s obvious which direction the line is. On rare occasions, someone cuts in and I’ve never heard anyone so much as grumble at the rudeness. I mean, this is not the same as a mother with a stroller, an elderly person, a person on crutches or in a wheelchair, where naturally, even if you’re first in line, human decency calls for you stepping aside and letting them on first. These are able-bodies persons rude and arrogant enough to just insinuate themselves into the line, because they don’t like how long it is. I see this behaviour more often during the morning ride when Johnny or Janie-come-lately stride right up to the front of the line, oblivious to the fact that there are 10 others lined up in an informal fashion. One lady, who bears a striking resemblance to Dame Edna (UK cross-dressing comedian) gets dropped off around 7:30 am every weekday morning in a Lexus. As soon as she hauls herself out of the car, she promptly goes to the front of the line. No matter that a senior citizen is actually at the front and has been waiting in line for several minutes; no, the dame gets on first. Other people aren’t quite so bold and do things surreptitiously. They walk past the bus stop to where the free newspaper stands are, grab a paper and lull around the front of the line in the opposite direction, hoping that someone in the line proper will let them sneak in. You would not see this kind of behaviour in a bank or supermarket line-up, but I suppose, as Canadians, we’ve been brainwashed into thinking we’re a kinder, gentler nation that turns the other cheek, even when one of our own has slapped the opposite cheek. I wished I had the personality of Dr. House to speak my mind and ask loudly, are you old, infirmed, crippled, or pregnant? No, then haul your ass to the back of the line you arrogant bastard! Finally getting on and riding the bus is sometimes no joy either. Many people get on with backpacks with a larger girth then their own bodies. They seem to have no clue that keeping their backpack on the back, while convenient for them, hogs up extra space and they end up bumping and pummelling everyone around them. There are also guys (and they are all males doing this) that get on and take on a macho stance when they sit down. Their legs are splayed as wide as they can get them (I don’t know, are they thinking that this will somehow show off their manhood), which results in them taking up more space than the seat allows. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like some macho, dumbass jockhead’s leg touching mine for a half hour. Then there are the sleepyheads. I can’t be too hard on them, because a lot of times, I’m one of them. While I do close my eyes on the bus, a lot of this has to do with not wanting to look at anyone else on the bus. The eyes may be closed, but it does not mean I’m actually asleep. For those that have actually nodded off, there are obvious signs. The neck muscles have relaxed and no longer hold up the head, resulting in the chin touching the upper chest. As the bus weaves and jolts along, the sleeping body follows the motions of the bus and when the bus has to make a stop, the inertia causes the sleeping person to bump the person they’re sitting beside. The really awkward moments are when the sleeping person leans into and uses you as pillow. You don’t want to cause a fuss, so you leave them alone, especially if the person is a pretty girl. However, when you need to get off at your stop, you have to get up, which usually rouses them from their nap. Most times they look around in dazed confusion about where they are and what they were doing. |
Submit your image for posting on this page and the galleries Submit a public comment about anything I've written on this site - these messages will be posted as Reader's Comments on this page Send me a general comment about this website - these messages will not be posted publicly, unless I ask you What's New August 26, 2008 - News item from the folks that hold the PMA show every late winter (February or March):
Between Nikon and Canon, they still command 84% market share in Japan. Wonder how Olympus and Sony's five year plans to obtain 20% market share (each) are coming along these days... I keep forgetting to mention this and by this point, the sale is likely over, but the local Costcos in Vancouver were blowing out little desk lamps made by Ott Lite. If you've cruised through some websites, namely Luminous Landscape, you may recall some years ago that MR talked about certain Ott Lite lamps as being suitable for viewing proof prints. The Ott Lite that MR used was the poor man's viewing box at about $100, which is still a lot cheaper than the smallest desktop viewing boxes that go for about $400. The reason why the Ott Lite is worthy of use is the daylight balanced flourescent tube used, which allows for more objective and critical lighting than under the typical tungsten light used in most homes (changing now, I'm sure to fluorescent bulbs). I don't think the Ott Lites sold by Costco are the same as the one used by MJ; however, for $30, how can you lose. Around the same time that MJ discussed the Ott Lite, I paid $20 for a daylight balanced fluorescent bulb to use in my office lamp for the same purpose, to act as cheap proofing light. My wife bought one Ott Lite first to use as her own bedside lamp and before I could ask her to buy another for me, she went out and bought three more for the me and the kids. I came home one day and found them stacked in my home office. If you have young kids that still need a night light, the Ott Lites sold by Costco have little nickel sized bulbs in their base that should provide just enough light to suffice. It's bright enough at night that I turn my lamp away from the bed. There was an interesting posting over at TOP a day or two ago, wherein, MJ, the blog’s self-described factotum and chief bottle washer felt obliged to point out that he’d recently been attacked for a review he co-wrote about a Pentax macro lens. I won’t get into the finer points of the postings and the bruised ego it created, but after reading the exchange that caused the eruption of alleged abuse at Photo.net, a few sayings come to mine: much ado about nothing, a tempest in a teapot, and mountains out of mole hills. Granted though, as a sideline observer, I'm not the one being criticized and maybe I'd feel the same as MJ, if it were me. However, to my reading, both parties are guilty for taking a small thing and blowing it out of proportion and out of relevance about the focus (pun intended) of the posting, which was a review of what appears to be a dandy little lens from Pentax. Flare-ups such as this are notorious for happening on various forums, which is all too easy to happen when person-to-person discussion cannot take place and as such, all the physical and vocal cues and clues are MIA. I’d think that if the commenter and MJ were to actually meet and discuss their points of view in person, both would come to understand the other’s perspective and opinion and it would never have gotten nasty like it did on the Photo.net thread. The irony is that both the poster and MJ believe the Pentax lens to be quite a good lens. It makes me wonder sometimes, if maybe some reviews become general and bland, because the writer cannot be bothered to get too picky, knowing that he or she will be criticized for perceived faults by readers. Subconsciously, maybe that’s why I don’t get into doing much testing these days, as much as I like and enjoy seeing what a lens can do compared to another. Someone out there will find something wrong with how the testing was done and declare the test null and void. You’ll also be called an idiot at the same time for conducting a “flawed” test, which I’m certain I’ve been called over the years. Probably the one comment that hurt the most (tongue strictly in cheek), was (sniff, sniff) being called a “lightweight” compared to another Nikon using guy, whose name and eponymous website shall not be mentioned here J August 25, 2008 - China seems to be a regular source for leaked news. First there were the cell phone photos of the Nikon D700's brochure, which gave us the first real indication that Nikon had a new FX SLR coming out. I'm not sure if the Nikon D90 rumours came from a Chinese source, but it would not surprise me. Now, Canon China has apparently "accidentally" posted information about the new 50D, a replacement for the 40D. Seeing the 40D replaced so soon is surprising (I`d be kinda pissed if I were a 40D owner), but the 50D intrigues with a 50% increase in resolution from 10 MP to 15 MP and ISO 12,800. While the resolution bump is already a tad aggressive, when coupled with the spectacular ISO 12K, all in a DX sized sensor, I don`t have much expectation that the ISO 12K will be anything useful. It seems more like specmanship by Canon, because it`s taken a bit of a beating with the Nikon D3 and D700, while its flagship 1D Mk III has been dragged through the mud with the AF problems that Rob Galbraith has discussed to death. Where ISO 12K would be very useful would be in a 5D Mk II or 6D, which, as far as I know, no one has heard anything about. However, with the 50D offering 15 MP, that gives us a good clue as to what Canon`s lower cost full frame SLR will be offering for resolution. Makes you wonder if Canon will have a solid one-two punch for Photokina with the 50D and an expected 5D replacement. While the Nikon D90 rumour seems pretty solid, some are wondering if Nikon will have the high resolution FX SLR ready for Photokina. Thom Hogan does not believe Nikon will given the lack of leaks and photos of any prototype SLR being used at the Beijing Olympics. That`s a shame, because while the D90 will be very welcome, it would be nice if Nikon could break through the 12 MP barrier they seemed to have imposed on themselves. Update on my desktop computer: my quest for silent computing led to me doing away with the incredibly noisy stock fan/cooler units that came with my Xeon processors. I replaced them with very tall and quite massive passive coolers, but I was a bit lazy and didn't clean the original thermal paste when I installed the ThermalRight coolers. While the computer became beautifully quiet after the change from active to passive, the temperature increased significantly with no more fan units to keep the CPUs cool. This past weekend, I redid the job, but cleaned up the old thermal paste using Q-tips, paper towels and 99% rubbing alcohol. I applied some new thermal paste, being careful not to overdo it, as a little bit of paste is all that you need. I also added two 120mm case fans to provide some active, but still very quiet cooling to the massive CPU coolers. I had enough space to install one fan unit properly on one of the ThermalRight coolers, but there was not enough space for the second unit to be mounted in the recommended spot on the other cooler. However, I was still able to mount the second fan unit in a way that allows it to blow cool air on both coolers at the same time. Unfortunately, with the size of coolers and the fan units mounted, I had to adjust some other items inside, such as the side fan unit that blows cool air on the expansion cards. I also had to shift the graphics card from the first PCI-E slot to the second one to accomodate the space needed for one of the fan units. These two adjustments required a return to the ATI HD2900 GPU, because one of the heap pipes on the ASUS card extrudes out from the main card in such a way as to interfere with the side fan unit. The end result is two more large fan units mounted internally and one more on the GPU, which could lead to noise issues again. However, after boot-up, I found the noise to only be a very slight increase over the passive cooling system. While the all the fans inside the box amount to some audible noise, it's not at all objectionable and the noise from the hard drives is still noisier. It's no big deal to have the box on and running all day long. Curiously, when I monitored the temperature, I found cores 1-4 to be hotter than cores 5-8, whereas when the CPUs only had passive cooling, it was the opposite with cores 5-8 running hot. Doing my video rendering test still shows some worrying heat increases with the peak hitting 100 degrees Celsius, just as with passive cooling. However, unlike with passive cooling, hitting 100 degrees did not result in an immediate throttling of the CPU performance to try and spike the temperature down. With the fans blowing some cool air, the cores would hit 100, but still maintain performance. I was concerned about the fans exhausting hot air all around the the interior of the case, because the fan units blow cool on one side, but exhaust hot air on the other side. I oriented the fans label side facing the coolers, so that cool air is blown on them and hot air exhausts on the other side. However, I remembered that when the CPUs were actively cooled with their original fan units, the whole room would warm up considerably, meaning the old fans exhausted a tremendous amount of heat inside and outside the computer. While the computer with its new coolers and fan units still does exhaust some heat into the room, it's nothing like it was in the bad old days when I would go deaf in a heat wave. August 23, 2008 - My buddy, Rob Greer, from LA has created a blog section at this website. You can follow the adventures of this California wedding, portrait, and studio photographer. The guy's currently renovating a large space in an old building to be his live-in studio. Michael Clark, a professional adventure photographer from New Mexico has just published his latest newsletter (he publishes quarterly). Clark’s newsletters serve a few different purposes.
In this quarter’s newsletter, Clark discusses creating a DIY portfolio. How timely, given that I just wrote about how today’s photographer may decide to outsource the creation of photo books, given that there are online outfits offering good quality at low cost. Clark decided to create his own portfolio using products that should be familiar to long-time readers of this humble website, Moab Entrada paper and Moab Chinle albums. I used the same Moab Chinle album as Clark to create a wedding album for a cousin’s wedding in 2007 (wedding was in 2006). I also used the Chinle album to create a custom photo book for a former, but long-time supervisor of mine that retired last year. Both albums were created using Moab’s premade, pre-scored Entrada 190 pages meant for use in the Chinle album. The wedding album had images printed on both sides while the photo book had images on one side only. Both my cousin and my retired supervisor were thrilled with their albums. The album for my old supervisor was seen by a few people at work and I received a lot of kudos for the photos and the overall package, which was elegant and had a high-quality look and feel. While Moab does make thicker paper than Entrada 190, which I think are more appropriate for fine art prints meant for display, the 190-weight paper is just right for the album. Not too thick and not too thin; however, if printing on both sides, you must allow the first print side to dry thoroughly before printing on the other side. And, to continue the thought of DIY albums, I recently placed an order for more Unibind covers. While I love square format albums, using them with the 12x12 inch Unibind covers does not actually result in a truly square album, as you would get with the Moab Chinle album. The Unibind covers are exactly 12x12 inches, including the half-inch space meant for the binding, so you actually end up with an album that is more 11x12 inches for the pages. Unlike with the Chinle album with dedicated Moab pages available for it, I have to custom cut whatever paper I want to use to 12x12 inches. Humanity being imperfect, my cutting typically results in pages that are slightly off from one another by tiny smidges, which gathered together results in an imperfect bundle of pages. The letter sized Unibind covers are much more convenient to use, since all you need to do is just give the binding side of the paper a lit bit of extra breathing space. No cutting or cropping required; print, dry and then bundle up for the one-minute heat cycle to bind the paper to the cover. The letter size cover allows for your choice of all the paper on the market without having to cough up big bucks for 13x19-size paper, only to have to cut the large sheets down to 12x12. The Chinle albums are not cheap and you won’t really be able to do double-truck prints and full bleed prints are not recommended, but for doing one print per page albums, still worth a look. The big advantage with the Chinle and Unibind options is that you control the quality of the print and the paper used. What's New Archives for 2008 - July to December What's New Archives for 2008 - January to June |
|
Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
|
 |
|
