Posts from — February 2006

I’ve been a Canon 10D owner for quite some time now.  In fact, when I found out that my wife and I were having a baby, I knew I needed to bite the bullet and upgrade from my point-and-shoot Casio 3000EX.  Roughly $2500 later (camera plus lenses, extra batteries, CF cards, etc.) I was one happy (if a tad poorer) camper.

And, the camera has been good.  It has allowed me a degree of flexibility with creativity that really does surpass 35MM cameras.  Both the immediate histograms and the ability to zoom in on a captured picture while you can still get another shot have literally changed the way I take photos.  The benefits of the degree of control and the quick focus and lightning shutter response are almost immeasurable compared to a point-and-shoot digicam.  Most people I know with a non-slr camera always complain about the lag time between hitting the button and the picture being taken.  The memory of a generation of children has been lost to shutter lag, I’m convinced.  But, the 10D changed all that for me, and all was right with the world (or at least with my camera).

But as is the way of things, time has moved on and so has technology.  First the 20D was released, and it was a significant step forward.  Two more megapixels and a second generation Digic II processor made this camera a sweet replacement.  People say that you can take almost noise free pictures at up to 800 ISO with this puppy.  For an ambient light photographer like myself, that’s a major deal.  But, I held my techno-lust at bay and never made the leap, though I tried to talk myself into it on more than one occasion.

Then Canon has the audacity slap my face one again by releasing the 5D, a full-frame CMOS camera, meaning that it doesn’t suffer from the 1.6x lens magnification factor like the 10D and 20D do, where a 50mm lens is akin to 80mm.  Hey, that’s great for telephoto, but you get killed on wide angles.  This camera is a beauty!  A huge LCD on the back, improved Autofocus and massive internal memory make this camera the pro-sumer king.  And, for only $3500.00 this 12.8MP bad-boy can be all yours.  But, sadly, not mine.  My only consolation on this is the slight banding issue that seems to plague a small subset of units.

Now, Canon is delivering another sucker-punch with its announced release of the 30D.  How does this compare to the rest of the Canon line, and specifically the 20D that it is replacing?  Good question!

I see it largely as a hybrid, with the same sensor as the 20D, but with some of the more advanced features of the 5D, such as the 2.5 inch LCD and the ability to turn off sharpening while shooting JPG’s (typically only possible with RAW formats).  The biggest thing that I like about this camera, is the inclusion of a spot meter – something that I’ve sorely missed on my 10D.  Its a 3.5% center positioned meter that allows you to pin-point the exact portion of the photo that you want metered for proper exposure.  Simply point to the most important subject in your photo, spot meter and exposure lock, then reframe, focus and shoot.  Almost guaranteed results as you want them.

But, the big question is, will it be mine?  I don’t know…  If Canon follows their normal release schedules, this October will bring a replacement for the 5D, and I’m thinking that the Nikon D200 is looking awful sweet compared to the 30D.  Of course, then I would need new lenses, more batteries, a strap that says Nikon and not Canon… *SIGH*

It’s a never ending battle…

I don’t know that I really want to be advertising this, but since I’ve done it before, I might as well at least PROVE it.

Sigh…

A Blog home, that is…

So, my move to WordPress is finally completed. Apologies to any of you who experienced an outage during this time of flux. Somehow, I’m sure you survived. heh..

In the past month, we’ve:

• Moved from a table based layout to a total CSS based layout
• Changed from a hosted blog system to a self run system
• Changed the system type – Blogger to WordPress
• Changed from a Windows based server to a Unix based server, mostly for fancy permalink reasons (IIS on Windows doesn’t support .htaccess and mod_rewrite for those of you that care)

Anyway, hopefully things will settle down shortly – my permalinks have changed (somehow that doesn’t sound right, does it – like jumbo shrimp), and I still have to figure out how to get a redirect from atom.xml to my new RSS feed, but all in due time.

I will be posting reviews of other systems, as previously stated, but in the end it was the ease of administration and the ability to use things like WordPress Pages that tipped the scales.  It truly is a wonderful web-publishing system, and I’ll be posting more on the subject shortly.

Anyway, now back to the original programming of commentary on all things.

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Check out http://gethuman.com/ and talk to someone today.

So, while many of you may not notice this, my blog has undergone a tremendous revision.

Most people probably won’t notice anything different at all. Some frequent readers may notice the addition of a (currently blank) right column, where some blogrolling stuff will eventually reside. Those with a REALLY keen eye may notice that my menus have changed their look somewhat…

But, the biggest change will probably go unnoticed, so I’m gonna shout it out, because it is too momentous and amazing to let it go unheeded!

THIS PAGE DOESN’T USE TABLES FOR LAYOUT ANYMORE!!!

WOO HOO!!! *High Fives Anyone Around* *Struts Like the Badass He Is*

Ahem… Right.

Well, for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, its MAJOR. HUGE. Well, OK, maybe not really major either, but in the web dev world, we’re talking MONUMENTAL. Its only taken me 4 billion hours, but I’ve finally mastered (somewhat) the art of CSS Layout. This is the first step towards being able to make amazing interchangeable designs by only updating the accompanying CSS files.

Besides the obvious benefit of more easily changed themes, there are many benefits to this method of layout. Some quick ones off the top of my head:

1. Smaller files, quicker loading
2. Ability to write HTML with fully semantic markup, rather than a hack of semantics and presentation.
3. Easier accessibility to mobile or other devices
4. Much simpler HTML structure in the page
5. Much more search engine friendly, with source ordered layout (content up top, vs mished in the middle)
6. Tables in general suck for layout – they are slow, inflexible, don’t degrade well (meaning scale for small pages) and they print poorly

Well, I admit, that wasn’t all of the top of my head, but you get the idea.

This is the first step in several planned changes, culminating in choosing a new blog home. Blogger has been great, but its starting to chafe around the edges. Categorization, trackbacks, single page designations and concerns about “control” are all pushing me to be evaluating several types of blog systems.

Currently, I’m looking at:

• MoveableType
• LifeType
• WordPress
• .BLOG
• Community Server 2.0

Each can be downloaded and run on your own server using various DB options (but usually MySQL). The top three are PHP based and the bottom 2 are Microsoft .NET based. Being an ASP.NET guy, I’d really like to use one of the latter, but I think features and functions are going to push me to the PHP versions.

Anyway, I’ll update again with reviews, pros/cons, etc of each one as I move closer towards making a decision.

Oh, and while I may have kinda alluded to the fact that I’m a “master” at this, well please don’t take me too seriously. I’d be very interested in hearing if you find anything on the blog that is screwed up. Mostly ’cause its 4AM, and I’m not exactly in the best Quality Assurance frame of mind right now. :^)

Thanks in advance!

On one of the Sci-Fi boards that I frequent (I know, I’m a geek…), someone asked this question:

• Should they just make Trek movies
• Should they restart Enterprise
• Should a new series be made
• Should they leave it as it is and move on

Now, I’ve waxed dramatic on this topic before, but I’ve nailed down some more supporting evidence for my postulations. I posted this to the forum where the question was asked, so some apologies are in order for the stream-of conscience-esq nature of the following post.

Anyway, here you go:

IMHO, Star Trek itself rocks… But it also has the distinction of being the best (and worst) handled show in sci fi history – again IMHO.

I believe that in order for another ST series to be popular, they have to come out with a movie again first – kick in a new generation of fans, so to speak. This point could be argued quite a bit, but in they days of the DVR, our TV ratings system is imploding in on itself and I don’t think that the industry has ANY clue what people actually like to watch anymore… But, I digress. Agree with this point or not, I’m moving on…

Unfortunately, a popular movie today is much different than the historical ST movie – they have to make it more “epic” than your traditional ST movie. People want BIG – don’t believe that? Well, let me prove it…

First of all, look at how many of the top 20 grossing films in history for the US are “greater sci fi” – I know some of you will argue with me that something like Spider Man is Sci Fi, but bear with me… (all info from IMDB, btw)

2. Star Wars (1977) $460,935,665
4. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $434,949,459
5. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) $431,065,444
6. Spider-Man (2002) $403,706,375
7. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) $380,262,555
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) $377,019,252
9. Spider-Man 2 (2004) $373,377,893
11. Jurassic Park (1993) $356,784,000
12. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) $340,478,898
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) $317,557,891
17. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) $313,837,577
18. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) $310,675,583
19. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) $309,125,409
20. Independence Day (1996) $306,124,059

14 of the top 20!!! Man, people love this stuff… But look at the pictures and how they break down:

EPIC films:
2. Star Wars (1977)
5. Star Wars: Episode
I – The Phantom Menace
7. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
8.The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
12. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
17. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
18. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
19. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
20. Independence Day

Good “Story” Films:
4. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
11. Jurassic Park (1993)

Existing Franchise Films:
6. Spider-Man (2002)
9. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)

Now, a couple of disclaimers – just ’cause I classified a film as epic, doesn’t mean it isn’t a good story, or doesn’t come from an existing franchise. And, you could say that these don’t really add up to anything, because really we are talking about primarily 2 really good franchises – StarWars and LOTR. Well, I would argue those with you as well – in fact, independence day being there makes my point for me. But anyway…

My REAL point is this – to have a REALLY successful film, the best idea is to do an Epic Sci-Fi film. Probably not a lot of argument for this statement.

So the real question is, why hasn’t this been done with Star Trek? Why is it that the franchise that is arguably the most RICH in story and potential doesn’t ever seem to come up with a plot that is sweeping in nature? I mean, there are complete sectors, dozens of races, hundreds of ships, politics galore, etc and in Nemesis, we get 2 ships in a standoff as the climax. IT’S ALWAYS 2 DAMN SHIPS!

Compare to the opening scene of Revenge of the Sith to see the drastic difference I’m talking about…

Now, I liked Nemesis, but that’s ’cause I’m a die-hard trek fan, or more correctly, a complete Starfleet whore – I’ll watch ANYTHING from these series, and probably like it. But the hard fact of the matter is that the economics of what gets made today has changed drastically from even the days of DS9 and CERTAINLY from the days of TNG. Enterprise would have been fine 10 years ago, but it doesn’t cut it in the economics of today. To me, that is a shame, but it is what it is…

If we want to see our beloved show continue to be a blip on main stream media radar, it has to change with the times and give the people what they want.

Even Shakespeare always put a parade in his plays – why? To appeal the masses, so he could keep his theater open and put on more plays. Masterpieces can STILL be written that appeal to the masses, and I can’t think of a better “universe” to do it with than the ST universe.

The question is will the “powers that be” ever remove their heads from their rears long enough to take a glimpse at reality.

And that my friends, is a question for the ages…