On The Jazz II

So why is it that people that drive round with music blasting out of their car invariably have awful taste? Usually they're broadcasting some terrible dance, shit-hop or other aural abomination (note: that is not to say all hip-hop is bad - just most).

I mean seriously, when's the last time you were walking along the street and some car drove by playing out good music? For me, miraculously, it was today.

That's right. As I was walking home from Old Town a car passed me playing righteous, righteous funk. I'm not sure what it was, though it was certainly JB-ish. And the horn section was giving it some.

Sometimes I forget how good funk is. Proof that I am an idiot.

Incidentally if you're in Europe then Breakestra are currently on a European tour. For the uninitiated, Breakestra are the funkiest band alive (yes, even funkier than Calypso King and the Soul Investigators). Annoyingly they have a residency in LA, except for when I'm here. Go see them, because they are possibly the best band in the world.

Well, I've just been asked to turn the music down. Just like in every other place I've lived.
Seriously, some people just don't know good music when they hear it (through the ceiling/wall/floor).

Radiohead on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Epson LX-86 Dot Matrix Printer, HP Scanjet 4c, oscilloscope and Hard Drive array


Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

and they're going to rock your world.

Labels: rock out with your transistors out

Coffee Drinkers Have Slightly Lower Death Rates, Study Finds

I'm pretty sure human mortality rate is 100% regardless of whether you drink coffee or not.

Labels: I am invincible

El camino del Rey
Lots of nudity
Better than me
Morbid yet interesting
Dumb
Not very accurate title

Labels: video

OK, in a few tens of hours I'm heading back to CA.
Of the books I'm taking, these are the two that are shortlisted for cabin duty:

Haruki Murakami's Dance Dance Dance

and

J.M.Ledgard's Giraffe: A Novel


Any recommendations as to which goes in checked luggage and which goes hand?

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

more

Labels: codeswarm, python, visualisation

The Death* Star

* of a

Sex lines that is.
An article about Phillip Toledano’s book Phone Sex

quoth:

“Gary was watching a ‘World’s Strongest Women’ show and saw a woman pick up a motorcycle.
‘Oh I could do that,’ I offered.
‘Could you?’ he responded, breathless.
‘Yes. How much do you weigh?’
‘160.’
‘Oh. I could bench-press two of you.’
‘Oh my god… I’d like to see you lift up my girlfriend’s car.’
‘What kind of car does she have?’
‘A Mazda Miata.’
‘Oh yes, I could pick up a Miata. In fact, I would love to.’
‘Really?!?!??! Oh my god! What if my girlfriend was inside?’
‘I would just pick it up, lift it to my shoulder level, and then hoist it up over my head, with your girlfriend inside. I’d slowly turn around in a circle with it held up in the air, with your girlfriend screaming in the front seat.’”

A part of me may miss getting paid for this when I move on.

Labels: who you gonna call?

I ams a robot.
which is to say, I always get captchas wrong.

Labels: gotchme

I was just doing some photo library organising tonight and came across some photos from the last few months that I quite like but had completely forgotten about.

So here they are

Labels: forgotten, photo

Sorry, I know they're dull. But I got space to fill here, and this blog ain't gonna write itself.

Just more Kodak Z1085 test shots. In the library again because that's where I spend all my time (yes, I know, I live the life of a rock star).



Also, in case you don't know, the slightly misnomered 'dailies' section is here. The idea is that it's a place for me to put general day-to-day shots that I kind of like. As such, the standard is not going to be particularly high.

Labels: library, sssssssssssssshhh, the 'stud' in studying, z1085

Just for fun, a very coarse plot of an ebay auction that ended today (I was selling a 20D if you really must know).
I think bidding patterns are really interesting, as do a great many economists and even physicists.
I think at some point I'll write a quick program to plot ebay auctions more finely. Speaking of which, the above graph was plotted with python/pylab because the graphing part of OpenOffice.org, at least the version I have installed, was giving me such a headache that it was actually quicker to code it myself. Now python/pylab make it extremely easy to do simple plots like this, but it's still not a good sign for OO although to be fair I'm out of date so I imagine (hope) it's much better these days.

Labels: AJs, and yeah - I really do think, good one shaggy, nice try

Well, due to play.com messing up my order I did not receive the camera until today. Still, they did at least sort it out very quickly when I called them to find out where my camera was.

I took it out with me today to evaluate how it performs [photos]. I didn't have time to go out to specifically take photos. So what you have is a selection of photos from my journey to the library, and my day spent in the library. Lucky you.

First impressions:

1) it's a lot smaller than I expected, and also physically much nicer than the product shots lead you to believe. Quite frankly, they make it look like abomination whereas in reality it's fairly smart. Nothing amazing, but nonetheless quite nice.

2) the interface is pretty intuitive, all important settings are easily accessible

3) 16:9 mode is quite cool. Obviously I realise you can crop in post but if you're planning on ending up at 16:9, having the LCD 'viewfinder' image cropped to that ratio does help with composition. There is also a 3:2 crop available which may be more useful in the long run (not sure if the appeal of 16:9 is going to wear off)

4) battery life is a.b.y.s.m.a.l, even with 2900mah NiMH AAs. I mean, really, really bad. Like 10-20 shots bad. Just terrible. It looks like I will end up buying a proprietary Li-on battery and charger. Suck.

5) video is as expected. Which is to say, good.

6) as a still camera, it seems to really be not bad at all. Of course, I haven't really pushed it so far so only time will tell. Most cameras should be able to handle what I shot today!

7) macro really isn't very macro-ey on this camera

Labels: field test, first impressions, kodak, photo

The US Embassy.

Wow, the automated recording that answer's the US embassy's phone sounds just like the dude who does the voice over intro to The A-Team.
Strange but true.
Good choice I say.

...the pun never ends.

*DOUBLE POINTS!*

Labels: highest form of humour, punnery

Leica 50mm Summicron-R E55*

OK, it's been a while (I can't even remember the last time) since I went on a bit of a camera rant so here we go.

So tomorrow I expect to receive a new camera. Excitement! However, in all fairness it's probably not actually a very good camera. I expect it to be decent but no more. Why then, given that I already have a veritable plethora of actually very good cameras, would I buy it?

Well, the answer is two-fold. First - I obviously have a problem with buying cameras, lenses etc. It just happens. I don't really have that much control over it.

Secondly, I am well aware that it is a mediocre camera. What it has going for it is its video capabilities. Recently, as anyone who knows me will know, I have become an uncle. Although my poor niece has been extensively photographed in her short life I've also realised that short video clips of her are really fun. Now then, that brings us back to reason 1 as I do actually have access to several DV cameras and the video mode on my F30 isn't bad either. But what I wanted, nay needed, was HD.

To an extent I feel I'm justified here. Because by the time that she may actually want to watch these videos, she'll probably not be too impressed with VGA or PAL.

OK, so itch identified it was time to scratch it. What I was looking for was essentially a very cheap HD camcorder. And the search led me to the Kodak Z1085IS. There are actually a few cheap HD camcorders around which record onto SD(HC) cards with the h.264 codec. Aiptek and Jazz sell very cheap camcorders that will shoot 720p (or even 1080i). The problem with these is that they lack IS (image stabilisation) which I think is fairly important for video, and have low bit-rates (more on this later). The next step up from these are far more costly 'real' camcorders from the likes of Canon, Sony, Panasonic - the usual suspects.

Well, that doesn't work since I'm after cheap. The answer (I hope) lies in the fact that several manufacturers are now offering HD (by which I mean 720p) video facilities on their digicams. Kodak, Panasonic and Samsung are the ones I know of. Clearly it is only a matter of time before 720p becomes standard on digicams. However, if I don't want to miss my niece growing up I can't really wait around so I had to pick one of the current crop. This is non-ideal as the current crop don't really offer everything I'd want from a digicam, so I decided to pick a camera solely for its video capabilities (rather than try and replace the F30).

When it came down to it, the real contenders were:

Samsung NV24HD
Panasonic TZ5/FX35
Kodak z1085

The Panasonics were kind of out of the running pretty quick on grounds of price. However, they also have the disadvantage of having small sensors and recording video using MJPEG. They also apparently have a terrible microphone setup. On the plus side the TZ5 and FX35 have (on the wide end) 28mm and 25mm lenses respectively. Wide angle is a good thing (although not as good as I'd previously thought - but that's for another day).

I really wanted to get the Samsung. It has a 24mm (equivalent) lens and encodes videos in h.264. Alas, it also has a tiny sensor (1/2.5" same as the Panasonics) and the bit-rate of the videos is low (7-8Mbps).

Finally, the Kodak. Firstly I can't believe I bought a Kodak camera, but then I wouldn't have believed it if I'd bought a Samsung or Panasonic either. However, dig a little deeper and the Kodak gets interesting:

1) it's the cheapest of the 3
2) it has a (relatively) large sensor. 1/1.63". It may not sound like much but when you work it out it has about twice the surface area of the sensors in the Samsung and Panasonics. This should mean less noise for the Kodak in low light. As far as I can tell the sensor resolution shouldn't have that much effect as when you're shooting 720p I can only assume you're doing pixel-binning so that the total sensor size is the important issue rather than pixel pitch - I understand this is oversimplifying but you get the idea.
3) much higher bit-rate for video. Video is recorded in MPEG4-2 at ~14Mbps. I'm aware that h.264 is a more efficient codec so you can't compare directly, but by all accounts most of its gains over MPEG4-2 are with low bit-rates. Basically, my hunch is that 14Mbps MPEG4-2 will look better than 7Mbps h.264
3) it runs on AAs. Good because I also plan to record several hours of lecture each day on it next term. I don't expect a set of batteries to last much more than an hour.


OK, anyway, that's why I bought the Kodak. Hopefully I'll find out tomorrow whether it was the right way to go or not.
Oh, and a retroactive warning: nerd alert.

*this picture has nothing to do with anything really - it's just a nice lens which I happen to have a picture of because I'm going to sell it. Did I mention that it's nice? And for sale...

Labels: cameras, h.264, hd, mpeg4, photo, video