Today, I want to present a major movie, one of the world best films, a diamond from 1950. Rashômon is one of the most important movies of its time, and it stays as a golden nugget for both its form and its contents. Akira Kurosawa is clearly not any movie maker, he is the author of Yojimbo (the bodyguard) which was the source of For a fistful of dollars with Clint Eastwood as well as Last man standing with Bruce Willis (the least interesting of the three). He also created Seven Samurais which will be done again in a western adaptation universally known as The Magnificent Seven.
But Akira Kurosawa is not only a Japanese movie maker and director, he also was at the origin of a true revolution of 20th Century Japanese cinema. He introduced techniques and ideas coming from the Western world (like Hokusai had integrated the impressionnists’ painting in his works), and he brought to light an exceptional cinema where everything is worth keeping. Rashômon is of that quality. One single story, told from different points of view, grows to the size of four different mixed stories. Each camera angle brings distinct tint and perception. The picture-goer will be drawn into the camera moves and will perceive how much there is no perfect point of view, how much a motion-picture (and its director) tells a unique story merely by placing a camera here instead of there.
But it is also the dramas of three people stuck in their environment, their culture, their prejudices and those of their contemporaries. You will be deeply moved, but there is not even a hint of cheap sentimentality.
And we will remember that Rashômon was the reason for the creation of the Best foreign film category of the Academy Awards. A motion-picture that breaks so many cinema rules, and still stays attractive to the largest public, that it appeared necessary to Hollywood to open a new category just for it.
Synopsis
Toshirô Mifune plays a bandit accused of the heinous murder of a man. But didn’t he rape his wife too? Four witnesses (including the bandit and his victim) will tell the single sequence of events. Each one will slightly transform it according to his memories and the personnal additions. Where is the truth? Are memories real?
After that, you will be able to come back to Pulp Fiction (a movie I simply loved) and perceive how difficult it is to reproduce the strength of Rashômon.
We hear that the newest graphics chips from AMD-ATI will be delayed by a quarter (not arriving before Q2). nVidia gonna love that delay. Their 8800-series will sell all alone on the market of DirectX 10 for quite some time. Let’s hope that the lack of real competition will not become a serious monopolistic problem.
At the moment, the nVidia event is arrival of plenty of GeForce 8800GTS 320Mo OC cards aiming for the “under 250$” market.
For once, a scammer let us smile (though against his will). Let’s smile.
Today, it is the 419 scammers that have been baited by an Internet user who decided to have fun with them and convinced them that he would give a lot of money to people who would recreate famous scenes from movies or TV shows. Here, they accepted to play the well-known “dead parrot” Monty Python sketch.
This is pure exceptional anthology. A moment that will stays in the history of Internet scams and scam baits.
Today, I am asking a simple question to solve a little problem I have :
Since I installed a RAID array in an OpenSUSE machine, I can observe that the little red LED light of disk access flashes once every seoncd -even when I do not try to use the array. Would somebody be able to explain me why the machine finds it necessary to regularly check at least one disk so often?
Yes! If you want to get top photo quality, an inkjet printer is the best solution. But the cost is high. To reduce it, look at the color laser solution. Most entry-level printers are sold under 300$ and the operating costs are tremendously lower than those of an inkjet (toners are more expensive than liquid ink cartridges, but they routinely print several thousand pages). Moreover, they are FAST (several pages per minute instead of several minutes per page).
However, the market is maturing a lot and new models are arriving. The proof? Look at the latest color laser printers comparison from Tom’s Hardware and check the list of tested printers.
HP Color LaserJet 2600n (already tested in November 2005 here)
HP Color LaserJet 3600
Magicolor 5430DL
Lexmark C522n
It is nice to see that one-pass color laser printers become more and more affordable leading to even faster (more silent) printers than was available a year ago.
The conclusion has nothing new for the observer: Lexmark is disappointing, Minolta is bulky (despite or because it is very complete), old HP 2600n has printing cost too high for a large use. The newest HP Color LaserJet 3600 printer is -not surprisingly- the best offer: An excellent compromise like HP has always been providing for blak and white laser printers.
Online shops start to prepare the launch of the Canon EOS 40D. Some are preparing virtual shelves for the new Canon DSLR. Some are already typing data in their web sites.
It’s decided, I go a leopard safari trip in South Africa in April. the big question is -as always- what should I put in the camera bag, what should I bring. But also, what should I leave in Europe? We are not donkeys, but when you want to take the picture of your dreams it’s always bad to refrain yourself because you don’t have the needed hardware. I admit it may be a matter of appreciation, though. I remember this phtoographer going last year in Kenya. We would make fun of his carrying 5.5kg of his Canon 600mm/4. But he could easily remind us that it would be handy if a cheetah started to hunt too far from our 400mm lenses.
Let’s see what will probably be in my Lowepro Mini Trekker AW camera bag:
Camera: Always faithful Konica-Minolta Dynax 7D. I will not even try to bring a spare analog camera, I wouldn’t use it.
Standard lens: Minolta 300mm/4, great optics.
Secondary lens: Either the old Sigma 400mm/5.6 to avoid being too short with the 300mm, or (even better) the Minolta 200mm/2.8 with a 2x Minolta converter (provided that I can buy a second-hand one before take off - a converter).
Misc lens: Minolta zoom xi 28-105mm/3.5-4.5; Not a wonderful glass, but it’s small and may come handy.
Additional macro front lens in case I’d look down and check flora and insects
Two Compact Flash Transcend 1GB cards and a CompactDrive PD70X portable disk drive in order to always have enough storage (in Kenya, in 7 days, I shot 950 photos)
A Minolta 5600HS flash because it may be possible to do night safari and I dream of a drinking leopard
Binoculars: Not really critical, but very useful, lovely 10×50 bought in a sale at Liedl a year ago
Cleaning: standard rag wool, air gun, etc. but nothing hi-tech
I am still hesitating about brining a monopod if we are to stay all day long in a SUV. A good bean bag or a rolled-up scarf may be better.
About energy management, it’s clear cut. In South Africa we will be based in hotel lodges. Everything will be simplified by the availability of mains power. But I’ll bring the 12V chargers for the Dynax 7D battery and the CompactDrive PD70X batteries.I never use a 12V/230V converters: Too heavy and with a low efficiency (it’s heating up quickly), I am equipped for 12V autonomy plugged in cigar lighters in cars. I’ll take two batteries for the camera (I’llswap and charge them at any time), three or four sets of 1.5V AA NiH batteries.
A nice image of an marvellous archeological site (the Machu Pichu in Peru) still full of the echoes of a glorious past, Inca history. Thanks to Scott Howard, you can visit this billion and a half pixels assembled from 400 individual images.
On Sunday, I took advantage of the extraordinarily warm weather and the re-opening of the Espace Rambouillet since 1st of February, to do a little European safari. The park of the Espace Rambouillet is hosting a few fallow deers ; they are speciallly fearful, so I wanted to use the probably limited number of visitors to approach these elegant and timid animals.
As you can see below, I reached my objective, but as the hunting approaches were long and tiring, I finished with a winged subject easier to shoot (the eagle was having a siesta in the sun).
We were wondering why the R6×0 family of graphics chipsets from AMD-ATI was so late compared to the 8800 family of boards from nVidia. Part of the answer may come from the fact that AMD-ATI made a move toward full integration of HDMI (High Definition) in the graphics board.
R600 will be able to handle two full streams of video and audio to full resolution displays (1080p or 1440p). It is quite possible that the little brothers of the R600 (R610 and R630) will be limited to one stream-display only, but the added work associated to this integration may lead to the best HD audio+video in the graphics market place.
Would this lead to a split of the market between nVidia for high-end gaming solutions and AMD for the HD video solutions (while graphics integrated to the mother board would still be shared by both contenders)? I wonder.
Thanks to Canon, it is possible and easy to discover how a photo optical lens is created. And it is a much more convoluted process than you may think.
If you ever wondered why a lens cost so much money to make (and some of the nicest lenses are digging holes in our wallets), take a look at this. It takes you through the entire process of manufacturing a Canon lens if you click on Please visit the Virtual Lens Plant (specifically the manufacturing of a 500mm f/4 IS - definitely a large chunk of glass).
It’s nice, clear, technical, interesting and full of details. The only drawback of these videos is that they are quite sensitive to the speed of your Internet connection (this is very true if you live in Europe). There are three tabs once you get to the video, make sure you check them all out!
We, geeks, are always on the look for a designer box for our PC in the obvious objective to seaprate ourselves from the ugly standard grey box. Our desire has now also extended to the boxes protecting our external hard drives. After a generation of grey, metal or black boxes, we start seeing nice packages. But GeekStuff4U.com offers a GW2.5HD-U2 box that totally reverses the trend: aimed at containing a 2.5″ hard drive USB-connected, it look s exactly like a bare 3.5″ disk.
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Online shops start to prepare the launch of the Canon EOS 40D. Some are preparing virtual shelves for the new Canon DSLR. Some are already typing data in their web sites.
