Archive for February, 2007

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.

• Full specs at Geheugenkaart (Belgium)
• Empty space at EFlens (their home page has already a reserved space for the new digital camera (empty space at the right of the 30D))

The biggest news seems to be the price: 1698€. All the rest is as expected.

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.

All this will come with some paper notepad to replace the Sony Clié PDA that I always have with me but will be too cumbersome to recharge.

Not forgetting long sleeves shirts and bush hat as protection against the African sun.

Do you see something that I’m missing or something I should leave behind?

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!

[Provided by Juli]

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.

Moreover, at 19€ only, it’s a bargain.

This man should be better known. He died at 93 after receiving a Grammy Award in 1997. He created a world of couch potatoes. He favored petty fights in front of the TV set. He fathered the TV remote.

Source: BBC.

On the 1st of January 2000, some people were expecting to see the world crumble because old software applications had been written using dates coded on 2 digits. At the turn of the century (or rather at the change from 99 to 00), there was a need for upgrading/patching applications to support 4-digit years in order to avoid the end of civilisation.

The nightmare did not happen for the world, but there was a boom for the IT industry around the correction of the Y2K bug. Today, we are reaching a point where we could see another similar drama: The Y2K7 bug.

In 2005, the US Congress decided, as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, that the date used to switch for Winter times to Summer times and back (in application of Daylight Saving Time) would be changed. Instead of being the usual 1st Sunday of April and the last Sunday of October, these dates would be moved by 3 weeks for the US and a few followers like Australia. This becomes applicable in March 2007.

It wouldn’t be much of a problem if that did not have to be hard-coded in the many software applications using time information. Most of them need to be patched to behave correctly.

Most certainly, any unpatched pre-2005 application is doomed to behave incorrectly next March when time comes to change times. Did you notice that Windows 2000 is still counting as 10-15% of installed Windows PC? Did you notice that Windows XP was launched in 2001? Maybe your calendar application or some airlines reservations software has not yet been updated… As for the Y2K bug, the Y2K7 bug may have influence on more hidden systems: routers, photocopiers, PDA, cell phones, room/conference reservation services, energy metering systems and -of course- the blinking digital clock of our VCR (OK! This last one should first be set to the right time once).

The patch dance should be started by now.

For those really worried about it, Windows XP has already been patched by Windows Update. No need to rush and buy Vista just for this.

Sony Alpha-100

After making a successful entry in the market of the digital SLR photo camera with the A100 in July 2006, Sony should be preparing the extension of its product line (still containing one camera only). Most people expect it to take the form of the addition of a higher-end camera that could be named either Alpha 10 [A10] or Alpha 200 [A200] (Wanna bet?) This would be a good complement to the A100 and would fit nicely after the Konica-Minolta D7D.

It is definitely interesting to notice that there is still no information leaking out of Sony about this future product. However, we should remember that the Alpha 100 was not preceded by months of pre-launch propaganda; Sony went shot for a quick launch followed by months of heavy advertising (and kept its word on the launch date).

(more…)

You were told repetitively so: It’s bad to download movies, this is really bad; Each time you donwload a movie a cute little kitten dies. But in reality, there are movies that you can download for free without going ilegal, without risking the ire of the MPAA. We presented several here. But it is now time to present a very recent movie: Elephants dream.

Neither Cary Grant, nor Ava Gardner. Neither Mel Gibson, nor Spike Lee. But enlightened amateurs, a few pros and a lot of passion to produce this short Open Source film (everything is available: the software programs to do it or redo it, the models, the scripts). Anyway, it is not a technological demonstration of prowess (which took 125 days of heavy computation on 240 dual-core servers to be created) but an art work with its own life and heart.

Synopsis

Should we really talk about synopsis? The scenario is a little troubling at first. But you can easily find your marks. The two characters, young Emo and wise Proog, seem to evolve in a kind of machine that recalls memeories of 1997 Cube of Vincenzo Natali. But there is also a dark fantasy side that may remind you of The Matrix. Proog tries to lead Emo among the dangers and the surprises of the machine. This is the occasion to meet images and environments that can only be described with superlatives even if the depth of characters is not the main argument of this movie.

Posts about EOS 40D: EOS 40D initial scoop All of them

It seems that there would be some internal information spread on 12th/13th February inside Canon to prepare the announcement of the Canon EOS 40D digital SLR camera.

Around there, it is said that the AF will be using the 9+6 sensor of the 5D camera.

Stock-Photo-blogspot is also very precise in the list of rumoured characteristics it describes. This is a kind of rumour consensus list:

• 10.1 M-pixel
• Dust removal like the EOS 400D/Rebel XTi
• 1.6 crop factor
• Weather-sealed (this seems unsure even if it would make it very competitive against the Pentax K10D -sold at less than 1000$)
• Less than 1200€ (following the market epxectations)

Wait for the end of an embargo on the 24th of February.

“Can you improve your conversation skills? Certainly.

It might take a while to change the conversation habits that’s been ingrained throughout your life, but it is very possible.”

The rest of the article is on The Positivity Blog.

Source: XKCD.

Google sells advertising. There is some of it on my web site pages. Normally, as a web site owner, I don’t really look at the price ads are sold (I don’t buy ads to publicize and market my web site). But, nonetheless, I was curious about the price ads are sold to Google customers. More precisely, I tried to identify the ads that are sold at the higher price.

To scrutiny those, I used AdWords, Google’s tool for vendors; It allows to evaluate prices. The result is nearly shocking if you look at the highest scores. They are systematically grouped in a few narrow categories:

• Loan financing or refinancing – often to pay college
• Automobile insurance
• Attorneys and personal lawsuits

First, we can notice that this is significantly skewed towards the American way of life. But these are obviously related to commercial topics linked to professions and skills that can earn you A LOT of money if you can sell them right (isn’t it the main purpose of any publicity and advertising?)

I collected a list of the most expensive search words I could find.

(more…)

In the world of P2P, Bittorrent is clearly the protocol of choice for big file transfers. This is true for videos (pirated or not), for GNU/Linux dsitribution CD-ROMs, for collections of photographic images, etc.

Among the Bittorrent-compatible P2P software applications, Azureus is clearly the one that receives the favors of the greatest public. It is proved by the participation to the networks. It quite certainly comes from the Azureus versatility, but also from its flexibility allowing it to be present on many different computing platforms (written in Java, it was ported to almost anything including a microprocessor: Apple, Linux, Windows PC, Unix workstations, etc.). But it comes with one hidden cost: Configuration nightmares, hundreds of options, some of them nearly impossible to understand at first. Azureus makes it a bit easier by breaking the configuration in several expertise levels, but it still is very complex.

When I wanted to install Azureus, even with my own computer experience, sometimes I was a little lost when lokoing for the best options to configure my machine. So, I decided to share this recently hard-earned expertise, with some of my own comments.

(more…)