John A and I in late January light

I updated this one after a few hours. I applied a texture to it, and I like the result: it flattens it and makes it seem like a painting, more of a Picture. (Click for larger image to see this.)

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BTW, one of the few downsides to the Fuji X10 is that the lens is not really the most flare-resistant one ever. Yes, it's a very complex lens, but it's still a little disappointing.

Mattebox for iPhone

tOP pointed to this. I haven't played much with the app yet, but it's interesting even seen just as an exercise in striving for excellent and simplicity.
I love that his model was the Konica Hexar, that camera was a ray of sunlight. Another reach for excellence and simplicity.


Mattebox for iPhone from Ben Syverson.

(By the way, have you noticed how people talk in a particular way in promotional videos? There's a particular way they use the voice tones to make their points, I haven't really pinpointed it yet.) 

Birch bark canoes, Kuralt, wood

I was looking for a filmatization of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, which I've just started reading. But oddly, there doesn't seem to be any! (A bit strange, revered as it is.) Instead I found an old and clearly beloved TV show, On The Road with Charles Kuralt. Here is a couple of kool segments.

I don't understand how you can build a canoe, much less a really good one, from birch bark and without glue or nails.  [Ah, sowing and pitch. Here's a vid, and bit more here.] It's amazing what some people can do with wood. It's a particularly difficult material because unless you "cheat" and glaze it, it will expand and contract with humidity, and all the joints has to be carefully constructed to take care of that! (I was educated a little by a friend who built me an amazing tilting drawing table with inlaid wood in the nineties.)

Google's terms of service

Wow, I guess it's true what they say: you don't know how many Gmail addresses you have until Google changes their terms of service!

I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan

I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan, new book, an "autobiography" by fictional character Alan Partridge, who actor Steve Coogan let loose on the years ago in the TV show Knowing Me, Knowing You, and later two series of I'm Alan Partridge.
Steve Coogan reads the book in the style of Alan Partridge, but it was apparently written by three-four people.

Alan Partridge is an interesting character. It's hard to say if he's a genuine a-hole, or if he's just really a mediocre blowhard, really self-centered, and extremely oblivious to the way he is coming across and the way he is treating other people. But in any case, if you're in a certain mood, it's really funny, both the shows and the book. The character has lots of zealous fans and it's one that Steve Coogan clearly has been struggling to step beyond.

The End of the Beginning

[Thanks to Ian]

The new crane/helicopter

Thanks to Tommy for finding this awesome video. This camera copter with built-in stabilizer will replace a lot of crane and helicopter shots in cinema. Not to mention it can go a lot of places where you can't put helicopters or cranes.

 
CineStar 3 Axis Gimbal from tabb firchau.
(It looks good in full-screen.)

Zorse

Male zebra + female horse = zorse. Huh!

I saw one in the film I'm Reed Fish, and I had to check 'em out. I'd looked up the movie being a Bledel fan, I am not entirely sure how well I like it yet.

Wikipedia says: A zorse is the offspring of a male zebra and a female horse. This cross is also called a zebrula, zebrule, zebra mule or golden zebra. The rarer reverse pairing is sometimes called a horbra, hebra, zebrinny or zebret. Like most other animal hybrids, the zorse is sterile.

Dear Photograph

Dear Photograph, photo blog.
Interesting play with time and personal history.

The last time, a couple of years ago, that I visited the street I grew up on, I was struck by how alien it was. It was like everything had changed, and I honestly might not have recognized it if I hadn't known where I was. I'm not even sure how much was physical changes in the street, and how much was me. But it was weird. It was like the place where most of my developing thoughts had happened, was just gone. Maybe that's one of the reasons they say "you can't go back".

A said:
with the same idea Amit Sha'al won a World Press Photo award. 

... it may even be working better with B/W photos.

"See You In My Dreams"

[Thanks to Phil]

Music by Lonely Boy.
Khan used the Canon 5D2 for the video to take advantage of the short depth of field (blurred backgrounds) this camera can give, unlike most affordable dedicated video cameras.


"See You In My Dreams" from Basharat Khan.

Caffeinated owl time

Art by Nikolay Popov.

When you need to function at ungodly hours: coffee!

Limit search to one site

Here's a really useful Google trick which many people still don't know about, how to limit a Google search to one site.
Today I got an email:

I am looking for some of my favorite stories from many years ago, but am not finding them. One was of a group skinny dipping in moonlight when one lost a watch or something. The author had a flashlight, which he shined near, but not on, the girls who were looking. Do you remember the story, or know which newsletter it is in?

I answered:

No, actually I don’t. But Google is my friend! Here it is: 
http://www.domai.com/news/2004/04april-23/index.html


The way I found it was, I put into google: 
site:domai.com flashlight
(No space after the colon.)
This limits the search to the given domain. 


---
There is another good trick: say somebody sends you a good article in email, but there's no clue where to find it on the web. Then you take a phrase from the article, and put in into google, in quotes (which tells Google to keep the phrase whole), for example:
"Then Daniel remembered about the flashlight"
... which finds the same old newsletter, and no other page.

Pixar, Brave

They say the next Pixar movie, June 22, 2012, is Brave.

The story and look is a bit more traditional Disney than it is Pixar. Which immediately is not the greatest impression I could get. But some details seem promising, for example lookit the screenshot. I like that the her hair looks more hand-drawn than it looks rendered. It adds a bit of the abstraction I'm missing in the trailer otherwise.
Ah yes, lack of abstraction, that's what felt weak to me. And of course, I'm not crazy about pre-industrial stories or fantasy in general, paradoxically most of it seems to lack the very imagination which the genre by definition allows so much of.

And there's rumors that the next-next Pixar movie will be quite abstract, taking place in a girl's mind with personified emotions, sounds interesting.

I have read that when Pixar was little and unproven, they had to resist a lot of pressure from Disney to make Toy Story a musical. For one, I'm happy they did!

Not that I dislike Disney, I usually enjoy their films. For example Hercules and The Emperor's New Grove are very funny (and lovably abstract, especially the latter), good, and seminal.

Update:
Alex mentioned ParaNorman. That looks like fun. And the light in it is beautiful, see for example the short clips neat the beginning of the trailer, of the sunrise-lit street and the hero seen through a window. It seems to be a stop-motion movie, I wonder how they make such beautiful lighting.

90210?

I just noticed there's a 90210 show on TV. I could'na believe it, my sister was a fan of that show over 20 years ago!
But apparently it is the forth series in the "franchise".

Now like then, the actors seem too old to be in high school. And now, man, how thin are some of those girls!? (One of them shown on the right.) Damn, they're barely even attractive. It seems like the bigger the obesity percentage grows, the more people over-compensate in the fashion- and now the entertainment-business.
While I'm being gratuitously critical, none of the actors are exactly overflowing with personality either. But maybe it goes with the bubble-gum tween-twit TV show genre. The characters they portray are the rich and popular kids, and if one of them were to be burdened by a personality, he would be out in the cold faster than you can say "fake tan".

I have seen one show in the genre which I liked though, I wish I could remember the title, but it had ironic distance and was funny, because it was a parody of the culture and intrigue which goes on behind the scenes of a TV show like it.
Update: it was Grosse Point.

Silicon fires

Recommended books about the computer revolution:

Fire in the Valley

Insanely Great

Hackers

Accidental Empires

Jayne Mansfield

Bought this postcard recently, I think it's very funny.
You certainly can't accuse Jayne of not knowing what to do with what she had! That may be the most daring dress I've seen. And anything which can make Sophia Loren cast jealous glances askance is something else.

Mmm, I actually recall very little I've seen with either of the ladies. Any recommendations?

I Dream About You - Yuka Honda

Aurasma Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality, post/video.

It is surely in its infancy yet, since somebody has to code in an object before the app will do anything with it. But it seems quite promising if the tech catches on.

Lady Gaga unveils a Polaroid photo sunglasses

Lady Gaga is creative director for Polaroid? This world is so dang weird. How about David Beckham becoming CEO of IBM?

Next gen cameras

I posted this about next generation cameras on my tech/tablet blog.

Small cameras and shake

I've had a realization: admittedly I love a quality pocket camera like the Canon S90 (S95/S100), simply because you can bring it and forget it until you need it. But of course there are disadvantages. One of them I've called "handling", because there's less room on a tiny camera for real buttons/dials and for your fingers.

But one aspect of this struck me today: shooting indoors with the S90, I felt less than confident that I could do it without shaking the picture. On the contrary, going one step up in size to a Panasonic GF2 or a Fuji X10, I have surprised at just how confident I feel in taking low-light photos with a steady hand. It just feels dead-easy to squeeeeaze a steady shot of on those ones.

It seems the better grip on such a camera, combined with the bigger and better shutter button, makes a big difference in steadiness. And it's not just a feeling, I've surprised myself that with such a camera I can take tack sharp pictures on 1/15th second with a mild wideangle, and that's even with the GF2 which doesn't have stabilization if one uses prime lenses.

Going up to a DSLR, I feel less confident again, I think this is due to the mirror smash which accompanies an exposure on these cameras. But I'm not sure if this is followed by fewer sharp shots in practice though. I have a feeling it does, if nothing else then because less confidence makes the hand less steady.

Two pub pics and more

I tried a pub for lunch today where I haven't been in a while. They have new owners and they do food all day, which is great.
Also it turned out that the burger I got was really excellent, a nice surprise, I have been wanting more choice for lunch. Heck, even the corner sofa seat I got was the most comfortable I've sat in for a while. Good lunch time.
There was this great low January sunlight, so I took these pics. (Canon S90, "you don't need to know you got it with you".)

(Clickable.)

While walking and eating I listened to David Pogue's recent novel. I used an iPod Nano in a Lunatik Lynk wrist chain. It's a pretty geeky item one might think, but it looks nice, and it works well both as a watch and an iPod.

On the way home I walked past a watch shop. Most men's watches seemed to be around 5,000 pounds sterling ($8,000). And I guess that now everybody has the time on their "moby", we can no longer pretend that pricey watches are not, well, jewelry. I wonder how such a shop survives in a working class town.

You never know what you have

I just found out I can watch Lovefilm films over my bluray box. Kewl. I watched Gran Torino last week over that service on my iPad, lovely movie. (It's a limited range of movies, of course.)

Imagine it, I've had that box for well over a year, but I never tried the Internet services on it before today! I only tried it now because I wanted to check a thing (X-Pro1) on youtoobs, but it was also dinner time, so it would be handy if it could be seen in the living room.

Leonard Cohen - Alexandra Leaving

Repost.

BW film photo

Our friend EmptySpaces took this lovely photo. Unlike me he likes working with film, this was taken on Fuji Neopan 400. And on a "Black Slim Devil", though I confess ignorance as to what that is. Aha, here we go. Surprisingly not a nickname. Looks kool, and I like the rubber grip and the super-wide lens, that's rare in affordable cameras, probably because they are tough to make with good corner-quality. Which you can't say the BSD has, but I like the look. It's out of stock, but seems to have been reincarnated as the Blue Ribbon.

Coolpix 600, 1998 Lyngby, Denmark

I just came across these couple of pics, I don't believe I've ever posted them before. They were taken in 1998 or 1999 with my first digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 600, where I lived in Lyngby, Denmark, near Copenhagen.
Believe it or not, the linked files at 768x1024 pixels are the full camera resolution... How times have changed. I bough the camera for about $600, just marked down from over a thousand. But even at such basic quality, the immediacy of a digital camera was exciting.

(Clickable pics)

Interview: Kayce Baker, Fujifilm, X-Pro1

Interview: Kayce Baker, Fujifilm, long article.

Interview with the Director of Marketing of Fuji USA, herself a keen photographer.
Quite interesting. For example, here we get confirmation that the "pro" in the Fuji X-Pro1 is no accident, like I said, they are aiming for full professional quality here. She says their aim was to make the ultimate leisure-time camera for the professional photographer.  Lissa;

...take the image quality above and beyond what is considered mirrorless. So we definitely want to stay in a different stratosphere. Look, are we Leica? It's not going to cost you $15,000 to walk out the door with one of these things, but at the same time we have a premium model here that's going to give you premium results.

She claims that this camera should give full-frame quality (resolution and signal to noise ratio) in a smaller camera and sensor, due to the new type of sensor and lack of softening filter ("low-pass"). Verra interesting. If it really lives up to these claims, and they have a very impressive track record, then the price might be compared to full frame cameras rather than M4/3 cameras, and that's rather a different perspective! Especially since the camera is smaller by far than full-frame cameras are. Actually even smaller than reduced-frame DSLRs, due to no space needed for mirrors and prisms. Could be a good deal in some ways.

If one is the type to hate to compromise on quality, but is tired of  2-kilo cameras, and maybe like to have a 28mm lens and a 90mm lens instead of a zoom, then this camera is a worthy candidate for sure. (They may make zooms in 2013 it seems. I wonder how they will attack that, given the compromise-free approach here. Zooms are usually all about compromise, though less so these days.)

Personally, I'm not sure it's for me. I love it in principle and I'm really happy they made it, but the type of premium quality we're talking about here is mainly noticed in really huge prints, and I don't tend to make those. So, while I reserve the right to change my mind every three minutes like usual, I think the X10 is a better fit for me for now.

------------
UPDATE:
Will said:

Thanks again for your review of the Fuji X10. I've had mine for a few weeks, and I love it. Best camera I've ever had. It's equally good at family snapshots in peculiar lighting conditions (and aren't they always?) and at serious photography (to the extent I'm capable of it). It really hits the sweet spot.

I fully agree, that camera is really a big surprise. If I could only keep one camera, that would be the one.

It's perfect for things like family documenting. I remember trying to take indoors pics of my nephews with my Fuji F10 (which was otherwise ahead of the curve then). But even though it during day, they just got blurry, shaken. (And on-camera flash looks awful usually.) With the X10 that's no longer a problem, if I can see it, the camera can handle it! The stabilization adds at least two stops, and the sensitivity at least another two stops, that's huge. Oh, and the lens is faster too! (OK, the X10 is bigger than the F10, but not huge. Still a good size for travel.)

Silver halide film, ghost begone!

That's an ad I just got.
Isn't it a wonder that after, what, 170 years of photography, we finally get rid of the limitations of silver film, we can now make pictures look like anything digitally... and some people want to emulate "the magic of silver halide film". It's also one of the follies of the otherwise wonderful camera company Fujifilm (perhaps because they used to make film and they miss it), their cameras always have these stupid "film simulation" settings. You can't even get out of them, at best you can set it to "Provia/standard". I don't even know what "Provia" is, I've never used one in my life.
 I'm sorry, I think film looked like shite if you weren't lucky. It was so grainy and blotchy, and getting tones and colors right was a constant battle.  For me this is like being nostalgic for the era of medical healing of anything by bloodletting, or curing mental problems with lobotomies.

Update:
Pop said:
Now look what you made me do. I re-awoke my blog to post this on it. I can hear it grumbling in the next room…

Canon G1 X

If my Fuji X10 didn't have such surprisingly good low-light quality, I might have regretted getting it just before the Canon G1x was announced. For the G1x is pretty much the same camera as the X10: high quality, compact, all-round camera. But the G1x has a larger sensor, larger than M4/3, and so in theory it probably has yet better available-darkness powers.
But then it's bigger and heavier (530 grams vs 360 grams, big difference), and it's sort of brutish looking.     :-)

Ah, and the Fuji, no doubt helped by the smaller sensor, does have one clear advantage: its zoom is much faster, F:2.0 to F:2.8, as compared with the Canon's much more limited F:2.8 to F:5.8. Particularly at the long end where you need all the help you can get, that's a two-stop difference! (I think Fuji has the record in zoom speed.) ("Speed": how much light a lens or sensor takes in per second.)
Still, doubtlessly this is a very powerful all-round and travel camera.

When a Mac won't download a file

Here's a simple trick that many new Mac users don't know: sometimes, I'm not sure why, a Mac won't download a linked file from a web site, depending on the page's programming.
There are two solutions: either option- (alt) click on the file, this forces a download of the linked file.
Or Control-click on the link, this will give a popup menu which contains "save linked file" or similar command.

The control-click thing is universally useful. It's the Mac equivalent of "right-clicking".