Saturday, March 24, 2012
A Titanic mistake
They're re-releasing Titanic, so I just saw the trailer for the first time. It was even more gawd-awful than I had imagined. It's hard to think of a movie I'd have less desire to watch. Maybe Passion Of The Christ with an all-poodle cast. Or Yentl And Zombies. Or a film about the love life of Darth Vader when he was young. Wait, somebody did that. Still a bad idea.
Friday, March 23, 2012
This is what a camera looks like
I'll tell ya sommin that it seems only Fuji and Olympus have become aware of: there's a pretty big demographic, those of us who photographed before 1980, who miss their Real Cameras.
Today's plastic Wunders are not machines, they are blobs.
And that, apart from good performance, is what will make the new Olympus OM-D sell like hotcakes to old-timers:
(Obviously, performance is irrelevant to this emotional stance, most of those blobs are actually amazing cameras.)
My collection of vintage metal cameras in my living room testifies to this love affair. And now somebody has finally, after over a decade, realized that there is a solid niche there, and I can get the best of both worlds, my metal-addiction scratched and very good digital performance, in the same machine.
And I'll bet it's not just old-timers either, I'll bet many younger people have an affinity for solid machined metal, rather than Fisher-Price toys, even if they are black and heavy.
Today's plastic Wunders are not machines, they are blobs.
And that, apart from good performance, is what will make the new Olympus OM-D sell like hotcakes to old-timers:
to us, this is a camera:
to us, this is not a camera. It doesn't look serious:
(Obviously, performance is irrelevant to this emotional stance, most of those blobs are actually amazing cameras.)
My collection of vintage metal cameras in my living room testifies to this love affair. And now somebody has finally, after over a decade, realized that there is a solid niche there, and I can get the best of both worlds, my metal-addiction scratched and very good digital performance, in the same machine.
And I'll bet it's not just old-timers either, I'll bet many younger people have an affinity for solid machined metal, rather than Fisher-Price toys, even if they are black and heavy.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Vancouver mountains
Our reader Ray yesterday took this spectacular panorama of Vancouver mountains close to where he live. It was taken with a Pentax 70 super-zoom camera at longest setting (24x no less, that's almost impossible to do without a tripod), and stiched together with Image Composite Editor.
If you want the full-sized file it is here. (You can click on the picture too, but Blogger will not post pictures larger than 1600 pixels, which is tough on panoramas.)
Warning: I made two halves of the big version and put them on my twin monitors as wallpaper, and soon after my Mac crashed. This is rare, and even more rare, almost unheard of, is that it wouldn't start properly after that. I tried a few things, and after starting from a different hard disk, I removed the two pictures I had as wallpaper. (I got suspicious because of the timing and because it froze right after loading the wallpaper.) And then it started properly again. I've never encountered anything like that before. And it's hardly likely to have anything to do with the original file, since I had saved it as two different and separate JPGs. But still, to be safe, maybe you shouldn't use it as wallpaper...
(Of course if anybody can explain how a JPG (made by Save As in Photoshop) can prevent a computer from booting, I'm all ears.
If you want the full-sized file it is here. (You can click on the picture too, but Blogger will not post pictures larger than 1600 pixels, which is tough on panoramas.)
Warning: I made two halves of the big version and put them on my twin monitors as wallpaper, and soon after my Mac crashed. This is rare, and even more rare, almost unheard of, is that it wouldn't start properly after that. I tried a few things, and after starting from a different hard disk, I removed the two pictures I had as wallpaper. (I got suspicious because of the timing and because it froze right after loading the wallpaper.) And then it started properly again. I've never encountered anything like that before. And it's hardly likely to have anything to do with the original file, since I had saved it as two different and separate JPGs. But still, to be safe, maybe you shouldn't use it as wallpaper...
(Of course if anybody can explain how a JPG (made by Save As in Photoshop) can prevent a computer from booting, I'm all ears.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
What is happiness?
I have just found out what happiness is!
I had a dream where I was in a café in Copenhagen, and a girl came in who looked exactly like Alyson Hannigan. She walked up to met and said she was there to meet me, and to look outside, something amazing was there. I followed her, and indeed there was something amazing: one more girl looking just like Alyson Hannigan, also there to meet me!
We had a great time. At one point the first one was wearing a leather hip harness on top of her jeans. Sexxxxy.
So that is happiness: a date with two Alyson clones!
She is no Megan Fox, but really I prefer Alyson.
Here is a more day-to-day Alyson: (girls are so lucky, they are allowed, heck, expected to make themselves glamorous with make-up. The rest of us are stuck with the face nature handed out.)
I had a dream where I was in a café in Copenhagen, and a girl came in who looked exactly like Alyson Hannigan. She walked up to met and said she was there to meet me, and to look outside, something amazing was there. I followed her, and indeed there was something amazing: one more girl looking just like Alyson Hannigan, also there to meet me!
We had a great time. At one point the first one was wearing a leather hip harness on top of her jeans. Sexxxxy.
So that is happiness: a date with two Alyson clones!
Here is a more day-to-day Alyson: (girls are so lucky, they are allowed, heck, expected to make themselves glamorous with make-up. The rest of us are stuck with the face nature handed out.)
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Abundance is now
We always hear and feel that things are going worse and worse. And yet, people "below the poverty line" today have luxuries that barons and kings did not have 200 years ago. And the trend continues.
And Peter Diamandis on the wealth in space:
And Peter Diamandis on the wealth in space:
Monday, March 19, 2012
Tintin, mocap
Tintin has just been released on blu-ray, and I'm watching it.
Is it just me, or is this the most realistic mocap/CGI movie released yet? For sure it's a quantum leap ahead of A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey. While that one couldn't fool anybody, I have to wonder how many people go into the Tintin movie innocent, and never glom onto the fact that it's not live-action. It's amazing, both humans and scenery looks Real, and there's nothing of that weird fakeness of movement which earlier came from motion capture (counter-intuitive as that is).
It may not quite have knocked down the fortress of ultra-realism in CGI, but it sure has taken down a couple of the outer walls, and shaken the foundations!
Is it just me, or is this the most realistic mocap/CGI movie released yet? For sure it's a quantum leap ahead of A Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey. While that one couldn't fool anybody, I have to wonder how many people go into the Tintin movie innocent, and never glom onto the fact that it's not live-action. It's amazing, both humans and scenery looks Real, and there's nothing of that weird fakeness of movement which earlier came from motion capture (counter-intuitive as that is).
It may not quite have knocked down the fortress of ultra-realism in CGI, but it sure has taken down a couple of the outer walls, and shaken the foundations!