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Linkdump
» Mailorder Beer
A plug and a bit of a bookmark for myself -
Beerstore in NZ does a great job of distributing beer of all kinds delivered to your door.
I've used them a few times now and they're quick and efficient - I even had one delivery with broken bottles which the couriers obviously screwed up and within a couple of days
Beerstore had another order on my doorstep no questions asked. Now thats service !
» Cult Calculator Turns 30
Even though I'm rubbish at all things mathematical I do like calculators. The HP 12c is a
cult-classic and its turned 30 years old. Still going strong in the finance world.
» Making Facebook Self Healing
Pretty fascinating - I'm guessing you get to a certain size and economies of scale mean this is the only viable option -
Making Facebook Self Healing.
» What is a karonkka?
A friend of mine recently returned from Finland where he was examining a PhD defence - the process is called a
Karonkka.
As well as getting decked out in a full-on tux & tails they actually had ceremonial swords to boot. How cool is that ?
Be sure to read Shauns other posts on the nature of research, patents, science and technology in New Zealand.
» TED Talks
A friend of mine (cheers Eddie!) pointed me at the excellent
TED Talk series.
Subscribe to their RSS feed now.
Theres always something you can set aside 15 minutes of your time to learn about or dump to your mp3 player to listen/watch while you commute.
Recent favourites of mine have included -
'Build a brain in a supercomputer',
'Our buggy moral code',
'What brain damage can point out about our mind',
'Why are babies cute? Why is cake sweet?'
» Useful Ways to be Persuasive
I realised my Linkdump category hadn't been updated in a looong time so I'll kick start it with this link to some common-sense
ways to be persuasive.
As per the link comments in the preamble, its a bit pop-psych but theres some useful stuff to help get your head around how you can get your point of view across to other people.
» Because you need to know - Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout
It'll be interesting to see if the New York Times keeps this table up to date -
Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout.
See which financial institutions receive money and how much they get.
» Good Music - Le Pop by Katzenjammer
Discovered while reading
Popmatters list of Also-rans for 2008 -
Katzenjammers 'Le Pop' is one of those joyful albums by a band determined to put a stupid grin on your face at all costs or die trying (cf early Violent Femmes, Crowded House, Pogues).
Check out a couple of videos on YouTube - '
A bar in Amsterdam' and '
Aint no thang'
» Good Books - The Shock Doctrine
Another excellent read from
Naomi Klein -
The Shock Doctrine. I have to admit I'm only halfway through this book - mans inhumanity to man makes for tough going - however its pretty much compulsory reading for anyone that wonders how the worlds free market economy's were lead down the track they're currently on.
Essentially what Klein does is posit the idea that free market economies and reforms can only be forced through on the back of an external crisis (sometimes real and sometimes engineered). As a result those people best placed to take advantage of the reforms do extraordinarily well and the vast majority of us end up worse off - with globalisation these disparities keep getting worse as multi-nationals cease to be bound by georgraphy.
As the recent recession and American bank / finance / auto bail-outs have shown - the free market has failed to a certain extent - their own calls for deregulation have bit them on the ass and now they're going cap in hand to the very regulatory bodies they once reviled for assistance.
So even when things go wrong for the wheelers and dealers of the world - they still come out on top.
» Good Books - Killing Rommel by Stephen Pressfield
Another quick summer read -
Killing Rommel is a return to form for Stephen Pressfield - his 'Gates of Fire' was a masterpiece but after that I found 'Tides of War' and 'Last of the Amazons' to be a little dry.
His latest novel tells the tale of the
Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and their various exploits in the North African campaign, culminating in a mission to track down and kill
Rommel.
» Good Books - Old Mans War by John Scalzi
My linkdump sidebar has been a little stale so I thought I'd fill it with a few short reviews.
Over Christmas I was looking for some lightweight reading material and
Old Mans War certainly did the trick. Easy to read, great pacing, nice ideas and a milieu that you can't wait to immerse yourself in again (which I did by reading
Ghost Brigades soon afterwards).
Both books focus on humanities move to colonise space, the competing species struggling for the same limited resources, the inevitable conflicts that arise and the rather unique solution humanity has come up with to ensure its survival.
Only complaint would have to be the 'el cheapo' Tor publishing values - cramped text and tiny margins made both books tough on the eyes.
» Retro Remake - Wizball
Dust off the joystick - Retrospec has remade
Wizball for Windows.
If you had a Commodore64 in the 80's then chances are you had
Wizball - one of the classic games on the platform.
» Operations Competitive Advantage
Those infrastructure guys beavering away in the background really are important -
Operations is a competitive advantage.
» Lessig: Corruption Lecture
Highly recommended viewing -
Lawrence Lessig new ten year project is to tackle Corruption -
view his presentation here. Starts a little slow but builds momentum and its an entertaining presentation.
» FitPC
Tiny PC -
FitPC. Looks like an ideal way to drive a kiosk or display system.
» DHTML Arkanoid
If you grew up in the mid to late 80's then you would have heard of
Arkanoid - now it can be played in your web browser as pure
DHTML Arkanoid.
» Retro Mac Wordpress Theme
If you use Wordpress try out the
Retro Mac Wordpress Theme in all its one-bit glory. Another brilliant domain name too.
» For Lego and Apple Fanboys
Nifty -
Young Woz and Jobs Playset goes on sale in two days. Goes to show that a little creativity goes a looong way on the interweb.
» Free the Jena Six
Craziness -
Free The Jena Six. Its truly disturbing this kind of thing still goes on in the US.
Sunday 16 October 2011 at 2:40 pm
A plug and a bit of a bookmark for myself -
Beerstore in NZ does a great job of distributing beer of all kinds delivered to your door.
I've used them a few times now and they're quick and efficient - I even had one delivery with broken bottles which the couriers obviously screwed up and within a couple of days
Beerstore had another order on my doorstep no questions asked. Now thats service !
Sunday 16 October 2011 at 10:56 am
Another medium format star, I'd always been tempted by Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) cameras since starting down the analogue film path but didn't really know where to start. Both Mamiya (the 'modern' C220/330) and Yashica (quite a lineup that mirrors Rolleis) had some quality candidates in this field but the true legend was the
Rolleiflex (and its cheaper cousin the Rolleicord).
The only catch was that the Rollei has achieved a certain cult status among TLR and medium format fans so finding one in decent condition for a modest price wasn't going to be easy. I'd regularly see them going for $500NZ+ and up to $1200 for ones in really good condition.
A few months after my search began a friend of mine mentioned his father had one for sale - turns out he had bought it in the 50's and carried the thing through the Himalayas and New Zealand alps so it had quite a colourful history. Apart from a little wear and tear it was in great 'user-grade' condition - leather, light-seals, speeds, shutter and meter were all in good nick. This was a later model Rollei with a Carl Zeiss f3.5 70mm lens and a selenium-cell light meter (the expensive f2.8 models were out of my league!).
Loading the film is a little tricky but there are plenty of useful
YouTube videos to help a Rollei newbie load film. The biggest hassle I find is the film advance and cocking handle doesn't easily lend itself to muscle-memory and can lead inadvertently to double-exposures. Definitely have a bit of a practise with the wind and half-cock reversal before you load film just so you've got it nailed before you go blowing expensive film.
I have to say that using a Rollei TLR is a great experience, even after fifty years it works just as smoothly as ever and the images it takes are stunning with the wonderful 6x6 framing adding to the overall filmy-goodness -
Useful Rolleiflex links
here,
here and
here.
Saturday 15 October 2011 at 4:29 pm
My first foray into Medium Format film, another second hand find. I've written a little about the joys of Medium Format over here
already.
The
Mamiya RB67 itself is a beast of a camera. It weighs a ton, feels like its hewn out of stone and cocking the shutter feels like pulling the bolt slide on a rifle. Its primarily designed for studio photography or landscapes where a lot of care is used to stage the shot and the camera is likely to rest on a tripod.
This is a picture of the successor to the RB67, the RZ67 which looks almost exactly the same as its predecessor. As you can see it has a (huge) vertical viewfinder for composition and a bellows for focus -
I picked mine up second hand with a 220 back. Medium format film comes in either 120 or 220 'size' - this relates to the length of the film and number of shots you can take (twice as many on 220). Theres a slightly different tensioning-setup in terms of the backing plate as film is fed through the mechanism; so a camera will usually have a switch to move from 120 or 220 film which adjusts the pressure-plate accordingly. On some medium format cameras the film mechanism is actually in a modular and removable housing called a 'back'. This means you can swap backs with different film types mid-roll or have spare backs ready to go for quick reload. In fact, nowadays you can even get digital backs for the more modern medium format cameras.
Unfortunately my 220 back promptly jammed within days of purchase so I had to scour the interweb to find a replacement. I managed to source a 120 back relatively cheaply from a US specialist so within a fortnight I was up and running. It was a fortuitous breakage because 120 film is much easier to get than 220 anyway.
My Mamiya has a 90mm f3.5 lens (roughly equivalent field of view as a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera) and as per the '67' in the cameras name, takes 6cm x 7cm images (common medium formats are 6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x8 all on the same 120/220 film). When you see these pictures on the negatives you'll be amazed at the size difference compared to old 35mm film. The first thing you notice (apart from the weight) is the massive vertical viewfinder which makes composition a breeze.
A couple of interesting tidbits apart from the weight and viewfinder - the bellows focusing rack (seriously old-school!), lack of a light-meter, the shutter is built into the lens not the body and the back can be rotated 90deg if you want to shoot vertical orientation shots (I think the RB might mean 'Rotating Back' but don't quote me on that).
I've only used the camera a few times - its just too unwieldy for regular use. Also, it hasn't got a light meter so I either meter with another camera, guestimate or use an old external meter from the 60's.
However, the pictures (and negatives) you get from this camera are astonishing -
Theres some good info on the RB67 over
here,
here,
here,
here and
here.
Saturday 08 October 2011 at 12:42 pm
The first camera I deliberately purchased to engage my luddite sensibilities was a
Trip 35 (who in their right mind would buy a film camera in the 21st century?)
I've posted briefly about the
Trip before but I just realised I hadn't updated it to reflect the fact that I wound up buying one.
Theres not a whole lot to the camera - it has a lovely sharp lens, has a selenium-cell light meter (so doesn't need batteries) and only relies upon the photographer to set approximate distance. The camera takes care of the rest.
Its relatively compact, built well and essentially idiot proof. It was manufactured from 1967 to 1984 so there are plenty about and they're relatively cheap.
Loaded up with some Velvia it'll happily take images like this all day long -
Saturday 08 October 2011 at 11:54 am
Another second hand find, the Nikon F3HP was my first foray outside the comfortable 35mm Olympus SLR range. While Olympus had a fairly limited range of pro bodies (the OM 1,2,3 and 4) with very specific enhancements and functional delineation, Nikon had a much much larger range of bodies to choose from. Because of this, I'd resisted the temptation to venture into the Nikon (and to a certain extent Canon) sphere.
After
plenty of research I set up a saved-search on my favourite auction site and waited for a suitable camera to appear. Within a couple of weeks I'd spotted and acquired (at a fairly modest price) a F3HP body. It came with a Nikon kit 35-70 zoom lens as a starter for ten.
The F3 series was the last of the 'manual-focus' pro series cameras. After that, the F4, F5 and F6 all incorporated increasing levels of automation. My rudimentary understanding of Nikon film-camera nomenclature goes something like this - F series were Pro level SLR's, FM were Pro-am manual SLR's, FE/FA were Pro-am automatic/electronic SLR's, EM/FG were entry level SLR's and then in the late 80's and 90's there were lots of Fxx series automatic Pro-am type SLR's. Note that Nikon is the only big camera manufacturer still making a 35mm film SLR - the
F6.
Compared to the Olympus bodies I was used to the F3HP (the HP stands for 'High Point' and refers to the tall viewfinder) is quite a handful - its built like a tank and could do some serious damage if swung in anger. Its also chunkier in all dimensions, has many more controls and has a large and bright viewfinder.
It handles well and the basics controls are mastered fairly quickly. It has a great wind action and the metering is very accurate. The F3HP allows for Aperture Priority shooting or Manual shooting - in AP mode the smooth wind action makes for rapid shooting.
Probably the biggest disappointment was the kit-zoom. It wasn't bad but it wasn't great. It matched my previous manual-zoom experience in that unless you hit focus perfectly a bit of slop in the action was going to make for unintentionally blurry pictures. From then on I decided to stick to manual fixed focal length lenses - less flexibility but much much nicer to shoot with and the results are more predictable. As a result of foregoing zoom lenses I added a Nifty-50 (50mm f1.8), a 50mm f1.4 and a 28mm f2.8 for some wide-angle action.
In terms of the camera itself, I'd rate it as a solid 8/10 and a must-have if you're interested in film SLR photography. Although it is a great camera, I'd probably recommend starting with something else initially as the size, weight and extra controls can be confusing if you're a complete newbie.
Drop in some black and white Ilford film and you'll get pictures like this -
Sunday 18 September 2011 at 11:15 am
Even though I'm rubbish at all things mathematical I do like calculators. The HP 12c is a
cult-classic and its turned 30 years old. Still going strong in the finance world.
Sunday 18 September 2011 at 11:12 am
Pretty fascinating - I'm guessing you get to a certain size and economies of scale mean this is the only viable option -
Making Facebook Self Healing.
Saturday 27 August 2011 at 1:09 pm
Another NZ TechEd comes to an end.
Not as good as previous years, no juicy Wave 14 preview goodness from 2009 or the promise of the 2010 product releases last year.
Still some good presentations though - these are the ones I attended that are online -
These guys were good value but their presentations weren't recorded -
I can't seem to find much on Jeff Johnson online but he did a great presentation on managing the user more efficiently (folder redirection etc) rather than worrying about the device they use (as opposed to VDI or Thin Client) as thats where true TCO savings are made.
Rick Claus' presentation on server migration to 2008r2 64bit was great - SMIG tools looks like a must have Powershell script family. Theres some detail over
here.
