Sleepless Travels Reloaded » Geekery

Google Street View launched for Australia/SA!

evane — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:06:54 +0000

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Where I work

I was at homegroup/cellgroup/Bible study tonight and some of the other guys (IT guys…) said that Google Street View had just been released. I knew they were doing it but didn’t realise it was already released. Also I never was interested enough to play around with the American locations.

Anyhow, I am REALLY impressed. It is tremendously smooth. Also if it is so comprehensive why have I never noticed them >_>

Slightly creepy, heh.

Even my apartment block is there! Even though it is on some little sidestreet!

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It is really very smooth, with hardly any loading time!! I only have ADSL2+ and the housemates are videoconferencing too…none of us are lagging. -impressed-

P.S. here’s my old house!

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P.S. I just looked up the Daiso site, and they have a store in New Zealand but not in Australia…..
$#^@#%^%$!!!!!!? WHY. I’m a huuuuuuge Daiso fan. I went crazy there in Japan! Especially on my last day in Osaka >_>

P.P.S. Everything works FINE in Opera! W00t!

Ikea name generator

evane — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:23:12 +0000

Hrm. I’m a sturdy three drawer dresser.

Check out the name generator here.

Lunchtime Shopping

evane — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:15:01 +0000

One of the prime perks of working in such a central location is the plethora of purchasing experiences one may obtain during a limited amount of time, say, an hour-long lunch break.

Today I went down to MSY, a leading Australian budget IT retailer. My cousin says it’s the cheapest around at the moment, and I always believe what my cousins says about prices.

It appears to be geared towards people in the know. It doesn’t exactly have the most welcoming facade. When you enter you seem some messy desks, behind which are boxes and stacks of random computer parts. You queue up and then tell the person at the counter what you want. There are full price lists available (text in 6 pt font) however for the uninitiated the alphabet soup of numbers and letters may not be helpful. The lone front desk guy was a middle-aged Chineseman. A middle-aged Chinesewoman was grabbing goods off the packed shelves behind the desks, haranguing the Chineseman (as to computer shortcuts, and how to work more efficiently and faster, faster, faster) as customers read out what they wanted from the price lists. Aha. My sort of place.

It all works marvellously well. The unspoken rule is not to dither and ask the wrong sorts of questions, (”what is the best hard drive around?”). Everyone in the queue will glare at you for not having previously done research, n00b. There is a lack of customer service in that there may be no stylish shop fronts or neatly coiffed “customer service personnel”. MSY’s website really sums it all up. A focus on information and zero wastage of resources on needless foibles like a website designed in this decade. There is no spoonfeeding. There is sufficient information on that pricelist for you to google and make your own informed choices. The standard 7 day return policy applies, as well as a 1 year warranty on everything. What more can you ask for?

So I bought:

A-data 1 gig DDR1 notebook RAM - $55. [I wanted Strontium, only because it sounded cooler, but the only other one they had was Kingston and that was $97!!]
Samsung 160g IDE notebook HDD - $65 [yeah I use DDR1 RAM and IDE HDDs my book is ooooooooold]
ASUS b/g wireless PCI network card - $21 [I wanted Netgear to match up with my modem router but it was sold out :< ]

and…-drumroll-

ASUS EN8400GS SILENT/HTP/512M

See what I mean about the alphabet soup? I had to read a beginner’s guide to graphics cards on Tom’s Hardware as well as consult with various gaming enthusiasts before I could make sense of this!

By that time I got pretty sick of it all. I knew what the numbers meant but didn’t look up any reviews on the card. I just needed a card that was a whee bit more powerful than my current motherboard server graphics card (Volari Z7 16mb - laughable!) which couldn’t run Coverflow and had difficulty in playing videos smoothly. I don’t game. And since I only had a PCIe x4 slot available (-shakes fist at Dell SC430’s limitations-), which I had to mod, a powerful card would be pearls to swine.

NEC Versa s3000

While the RAM and HDD is to extend the life of Setsuko2, my notebook, the wireless card and the graphics card is to turn Ryuhei3, the server box (which runs very well as a server btw) that I bought way back in 2006, belatedly, into a desktop. I still half wish I bought a normal desktop system instead because its weird configurations make it expensive to fiddle with (had to get ECC RAM for it…sigh) however the case is admittedly very cool. While I was in MSY today I looked at the other cases they sold and they all looked uniformly cheap and ‘orrible looking.

Dell SC430

So with that background in mind, I picked the 8400GS for the following reasons. It was only $3 more expensive than the 256mb version and 512mb seems to be the norm these days. Within the 512mb range, it was the lowest and therefore cheapest model available. I hadn’t heard of ECS and I remembered C recommending ASUS. So basically I picked it because it appeared to be value for money.

The SC430 is silent. I like it that way. My pc1 (no given name because I hadn’t developed a nomenclature then) has a whine that can be heard down the hallway, in the bathroom. With the door closed. With the tap running. I wasn’t even sure if whatever graphics card I picked would work as the server is now discontinued and all forum discussion on Whirlpool and Overclockers Australia had ceased around late last year. All the graphics card models are different now. More reason to pick the cheapest card I could find.

So I was expecting a not terribly good fan, but I hoped that technology had progressed so that even the cheap fans weren’t too crappy, or that my graphics requirements would be so low as to not be too taxing on the card and thus not to have the fan turn on.

To my surprise, when the box was handled to me by the middle-aged Chinesewoman, I saw text like “silent” and “0db” on the box! Could it be? Can one hope?

….it has passive cooling!! No visible fan. A solid chunk of metal running down its beautiful fish skeleton spine, chilly cold to the touch. Oh, dream of dreams!

Hipster PDA

evane — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:56:52 +0000

Photo credit: 43folders.com

Like LOL metaspeak, another thing that’s been around the block and back before I’ve belatedly picked up on it. Getting old, I tell you. Can’t keep up with the kids these days.

I stumbled onto this post somehow. I don’t remember what I was doing to get to it!

Basically you get a bunch of index cards and clip them together with a bulldog clip. Welcome to your new hPDA. Funkily lo-fi! The main thing is to action all your jotted down notes once you get to your desktop.

I’ve never liked electronic organisers, or even paper diaries (surely you don’t need a full calender ALL the time…especially not for days in the past). I have an Outlook calendar at home, and one at work. I have work paper diary. I have a google calendar. I have a calendar on my phone. I’ve eschewed gCalendar for my mobile calender since it would take too long to load up online gCalendar on my mobile everytime I wanted to check it. gCalendar has all my “legacy” events like birthdays and anniversaries though. I used to sync Outlook with gCalendar and my phone using a third party plugin called Funambol and Goosync which worked beautifully for awhile then crashed in flames. I have a work/associate’s diary that has to be used, so I suppose that’s not negotiable. Well the point of all that is that I’ve never found a happy medium to get everything in sync.

I think I’ve found a perfect system now though! Now when events occur I’ll jot it down on my hPDA - the quickest way. When I get back to my computer I’ll enter it into gCalendar, whichever takes my fancy. Using the Google Calendar Sync official plugin which didn’t exist at the time I was using Funambol, Outlook and gCalendar will sync and once that is done it’s easy to sync that to my phone.

There are a couple of templates for hPDAs out there, some for printing on A4 size paper that can then be guillotined. John Norris’s and Douglas Johnston’s.

Well I wouldn’t use index cards because I find them too thick. Also I do not like bulldog clips because you can’t really write on that large space taken up by the clip itself. I’ll probably print on the other side of scrap paper and get one of those binder rings. So I’ll probably do something like what this guy has done. Maybe find a nice pouch for it too…

-sighs contentedly-
-indulges inner anality-

P.S. Is it just me or is having a stationery fetish not an uncommon thing?

Forbidden City III - throne rooms

evane — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:42:49 +0000

HALP.
My RSS feed is tewtally stuff0rred!!

My old feed used to look like this: http://evanelam.photo-log.com/?feed=rss2.
My new one looks like this: http://evanelam.photo-log.com/feed/.

I updated wordpress and every plugin that was outdated recently. I’m pretty sure that my feed got stuffed up after that point, because I only really started updating again after that.

People using my old feed (David, Ray) say nothing has come through since then. Facebook automatically imports my posts as notes. It uses my old feed and it is updating fine. I subscribe to my own feed in Google Reader to make sure the feed is working properly. Well obviously I haven’t checked it recently because, using my old feed addres, it has the same problem as Ray and David.

I noticed feedburner is using my old feed address too. So I try updating it with the new address. It borks on me. Completely fails. I enter my blgo web address into Google Reader and it automatically picks my new RSS feed address (as that’s what it’s listed as in my header for the blog). It works, but the entries it shows are from way back, even less up to date than what shows up when gReader is using my old address.

If you feed my new RSS address into Feed Validator, this is the error report you get.

I’m pretty sure there is no easy way to change my feed address, or settings, through the admin options in WP (the only thing I found was in Options>Reading, and that was just how many posts to show in the feed and whether to show full texts or a summary.

Okay, so after that longwinded error report…can anyone help me =_=

I really do not want to dig around in the WP files by downloading my whole install via ftp. I’m quite decidedly rusty on PHP and the XML used in generating feeds.

Maybe the next step would just be to disable all my plugins and see if that will help - I have a couple of plugins that access the feed for reporting purposes, and a feedburner plugin too…maybe they somehow affect it?

Argh.
-pulls hair-.

My tour of the ANU Chemistry Research Building~

evane — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 05:28:45 +0000

Cockatoos near the oval and tennis courts at ANU

One of Ray’s friends is a postgrad chemistry student at ANU, and I invited myself for a tour of the Chemistry Research labs!
Come on, when are mysterious liquids bubbling in test tubes not interesting?!

His research was mostly to do with proteins and proteins structures and identifying them … I think ^_^;;
Well let’s see how much of the tour I’ve remembered…

First they put some e. coli bacteria together with nutrients in a flask and put it in this machine which jiggles the stuff up and downreally quickly. E. coli is a very hardy bacteria and grows in almost anything. Human skin cells also produce protein but it’s a bit trickier and you have to be more exact. E. coli can also be manipulated rather easily.

It kind of looks like milk from the outside but that’s just the white forth on top. The liquid below is kind of amber-ish in colour. It smells like vegemite apparantly.

The mixture is then put through a centrifuge which spins the tubes round really fast. It separates out the liquids. After the protein bits are extracted it is put through a…

Pressure cell press. Liquid gets put in a thick 100% stainless steel tube thing and then into the machine. It is compressed to up to 800 times atmospheric pressure (where the red line is). After which it is put through a…

Purification process. It’s in a cold room to keep the mixture stable. The liquid is put through the top and it goes down, down, down through this liquid/solid thing (a jelly?). All the other crap is absorbed away and you get a purer protein mixture at the bottom.

After this process you can do lots of stuff with the protein. They are always inventing (expensive) new machines to prod the proteins with!

For example you can put them in a…

Note little colourless plastic boxes piled up on right side of photo on shelves

Little plastic box and try to get protein crystals. It’s apparently very difficult because only very certain proteins can crystallise. I asked Peter if I could have a look at the boxes through the microscope but he said it’d probably be very difficult to find a box that didn’t contain duds (he wasn’t involved in doing protein crystallisation at the time, having already done that in his Honours year). He did show me a chart with photos of protein crystals though, and they were pretteeee.

Another thing you can do is put them in this huge-ass magnet that has like 800 times the earth’s gravitational pull. The ?800 MHZ magnet is even housed in its own little building outside because otherwise it starts attracting keys and whatnot. You can’t go into the inner room with any metallic stuff and its serviced with plastic tools.

It’s like 30 million dollars AND frequently breaks down!

You go upstairs to the second level deck, put in your test tubes of protein samples then it gets lowered into the magnet. The magnetic force aligns the protein strands and whatnot, and then you read the output on the …

Computer in the outside room.

The magnet isn’t invasive and leaves the proteins much as they are. After testing they are taken to be stored in liquid nitrogen or something. Hey never know when you may need them again eh?

You can only get into the magnet building with a keycard, and you have to sign up ahead of time to use it as there’s always a queue.

I also had a quick walk around the organic chemistry labs, which generally does research on a much smaller molecular level than Peter’s protein research.

Super powerful X-ray machines for photographing structure of molecules

pH meter

Machine that tests for compounds

Commonly used in drug testing, this machine tests for all sorts of compounds. As you can probably tell, this system is a bit… haphazard. The sample is injected into this hole (the black circle which is just above the clampy thing holding the diagonal metal tube) then passes through some metal coils. It then mixes it up with the different solvents in the manky cardboard box on the left. The output is then shown on the computer on the right. You can kind of see a network hub balanced on the machine just above the big glass bottle of solvent. The metal tube clamped at a diagonal angle is a like a mini liebig condenser IIRC.

This is Peter’s old desk/workbench.
Actually there’s still a sample of old nutrients for the bacteria there (the bottle that has dark amber liquid it that looks like urine, on the first shelf up on the right, next to a little white box with blue markings on it). It’s made out of yeast which is probably why it smells a bit like vegemite…

But anyway it’s probably really old…and yet you can still feed it to e. coli. See? No wonder those chem students love using e. coli.

So after that I went to the Moreno-Ocampo lecture (”The New System Of International Justice In The Wake Of The International Criminal Court”) at the ANU Law School. It was presented by Mr Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the First Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. It was pretty interesting. There are all sorts of human rights abuses that just aren’t well-reported on in mainstream Australian news!

The ICC basically brings justice to the fore as a restraining force on human rights abuses internationally (the others are just political might and er….more war). It also promulgates what amounts to an international criminal code and defines what human rights abuses are, eg genocide. And if these crimes occur and they are of sufficient magnitude and the signatory state it occurs in doesn’t do any action to prosecute such crimes, the ICC can intervene to bring those responsible to justice. Read more about it on the wiki.

It was brought into force with the passing of the Rome Statute on 1 July 2002 and can take action against any crimes that took place after that date. (Personally I think they should have made it 4 July just to annoy the Americans.)

Very interesting man although unfortunately I lost about 30% of what he said due to his thick accent >_<

The question time at the end was pretty interesting too even though there were some stupid questions, one from an American (Q: don't you think the new policies in place (ie defining mass civilian casualties as a crime) prevent troops from protecting themselves adequately? A: Well, we think that killing lots of people is a bad thing that should be avoided.) and another from a try-hard.

Australia is a signatory to the Rome Statute. Alot of Asia (including China), much of the Middle East, Russia and most notably the US (who has publicly said they would never send a citizen of the US to the ICC) are not signatories. Read more about the US and the ICC here. And don’t blame Bush, it started with Clinton.

As of August 2007, 104 countries have ratified or acceded to the court, including nearly all of Europe and South America, and roughly half the countries in Africa.

Japan will become a state party on 1 October 2007, bringing the total number to 105. A further 41 states have signed but not ratified the treaty; the law of treaties obliges these states to refrain from “acts which would defeat the object and purpose” of the treaty. In 2002, two of these states, the United States and Israel, “unsigned” the Rome Statute, indicating that they no longer intend to become States Parties and, as such, they have no legal obligations arising from their signature of the statute.

The ICC are pretty selective with the cases they prosecute. Take for example a simple murder in a house. Normally the police would come and ask the neighbours if they witnessed anything. But imagine the number of witnesses involved when it comes to large scale human rights crimes that pass the “magnitude” test. So generally they will only prosecute certain events, and try to cut down on number of witnesses too. However this selection process only prosecutes the most damning cases and guarantees a 100% win rate for the prosecutor.

Anyway, all in all a very educational day!

After that I rounded it off with dinner at Milk and Honey with some old law school mates! Yum.

News Roundup

evane — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:49:22 +0000

Psychic cat predicts human deaths

Cat humiliation - Hello Kitty hats

Some guy got a BSOD tatto ??!!

Some school kids have it really bad - rickety-looking rope and pulley system over raging river o.O

Pizza in Japan - Eeew…

Oh, and by the way?

Bag count:
6 LVs
2 Pradas
1 Ferragamo
2 Juicy Coutures

1 Fake Fendi Spy offered for sale.

Which lolcat are you?

evane — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:27:10 +0000

Your Score: Cheezburger cat

71% Affectionate, 53% Excitable, 57% Hungry

Sure, you deserve one. You helped popularized lolcats from a running gag to an online sensation. Now mainstream media writes asinine columns on this ‘phenomenon’, students write theses on the topic, programming languages adopt the grammar, and losers write tests about them on dating sites. Now take your cheezburger and never touch the internets again.

To see all possible results, checka dis.

Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Wii Fit

evane — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 14:37:17 +0000

I want the Wii Fit >_<
The only console I’d ever buy is the Wii and only for the untraditional console games (Wii Sports and er…the other one. With the neon hockey and the fishing game) ._.
It’s also a great to have at a party…

iPhone…not.

evane — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:08:54 +0000

My SE

No, no. I am absolutely NOT lusting over the iPhone. I was before I got the SE cybershot K800i but now I cannot go back because of these reasons:
1. Still can’t replace my digital camera
2. No 3G

And less importantly…
3. Can’t install java apps
4. Safari doesn’t tempt me at all - Opera mini does me fine. Now if I could experience Opera mini/mobile on the iPhone’s screen…………..
5. Can’t use music on phone as ringtones. Whut?!

Well it’s the camera thing that really gets me the most. I am too spoilt by my phone’s camera now!! And am now eagerly awaiting the K850………

Anyway, that doesn’t detract from the fact that the iPhone is a revolutionary piece of hardware/software. It looks absolutely beautiful. I think I’ll just wait for V2.0 or even V3.0 (gotta wait for camera to catch up first)

I like the way Gizmodo has covered the whole iPhone story including the various religious references as a result of the hype. Funny XD

Some entries worth reading:
Origins of religious terminology
The One True Phone
Switching up the religious imagery (washington post comic)
Jobs=palpatine (gotta love the star wars refs too)
Moral quandry of getting the iPhone…

Anyway, the iPhone is depicted often on Giz posts with a smiley face (like in the last link above and here). It’s sooooo cute!! Yesterday they released a bunch of similarly themed wallpapers for the iPhone. There’s even a Darth Vader one XD. Get them here. I wanted that cute smiley one but then since my signature look (ala Zoolander’s Blue Steel?) is ‘_’ so I thought I’d go with that one XD

Another thing they’ve done is hook up hottie (in a geeky way) chief editor Brian Lam with a Lifecam from Justin.tv. Whut?
A Lifecam is camera that is worn on your head and transmits exactly what you see and hear 24/7 directly to the web so that really bored people can watch everything you do live. Read about how Justin.tv developed it. It’s pretty interesting. One of the guys was from MIT. And IIRC, they use 4 EV-DO cards at once to get enough bandwidth to upload video with sufficient quality.

So Blam got one of those camera setups from Justin.tv and is wearing that as he goes to stand in line at the Apple SF store. I think he joined the lineup in the evening on the 28th. I really got a feel for the lineup from that XD It’s like being there but not having to actually, like, suffer. Definitely an interesting way to bring the news to the public, and justin.tv gets good publicity for it too! I love how the web can be used to tell a story in such diverse ways. Oh yeah and Blam was blogging via the Wi-Fi hotspot around the Apple store on an OQO2. He also had a macbook and could be contacted via AIM on his Helio mobile (is that a version of the sidekick? Hmm). Lineups aren’t what they used to be with so much connected-y tech…(See comeplete lineup coverage here. It’s funny okay? Sort of.)

Anyhoo. Screw all that. I’m getting a Meizu instead.

30 sec ping pong gun o_o

evane — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 14:01:34 +0000

I need to make this right now!!
Someone get me some hairspray!

Ping Pong Gun - Click here for the funniest movie of the week

- via Gizmodo

Yoshida Kyoudai (吉田兄弟)

evane — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 16:51:27 +0000

I first heard of them while channel surfing at hall in HK (2005…wow that was a long time ago). Unfortunately caught the last bits only and missed out on the artist/title of song. Sometime later I did come across them again. I wanted to blog about it then but no vids on youtube at the time.

I’ve been a huge yt music binge today though.

Long, boring story ahead:

This girl subscribed to my yt feed…I had a look at her profile and saw some cool vids she favourited, some of which were Vanilla Mood [doesn't Keiko, the pianist, look anorexic? Srsly.] and Joe Hisaishi performances … one of which was a video response to video by this kid Ben who is a pretty awesome piano player for his age. Through that I also came across piya who plays some awesome Joe Hisaishi on piano too.

At the same time through the clicknetwork (AKA Rozz and Xiaxue’s Girls Out Loud II) I was introduced to the horrors of the teriyakiboyz’ Tokyo Drift (Fast and Furious). It’s the massively annoying but undeniably catchy theme song of FnF3. Can’t find the actual MV (copyright issues?) but found lots of fan music videos using the song and clips from FnF3. Now I want to watch the movie. Fast cars, hot girls. What more could one want?

Anyway, back to Yoshida Kyoudai. My fav part of the performance is about 1:25-1:43 when all the background music stops and it’s just shamisens+percussian. Sooooo gooood.

P.S. here’s the actual MV of ‘Rising’:

Think of it as the last obstacle to prove your worth as a lawyer

evane — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 06:12:11 +0000

It was like the Amazing Race.

Start: EST 16:50.
Challenge: print off, certify and post a statutory declaration so it gets to Adelaide by Tuesday. Not to mention how to do all of the preceding and find the locations of all relevant places…and the fact I had no map and had zero familiarity with Melbourne CBD. Bonus: find the gold express post box!!

Highlights: finding out that Melbournites are quite accomodating when “WHERE’S THE NEAREST POLICE STATION?” is screamed into their faces, being sent on a wild goose chase by shop staff who just want to get rid of the asian lunatic begging to use their computers/printers, getting ripped off by the Indian convenience store owner to use his computers/printer, sprinting all around Melbourne and nearly chucking my guts out onto the pavement.

Didn’t manage to make it in time before the main post office closed at 5:30, but then realised (saw express post advertisement in the window of this little store run by a Korean dude who was nice but refused to let me use his computer/printer - “it’s inconvenient”, he said with a little smile which is asianspeak for “you’re crazy, please get out of my shop”) could still post by using the gold express post boxes - deadline 6pm. Thus….30mins to do all of the above!!!

Managed to post at 6:04. Hung around waiting for post office van to make sure I wasn’t late. Mail collected: 6:14.

…and after all that, I still don’t feel safe. I mean I didn’t even get to check the stat dec/certification before I chucked it in the box. Plus the police seem to certify just anything - he didn’t even ask me for photo ID… probably because he saw I was desperate?

So…I’m flying back to Adelaide this Sunday early morning 6:30 (cheapest flight …$50! woohoo~).

================

The stat dec is a document I have to lodge with the Legal Practitioner’s Board, or something, in Adelaide by Tuesday. Had posted it on time before but there was a very MINOR mistake that I made due to a technicality I didn’t know about.

Since I’m not confident that the one I mailed in a rush yesterday night was 100% correct, I’m flying down to lodge a 100% certainly correct one, and if that is not correct at least I’ll be in Adelaide to wash, rinse, repeat.

I am a courier, hear me roar.

=====
UPDATE: Forgot to mention that my mobile with net access was invaluable. No one seemed to know with any certainty where it was, and they’d point off vaguely in any direction. Yesterday was wild goose chase day, I tell you! Then I remembered I had net access! I have a SE K800i (3G) and together with the Opera mini browser I could quickly find the website of the Victorian police and lookup the addresses of police stations in the city. I heart web access on my SE, I heart Opera mini!

lolgeeks

evane — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 08:03:39 +0000

First there were lolcats, now there are lolgeeks and lolgays.

Mehehe.

i can has cheezburgers?

evane — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:40:57 +0000

From icanhascheezburgers.com

My new fav site is icanhascheezburgers.com.
Got the link from a recent yongfook entry.

It’s like a geekier cuteoverload, with tons of in jokes. I got so hooked I read all the archives. =_=
And saved a ton of pics. Muhaha.

Oh, and after all that I have developed a huge craving for a macca’s cheezburger!

The pessimist’s mug

evane — Fri, 18 May 2007 17:07:51 +0000

- $9.95 from Despair.
Via Gizmodo

Screenshot time!

evane — Wed, 16 May 2007 16:54:26 +0000

Thanks to the Opera skin discussion on the Opera Facebook group, I came to know of the Royale Noir skin (history of skin here).

Royale Noir was a secret Microsoft theme that was left incomplete when Royale or MCE got released. User oddbasket completed and made improvements not only to Royale Noir but Royale Zune (an official MS skin released to complete Zune player theme). Get the Royale Remixed pack here or here.

The pack includes the original Royale (which I was using before. It’s great and much better than the standard Fisher Price Windows XP theme - thanks David), Royale Noir and Royale Zune. The only Royale download you’ll ever need!

I’m currently using Royale Noir and it is awesome!!

(The program in the background is Opera 9.2 with Ouroboros skin, featuring the Speedial)

Camera wishlist

evane — Wed, 16 May 2007 14:53:32 +0000

Nikon D40 with kit lens (18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor) (~$840)
Nikon AF-S Zoom-Nikkor D 18 - 200 mm f/3.5 - 5.6G DX ED IF VR ($~1189)

Nikon 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor (wide angle lens) ($1580)
Nikon 105mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor (macro lens) ($1309)
or Vivitar Series 1 90mm f/2.5 macro, which has cult status and is $91 (!!)
Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D (fast prime lens) ($215)

Gorillapod SLR ($50)
Sony GPS-CS1 (Geotagging for photos) ($110)
SDHC 4gig card (~$40)

Hoya UV filter ($20) (For lens protection)

—————–

After reading the rather good reviews on sushicam
and kenrockwell as well as generally on gizmodo, dpreview, etc (and kennysia, but he doesn’t count), I decided that if I got a DSLR then the Nikon D40 would be it. Nice entry level cam, gives me the option of expanding my skill set too should I choose to.

I’ve groped it well enough too. Went to Diamonds Cameras (selling for $940) and Harvey Norman at City Cross Arcade on Rundle Mall (selling for ~$990) (btw Justin seems to really know his stuff, and he’s a Nikon man too XD He was very helpful!) Anyway I do like the feel of the D40. Nice and small and relatively light. It would fit into most of my handbags, and definitely would fit into any bag I go travelling with.

My main reasons for wanting to get a DSLR is to have a greater level of control over my photos. And lenses. I love insect/macro photography. Wideangle lenses make stuff look goooooood too. I threw in the 18-200mm lens because of the absolutely rave reviews on sushicam and kenrockwell, it seems to be a revolutionary lens and so much in demand that it’s really hard to get even a year on. (Lens prices above are Australian ones, because I’m too lazy to find prices from other places).

The only thing that I’d *definitely* get on the list above will probably the Sony GPS logger. That will be pretty essential for Japan. I might just bring along my dad’s Sony V3 instead.

Isn’t it easy to draw up a list of stuff you’re never going to buy?

——

Or should I just buy a prosumer cam (point and shoot, non-DSLR)?
Sooo many different types though DX
One thing I know for sure though: these cams will definitely be obsolete before a DSLR ever will. Also I don’t have the option of buying lenses to expand their capabilities. Although with the price of these lenses I might as well keep on buying these point and shoots every time they get updated >_>

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On the other hand since I *can* just use the V3, should I buy the special lenses/lens convertors for it?
Nah, it will all become obsolete…?

Ohhh…decisions, decisions.

——

Cameras direct seems to be the cheapest place in Australia so far. Body for $660, 18-55mm for $179. Yeah, they don’t sell it as a kit. Odd. I heard that if they don’t sell it as a kit then it may be gray market…I might give Nikon Australia a call to see if it’s a legit distributor if I do decide to buy from them.

Shipping comes up to about $13 (eh, pretty cheap), so altogether it’s ~$852. This isn’t too bad…in HK it would be A$728 (huh, but may come with extras like spare battery, case, etc). Then if you add in shipping + insurance to Australia it may not be worthit asking David to ship to me. I mean how many iTunes credits can one use >.> And if I wire money to him I have to consider bank charges too eh?

Hmm…since body and lens does come separately..if it is a legit product (and I’m fully covered by warranty etc etc) maybe I should just stick it out with the V3 and when I have a job I’ll buy D40 body + 18-200mm lens instead of spending money on the 18-55mm, which will be superseded by the 18-200mm. Total: $1849. Which is a lot of money still DX

Let’s play a game of equivalent values.

Stuff I think the D40 is better value for
That’s about worth a laptop. Which I don’t forsee myself buying in the near future. I’d rather not buy a new computer to upgrade to Vista.
What else is it equivalent to? Probably almost as much as a LV Epi Speedy 30 + LV Epi pochette accesoires.
Interstate airfares. Argh.
Staying at more expensive places in Japan

Stuff I think the D40 is not as good value for
Huh. I’ve probably spent a grand on clothes from Veronika Maine/Cue since the start of the year…but I think it’s a good investment because these are work clothes. Gotta make a good impression!
Eating more and buying more in Japan

…I think I’ll hold off any purchases till I get a job. V3 should be good enough…

Good gift idea XD

evane — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 03:54:25 +0000

Stuffed horsehead, for your frenemies.

Love the “X” eyes and the lolling tongue XDD

- 70USD stuffed, or 60USD unstuffed, from Kropserkel.

Dude. Like, best. Ever.

evane — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:48:40 +0000

This guy was bored so he did 3 days of filming not to mentioned umpteen hours of planning and special effects editing, I’m sure. All becase he was procrastinating.

Not bad for an amateur.

Thanks for the link Ray!