S3 update

August 18, 2004 //

For all the camera fans eagerly awaiting the new digital SLR from fuji (S3) dpreview.com has some updated info. Related to it.

Personally I’m supprised at how long this kinda thing is in development. I mean there was a press release about some of the features including pictures of (I assume) a working prototype back in May (2004) and still no retail options, as far as I know.

[update]
You can pre-order it for $4000 ❗ and its going to be available in October 2004 (ish)
Anyone who wants to buy me one for no reason please don’t hesitate 😛

Categories Photography

Visitors

August 18, 2004 //

Row is coming to visit this evening, and I’ve taken the day off tomorrow so we can go to London. A visitor was exactly the incentive I needed to give the house a proper clean, as opposed to a half-hearted wipe every now and then.
Not that the house was anywhere near as bad as houses sometimes got in student days, it only took me an hour or two to get the place ship-shape. It feels much better when the place is clean…
And my parents are visiting this weekend, although I don’t know if they’re going to come to the house at all.

Mental note: I must remember to ask if I can borrow their metronome… I’m thinking my timing needs work for guitar playing 🙂

Categories Random

Additions

August 18, 2004 //

The more observant of you will notice the ‘Time’ addition to the menu on the left *points <=*, there is a count down until my drink drive ban is over, a ‘static’ net time clock (by static I mean it only updates when you refresh the page) and a count up since I first started blogging… somehow it seems longer than that but still.

The countdown and countup are run by my first php script :D, of course there are many of these kind of php scripts about but none of the ones I found did proper months.
By this I mean calender months, rather than all-months-are-28-days-long type months.
I’m not gonna pretend that I did it all from scratch though, clever stuff was stolen from this counter script by Jeff Holman.
Also I’m not gonna pretend that its the most efficent script at the moment, just looking at the code I feel that there is much room for more cleverness, and maybe if I get enthused then I’ll have a bash at really sorting it out…
If I do then I’ll probably ‘release’ it on this site (the excitement is almost palatable…not).

If you think this is cool and want it, why not encourage me with words in the comments section 😛

Categories Website

Happy Birthday Coley!

August 17, 2004 //

Happy birthday to Coley, the significant other of Denyer 😀

Hope you guys have a great night out, sorry I can’t be there, I promise I’ll visit as soon as finance allows (not too soon by the looks of things :().

Categories Random

Damn weak strings

August 17, 2004 //

I really haven’t got the hang of this re-stringing thing. Got the work-shop-guy to reduce the size of the saddle (technical term that I learned today) for my guitar so that the strings are closer to the frets, thus making it easier to play.
Of course to do this you need to take off all the strings first, which I did… then a quick bit of machining later and *presto!*, now to just restring, no problem… then a quick tune….

five minutes later

*SNAP*

damnit that high ‘E’ string really doesn’t like me, I have great difficulty hearing if it needs to be tuned up or down (for some reason) and is also the weakest string on the guitar.
Fortunately I was thinking with my brain last time this happened and therefore have a spare one waiting…
I think though that I’ll wait until I get home, re-stringing at work in the lunch hour really doesn’t appeal right now.

Categories Music

Counting the days…

August 16, 2004 //

… until my ASDL gets activated, no more taking work home on stupid floppys, back to the joy that is email and or web space. Ideally in this situation I’d be using my 128Mb flash disk that pretends to be an MP3 player but actually isn’t…..

but I lost it 😐

Categories Random, Technology

Give cold callers the cold shoulder

August 16, 2004 //

A few minutes ago…

*beep*… my phone is on quite mode because I’m at work, I pick up:

me: Hello
them:Ah, hello I’m calling from O2 and I’m hoping to save you some money on your mobile phone bill.
me:ok
them:Now you’re on pay as you go at the moment aren’t you?
me:No I’m on T-mobile mix-it
them:Ah you’re on a contract, you wouldn’t happen to know how long you’ve got left on that do you?
me:About seven months
them:Oh… you’ve got seven months left? Well sorry to waste your time then.
me:Bye

Not the first time a cold caller has failed miserably to sell me anything and with out me having to say a word out of turn 🙂

me = proud

Categories Opinion, Random

Dreams of power

August 15, 2004 //

Well, I was dozing this morning and quite randomly dreamt of a new system of government. Before I describe it I must point out that I have little knowlegde of politics and have no idea how good/practical this idea would actually be…. plus it a dream damnit!!

Firstly there is the ruler, for now lets assume that they have complete power over the country, in the same manner as a king/queen of old. Below the kind is the master questioner, this person has the power to remove the ruler from power. The master questioner’s job is to ask questions, the ruler must justifiy themselves to the master questioner.
Below the master questioner is the assembly, they can elect the master questioner (MQ from now on) and the MQ must satisfactorily explain to the assembly what the ruler is doing, and why.

It is quite easy in this situation to imagine there being parties in the assembly, each with a favoured MQ and the assembly being elected by the pubilc, so not all that different from the current british system of governemt.
It just seemed like a good idea to have the decision make one step removed from the public election process in order to encourage more long term planning. Also if an MQ is voted out it doesn’t necessarily mean the ruler is removed from power, if they can do a satifactory job of explaining their actions to the new MQ.

Categories Thoughts

Drool

August 13, 2004 //

Wow, a silent, shiny PC…
Hush, the silent PC we all want

Read the review or visit the homesite of this lustful piece of tech.

Categories Technology

The fear

August 12, 2004 //

Ever since I put black and white film in my camera I’ve been kinda scared to use it… isn’t that silly?!
I think the main reason for this is that I associate B&W photos with a level of artistic-ness that I just don’t have.
In an attempt to get some ideas/confidence I bought a B&W photo magazine (was also facing a long train journey to somewhere), there were an awful lot of very interesting things in there, including information about photo holidays !
I’d love to go on one but they’re damn expensive.

There was also some info on ‘toy’ cameras, and how with a plastic lens camera costing less than £30 its possible to take some fairly decent ‘artsy’ photos…
for a short while I was very enthused (didn’t actually take any pictures but hey) and thought about getting a toy type camera for myself.

…… but then the realisation slowly dawned on me; It doesn’t matter what equipment you have or haven’t got, its not going to improve your photographic talent. I should stick with my current camera as its not holding me back in any way, and probably won’t for a long time.
What I really need to do is get properly familiar with my camera, so that I can bang off photos with it without really having to think (its a proper manual job – FYI).

A poor workman blames his tools, to an extent.

Categories Photography
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