analog thoughts in a binary world

I'm switching over to Wordpress. For those of you who actually keep up with my rantings online, make sure you update your links. I'm going to stop updating Blogger.

I think RSS feeds should be enabled.

I'm getting a free subscription to Motor Trend after attending the Orange County Car Show, but after getting this month's issue and reading the article about their Car of the Year Award selection, I figured it was time to finally write in to the editors.

Here's the letter I sent. I hope it gets published:

How on earth did the Toyota Matrix, Corolla, and Pontiac Vibe become eligible for Car of The Year? The trifecta of blandness all equally received a bottom line conclusion indicating that "you could do better" and reading the brief reviews hinted that the Mazda3 would be much preferred, yet the Mazda3 wasn't even a COTY contender.

If the criteria for vehicles in order to be eligible for COTY are that they are "new or significantly upgraded" as of the new year, then how were the BMW 135 and the Pontiac G8, ahem, Holden Commodore, eligible? Technically, both of these have been on sale for a while - maybe not in the US of A, but still, they're not new. The Subaru Impreza/WRX and Forester are new. There - these three vehicles could have replaced the three stooges of vanilla (no offense to larry, moe, curly, shemp, or to the vanilla bean) that your crew enthusiastically dismissed as being too bland, yet included in the list of contenders.

If I wanted to read about some editors forced to babble and spew drivel about things they're not interested in, I would have gone ahead and read or listened to something that I knew for a fact was biased. Maybe FoxNews followed by NPR followed by Howard Stern, you know, to cover all my bases.

No surprise, the Nissan GT-R won the COTY...but I mean, come on, put a supercar against some sedans and econoboxes, it's no wonder it won.

...this is a bus - do you know how big a bus is?

So I got a new-to-me lens for my SLR today. I've been interested in macrophotography for a while now so I finally traded my EX-25 extension tube for a true macro lens, the ZD 35mm 3.5 macro. With the Olympus 4/3 system 2:1 FOV crop, effectively, this becomes a 70mm lens for me, so it is actually a great prime lens - good for portraits and everyday photography.

Anyway, I took some quick shots and after seeing the images, I was amazed. This lens is sharp. tack sharp. cracking sharp.

Here's an example of our bird - I was probably an inch away from his head:


...and here's a 100% crop of a small area:


Here's another:


I always thought my kit lenses were already pretty sharp, but after seeing these shots, I'll have to revise my opinion.

Anyway, I've been using a 50mm F2.0 Yashica lens as my everyday lens, but since focus was manual, I probably only got 20% of my pictures in focus...not only that, the 50mm length was a bit long for my taste for shots that weren't strict portraits. Now, with my 35mm macro, I've got an autofocus prime lens in an ideal focal length that's tack sharp!

...and, in the true spirit of my gear acquisition, I didn't pay full price for the lens - I got it used from B&H and I traded my EX-25 tube to fund the lens. Now, other than my Sandisk Extreme III 8GB card and a flash TTL cord that I technically got for free (thank you, Sandisk rebate!), everything in my kit is secondhand.

I remember saying that very same thing when I was growing up...while I watched Dance Party USA.

:)

Are you scared of flying? Well...you should actually be scared of *landing*:



yes, folks. that plane is flying SIDEWAYS.

A couple of videos for tonight.

This drummer is obviously listening to different music in his head:



...and watch very carefully:

I haven't played Guitar Hero in a while, but of all of the Guitar Hero videos I've seen, this is the best: