Random tangent (blog)
Ameel Khan's personal blog. This is a blog about life, technology, photography, typography, the internet, science, feminism, books, film, music, and whatever other random stuff I come across or happen to be interested in today.
I’m a day late in posting this but the International Year of Astronomy 2009 has begun!
Over 130 countries are participating and, indeed, 87 countries have their own IYA websites (including, of course, both Pakistan and Australia). Be sure to check those out so you can take part in the events being held in your area.
If you, like me, felt that some of the ads you saw this year were particularly sexist – a few even disturbingly so – you weren’t wrong: Alex Leo lists the ‘Five Sexist Trends the Advertising World Just Can’t Shake’.
I guess not much real changed has occurred [1] since the Media Education Foundation produced Jean Kilbourne’s awesome ‘Killing us Softly 3: Advertising's Image of Women’ back in 1999. (You can watch all of it on Google Video, by the way.)
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[1] Except for a lot more awareness of the issue – thanks in particular to people, groups, and websites like Feministing and copyranter to name just two.
After waiting three days with (increasingly) inflamed tonsils I finally went and saw a GP this morning and what I'd begun to suspect is now official: I have tonsillitis.
Why did I wait three days before visiting the GP? Because inflamed tonsils don’t necessarily mean tonsillitis, and since I didn’t have any of its usual sings and symptoms, it could have been a viral infection that I wouldn’t have been able to medicate anyway.
As it happens, I started developing some of the symptoms by yesterday afternoon. Fortunately, by then I’d already already made an appointment with Dr. Michal Lum at the Metropolitan Medical Centres Carlton so that was that.
Now I’m on a 12-day course of penicillin (specifically penicillin V) and am taking iboprufen for the inflammation. Here’s hoping things gets better quickly because this is turning out to be quite painful and I’m feeling rather miserable. Such is life.
This issue will address themes of sex and sexuality as they interact with the daily politics of human life. We are looking for feature articles and non-fiction that deal with:
- Gender Roles
- Sex/Sexuality, Feminism and Activism in Pakistan & Abroad
Hello World! Google.com
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<p>Hello World! <a href="http://google.com>Google.com</a></p>
Michael Crichton, one my all-time favourite authors, passed away a few days ago.
I loved his books and the way he wrote them: they were exciting, inspiring, and a whole lot of fun. Indeed, I've read all his fictional works though I've only read one of his non-fiction ones (must remedy that). I've also watched almost all of his films and remember being blown away by 'West World', 'Jurassic Park', and 'Twister'. Heck, I even remember the ending scene from 'The Andromeda Strain' which I watched on TV back in the mid-80s! I must now watch the three films that I've missed.
You can read more about Crichton here:
Rest in Peace, Michael.
I love Microsoft: The original Windows 3.x version of Tetris (the one made in 1990) runs just fine in Windows Vista :) I've actually been carrying that version of Tetris -- all 76kB of it -- around with me since the mid 90s. Of course it requires quite a bit of window resizing to get it just right on a 22" wide screen!
Why do I and so many other people care so much about this game? The good folk at Graph Jam said it best:
A friend and I even organized regular Tetris tournaments at our undergraduate college during the late 90s which were hugely popular. Also, Tetris is the only game I've ever bought for my mobile phone. Yes, I am addicted.
Though, really, Tetris is less like a drug and more like a good cup of tea: it's perfect for any occasion. Whether you want to wake yourself up, relax before going to bed, keep your hands busy while talking on the phone or listening to a podcast, or do something when you have nothing else to do, Tetris is always the answer.
So thank you Microsoft and, more importantly, than you Alexey Pajitnov for creating such an awesome game.
Back in April 2007 (in my third post on this blog, in fact) I wrote that my laptop had died and that I was stuck using my mother's ancient, somewhat-battered laptop. My plan was (and still is) to get a job and then buy myself a nice, high-end tablet PC.
However, over the last couple of months, my mother's laptop started acting up so I had no choice but to find a replacement for it. I didn't want to buy a tablet PC because I don't yet have a job so I'd rather not dip into our savings too much (and I'm not willing to buy anything but a high-end tablet PC). Instead, I bought a cheap desktop PC that I could work on in the interim and upgrade in the future. I was always going to buy a desktop for home use, I just hadn't planned on doing that right now. But as plans tend to do, this one changed so now I am the proud owner of an HP Pavilion desktop PC:
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It's reasonably low-end as desktop PCs go: with a 2.4GHz Dual Core Intel Pentium Processor instead of a Core 2 Duo and, importantly, integrated graphics instead of a separate graphics card. Fortunately, this isn't much of a problem because I don't plan on getting into computer games, high-end graphics editing, or power intensive computing just yet. I do plan on recording and editing videos and doing some basic graphics editing but all that will work fine on this system. In fact, this setup runs the Windows Vista Aero interface without a hitch so it's not like I'm suffering here!
In other areas, it's a pretty kick-ass system: with 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 360GB 7,200RPM hard drive, a CD/DVD reader and writer, and the usual set of ports, card readers, and networking options. The best part: it came with a 22" wide screen LCD with a 1680x1050 native resolution :) After using a 15" screen for a couple of years and then a 12.1" screen over the last year this big screen is fricking awesome!
In fact, the whole system is pretty awesome and I'm having a great time using it. Woo hoo! :)
In 2007, photographer James Nachtwey won the TED Prize which awarded him $100,000 and "one wish to change the world". His wish was:
I'm working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to help me break it in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age.
On 3 October, Nachtwey's story will break -- both online and around the world. Melburnians can view his story at Federation Square while the rest of you should check the TED Prize Event Location page to see if it's being shown at your location (it's on in 16 countries). If not, you can always view it online:
For more:
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PC Magazine has published its 'Top 100 Classic Web Sites' list for 2008 and I have spent the last hour surfing the 'net, learning lots of new things, and adding lots of new feeds to my Google Reader :)
Awesome.
After conducting a second round of research and deciding that I really wanted an ultracompact (so some of the cheaper, chunkier, but feature-equivalent compacts dropped out of the running) I narrowed my list of digital cameras choices down to these three:
1. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3
Priced at $270, this camera has an 8.1MP 3x zoom lens, records 30fps VGA video (and also 848x480 widescreen video) in QuickTime, and has optical image stabilization, face detection, audio photo tagging, and an AV-out port. [CNET review]
I liked everything about this camera except that it records video in QuickTime, which is not a native Windows video format. This is an issue because my resource-strapped Windows XP laptop doesn't handle QuickTime very well. So, in order to edit videos recorded from this camera, I would first have to convert them to AVI (the native Windows video format) and all that would do is add is an extra step to the process.
2. Pentax Optio M50
Priced at $270, this has an 8MP 5x zoom lens, records 30fps VGA video in AVI, and has digital image stabilization, face detection, smile detection, and an AV-out port.
Though this camera lacks optical image stabilization, I almost liked it more than the Panasonic because it records video in AVI and the 5x optical zoom and smile detection feature are nice bonuses. However I wasn't able to find a good review of it online so I was a little unsure about getting it.
3. Canon IXUS 80IS
Priced at $320, this has an 8MP 3x zoom lens, records 30fps VGA video in AVI, and has optical image stabilization, face detection, face tracking, automatic red-eye correction, audio photo tagging, a speaker, and an AV-out port. [CNET review (with video), CNET Australia review, detailed Photography Blog review, technical Photo Review Australia review]
This was the most feature-rich camera of the lot and was also my favourite. However, it cost an extra $50 and that was an issue.
The Decision: Go for the Best
Fortunately, Nadia convinced me to go for the best -- this camera is her birthday present to me, after all (thanks a billion!) -- and convincing me turned out to be pretty easy so, as of yesterday evening, I own a Canon IXUS 80IS camera!
It looks like this and is about the size of a pack of playing cards:
[Source: Canon website]
I've been playing around with it since I got it and it's really quite fantastic.
Also, the extra $50 cost turned out to be a non-issue because Canon is running a promotion that gives your four free movie tickets (priced at about $15 each) if you get the IXUS 80IS. Yaay!
Accessories & Warranty
Naturally, the first thing I did after buying the camera was to get some accessories for it.
I got three freebies from Ted's Camera Store (which is a great store, by the way):
I then bought three more:
Finally, I bought a 3-year extended warranty from Ted's.
What Next?
Like I said, I've been playing with the camera since I got it (well, since its battery got fully charged) and it's a lot of fun. Its features are awesome and easy to use and I am now preparing for my first video blog post :) I'll post some photos and at least one video from it over the next few days.
Thanks, once again, to Nadia for this moste awesomest birthday present. 'Tis wonderful, indeed :)
Dave Barry is one of the funniest authors and humour columnists ever and these days he's in Beijing with his wife, Michelle Kaufman, who is a sports reporter and is covering the Olympics.
Barry is also blogging and writing about his time in Beijing for the Miami Herald (where he worked from 1983 to 2005). If you haven't read any of his articles yet, please do: they're awesome. Also check out his Beijing photo gallery.
So, after trying out both Flickr and Picasa, I decided to go with Picasa Web Albums for my photos-in-the-cloud solution. Yes, that is yet another bit of my life that I am entrusting to Google. And, yes, I'm fine with that.
Why did I go with Picasa? Because Flickr, though really awesome, only lets me make three albums (or 'Sets') in its free version while Picasa lets me make as many as I want.
I do have a 1GB web space limit with Picasa but that's more than enough for my purposes. Heck, I'm using only 22MB at this time! And once I get a digital camera, take lots more photos, and find that I need more space -- though that won't be for a while because I don't take that many photos -- I can always buy some from Google. Quite cheaply, too. And it'll be shared with my Gmail space, which is awesome. My videos, meanwhile, will go on YouTube so I'm good there as well. And my audio is on SkyDrive so that's not an issue either.
Of course, I could have gone with something like SmugMug, which has no limits on web space or number of albums, and I could have installed an open source photo gallery on insanityWORKS.org, which can then be fully customized, but I didn't. That's because I quite like Picasa's web implementation (it's easy to use and I love it's geo-tagging capabilities) and I really like the Picasa 2 software that you install locally (both its photo organization abilities and its easy-to-use image editing features).
So, behold: my Public Gallery on Picasa Web Albums.
After setting a mostly arbitrary budget of "under $200" for a compact digital camera that can also record video, in my previous blog post on this topic I made a list of cameras that seemed to fit the bill. Since then I have done a second round of research, this time focusing less on price and more on my overall camera requirements (both photo and video related).
Video Blogging Requirements
I started off by doing lots of research on the web and found these two useful resources:
Different blogs suggested different brands of digital cameras for video recording, by the way, so they weren't all that much help. Of course, most of the video bloggers I know use camcorders or webcams anyway (while Robert Scoble uses a Nokia N95) so I wasn't expecting much from these sources in the first place.
Digital Camera Guides and Reviews
I then looked at review sites and camera buying guides:
Local Retailers
Next I checked out a few Aussie retailer websites:
Then, I went both a Ted's outlet and a JB Hi-Fi camera store -- they're a few shops apart on Elizabeth Street in the Melbourne CBD (#235 and #261, respectively) -- and got these recommendations:
This confused me at first because, after reading all those CNET reviews, I was expecting to be pitched a Canon or a Sony which both shops had plenty of. Then I realized how silly it was of me to think that. Of course they wouldn't pitch those: those brands probably give them the lowest margins and are mainly there to draw-in customers who are then pitched all these other brands that make the shop more money.
Still, this wasn't bad for a quick trip to each store: I learnt quite a bit and also picked up their latest catalogues so I have all the latest brick-and-mortal retailer prices for comparison.
Personal Suggestions
Finally, I got suggestions from a number of different people -- thanks, everyone! -- all of which were most useful though no I talked to had used digital cameras for video recording before. Oh well. I did get some good tips from Yahoo! Answers, though.
Next: Word-of-Mouth, Hands-On, then Purchase
Next up, I'll be hitting online digital camera forums to see what's being said about all these makes and models by the people who actually bought them and use them.
I'll focus on the four brands that have come up most often in my research -- i.e. Canon, Sony, Panasonic, and Casio -- though I will look at others such as Pentax and Fuji which came up a number of times as well. I'm hoping this will help me narrow my final list down to 3-4 specific cameras.
Once that's done, it's back to the stores for some hands-on time. I'll try each one out to see what the results are like and, once I've thought about it some more, I'll go ahead and buy one. I'll probably buy it from Ted's since I really like their 14-day exchange guarantee.
Oh, and then I'll blog about all that too :)
Final Thoughts
Some final thoughts about my general preferences:
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia