Buying a camera

As you may have gathered, I bought a new camera. It works splendidly.

However, when I started pondering about buying one, it occured to me that I know very little about what's important in a good camera, about how to read the statistics, what to look for or even how much do the cameras cost. Here's a short list of things I found useful.

The digicameras can be roughly divided into three categories; the very cheap ones (from €50 to €120 or so) the small pocket-cameras (from €150 to €400 or so) and more professional models, with changeable lenses and so on (from €400 upward).
This is not very clearcut. Imporant factor in the size-question is how the camera is powered; rechargeable batteries or a lithium cell. The latter are smaller. This is a question of preference; smaller cameras fit easier to pockets but on the other hand, bigger cameras are easier to take a good grip of and have more space for buttons.

The things you should know about the camera are;

• how well does it photograph in less than optimum lightning conditions
• how easy it is to switch the settings for these
• how sensitive the lenses are to light (apparently most even little more expensive cameras claim to go from ISO 64 to all the way to ISO 3000 or more, but in essence, in the two first categories anything over ISO 400 looked bad and pixely)
  
• how well does it replicate the colours
• how fast does it power up and how long does it take to save the picture after taking one (before you can take the next)
• how long does it take between pushing the shutter and the shutter actually opening (my mobile reaches whopping 2 seconds!)
  
• what's the exposition-time (too long causes blurry pictures as hand shakes) and
  
• does the camera compensate for shakiness, and if so, how

I used web reviews to compensate for my lack of knowledge. If you are pondering between two particular models, make sure you use the same website for both models. Otherwise there's a distinct possibility that the reviewers are writing for different audiences.

My favourite website is C|net. My impression of the site has been (with cameras as well as with mobiles) that they aren't happy with anything. Long reviews that seem to be - so I feel - written with the mentality that the product is crappy and the reviewer's mission is to find exactly how. I failed to find a camera that got a grade higher than 8 out of 10. Of course, I'm under the impression that reaching 7,5 grades for "very good". You can see how such attitude would be welcome.
I used some less critical websites to balance C|net. If you just read the site in question, you will easily forget that you aren't buying the camera to go shooting in the Mariana Trench.

I myself settled on Fujifilm FinePix F50fd. C|net says; "the camera is sluggish between shots, shows minor noise even at its lowest ISO, and doesn't include a full-manual exposure mode".
C|net recommended different cameras, but that happened to be most along the lines of my budget, needs and the store's inventory. As you may have gathered from the picture I posted earlier, I'm very happy with it.

Netscape is finally dead

The unquestioned king of browsers in the 90s has finally come to it's end; AOL is announcing that it shall no longer support the browser.

In mid90s, Netscape had nearly 80% marketshare and it was bundled with Windows till version 98.

After Windows 98 (when Microsoft only packaged Internet Explorer with the OS) the market share started to fall. People didn't really care what browser they used, just as long as it worked.
It didn't help that Internet Explorer wasn't standards compliant, and as soon as it's market share got to around 50% they announced their own modifications to the HTML-template, which Netscape for understandable reasons didn't support.
The end-result was that Netscape's browser showed some of the pages incorrectly. Thus we got those "Designed for Internet Explorer" buttons of the late 90s, and to the steady drop of userbase (in the diagram on the right, taken from Wikipedia).

In -99 Netscape was bought by AOL, after which the development of the browser was given to the newly-created Mozilla Foundation. Netscape still published a new browser more or less every other year, but it was just reskinned, skimmed Mozilla (without popup-killers etc.).

I used Netscape products loyally to around early 2002 or so, when a friend of mine introduced me to Opera. At that point, I was really disgusted with Netscape, and only the fact that I wanted to have total control over my surfing experience (I didn't have my own computer andthe rest of my family used IE) stopped me from jumping the ship.

I was kind of surprised to learn that after Netscape 6 (which was the last version I used) they still produced new numbers, going as far as to release Netscape 9 last October (being actually just Mozilla Firefox 2 with a new skin and few extensions).

But all in all, it used to be a king, and a king needs a proper burial.

Rest in peace.

Maps of Europe

Here's a link to several maps of Europe. It's coloured accoarding to interesting tidbits of information, such as the hair colour, eye colour, legal drinking age or when it's legal to have abortion.

Tells something about the differences between the European states.

Doctor Who Christmas-story

Daily Telegraph has a three-page long Doctor Who Christmas-story, which you can read even if you know absolutely nothing about Doctor Who.

A man's head was sticking out of the chimney, looking at him upside-down. The man's face was covered in soot, he didn't have a beard, and his hair was very untidy. His glasses had nearly slipped off his nose. "Ah," he said, "Now. This is not what it looks like."

Tom went over and peered at him. "Are you a burglar?" he said.

"Okay. Right. This is not either of the two things it looks like. I'm -"

He looked suddenly horrified, then with a great blast of soot he fell out into the fireplace, and rolled to his feet. He was in what might have been a very fashionable suit if you were what Mum called a bit of a waster.

It's very good. Do read it. Link.

The new camera just paid itself

One of the best pics I have ever taken. Helsinki around 16:00, but I'm sure the JPG itself has more detailed numbers. I haven't edited the colours. At all.

Isn't this depressing.

This is from Deus Ex, a computer game about dystopian future, made in 2000;And this is from Chicago Police Department, about seven years later;

Depressing, isn't it? If I just saw those texts without logos, I couldn't tell which was a game and which was reality.

Neuros OSD Media Center

Entry in the company wiki.

I'm going to buy this. As soon as I'll get a telly (which I'm going to do inside the next two months).

It records, plays, understands and browses everything, starting from USB-sticks with no DRM. It's basically a small computer made to be used with a TV.

It costs in ThinkGeek store (with shipping from USA) about €160. Plus tax.

[ this is my first "wishlist" tag, which will probably see some heavy use in the near future]

EDIT: no HDTV support, so it seems I have to wait for the next model.

Some random photos

I bought a new camera. It's smaller and capable of bigger images (up to 12 Megapixels (or 4000x3000) with sharper lines. Here are some photos I took in the train and metro this morning (around 8:00-8:30). As well as few photos from the metrostation during evening. I hope to get some photos of the long stairs to the metro - they are fairly impressive..


Also: hoping to get better handle of the camera yet. As much as I liked the photos, I think I could do better - I got some fairly sharp ones at home but the ones I took outside (albeit quite fast as I didn't want to disturb people) got a bit blurry.

Reviews.

Published something at kvaak.fi. Check if you can read Finnish.

Also: I finally get to write something to Sarja-info, something I have been hoping and treading for two years now!

Walking away from church

Today, I finally did something I had been pondering for five years or so.

I filed my resignation papers from church today (handily done via online-form. Thanks modern age!) and started thinking about the repercussions. Nothing too serious, but let me walk you through;

The things that have mostly kept me in this long were (1.) the idea that I believed in something, (2.) that church did Samaritan work both in Finland and abroad and (3.) that I wanted to upkeep the church buildings themselves as historical artefacts.

In turn, the biggest reason why I filed the papers was the (1.) sobering realization that I don't need outside-confirmation for my beliefs. I can read comics without belonging to Comics Society (but I belong anyway, because I enjoy the company and the perks); similarly I can choose to believe in things without belonging to Believing Society. I'm not using the perks and services that come with the membership, so why should I pay for them? Particularly as the membership is something 15 times more than in Comics Society.
Other reasons (less important) include the fact that (2.) while church does Samaritan work, this work consists of only 10,6% of the yearly budget. For every ten euros I pour in, only one goes to help other people. I could better use my money to give it to some other organisation(s), that only have one objective instead of several dozen.
I'm also not comfortable with the fact that (3.) while some of the the priests are very comfortable with the society we live in (as I have doubtlessly mentioned in the past) some are not. This particularly goes for the higher hierarchies and the northern provinces of the country.
Every time I hear about a priest refusing to work in the same church as another priest - because the another priest happens to be a she - I get a bit uneasy.
The final reason was missionary work. Thinking that I pay for something that sends people to Amazon, Africa etc. to talk about God and thus is a direct reason for vanishing nature religions tens of thousands of years old is just wrong. Even though I know it isn't what it was a century or or (perish the thought) millenium ago.


But here I am. Now I have to think where to give money - Red Cross? Some organisation that works against mental illnesses? It used to be so easy, just giving church money.. of course, explaining my belonging to church just because of its convenient nature (and with 90% of my money going to somewhere else) is not morally right either.

Shame about the buildings thought.

The picture is taken from Wikipedia, attributed to Creative Commons and can be found here.

Linux, here I come!

One of the biggest reasons why my laptop isn't running linux is that I use it to make video calls. Linux has notoriously bad trackrecord for video (or audio)-conversations. Even commercial applications with Linux-ports usually lack video-support.

Well, no longer.

Thank you Skype!

Well... just great...

I wanted to comment on a MSN blog, so I had to enter my Live id (there was no Anon or non-certified alternatives) and a minute after posting, this appeared on my mailbox.

1. "Windows Live Spaces" - horrible name, isn't it? For one thing, the branding thing - this really doesn't have anything to do with the operating system, now does it? At least I hope it doesn't. Vista is such a clusterfuck (beg your pardon) that I wouldn't wager either way.
"Live" - what?
"Spaces" - seeing as how they keep saying "my space", "your space" etc, "my page" was probably copyrighted or something. Anyway, this seems artificial way of trying to create a new word.

2. "Now it's time to have fun with you space" -- what?!

3. "Express yourself". How about with a finger? Stop sending me spam everytime I comment on someone's blog... I'm sorry, space.

4. "Connect and share anywhere.." - is this even grammatically correct?

Journeyman

This show must have one of the best themes ever.



I love the way the guitar seems to be trying to break away from a loop, eventually successing.
The visuals are also great; they really bring out San Fransisco as a mythical place, where everything is possible. I really love stuff like that; a right picture taken at a right time is greater than life itself, and more real than the original ever were.

That's why I love photography; it's from around us, but magically when you take the picture, it becomes an artefact of more magical reality.

Another sunset

Hey, remember this? It was taken at 23 -- this is around 1530 at Lauttasaari. I didn't have anything to hold the camera on, and the exposure rate is terrible (around two seconds) for pictures in bad lightning. Also, it doesn't capture the light that well, so I have to adjust them afterward on the computer.

Sigh.

I hope to buy a new one sometime in the very near future. I just have very little knowledge what's important in a great camera. Obviously the amount of pixels is not the only important thing.. ability to take damage would also be important, as I carry it in my backpack. As is the ability to capture light in different conditions. But can somebody help put this up in numbers? Maybe recommend a good camera?


Lauttasaari about 23 hours earlier.