[www.dpreview.com]

Dispite the problems with the returned telephoto zoom lens I have been having some fun with my camera.
photographs and comment…

I’ve just finished watching the film version of “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” on Sky movies. Here’s my short, one word review…

Tragic

O.K., here’s my longer review…

This version is a Nutrimat machine rendition of the classic.. i.e. it’s almost but not quite entirely unlike the original. I’m not going to say much about the changes in the story (other than they are ill thought out and in a lot of ways just a vehicle to get John Malkovic in the film) but the whole thing was a mess.

The jokes, when left intect were spoken without comic timing. Where there should have been suspense there was deadpan. Jokes were either truncated so that they lost their punchline or were so cut that they didn’t make any seanse at all, and hence were unfunny. Oh, and they used an irony extraction tool.. except on the producers.

A case in point for all of the above can be seen during the end credits. There is shown the “guide” rendition of the Valhurg and Gurgugvant battle fleet joke. There were no time constraints here as the credits were rolling and would do so for another few minutes. Yet, the whole sequence was butchered, removing all the parts about the battle fleets destroying whole planets etc. which made it sound as if the fleets were mighty, fearsome and dangerous.. i.e. building the whole point of the gag, so that when they were eaten by the small dog you thought “so what?” The punchline of the dog eating the “dangerous, hellish fleet” was lost. This was a microcosom of the whole film.

Oh, and did anyone else think that the 1960s retro comic animations for the book just felt stupid? Give me the sophisticated complexity of the originals any day.

I think I’ll go and flush my brain out with soap and water now. It feels dirty.

Yesterday I had returned to me the two Sigma lenses I sent off for work to be done on them.

The 24-70mm F2.8 lens had its chip upgraded so that it would work properly with the Nikon D200 camera. The 28-300mm lens went in because, basically, it was out of focus.

Anyway, seeing as it was a nice day today I was able to test both the lenses out. The 24-70mm works perfectly. However, the 24-70mm is a bit of a lemon.

Sigma told me that they’ve replaced the complete optical package within the lens (and the reason for the delay in returning the lens was because they had to order this from Japan). Before it left, the lens, other than being slightly out of focus, worked properly. However, now it won’t focus beyond about 100ft. That’s right, the focusing system is broken! So, I’m going to have to go through the hassle of sending the thing back. What a pain.

You have to wonder if they actually test the lenses at all before shipping them!

Hmm.. I think the writer of the current Dr.Who story has been playing too much Doom… and using the sound effects in the episode too.

How will the Doctor save them all? Will he find a BFG9000 behind a rock? We shall see next week.

So, what have I been up to?

Well, last weekend my parents came up from Cornwall. My Mum’s definitely getting worse and spent a great deal of the time wandering out to sit in my Dad’s car and back in again. It got so much of a problem on Monday that we locked the front door to stop her.

Also, after having BT problems with my ADSL on Saturday and finding that if I plug the Draytek into the test socket I get a hugely faster connection than if I plug it into the face plate. Since then I’ve tried everything such as disconnecting all the extensions, re-plunching the cables etc. but nothing has made a difference. Basically, if I plug the Draytek into the test socket (underneath the face plate on the master line socket) I get ~4MB/s and if I plug into the face plate I get ~2.5-3Mb/s. Hmmm.

On other matters.. I’ve got a social life! OK, it’s just the Oxford University Geology Society annual dinner last night. much debauchary happened, as usual. Tomorrow evening is the Polar Society AGM and annual dinner, with very much less debauchary as there will be fewer geologists.

I’ve also jumped and ordered a refurbished iBook G4 12″ from the Apple store. It’s the only way to get one at a price similar to the old educational price and not at the stupidly high prices at Dixons/Currys/PC World etc. It should arrive by the end of the week, as should my lenses back from Sigma (fingers crossed).

It seems that after my problems with my Draytek router buffering packets being passed to the switched ports from the router part (when using recent firmware), Draytek want a look at it. This, of course, means that my ADSL connection would be unavailble while the router is away.. not acceptable. So, either I put up with the annoyance or get a replacement of some kind, which sort of makes sending the Draktek off a bit pointless. :-/

The earthquake in Java is a tragedy. The loss of so much life it terrible, but it’s not so much of a natural disaster as a man-made one. Here’s why I think that…

Java is in a region where there are quite a few earthquakes, many of them with a magnitude of around 6 (which is moderately strong but very common, at least a couple a week globally). Admittedly, most of the earthquakes in the region where this one took place are quite a bit deeper than this one which, at 10km, is pretty shallow.

If you look at the USGS’s summary page on the earthquake you can get some idea of the background. If you can also understand the moment tensor solution for the earthquake you will see that it’s almost a completely vertical fault plane with a horizontal slip, which is unusual for the area but would mean that the ground motion would be almost purely horizontal.

Anyway, normally, in an area with many earthquakes it would be considered that the degree of damage caused by such a moderate earthquake would be relatively small. After all, the buildings should be built with such quakes in mind. But this is obviously not the case here. From what I’ve seen, the area is built on reasonably stable ash deposits so it’s unlikely that ground motion amplification due to sediment basin resonance and liquifaction would be a key factor. No, it’s probably down to poor building design.

Reports from the area say that when driving through the more affluent areas in the region you can drive for miles without seeing much damage at all and then you’ll hit a group of houses which have totally failed and that the majority of the casualties have happened in the outlying villages.

Surely, in such an earthquake rich area the local authorities should have would have made sure that the buildings were at least resistant in their design? It doesn’t really mean that the buildings would have to be more expensive to build even.. just make sure that there’s cross-bracing even in shacks.

Maybe it’s just the mind set of the local population which is the problem. There have been quotes from people from that area after volcanic eruptions where large numbers of people have been killed asking them why they have re-populated the area of known high risk where they say that it’s not a problem as that’s the future and it my not happen in their lifetime. It sounds like they’d make excellent politicians.

You scored as 5th Doctor. Always a little confused and vunrable you never always help. All the same you are good at Cricket! 4th Doctor 83% 5th Doctor 83% 2nd doctor 83% 3rd doctor 67% 1st Doctor 42% 7th Doctor 42% 10th Doctor 33% 9th Doctor 33% a Dalek 25% Davros 25% 8th Doctor 0% 6th doctor 0%

What Doctor Who character are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

There’s a review of the new Apple MacBook notebook (not laptop as Apple now say that you shouldn’t use it on your lap) over at Ars Technica [via Slashdot]. I’m not at all impressed.

From the review the new machine is bigger than the old iBook G4 12″ and has a shorter battery life. Not only this but it has a keyboard, which looks as though it was developed by Casio, and a horrid glossy screen (similar to the current generation of Sony Vaio). Oh, and it costs about £100 more as well.

Yes, it’s faster than the old iBook, but for me that’s the least of the features I’d want for such a machine. The old machine was compact, ran cool and had a decent enough screen which could be used outdoors even in the sunshine to some degree.

The new glossy screen, if it’s anything like a Vaio’s, is a very poor replacement. In the lab where I had to help a user with the Vaio there are large windows on three sides and flourescent lights, this made it almost impossible to read the display due to the multiple light sources at or near head height. If you took this machine outside you’d probably get a very good view of your face and what’s behind you but very little of what you actually want to look at.

The new machine also runs hot.. it’s reported that the CPU runs at over 80C and it will roast your thighs if you try to use it on your lap. This is just nasty.

It’s a very great pity that my inheritance didn’t come through sooner as then I could have bought a properly configured iBook from the Apple HE store which would have been ideal for my trip to Norway in September. Now I’ll have to start thinking again.

PS.
I knew the keyboard reminded me of something.. it’s the old Newbrain.

The new Morphy Richards combined LCD monitor and deep fat fryer…

Now you can fry your fresh doughnuts while playing your favourite FPS frag-fest game!