2×2 section of white pixels

So I wasn’t totally satisfied with the magnification I got on my last round of LCD vs. RGB pics. This time instead of using a straight 100MM Macro lens, I used a 35mm normal lens attached to a bellows. Last time I got around 14x magnification, this time its more like 168x =)

G-force Graph, click for full run data

While part of me feels like I’m getting old, I know I’m not quite over the hill yet. So I got my car back from the shop after 3 months of engine rebuild. Its not quite running right yet…but in the twisty’s not much is faster. Back in March I made this post about the G-Tech Pro. I never got around to posting any of my runs, so I’ll post this one.

Disclaimer: Pseudo-professional Driver on a Closed Course. (hey it works for the car ads)

While in theory on a closed course I have no fear of crossing the center divider and should have the same cornering room, lets just say I was trying to practice normal style driving, just faster =). Now notice how I’m a total wuss when corning left only getting about 1.0g’s while to the right I peak at 1.34g’s. I know there is more room to run out in case I get in trouble on the rights…

Anyway I just like posting graphs. Enjoy…

Canon Pixma IP8500 and the Epson R800

This article is a tad old, but its still very relevant. I recently decided that my cheap ass Canon S520 (paid $50 refurb at Frys) is lacking compared to modern printers. I also recently started doing more photography and decided it might be nice to have a nice printer. Tom’s Hardware did a nice review of the 3 current $300-400 range printers from Canon, Epson and HP. Anyway, so sum up…

The Canon and the Epson were very close and better overall than the HP. The Canon IP8500 had the edge in Speed. The Epson R800 has its edge in better Quality and print Longevity (uses pigment based inks instead of dye based). The Epson also had a couple little features I think might be nice the canon doesn’t, roll paper, firewire, and better fine art paper selection. The Canon on the other hand has pictbridge (lets you print from memory cards), duplex printing (double sided) and a user replaceable printhead. The Epson print head is not user replaceable, so if its damaged or clogged and can’t be cleared using self-cleaning it needs to be sent in for repair. Although, I hear in the latest models this is less of a concern, I would use your printer occasionally to keep the heads clean and follow the directions when replacing ink. I’ve also heard one of the caveats of any of Epsons printers is that if you switch print qualities they tend to go crazy about head cleaning and in general they tend to be fussy if you don’t use them often.

I hear the Canon prints can have some color variation compared to the Epson’s when viewed in different lighting conditions, as well as they tend to be a bit exaggerated which can make printing portraits (which have subtle skin tones) a little challenging. On the other hand your average pictures will look brighter and more vibriant.

From pcworld’s review, they both seem to have almost identical photo print costs.

A. So if you need the extra speed and want to sacrifice a very small touch of quality for a nice boost in speed, the Canon is your man.

B. If you demand the highest quality and want fade free water resistant archival quality prints on a variety of papers and follow the directions to keep your heads unclogged the Epson is a winner.

After taking a look at some print samples from both printers, its very very close. I would need to have identical prints to really tell you which one is better, but it does look like the Epson has the edge. Its detail from its 1.5picoliter drop size just seems to edge out the 2picoliter drops on the Canon.

I think for most users the feature list will be the deciding factor since they are so close to each other in quality.

P.S. Ok, I take it back, after reading tons of additional reviews I think the less hassle of the Canon is winning over the archival inks of the Epson. They simply clog too often from user reports than I think is worth it to me. I don’t print every day and I don’t want to waste $10 in ink warming my printer up every couple of weeks.

100dpi MiniSD w/dime. Click for GIGANTIC size!

So, I was thinking today and it occurred to me that digital photography has changed things a bit. In the past if you took pictures of things that the powers that be didn’t like, they would likely take your camera and smash it and pull out the film and possibly search you for more film and destroy that too.

Well, digital memory can be small, really small! Its also really tough, surviving drops, water, plane crashes, and lots more. So the weird guy that I am I think, hey why not swallow it? My normal SD cards are easily small enough to be swallowed, and MiniSD is even smaller and can be adapted to SD. So you could keep a spare SD card, when they go to take your stuff swap out the card and swallow the important one. Its definitely small enough to pass through, but no guarantees =)

P.S. The image is 90DPI which should be close to real sized on many monitors. 72-100dpi is fairly typical these days. My Dell 20″ is spot on 100DPI.

Erie shot from Netercomm’s site

I’m not the only one hoping you can’t blow up the world via the Internet right?

Broadband over Gas lines?
So the other day I ran in to this press release from Nethercomm. At first I thought to myself, “this can never work”. But I sat down and really thought it through and I’ve decided its brilliant. Although I’m missing the required electrical engineering knowledge to truly say its going to work, on the limited knowledge I do have, I would say its has a much better chance than broadband over Powerlines which has been all the rage and flop for quite some time now.

Think about it, if you can use all the spectrum you want and all the power you want there would certainly be PLENTY of bandwidth. Now there are limits, such as wavelengths that won’t go around corners nicely. Power may be limited by how much leaks out places like your pilot light as well as how much is practical for the home side to transmit (you might think twice about that $30/month service if you also spent $15 in power to transmit a few hundred watt signal 24/7).

But even more likely, this might just work. You have system that is inherently sealed (save pilot lights and gas appliances in use), a medium that is totally homogenous (low pressure natural gas) and nothing else between you and the customer. Unlike power lines, no messy transformers and other such obstacles to a clear signal, no worries about unshielded lines, etc. The only problem I can think of, is areas where plastic lines are in use, and really its only an issue when they aren’t buried below a few feet of dirt and concrete (which they are most of the time).

I will enjoy seeing how Nethercomm (a local Los Angeles, CA company) works out all the kinks.

Fiber Connector

Fios Success
Wow, it has been over a month since i’ve posted. The fiber installation went totally smooth. The bandwidth rocks! With my 15000/2000 connection I’m getting 1800Kbytes/sec downloads and 230Kbytes uploads (6-10x faster down and up than the typical 1.5/256k cable). The standard DNS servers they set you up with seem to be a tad overloaded (causing initial page lookups to be slow), but I quickly fixed that using a very fast one that pings about 4ms to me and using riskinit.com as a backup DNS (typically pings less than 30ms). Here is a small gallery of the hookup. The provided D-Link 604 (DL-604) is totally adequate for most setups. I setup some port forwarding for the different computers in the house and everything is running smoothly.

Overall I would say I’m very satisfied. FIOS is only $50/month for a great service. I’ve only experienced very short transient outages of maybe 10-15 seconds once or twice in the last month. The average user wouldn’t ever notice this (it’s only because I use my connection 24/7 that I notice even the smallest glitch).

P.S. Limit, drop me an email!

FIOS Update!

I think I may have finally broke through the bureaucracy! I made yet another (I can’t accurately say but I would guess like my 10th call) to Verizon today and actually got someone who had a clue! After about 10 minutes of playing with addresses in the computer we came up with the fact that 21870 Nutrir Way was listed as QUALIFIED… For anyone who hasn’t clicked on the image yet…Nutrir way is a small driveway that dead-ends and doesn’t really exist (except on maps). Our property fills in the gap between Corvo/Nutrir and Canon.

So anyway in the Verizon computer we changed our ‘service address’ to 21870 Nutrir and now we can order FIOS. I’m supposed to get a call back tomorrow with the install date! FINALLY!

Crap, now you all know where I live…all I can say is BEWARE OF FIBER DOGS!

UPDATE 3/24/05: Installers will be here April 1st (ok maybe they are kidding me, but I got a confirmation#)!

UPDATE #2 3/27/05: While house sitting for my parents the FIOS installers came HERE to check some stuff out for their installation and noticed the same name, talked to him and helped him with the exact location of our house. He confirmed that now that he knows exactly where it is he would survey it on the way out [of the canyon] and will be there on the 1st!!!

UPDATE #3 3/30/05: The linemen came out today and ran the actual fiber, I took a couple shots of it. Overhead wire connection, extra corning cable and the connector (even bigger version).

UPDATE #4 4/1/05: So Verizon flaked…funny joke…haha I’m really laughing. Damn bastards…rescheduled for Monday. I wish they just would follow their own schedule.

G-Tech Pro Competition Road Race Screen

I love cars, computers, and photography. So anytime I can mix all 3, its a good excuse for a post. Although this news is easily 6 months old, (its practically sacrilegious to post something this old on the net) I only look for this sort of firmware upgrade anually. So it would seem that Tesla Electronics has finally has posted their long promised road-race upgrade to the popular G-Tech Pro Competition performance meter. I haven’t had a chance to review it in action, but the feature list seems decent. It boasts 90mins of data logging at 20 samples/sec and 180mins at 10/sec. This is in contrast to the much higher resolution drag mode where it only stores 300 seconds of runs. Since you can always upload the data later to your PC, this is plenty of storage. They also added other misc. features such as the ability to store setups for up to 4 vehicles and improved documentation.

I love mine, my only major complaint is the display is totally un-viewable at night. The backlight was never very good to begin with and has deteriorated to absolute crap over the years. Mine is an older ‘blue’ backlit model, maybe the newer ‘orange’ models are better.

Anyway, it was another good excuse to take a shot with my macro lens.

[WARNING REALLY BIG IMAGE]

Sony G400 vs. Dell 2001fp

I’m a big fan of macro and micro photography. Alas, my 100MM macro lens is one of my favorites. Once in a while a camera manufacture will make a truly great lens, the Pentax-F 100MM F2.8 lens (and the FA version as well) is one of them. When used on a 2/3rd format digital its equivalent to a 150mm macro. So I was playing with my nifty Pentax *ist DS the other day and took a picture of one of my monitors just for the heck of it. So then I felt compelled to compare it to my LCD. Wow, I knew there was a huge difference (LCD is obviously sharper), but its a huge difference. You can easily make out the Trinitron mask on the Sony G400. The LCD is a Dell 2001fp and the pixels are nice and clear in the picture.

Anyway, I just thought I would share.

FIOS Availability

So I went a little crazy and put in a bunch of my neighbors address in to the Verizon FIOS availability form. Mix in a little Photoshop and you have what is driving me mad. FIOS is available in what appears to be completely random locations.

The picture is a link to a map of my neighborhood. Click it…

Ok, explain that! I’ve thought about it and its either 1. random (maybe to stage the workload?), 2. computer error or 3. the bundles of fiber not hooked up at the CO have no particular order. What ever it is…its driving me a bit insane…

I’ve called and the CSR filled out a engineering report, but I don’t have any high hopes of that changing things.