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Rob Galbraith DPI: Canon announces development of EF 200mm f/2L IS USM and EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM:
Canon today has announced that an EF 200mm f/2L IS USM and EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM are in development. Prototype units of both lenses are to be on display at the PhotoPlus Expo trade show taking place in New York City from October 18-20, 2007.
blog.pmarca.com: 12 questions for the producers of the new Bionic Woman:
Any organization that developed biomedical technology for instant healing and flawless body part replacement -- technology 20 years ahead of its time -- would be able to license it and generate hundreds of billions of dollars of income very quickly. Instead, they keep it secret and derive no real value from it. Why?
(On behalf of my childhood, I would also like to extend this same question to the producers of Knight Rider and Airwolf.)
Heh. Every so often rec.arts.comics.strips lights up with a discussion where some variation of "how can they have candles in Sherman's Lagoon? They're underwater!" appears, to which everyone cogently replies:
Have you noticed that it's a comic strip starring a talking shark?
Which is a nice reminder to readers, and a warning to writers, that in any kind of fiction, readers have to agree to a suspension of disbelief, or else the entire thing falls in upon itself because -- by definition -- fiction involves some aspect of things that haven't, won't, or can't happen, that the reader has to believe has, will, and can. Or else.
Writers have to build the web of writing that allows and encourages that suspension. You need to get readers them to do this, but you can't do that by taking the disbelief and beating it over the head repeatedly with a baseball bat.
Down that path lies -- the evil overlord.... And failure to avoid the failures of the evil overlord, you end up with what I call the "five minute script", i.e., if you put normal, rational people in this script, it's over in five minutes. (as in "see that guy with the mask and chainsaw? Shoot him; we'll figure it out later"
Halo 3 breaks records, $170 million in 24hrs - Xbox 360 Fanboy:
Exciting news fanboys, Halo 3 has officially become the highest grossing entertainment launch in history pulling in a whopping $170 million in its 24 hour launch window.
Think about that number for a second, and compare it to the money movies are bringing in these days (resident evil: extinction topped the list last week @ $24mm).
If you haven't noticed before now, video games are now a huge part of the entertainment landscape -- budgets and revenues rivaling Hollywood.
Wow.
(I get my copy today. if the blog goes dark, I'll be back. or dead...)
Finally, projects that have been sitting around for a while are getting done -- part of the point of taking time off was to get as many projects over the hump as I could, in the hope that I could stay caught up once I get back into a work schedule.
It's nice to have some of them finally coming off the list. Here's one of the first:
This one was fairly simple, only a couple of hours -- but it's been sitting around driving me crazy for months, because it required getting access to the drill press in the workshop, which was stuck behind stuff, which required... you get the point (my life, it's just a Gantt Chart with a big thick line on the critical path marked "you'll never get to this".
We've owned a telescope -- a Meade ETX-90 -- for a number of years, but we just don't use it very often, because set up time gets in the way. It's a nice unit, but you really need to plan ahead to give it time to cool and to get it set up and aligned and working -- it's enough to keep us from using it a lot (hopefully, that'll change).
For some things, especially planetary observing and solar work, you really don't need the complexity of a scope; good binoculars will do. I bought a set of Orion 25x100 binoculars. Really good, quality astronomical binocs -- but they weigh 10 pounds. Not something you'll ever hand hold.
I also picked up Orion's Binocular mount and tripod, which uses a parallelogram type strut to allow you to move the binoculars around and share them with other people without losing your aiming. Like any good geek, I felt they were almost perfect, but I needed to make a couple of changes. So the tripod went into the garage waiting for a few hours of free time...
And waited, and waited, and got stuff tossed on them, and waited some more, and.. (you know how it goes)
But now, it's done: here are the changes I made:
First, I wasn't thrilled with the binocular mount, especially with my binoculars. At 10 pounds, those buggers are huge, and heavy, and they needed a stronger and more flexible support. Also, I standardized on a specific quick release mount for all of my cameras and opticals, and I wanted to use the same mount on this for simplicity: it means I could, potentially, carry these binocs and use them as a spotting scope on a standard tripod while birding if I wanted to (and hired a sherpa....)
Since I use the RC2 mounting plate from bogen/manfrotto, I replaced the standard mount with the Bogen 3030 3 way, a good, solid and flexible tripod head.
(digression: why do I use the RC2? it's a good, solid quick release -- and it has a locking switch in the unit, which means you don't have to worry about he quick release releasing if you hit it wrong; I REALLY like the having a little measure of safety here for some reason. Maybe it's having expensive optical gear hooked up that you don't want to land on the ground at a bad time...)
The other change was a bit more involved.
The mount offsets the weight of the binoculars by using a weight attached to the end of an adjustable rod; the idea being you can make the unit weight-neutral. The standard unit comes iwht about a 15 pound weight at the end of an 18" rod. that rod's not removable, which I found made moving and storing the unit around awkward; worse, the weight wasn't enough to balance binoculars of those size.
What I ended up doing was replacing the standard rod with a longer threaded rod. By pushing the weight out further, I can use a lighter weight to balance the binoculars; 15 pounds instead of 25. Once I found weight neutral, I drilled two holes on the rod for cotter pins, so I could make the rod/weight part removable, but install it and secure it without having to adjust it; if I put something else on the unit, I can remove the pens and use the original friction lock.
It can be set up and in use in about two minutes now. By splitting the weight and rod into a separate piece for moving, it's now easy to stuff in a car (or a closet), or haul outside for use. And of course, the easier it is to use something, the more likely you will, right?
Now, I just need to find my solar filters. I know they're around here somewhere.
Burningbird » We all Live in an iPod:
I wasn't going to comment on the "Beatles Yellow Submarine" pre-loaded yellow iPod rumor, but Sheila pointed to the Gizmodo entry, and the post and the comments did give me a chuckle.
I think it's neat that Apple is making a special iPod just for old people!
Such a dear, dear child.
Okay, I kid you not. This really happened. I was sitting on BART one day heading into San Fransisco -- and this was easily 20 years ago, to make it even worse -- when two (at that time, 16ish) girls were sitting and talking music, and suddenly one of them said "hey, did you know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings? Oh my god!".
No, seriously, I heard with with both ears. I would have nose-snorted a Pepsi if I had had one. And now, of course, those two girls probably have almost-teens who are listening to something that pisses off their mom's, and their moms are listening to their Band on the Run album and wondering about how screwed up music is these days... At least, I hope so.
This leads to a little Friday exercise in devilment and time wasting fun…
If you could design an iPod around any one singer/group, who would you feature, and how would it look? Extra points for providing a graphic.
My first thought: Bare Naked Ladies, only it'd have to be the color of Dijon Catsup, and it'd cost a million dollars. Apple might only sell one or two, but think of the profit margin.
By Ken Levine: If THE SOPRANOS were on a major network:
So if you’re still pissed at David Chase for the way he really ended the series just think of the alternative.
I admit this up front: I saw one (count them, one -- it involved the race horse) episode of the Sopranos. I felt it was exceptionally well written, exceptionally well acted. I never had any motivation to watch it again, so I'm far from an expert on the series.
But what I've seen written about Sopranos over the years has made two things clear: it was a series that played long and hard with ambiguity in various forms, starting with the baseline ambiguity of a mob boss trying to maintain a "normal" family life as if he sold insurance (which, well, he kinda did; sorta). And it was a series that not only wasn't afraid to ignore convention, it reveled in breaking conventions of drama and story telling.
So, here we have the final episode, and what is it? It's an ending that breaks dramatic convention by refusing to give a clear end point to the story (while not being set up for the sequel or the spin-off), and it leaves you with ambiguous answers on what happened and how everyone turned out.
Gee, a series that everyone thought was great for ambiguity and not doing it the way everyone else did, and they ended the series with ambiguity and didn't do it the way everyone else did (as Ken Levine so wonderfully pointed out) -- and their fans are pissed at them for it.
Count me amused. Did anyone really expect anything else? I guess so. But is that the fault of the Sopranos?
By Ken Levine: Working with Tony Randall:
Glad to see there was such a positive reaction to THE ODD COUPLE. My first staff job was on THE TONY RANDALL SHOW, done for ABC in 1976. In that show he played a judge in Philadelphia. It was produced by MTM and we had quite a writing staff. The creators/showrunners were Tom Patchett & Jay Tarses (who had run the brilliant BOB NEWHART SHOW), Gary David Goldberg (created FAMILY TIES and BROOKLYN BRIDGE), Hugh Wilson (created WKRP and had a long feature directing career), and me and my partner, David Isaacs were the two young schleppers. That was it. No consultants. Just the six of us.
David and I were originally signed to write a freelance episode and from that we got invited to join the staff. Production was well underway when we came aboard. At our first table read Tony stood up with an announcement. He had just been to England during a hiatus and informed us that the British sitcoms were so far superior to ours. There was no contest. American sitcoms were shit. Then he sat back down and we had the reading of the decidedly American script David and I had just written. I thought our staff career was going to last one day.
But happily he liked the script… and us. At the time I was single, bringing dates to filmings (hoping that might help me get lucky) and after the show I would always introduce them to Tony. He would praise me to the heavens, how they couldn’t do the show without me, etc. All total bullshit but the girls were impressed. Say what you will about Tony Randall, he was the best Wing Man I’ve ever had.
Man, I'm actually old enough to remember the Odd Couple fondly. While we don't watch much network TV these days, one show Laurie and I have really started enjoying is Two and a Half Men on CBS, starring Charlie Sheen as an aging playboy who's dealing with the reality that his body and his lifestyle aren't always on the same page, and Jon Cryer as his somewhat nerdy, awkward brother who's dealing with divorce and trying to rebuild a life.
This show is buttressed by a wonderful supporting cast and absolutely stunning writing, of the "how did the network let them do this?" type. Very sharp dialog and good chemistry. And to me, from the first episode, it was a modern embodiement of the kind of chemistry and interaction that is the essence of the Odd Couple (hence the tie-in to Levine's piece).
Two and a half men sits up there with me with Odd Couple, MASH, and Cheers, and that's saying something....
And if you aren't reading Levine's blog, you're missing some wonderful writing....
The two-fer Tarantino/Rodriguez movie Grindhouse is going to be broken... (kottke.org):
There have been reports that many film-goers have been confused by the movie's structure - mistakenly assuming that there was only one film on offer and leaving the cinema en-masse after the Rodriguez section
okay, how many people remember when Monty Python and the Holy Grail was first released to theaters? At one point, they had it set up so that the film would show an "Intermission" banner, and (at least in my theater) they closed the curtains and raised the lights.
Just long enough for people to stand up and start moving to the lobby -- and as soon as the curtain closed, they opened it again, turned off the lights, and went back to the movie....
And, of course, some folks didn't get it...
chuq (we need longer intermissions!)
So can anyone suggest good photography-oriented blogs or bloggers or sites with feeds?
Here's the list of sites I read (also look at my links section on my main page):
Digital Outback Photo
Patrice Douge
Inside Aperture
Photo Business News
PhotoAttorney
Photodoto
Photojojo
Smugblog
The Digital Story
The Online Photographer
Thomas Hawk
Santa was good to me.
That is a new HP Photosmart Pro B9180, which I intend to use for my photography printing. I'm still (obviously) in pre-setup mode; it's the size of a small car, and built for many years of fruitful usage, and I had to rearrange the office to make room for it before I could hook it up.
I'm REALLY impressed with the overall manufacturing quality of the box. I can't wait to get it wired up and see how it prints...
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