50mm f/1.4 D Nikkor

Adorama credited my credit card last night for the 85mm f/1.8 I returned. They didn’t have the 50mm f/1.4 that I planned to order instead, so I ordered it from B&H. B&H shipped it this morning! Yay!

Thinking while talking

I think well while talking. It’s not always the first thing that comes out of my mouth that’s the best, though. Sometimes it’s where the talking leads me, even if I’m monologueing.

In the morning

In the morning, three days per week, my wife takes our little girl to daycare. She wakes up, gets ready, goes to 7-11 for a coffee and then comes back to wake up, dress and put our little girl in the car. This morning, around 7:35, I got our daugher up instead of us sleeping in and got her ready myself, including brushing her teeth. How non-lazy. How nice.

She’s so deliberate.

I’m amazed how articulate, sensitive and deliberate my daughter is. Naturally, there may be some home team bias, but I’m amazed nonetheless.

Goodnight, Oly.

I sold my Olympus E-10 via Craigslist today. $195 with a bunch of accessories — a very good deal for the buyer and I’m happy, too. Enjoy it, Dave and Rose.

New iTunes rating algorithm

I changed my iTunes music ratings/iPod mini 4GB sync algorithm.
Each int is a star count.

- Move 4 to 5
- Move 3 to 4
- Change playlists from 3+ to 4+. This will leave 3 very empty. 3 will become place for “possible for iPod.“

So new rating system is

1: Hate it.
2: It’s okay but I never want it on my small iPod.
3. Stuff I may want on iPod sometimes — move to 4 when I do.
4. Put on iPod.
5. Always on iPod. Not subject to change of state.

I find it interesting to realize that I recently considered my old system of rating to be lacking in granularity. This new system effectively gives me even less fine control over ratings since it basically removes what I used to rate as 4 and moves those into 5. But I think it is definitely an improvement nonetheless.

33 new CDs -> iTunes

I ripped a stack of 33 CDs today.

Current iTunes track count: 7971

Goodbye, eighty-five.

I’m sending my 85mm f/1.8 Nikkor lens and 81A warming filter back to Adorama. I found that in the indoor light I wanted to use it the most (my home) at the distances necessary (3′ minimum focus and a very zoomy 85mm lens on an APS-C sensor Nikon D70) it was just not sharp. And, really, I didn’t like the focal length and crop factor of this lens on my DX Nikon. Bummer. I’m going to get a 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor instead.

Too bad I sold my 50mm f/1.8 right before I found my D70 deal. Darnit.

Mexico, suddenly

We got word yesterday that my wife’s maternal grandfather is dying at home and may have as little as a day to live. My wife was already planning a trip to Mexico in three weeks to visit her grandmother with her mother. So they changed their tickets to today and flew on an 8am plane from Tampa by way of Atlanta.

Disney marathon

Today is Monday. Yesterday I spent over 13 hours at Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom. That calculation is no exaggeration. We walked into the monorail boarding area before 10am and left that area for the parking lot after 11pm. Holy cow. I spent a couple hours reading Bill Bryson’s I’m A Stranger Here Myself in Ray’s Cosmic Food Something-Or-Other, listening to the automated entertainer Sonny Eclipse. I finally left Ray’s because the smell was just too much for me. Disney is not the place to sit in a cafe and waste half a day. That place is desigined to keep you on your feet and moving through the machine.

Mensuration, aethetics and context

The things I like most are immeasurable. To measure them would be to take them out of context. Like a summer’s day.

I miss my 50mm f/1.8.

Darnit. I sold it to a guy about three weeks ago, on the way to St. Augustine the Friday before Christmas. $90. Damn. Now I want it back since I found my D70 so I can autofocus the 50mm.

Huge roll of wrapping paper

Bombay Company is going out of business. We visited them while at Countryside Mall today. We picked up a gigantic roll of silver wrapping paper for $1.00.

85mm initial initial observations

I haven’t shot this thing much at all. I haven’t even left the house with it yet. But, for my own future recollection, I’m compelled to note the following:

IAt about ISO 500 and 1/30th of a second at f/1.8, this lens creates slightly brighter pictures than my eye.
I was actually hoping to be able to shoot such shots at more like 1/100 sec. but this is very good.

85mm f/1.8 Nikkor delivered!

It just arrived via UPS. So far, it looks great. The used B+W 81A warming filter I got with it from Adorama is scratched. That sucks. But at f/1.8, I doubt it’ll ever show up. We’ll see.

Maintenance and handling of hardware v. software (reboots v. rebuilds)

Hardware: You beat it first, then you put it in production. Be careful once it’s in because hardware can wear out.

Software: Software doesn’t wear out. You beat it first to get the bugs out, then you keep beating it forever.

For example, today I was thinking about regular complete software rebuilds (a good idea) vs. regular hardware reboots (not always a good idea). Just because that server booted fine this morning, doesn’t mean it’ll reboot fine right now. So watch hardware — it wears out. Software doesn’t.

Current iTunes track count

7585

P.S. I love Fergie’s song “Big Girls Don’t Cry (Personal)”. It’s just great.

Another big day for new utilities

One area of inefficiency in my daily computer operation is that I limit myself to one clipboard entry at a time rather than a clipboard history that I can choose (paste) from or just browse. I’ve looked into this a little in the past but never followed through. Today, I came across PTHPasteboard. Looks good. I’m giving it a try. So far, so good

I also came across SmallScreenX, a nice freeware app for creating an on-screen border of user-defined size. It is useful for seeing the screen area of various users without lowering my own screen resolution — handy for software development.

I found both of these from a page I got in my MacWorld Gems email today.

TaskPaper initial observations

TaskPaper is looking great. I’ve already got my personal and work todo.txt files in it and its use hasn’t slowed me down at all today.* It seems that TP is having some trouble parsing my large work todo.txt file, evidenced by it hanging up when I try to filter by @BZ or @QA tags.

* Okay, one thing: Pasting from TaskPaper into NeoOffice kept the font from TP, which I didn’t want — I wanted straight text. Oh, well.

Screencasts

I’m excited that I can now do screencasts. Most important is for documenting things to put in Bugzilla at work or documenting things to train people.

MacHeist.com bundle deal

I read a two-page ad in MacWorld magazine a few days ago about an annual “MacHeist” deal. The list of software last year was very good and the bundle cost only $50 so I was very interested in this year’s bundle, which would be announced on 9 January 2008 (today).

Well, this year’s bundle includes Snapz Pro X 2, $40 alone, which I wanted to buy anyway, so I was sold. I bought the bundle for $49.00. And TaskPaper is looking VERY nice. I moved my todo.txt file into it and I’m already up and running. The runway to figure out the basics and get back to work with TaskPaper is about 10 seconds. Wonderful.

Instancy and Patience in the Digital Age

I was thinking yesterday about how people expect their computers to be faster, faster, faster, with the goal of operating instantaneously in every regard. Others criticize them and label them power-hungry, bitter brides.

I gave this a little thought and saw that what people really want is for computers to be like the rest of the world. Instantaneous. When you turn the page of a book, you don’t wait for it to render. When you dig a hole with a shovel, you see the hole immediately and it is immediately available for use.

People that want their computers faster just want them to be real. It’s not a new standard, really.

Tripods

A week before Christmas, at a lunch party at my mother-in-law’s house, an old family friend told me she found two tripods and “a lens” in her attic and I was welcome to them. Cool. A week later, Christmas Eve, we had dinner at her house and she gave them to me.

Both tripods were heavy duty. One seemed a little brittle but the other looked great. And the “lens” was a small, white Meade refracting telescope. The one tripod is quite a nice one for my needs — I’m very happy with it.

Guinness draught

I went to Britain in 2007, in August, I believe. And I tried Guinness draft while I was there. Repeatedly. It was great. And cold. So I came home actually liking a beer for once. Then I tried bottled, U.S. (Fla.) Guinness. It sucked. But it sucked less than every other bottled beer I’ve had. So I drank it a lot for a while until I was sick of it. Corona still gives me a headache.

85mm hasn’t shipped.

Christ. I ordered it Tuesday. Today is Thursday. What’s the deal, Adorama?

85mm f/1.8 Nikkor

I want this lens. I want the bokeh and I want the speed for low-light, no-flash shooting. This lens is the main reason I bought my D70 last week.

I went to Ritz Camera at Countryside Mall yesterday and they had one in stock, albeit for $499, a high price. I shot it on my D70 and, boy, did I love it! Great bokeh and it let in so much light at f/1.8. Even at f/2.8 (also a new aperture for me on anything but my Oly E-10) it had good bokeh, though it was, of course, darker.

I was trying to explain this lens to my wife on the way home from the mall — she thought the 18-70 lens I got with the D70 was this 85mm lens. Nope. She encouraged me to just buy this 85mm. So I did — on Adorama, along with a used 62mm 81A warming filter since the D70’s pics are so cool out of camera.