It seems giant balloons didn’t do the trick

Anna and I have received several invitations to parties with free booze and food. Phone calls, emails, coupons, and trinkets in the mail. We are being courted. The gravy train that was so enviable these last 5 years is starting to grind to a halt. Fighting over scraps, cards are offered at the slightest provocation. Blood is in the water, and our suitors are getting desperate.

As a cold hearted bastard, I find the whole thing amusing. If you are of a similar persuasion, you will probably want to click this link: “Downtown San Diego Condo Rave, Drinks,Sushi,Fashion&neg-am io financing“.

It has it all – suspiciously handsome neighbors in skimpies, an ice block logo, and a DJ. The commentary and photos are well worth the clicky. You know you want to. (via SD Blog & MetaFi)

I’d like to link another gem – Regulators To Issue Mortgage Warning. The gritties:

“As the real estate market slows, some mortgage lenders are trying to prop up profits by relaxing lending standards for certain types of loans, endangering borrowers and financial institutions, a top banking regulator said yesterday…Reich said regulators are “closely monitoring” the growth of loan types in which the payments can suddenly double, creating a payment shock that could force borrowers into foreclosure if housing values were to fall and could also cause financial losses for the lenders who make the loans. Reich called the increase in such lending troubling. He noted that regulators are crafting a specific warning to the industry, known as a guidance, that will restrict the use of these loans. It could be issued within the next few months.”

There could be some clouds on the horizon when these ARMs hit the 3 year mark.

I’ve got photos. Where do I put em?

With my new toys, I’ve been producing a lot more photos. This isn’t a problem at home – I’ve got plenty of storage & backup space, desktop hard drives are huge and cheap. But they don’t help me much two weeks into a trip. I’ve got a few options:

Laptop route
I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while. At 2 lbs & the tablet features, the tiny Fujitsu Lifebook P1510D seems like a steal at roughly $1400. Certainly more money than the rest of these options, but I’d be getting a lot of flexibility with it. The main draw is that you get all the comfort of a laptop in a small package. It has a CF slot, so downloads at the end of the day would be pretty easy. The battery life is good, so it can always serve double duty as a media player. No optical drive limits my playing of DVDs though, but I can always rip a bunch and slap them on a hard drive or USB stick.

I am loathe to do much more than a little surfing on the internet cafes, so bringing my own laptop would reduce some of the key logger concerns. I guess the real question is how many net cafes let you hook your computer up to their connection. The other option is wifi, which seems to be popping up all over the place, but I doubt I’d want to depend on it in most countries.

The disadvantages of the laptop are pretty obvious. It can be a target. It is bigger and heavier than other options. But probably my biggest hesitation is that it is potentially a huge distraction. Will I be pouring over the days photos, rather than heading out to explore more?

Storage with a screen
The Epson p-2000 still seems like the best bet in this market. At roughly 1 lb and $400, it gets a decent bit of work done – photo download (though slower than other devices), viewing (not as big as a laptop screen, but better than the camera), plays movies (battery life isn’t super though), etc. Since it is relatively first generation, there are going to be better models out soon.

Portable hard drive/image tanks
These devices are basically a card reader attached to a laptop hard drive. Push a button and they dump the CF card contents to the hard drive. There seems to be two main contenders, the Nexto-CF and the PD70X/HyperDrive. There are small differences between them, but they essentially have the same benifits, and both cost around $200. I’m leaning more towards the Nexto-CF based on this guys impressions & use. Relatively light, easy, and simple, but you don’t necessarily know if your photos are crap until you get them back home.

The no hardware option
Burn to dvds in net cafes. CF readers and CD burners can be common at net cafes – I was pretty successful with this in Peru. I suspect it depends a lot on the country. Will have to do some more research to see how easy it is in Cambodia & Vietnam. Main problem is that it can eat up time getting these copied and burned to cd/dvd.

At this point I’m leaning towards the image tanks for cost & convenience, but am still on the fence.

Thoughts?

New toys.

(photos can be found here)

As mentioned before, I ordered a new camera & lens. I wanted something of decent optical quality, small (in relative terms), cheap (again, relative), and flexible. I think have come pretty close to these goals with this camera (Canon Rebel XT aka 350D) and lens (Canon 17-85 IS USM lens) combination.

Rebel XT thoughts –
I like the body size of the camera, but I can see how it would be too small for many. I wasn’t ever comfortable with the camera on a strap, so I ordered a hand strap. I’ll see if that feels better. For packing the camera around I ended up buying a Rezo 20 as a case. It is slightly too large for the rebel, and it doesn’t really fit in my day bag. I need to get a bigger day bag anyway, so I will see if that changes anything.

As the body is small, the viewfinder is smaller than other bodies like the 20D. I found it quite usable, though I’m thinking about buying the extended eye cup. The 1.8″ LCD is decent when turned up, but hardly up to full sun treatment. I haven’t bothered with a screen protector yet, it doesn’t seem like it needs one. Buttons and the dial all seem well placed, and I got used to the positions quickly. The screens display almost all the information you want about the current settings. The glaring exception is ISO speed. To get that you have to press the info button. Not a huge hardship, but it would have been nice to have it with the rest of the status display.

I’ve always been a fan of photos on the sly, so I was a bit worried about the shutter noise. I’m happy to report that while there is a mechanized sound, it is not very loud, and easily ignored. I also love the black body compared with the silver, it is much more discrete.

I wasn’t expecting much out of the flash, but I found it actually fairly useful for fill-in or boosting light if exposed properly. I think I would still like to figure out some sort of bounce/diffuse situation though.

I spent some time playing around with most of the settings, though I tend to keep it on P and make adjustments that way. The auto modes seem to work fairly well, I think the camera would perform just fine if you handed it to someone who wasn’t familiar with photography.

One thing I keep having to remember is that exposure compensation and ISO speed are not reset when you switch off the camera. One thing I wish they had done was an auto ISO setting – you would tell the camera if shutter drops lower than x, increase ISO. Probably not a budget line feature. That said, I am really impressed with the ISO performance of the Rebel XT. 1600 ISO is fairly usable, and 800 is downright amazing. Hand held & lowlight being some of the driving forces for the upgrade, I’m very happy with the results so far.

The color and exposure seem quite good for the most part. Out of the few hundred photos I’ve taken testing the camera out, only one had color saturation issues. The exposure issues were mostly just examples of massive exposure range.

Auto focus on the Rebel XT is contrast based. Once I got used to the focus points, it was pretty easy to use. I found that I had to be careful relying too much on auto focus in low light & low contrast, performance is not the best in these conditions.

Canon 17-85 IS USM lens thoughts –
At an inch longer, a bit wider, and around 2/3 of a pound heavier than the kit lens, the camera definitely has a different feel with this lens attached. It is much more front heavy, but feels fairly natural with the left hand supporting it. I was worried about this lens after many reviews said it was known for chromatic aberration (aka purple fringing). However I had to really try to get CA to show up. I wonder if the SMC on the hoya UV filter helps with this.. I will have to test it out at some point.

The range of the lens is quite nice, approximately 27mm-136mm after the sensor 1.6 crop is figured in. This lets me get some wide angle shots, as well as a decent bit of zoom. Seems about perfect for travel.

At F4 – F5.6, the lens certainly isn’t the fastest on the block. However, I’ve been very impressed with the image stabilization (IS). Canon claims that the IS provides up to 3 stops of compensation. But fooling around with the camera, I found at times I could get away with even more. This doesn’t mean I am going to be able to do any serious night photography without a tripod, but I found it more than adequate for snap shots.

The USM (Ultrasonic Motor) focus on this lens is very quick and quiet. It is easy to switch to manual focus, and the focus ring on the lens is easy to use. The lens also features manual focus override – if auto focus isn’t doing the job, you can override it with the focus ring without worrying about damaging the lens focus motor.

Final thoughts –
So far I’m pretty happy with my purchase. I feel like I have scratched the surface of what the 350D and the 17-85 lens are capable of. I’ve got a handle on the photo basics, but I’m not quite at the all manual stage. Coming from a point and shoot background, I’m sure I have plenty of bad habits to break.

Drugs and fruit

Holy crap:

Andrea Suastegui had been suffering flulike symptoms Saturday when she and her husband drove to the Frutería El Palsa Market on 25th Street near Broadway and purchased prescription medicine without a prescription… After the drug was administered with a syringe, the woman almost immediately went into medical distress. Police and paramedics were called about 4 p.m. and she died at a hospital just before 5:30 p.m… Regular customers of the produce store were shocked to learn of the incident as they gathered in front of the padlocked market Monday. “They sold fresh fruit,” said Guerrero Sumano. “I didn’t know they sold drugs.”

Add me to the list of shocked customers. (Link to story here)