I Finally Got It!

What is it? It is the Canon Rebel T1i, or 500D for those in the UK (though I don’t have any readers across the pond). It’s my birthday present, and something I’ve been waiting on for some time. I’m so excited to have the camera and look forward to using it to take many different pictures. I also got the Canon EF-S 55-200 mm IS telephoto zoom lens to go with it. I additionally got a great camera bag to go with it. Both the lens and the bag came from my parents. It’s so exciting to me to have the camera and be able to take some great pictures. I’m a nerd, as those who read this site are fully aware, and that extends to things beyond just computers. I really do enjoy photography, as some might have noticed, and I am so grateful to have something that can grow with me and help to take even more fantastic photos. It’s amazing. I’ll share some examples here, but first let me give you a quick review of the camera.

Note: All photos of the body and buttons are from DPReview. It’s the BEST camera review site. However, all sample photos were taken by me!

Handling

The camera is a large camera, as most are aware. The dSLR systems are typically larger, and feature large screens on the back and weight significantly more than any point and shoot that you can purchase. That’s why the gadget bag was so important for me.

However, handling is about how it feels in the hands, and how the  buttons are laid out. The camera has a fantastic screen on the back which is where you primarily find the details of the settings and the potential to review your photos after being taken. The buttons are satisfying, and within reach. Also, my hands aren’t huge and  therefore it fits nicely in my hands.

Features

Getting top billing on this camera is the inclusion of a HD video mode. It includes 720p video capture at 30fps, or frames per second, (which is about half of what the human eye sees, but what a smooth video typically will run at) and 1080p video at 24fps. It makes the 1080p video mode a little less attractive, as some choppiness is evident. Also, the autofocus in the video mode is slow. Therefore, it’s not quite as amazing as it sounds. However, it looks FANTASTIC when shooting video. You you just have to focus before you start taking the video, pan slowly, and not have something moving back and forth toward the camera. Otherwise it’s great.

Additionally, it features 3.5 frames per second shooting with unlimited frames shooting in jpg mode, great color reproduction, 15.1 megapixels, RAW capable, DIGIC 4 processor, and support for high capacity SD cards. It’s really a wonderful feature set, and more than worth the entry cost.

Picture Quality

After all, it’s all about the pictures in the end. The picture quality is seriously amazing. Stepping up from a point-and-shoot camera, the detail and color reproduction is outstanding. Being able to focus close in, blur backgrounds, open my shutter speed and do all kinds of other amazing things that simply can’t be done with other cameras blows my mind. If you don’t believe me, check out the photos:

There are plenty more photos coming later, but that’s just a smattering of some of my favorites. Check out my Facebook page or a new page that I’ll be making on Flickr. I’ll update that later.

Conclusion: An AMAZING camera for an entry level photographer. It’s expensive, but ever so worth it. If you love photography and want to step up, it’s a great value proposition and won’t let you down.

What do you guys think? Know of any good photography spots around San Jose? And hey, I’m willing to take pictures for anyone that would like some pictures!

Roku Netflix Player and Life with Pictures

I LOVE my Roku Netflix Player. It's the coolest device that I've ever spent a hundred bucks on. Let me run this down for you.

• Dead simple to use. Seriously. You plug it in to the wall, the router, and the TV. Enter a code on your netflix account (that has unlimited streaming) and Wham! It syncs up and downloads all of the movies that you currently have on your "Watch Instantly" queue.
• You scroll through the movies by picture, select it, and then you simply press play. I've never had to wait longer than 15 or 20 seconds for a movie to load (6-12 Mbps Comcast cable internet) and the resolution has been great. I haven't had a chance to put it on a huge HDTV yet, but the picture quality is certainly close to, if not on par with, DVD.
• The selection is actually quite impressive. Over 12,000 titles are available through Netflix. And a whole bunch more content can be rented or purchased through Amazon Video on Demand. While I don't use Amazon, I currently have over 60 movies and full seasons of TV on my "Watch Instantly" queue.

This device has met all of my requirements to be a great edition to my AV setup. I'm planning on upgrading to an HDTV relatively soon, so I'll let you know what I think of it after that. Meanwhile, let me tell you this much: buy it. It's a hundred bucks. If you have a Netflix account with unlimited streaming, it allows you to get so much more for your money. I've watched 2 full seasons of 30 Rock (I can't recommend this show highly enough. One of the only shows that me and my wife actually laugh OUT LOUD at while we are watching it. The writing is sharp, witty, and current.), numerous hours of Law & Order SVU, and tons of movies that I can just turn on at the press of a button. As the selection continues to expand, this is only going to get better and better for the mere 100 bucks that it costs.

On another note, I bought it on a Saturday, and received it on Tuesday. It shipped late Monday night and was at my door on Tuesday (Shipped from 40 miles way in CA. :) ).

Ultimately, buy yourself one. You owe it to yourself. Expand your horizons, and enjoy your Netflix account again.

Life update: Things are very well in the Gamblin House. We spend time watching movies, going out to shop, and finding wonderful new places to eat and enjoy our time together in wonderful San Jose. We travelled out to Santa Cruz a week ago for a FANTASTIC Saturday date. It was seriously so fun. We were able to hang out and get some cotton candy and salt water taffy. The weather was perfect. Today was even better. 75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. I love living in this state, as it provides the greatest summer weather you could ask for.

I start playing EY basketball on Tuesday. I'm so out of shape, but can't wait to get involved playing ball again. Friday I'll be at the in laws, and then the week after that my wife and I will head up to my parents to help my mom cater a wedding. My wife can't wait! I'll include some pictures here. They are from my phone, so please excuse the poor resolution!

My wife made this cake. It's a bust of my dad's head. She's amazing. And for hire! Call us. Serious. :)

About to ride the Cave Train Adventure. So lame. But so fun.

Anyone want one? Yuck.

This ride is fun, but headache inducing.

This was in MARCH.

We love our state.

Leave any comments. We love them. Comment for the sake of it. So I know you are alive. And if you have a blog, and I haven't linked you, give me the link. I'd love to add you to the blogroll!

BASIC

So, how many of you out there have actually written program code in BASIC? I know it's pretty much a dead language, but there are many different types of microprocessors out there that actually eat the stuff for lunch. I'm taking an Enterprise Infrastructure course in this, my last semester of college. It's pretty fun so far. Our first assignment involved writing a couple very simple programs in BASIC, compiling them to assembly and then running them through a microprocessor simulation. It's interesting. Here's a code snippet:

So, this program very simply creates a counter variable which increments and outputs to a port. The final variable outputs alternating 1's and 0's to a port upon completion of the counter. Obviously, the counter is designed to count up to 9, and then kick to the end of the if statement and loop.

Here's a slightly more complex program:

This program starts with a word variable (2 byte variable) which responds to the input from port d. If port d is lit up, meaning it returns a value of 1 from the bit in the zeroth location, it will increment the counter by three and output the high bits to port c and the low bits to port b. Meaning that port c doesn't light up until the value is at least 256, or beyond the storage capacity of one byte.

It's interesting to look at this. It may as well be sudocode. I mean, I barely had to think too much about the complication of the code, and realize that BASIC was a simple program to write in. It is not object oriented like Java or C++ or even VB, however, it is a simple language. As I write more in BASIC, I will have to deal with such things as memory deletion, clean up, and memory buffering. That's the ugly part of simple languages.

I'll post more as I learn more.

/coding

Add: By the way, if you want to play with some BASIC programming, you can check out www.oshonsoft.com for a pic simulator (pic is a microprocessor for many different industrial uses). It's fun!

The Intricacies of the Mind

Anyone who reads this (which according to google analytics isn't a lot of you yet) probably doesn't know that I started as a neuroscience major at BYU. My plans were to graduate, go to medical school, and pursue a medical speciality in Neurology. It's an interesting thought to me now. to think that I was very involved in that for a long time. I still have a desperate fascination with the mind and how it functions so clearly differently in so many different people. That's the interesting part for me. Maybe my future lies in neural network programming, HCI (human-computer interaction), UI design or other things along those lines. However, for right now I'll have to settle for postulating.

As many would know, I'm an avid technology geek. So, of course, I was watching the WWDC Keynote with keen interest, hoping to find out more about the imminent revamp of the iPhone. It happened, and we now have a new iPhone 3G releasing in 70 countries, with GPS and a lower price point of $199 for the entry level phone (8 Gig). 22 countries will have availability on July 11th, the US amongst them. I like the iPhone. I've used one sparingly, but I find its simplicity, capability and future extensibility to be unlike most other phones currently on the market.

You may be wondering what this has to do with the mind. Let me explain: the beauty of the iPhone has always been in the spectacular engineering involved with the UI, HCI and underlying stability. Let's be honest: simply pushing an icon on a screen is an ideal way to launch an application and find information. Could there be a more simple interaction when it comes to the factors in human-computer interaction? It isn't necessary to create coordination to run your muscles and control a mouse to find an icon and double click it. You merely use your fingertip and press it. Instant activity, and instant gratification. That's the beauty of such simplified programming: ANYONE CAN USE IT! Who out there has ever picked up a WinMo device? You have to go through menu after menu to find the program you may be looking for. You have to adjust through many panes to find simple sets for brightness, and many other factors. Granted, some compete very literally with the iPhone (the HTC Touch and Touch Diamond come to mind, along with the new Samsung Instinct and various phones from LG), however apple created this simple interface. Why does the demand exist for something so complex yet simple in its creation? Because humans enjoy interacting with things that are logical.

Many humans have been blessed with an incredible spatial capacity. They can visualize and create complex maps of things in their minds. Their creativity is limitless -- they can create music, artwork, and many other things. I'm not amongst these people. While i have a great facility for creativity, I find it particularly hard in those arenas. I am very logical and procedural. And that's the beauty of the iPhone. Pretty icons indicate the programs. Logical steps are taken to facilitate the use of advanced features. It's an idea blending of the creative and logical minds, which allows it to find a position amongst the most spatial and the most logical in this world.

Whether or not you like Apple, their engineering teams are second to none. To find this lack of blending in the real world, and create a device so well suited to satisfy the needs of the procedural computer geeks and the creative art kid is from where their true strength is derived. Focus group testing, product iterations, design implications -- everything must be considered when creating such an advanced device that is designed to cater to so many people.

Anyway, that's my diatribe on the creativity and eccentricity in Cupertino, CA. Congratulations Apple on creating a convergence device that not only converges email, iPod, cell phone and internet but that also converges the minds of so many different people.

Sing your song after the break.

Sage (First Impressions)

So, I just downloaded and installed Sage, a feed aggregator designed to work within Firefox. I have some quick first impressions to share:

1. Well Designed: The aggregator is simple and its use is very intuitive. I had it installed, and got feeds added to it quickly. Just click the feed tag on the bar and off you go!
2. Quick: It is a simplified reader, and runs very quickly. It loads feeds fast, and organizes them simply as well.
3. Opens feed in browser: This is a little different. When you click a feed, it opens it in your browser window in squares all over. The unread ones appear first. Alternatively, you can view them in the sidebar, below the feed itself, but that provides no real summary.
4. Exactly what it should be: It appears that Sage is no more or less than what it should be: a simple, no-frills feed reader extension for Firefox. It really allows me to see my feeds quickly.

I am satisfied with Sage to this point. After a few more hours of use, I'll update my impressions.

Updated (11:50 a.m.): I found how to turn off the rendering in the "content pane". It makes Sage even that much more enjoyable. It only opens them in the sidebar, and you can hover over those and it will describe more of the post for you. Then, by right clicking, you can open in a new tab or whatever fits your fancy. You can mark all as read at a time and even mark all as unread. that's a nifty little benefit that you can get in the program itself. I like that.

Here's the download link (in case you wanna give it a run): Sage Download Page

Updated (5/15/08: 12:16): I just noticed Lifehacker's post on the 5 best RSS readers that went up today. Sage is amongst them. I've actually used them all, except the MacOS one, and find that Sage is by far my favorite for its ability to run from right within Firefox and the small memory imprint. It's beautiful. Check it out their post here.

Any tips? Leave them in the comments.