2007 April Archive at elwoodicious

Archive for April, 2007

Bath time is the best time.

Published by james on April 10, 2007 in Family. 2 Comments

It has occurred to me that my site is turning into some quasi daddy blog where I constantly post pictures of my kid. I suppose I should dig up more varied topics but then again she is too damn cute.

Quite Possibly The Strangest Purchase I Have Made

Published by james on April 6, 2007 in Random. 6 Comments

Per Management’s Request:

1 case of Pemmican Premium Cut Beef Jerky, Peppered.

Sleepless in Windsor, The Movie Roundup Edition

Published by james on April 6, 2007 in Reviews. 0 Comments

This week has been filled to the brim with fractured sleep schedules and near sleepless nights–last night, in particular was one long stretch of no more that 45 minutes of shut eye. Needless to say, since I cannot effectively work on the laptop at an awkward 90 degree angle with one arm, and I hesitate to open a book for fear that half-digested soy formula will spatter on the pages, movies are my friend and companion in the witching hour.

Ong-Bak (2003)
While light on plot and character development–the head of Buddha is stolen from a small village by big city thugs and the local nice/tough guy heads out to retrieve it–the movie excels in its stunts and fight choreography. The pace of the film is brisk and Tony Jaa demonstrates some incredible athletic and Muay Thai skills . If you like action and martial arts than this film is a must see. Add bonus, it spawned this conversation in the middle of the night:

Management: Why is the TV so loud?
Me: What?
Management: The TV, it’s L-O-U-D! (turns down the volume)
Me: Oh. I had trouble hearing the subtitles.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
There has been plenty said about this film and I have little to add except that I found it profoundly sad, moving, and enlightening all at once. See it.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Fantastic film. Beautifully shot; one of my favorite scenes is when the children are fleeing down the river the lighting and photography is lush and storybook like with shots peeking through the grass and over the back of a fat frog. The story is an old one of cruel step father after the hidden wealth of the young children yet Laughton and Agee took Grubb’s novel and blended together equal parts Mother Goose and Brothers Grimm while casting it in a dark Faulkner-esque Southern Gothic mold. Very highly recommended.

The Jacket (2005)
The synopsis on Dish did this movie no justice and I was left shaking my head as to why it only received two stars. It is a sad tale that folds Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind into Jacob’s Ladder and The Machinist. Adrien Brody plays an amnesiac Gulf War vet who is wrongfully accused of killing a Vermont state trooper and subsequently committed to a state run psychiatric hospital. Through the course of some incredibly cruel and inhumane “therapy” he finds he is able to step forward fifteen years in time allowing him to influence events in the present. Taut and well acted The Jacket is a must see.

Brazil (1985)
The last time I saw this film was some 20 years ago and my teenage self was amused by the Dadaist take on themes explored by Orwell, Kafka and Dostoevsky. This time around, in light of the last seven years, I felt profoundly sad and disheartened as Brazil is rapidly becoming a reality. Gilliam is at the top of his game, Pryce’s acting is top notch, and De Niro is inspired. See it and laugh through your tears.

Still on queue to watch is Brick along with a pile of movies from the Thirties, so long as my endurance holds up.

Dithering over DSLRs

Published by james on April 4, 2007 in Random. 8 Comments

The last major purchase I made for myself was over two years ago, an iRiver H320 for a whopping $280, so it could be said that I often do not treat myself to the finer things in this tech-life. With the hospital bills and major new home costs receding like some fiscal tide we are finding ourselves with a new found discretionary income and one of the things that I have been grumbling about is my lack of a good digital camera. My janky Kodak is serviceable in that it takes pictures, maybe not great ones but if I press the button eventually something will be written to a jpg file on the memory card. What I want is an entry level DSLR that will allow me to have the pretense of being all artsy-fartsy (I might even trow in a beret to solidify the fantasy).

Seeing as I hardly spend a dime on myself the thought of dropping some $700-800 on myself is making me break out in hives. If you think that is silly, the discussion of replacing my laptop, while a constant ongoing one-way conversation, has me lying awake at night thinking about how much $1700 really is–1.5 mortgage payments, 6 months of groceries, 6 months of car payments, etc. Anyway, I’m sitting on the fence between the Canon and the Nikon camps largely split between the Digital Rebel XT and the Nikon D40x. Knowing next to nothing about photography let alone the pros and cons of the various technologies used by the companies I am left sort of scratching my head and thinking more about price over performance which is not really a good place to start.

So here’s what I do know:

Canon Digital Rebel XT (gratefully cribbed from dpreview.com)

Around $650 with Canon 18-55mm lens kit
8MP
Image Formats
- RAW
- RAW + JPEG Large/Fine
- JPEG (EXIF 2.21) - Fine, Normal
22.2 x 14.8 mm CMOS sensor
Compact Flash Type I or II
1.6 lbs (Body plus battery,CF and 18-55 mm II lens)

Nikon D40x (gratefully cribbed from dpreview.com)

Around $799 with Nikon 18-55mm lens kit
10.2MP
Image Formats
- NEF (12-bit compressed RAW)
- JPEG fine
- JPEG normal
- JPEG basic
- NEF (RAW) + JPEG basic
23.7 x 15.6 mm CCD sensor
Secure Digital / Secure Digital HC
1.2lbs (Body plus battery)

Fleshing things out a little further, digitalreview.ca has a side by side comparison of Nikon’s D50 with the D70 and the Digital Rebel XT which at least gives me a little better understanding how the lines compare.

After doing some research about RAW format I’m relatively confident that UFRaw plugin for Gimp will take care of my modest needs so I’m not too worried about NEF versus CR2. So, it would seem that it comes down to price again. The Nikon D40x is about $90 more than the Digital Rebel XT (and the XTi is $185 more) for what I can tell is 2MP more. Management suggests that I should get the Canon and a really good memory card for the savings and I am very inclined to agree. Anyone have an argument why I should go Nikon instead?

Canon or Nikon. Nikon or Canon. I’ll be dithering for one more month as I screw up my courage to drop that kind of cash on myself then I pull the trigger.

Devourer of Planets!

Published by james on April 3, 2007 in Family. 1 Comment

My home directory as art.

Published by james on April 1, 2007 in Linux. 3 Comments

While doing a little spring cleaning on the laptop I stumbled on a neat utility in Disk Usage Analyzer that will make an image out of a specified directory. Pretty wild how the directory structure can translate into an eye pleasing piece of art.