Journal of a Sysadmin

Does something smell off to you?

On my way to work in the mornings, when I drive the car (which is almost always anymore), I listen to either 660 for news or CBC 1010.

This morning it was the CBC. So here they are, members of the news media, with other members of the news media and some bloke from the 3rd largest news media company in the US saying, (I’m paraphrasing here)

There’s all these great news sites on the internet but so much of it is user published news. How can you trust that?

Like I’m going to trust you more for saying something like that? Just because it doesn’t come from a large media company does not mean it isn’t trust worthy. Of course, you need to do some back ground checking and at least know a bit about who it is you are reading. Would you take the word of some joe that walked you to you on the street and said, “The sky is falling!”? Likely not that either.

This all smells like so much garbage, large media trying to spin another story.

I will continue to listen to the CBC, but as time goes on it seems like I’m getting more and more pessimistic as to who is telling the truth and when. I think blindly following the word of any news site is generally a bad idea: large media outlet or not. For the real deal, visit someone who doesn’t have a profit margin to protect.

Toy yes, but a very useful toy it is!

jhb’s dad (hereby known as papa) has a funky Nikon D80 DSLR. Really nice camera, I mean, really really nice. Auto Focus and exposure but it can be over ridden using various controls in the camera. Takes any of the AF/D/G Nikkor lenses and has a decent battery life.

Therefore I knew well in advance that jhb would be returning home with an idea that she really wanted one. This started us down the path of looking for cameras, but not just any camera, we wanted a decent camera because we’re likely not buying another one for a while.

jhb did a lot of research on this and came up with some candidates:

• Nikon D40
• Nikon D80 DSLR
• Nikon D200 DSLR

A lot of her information came from www.kenrockwell.com, as he has a very complete website which seems to have a lot of really good and useful information.

We went to the store (Vistek) and spoke with Jeff who is new there but seems to be a professional photographer, almost didn’t look at the D40 (it’s not at all what we wanted), then proceeded to compare the D80 and D200. Here is the outcome.

The D80 is a great camera for less price than the D200. There are definitely some functional differences (shutter speed on the D80 goes to 1/4000 vs 1/8000 on the D200, D200 has a slightly better CCD, D200 takes a wider range of lenses as well as some other differences) and there’s also the tactile difference.

The D200 feels like a solid camera. It has a metal case instead of plastic, and a rubberized coating as well. It’s moisture sealed which should prevent it from needed more frequent cleanings. The D80 feels nice but is slightly physically smaller and there is a substantial weight difference (about 250g) in the camera bodies. The D200 is an entry level pro model and it looks and feels like it.

Now for function. Obviously we bought the D200, I wanted a camera that would get us through a few years (the cybershot only lived about 3 years before it started having some issues). So, for function. OMG does it function!

I’ve already found with the 50mm f1.4 lens we bought with it I’ve had to use the manual override for aperture as it tends to kill off the depth of field first, instead of kicking up the ISO rating. I’d rather have a depth of field and a bit of a grainy shot than everything fuzzy and soft. Of course, this won’t be our main lens, that one is on order and should be in at the shop in about 2 weeks.

So with the current lens manual override is key. Either on the aperture if there is borderline light, or on the shutter speed if you have enough light and you are taking some action shots. I think the auto-everything will be just find with the flash, moderate light, and not a lot of movement. Anything past a walk though it seems to have trouble with (therefore needing an override). Keep in mind, I haven’t had a really sunny day to do any playing with.

Now we’ll wait for the new lens and our SB600 flash.

Jeff, if you ever read this thanks! I’m convinced!

[Nikon D200|Nikkor 50mm 1:1.4 D|1/2 sec|f9.0|iso 800|available light]
[Cropped using The Gimp]

Yes, they are home and Home they are.

jhb and little J are home again, home from Hawaii after a 3 month extended vacation. When middle C and I left in January they had intended on coming back at the end of February but instead opted for the middle of March.

And they are Home, with a capital H. It feels so much better having them here. LIttle J has grown so much, is madly crawling around the house and contains so much BOY that it’s hard to keep up with him. Everything shiny or with a light or that looks like it might taste good gets touched! I might even have to rethink the CO detector on the second floor that plugs into the wall, not to mention the night light that I bought right after buying the house. It’s gone already and a safety cover replaced it.

They are both (of course) having problems adjusting to the timezone, so little J was up until about 1:30am last night and no one wanted to get up this morning. Good thing I took a couple days off work for this!

And this concludes our Hawaii vacation 2006/2007. Have a nice day.

Misc. noteworthy bits and bobs.

DST happened, earlier than it did before. I really hope it saves money on energy and doesn’t just end up getting reverted and causing us a ton more pain. We’ll have to see.

It was warm over the weekend. +16C or something yesterday, and almost all the snow is gone. Really nice out. Last night it rained, March 12th and it rained not snowed. That in itself is note worthy.

jhb and little J get home on Wedensday, in the early afternoon. I miss them so much. I bought jhb a book (I guess for me too), and a book for little J, and a magazine for jhb

I cleaned the house this past weekend, upgraded and repaired the PVR (long standing technical broken part issue), upgraded jhb’s machine and made GL work properly.

I also tried out secondlife for the first time (omg, another social networking disaster that will end up not scaling and wasting peoples lives). I have to say it has potential though… maybe, but at this point it is pretty well completely useless and a time sink. I’ll play a bit more with it before I decide for sure and report back.

Spring?

I had coffee on our deck this morning, first time this year.

It was nice and warm, the sun was out. Missy and I played fetch with here very ragged football. On my way to work I could smell spring, things are moving and changing and here you can actually smell those changes. Not the yeasty sour smell of organic matter freezing and thawing either but a sweet life affirming smell of growing things and a future that’s just around the corner.

Spring may be soon here.

jhb will be returning next week (after the two week extension), Jonah is crawling and trying to stand, everyone is good.

Life is good.