kjp
The other day I heard a nice sounding word mizzling for the first time. It's a good little word - reminds me of drizzling with a tinge of miserable? ...
As I mentioned earlier I have bought a new digital camera. I have been playing with it for the past few days - hence no posts here. I ended up getting a Canon PowerShot A75. It seems to be a great little camera - and just what I wanted.
I'll put a long post up here about the nitty-gritty of the selection process (probably on the weekend?), but the three key points (for me) were:
* 3.2 megapixels instead of 4: for me the benefit would not have been significant, but cost would have been significant
* Wanted good image quality, good lense system - everyone seems to say Canon
* Wanted the ability to manually control most (if not all) of the settings (apperture, shutter speed, etc)
From now on there will be more pictures going up to the photos section of this website. I just have to take some images that someone other than me might care about! Thinking of going up Mount Coot-tha on the weekend...
Well, the final piece of getting my car registered up here (and cancelling my ACT registration) is almost done. I got a refund of my ACT CTPI from the NRMA in the mail today. A handy few $100. It's taken a while to get it from NRMA thought. Better late then never, I suppose.
I'm pretty tired from work today... Also I didn't have much sleep last night - my last game at Go went on for ages. It was a good game: I was playing a guy that is of a similar standard. I was white, the game was really interesting. In several of the earlier "skirmishes" I was pretty happy with my attacking play. Later I extended myself too much - and was not able to connect, loosing a big chunk of the middle of the board. A large part of one of the corners and bits and pieces around the edges got me some good territory though. I ended up losing by 9 stones, 2.5 if you include a 6.5 komi - I was quite surprised at the close result.
I now have one. Yay! More to come later. Got to play with my new toy now :).
No, not the animal kind of zoo... I caught the train into "The Valley", and went to The Zoo, a live music / dance / pool place. It's a pretty cool place to be, me thinks. I saw the last 1/2 hour of the "Brad McCarthy Group", being - saxaphone (tenor, I think, can't remember), bass, keyboard, drums; and some tracks having vocals (female) and another tenor sax. It was pretty cool music. Then Darren Percival, which was less "standard" jazz music. He's got a pretty good voice though. He sung with James Morrison for 7 years. The first piece (just him singing) sounded more "tribal" or something ???. There was 4 echos (1 second separation, or so) of his voice - it was very effective. The rest of the music from him was with either tenor sax, (electric) bass guitar and drums. Interesting music to listen to.
The way home was pretty dumb on my part: I left at around 11.30. Apparently (on Sunday) the last train on the Ferny Grove line is 10:53 pm on Sundays. Do'h. Taxi instead.
Well, another (full) year since my birth has ticked over today. I'd probably classify myself as mid twenties now. Boy, am I getting old :)
So far today I've done two of my favourite things - going to the beach and going orienteering. I got up at my usual time (6.30) and I was in the water at Kings beach (Caloundra - Sunshine Coast) at around 9.00. The water - was (initially) on the cool side - but fine once you were moving. The waves were pretty small, but catchable. There were some bigger dumpers as well: a few those tossed me around a bit when the wave bucked up over a sand bar... You only live once. Because of the light conditions you could stay out in a good position without using up too much energy (ie: enjoyable, not like last week).
After getting home, showeing the sand off, and talking to my little sister, I went out to orienteering. It was at Bank Street Reserve - near (in?) Alderley (pretty close - short drive). It's a very small area - about 600 m x 800 m (or so). The Red 3 course (difficult, longest) was just 3.2 km(!). However this was probably a good thing - as I didn't have as much energy as usual due to the trip to the beach.
For the rest of today - probably sleep this afternoon, plus a few jobs - hope to go out to a Jazz thing tonight. Will see.
Probably a sign that I've spent most of today infront of my computer doing camera research things. Sleep, glorious sleep now...
I've discovered something (that probably has been around for a while, but hey...) in the Firefox browser: you can middle click on a tab to remove it. Nice and easy when doing lots of surfing (instead of clicking on it then clicking the close button).
OK. I said a little while ago that I'm thinking of getting a digital camera. And I am. Here goes a big list of criteria that I'm thinking of. A lot of these criteria points are prompted from the great digital camera website: dpreview.com. The glossary page is very informative. I've written this entry up over the several days of research that I've been doing - there maybe slight inconsistancies.
I suppose the three big issues are: cost, megapixels (related to the maximum possible resolution) and zoom (how close up I can get to something). And, more importantly, why the hay am I thinking of getting this camera. Well, on a basic level, that's easy:
a) I've got a funky new job, and spend hardly any of the dosh that gets put in my bank account each fortnight
b) At the end of April each year I occasionally get myself something good
c) I think (not certain about this) that I would like a good digital camera. I have an old simple, film, point and click camera that I don't really like (don't know why..??) and haven't used in years (of the order of a decade or so!!)
So, I think that I want to get a simple, but decent digital camera. A problem is that I don't know how much printing of photos that I'll do. Or will I be primarily looking at the images on screen?? Not sure about this. But this is a problem: The usage of the images effects the requirement on the pixels. If you only ever need to view the image on screen / print small photos, then lower megapixels are required. I need to think about this. The other thing is that I like going walking in the bush, and if you want to take detailed photos high megapixels is better.
Ok, now the camera criteria (these are only in the order that they come to my head...):
1) Cost - well this is easy - as low as possible. As per usual, I'm a bit of a cheapskate, but I'm prepared to pay money for good stuff.
2) Megapixels - I've been thinking a lot about this. As far as I can tell, what matters here is what you are going to use the camera for. There seems to be two main reasons (relating to usage) why you would want higher amounts of pixels. Firstly, when viewing the image on screen, you want to be able to zoom in and look at (in detail) bits of a photo. A screen is usually a lot lower than print resolution (apparently around 72 or 96 ppi). So to see (in full) a 2048 x 1536 (3 MP) image on 1024 x 768 screen, I would be at a 50% zoom (in software). Secondly, when you want to print off a photo, the maximum size you can print the image (at photo quality or at slightly less) is dependant on the number of pixels. To get A4 photo quality images (at around 300 ppi), you need 4 MP or more. Well, 4 MP is the figure quoted by people in shops and others around; however, this probably is a "to the eye" measurement. If you're a freak, then theoretically, an A4 image (210 mm x 297 mm), at 300 ppi needs: pixels required = height (in pixels) * width (in pixels) = (297 mm / (25.4 in/mm) * 300 ppi) * (210 mm / (25.4 in/mm) * 300 ppi) = 8.7 megapixels.
This is all well and good. However, I'm not sure how relevant it is. I have been trying to figure out whether I will want this capability / how much I am prepared to pay for it. Looking at a couple of brands, there is a couple of hundred dollars per megapixel (very roughly). But whether I will use it or not is another issue. I figure that I'll be using the camera (on an amateur basis) for a few (call it 3 to 5) years. Per year, I think that the number of A4 print outs that I'll get will be very few. And of those, that require very high detail, the number will be minimal (at best). Most likely, I may have a couple of A4 prints that good quality is good enough. I doubt that I will have any need to get photo quality A4 images.
So this points me away from a 4 to a 3.2 megapixel camera. Getting a 4 MP seems like overkill.
I looked (on screen) at an image taken on a 4 MP camera (image is 2272 x 1704 pixels), with the same image resized down to 2048 x 1536 pixels. I couldn't see and significant differences when looking at individual blades of grass (when both zoomed in, at no zoom and zoomed out). Again, this points me away from 4 MP to 3.3 MP. So unless the camera shop has a 4 MP version of a 3.3 MP camera at virtually the same price as the 3.3 MP, then I'll be going for the 3.3 MP camera.
3) Zoom - Not sure about this. Some zoom capability is definitely required. I suppose the 3x that I am familiar with (on film cameras) is probably the basic requirement here. This (at least) is what is on most of the digital cameras that I have seen. It seems that, like the number of pixels, you pay more for more zoom, and that how much you should get is dependant on your (expected) usage of the feature. A few people have said that 10x is required for close up (of nature things, for example). I think that I would use 10x a bit, but probably not that much. Need to think about this some more...
4) Sensor type. There seem to be three main alternatives: JFET, CMOS, CCD. CMOS seem to have lower power requirements, but CCD are (at the moment) a better technology for digital cameras. Not sure I really care (??).
5) Digital zoom - is pretty much irrelevant to me. I can process images when they are on my computer. Having said that, it may be useful when a object is far away, but for some reason the quality of the image isn't so important. Not sure when this would occur?!?!
6) Uncompressed format. I'm not sure that I will want this. Part of me does - it means that you can get a better image (avoiding the lossy* jpeg compression). But this probably won't matter. *While jpeg is lossy, I'd be surprised if, in normal use, the loss was noticeable. Having written that, and going away to think about it a bit, I think that this is important - it seems to be an easy way of getting more detail out of an image.
7) Input / Output - I don't really care how fast / slow the download speeds onto my computer are. However, some digital cameras have AV outputs, enabling you to plug them into a TV and show people. That would be cool. As for input - hopefully it will be in the form of photons hitting the sensor :). But seriously, I know that some cameras enable you to transfer photos from your computer to the camera. Eg: the Canon Powershot A70 (which a guy I know has got) lets you do this - but only on images taken from the camera and not stuffed around with. Having this input method would probably be a nicety, but not significant.
8) Movies / Audio - I don't want a fully fledged digital video camera. I don't want, and don't anticipate any need to make (long) videos. However, the occasional (short) video clip would be good to capture - this seems to be provided by most digital cameras. Some cameras have the ability to take an audio memo of the shot. This would be helpful...
9) SLR (Single Lens Reflex) means that when I look through the viewfinder (not the LCD screen), I see the actual image that will be taken (ie: I look through the picture taking lens). I don't think this matters for me - I'll probably be using the LCD screen to take photos. SLR seems to be a feature of the more professional cameras (and too expensive for me). I'm more interested in more of a "point and shoot" camera.
10) Twisty LCD screen - I don't care about this. From talking to people at camera shops, they seem to be more of a hassle then they are actually worth; plus there's the risk of getting it snapped off or something if I were careless for some reason!??. A good thing about them is that they protect the LCD screen from being scratched, etc, when not in use. However - there are other ways to guard against this - a camera case(!).
11) Panorama shots - Some have the ability to take successive (eg: going from left to right) shots of a scene that are combined together to form a big picture. This apparently, can all be done in software, but some cameras have a portion of the last image taken on the LCD screen, making this process easier.
12) Full manual mode - this would be very desirable. I wouldn't mind learning a bit about photography - and being able to modify the aperture and shutter speed would be helpful.
13) External flash - not required for me.
14) AF (Autofocus) Illuminator - not sure this matters. Apparently, higher end cameras have the flash separated from the lens (being attached results in it being further away...) which reduces things like red eye. I'm not sure if this really matters to me.
Need food now; then more looking at particular camera models, then shopping (if I get time - fingers crossed)!
I've made some of the changes I was writing about previously.
I've stopped using the category browsing buttons for each category. I couldn't get them working properly. So they're gone from the individual entry pages. The main archive page contains at most 10 entries per category - much better. There are now three pages per category. I wanted to have a listing of just the entries for each category (to replace the listing that was on the archive page). Because of the removal of the category archive page, there was no longer a way of seeing each entry and it's neighbours in that category - without going back and forwards to the category list page. So I've included a page containing all entries per category. And the final page (per category) is just the good old excerpts page - no changes there. Theres a few more navigation buttons when cruising this site by category (maybe too many??), but I'll see how it goes for a while...
I went flat hunting earlier today. In the morning I drove (bludgy me) the 20 seconds down the road to the shops to get the paper. On the way to the shops I nearly had a prang... changing into the left lane when a car was speeding up on my back left. Anyhow, later on, I went to five places: conveniently numbered 12, 13, 14, 15 and yes, you guessed it: number 16. (I've checked out 11 places before today...).
The places I went to were in Gordon Park, Lutwyche and Kedron (all near to (mostly South of) the junction of Stafford and Gympie roads).
12 was advertised as needing some TLC. And it did - being more than a bit old and dingy. I don't want to have to make any repairs / maintenance to the place I get... so that one is off the list. It was overpriced, as well.
13 was a good place - owner occupied, in good condition, nice. But all the walls were yellow - not my thing. But a good place for me, and good value for money. Not sure about not catching the breeze though.
14 was good, except that there were no views of anything - fixed wooden shutters over the windows. Probably due to block out views of other apartments and the immediately adjacent shopping mall. It was a good price. But weird layout - go through the kitchen to get to the living area?
15 was a new place - had tiles almost everywhere - something that I like. Air conditioning in the main living area, and an inbuilt funky dishwasher, and expensive. Being a Canberra boy having ceiling fans or air conditioning is a plus.
16 was going for less than $200k. Dark, dank, smoky, next to a construction site. Nup.
My checklist of things to take into account (created the previous two weekends), whilst nerdy, was helpful. While whether or not the other people in a block of flats are owner occupants or are rents is a factor to take into consideration; whether or not the previous occupier of the flat for sale was the owner or a renter is important. Owner / occupiers have a greater interest to keep the place in good condition.
It's also good (for me) that I'm getting able to say "that's too expensive / that's a good price" for a particular place... Which is the whole point of the exercise: I don't need to move just yet, but when I do and a good place comes up I want to be able to move quickly. Ahh the rain: it's been drizzling off and on for most of the day - presumably this kept the numbers on the flat hunting circuit down a bit.
...I'm thinking of getting one.
I'm in the "research" phase of the whole excercise. Just looking around at all the specs that need to be considered, talking to people about their experiences, etc. If I haven't already talked to / emailed you and you've got a digital camera, then advice on the make / model you got and why you favoured that camera over any other would be appreciated.
Go was interesting last night. Had several good games - against someone 4 kyu above me (we needed to count to get the result - he won though) and against someone who was much more than that above me - 9 stones for me! We didn't need to count for that game... As expected, really. Anyhow a few things for my record:
* The 9x9 game is very different to the 19x19 game. There's a different balance between territory and influence.
* If you're being attacked at one end, instead of defending, try and attack at the other of your connected stones.
* Alternatively, play somewhere else on the board that forces your opponent to respond.
* Make sure a group of stones is alive (two eyes) before going on the attack - otherwise you risk loosing lots.
* Be prepared to give up one or a few stones if it means that you can save bigger areas.
* The importance of "sente" (initiative / impetus). If you need to make a defensive move make a forcing move first followed by the required defensive move. Try and keep sente and control the game - make your opponent respond to you (not vice-versa).
* Don't put yourself into self-atari!
* Make the "biggest" move.
I've got to get me a good book on Go...
There is a list people/groups that (wrongly) censor others / limit free speech in the "The Jefferson Muzzles" (reported by the The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression - a US organisation supporting free expression). Being in the US it's not directly relevant to me (here in Aussieland) but interesting none the less. I've heard that Australia doesn't actually have free speech as part of our constitution. Maybe wrong about that though...
Well I've been giving this computer a good bash today - thanks mostly to the previous post. Anyhow, the past few days have seemed to result in various groups of people dropping by for meals / coffees to catch up. S and J are up (S for a while, J since last weekend), so people who are in and around Brisbane wanted to catch up with them. They both leave tomorrow, spending a night (or two??) in country NSW (aunt's place) before arriving back in Canberra mid week. It's been good to see them again. For some strange reason I haven't had the need to do a clothes wash in a while... Another strange occurance is that I haven't cooked a meal in a while either... (ta).
We had a pretty nice lunch today - prawns and crab. Yum. Also went to the dog beach at Nudgee in the afternoon - the dogs had a great time, although Holly doesn't know how to swim yet... She's recovering from the past week - she became dehydrated and lost a bit of weight. Last Wednesday I went to Go again - I enjoyed it, although Wednesday (beginner) nights mostly have people younger than me... a bit weird. But who cares about that. I hadn't been for the previous three weeks - busy with big sister's leg, parents, and sick/tired, etc.
Yesterday (and last Saturday as well) I went around with mum to some apartments that are being sold. I'm considering whether or not I should buy a place (unit / flat / townhouse) for either me to live in, or to rent out as an "investment property". I figure that I'll be in Brisbane for at least 3 or 4 years, so I should at least consider the possibility. I'm initially just getting a feel for what money buys, what I want and what (bad aspects) to look out for. It was good going around to places with an "old hand" - who knew a few tricks or too and things to look out for. I've also now got a criteria to which I'll be looking over places. Much better than just looking around at the place - it will focus my examination of the places and provide a more objective way of comparing places.
Over the past little while I have been doing a few changes to the way data is stored at the back end for the extra bits of this site - in particular "links" and "about". Originally this site was completely xhtml compliant, but as it grew it got more and more problems with it. It was initially structured so that the about and link sections were just hard coded html and text in a Movable type template. I moved away from this as it is relatively hard and messy to update. So: both of these sections were given their own blog: each of the sections of the page are categories with the subcategories being individual entries. While the content is fairly static it is much easier to update the content if I need to. When I made this change I didn't do it properly: and broke compliance on a whole lot of bits of the site.
It's now (almost all) fixed up now. There's still one problem in relation to xhtml compliance. I think it's to do with my installation of Movable Type. When there is a comment posted to an entry, then the text "Posted by: [whoever] at [whenever]" is included below the comment. The reference to the person is a redirection link, eg: http://www.kjp.id.au/movabletype/mt-comments.cgi?__mode=red&id=8. However this seems to be breaking the xhtml standard, as the & symbol is "&", and not "&-a-m-p-;". It would seem to be a problem with my installation of MT. I'm pretty sure that I've got version 2.661 installed, but I could have stuffed it up somehow and got 2.66, or an earlier version???? Very unsure about this. I've just checked the installation with 2.661 and the files seem all there, similar, etc. I'll probably reinstall MT sometime, or maybe just wait until version 3.0 comes out. Whenever that will be???.
At this point I probably should add the fact that to keep track of the validity of a whole bunch of pages I wrote a perl plugin. It checks a list of pages against the W3C Validation service. It does this by checking the url http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=[url of page to check] for the existance of the "<h2 id="result" class="valid">" in the returned html. There are alternative ways / plugins of checking (x)html, some include:
* MTW3CValidator by Brandon Fuller. With this you put tags at the start and end of your template, and then show at, say the botttom of the page, the validity of the page. This is a good idea as it means that all of the pages will be checked when they are updated. However, this isn't what I wanted - as I wanted to display the information all on the one page (as a summary) not on each of the individual pages (don't want to clutter up each of the pages, etc).
* There's a way of getting the W3C Validator to return xml instead of html can be used, but I couldn't get it working correctly. Theres a quick how to for this method here.
Some pros and (mostly!) cons with this plugin:
pros:
* It makes it easy to determine which pages are out of (x)html compliance
cons:
* While I have a reasonble IT background, I have had no significant experience with perl (just a few text processing scripts for my own use), and no experience with MT plugins. As a result, the code probably isn't as efficient as it could be. If you do want to use it (see below) then make that you check out the code for yourself.
* Because it takes a long time to check all of the pages listed, it seriously slows down the MT rebuild process. As a result, it is best if it is not included in the list of templates to rebuild, as it will slow down posting and commenting to your website. This means that it needs to be rebuilt by itself - when prompted to by the user. I might try and use mt-rebuild - a script that runs on your server at a given time that updates all or particular templates within a MT installation. I may use it to run the validation script once a day.
* A list of the files to update is hardcoded into the script. This could be improved by having the data stored elsewhere, to enable it to more easily include additional files.
Everyone out there in internet land is free to use this plugin if you want, but: be aware of the cons with using this plugin (most notably my lack of perl experience) - ie: use at your own risk (make sure you have backups!); and please comment back to this page if you do use it (ie: give me credit). If you've got any improvements / suggestions, then please let me know on this page. Cheers. You can download the plugin here, or see it in action here [Page deleted, link removed]. The Movable Type template code that is required is simply: "<MTcheckHTML />" (without the quotes) - easy! I haven't (and don't plan to) put it up on the MT plugins page because of the significant number of issues with it.
Now, after all that validation stuff, there are still a few more things to do to this website:
1) Search engine cache.
When a search engine (both Google and Yahoo do this) update their cache of my website, the cached version does not display correctly. See, for example, Google's cache of the front page of my website. The five navigation buttons appear within the Google messages at the top of the page. This is because they use an absolute position from the top of the page. While the number of people looking at the cached version of this website is going to be small (if any...), I probably should to fix this.
2) Category browsing.
Currently on each of the individual archive pages (for each entry) there are back and forward buttons for the previous and next entries (as ordered by the date entered). There are also back and forward buttons for the previous and next entries in the category(ies) that the entry has been assigned to. This functionality is available by using the PreviousNextInCategory plugin. However, there's a couple of problems with it.
The first problem, as mentioned on the plugin's page, is that the navigation only works with primary categories. This means that if you have multiple categories assigned to an entry, then the previous or next link for the non-primary category will result in the wrong entry being displayed (ie: bad). There's probably a way around this. But I couldn't be bothered...
The other problem is that it does not update the previous entry within the category. When you post an entry to Movable Type, it automatically rebuilds the previous and next entries. This means that any navigation buttons to the previous or next entry will be correct. However, this does not apply to previous entries in the same category that are not the previous (chronological) entry. This means that the category navigation buttons don't get updated as required (unless a complete rebuild of the website takes place).
So I'm going to stop using the plugin and modify my individual entry archive pages so that they do not buttons that enable navigation within a given category.
Actually, on second thoughts, If I get the system to rebuild the website regularily (eg: daily, see above), I may put a bit of time to try and get the plugin to work correctly (ie: using the correct category when using category navigation buttons).
3) Clean up archive section
The archive page of this website is getting bloated and too full for my liking. I don't want to list all of my entries on the one page. It was ok when I was just starting out, but now that I've got 47 entries in the "Life" category I want to cut it down a bit. I'll probably change it so that only the 10 most recent entries per category are listed. Also, I'll probably add a page per category that contains just a listing of entries for that category and a page per category containing either excerpts or the full entries.
Phew. What a post.
I've just discovered 4ZZZ, an alternative radio station in Brisbane, 102.1 FM. There's some really cool jazz on at the moment. I'll be back next Sunday morning!
The results for the Brisbane City Council Lord Mayor and Wardens was announced. Well this is pretty old news (election held on 27/03/2004): Tim Quinn (the previous mayor - Labor) got the boot (and Newman (Liberal) got in) - but the (17:9) majority of the council is Labor. The sitting councillor for Enoggera - Ann Bennison (Labor) - kept her position. However, there was a swing (12%) against her to the Greens - the Liberal vote was slightly down. This area seems to be fairly safe Labor territory - at least both the state and local level: Green preferences would mostly go to Labor.
There's an interesting article here (NYTimes: registration required) that discusses the proving of mathematical theorems using computers as an integral part of the proof. The main example given is the problem of finding the most efficient way to pack spheres. Apparently its been recently solved with extensive use of computational methods: it turns out the most efficient way is to stack them in a pyramid. Does this constitute an actual proof when the "proof" itself can not be checked by humans (too many and too complicated calculations to be checked in a realistic timeframe)? It would seem that the strength of such a proof is weaker than other (non-computational) proofs. For the problem in question the proof has been split into two parts - pure and computational parts - and these have been submitted to separate journals. It will be interesting to see whether these kinds of proofs will be accepted in the future, and whether computers will discover new theorems / proofs.
What a great title. Pity it has nothing to do with this post. :)
As it turns out my entry for the TinyRadio contest was too late. Probably a good thing. My robots would have been very large (ie: double in size) (and hence harder to score highly) when compared to the winner. Dinner was at the club, with the four of us (mum, dad, and W), and J of skydiving fame. Good stuff.
Did a few different things today. Dad is up for a week or so. In the morning we went to Mount Coot-tha - a prominent feature of the Brisbane skyline. Initially we went to the lookout / summit area - nice views - as expected. Then went on the "J C Slaughter" track - and the Aboriginal art loop - a total of about 5 km. It was a pretty good, easy and fairly scenic walk.
In the early afternoon I finished my hack-job on my entries to yet another "Tiny" Robotbattle contest. This event ("TinyRadio") was a radio event (but with no formal teams), where the final score was calculated from the raw score and the size of the robot. I've only put in a little amount of time on my entrants: and have a few unimplemented alternative (better?) strategies. Ah well. Also, I'm not certain that I got my entries in on time... Ooops. So we'll see what happens.
Afterwards there was the usual dog walk around the local park. Red is taking to his new "Kong" (the old one ended in multiple pieces...).
A guy at work pointed out this story about a person who has ridden her motorbike through the Chernobyl dead zone (the region near the nuclear disaster in 1986). It's a pretty interesting story, interesting history with good photos.
There's an interesting article here about the differences in height between populations of people. Apparently Americans lose height (when compared to Northern Europeans) during the infancy and teenage years.
Apart from doing some minor changes to this website, I haven't been very active here recently. This is mostly due to being sick(ish) / tired and just not feeling like it. Ohh well, it happens, as they say.