January 20, 2010 by vk
Finally replaced battery charger for my BLS-1 Olympus batteries. The old one was lost by the friends of mine somewhere in Spain. The new one is a quite interesting thingy – the universal battery charger made by Enkatsu (I have used some Enkatsu LiIon batteries and they are very good, sometimes even better than original branded ones).
The universality of this charger works pretty simple. All you need is a charger base that is universal and an “optionally required” plate that is designed to fit your particular type of batteries. It makes chances to find needed charger in the next door retail outlet much fattier because it’s easier for retailer to keep in stock a pile of cheap and relatively small plates for almost any camera brand than a designated chargers.
For example, you can grab a Delkin universal charger at Amazon and pick any of a dozen+ plates to fit your DSLR or EVIL or camcorder battery. And if you have two or more different types of LiIon batteries to work with, you can save some space in you luggage by bringing just one charger and a different plates for you stuff.
Tags: gadgets
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January 15, 2010 by vk
I think I should start with the statement that the LG GW300 is not anything like that nice Google Nexus One or Motorola Droid smartphones that everyone are buzzing about. GW300 is a pretty simple (comparatively) QWERTY mobile handset without any fancy 3G, online applications repository and GPS capabilities. Mobile phone on a budget, that’s it.
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Tags: gadgets
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January 12, 2010 by vk
So, the first of Samsung NX has just hatched. With a crack and pop sounds a dozens of hands-on previews have emerged. Most of them are just “I squeezed this lil thingy at the show, can’t post any pics though”. But some of them are real preproduction (beta firmware) NX10 previews.
What deserves the careful attention? First of all, the samples. There are not so much of them yet. Korean 1, 2 and 3. Next should be preview from DPreview and theirs own samples gallery. And the last but not least – Samsung NX10 vs. Panasong GF1 noise comparison here.
What’s great about Samsung NX10? Well, not much actually. This is the only APS-C EVIL camera on a horizon yet. It has a nice looking simple and sturdy body (yet not too compact and way too much DSLR-like). It has a normal pancake lens in a roadmap, and it will hit the shelves simultaneously with the first body. Colors are very “Pentaxian”. The several years of working with Pentax gave Samsung a good idea how natural colors should look like.
The rest little things are little. The picture a way too samsungish in terms of very aggressive noise reduction algorithms that are killing too much details. Also, the rumored price of $699 is a little too much for an entry-level EVIL camera, though it’s noticeably cheaper than any of Olympus and Panasonic Micro Four Thirds cameras.
The good news is that Samsung – unlike Olympus – is dropping their DSLR operations. I guess it wasn’t a hard decision since all they did was just copying Pentax cameras and rebranding Pentax lenses. So now Samsung will concentrate all digital imaging division efforts on NX system and the fruits of this efforts are promising to be really fascinating.
Tags: cameras
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December 28, 2009 by vk
In his blockbuster quintessence of Hollywood leftism and romantic primitivism – Avatar – James Cameron shows the whole planet population as les bon sauvages – the noble savages. A bunch of tree huggers who even killing their food ethically, with apologies to the victim, though ex post facto.
Well, the Bon Sauvage and the romantic primitivism are as old as our civilization. In any times there will be rather naive people who think that progress, social evolution and civilization itself are killing something good, naturally noble and spiritual in us. So James Cameron is not the only one and not the last one. Le mythe du bon sauvage will be rewritten many times in the future. But lets get back to Avatar.
In the movie there is a scene when Le Mythe is fading for a second and indigenous bloodthirsty nature reveals itself. In the moment when Neytiri is telling about Na’vi social traditions we are getting one important message: only those who successfully accomplished a set of pretty tough exams can become a member of Na’vi society. The fate of failed ones is not uttered but rather transparent. At that moment we’ve seen cute black bald kittehs. We know who cares about that les miserables in the jungle by night.
There are no cripples among the Na’vi, even their elders are not so old and quite lively. And the Humans as a contrast: movie’s main character is a cripple with both legs paralyzed, Sigourney Weaver’s nerd team are brainiac pussies who will never pass the Na’vi exams. On Pandora their natural role is to be a helpless food for wild animals.
One of the most important things that differs civilized men from indigenous savages is how the society treats its failed members: cripples, criminals, bankrupts.
Tags: movies, people
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December 25, 2009 by vk
RT.COM or formerly RussiaToday.com – Russian most powerful propaganda machine aimed outside of the country. Officially it’s registered to Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”. Obviously, this “autonomous” organisation is affiliated to largest Russian TV network which is the main propaganda power for the bears on unicycles inside the country.
RT.COM commercial says Obama’s nuclear threat is greater than that from Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who are a friend of Russia.
In the early February 2009 RussiaToday.com (or ANO “TV-Novosti”) have bought RT.TV domain name for a whopping $62,500 from a private cybersquatter John van den Berg. Such a big price for a national TLD made the deal the biggest one in the .TV top-level sector in the Q1 2009.
Approximately in the same time RussiaToday bought RT.COM domain name and changed its brandname to a trendy short RT.COM. This deal was not covered in the domain sales media, and the price of purchase wasn’t disclosed. But it can be figured out pretty easily. Short .COM domain names are usually at least ten times more expensive than .NET of the same length. In 2009 not so phonetically pleasing two letter .NET domains were traded for about $150,000.
RT.COM – registered by the first cybersquatters back in 1991 is a great value today. Abbrevations.com returns 88 results for RT. So I think TV-Novosti paid at least $3,000,000 for RT.COM (perhaps, much more). Well, not a sacrifice for an oil-buffed country which have spent on its English language heavy artillery of propaganda at least $90M (perhaps, much more) in the first (2005) year of operation, according to Wikipedia.
Tags: shmolitics, Web 2.0
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December 15, 2009 by vk
Anticonsumerists, like all socialists in general, are racists. They tell us that things made by Chinese are lower in quality than those made by whites. They are opposing the moving assembly lines and manufactures to the developing countries to prevent such countries from developing and starve the population out.
If they tell you do not buy that brand new Nike boots but send your money to Africa instead, they tell you to take that bowl of ramen out of the shaky tired hands of Chinese or Honduran or whoever and pour some Kalashnikov cartridges into the greedy hands of Somalian warlord.
Anticonsumerists love to play with the obvious ideas like why do you need to wait till particular date to make a gift or something special for your significant someone. But they won’t tell it straight, they will blame you buying gifts for your wealthy beloved ones instead. That’s their point – to make you feel guilty – to gain some control over you.
And making you guilty is not the only strategy. They have another ace up their sleeves – flattery: they call you rich. Do you live on a paycheck to paycheck budget? Oh, you are rich, you are so freaking wealthy, because a lot of folks over there somewhere got no paychecks at all.
Actually, most of the really rich people are not anticonsumerists. They do not prey on money or goods, but they won’t lose a chance to buy a good thing for a good price. And this is quite logical. What more interesting – the really poor people are not anticonsumerists too. They know the price of money and they know what exactly they need.
Who’s that anticonsumerists though? Socialist fatasses with a fat paycheck or the grant driven slackers or the students on a welfare – just draw a picture of Michael Moore – he is one hell of a quintessence.
Tags: shmolitics
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December 10, 2009 by vk
A couple of days ago I forgot to check the pockets of my jeans before laundry. The weather was slushy all Autumn so I set up my washing machine for super wash at 90 Celsius with an extra rinsing. Two and a half hours later I took out perfectly clean jeans and discovered my keys and my flash drive in the machine’s drum.
A cheap 2Gb flash drive was working fine for me for more than two years. It was branded like A-data MyFlash, but I have never seen another A-data products anywhere. So I left it on a table to dry up and on a next day tried to stick it into USB port. And it worked! I have made a full backup with no errors.
Tags: gadgets
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