Review @ 1337 IT

I just won a Sigma DL 100-300mm 4.5-6.7 Lens on Ebay. I got it for less than half the going rate. “Why?” you may ask. In a sombre tone I would reply with just one word, “Fungus”.

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So I was shopping in Aldi. I get up to the counter and see they have a 4 Pack of 2500mAH NIMH batteries for $9.99…….

Now I’ve dabbled with cheap Chinese batteries before. At $9.99 for a 4 Pack they were cheap, but not suspiciously so. Also Aldi has a very liberal returns policy. On top of that my battery review seems very popular and above all, I needed more batteries. I took my chances and dropped a pack on the conveyor.

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So I was browsing around a giant bookshop on DrVJ’s birthday and I saw a whole section of 1000 Things to do before you die, 1000 Foods to Eat, 1000 Movies to See.

“nOObs” I scoffed to myself. Where’s the 1337 things to do before you die book? Read more »

So I went away with friends for Australia day. I came up with the idea that it might be cool to take a projector along with the Xbox 360, Wii, PS3 and laptop full of movies that will be going. I check out what’s on EBay and find I’m not overly impressed with the specification:price ratio. Sadly I mentioned in an email that I would try to get my hands on a projector and my friends got very enthusiastic. I was locked in. Read more »

I made up a little gallery for myself. So far it’s only got a few pics from my recent weekend away at Patonga.

My current desktop image is this little guy.

http://pictures.1337it.com if you want to check it out.

All my goodies have arrived from EBay. In the end I got myself a proper light tent (75cm³), a remote shutter release, a 3-Way spirit level flash attachment and a “GorillaPod” style tripod (small).

3-Way Flash Mount Spirit Level:

While it looks bad arse, I haven’t found much use for it yet - I imagine it will be handy for portrait shots or landscape shots where the horizon might embarrass me if I’m not perfectly horizontal while shooting. Obviously completely useless without a tripod, but if you have a tripod and want one, I say go the 3 way since it will cover you for portrait mode shots as well. Cheap ($10AU shipped), looks very cool on or off the camera, fun to play with, choking hazard for small children. Recommended.

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While DrVJ’s main present of the Pentax K200D has gotten a lot of coverage my supplementary Christmas gift of a nice gaming headset has had none.

Today, we rectify this.

Sennheiser PC 350 Gaming Headset:

Well it’s sturdy, comfortable and works. Good start. Inline volume control for the headphones. Inline mute switch for the mic. Soft padding on the ear cups and the head band. Thick, solid plastic for the boom mic. Reasonably thick cable. All good.

Since they’re closed headphones they sound good with solid bass. They block out most outside noises and don’t let more than a whisper sneak out around the seals even at (very) high volume levels. Excellent for games (my CS and TF skills have definitely gone up). They also sound great for music, loud or soft, and general computer use such as movies, TV etc.

Their only real weaknesses are the fact that they are closed headphones and the price. Virtually useless in a co-operative environment as you can’t hear your buddies. Still this is only an issue with co-operative setups at LAN events, which is a reasonably small portion of gaming, if they were open they would have many more drawbacks. The price on the other hand is a bit different. If you’re gainfully employed or you have a generous partner, they can be found for anywhere between $200AU-$300AU. If you’re a kid or on a budget just grab a cheap headset and be done with it - One caveat. I would avoid Logitech headsets. As much as I like their keyboards (G15) and their mice (G7) their headsets have always been very flimsy. Every set I’ve ever owned I have broken in some way.

If you’ve got the cash, get some.

Now DrVJ loves books. It seems books are her version of a shoe fetish.

Every time she goes out she comes back with more of the things. She’s even admitted to owning 3 copies of the same book at times. The girl is a freak.

Now me, I’m not a big fan of books for entertainment. I love knowledge and as such am happy to read non-fiction, manuals and instruction booklets. I don’t however, read for fun. I’m a 21st century digital boy and as such have a multitude of ways to enjoy myself that don’t involve reading. I also think books tend to be a great waste of space and resources.  Since a whole library can fit on a single consumer grade hard drive now, I think it’s time libraries were relegated to museums and history.

My girlfriend does not concur. As such I salvaged and modded a sweet set of bookshelves that would hold every book she owns. My thinking was that at least they’d take up less space and maybe seeing them all in one place would get the point across that she has enough. Wrong. It merely seems to have encouraged her.

Now I get to wake screaming to this sight ever morning and yes, that’s another smaller bookshelf to the left just waiting for more books.

It’s only a matter of time before it assimilates me and then the world.

Now it might seem harsh to blame my girlfriend when things break, she doesn’t exactly have a good track record in this department. She has managed to destroy so many things in the time we’ve been together (most notably my sanity). Generally I don’t care about these things - I love her and I chalk it up to the cost of doing business. Some things however, are more painful to lose than others:

1988 Skyline GTS SVD: This was my first decent car and while I did manage to crash it several times it was always repairable - DrVJ has one crash (probably not her fault) - total write off. Had I been in the passenger seat I’d probably be dead. I take solace in the fact that it did a good job of protecting her (and got up on two wheels - a feat I never managed). The other, earlier incident that springs to mind was when I *was* a passenger and she was driving. Reverse parking into a spot in a shopping centre car park, she came to rest with the back bumper on a sign. I said nothing. Deciding she wasn’t quite in the parking spot far enough she let the car roll forward a bit then reversed into the sign post *again*. At this point I mentioned that she was actually hitting a pole - and I’m the arsehole! Now while this car wasn’t the most exciting or newest thing on the road it was a great (and fast) car and Nissan only ever released 200, 20 years ago, so it’s not like I can just get another one.

R.I.P.

1988 Honda NSR250: A very sweet (and illegal) bike I rode for the duration of my Ls and Ps on my motorbike license. It did 0-100 as fast as an R1 at the time (although probably not with me on it). DrVJ runs it into a gutter, bending the front rim and fuel tank. I ended up selling it after it gave me a 3 month “License Vacation” and I couldn’t be bothered fixing and registering a bike I couldn’t ride. The problem with bikes that can do 100km/h in about 3 seconds is that you tend to spend a lot of time doing 100km/h, even in 50 zones.

I hope you’re out there making someone happy!

Now admittedly these things happened a few years ago now. As I said before, I tune out all the little things she destroys now. Two recent examples have been in my current car. Both times I have lent my car to her in the past year (while her car was being serviced or more correctly “unfucked”). First time she gets a flat tyre, second time she breaks a windscreen. Both times on a motorway and Sydney, we’re not talking dirt tracks here people.

She also breaks her own stuff. The radio in her car likes to mysteriously turn on at max volume when you start the car on cold quiet mornings, and there’s been a disc stuck in the CD player for over a year now. She also merely needs to park her car and walk away to have people repeatedly remove and deposit paint on the rear driver’s side wheel arch. Every other week there’s a new scrape there and if I didn’t know that she’s actually an excellent driver and parker I’d just blame her.

She can break any form of electronics just by turning it on. She tells stories of 4 car pileups happening in merging lanes as she drives past (also not her fault). She is Girlfriend: Ruiner of Worlds and I wouldn’t trade her for anything.

Edit: She also told me that the bench power supply in my header pic should be made to say “1337″ for the photo. I had to tell her that it maxed out at 30V and 20A and if I made it say “1337″ it would catch fire.

Within a few days of receiving my Pentax K200D DSLR I had built a light box (which worked well), ordered a proper light tent, remote shutter release and various other bits and bobs for my camera from EBay. Shortly after that I felt the need to get my hands on some new and interesting “glass”.

Knowing my dear old Dad was himself a bit a keen photographer back in the day I paid him a visit and raided his stash of old goodies. They may not have been new and interesting, but they were certainly interesting.

I came away with 3 very nice manual lenses, a 2x Teleconverter and a tripod.

The lenses are a Vivitar 28mm, a Richoh 135mm and a Tokina 300mm. Both the Vivitar and Ricoh have apertures that open to 2.8 which I found pretty interesting considering the fully automatic and *not* 30 year old DA lens that came with my Pentax will only go to 3.5 @ 18mm - move the zoom a touch and it stops down to 4.0 then 4.5 and ultimately 5.6 at 55mm. Since my Pentax has a a sensor that is 2/3 of the 35mm film standard these lenses are designed for I have to multiply their focal length by 1.5 to get their 35mm equivalent value when used on my camera. They become 42 mm, 205mm and 450mm lenses. Seems everything is bigger in the future. I worked out the focal length equivalents to try and work out where my new manual lenses slotted in compared to the 18-55mm zoom lens the camera came with. Of course after I did the research and got the figures I found that the lens on my camera really is 18-55mm and not marked as a 35mm equivalent. It does of course make sense because focal length is merely the distance from the lens to the sensor, but it means DSLRs with different sized sensors will produce different results when coupled to the same lens

The 28mm, while a very nice (and fast) lens, sits in the middle of the range of my nice new auto lens so  I don’t think it will get a lot of use. The 135mm and 300mm however are awesome. I went out to Parramatta Park yesterday shooting with my good friend Dr Ax0r. The 300mm lens barely left the camera, and when it did, it went straight back on. We were mainly shooting birds, but also the odd person if they did something interesting.

The 300mm was the hot favourite until we headed to Lake Parramatta and tried to take some landscape shots. At this point we realised just how much zoom we were playing with. We dropped the 18-55mm back on, zoomed it out and popped a couple of shots before heading home to check out the shots and play Pixel Junk: Monsters (until 3am - damn).

Some of the better shots below - all were taken with the 300mm Tokina except the landscape which was the 18-55mm Pentax DA (@ 35mm).