I took the Nerd Quiz and scored pretty high.

6% scored higher (more nerdy), and
94% scored lower (less nerdy).

What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:

Supreme Nerd. Apply for a professorship at MIT now!!!.

I annihilated most everyone in my office except Mike who was just 1% less nerdy than I.

What a complete waste of time

On Friday night my company had our annual Christmas party. The venue this year was the Chop House which I gather is a very upscale and expensive steak joint. In the past we would always have a separate room for just our company so we could mingle. Unfortunately at the Chop House we were just stuck between the doors and the bar and it was absolutely packed. We had a constant stream of regular patrons cutting through our group and it was so loud you pretty much had to shout at each other. For the dinner we were just a bunch of tables in the main restaurant. So while the food was excellent a bit more privacy would have been great. Oh well.

On Saturday, Mike had organized a trip to the Broken Plate (a greek restaurant in Crowfoot) for the University bunch. Wow. Usually Anji and I keep our restaurant bills under $25 for the both of us. This evening we were $50 with no drinks or appetizers. Ouch. On the plus side it was a fantastic meal, great company and great venue (although a tad loud). Part way through the meal they had live dancing, and periodically throughout the evening lucky guests would get to smash plates against the bar. Probably not a place we’ll go often ($$) but definately a nice place to go once in a while. I love greek food.

Things seem to have deteriorated lately. Even though Anji and I try and stagger our naps at night (so we can wake each other up) we are finding that somehow we both fall asleep and we end up sleeping for 3 or 4 hours at a time. We are still sleeping much less than 3 hours a day but not as little as I would like. I think part of the problem is that I’m missing several naps during the day and usually late for my evening one. Hopefully after Christmas I’ll be able to stick to a schedule a bit more. Anji’s planning on stopping after Christmas. My todo list is way to big for that.

Zoo Lights 031

Originally uploaded by charsplat.

Yesterday evening we went to ZooLights at the Calgary Zoo. It was a beautiful evening and quite an enjoyable event. Not nearly as packed as I thought it would be.

I brought along our digicam and took over 230 photos (all without a tripod, 2 were set down, the rest handheld or airborne). I was just having fun trying for neat light trail shots. Of the 230 there are maybe a couple that are any good but that’s OK. I had fun and that’s what’s really important.

I even tried my hand at camera tossing which is basically sticking your camera on long exposure and chucking it. I wimped out and held the strap but I got some neat stuff. Ha. Lets see you DSLR people do that

You can see my favorites from the event here.

Depth of Field

Originally uploaded by charsplat.

This is my entry for photofriday. The theme is “Depth of Field”.

While out Christmas tree “hunting” I took a few close-ups of various branches and I rather like this one.

Frost 021

Originally uploaded by charsplat.

We’ve had some beautiful frost on everything last night and today. After lunch I headed out to the back yard and shot a few frames on my digicam. This one is also a favorite.

It’s been a few years since I’ve checked in on the X server package with cygwin. Sweet! It now supports rootless mode so X windows can mix freely with my Windows desktop. This is great!

I’ve found it works out nicely to install cygwin and then add the c:\cygwin\usr\x11\bin\startxwin.bat script to my system startup folder. I edited the script to have it stop running an xterm on startup. Now when I connect to my Linux hosts I can run xapps and they just work. Wonderful! Thank you cygwin.

Cygwin Installer

I’m kind of drooling over digicams these days. I’m jelous of Mike and his Canon Rebel XT. I’d love to be able to take photos without the tremendous cost of film and processing. I’m not sure I’m really in a position to buy one right now but a guy can look can’t he

Some of my thoughts on what I’m looking for:

1. I would like to not have to carry a backpack full of lenses nor be continually looking to buy a bigger, faster, zoomier lens. The superzoom prosumer type cameras are very appealing in this respect. I can do landscapes, telephotos, macro, etc all in one package.
2. I do a lot of longish exposure shots in the 8-30sec range. I would like something that can do this with reasonable sharpness and minimal noise. Also bulb mode and a cable release would be excellent.
3. RAW to avoid JPEG artifacts
4. Decent macro performance for flowers, etc. Attachments for closer focusing?
5. Wide angle. The wider the better. I like landscapes and the perspective wide angle lenses give!
6. Hot shoe for external flash
7. Low shutter lag!
8. Manual focusing / Manual zoom
9. Threaded lens to take polarizer + other filters

This post will kind of be my scratch pad as I’m investigating the different options. If anyone has any thoughts or experience with any please post your thoughts too.

The cameras I’ve been looking are:

Fuji Finepix S9000

• Fixed lens. 28mm (f2.8) to 300mm (f4.9) equiv.
• $850 locally
• SLR-like features: takes manual cable release, good controls
• ISO 80 – 1600
• Max exposure = 30sec. Bulb.
• Fairly noisy in low light. Noise correction very destructive.
• 9mp
• Manual Focus with full crop focus helper
• Manual Zoom
• Hot shoe + PC sync

Panasonic Lumix FZ-30

• Fixed lens. 35mm (f2.8) to 420mm (f3.7)
• Iso 80 – 400. Noisy on 400
• 60 sec max exposure. No bulb
• No standard cable release
• Poor lowlight. Bad noise reduction
• $850 locally
• Leica glass!!!
• Image Stabilization!!
• Manual Focus with full crop focus helper
• Manual Zoom
• Hot Shoe
• High Quality 3rd party wide angle attachments an option and can provide 24mm equiv.

Olympus E-500

• SLR. Kit comes with two lenses. 14-45mm F3.5-5.6 and a 40-150mm F3.5-4.5 (2x crop factor gives 28mm to 300mm 35mm equiv)
• Available in kit for $1200 locally
• 8min bulb. lowish noise.
• Poor view finder
• I wouldn’t invest in many/any more lenses. I don’t trust this mount to be available for long. Also limited 3rd party support (ie. no Tamron and Sigma).

Kyle and I are heading over to Saneal camera at lunch today to take a peak at some of these guys. I’d love to try out the Fuji. It’s sounding most likely for me at the moment.

To be continued.

Update: Kyle, Mike and I hit Saneal at lunch and spoke with them a bit about cameras. They had lots of good things to say about the Lumix. They had much better things to say about the Olympus. They didn’t have anything good to say about the Fuji.

They opened a Lumix box for us to poke at the camera. Unfortunately they didn’t have a battery so we couldn’t try anything out. It certainly felt nice in the hand.

The Olympus E-500 was very nice and they had nothing but good things to say about it, the build quality and the lenses. For an extra $350 it’s sure a lot more camera. Apparently the lenses are fantastic (they claim sharper than the best Leicas). Certainly it felt nice and was responsive. I’m not crazy about all the lenses again. I’d have the two plus need another macro lens to get close to what the panasonic provides.

Painting with Light 2

Originally uploaded by charsplat.

Last night Mike, Wes and I hit Nose Hill park to take some moon / star trails pictures.

When we got there we were rather suprised by how bright the sky was. I didn’t end up taking any shots of the moon or stars and pretty much just took some fun shots like this one with Wes.

I definately will try star trails sometime but I’ll wait until the sky is darker (also maybe if Anji lets me buy a new digicam.. hint hint

All in all it was very cold but fun. Mike ended up with some pretty great shots.

Tool Cabinet 3

Originally uploaded by charsplat.

This morning I finished a project I’ve been working on for a couple nights (while you suckers were all sleeping . It’s a rollable work surface / tool storage unit. I cheaped out and used MDF instead of plywood so I’m a little worried the doors will come loose. The top surface is two layers of 5/8 MDF covered with a yellowy arborite. The shelves are adjustable. The whole thing is on largish castors so I can position it where I want it in the garage. For storage it fits perfectly under my work bench.

I love that I actually have the time now to build things like this!