Settled on the FinePix F30
After much consternation, I ordered the Fuji FinePix F30 from Amazon for ~$340. I could’ve gotten it a few bucks cheaper elsewhere, but shipping is free (or, more precisely, paid for already) w/ my Amazon Prime account, and Amazon has a more favorable return policy than most other places.
Though I continue to have reservations about the overall quality of the F30, the high-sensitivity, low-noise Super CCD sensor is compelling enough to suck up my doubts and move on. There’s something of an inheritance battle among Rebecca and Bob for my Z750, but that’s not really my problem.
Once I get it I’ll take some test shots and report back.
Or maybe the FinePix F30…
Having just declared my devotion to the Canon SD700 IS, I’m already having cold feet. I’ve just learned that Fujifilm has a mediocre ultra-compact they call the FinePix F30, which is pretty middling but for one striking feature: a Super CCD sensor that delivers less noise at ISO 1600 than my Z750 does at ISO 400, and not-entirely-useless photos at an amazing ISO 3200. So, while the SD 700 IS has active image stabilization to reduce low-light blur due to camera shake, the F30 actually has significantly higher sensitivity such that higher shutter speeds are available in low light, not only reducing camera shake but also subject motion blur.
So now I’m presented with a dreadful choice: Get the FinePix F30 which will work great in low-light but is an all-around mediocre camera, or get the SD700 IS which will kick ass at everything it does but still leave me with tons of would-be-a-great-picture-but-for-the-blur shots. Dammit, I can’t decide!
Tired of the Casio Exilim EX-Z750
I’ve previously opined on my Casio Exilim EX-Z750 ultra-compact digital camera, which I thought well enough of to bring to Iraq for use recording my experiences there. However, in part due to my experiences with it there, and subsequent to my return, I’m growing increasingly weary of its limitations.
First, it simply cannot produce the clarity and rich color saturation of my previous camera, the Canon PowerShot SD-60. I expected this going in, of course; the SD 60 is easily twice the size of the Z750, and is a Canon to boot. However, I’m surprised how much this grates on me as time and time again I download my shots only to discover poor sharpness and washed-out colors. Post-processing in Photoshop certainly improves things, but I never had to post-process my SD60 shots for sharpness.
Second, low-light performance is shit. I’ve downloaded a couple of tweaked Best Shot profiles to create ‘virtual’ ISO 800 and ISO 1600, both of which introduce about as much noise as you’d expect. Noise Ninja does an OK job cleaning this up, but there is inevitably some loss of detail.
Third, the flash is worthless. It’s underpowered, and yet still manages to reliably reproduce the nuclear effect. I knew this from reviews I read, but I smugly thought to myself ‘no one buys an ultra-compact expecting a good flash; I’ll use the high ISO modes and post-processing for low-light shots’. Ha.
Fourth, in order to reduce the horrid noise of the high-ISO modes, I have to turn down the sharpness in the hopes of disengaging Casio’s primitive in-camera sharpener, which really should be called ‘Noise Amplifier’. This is part of what causes the shit clarity, and again I can get most of the sharpness back with post-processing, but this just brings out more noise, which I have to clean up with Noise Ninja, and I don’t want to spend so much time tweaking sliders in Photoshop to get my raw, shitty pictures to a point where I’m not embarassed to share them.
Finally, the EXIF metadata inserted by the Z750 left alot to be desired. My SD-60 recorded ISO level and camera orientation, which was a huge help in auto-rotating images and selecting denoise candidates. The Z750 recorded F-stop and time and little else. Not cool.
All of this is very unfortunate, because the Z750 could have been a great camera. It spent four months in my pants pocket in and around Baghdad, being whipped out at random to take a flury of shots. I measured its battery life in epochs, its LCD screen was an object of lust and envy for all who beheld it, and even Ra’id the finicky Jordanian photographer/tour guide at Karak thought it was a great little camera. Too bad the photos it produced left so much to be desired.
So, never being one to curse the darkness without making at least a token attempt to light a candle, I’ve focused my considerable lusting powers on a new object: the Canon SD700 IS.
First, being a Canon, it is legally obligated to not suck. In addition, it has active anti-shake technology (not the ‘anti shake’ Casio deceptively markets in the Exilim Z850 which is just a high, noisy ISO mode), an ISO 800 mode for those emergency, noisy-is-better-than-nothing shots, and actual after-market accessories. Its battery life can’t touch the Z750, but apart from that it’s a better camera all around.
All that remains is for me to come to terms with the ~$450 price tag.
Why doesn't va_start work with reference parameters?
I’ve been hacking alot of C++ lately as a part of my new job. I implemented a simple string formatting function using __vswprintf_s and the C variable argument constructs va_start, va_list, etc.
I was surprised to discover that, when the prev parameter argument passed to va_start is a C++ reference parameter (like, say, const std::wstring&, as in my case), the resulting variable arguments are garbage, and of course any printf-like function produces nonsense and/or crashes.
It’s not at all clear to me why this is, though it sucks rather profoundly.
Customizing the Windows XP File Dialogs
I’ve also misplaced the document I wrote to myself describing how to customize the Windows file dialog to replace shit like ‘My Documents’ with links to file system locations that actually matter to me. The link to the article I followed was part 1 and part 2. This article helps include standard locations in the custom places bar. I have my own version of ‘My Documents’ (on another volume) as the first place, followed by the desktop, my computer, and my network places.
Sadly, Office uses its own list of places (naturally), so you have to further contort yourself to get Office to play ball.
My XP Non-Admin Configuration
Having been unable to find the document I know I wrote documenting the stuff I did to set up my non-admin environment on prospertine, I’m starting from scratch.
First, during setup anelson had admin rights; there are some security issues with this, as the user anelson will have write privs on some folders that he shouldn’t, but I’m not going to worry about that now.
I created an admin user, god (no, I don’t use the stock Administrator account). I removed my user account, anelson, from the Administrators group.
I added anelson to the __vmware__ group so I can still use VMWare, and granted Log on as a batch job permission as well.
Next I set up my environment based on the Keith Brown’s guidance:
I created a folder, G:\Tools\AdminShell, which still store all the admin stuff.
In this folder, I created admin_shell.cmd, which will be used to start an admin shell based on Keith Brown’s, but without the domain credentials since I’m not on a domain.
That’s a start, but there are a few things I have to do with admin privs rather often:
- Munge firewall rules
- Browse the filesystem and run files
- Access the control panel
The last two can be done from Explorer, but explorer.exe can’t simply be run from an admin shell, since it will instead adopt the credentials of the existing explorer window. The relevant blog post offers a workaround.
Shit! FreeDNS is down!
Last week, the RAID volume in prospertine went down, and I spent yesterday restoring it. Today I’m rebuilding prospertine‘s OS environment. I forgot how I had my non-admin stuff setup, so I went in search of my blog post on the subject, only to find that apocryph.org wasn’t resolving. Since it was working fine a couple days ago, I checked out the site of the DNS provider, FreeDNS, only to find the following message:
you win.. whoever you are…
you can call your bots off me now….
this is really pointless… whoever is doing this…
if your one of tens of thousands of people i have had to kick… my message to you is …
realize i live in a country/society with laws.. yadda yadda yadda…
i assure you its nothing personal… really…
i do not enjoy having to kick people… at all… its very unexciting… seriously…
if you use my servers for illegal stuff … i CANT host it by law… its that simple… i didnt make the laws…
Hmm…that’s ominous. I love FreeDNS (so much so that I’m a paid, Premium member), and the guy that runs it is doing a great service, but damned if I’m going to sit around waiting for it to come back on line. I’ve moved apocryph.org over to EveryDNS, which isn’t nearly as good but has one major advantage: it’s up right now.
It’ll be at least 48 hours until the DNS changes propagate; by then hopefully the fate of FreeDNS will be more apparent, and I can decide how I want to move forward.
Best Arabic insults
I happened across a rather extensive list of Arabic insults (NSFW), and felt obligated to point out some of the more entertaining among them (profanity follows):
- Add ma emmak neketo la bayyak men tizo, hebil fik men bayadto. — Your mother fucked your father in the ass so much that he got pregnant and held you in his balls (Yes, I swear that’s what it says)
- Badi lahsak manbat sha’er baidi — I will make you lick the roots of the hairs of my balls (Not just the hairs; the roots of the hairs!)
- Una bede et’hash zebe be dant bentok — I wish to place my penis in your daughter’s ear
- Elif air ab tizak — A thousand dicks in your ass (Hmm, if you thought that was wierd…)
- Elif air ab dinikh — A thousand dicks in your religion (…how’s that for weirder?)
- Fatah — Foreskin (considered a grave insult) (Isn’t ‘Fatah’ the name of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian political party?)
- Airi Fe Sabahak — My dick on your forehead (Does that happen often?)
- Kuss Ummak Bisinaan — Your mother’s pussy has teeth (I don’t even want to know…)
- Kafekom kalaman bel Arabia ya hi wah naht! — Stop speaking in Arabic, you animals! (This is probably meant for me)
Most of these sound like the insults my little brothers made up when they were 10 years old. Of course, expletives are always the most colloquial elements of a language, and in the case of Arabic they’re almost always specific to a single dialect, so it comes as no surprise that the English translation seems absurd. Still, one can’t help but notice a few recurring elements in the insults that are foreign to English swearing:
- Insults against sisters and one’s religion
- A clear equation of homosexuality with a grave insult (moreso than English)
- Extensive use of the subject’s mother and lineage
- Verbosity
Perhaps more surprising, this comprehensive list isn’t even complete; the expletives my Iraqi coworkers taught me don’t even appear here.
Arabic Pop/Latin Fusion!? NO!
Apparently my previous post on Arabic pop was a bit premature; I just heard Elissa’s Kilmit Hob, which caught me off guard with a firestorm of male Spanish (and distinctly Latin) vocals! Not cool! Why on earth would an Arabic pop star incorporate Latin musical elements, let alone vocals? Where’s Arab nationalism when you need it, dammit! ishtah, Latin vocals!
Arabic pop rocks
Ever since I lived in Iraq and visited Jordan, I’ve had a thing for Arabic pop–or rather, female Arabic pop; Arab male pop stars are even more effeminate than American boy bands, if that’s possible. It’s been hard to find Arabic pop artists here in the States, but I–er…a friend of mine–stumbled across a few great Arabic pop torrents. I particularly like Nancy Ajram and Elissa. This is roughly equivalent to an Arab man saying he likes Britney Spears and whats-her-name the scary-looking 14 year old girl, with a few notable differences:
- Arab female pop stars tend to be hot in a beautiful woman sort of way, while American female pop stars seem to be trending more towards hot in a underage borderline-pedophile jailbait sort of way
- Arabic pop sounds much cooler, because I don’t understand Arabic so the undoubtedly lame lyrics don’t detract from the listening experience the way English pop lyrics do
- Arabic pop has a substantively different sound, which belies its Middle Eastern roots. To my ears, this is a cool sound when combined with a faster, pop beat
I would be shocked if Arabic pop in some form doesn’t catch on in Western culture in the next decade; at last I’ll be out ahead of a pop culture trend! Alhamdulillah!