JerryKnight.com

It’s been one year since the last post on here. Guess it happens. I tweeted for a while, but mostly I Facebook. I like the interaction better than Twitter. I might post more on here. I might even post a few pictures from time to time. Oh, and I scheduled this post to go out as close as possible to 12:34:56, 7/8/09. Not quite as exciting as when the Unix time passed through 1234567890 (on Friday the 13th nonetheless) but it’s still an interesting datetime.

I’ve been developing a fascination with Rubik’s cubes, ever since I was able to learn how to solve them (I think it was only last year). It all started with the Rubik’s calendar cube (you solve one side to show the date), but I had no idea how to solve an entire cube until I ran across a series of YouTube videos that showed one of the simpler methods slowly enough for me to catch on. I then learned another method that can be used to solve the bigger 4×4 and 5×5 cubes.

I just received my two newest cubes. All the way from Greece! Rubik never made anything bigger than their 5×5 “Professor’s” cube, and some claimed that anything bigger would be impossible or highly impractical to manufacture. V-Cubes has proven them wrong, and I now have their 6×6 and 7×7 cubes. So my collection now includes:

• V-Cube 7×7
• V-Cube 6×6
• Rubik’s 5×5
• Rubik’s Revenge 4×4
• Rubik’s (standard) 3×3 of course
• Rubik’s Mini 2×2
• Even a 1×1, as a joke (a die with the same colored stickers as a Rubik’s cube)

Also, I am a loyal fan of CubeSmith’s replacement stickers and tiles. They are so much higher quality than the “stock” stickers; all of my cubes have CubeSmith tiles (much more durable than normal stickers).

It turns out that solving a 6×6 is roughly the same as solving the 4×4. The 7×7, while needing a lot more steps than the 5×5, doesn’t appear to be much harder either. I don’t think I’ll ever be one of those “Speed Cubers” but I enjoy the challenge.

I haven’t been posting much here, at least not in formal blog posts. I have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. Well, I’m sitting on the side of the bandwagon, at least. Nobody is completely sure what Twitter is for, but it basically asks the question, “What are you doing?” It’s a lot like the Facebook status feature – “Jerry is hungry”, “Jerry is tired”, “Jerry is heartbroken over the scratch on the LCD screen of his 5D” etc. It can also be a mini-blog, or even a simple public chat kind of thing.

I find it’s a lot easier to come up with a 140-character update (that’s the size limit of Tweets) more often than it is to write witty, articulate, full-on blog posts. So watch the Twitter box on the right, or better yet, get on Twitter and follow me.

By the way, the 5D was injured during the last wedding. I was holding it with the hand strap, and the XTi was hanging on my side with the longer lens. Somehow, the two bumped ever-so-lightly, but it was enough to put a fairly bad scuff in the center of the screen. It will soon be repaired, though. The replacement plastic screen is on its way from Canon (cheap and easy to install) and I also have another protector that will go on top of the screen that’s actual glass. I’m not sure why Canon doesn’t put iPhone-quality glass on their screens. I’ve never once had the slightest scratch on my iPhone, and I put it through much more torture than the 5D. At least Nikon puts a replaceable cover on their camera screens.

I still have this lens, and it’s still for sale. I may still put it up on eBay, but for now it’s available to anyone who wants an awesome professional Canon lens at a great price. It has never been used, and it has a bag, lens hood, manual, and USA warranty card. It was part of my 5D kit, so it came in a white unmarked box instead of the retail packaging.

Email me if you’re interested! jerry.knight@gmail.com (I already get tons of spam, so what’s a little more?)

In keeping with my last post’s title, I got the duplex I’ve been looking at (among several others in the Waco area).

It’s a nice 3br/2ba duplex on the corner, right across from the Y, and it has a covered car port. I looked for places with a garage, but they all were either too expensive or way far away. As you can see above, the living/dining room is quite spacious, so I’ll have to experiment with furniture layout.

The kitchen seems to be in good condition. (relatively new dishwasher & fridge, older stove/oven)

Decent back patio – a little small, but I wasn’t looking for much there.

All the bathrooms have obnoxious wallpaper, but I ran across an idea to counter that, in the event they won’t let me change it.

I think it will be a nice place to live. Better than my current apartment, although I was happy enough with it – just time for a change and a bit of an upgrade.

Note: I’m compiling a list on Google Notebook of possible things I’ll get for the new place.

Not much to say… It’s breath-taking. I look forward to lots of super pictures from this beautiful piece of technology. Last year, I never would have thought I would want or be able to go for this camera body. But then I got to shoot a lot more and found out how much there is to learn and how fun and rewarding the process can be.

I chose the 5D over the 40D because of the type of photography I have become interested in. Shooting weddings and portraits with Kathryn is so much fun, and it’s very different from other types of photography – landscapes, sports, nature, etc. The 5D is older than the 40D. It’s slower and lacks the new features the 40D has, but it has a full-sized sensor, and now that I’ve seen the difference in my own hands, I realize how big of a difference there is. The way I see it, early DSLR’s were given smaller sensors because at the time, 35mm sensors were next to impossible to produce and sell at a reasonable quality and price. Sure, cropped sensors give long lenses more reach, but eventually, I believe that all DSLR’s will be 35mm (or medium formats) and the 1.6x crop sensors will be a relic of the past.

This is the best way to get into the full-frame DSLR world. When the 5D’s replacement comes out later this year, it will definitely not have the same price (~$2100) for a rather long time.

Oh, and I’m doing the kit lens resale thing. I bought the 5D kit that comes with the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens. This is an absolutely phenomenal lens, but since I have and love the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens, I will be selling the 24-105, which can be bought for about $1050 at reputable dealers. I want to recoup enough for the lens to take a decent chunk out of the price of the 5D, but I’m not expecting to sell it for 100% of the normal price, so if you’re in the market for a great lens at a great price, let me know! I would rather sell it in person than resort to Ebay, but I will use Ebay if necessary.

I have been living in the Dark Ages of Ignorance for so long. Canon DSLR shooters, go here and watch this. Just.. watch it… (Sorry, Jen and Mark, this doesn’t apply to the 300D even with the “hacked” firmware – I tried.)

http://www.thebschoolblog.com/index.cfm?postID=57

So the old push-the-shutter-button-halfway-to-focus thing? There’s a whole different way to do this that I never even heard of before. On the cameras that support it, (Yay, my 400D/XTi does!) you can make it so the useless AE lock or * button (useless if you shoot mostly in manual exposure mode) acts as the auto-focus control. This removes all focusing features from the shutter button, and it only releases the shutter. Putting the AF mode into Servo, you can either hold down the back * button and focus continuously while shooting, or you can one-shot focus. Servo mode also lets the shutter release even when the camera thinks the focus isn’t set, so no matter what, the shutter button will always release the shutter. It will take a bit of getting used to, but I can see how this way of auto-focusing can be much easier to control and get the focus right more consistently.

(Note: I’ve read that at least a few Nikon DSLRs allow the same functionality, and who knows, maybe they had it first. No matter.)

And, the joystick focus-point-selection trick also works on the XTi. Want the left focus point active? Hit the left arrow key. Want to get it back to center quickly? Hit the Set button. It’s no eye-controlled focus, but even if I had ECF, I would use this method whenever I need the focus point to be set. It doesn’t let me use my Set button for image quality, like I had before, but I rarely shoot anything but raw these days.

Focus has been one of the big areas in my photography that I’ve tried to improve, so these hidden tools might help me out a bunch!

I recently assisted the very talented Kathryn Krueger at another wedding, and I really like a few of the shots. It’s always incredibly fun to work with Kathryn, and I’ve learned so much along the way. What better way is there to spend a day than in the middle of frenzied preparations, fancy attire, and palpable emotions?

I’m still learning… Half of it is seeing good compositions (very hard – takes lots of experience and talent, and starting out, not a small degree of luck), the other half is actually getting the camera to capture those shots as things happen. It’s usually rare to get a second chance to get everything right. It’s hard to not be critical of all of my duds and focus (hah!) on the shots that look decent, but here are some from the reception that I like. This was a very glamorous and photogenic wedding and reception.

I am equally unamazed at Canon’s early 2008 announcements, although I’m probably a bit less indignant than I am with Apple. I’m sure the shiny new Rebel XSi is a fantastic camera, but it goes in the “not compelling at all” category for me. It looks like the improvements are only marginal over the XTi it’s replacing. 12MP sensor (1.6x crop), LiveView (perhaps the most useless feature that’s distracting Canon from bringing back eye-controlled focus), Digic III (with no apparent performance improvements), and a slightly bigger chimp screen. Oh, they also added something resembling a spot meter. 4% of viewfinder? That’s a big spot, but still an improvement I guess. And to cap it all off, it now uses SD cards instead of Compact Flash. That kind of seals it as a dead-end entry-level camera. Nobody should be switching to it from any other Canon DSLR unless they feel like buying all new memory cards.

They also announced a couple lenses that I’ll never own.

Overall, this announcement means that any 5D improvements won’t be announced until Photokina in September, which probably means nothing new will be available until the very end of 2008. This also means that Canon has no real answer to Nikon’s D300 + D3 launch (except the ridiculously expensive 1D(s) Mark III that no mere mortal could ever own). Disappointing, Canon. In the chess game between Canon and Nikon, this announcement is something like castling. Hope their strategy pays off.

And I had such high hopes for 2008.

I have to say, I’m quite unimpressed with the announcements made at MacWorld by Apple. Perhaps Apple set the bar too high last year with the unexpected release of the iPhone, but I would have expected more from Apple in 2008.

iPhone Updates – New features include: location on maps, movable icons, and multi-recipient SMS. All of these features have been available using 3rd party software (requiring a relatively simple hack to unlock everything). They continue to (seemingly) ignore 802.1x authentication and Exchange syncing. I guess the only potential upside is that Apple acknowledged the upcoming iPhone SDK that will hopefully allow legitimate 3rd party applications. I don’t expect them to have simple, straightforward licensing, and they’re certainly not going to remove all their encryption and hardware protection and grant full access to the iPhone, so I don’t know how useful the SDK will ultimately be.

iTunes Movie Rentals – Yawn. There are much cheaper, although less snazzy, ways to rent movies.

AppleTV Updates – Don’t have AppleTV, but the updates seem to only allow movie rentals, so the yawn continues here.

Time Capsule – (a network-attached storage device for Time Machine backups) This adds the ability that should have been available at the release of Leopard. It looks proprietary (meaning I doubt other types of NAS will work), so current Airport Extreme owners are probably up a creek. For those lucky enough to not have an Airport Extreme station, this will double as both a NAS hard drive and a wireless base station (and print server) so it’s not all bad.

MacBook Air – It’s thin. It’s light. It has an LED-backlit screen. The battery will last a while (5 hours of wireless usage), and the trackpad is a little better. Everything beyond these features is a significant step backwards from even a MacBook. Slower processors, non-upgradeable 2GB memory, one (1!) USB port, no ethernet (optional USB attachment), no optical drive (optional USB attachment), no Firewire (optional USB.. wait, no). It costs more than a fully loaded MacBook, which is only 2 lbs. heavier and has a much faster processor, faster and bigger hard drive, marginally less battery life, etc. At the end of the day, the MacBook Air is still just an expensive, underpowered laptop. How much is it really worth to have a lighter laptop? (Although the added accessories to make it as usable will more than make up for the lower weight.) The only bright side to this thing is that it will prompt lots of technophiles to throw vast amounts of their money at Apple, which I hope will fund a real computing revolution.

Oh, and what about multi-touch? A multi-touch trackpad has actually been in the PowerBook/MacBook for a while, and the new one only allows a couple extra features that may or may not see much use. This is the smallest possible upgrade that Apple could have done while still being able to mention “multi-touch.” Wake me up when they release a multi-touch screen or a multi-touch keyboard interface. Given Apple’s yearly release cycle, it may be a while.

Now it’s up to Canon to release something impressive. Otherwise, I’ll have to suspect that for me, 2008 will be a technological lull.