It speaks.

Still alive, despite appearances to the contrary.  Work is insane, been travelling too much, and we’re expecting a new arrival in about five weeks, so no time for any personal writing.  This is the first time in about four months I’ve been able to be at home for three weeks straight, massive proposals with utterly screwed up resourcing notwithstanding.  Covered GameConnect AP and eGames Melbourne 2007 though, which was good fun - the last articles are going up tomorrow.

Been playing a reasonable amount of Mass Effect in the time I have had though.  And, I’ve managed to beat BioShock, Halo 2, and Halo 3, so I’ve almost caught up to 2007.  Assassin’s Creed is sitting on the shelf along with Half Life 2: Episode 1, Half Life 2: Episode 1, and Team Fortress 2, and I’m going to be picking up Super Mario Galaxy as soon as I have a chance.  From the looks of it, I’m pretty much set through ’til sometime half-way through ‘08.

So why the long quiet?

Simply put, a lot’s happened. As in, a lot.

For starters, the good news - I’m having a kid! We’re due in late December, so he’ll / she’ll probably get annoyed with only getting presents once a year. They’ll appreciate it as they get older though, as it’ll probably mean bigger gifts. Haven’t found out the sex yet, but that’s mainly because it’s still too early. Not sure if we will or not, for that matter - I’m keen, but my wife’s uncertain. We’ve been busy furniture, diaper, and every other baby thing you can possibly think of shopping.

On a sadder note, I’ve also been relatively recently diagnosed with a chronic medical condition with relatively serious implications. It isn’t life threatening, but it can lead to fairly major complications if things go belly up. Historically, the 30 year prognosis isn’t great, but on the bright side, the drugs are better than what was previously available, suggesting that the reported “worst case” rates are higher than what would be observed today. The most unfortunate thing is that no-one knows definitively what the causal factors are. There’s quite a few theories and the findings are quite consistent, but there’s no real certainty. In practice, it’s meant quite a few fairly major lifestyle changes - I’m not quitting my job, but I am having to change my diet and behavioural patterns very significantly in the hopes that it’ll make a difference.

On a happier note, the reason I haven’t been writing as is much is primarily because I’ve been writing elsewhere. The writing gig is going well, and I’ve picked up an Xbox 360, with which I’m having much fun. Dead Rising, Oblivion, Forza 2, and Gears of War are all really good fun. ‘Course, that now means I need to update my blog again with a gamertag.

Haven’t had any time whatsoever to take any photos lately, something I’m somewhat disappointed about. Mainly because of doctor’s appointments, having come down with the flu for a week and a half, and completely crappy weather, but still - I really miss getting out there and taking shots. I’m going to try and get out there this weekend, assuming the weather’s good again.

So, that’s where I’m at. It’s been a busy year, probably the “biggest” (so to speak) since I bought a house.

Still alive.

Still alive, still here. Just haven’t had any time for updates lately. Been too busy writing elsewhere, and we’re moving into E3, which makes things even tighter.

Started enjoying the Wii again though. Picked up Resident Evil 4 and Super Paper Mario and have been having a grand old time. That and we’re reorganising the house, so I’m rebuilding baffles to make them a little more attractive and inconspicuous.

Painful Windows Advertising

This has got to be one of the most painful product pieces I think I’ve ever seen.  It starts out pretty poorly, but just wait ’till she starts singing …

Home Theatre Setup: An introduction

A friend’s recently asked me how I made my home theatre sound so good. I’ve spent quite a bit of time setting up my home theatre system. Some would call it an obsession, I call it getting the most out of my system. :)

A surprising number of people are happy to drop a few thousand on a decent sound system and leave it there. After all, you’ve paid your money, it should sound good, shouldn’t it? It did in the store, after all - why should it be any different in the home?

Things aren’t quite that simple. Acoustics are a fickle beast and are notoriously sensitive to environmental conditions. Something as simple as shifting the angle of a single speaker by less than five degrees can easily change the position of the entire soundstage, voices can pop in and out of focus, and instruments can float around the room. Home theatre configuration is key to getting a good sound. And, it doesn’t stop there - you can actually make your speakers sound a whole order of magnitude better by understanding how your room characteristics affect the sound.

The best starting point is to just make sure your speakers are in the right places. If it’s a home theatre, follow the Dolby Guide. Key (and sometimes easy) points:

  • Try to make sure that your front speakers are neither too far apart nor too close to each other.
  • If you’re planning on listening to music and want to get the absolute most out of your system, you’ll need to sit in the primary position (on your couch directly between your two front speakers). Toe the two front speakers in so the tweeters on each point roughly at your ears (not your forehead).
  • If you’re only watching movies and have multiple seats in the room, leave the front speakers pointing directly at the wall behind you. You’ll lose fidelity in a stereo signal, but it won’t matter for most 5.1 encoded movies, as they use positional sound anyway.
  • Follow the positioning guide for your rear speakers - most people will put them behind the couch. That’s OK, but they’re actually better off to the side.
  • Make sure your centre channel is located above or below your TV directly in front of you. Ideally, angle it so it’s also pointing at head-height.
  • Keep everything located symmetrically around the room. Don’t have one speaker further to the left or right relative to the TV or yourself than the other one.
  • Make sure there’s nothing between your ears and the tweeters in each speakers. High frequencies are directional, and putting anything in between their source and you will significantly impact sound quality.
  • If you have a real subwoofer (one that you either built yourself or paid around a grand or more for), put it wherever. Bass is non-directional and you won’t actually lose much fidelity in practice even if it’s behind (or under) your couch. Ideally put it somewhere so it has a clean path to your ears, but it isn’t as essential as your other speakers.
  • If you have a home theatre in a box subwoofer, make sure it’s out in the open and pointing at your ears. Ideally, put it right next to (or under) your TV. Most home theatre in a box subwoofer actually aren’t - they don’t go deep enough to be a true subwoofer. As they emit higher frequencies, the sound they produce is quite directional. So, if you put it to the side or behind your couch, you’ll end up hearing things (like voices) coming from your front and behind you at the same time.

Follow those, and you’re off to a good start.  From there, the next most important things are understanding how:

  • to make sure everything’s configured correctly and volume levels are correct
  • acoustics are actually affected by your room
  • to determine how your room is colouring your sound
  • to fix your individual room characteristics to improve overall frequency response

Some people try to run their systems from a corner or in a non-symmetrical room. Neither is normally good nor easy to fix. You can actually get some acoustic benefits from a non-symmetrical room, but in most situations, it just degrades the quality.

Lessons learned: Landscapes are hard.

We went to Hanging Rock, Mt. Macedon, and Rupertswood Mansion on the weekend, per my suggestion, to try and get some decent shots.  No luck - landscapes are amazingly hard to capture.  The day wasn’t too bad, but the photos were very definitely disappointing:

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The biggest problem was the monochromatic look of everything - when you end up under the shade, everything’s green and grey.

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About the only decent shot from Hanging Rock was my first attempt at a panorama:
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Rupertswood Mansion was a little better, but still rather challenging.  Got a nice shot of some geese, but apart from that, mainly only cheap shots with the 50mm:

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So, what did I learn?  Quite a bit:

  • Having a large aperture doesn’t mean you have to use it.  Quite a few of the shots I took with the 50mm would probably have benefited from a wider depth of field.  They still turned out OK, but I think I would have preferred them a bit more if the focus area had been larger.
  • When the subject matter is boring, focus on composition.  It’s very possibly my eye, but the vast majority of what we saw was extremely boring.  Very nice in person (and very peaceful), but highly monochromatic, too large for the frame, too regular, and no variation in texture.  So, like a fool, I kept shooting and trying to fix the framing.  Not a hope - what I should have done was start thinking in black and white and focused on deliberately blowing highlights, given up on the 18-135mm and stuck with the 50mm alone, or basically attempted anything to vary my composition.
  • Never forget the gremlins are out to screw you up.  I actually shot two panoramas, but the first one screwed up because I forgot I had auto-ISO enabled.  So, even though the camera was on manual when I shot them (I’m not entirely dumb), the colour still varied between shots because the ISO jumped from 100 to 125 between them.  So, only one panorama was usable.  Which was a pity, really - I enjoyed how the one I took turned out, so I’ll have to try doing some more.

I got a few decent shots, but nowhere near my zoo visit.  I’m trying to recover some of the more average ones by playing around with black and white filters, but it’s like trying to polish a turd.  OK, maybe not that bad, but it’s close.

I figure I’ll hit the city this weekend and try to get some late afternoon / early evening shots.  Might take the tripod, too.

Other stuff I did over the weekend:

  • Finally bottled my beer - it’s been sitting in the vats for about a month.  I did another Cerveza and an Indian Pale Ale - will be very interesting to see how the second turns out.  They’d been sitting so long, every bottle but the first came out crystal clear.
  • Cleaned the yard, picked up dog poo, the usual.
  • Played some Lord of the Rings Online.

Stuff I need to do:

  • Finish off my second thoughts on Japan piece.
  • Populate my events calendar, my attempt to track what’s of interest photographically in Melbourne.  I need a dumping ground where I can put everything I come across that has interesting subject matter.
50 of the weirdest moments in gaming

Originally courtesy of PC Gamer:

Worth a laugh. He doesn’t mention Old Man Murray’s excellent take on what caused the death of adventure games, but there’s plenty of gold in there already.

The Fourth Wall: Breaking the divide between the game and the gamer

Came across this link via King Lud IC, a gamer / game designer from Virginia:

The fourth wall is the invisible divide that separates the viewer from that being viewed. Subjects that break the fourth wall show self-awareness, such as in Contact DS (not mentioned in the Wikipedia article) when the professor talks directly to you, the player. Depending on how it’s handled, it’s either a cheap gag or a very effective post-modernist trick to change the perception of the viewer.

In games? Mostly a cheap gag. Still, it’s interesting to see the discussion.

Site Updates: RSS for Photos, Wordpress 2.2

Updated Gallery to include RSS feeds.  I’ve also added a dynamic album that shows the most recently added images, but I’ll be stuffed if I can figure out how the heck to include it as another front-page album.  Still, it has a working RSS feed, even if no-one’s going to be able to find the damn thing.

I’m also about to roll Wordpress 2.2 out.

Incoming searches: Grey market cameras

Just a quick post about some incoming search trends.  I’ve had quite a few people hit my site looking for information about grey market cameras - here’s what I have to say.

The major camera manufacturers lock up each region around the world through exclusive wholesaler arrangements.  So, if you want to buy a Canon or Nikon camera, you have to go to the (normally) single wholesaler who’s authorised to purchase from Canon or Nikon.  Obviously, in these days of global trade and the Internet, their closest competitor is only a single click away.  If you don’t like the prices they’re charging, you’re free to go to a vendor in the US, the UK, or wherever else.

To stop you from doing this, most local service arms will refuse to service or honour the warranty of models purchased overseas.  It doesn’t matter if you bought a $2,000 camera in Singapore from an authorised vendor - their default position will be that because you bought it overseas, your warranty isn’t valid.  Nice, isn’t it?

These imported models are called “grey market” cameras.  They’ve been imported legally and are technically exactly the same as the models being sold domestically, but they aren’t recognised by the manufacturer.  The primary advantage this gives them is that they can set prices in each region to be whatever they want.  Canon and Nikon, for example, tend to charge approximately 50% more in Australia than in the US or most of Asia.  On the other hand, Pentax is really cheap in Australia, but expensive in Europe.  They’ll normally tell where the camera was purchased via the serial number of the bottom of the camera - Nikon varies the first number depending on which market the camera was intended to be sold in.  Most retailers will provide domestic support of a foreign model as long as you purchased it in person overseas from an authorised vendor.  Canon’s a bit of a prick about this one, apparently.

They argue that it ensures consistency of product, better consumer satisfaction, and so on, but it’s bullshit.  It’s basically a form of price discrimination.

So why go grey market?  It’s often bloody cheaper (hundreds of dollars in many cases).  Why not?  You normally lose local warranty support and may have difficulties getting your camera serviced later on.  Bear in mind though that this isn’t necessarily the end of the world - most cameras only come with a one year warranty anyway, and there are other service centres that really don’t care where you bought the camera in the first place.  Most reputable local retailers will also provide the warranty coverage for you (which they have to do by law), so if your camera breaks, they’ll take care of shipping it back and getting it fixed in the country or origin.

So, in a nutshell, the advantages of going grey market:

  • Significantly cheaper.

The disadvantages:

  • If your retailer goes bust, you’re out of luck during the warranty period unless you’re willing to ship it back at your cost.
  • You may have difficulties getting it serviced by the manufacturer after the warranty period.  Then again, you may not - it’s luck of the draw.  On the other hand, you can always get it serviced by someone other than the manufacturer - most people just want your money and don’t really care where you bought it.

The two companies most people know of in Australia that deal with grey market cameras are PhotoBuff and D-D-Photographics.  It’s up to each individual whether or not they want to take the risk, and I make no comment about the long-term reliability of either company.  However, I believe PhotoBuff’s been around for about three years, and D-D-Photographics about five.