tindrumfire.com

Flights are confirmed (but not booked), camera will be ordered soon.  At this point, over the next month and a half, I’ll probably be through:

• Melbourne
• Sydney
• Canberra
• Brisbane
• Wellington
• Auckland
• Hawaii
• North Carolina

Looking forward to things calming down a little, to be honest.  All I need is Perth, Adelaide, and Darwin, and I’d have the ANZ royal flush.  At least I’m not going to Singapore / London as well (which was on the cards at one point).

Anyway, I’ve definitely settled on the Nikon D80.  The Canon 400D just felt too cramped in my hands.  I really wanted to go with the Canon - I’ve owned an A70 for ages, and it’s been a good camera to me.  I wanted to like the 400D.  I really did.  In the end though, it was just too small - I couldn’t get a comfortable enough grip on it to think I’d enjoy using it.

I also thought long and hard about the Pentax K10D - feature for feature, it beats the Nikon D80.  Dust-sealed joints, anti-shake, and so on.  It’s even a little bit cheaper (assuming you go through one of the grey-market importers).  The single biggest killer for me was concern about the investment I’d make into lenses.  I’ve been told by a few people that while finding Pentax compatible lenses in Australia can be a bit difficult, they’re still very high quality.  My main issue was that given how difficult it is to find lenses right now, what does that mean for the future?  The glass manufacturers chase the biggest markets, and at the moment, that’s Canon and Nikon.  It seems that you can get specialist lenses for all the cameras, but “specialist” doesn’t normally mean “cheap”.  Both Canon and Nikon have massive lens support, and to be honest, I doubt that’s going to drop off in the forseeable future.  Pentax, on the other hand, seems to have somewhat limited investment in their digital cameras.  So, I’m not quite sure how committed they are to the market - they could easily just slide back into point and shoots or scale back into pure consumer digital SLRS, focusing on super zoom lenses and little else. 

I’d probably get the Pentax over the Canon 400D (given that they’re in roughly the same price range), but I’d rather the D80 overall.  Given I want to get one or two primes at some stage, I’d really rather a wide selection of options, ranging from the cheap to expensive.  And, I’d also rather have strong first-party lens support rather than just a third-party lens focus.

So there we are.  I’ve also decided to get the 18-135mm kit lens instead of the 18-70mm - that should give me more than enough range for normal shooting (27-200mm equivalent) without too much apparent loss in image quality.  Not as fast at the 18-70mm, but everything’s a trade-off.  And, I won’t bother with the 70-300mm cheapie - I’d rather save up and get the 70-300mm VR later instead.  Really looking forward to having a working camera again.

Latest updates:

• Finished the review of Command and Conquer 3.  Not such a great game.  A good game, but not a great one.
• Eminence was good fun.  Far more impressive than I was expecting, to be honest.
• Still haven’t bottled my beer.  Really need to do it soon.
• No general writing lately - haven’t had the time, to be honest.  Planning to catch up this Thursday.  Would be doing it tonight, but I’m too stuffed - got up at 5:00am to catch the flight this morning, and didn’t get to sleep last night until around midnight.

I’ve decided which one I’ll get.  After much internal debate, I’ve finalised on the Nikon D80.  I’m planning on buying the body only and purchasing separately:

• Nikkor Lens AF-S DX 18-70mm f3.5-4.5G IF-ED; and
• Nikkor Lens AF 70-300mm f4-5.6G

According to Thom, the 18-70mm has far less chromatic aberration than the 18-135mm.  So, while I’ll miss the extra 55mm on the top end, I’d rather have a good quality lens.  I’m still going to have to swap it if I want telephoto, irrespective.

The 70-300mm is the Nikon cheapie - it’s not even the ED version.  Still, it’s cheap, and the next step up is probably to the Vibration Reduction (VR) one, which is more than I really want to pay at the start.  I’ve had a look through what Sigma has to offer, and again, if I really wanted to make a significant step up, I’d have to spend 5-10 times the money.  If I were going to buy anything else, I think I’d rather get a good fast 50mm prime.  Fast telephotos are just too expensive - maybe once I’ve actually learned how to use the camera.

I ended up going with the Nikon because it had:

• auto ISO;
• two control dials;
• better ergonomics;
• 11 area TTL (as opposed to 9, even though the difference is probably meaningless);
• spot metering;
• an always-on settings LCD; and
• the pentaprism (better viewfinder).

The Canon was really nice, I just primarily wanted a slightly more functional and full featured camera.  I toyed with buying the D40 for quite a while and spending the difference on a better lens, but I decided not to because I didn’t really want to go down the point and shoot path again.

I’ve also decided to go with a grey-market model.  I’ve found a few Australian businesses that import from Hong Kong and provide local warranty support.  The price difference is very significant - we’re talking in the order of 30%+ below local lowest prices.  When we’re talking $500 cheaper, I’m willing to take the chance.  Plus, they’ll let you pick up in person.

Now I’m just waiting for travel approval overseas so I can claim back the GST on the way out.  As soon as I get that, I’ll buy it and start taking photots!

Fast track of what else has happened (or not), and what I’m planning on doing:

• Completed Spellforce 2 + expansion pack and wrote the review.  Not a bad game - very long though.
• Finished reading Uplift War by David Brin.  Very good book.  Probably going to pick up the first book in the next trilogy sometime this weekend.
• Haven’t bottled the beer yet.  It’d be ready by now, but I’m letting it sit for another week yet.  I’ll probably bottle it this weekend.
• Starting on Command and Conquer 3 - need to get the review finished ASAP.
• Going to Eminence: A Night in Fantasia this Friday night.  Should be good fun.

What can I say.  Just don’t blame me when you ears rupture.

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/dog-island/dog-island-i-feel-sick-254213.php 

Shot this weekend, during a barbecue:

2238

The thing I like the most about the shot is the way the table apparently disappears into the distance.  There’s actually a brick wall right behind it, but thanks to the constrast, you can’t even see it. That and the clarity in the table.  Not bad for a now archaic 3 megapixel camera.

A lot has happened lately, hence the lack of updates.  Work’s been busy, been flying around Australia a lot.  It’s a nice week when I’m at home for the full week.  Still, can’t complain too much - at least all my travel’s only been domestic, and while I’ve done three states within a week, it isn’t as bad as some of the people I work with.  One guy’s already made Platinum with QANTAS - so far this year, he’s made 33 single leg flights.  Many international.  Mad bastard.To make the flights a little more bearable, I picked up a 30 gig Creative Zen Vision W.  Since doing so, I’ve become very interested in podcasts.  I know I’m late to the party, but there’s some seriously good stuff out there!  Stuff I’m currently listening to:

• Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase:  Interviews by a flight attendant, covering the weird experiences pilots, stewards, and passengers have had while travelling.
• PodAsia Travel:  Matthew Holden, a BDM with SAP, covers travel to countries throughout Asia and the world.  Nothing too in-depth, but interesting for a business traveller.  Plus, he’s an interesting man.
• Escape Pod:  Regular Sci-Fi stories, read by the authors and other people.  Fun stuff, and good stories.
• Pseudopod:  Same as the above, but horror.  Affiliated with the same company.
• Good Game:  A vodcast off the ABC covering games and gameplay.  Cheesy, but good fun.  It’s also less cheesy than G4TV, which can only be a good thing.  Olivia Munn, I’m looking at you.

The weekend’s been … OK.  Good and bad.  I’ve had no end of trouble with the new computer, but not for the reason you might expect.  The computer itself is great - dual core E6600, 8800GTS, 2 gig RAM, RAID 0, and so on.  Great fun.  However, it hasn’t been without problems.  We go geocaching and own a Garmin ETREX GPSr.  Unfortunately, it’s a serial GPSr, as USB GPSrs were relatively expensive when we got it.  Serial ports are now relatively rare - my new motherboard supports serial ports, but doesn’t come with one - it only has a riser socket for it, not the port itself.  I tried to track one down briefly, but gave up when it didn’t turn out to be easy.

So, I did the next best logical thing - I bought a USB to Serial Port adaptor.  Not so smart.  Apparently, there are varying levels of quality.   Mine’s a Huge Pine based chipset.  For what it’s worth, apparently it’s almost the cheapest.  It’s a piece of crap, to be blunt - every time GSAK tries to download my waypoints from the GPSr, my computer bluescreens.  Not very impressed, to say the least.  About the only bright side is that I can upload waypoints, which at least means I can still go geocacheing.  Which leads me into my next point …

I’ve finally updated the caches we found about a year ago.  Now that the house is finished, we’re planning on starting to go geocacheing on a regular basis again.  I’m also thinking of finally getting a decent camera - my old reliable Canon A70, while having been good, is starting to date a little.  That and the lens shutter is dying.  So, at this point, I’m looking at either an EOS 400D or a Nikon D80.  I’m up for a flight to the US half-way through this year (assuming things don’t change), so it’d be an ideal time to claim back the GST.

I’ve also been busy writing for a commercial games site.  I was offered a staff position about a month ago, and between writing news articles, reviews, and generally learning the ropes, time’s been somewhat lacking.  Still, I’m gradually getting on top of (and ahead) of everything.  At some stage, I need to make a trip out to the State Library to grab a bunch of books I’ve been meaning to read.

So, this weekend I’ve:

• Finished doing the internal renovations we were planning.  Thank god.
• Put on two homebrews - an Indian Pale Ale, complete with home-boiled hops, and a fairly stock Cerveza.
• Sat in the sun for too long.  Slightly burned, but feeling good.
• Had a barbecue with some friends and met their baby properly.  The dogs were most interested.

Stuff I’d like to get through over the next few weeks:

• Write a followup to my experiences in Japan and some more about the theory of gaming.
• Complete the review of Spellforce 2:  Dragon Wars.
• Write up my opinions of Masters of Doom.

I think the biggest challenge I found about Japan was constantly being wrong. A week in Tokyo made my hypersensitive to every cultural misstep I made. And, the really crazy thing is, there’s just so many to make.

I like to think that I’m not the most culturally insensitive person out there. I grew up across a number of countries in Africa, Asia, and the West. One of the primary schools I went to had over 80 nationalities represented. There were two Australians there. I’ve spent evenings sitting around a tin drum fire signing with Cuban refugees. And yet, even with all that, I couldn’t for the life of me avoid making cultural mistakes. Even crazier, after I’d read up on as much as I could about Japanese cultural heritage.

There’s so much that makes a lot more sense when you have an appreciation of where the country’s come from. I can’t claim to have a spectacularly deep understanding of what makes Japan tick, but even after having read just a little, so much makes more sense. Karaoke, origami, the Otaku, and the emphasis on etiquette and role-playing - it all makes sense when one understands the contraints the Tokugawa Shogunate imposed. But, that’s for another time. This time is for my Gaijin blunders.

It was even simple stuff. When we landed after twenty odd hours of being awake, we arrived at the hotel to find out that we couldn’t check in until 3:00pm. While were trying to get ourselves organised, I lay down on my back for five minutes on one of their benches. Next thing I knew, I had the manager tapping me on my shoulder, telling me to sit up. In his context, that was totally appropriate - I was being messy by lying down. And, by doing so, I was bringing embarrassment to his establishment. On the other hand, my own Western context was that the customer’s always right (well, most of the time), especially in hospitality. So, in doing what would be fine elsewhere, I embarrassed him and myself.

We had the same issues getting on the trains. Unbeknownst to us, the signs actually tell you the length of the train, how many carriages are arriving, and even where the doors will be. So, you can line up at the right lines, if you know they exist. Needless to say, we didn’t. Even with Lonely Planet (now there’s one for the books, pun intended). So, we unknowingly cut in line repeatedly for a few days until we clued in.

The worst part is that most people are too polite to tell you you’re doing anything wrong. So, you keep doing them, not because you’re intentionally being rude, but because some of the cultural rule are so subtle as to be almost invisible.

The flip side is that people can be apparently unbeliveably rude without meaning to. Another thing that took us a day or two to work out was that there are rules for lines. There are rules for everything, but that’s neither here nor there. With lines, they apparently go parallel to the counter. So, even when we were standing next in line, people would queue up to our right because we weren’t a step over and forward. For want of a foot, we’d lose our place. And, it kept happening until we realised why people were happily cutting in front of us.

More later.