Camera Lies & Navigation Systems

Something I hate: Camera ads that straight up LIE.
Recently camera manufacturers have been introducing Image Stabilization into a lot of their point and shoot cameras. Great. The problem lies in how they are advertising their Image (sometimes called Optical) Stabilization. Let me explain how IS works… it greatly reduces camera shake (your hands being shaky during a longer exposure) usually using some sort of electronic gyros. What it does NOT do is freeze action.

I’ll give you a practical example: you take a twilight sunset shot at 1/20 of a second… a shutter time that would normally render a blurry picture, but because of your IS, yours is crisp. Another example: you take a shot in a gym of someone playing basketball. With no flash, you achieve a shutter speed of 1/100 of a second. That picture is BLURRY, not because your hand was shaking, but because the person in it is moving too fast to be captured by such a slow shutter speed. Make sense? (as a sidenote, you want to hit around 1/400s as an absolute minimum for most sports).

So in the Sony ad where that guy is talking about his muse and then takes a picture of a hummingbird that isn’t blurry at all and shows it to his friend and his friend is like “you’re right, that would have been blurry on my camera”… yeah, it would be blurry on ANY camera. To stop a hummingbird's wings you need a shutter speed around 1/4000 of a second. If you have a camera with a pretty wide aperture (letting in a lot of light) and a high film sensitivity (or ISO, for digital), you can sometimes achieve shutter speeds close to 1/100 of a second in a normal office environment. Here’s what this boils down to… there’s no way that camera can take that picture indoors… ever. So why advertise that it did, and that IS helps make it “not blurry”… why lie?

Part two of this debacle is a new Panasonic commercial that I was subjected to while trying to enjoy my beloved NFL this weekend. They are using a Panasonic point & shoot with optical stabilization to take non-blurry pictures of people dancing in a dark nightclub. Once again, it’s not blurry thanks to optical stabilization. While the stabilization might have kept your camera steady, it cannot slow down the people dancing… they would still be wicked blurry. Now… that could be a cool shot for artistic effect, but it’s not the shot they are pretending comes out of the camera. Again… stop lying!

Lesson: YOU CANNOT FREEZE ACTION WITH IMAGE STABILIZATION!!! The only thing that freezes action is fast shutter speeds.

Something that I love: Cell Phones with Navigation Systems
Keeping on the technology train here… Ok, I have to admit I don’t have one of these yet, but I’ve seen them advertised and read a bit about them. At first this might seem a bit excessive to you, but just think about this for a second. Navigation systems (a la MS Streets) have been in PDAs for years, why not put them in cell phones? How did this take us so long? It’s genius!!! This is one of those forehead smackers where you just go *smack* “Of course! It just makes sense!”

Can you think of a handier thing to have in you cell phone? I doubt it. I mean, anywhere you are, you can find anything. I shoot photos for the paper sometimes, and if I just had something where I could input the address and it would tell me how to get there… well that would be downright awesome. You’re out of town but want to find the nearest Wendy’s? No problem. Need to know the quickest way back from Wrigley? Done. You're downtown and want to find the nearest Chinese food? Bingo. Think of all the times you’ve been lost, or looking for something specific in a strange place… this is the instant answer. Pretty good idea if you ask me…

T-Mobile & Nike

From last time: "After some deliberation, I’ve decided to blog a little more. Not necessarily because I have the time, but because I gotta get some stuff off my chest. I’ve had enough, and it’s time for me to start explaining to people why they’re wrong and I’m right. So I’ll start a series of blogs about stuff that I really hate. However, in an effort to not seem overly bitter, I’ll end each rant with an uplifting thought about something I like."

Round Two...

Something I hate: T-Mobile ads for idiots
Remember those ads where they sold the idea “couples talk free”? My sister (who, in her defense, is actually not an idiot most of the time) wanted to get a T-Mobile because she was duped by this. It’s the same as their “families talk free” that Catherine Zeta tries to shove down my throat because I can’t afford Tivo yet. HEY! NEWSFLASH FOR CELLPHONE USERS: YOU CAN TALK FREE TO ANYONE ON THE SAME NETWORK! So not only do couples and families talk free… EVERYONE talks for free on the same network. But T-Mobile throws it around like it’s a big deal, and there’s this new idea that “couples talk free”. I know two people who actually were thinking of switching networks because “couples talk free” at T-Mobile. What?!? Ever wonder how they know whether or not you’re a couple??? They don’t! It doesn’t matter! That’s what Verizon is doing with the “in network” or AT&T/Cingular has just been doing for like 6 years with “free mobile to mobile” minutes. It’s not a new idea, folks! Man… T-Mobile sucks.

Something I love: the new Nike Gridiron commercial
Speaking of ads, how sweet is that new Nike football ad with just about every famous football player alive in it? I mean, Lee Corso as the mascot! Awesome! I feel like Nike is basically saying… yeah… this is how cool we are, look at all the people we know... and it's everyone. Urlacher, Vick, LT, Steve Young, Primetime, Shula, even Chris Fowler… are you kidding me?. Click-Clack that, underarmor! What a friggin sweet commercial.

Gum & the NFL

After some deliberation, I’ve decided to blog a little more. Not necessarily because I have the time, but because I gotta get some stuff off my chest. I’ve had enough, and it’s time for me to start explaining to people why they’re wrong and I’m right. So I’ll start a series of blogs about stuff that I really hate. However, in an effort to not seem overly bitter, I’ll end each rant with an uplifting thought about something I like.

Without further ado, here’s the inaugural edition:

Something I hate: People that throw away gum anywhere but a trashcan
What are you thinking?!? Have you ever stepped in gum? It’s incredibly annoying! People that throw their gum down on sidewalks or in parking lots suck. It’s a self-important, arrogant, unaware, indefensible act of total disregard for your fellow man or woman. Personally, I think a huge problem in our culture is that people act without any thought of the consequences their actions bring on people around them. Throwing gum where people walk, is a seemingly small, but classic example of this.

Either you 1) are maliciously trying to destroy someone’s footwear or at least terribly inconvenience them, or 2) you are totally clueless and failed to think that you dropping your gum on the sidewalk will terribly inconvenience someone. Which is worse? Sure being malicious is bad… but being maliciously clueless isn’t much better…

Something I love: the NFL
Seriously… how can you not love the NFL. Even with the utter and complete failing of both of my fantasy teams, my weekend was still so much better thanks to the National Football League. Also, it was raining on Sunday. There is something beautiful about a rainy Sunday afternoon in the fall, sitting in a basement on a comfortable couch, and watching the NFL while drifting in and out of sleep with good friends. I’m telling you… it’s hard to top.

magic

I like learning about things. You know, how they work. I used to have a book called "How Things Work" or something like that. I think it was a Random House book. Anyway, I think it's fascinating. This is why I should have been a science major.

I think I know a decent amount in regards to how things work. I've taken a lot of things apart, messed around with the insides, and even tried to reassemble things. I especially enjoy tinkering with electronics. I probably know more than a lot of people about what actually happens inside of things to make them work.

But with that being said, I think some things will always be magic to me. I like the idea of magic. Not necessarily the secular "hocus pocus" idea of magic, but the kind of lack of understanding that is wrapped up in wonder. For more about magic/wonder, you should read "Boy's Life" by Robert McCarron (how "reading rainbow" is THAT sentence?). If you were ever a boy, ever dated a boy, raised a boy, want to raise a boy, or were good friends with a boy, you should check out this book. It's not the greatest thing ever written... but it is sweet. He does such an awesome job of capturing the pure wonder and "magic" of being a boy. Sometimes I find myself missing that, but other times I find I'm in wonder of pretty much everything around me.

I was thinking about videos today, and how when you hit the record button on a video camera it captures video and audio... in a sense, life. I would say film is the most powerful form of media in the world today, and most of that is probably due to its realistic rendition of life. It's AMAZING to me that you can grab something smaller than a brick, hit a red button, and it captures the sights and sounds of life and puts them on a tape. Here's another thing... how do tapes work??? I mean, even if you explained it to me very well, I still wouldn't get it. All those memories and sensations (or at least the sounds and images that helped create them) can be put on this little brown strip of something that is thinner than a piece of paper, and rolled up in a piece of plastic. If you held up a piece of the tape part of a videocassette and a piece of a garbage bag cut the same size, I bet I couldn't tell the difference. But I will still spend 30 hours editing a video and then hit "export to tape" and watch it get recorded onto a tape in a video camera.

I'm sure someone smarter than me (or at least more technilogically knowledgable) could give a reasonable explanation for how a tape can record such an impressive amount of precious information. But for me, right now at least, it's magic.

trans fat

What the deuce is trans fat, and why do I care that apparently everything I eat has zero grams of it?

I bought some groceries, and I don't think I could pick up a single thing that didn't jump out and scream "Zero Grams Trans Fat!"

Well... they didn't SCREAM scream... you know... just visually "scream". Obviously, a can of Pringles can't scream. But if they could, I bet they'd mention SOMETHING about how they completely lack any trans fat (which I'm sure is bad for me even though no one knew what it was a year ago).

I guess I'll try to avoid it, since I reckon I don't need much more fat (in any form), but from the looks of this Pringles can... maybe the trans fat is trying to avoid ME...

blog.

Welp... this is my new blog.

Now I guess when I make sarcastic blog jokes, they won't be sarcastic. They'll just be... well... regular blog jokes.

Enjoy.