in my view ...

local mushies

2012-01-28T10:11:00.006+02:00

with a week of drizzle gone by (and going on) we went for a walk in the short reprieve. The mushrooms have started to sprout all over the forest. Having my Nokia E72 with me (its got a stunning camera on it for a phone, but overall its a love hate relationship ... but that's another post) enabled me to take these shots of the mushrooms currently in bloom.

Loved the skirt on this one...

and these yellow ones are so cute

I suspect that they start out like this ...

They could be poisonous, but like the Finns say "only eat the mushrooms you know"

little bug hatchlings

2012-01-26T01:48:00.008+02:00

Hi

recently I took some shots of interesting eggs found on our cherry tomatoes. I blogged about this here. The little fellas hatched the other day, but I didn't get the chance to photograph them at the time (was early in the morning when I noticed them coming out and I had to go to work).

So, despite predictions and guessing, they seem to be nothing like I thought.

some different angles

considering how small they are and the gear I have, this is not too bad.

so, anyone know what they are?

Nokia IMAP (idle) power and data use

2012-01-25T10:07:00.020+02:00

I find it vaguely irritating when people who are not technical dribble on at the mouth repeating Corporate "Kool-aid" when they are neither part of the company or have the faintest idea what they are talking about (nor probably even grasp basic electrical principles).

background

I've been quite impressed with my Nokia E63 smartphone and think that Nokia have done a wonderful job of making it, as well as designing the software that drives it and operates it.

With few exceptions (I can't think of one, but there must be) I've been impressed with this tool; not only as a phone, but as a useful communications tool. Having been impressed with the E63 I became curious about the E72 which is the "hotted up - professional communicator version" and after reading much about it decided to buy it.

Well cut a long story short Nokia screwed the pooch on this one and the E72 fell into the "looks sexy" but functionality falls short. Probably because it's aimed at executives category, actual functionality takes a back seat to how sexy it looks (hands up who's working at a place with highly technically competent management).

Which is a shame really as the E72 has lots of good specs which would seem to make a compelling case for it at the lower prices that have occurred as the shoal has swum after phones with no keyboards. Stuff like:

a great camera
internal OCR for converting photographed text into text
very crisp screen with good colour rendition
nearly double the CPU speed
nearly 10 times the data access speed (compared to the 63)

Being a Skype user (and that's skype-in too) the last two aspects drew me in. It would be nice to have the phone on Skype using 3G to enable Finnish family and friends to call me when I'm not in WiFi (and the data rate on the E63 just wasn't quite up to good call quality when on 3G rather than WiFi. Compare in detail here).

Quickly after owning the E72 some things stood out. Like its ability to function as an E series communicator should ... stuff like email.

the icing fell off the cake

The first thing which stood out to me on the screwed the pooch failure factor of the E72 was that my IMAP connection to my Gmail just kept dropping out. In fact it dropped out every 5 minutes.

WTF

Some research identified this was a well known problem among anyone who has a clue about what IMAP means and why you would be keen on using its IMAP idle feature (amazing what you can find after you buy something when looking for its faults but can't find before buying it eh?). IMAP idle is stonkngly efficient on both network bandwidth (and who doesn't want their data consumption to be less) and CPU activity (read battery life).

So back to the issue of corporate Koolaid sucking numbbits the "Nokia" excuse for this stupid drop of the IMAP feature is (according to Davis Fields, a Nokia product manager at Nokia messaging) is to because having IMAP always on would "significantly impact on battery life" as well as "consume more data".

Davis probably has a marketing degree, and just swallows whatever technical bollox he's told.

As it happens there are some excellent tools available for Symbian OS and Symbian applications development. One such tool is Energy Profiler; which is designed to sample and report on battery use (among other things) to enable developers to develop efficient software. I've not seen anything like that for Android or iPhone, but then efficient is not one of their criteria.

So with that in mind I set my little experiment to see what happens with IMAP off and then IMAP on. Below is a chart I made in EXCEL using the CSV data that Energy Profiler produces, you can see 3 'zones' here.

The Blue zone where I ran with IMAP off
The black zone where I started up Nokia mail and connected to my Gmail (soon after I started I got an email, so I included that in the black zone)
the Green zone where it ran with IMAP idle in the background.

the power use sure looks even at this sort of charting doesn't it ...

Well as it happens Energy Profiler gives both instant readouts as below.

or averages over a range. The image below is the average taken over the first 5.06 minutes of the test.

its 0.05W, which represents what amount of power is consumed by the phone while its screen is powered down and its just sitting around waiting for calls.

Now, powering on the IMAP client and letting it sit around 'waiting for email' via the very same 3G connection the phone is using, we see this.

Yep, also 0.05W

Ok, so this then means that its nearly the same. I have also done the same thing with my E72 and found the same thing.

The next question is, what happens if you run it over a longer time?

Well I'm glad you asked.

First I ran it for an hour with one IMAP connection to see what the consumption was. It turns out that over the longer period that the consumption is higher, it increases from 0.05W to 0.09W.

ok ... that's beginning to get interesting.

This is still trivial and base line power consumptions, but it has demonstrated a lift in the power requirements ... just like Nokia claimed. Then next I ran it for nearly an hour with 2 IMAP accounts connected to see if that made any changes in the baseline power requirements.

You can see below that the two accounts (started one after the other) resulted in two handshaking events with the IMAP server.

That one is shorter in duration than the other is interesting, I wonder if this is because each server has different responce times (due to say load) or that (because they are located in different geographical locations) that there was greater delays involved. Interestingly these handshaking events occured at about 5 minute intervals (or close to the expiry time that I have read that the SSL socket is set for).

Anyway the result of running these two IMAP connections over 35minute was a consumption of 0.09W as well. So it would seem that the additional server interaction created by doubling the connection quantity (from one to two) has not had a similar effect on the power demands (NB it has not doubled it).

Why might this be so?

One reason may be that the average is already so low with so many readings at IDLE using 0.05W and a few less than 1 second durations of handshaking consuming about 1.0W that it essentially makes no difference to the average over an hour.

It would mean that sending and SMS or talking on the phone for a few minutes would suck up that difference. For example, at the end of the last run I made a call for about 45 seconds. You can see that the power consumption during the call was about 1.3W

Dropping to about 1.2W when the handset screen darkens off.

This single short call lifted the average power consumption (over an hour) from 90mW to 120mW. Clearly actually using your phone as a phone even for a short time makes a more significant drain on the battery than leaving it on checking your mail all day.

So if you leave your IMAP connected for 8 hours and it communicates for half a second every 5 minutes. That's consuming about 0.8 minutes of call power (well, less really) over the entire working day. No wonder I don't see much difference on leaving IMAP on all day.

Even with 2 IMAP connections running.

Given that I make about 40min of calls a day (often longer) adding another 0.8 minutes worth of calls can hardly make a blink of difference to my battery life. Not to mention that my battery usually lasts me 2 ~ 3 days between charges as it is.

Data you say?

Glad you asked. Nokia (unlike Android) has a connection manager, which keeps your data connection alive for you. Data is often billed by connection and by either MB or KB. Android and iPhone just request the data and move on, but Nokia doesn't it keeps that connection alive. This is the data use for one of my experiments.

That little set of handshakes for nearly an hour resulted in a total of 13Kb (Tx+Rx). So even with MB billing (which my phone provider uses) this hours worth of connection cost me just 1MB of data and bugger all extra power usage.

So with data like this its really hard to see what the hell they're talking about in there at Nokia.
Being one to prefer backing up stuff with facts I thought I'd put this here for:

any poor bastard trying to make sence of the arguments on the Nokia fora about this
any person who has another agenda.

Agenda? What agenda? Well Nokia really really want you to sign over your usernames and passwords into Nokia Messaging so that it can do this background IMAP idle for you. Seems that they have some non RFC version of the IMAP idle protocol which will (after you give them your username and passwords) will do what the bloody phone should do out of the box.

bottom line

I really (really) wanted to like the E72, I mean it has a great camera, slick look, full qwerty keyboard, 600Mhz CPU and fast 3G connection (as well as WiFi). However the lack of actual functionality and crippled operation (compared to the E63) left me wondering what the hell happens in there at Espoo?

Never let a committee develop phones.
So if anyone has any data which they wish to submit to this discussion to identify how the Nokia case is actually upheld, please make a comment.

Looking forward to it :-)

PS: the E63's "screen saver" is a great clock. You can read it anywhere there is light enough to read and the digits are big. You can give it a quick glance and immediately see the time. Its like having a fob watch in your pocket.

The E72 however while it has the same sized screen uses a font that is so small that I just can't see it without close inspection.

If the devil can be said to be in the details there are lots of "details" on which the Nokia E72 f%$ked up on.

land prices

2012-01-18T01:53:00.004+02:00

Land prices, it has to have an effect on business.

Keep seeing this on the side of the M1 on my way home.

As its just a flat section of ground with some grass on it, it seems to be be "unimproved" to me. So based on this price its a bit under double what my "unimproved land" value is in the middle of Southport.

As businesses will just pass on costs to consumers is it any wonder that more and more businesses are moving out of the country?

little frogs love the wet

2012-01-17T04:29:00.004+02:00

Its been really wet (and cool) this January, which seems to have encouraged out some of the green frogs in the area.

very cute, they just don't make them much cuter than this do they :-)

what drives making things cheaper

2012-01-16T06:26:00.002+02:00

Economists would often say its economy of scale

Personally I reckon its often just exploitation. This "expose" bags iPhone and Apple, but I wonder how different it is for HTC, Lenovo, HP ...

I guess people would call this development

backyard nature

2012-01-15T02:06:00.004+02:00

One of the things that I find fascinating about insects is their machine like symmetry and precision.

We grow some (quite) small cherry tomatoes in the back yard which are about 2cm in diameter. The other day when bringing some in from the garden my wife noticed some insect had carefully laid some beautiful silver seeds on one of the tomatoes.

it was almost like someone had decorated the tomato with small silver dots.

Looking closer you can see they are actually a thin shelled egg...

and here you can even see the perforations around the tops of the egg where the grub will break out.

can't wait to see what comes out

Bulk slide scanning job

2012-01-14T01:18:00.010+02:00

Well I completed the scanning of the slides from 2000 to 2003 yesterday.

For those interested in this sort of task I scanned 675 images in about 2.5 days. Working by loading a tray and walking away, I can't say I sat there all the time but often I didn't get to do much in the middle. Sometimes I went out for a few hours (shopping or just doing something else). So determining the amount of time I spent is a bit tricky. I can't say I did "full time" work as I did some other things at the same time. So lets say I did about 6 hours over the 2.5 days = about 15 hours. This works out to about 45 slides per hour.

So for those planning such an adventure (and I keep reading about people scanning the 1500 slides of Grand-dads on the net) factor in about 22 hours of work for doing that. Assuming you dedicate 4 hours per day (per evening?) or a week. So go without TV for a week an you'll have the job done.

This suddenly seems less daunting.

So, to my setup

I used my Epson flatbed for this and followed my normal bulk scanning procedure, except in this instance I did not manually set each exposure. I simply set the auto exposure on. Importantly I also did NOT use the thumbnail generator as that just takes too long. Then I used irfanView to be the controller.

Why?

Well irfanView is a basic image processing tool, its not really the sort of sophisticated image editing tool that something like Photoshop is. Its lightweight (like I mean its only 2Meg as an install file and only takes about 10Meg on my Hdd including all plugins ) fast to start and has some great features for bulk scanning that are not as easy in Photoshop (well not that I know of).

As irfanView is free its even more worth using it.

For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with this here is what I did for this bulk slide exercise. Basically it goes like this.

You start irfanview, and start the scan dialog,
make the choices for the file names for this batch, then
the batch repetition of put slides onto the tray, preview, scan

so lets look at the details.

1) Start up Irfanview and select the right TWAIN device

2) start up the batch scan dialog, which then looks like this

Its got a few interesting points here which are worth pointing out:

you can choose Single (for scanning one thing) or more useful in this context
you can choose Multiple images to allow you to just keep feeding images into that scanner.

Pick the location you want the files to be placed, set up your JPG options (like the compresion settings {I pick the best file quality}) and work out what you want to name it.

The output file name is interesting as it allows you to pick a prefix to the file names, then pick what number it will start at (well I thought 1 was a good start number, but you may need another number for other reasons).

Once you pick the right stuff on this box and click OK you get into this sort of view (you may need to do a print preview to get the bit on the right.

[HINT: click that little sphere with 2 red arrows after you have selected all your images in the step below, that will apply auto exposure to each image you have selected. This may seem confusing now, but read this through then re read this ... sometimes things just have to be done after you've done it once already]

See on the print preview there is that little arrow pointing down, make sure you chose Normal on that and not Thumbnail. Thumbnail is rather like training wheels and will eat time every time you do this. Trust me.

So then select one image (click and drag) to create a selection area. Make the area just a little into the black of the slide, enough to allow for a little movement each time you load in new slides.

This will now be there and serve as a fast template for each scan run you do. From here you don't need to change the selection because any small movement of the slides (like less than a mm) will be accounted for by the frames you've chosen. So, this method will allow you to

load in 8 slides,
click scan
repeat the preview
click scan again
load in another 8 slides and keep going till you've finished the box

You won't need to wait for the system to generate thumbnails, or any other aspects. Just reload the slides, click preview (quick) and click scan.

IrfanView will take each scan data, save it to files starting with the prefix you gave it, increment the number and allow you to continue this till you're sick of it.

Now, my normal practice is to use a prefix for each box of slides. This requires I click on close (bottom of the preview / scan dialog box) and then re start the above procedure from "acquire/Batch scanning" in irfanView again.

As you saw, my settings were to scan at 1200dpi. This is quite enough for www use and as an archive of what the hell you have. For instance this image came out (including the black border) at 1830x1330 pixels.

and still after cropping down to just the image came to 1580x1077 pixels (enough for a small print) and had had this sort of detail at 100%

from there you can pull out your Nikon or send out to a specialist for better scans if you think the picture is worth it ... like this one (which I scanned on my Nikon LS-4000 later).

and 100% crop (right click to enlarge into a full tab to see 100%)

so don't spend too much time on the chaff and put the effort into the wheat later.

If I'd tried this exersize with the Nikon I'd still be feeding it.

See Ya

brisbane night skyline

2012-01-13T05:08:00.003+02:00

I came to Brisbane in 1983 to do my Bachelor of Science. I loved Brisbane at the time for being a lovely blend of a bit of city, but still being enough country town to not be intolerable. I took this shot from up at Mt Coot-tha with some Kodachrome

after Uni I lived and worked in Brisbane till 2000 when I left for Tokyo. In 2004 (having come back again) I was surprised at how much growth had taken place in the few years I was gone. I went up again to Mt Coot-tha and took this pic with my Coolpix

I should get up there again and add a more current one to show how much more again its grown.

So anyone who thinks that its more crowded, fast paced and generally annoying in Brisbane (well and South East Queensland in general) you can rest assured its not just in your mind. This is just one of many clearly visible indicators.

I guess they call that development. Its just that the pace is a little rapid for my taste

walking back streets of India

2012-01-12T23:23:00.005+02:00

India can be a fascinating place, full of extremes

Walking the back streets of a town I was working / living in I was often struck by the things I saw

which was nice, but clearly (from the smell) few can read (or choose to). I heard this morning that India is doing very well in the eradication of Polio. That's great news and deserves applause. Perhaps they could focus on public sanitation next? Well with that population its going to be hard.

On a trip up the mountains nearby to see some temples I was struck by this interesting door. It seemed to beg one to open and look at what lay beyond the portal

but behind lay only ruins (and that smell)

well, and the vista of the beautiful lands at the foot of the mountains.

catching up on my past

2012-01-11T14:28:00.004+02:00

For some years I've been promising to scan a bunch of slides taken between 2000 and 2003 in Japan, Canada, India and Korea. I have finally run out of excuses and the scanner is churning away in the background.

Of the many nice images I thought I'd start with sharing this one, taken in Alberta.

My good friend let me stay at his place for a while and took me into various parts of the country around where he lives (Lethbridge). On this trip to the 'hoo doos' with our 4x5 and 8x10 clutter I took this shot with the 35mm and a less than salubrious Sigma 75-300 lens.

Gotta love Canada Geese ... (oh and yes, I did get a few good exposures with all the large format clutter)

real estate nuts

2012-01-10T06:01:00.006+02:00

I should be writing something else at the moment (heck and I should be scanning some film too) but I just came back from the shops and had to share what I saw there.

It is said that "Nature abhorres a vacuum" and in the (albeit small) space left by the withdrawal of the real estate spruikers some other organisms have moved in to fill the void (or was it just elbowed in).

Yes, that's right! In the land of real estate value stagnation packed with retiring baby boomers who can only think "bricks and mortar" as "safe investment"we now have people from the land of the sub-prime crash trying (desperately?) to off-load stuff from there here.

So with all the doom and gloom in the race to flogg off over priced Australian real estate it simply MUST be time to look over the fence to where the grass must be greener.

Don't have the bucks right now, well how about this great offer..

I think the selling title should be LOSING YOUR SUPERANNUATION TO BUY SURPLUS INVESTMENT HOMES

I guess that they must figure that there are so many cashed up de-leaveraged Australians looking to re-invest after getting out of Sydney or Melbourne living here on the Goldie that haven't heard about why these houses are so cheap.

I notice that the wording is cute:

* the finance is guaranteed (they may even guarantee you a negative return too if asked)

* the rent return isn't guaranteed but the text is positioned close, so that must count for something (right?)

* the deposit is only $30,000

But it all gets better as they have FREE EDUCATION WORKSHOPS too.

I see on this part great news ... they offer you a chance to win a free trip to the USA or Thailand

presumably since the houses are in the USA and not Thailand (but one wonders) if the free trip you may win is to anywhere near where these houses may be?

so if you're a real estate nut (or just have a screw loose) then you know who to call. Don't tell them I sent you

fantasy vs reality (smart phones)

2012-01-09T04:05:00.026+02:00

or perhaps desire vs requirements

pre: post scriptum

For the overly sensitive I am not suggesting my phone is better than yours. I am actually only attempting to challenge the implicit assumption of current expensive touch screen phones that it may not be the case that your phone is actually much better than mine. Though I suspect that in itself is distressing.

A criticism of this article is that it compares phones which are not properly smartphones. My responce to this is that the phones under comparison here are the Nokia E63 (which some may not call a smart phone) and a focus on my experience with the Samsung GIO which is most definitely a smartphone.

The GIO was among those phones tested by Choice Magazine in this comparison. So if you don't think its "exemplary" or "typical" of smartphones well perhaps its not the Rolls Royce but it is indeed a smart phone.

And that is the crux of my point ... so too is the E63

So while my focus has been with the Samsung GIO it also includes experiences common to using Samsung Galaxy, HTC Desire, Apple iPhone 3G and 4s phones. In particular the aspect of battery life in those phones and touch screen aspects.

An interesting theme has emerged in the comments of this post which perhaps formed part of my premise but in blithering out this post a la "stream of consciousness" I never stated. That is "A lot depends upon what a person will use a 'phone' for and how much one must pay for it."

I fumbled around this concept with the subtitle desire vs requirements.

With smartphones the lines of functionality start to merge with other computing devices such as laptops and tablets. My personal assumptions are that a phone is a communications device and (like my Palm Pilot) a PDA. PDA's of course encompass significant computing functionality (games among them) and communication has grown (for me at least) to encompass email, www, social media (Twitter, Facebook) and other web services (like banking access).

The crux of what I'm saying here depends on where you sit on that circle of confusion at the focal point of where requirements meet with functionality and how the user interacts with the device.

Thanks everyone for the poignant comments; always welcome. If however you are 'religious' in the love of your phone, please read this post without your evangelical robes.

I've resisted making this post for some time, but after a conversation with an old friend I realised that perhaps I'm not the only one thinking this way and that perhaps I can afford to be the only one in my circle of friends who thinks this way.

My first question is "why do you buy a phone is it to make phone calls? Is it to communicate?" or is it to have access to other things?

Basically I'm bloody sick of everyone pushing "smart phones" onto me, which are often enough not any smarter than my existing phone.

For instance I have written blog posts, taken the images for it and posted that to the web from the above Nokia (this post for instance) while outside walking about.

I decided that the best way to solve this question (for me at least) was to stop fiddling with other people's phones and "go live" for a while with one of my own.

Now I knew that there would be a time to 'adjust', so while I was going to be sitting in hospital for a while (a week, month or so ago) I would have time on my hands and could reliably undistractedly be spending time to fiddle with and get acquainted with a new phone.

So I bought an Android phone (Samsung GIO) and handed my Nokia over to my wife (who would be needing / wanting access to communications like phone, SMS, WWW, email, Facebook, Skype ... blah blah blah).

The short answer to this is that within the 2 weeks I used it I went from wanting to like this phone to selling it and going back to my Nokia.

This should also be said up front that Nokia deserve a good hard kick in the pants for munging up their marketing on this and other E-Series phones. They've done such a pitiful job of selling this phone that I had no idea how good it was until after I bought it and compared it to others.

Now I'm no stranger to mobile computing which sort of started back in the 90's with PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) . I've had 3 iterations of Palm (currently still using an elderly Sony Clie) since 1997, made use of Laptops for my travel computing for over 12 years and live and work on the internet as much as the next IT sort a fella.

Now I have a number of friends who love (well, often also love~hate) their iPhone / Android phones. One of my friends (and fellow bloggers) has a compelling site into what sort of advantages can be had in image processing on the iPhone where editing and capture are combined on the one device. Check out his blog here. I can certainly see the advantage of a phone where it has combined an acceptable digital camera; as I have been long aware of the truth behind the old adage that

the best camera in the world is the one you have with you at the time you need it.

while not up to the standards of an iPhone 4s I can say the camera in the little Samsung was quite acceptable (though neither is a decent substitute for a decent camera)

First: what did I like about the new generation of phone?

Larger screen (but that's a double edged sword), you sure have more space to put your icons for your apps and to get to your apps (and I installed a few) was easier and allowed me to set up a home screen as I would on a PC ... sort of a miniPC.

Graphical presentation, the very sexy smooth feeling of the "gravity" feeling of slipping through a list or a page with a swipe.

But all these features just don't balance out if the thing doesn't work as a phone properly, right?

So what didn't I like about my new "smart phone"?

This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor does it go into detail on why. But, well for starters the phone coverage wasn't as good as my Nokia ... nor was the voice quality, hands free quality or Bluetooth headset functionality.

Battery life .. if you're not always plugged in, its dreadful. Heck, even my Palm (always marketed as a desktop extension) would last for months on AAA batteries or weeks on AAA rechargable. My new Nokia "Smartphone" lasts for 2 or 3 days and my older Nokia (plain old phone) lasted easily a week.

Then next thing was I didn't think it was that smart.

Now read this list below carefully and consider that coming from my Nokia E series phone which already did:

email (including PUSH email)
WWW (just a small part of the internet)
Calendar (and integration with Google)
Contacts that can be accessed immediately (and integration with Google)
internet podcasting
internet streaming radio
MP3 playback
voice dialing (without an internet connection)
voice reading of SMS and email (without an internet connection so I can listen to SMS's through my hands free BT headset while driving)
QWERTY keypad
integrated Maps and Navigation
camera (tres basic on my model)
Quick Office (spread sheets on the phone)
PDF reader

without so much as downloading anything.

It leads one to ask "what more do you need"?

It was a bit of a challenge to identify much about the Samsung Android which provided much more smarts than my older one.

If you look at it another way, phones like the Nokia E-Series, Blackberry, iPhone and Android are all providing the same sort of functionality. They connect to the internet, have decent data rates, have applications which integrate with both the phone system (camera / gps) and TCP/IP connectivity.

It all comes down to how its UI is packaged and what the consumer thinks is smart.

So there wasn't much left to add into this equation for me except "touch screen" bigger screen and faster CPU.

While the Samsung did open the door to stuff like Angry Birds or some nice fun apps it was a usability nightmare in so many ways.

Usablity issue - input

Give your touch screen phone to some one who has never used it. Its quitelikely they'll hang up the call by mistake, change what is active on the screen, perhaps delete something. People who are used to touch screens have learned that you have to be careful with it and often simply forget about this.

Watching someone typing on a touch screen can be amusing. They have to carefully cradle the phone so that they can hold the edges, and dart their thumb down taking great care as to not touch anything else by mistake. Its quite difficult to use one while walking and you certainly can't ergonomically hold it and type on it. But that's ok as most users don't type much on their touch screen smart phone.

I can type quickly and reliably on my computer, the T9 keypad on my older phones and on the QWERTY on my Nokia E63, but no matter how much time I put into it I just kept making errors AND having maddening difficulty in editing them. A bit of looking on the net reveals its not just me, its a whole world of people out there having trouble with this.

While there are some success stories out there with respect to text entry (like this article) for each success there are probably 100 other sites giving tributes to the poor auto-correct that touch screen phones give.

One site (which seems to fit my own experience) , that seems to have nothing vested in the outcomes gives the rates as being higher for iPhone users while speed of entry was about equal.

iPhone owners entered text as rapidly as QWERTY owners on their own phones. However, iPhone owners made significantly more Texting errors on their own phone (5.6 errors/message) than both QWERTY owners (2.1 errors/message) and numeric phone owners (2.4 errors/message) on their own phones.

(full article here)

Instead what struck me with the touch screen phone (I'll be calling it "New Smart Phone" from now on as my Nokia is just as smart and IMHO touch and screen size was the only significant difference) was the complete lack of tactile feedback in using the phone and the lack of control in editing because of the lack of physical navigation keys.

This is a significant point form me as one of the things which drove my move to Palm was that I didn't want the keyboard dominating the device (as it had on earlier keyboard devices like my Sharp Organizer). On my Palm a tiny portion at the bottom of the device was the pen input area and the entire screen was touch sensitive.

The Android phone I used however lost most of the screen visibility when you began entering text, and only displayed a couple of lines of context. Not as good as the Nokia, while the Nokia has a smaller screen it doesn't have to dual task the screen thus requiring design and presentation changes. Many times when using the Samsung the buttons needed (like Send) would disappear of the screen and you'd have to swing the phone around a few times to go from portrait to landscape just to get the button back.

Holding the phone an typing on it was a pain. I mean if you just want to type out:

yes, be rnd in a yic

its fine (although I wanted tic, and it isn't worth trying to re-edit that). But the nature of the touch screen meant that you can't accidentally bump anything (even with the merest of pressure with these capacitive screens) without blowing your input. The Nokia on the other hand allows your thumbs to even support the phone while you type, you can even feel where one letter starts and the other ends.

I soon learned that the touch sensitive was as much of a curse as it was a benefit on the Palm.

For instance you would pass the device to someone and they would delete or change something by just touching it accidentally. This same issue was as ever at work on the Touch Screen Phone as it ever was on the Palm. I could go on about the UI issue, but I think that its only suited for usage where you are able to focus on touching what you see and you only engage with the device by touching big coloured things.

If you're vision impared I suggest also looking at the voice advantages of the Nokia.
So if you don't mind what you write and can sort out the problems later then its all fine and dandy ... shat me to tears however.

Usability Issue - Reading the screen
Size matters, so I was also attracted to the larger screen, which I expected to add usability.

So while a bigger screen seemed to be a better idea, in reality it didn't work out for me as when web browsing I found as many sites which did not render as readably (despite trying 3 different browsers) on my Samsung as they did on my Nokia - despite the Nokia having the smaller (by half) screen. I suspect that this has to do with packing the pixel density too high for the screen size.

This got me to thinking, am I expecting the phone to do more than it really can? I mean if I wanted a laptop sized screen I could get a tablet (like an iPad) which gives me usable pixels rather than puny pixels. Sure the iPhone 4s looks very sexy but I need a magnifying glass to really see how much better that looks. The 640 by 980 pixels of the iPhone 4s screens sure looked nice, but the print ended up being so small I couldn't read it when rendering fonts at max density.

Already the iPhone is getting on the large size (funny how we used to prefer phones to be small and convenient) and I think that going larger would be pointless.

Oh I can hear the objections already, but then I'll put it to you another way. The Dell Streak has a much larger screen, but becomes a larger device as this vid demonstrates.

despite having a larger screen and being a pretty good touch screen phone people have not flocked to it ... I'm guessing the cumbersome handling has something to do with that ...

its a portal to your hip pocket

Cloud computing has a number of benefits but just in case it wasn't clear or obvious if you're not on the internet you can't access it. Now for some people being unable to get 3G signal is as frightening as not being able to get air.

Strangely enough I find myself in locations where there isn't 3G and thus I don't have access to Google maps while I still do have the Nokia OVI maps which my Nokia came pre-installed with. So as long as my GPS can see a satellite I can navigate, but of course the New SmartPhone can't do a thing.

So if you want to do anything with these New Touch Screen smart phones you have to have a steady stream of data to do it.

Most of the people I know rely on WiFi hotspots and home WiFi to supplement this, meaning that their phone becomes less functional when they leave home. Unless they're willing to pay and are in an area which provides that service.

Speaking of service and costs, you'll need to look at your phone companies billing methods, as here in Australia at least billing per MB is not uncommon. This means that if your phone:

makes a connection
uses data
closes that connection

you are billed for 1MB even if you used 0.027MB (which is about what a email check or skype handshake will require)

I ran Skype and email on my new phone for 5 or so hours and it sucked a shockingly large amount of data. Not that the phone thought so, in fact the phone thought it had only consumed 117KB or so. The phone company on the other hand billed me for over 50MB of data (good thing my plan has 4000MB supplied).

To make things worse, you can't set the phone up to chose which apps connect to what data source (can on the Nokia) or even to do something polite and ask which data source they should use or even if they can.

My Nokia on the other hand has a connection manager, which allows me to decide to connect and holds the connection open for apps that request it. Because of that a typical 5 hours use of Skype and email on 3G can be 1 or 2MB

But all of this seems to fit the average users technical levels / willingness to learn and the Telco's desire to charge.

The Telco wants to sell you on a system which ensures a revenue stream for them.

I want a phone that:

makes calls,
sends text messages
extends the realm of communication to include some other web services like email, Web, Facebook, Twitter and a few other things.
give me access to calendar and diary

While I was sitting browsing my mail in the hospital, I got an email from my friend which had a cartoon seemed to sum up this situation.

Heaps of guys just fantasize about marrying a "model", probably as many chicks drool over movie stars. The fact that some other woman may be even tempered, great with kids, cook well and even help balance the budget is overlooked in comparison to the "hot babe on a banana lounge by the pool".

Many seem to be obsessed with what is fashionable and how it will look to others if they are seen together.

I think that's a bit of how it is for many "New Smart Phone" users (which is not to say all of them).

For many it seems that having a reliable functional device which goes the distance is secondary to the user experience (a bit like that old anti Mac ad)

Try using your "New Smart Phone" for a few days away from power and see how it goes. Even with 3G turned off, no WiFi, no SMS and only an hours worth of calls in the day my Samsung only lasted 18 hours.

My Nokia does something like a 3 or 4 days in such usage.

I understand that some of my friends will now view me in rather similar light to the way that some groups view you announcing you like football (that'd be soccer to some Australians) or that you're gay.

bottom line

If you want a phone to be a phone

make phone calls
to allow you to send and receive email,
do a bit of web browsing,
take some photographs, and maybe email them or MMS them
play music
access social media like Facebook and Twitter

and you don't want to

spend a lot of money on the phone,
wish to use a lot of data
be always worried about it running out of battery

go get a Nokia E63 for $99. Put the extra bucks into an iPad or something.

It could be said that the main problem for phones like the E63 or the Blackberry is that they don't look right. People who use many of the touch phones would try to tell me that their phone is easier to get at X Y or Z feature than mine is. Well my response to that is only because they're more familiar with their device.

Sure you may have access to some features more easily (like evernote) on the New Smart Phones but then you could always go grab a 10" tablet and have the same thing with a much more usable screen area.

In my view a New Smart Phone which is bigger and costs more than a phone and a tablet, isn't such a hot choice.

Is it to be seen as stylish? If you were after a set of running shoes would you go for a pair like this?

they sure look more stylish and sexy?

Lastly I'd like to leave you with this quote from a site comparing the Nokia E72 to the iPhone:

Part of that experience is hampered by usability confusion, likely a non-issue to those staunch Nokia addicts who are upgrading to the E72 from its well-esteemed E71 predecessor, but which presents stumbling blocks to those fresh to the platform. Little things, like managing WiFi network and cellular connections, were less obvious than Android, webOS and the iPhone OS make it; mockingly obvious to those familiar with the ways of S60, but a headache to everybody else.

Or to put it another way ... were less obvious on Android and iPhone after having come from various PC's and Nokia. Its strange how if you grow up with something you think its intuitive, but forget all what you've had to go through to get to where you are.

God I love religion

2011-12-29T00:05:00.002+02:00

Its absurd to consider a scene were priests fight against other priests over who's turf it is

its almost like a scene from Monty Python's life of brian

while on the subject I liked the other news of the Croc snagging a lawnmower of the Gardner

seems to have cost the croc a tooth too ... oh well, hopefully they have a dentist

Merry Christmas

2011-12-23T00:25:00.002+02:00

well that time of the year has come around, and as I'm likely to be absorbed by family and friends at this time I'd like to make the last blog post of the year a Christmas wish of goodwill to all.

In Finland the Finnish for Merry Christmas is Hyvää Joulua.

The above image was taken by me one winter in Finland with the most amazing ice crystal growth (frost) formations leaving little spikes of ice all over the place.

Of course I'm in Australia again these days so the White Christmas is just a thing of days gone by for now.

Anyway, I'd like to wish you all the best for this period, stay safe and may the new year bring you health and prosperity.

My local little bit of bush

2011-12-18T03:51:00.003+02:00

One of the things about living in the same house for 40 years is that you get to see changes in the local area. Some for the worse others for the better.

At the bottom of my hill is a small creek and a bit of bushland. This bank of the creek was actually used by the railway that once connected Southport to Brisbane (till it was closed, but that's another story of political corruption, not today).

When I was a kid this little strip of bush was just that. Naturally it also looked a bit scraggly too. It was none the less fun to play in.

About 10 years ago (while I was living in asia) some locals got together and tried to clean it up by clearing out dumped rubbish, ripping out some of the feral weeds. Now the place is looking almost like a park. The old railway line forms a natural path through the strip of bush and there are markers to aid in learning a bit about what species is what.

Its so nice to see this all being done in what is essentially the commons, not someone's back yard

Hats off to my community members

(posted from my mobile while doing some walking around)

on ya bike

2011-12-15T01:08:00.005+02:00

its almost ironic that one of the great Australian slang statments pivots around a bicycle culture. Certainly in Australian history we were very much a nation who used bicycles to get around for work as well as pleasure. There are many stories of shearers getting from town to town on their bikes all over Australia.

Sadly Australia is now about one of the most negative nations on earth with respect to bicycles. This issue was recently raised by Tour rider Cadel Evans and (predictably) received significant and heated debate.

I have to ask, is Canberra the only cycling safe city in Australia?

Its a relatively rapid, interesting and sad twist to Australian bicycling.

Sadly it has become cemented into modern Australian culture that roads are for cars and bicycles are toys.

I started thinking about this again a few months ago when I saw this photo in the Finnish Press. It shows an excellent example of lateral thinking and application of pedal power to get around town, do some shopping AND take your kids with you.

Its almost tragic that a country such as Australia which regards itself as being an outdoor country is rapidly becoming an indoor and inside cars only country.

I lived in Finland for some years, and no matter what the weather, people would be outside walking, pushing kids in prams and riding bicycles. Unsurprisingly those people looked much healthier than the couch and car bound ones.

Recently one of the Bloggers I like to read did an interesting piece on the economics of bike lanes. While Cameron is a keen bicycle rider too (a real life one, not just morning lycra cafe set) his analysis seemed to show that having a healthier population did not actually give a net health cost benefit. Strangely because people seemed to be living longer lives. So this "James Dean" economic outcome (live hard, die young, leave a good looking corpse) demonstrates to me some of the shortfalls in using Economics to attempt to justify human activity.

Avoiding getting into issues like externalities and choice of metrics I'll steer back onto the course of bicycles and say that in Australia we are now facing greater and greater commuting times, more congested roads and many other negatives which I strongly feel are associated with our addiction to cars. Without doubt cars are great tools for a purpose ... but would you cut up your steak with a chainsaw?

I almost feel that we are missing out on some sort of innovation with our focus on cars too. As when last in Sweden I noticed this bicycle courier ...

I thought when I saw it "what a cunning and interesting design" ... don't see stuff like that in Australia. Heck even getting mudguards on a bike is hard now.

So while Holden has introduced an new electric car called the "Volt" that is expected to cost something like $50,000 one would have to ask why more people don't just spend $500 buy a decent bicycle and ride to work?

I know when I did (back in the 90's) I actually saved something like $6000 a year in vehicle costs (fuel, tyres, services) and got fitter to boot!

If enough of you get on yer bikes I reckon that it'll start to turn the social attitudes around and take bicycle riding in Australia from a "funny fad" back to real transport again.

Here's to that

taste varies

2011-12-13T02:01:00.005+02:00

Perhaps I'm too conservative.

This morning on the way back from my blood tests I spotted this outfit in a shop window (heaps of reflection on the glass, so quick n dirty photoshop work to make the suit stand out better)

and the shoes ....

Oh Lord, one has to either be the fashion equivalent of tone deaf for this one. Either that or have never ever seen those photographs of relatives wearing funny stuff and said "oh my god uncle bill, what were you thinking...

Back yard Sunday

2011-12-11T01:37:00.000+02:00

Hanging around the back yard after a early morning at the beach. While I didn't go swimming this time twas nice to watch the crabs and get my legs in the surf.

Its good to be feeling better.

backup and recovery

2011-11-29T02:53:00.006+02:00

my lovely wife came to visit of again in the ward. she thought a bunny suit would cheer of up.

Things are looking up now. Out of postop and in the ward now.

so now all the backups I've done so far in terms of personal health and fitness are helping me with recovery

the heart of the matter

2011-11-22T00:55:00.010+02:00

This is going to be a big week for me, as on Friday I'll be going under the knife and buzzsaw to have an unexpectedly discovered Aneuryism treated as well as (while they've got the heads off and the pump out) replace my Aortic valve with a mechanical one.

There has been a lot of development in the area of Artificial Heart Valves over the years, which is good cos some of the early models were a bit clunky.

I'm hoping that the surgeon chooses to implant the On-X valve for me, which unlike any others today is made of carbon and has some unique and interesting properties (such as coagulation issues).

The other choice that the surgeon seems to be considering will be the more traditional metal based one from ATS Medical. Since he (rather than me) has more experience in this matter (implanting valves) I'll be relying on him to make the final choice "when he's in there and sees what he finds".

God willing I'll be back and able to continue my life (and my blog) in a few weeks.

Part of writing this is to express that I'm often disappointed to see people who are slack arsed lazy wastes of skin doing nothing with their lives and often just abusing their bodies and wasting their good health.

Life for me has been a battle to have what I want and do what I want, so I take nothing for granted and revel in every success. You see I was born with an Aortic valve which did not "split" properly at embryonic development (commonly called a bicuspid aorta). So I had my first surgery (open heart surgery) when I was about 11. In this surgery they attempted to repair my valve.

This lasted till I was about 28 and rapid deterioration of my valve led to another surgery where I received a transplant from someone else. That lasted for nearly twenty years, during which time I've been lucky enough to enjoy good health (through hard work, careful training and a stubborn attitude), develop my self (though education and experience) work in interesting places and travel around the world.

My message to you today is to take your life by the neck and get out of it everything you ever wanted. Don't sit on your arse with your finger in your navel, get up and live it. When I was younger the surgeons and doctors regularly told me (and my parents) to be careful, not over exert myself and to live within my limits. My reaction to this was to know what my limits were and actively and intelligently pursue what they were.

Unlike most kids of 10 I was introduced to the concept that I could be dead quite early on. I think that it was something quite formative for my personality and my view on life. Life IS what you make it, sure you may get dealt a bum hand now n then, but play your cards to the best you can and go for it.

I know while I prepare to go to the hospital I'll be thinking of the wonderful things I've been lucky to share and experience

Norway

Finland

India

and heaps of other places which are too numerous to mention here...

So my goal now will be to recover my health so I can spend time with my lovely wife

and get out with friends taking photographs of the beautiful world we live in...

So my message in this blog post is to encourage you all who read this don't be limited by your perceptions and go out and live life while you're alive

(hope to) see you next week

phone plan data charging: things you should keep in mind

2011-11-16T05:42:00.009+02:00

Its not just the rules, but the implications of how the rules fit together.

I recently changed my phone plan from "pay as you go" with 5c per MegaByte(MB) of data and free "social media" (meaning facebook, twitter, ebay and foursqare {which I've never used}) to an "unlimited" phone plan where they toss in 4Gig of data (along with unlimited phone calls.

At first I thought that 4Gig would be quite a decent amount, but after my first day on the plan (looking at my logs and theirs) I saw I used 16MB of data. So it became clear that I might actually consume that billable amount (which is not the same as using that amount) if I wasn't careful.

You see, as soon as you change from "billed" content to "free" content it resets the counter of one MB back at the phone company, clocks up a MB to you and starts the counter going again ... even if you've only used far less than a MB.

Take this example I set up to demonstrate this. I started a connection on "free" check facebook and then look at some eBay auctions and then went to a paid service (gmail) using a tiny amount of DATA (like 0.1MB) then dropped off. I was curious to see if it generated a second charge.

all in all the phone registered that I was liable for 0.842 of a MB

my bill on the other hand showed that I'd clocked up 2 MB; one of free and one of counted towards my 4Gig of data.

You may say "that's right and proper, as you shouldn't be charged for the free stuff".

Well that may be, but if I'm going to be buying a MB of data (or using my allocation of it) then I'd like to get what I use. Considering that I didn't even use a whole MB in my entire session what was the point of giving me free what I'd already paid for?

But it gets worse, imagine that you make a longer connection period:

check your mail
have a look at face book
your email app checks your mail again
you pop over to twitter check thing out and make a few tweets
your email app checks your mail in the background
you quickly check that status of an auction
read the news and do some general surfing

You'd actually clock up less than 3MB of data but be liable for 4

If you have Skype or some other app running in the background it could actually be a lot worse than this over the course of a day.

Suddenly 4Gig doesn't sound so generous, and the "free stuff" is actually costing you.

So when I was "pay as I go" I only used the "free stuff" on the 3G phone data and did the "charged stuff" on my WiFi ... now I do the opposite, and actually find myself not wanting to touch the "free stuff" because it costs me.

cunning apps for photographers

2011-11-11T02:53:00.004+02:00

As a Palm Pilot user (and photographer) one of the first apps I loaded on my Palm was VadeMecum which helped a large format photographer with a number of handy tools such as calculating bellows draw exposure compensation, as well as DoF calculations.

Many of these functionalities (although not all) have found their way onto phones now (as the new PDA's) as well as some interesting ones.

Today I heard about this one:

The Photographer's Ephemeris

Which allows photographers to check out when the shadows will be in a place at at time.

In the past I used one on my palm pilot which simply showed where the sun or moon would be at any given time (it was a star chart) and you could sort it out for yourself.

Its sort of nice that the software systems we have now make it even easier to overlay maps of locations and this information for you, so you don't need to have a map of the area (or a compas with you) when planning things.

But you know, often we don't get the opportunity to plan, and have to make the most of what's there when we're there. So in situations where the sun isn't in exactly the right place ...

you can use a few tools like HDRI to at least make the most of the lighting you have.

economic booms

2011-11-08T04:11:00.005+02:00

boom - its even synonymous with explosion isn't it.

Explosions are often about short destructive forces.

Combustion is about burning stuff, things like the "internal combustion engine" come to mind where small amounts of the stuff is burnt at a time to produce ongoing energy from a small amount of fuel.

Efficient engineering can get excellent amounts of useful energy from a small amount of fuel. You can drive a modern car for 20Km on a litre of fuel ...

Or the same litre of fuel can be used to make a boom in something like a molotov cocktail

Which makes an effective cheap weapon to get your way, but has mainly only destruction as its outcome.

So why is any responsible Government trying to facilitate a resources boom in Australia rather than turn this into an engine for sustainable development for years to come? The ore will always be needed and likely as not the coal too.

I think that the only answer that makes sense here is that the Government is not behaving in a responsible manner and is acting like a kid with money burning a hole in its pocket.

Perhaps the electorate are too ... so why don't we tell our MP's to stop this short sighted boom stuff and start making wealth for our nation in a sustainable manner?

one size fits all

2011-11-02T22:47:00.002+02:00

and we all know how well that works.

I hear on the radio this morning that Anna Bligh (Queensland State Premier) thinks that making mining policy for Queensland should be be like that, and ignore geographic, hydrological, agricultural and demographic differences across the 1.8 Million square kilometers (715 thousand square miles).

One size fits all .. well we know how well that works for the people who buy clothes (even it it does make life easier for the suppliers).

I think its telling that rather than iterate any policy of her own she just slags the other parties. Probably because she knows in her heart after all the fuckups in Queensland she'll be out in the next election. Maybe she's been talking to Kristina Keneally?

Perhaps I should have called this post "dumb and dumber"

To Andrew I'll say "don't tie your fortunes to this boat anchor ... unless you want an albatross tied around your neck. However you do both seem to be birds of a feather.

Halloween

2011-10-31T13:29:00.003+02:00

Monter Mash was a favourite of mine as a kid ... I even have the LP

Now thanks to Ben I have a doll doing covers too

the details on the doll are sorta cute, with the neck bolts

and the chorus pumkin

ya gotta love that pumpkin

thanks Ben

Scanning as neg or scanning as pos

2011-10-29T04:57:00.005+03:00

This topic comes up again and again, with people not seeming to actually do anything to verify their work. So I'll put up this post to clarify differences I see when I scan negative on my Epson scanner with the supplied Epson software

I usually scan negative as positive and invert, the reasons are mainly that I get better control and I prefer the results I get. If you don't like to scan this way then by all means don't. If you think that you may gain something from this work flow then what follows are my reasons and some evidence.

Keep in mind that no matter what, the goal here is to produce a result that gets you a satisfactory image from your negative. If you can reliably and consistently get satisfactory results using a method then aside from learning about alternatives for "just in case" then by all means stick to the method you prefer.

Having said that I will say that over the years of scanning I have many times come back to stuff and thought "gosh, I know I can do better with that now". So if you happen to be reading this thinking about scanning your life's work of negatives once and for all just keep in mind that scaning can be a journey of learning.

You may also find the following useful links:

quick neg scan tutorial
using the Epson for bulk scanning of 35mm colour neg (and getting your desired settings applied across all evenly)
registration problems on Epson scanners and why you shouldn't go too far in trying to adjust this or that because when you improve focus you may disturb registration
using your scanner to understand film density.
driving your scanner software differently to effect some changes in scanner side exposure on Epsons (meaning better noise characteristics in the dense areas of your negs).
don't forget colour management on your Epson (its not where you might think it is)
Black and White neg scanning

Firstly Methods

I thought I'd start with a slightly over exposed negative. This will exacerbate the problems associated with trying to get shadow details, especially if one follows expose for the shadows and let the highlights fall where they may. I began by setting my Epson 4870 scanner in professional mode and scanned in a variety of ways. I notice (as previously observed in this post that (among other things) scan times varied.

Below is a table of my operations and results, note the changes in scan times in different operations:

Neg as Pos
scan 1 33:95 default adjustments
scan 2 34:00 auto exposure
scan 3 45.61 manual setting, blue hard right

Neg as Neg
scan 4 42:33 auto exposure
scan 5 42:49 manual adjustment of levels

You will find the images named accordingly.

I am not certain as to why there is a scan time difference but I find that the only explanation that makes sense is that the scanner is making alterations in exposure time. Its interesting to note that the scanning of Negative as Negative results in nearly as long an extension of exposure. Previously I have noted that some extension of capture can be found into the darker areas using epson scanners by altering the scan time in the above manner. How much is not a lot, but if you want it, you may just be able to pull a little more out (again also previously discussed).

So now, lets look at some images. Please note these are hosted on Flickr, so feel free to open them in another tab for closer examination if you require.

Firstly lets work with linear data

So scanning neg as pos the first three operations give the following results. Please also note that its important to assign the correct colour profile to your scan after capture. I have mine set to EPSON ColorMatch RGB ...

Again, I prefer to set things myself because I think "never send a machine to to a humans job" (unless you want an insensitive result).

We can see perhaps there is different contrast ... so now, inverting the image

Definitely there is different contrast. Clearly we get different shadow details here ... as well as different contrast. And naturally there is different colours as I have not perfectly tweaked each image to match the other yet.

Looking into details in a area of high contrast we see this:

Dense and inky shadows on the two images done "default" and "Auto" but much better shadow details on the image 3. I happen to think the middle image is about right on colour.

By setting the capture area of the scan (the black and white points) we can capture the density range that negative has. As I have mentioned before negative does not have an even or a linear response. There are some good reasons for this and its not a mistake or a design failing.

The R G and B layers are at different density for a given exposure AND have a different range of density.

So its important to tweak that as soon as you can.

Because each film will have different response characteristics I think its essential to apply curves YOURSELF. One can use the "neg pos" software that has already pre-programmed in various films, but the last time I examined that, it resulted in a much noiser blue channel. I believe that this is not related to the software, but to the way that the scanner driver is handled and the changes that alteration can make.

Of course the linear scan is a little lacking in contrast, and so tweaking it (I only bothered with scan 3 on the right) we get a more 'natural' looking image of the scene.

So we get a little better shadow details in the image ... but then that may not be noticeable or needed. It is however there if you did need it rather than not being there.

In my opinion this method allowed for better and more accurate setting of black point and seems to have resulted in a better output. I believe that this is related to there being more information in the "heel" of the image (dark is dense on negative) particularly in the green and definately in the blue.

Lets now look at the results of scanning negative on the negative settings

Firstly lets look at what we see in the scanner driver .. we see that the default settings leave red in the middle, and a curve being applied already

but apply a CURVE to the data which does not occur when you scan negative using the positive setting.

The more you adjust the black and white points, the steeper that curve is ... and please note that its not a linear curve. The blue now appears more moved over to the right than it did when you were viewing it as a positive.

and you'll also see that the curve bellies out more ... I guess that it could be "up to you" to decide if more or less processing in the scanner driver is better or not.

Without a doubt in my mind if you are not editing this in 16 bits, do as much in the scanner as you can.

Now lets over lay these two scans on top of the other 3

Now, looking at this I think its clear that Scan 4 (which was auto exposure) actually looks less contrasty than the Scan 5 (which I set manually) but BOTH are more contrasty and darker than the linear scan.

Perhaps you can tweak this in photoshop, but pulling the curve back out will result in loss of information due to the integer nature of the data. You can not do log maths on integters in an orthogonal way and not expect data loss.

This supports my experience that scanning negative as negative applies way to much correction to the image and throws away data which you don't want to happen. Its even worse when you look into the shadows as below.

Both Scan 4 and Scan 5 are much much murkier than Scan 3 (which follows my recommended negative scanning method).

Finally
I am only reporting what I find, if you want "the truth" go to church and the preacher will tell you what to believe.

If you ask questions about my findings I'm happy to reply. I do get a little bored with the simple re-iteration of the initial question, implying I'm wrong while not providing any of your own evidence and general not reading of the posts I link to. Questions about those posts are happily answered as I am not a professional writer I may make my posts with assumptions not properly clarified.

The Nikon 1 series

2011-10-28T03:04:00.006+03:00

I've been eyeing this off for some time and wondering if its a crock of under done technology in an over done marketing dressing.

The fact that the Panasonic G1 took ages to get any sort of market traction yet seems to be a screamingly better package for less money seems to cement that the Nikon is just showing what can be done with an extensive marketing network and public ignorance of what anything means.

I am tempted to believe that there may be something in the entire system, particularly with the fast AF and the availablity of interchangable lenses.

The sensor is smaller than the 4/3 (as seen above) but is still much larger than the old "pro-sumer" market of digital cameras (such as the Canon G series). Once upon a time people wanted to move towards DSLR cameras because they had a better pixel density. The less pixels per square area means that each pixel can get more light. Its sort of like carving a pizza into more slices and pretending there is more food.

The graph below shows the pixel density of successive cameras, I've started it with my 2002 model Coolpix 5000 (which is a 2/3" sensor and was a great camera in its day) and moved along towards the new Nikon 1

The Nikon has much lower pixel density than my G1 panasonic, which likely means it'll have more noise. Its interesting how we've come full circle back to where we were in 2002. I wrote this article some years back, but it seems none the less relevant now.

Perhaps Nikon is re-entering the pro-sumer market with a more capable camera (sneaking up the sensor size I mean)? Certainly when compared to the winky dink little sensors put into cameras like the Canon Powershot range (even the G12) this new 1 series will be a better performer.

But something smells badly with the marketing push IMHO.

SlowMo HighSpeed Jets

2011-10-25T01:46:00.004+03:00

The Gold Coast 600 was on this weekend gone and there was an FA18 flyover to mark the beginning

I'd rate this as the most boring flyover I've ever witnessed. What it lacked in quality it did make up for in quantity and duration. I guess this is what the bogans want right?

I wonder how much it cost to have that many Jets in the air for that long (and getting them all rallied together)

tracks in the sand

2011-10-24T06:51:00.004+03:00

One of my the bloggers I follow (Jao) recently did a post on animal tracks in the sand ... this made me think of the times I'd seen similar stuff here.

These are from a sand blow ... not far from this point

Its really good to be up in the early morning before people are up ... everything is quiet and you can see the tracks of those gone earlier in the day.

There's lizards up and around in the early morning

and this crab too

Portrait lenses: 5D vs GH1

2011-10-21T23:39:00.023+03:00

One of my favourite words is fungible. I'd never heard of it till I worked in the Finance industry (and who'd have thought but its a finance namespace word). Its defined over at Wikitionary as:

Adjective

fungible (comparative more fungible, superlative most fungible)

(finance and commerce) Able to be substituted for something of equal value or utility; interchangeable, exchangeable.

With that definition in mind, the purpose of todays post is to explore the fungiblity of 50mm on 4/3 vs 100mm on full frame.

background

When digital SLR cameras came out I was unimpressed by the APS size sensor. I felt that it twisted lenses into something I was not used to. My fine 24mm wide angle became a middle or nothing semi-normal and my favourite normal (EF50) became some sort of half assed tele (something like 80mm which is too short IMHO). I ended up needing to buy alternative zoom lenses to cover the angles I liked and the DoF was never what I wanted.

Then I tried 4/3 and found that the x2 factor on the lenses was much more acceptable to me than the x1.6 of APS. I did find that the optical SLR viewfinder was pathetically small and so it wasn't till micro4/3 came out with the electronic viewfinders that I was fully comfortable with focus (and yes, I had a number of focus problems with APS cameras which included backfocus and front focus issues as well as inability to clearly manual focus on the small focusing screens).

Since I started using micro4/3 cameras one of the questions I have sought answers to is the ability to substitute half the focal length at 2 stops brighter and get the same thing. Back in March 2010 I made a comparison of this however I used 35mm negative, which didn't fully satisfy my interests because I still wonder about the utility of a 5D in what I photograph.

As I recently borrowed a 5D (for testing the Olympus 21mm f3.5 wide) I thought I'd do another test to satisfy my curiosity (and of course provide information for others pondering the same thing).

Too many reviews compare things with no context other than the optical one. I think that's invalid because I don't know anyone who just buys based on what the magazines say. Most people need reach into their pocket and pull out some money. So in someways there needs to be an examination of cost benefit. So lets examine some costs.

Both the GH1 and the 5D are only available now as used cameras (which to me is a good thing as they are cheaper this way, let someone else take a big depreciation hit if you can). A good used 5D body still fetches about $1000 while a good G1 about $250 and a GH1 (if you were after video as there is no other significant difference between the G1 and GH1) about $400.

The lenses uses in this test were the Canon FD 50 f1.4 and the Olympus OM100mm f2.8 - one can expect to pay about $100 for the FD50 1.4 and about $200 for the OM100mm f1.8 So one can take advantage of cheaper lenses. Because shorter lenses cost less than longer ones of equal quality and also 50mm was once a really popular focal length.

Then there is size the 5D is about twice the dimensions of the G1

So not only do you pay twice as much for the 5D as you do the G1, you have to carry around twice as much of a monster.

People often discount this fact when making considerations and instead ruminate about "what makes the ultimate image".

This "ultimate image" nonsence forgets an important fact in photogaphy: if you don't have your camera with you then you can't take pictures with it.

Hmmm?

This is of course why I bought a G1 and sold most of my EOS gear back in 2009 (after much rumination and after buying the G1 and having if for some months just to be sure).

Clearly then this test is not without me having some pre-conceptions from the outset. I think its important to say that some of my preconceptions were upheld here, while others were challenged and I think its fair to say I learned something in here which I didn't expect to learn (but wondered about in another context)

examination

In this test wanted to examine how well the micro4/3 camera would hold up against a full frame camera in respect to portrait focal lengths. I chose 100mm for the focal length because I've always like it more than 135mm. Canon and Nikon and Olympus alike have all made good sharp f2.8 100mm lenses for some decades. I happen to own a Olympus OM100mm f2.8 which I think is one of the sharpest lenses ever made (the TS-E90mm would get my vote as the best) and the 135mm range is a bit patchy if you ask me. Likewise there are plenty of good 50mm lenses out there (I own a few of them) which of course makes the basis for this comparison.

So to compare a 50mm lens on micro4/3 to a 100mm on a full frame one needs to consider that to get the same DoF look and feel, you need to keep the aperture 2 stops brighter on the 4/3 camera. So in theory 50mm @ f1.4 <=> 100mm @ f2.8. But of course its not without problems because (among other things) the aspect ratio is different the 4/3 format is far more square looking than the 3/2 format of full frame.

Notice that when covering the same width that the 4/3 gives that bit more along the top and bottom.

Next I'll state that all images were taken

in RAW
converted using ACR 5.6 with exactly the same parameters
exposure set by my Gossen light meter and manual setting applied to the cameras

This was done so as to get the images as close as possible in terms of processing (camera JPG's would be more difficult for the nature of this comparison)

Something which came out right away was that: if you are taking shots in full sunlight that using f1.4 is a challenge.

The shutter speed required is often exceeding what your cameras shutter will allow. For instance on a sunny 16 kind of day (like this was) I was using 4000th of a second to get f1.4 and even then was needing to have shadows as part of the picture or have a washout. Check the nuclear glow of the shirt back for instance. At 4000th of a second fill flash is out of the question too.

So it seems that fast lenses and daylight are not good friends.

So anyway now lets take a look at the images.

First the image from the Olympus 100mm at 2.8

and then the 4/3 camera with the 50mm at 1.4
The first thing I notice is that the colour and contrast is different (there is also bokeh but that's for another post). The FD 50 when opened up to 1.4 is really soft and dull looking which influences the colour. This is clear in the 100% view below, especially where the stark contrast border between the white velcro of the cap strap borders the darkness of the hair in shadow.

Don't get confused and think this 'flare' only exists where there is bright light, it exists all over the image area and is what serves to make the lens "low contrast".

If we now look at the OM100mm at f2.8 we see definitely better contrast.

Its interesting to note however that the outright resolution of detail between the two lenses is quite similar.

This is consistent with what pulled me away from my 10D and 20D cameras in favor of the Panasonic G1 ... it just has heaps of detail.

On that subject its a good time to observe that the 5D turns its 36x24mm capture area into 4368 x 2912 pixels while the G1 divides its (much smaller area) 18x13mm into 4000 x 3000. This means that while the outright capture of detail is quite similar the micro4/3 is actually a little more demanding of lens quality. Since the FD50 f1.4 (or in fact almost any super bright lens) has always been regarded as a little soft fully open, it translates to a bit more than that here.

So when you stop the FD50 down to f2.8 it clears up immensely

to be more or less equal to the contrast of the Olympus 100mm lens.

but of course loosing that nice shallow DoF. I encourage you to open up each of the above images in a separate tab to allow you to click between tabs and see the differences jump out.

Perhaps the new Olympus 45 f1.8 lens would solve these problems and yield a lens which would

have the contrast I find in the Olympus 100 f2.8 on full frame,
have at least similar (if not better) sharpness
be more compact and light weight than the FD f1.4

The lens will set you back about $400 as it seems to be panning out, which is quite attractive. The initial discussion of the new Oly 45f1.8 indicated prices would be much higher, but if it does come in at $400 that will put it right on par with the typical 100mm f2 lens.

So you would then get the compact benefits of micro4/3 without needing to pay through the nose for smaller.

Back when micro4/3 came out there was of course no such lenses available, but the potential was there. So to actually see and explore this potential I have experimented with adapted 35mm lenses so that I can get a good idea not just a theoretical idea of what I can expect.

Both lenses used in this test were designed for different cameras than the EOS series, and so need adaptors. The OM lens was made for a camera with a shorter flange distance than the EOS, but not by much. So it only has a slim adaptor. The FD being used on the micro4/3 however has a much longer adaptor because (again) the flange distance effects the design of the lens (has to clear that moving mirror).

Paradoxically the 50mm lens actually becomes bigger than the 100mm lens when both are on their respective adaptors.

Of course a 50mm lens does not need to have such a massive stand off on a camera without a mirror. In this photo I show the Pentax 50mm lens (far right) beside the 50mm OM lens (on adaptor).

So the new micro4/3 Olympus 45mm f1.8 is likely to be about the same size as that little pentax lens. If you happen to be interested in more compact 50mm portrait lens than the FD 50mm f1.4 I suggest you consider the little Pentax. I have reviews on them here , here and (perhaps the most interesting) here.

Of course adapted lenses lose "niceties" such as Autofocus, Face Recogntion Autofocus, auto aperture and a few other things which can be important (for people who don't know how to focus a camera or set an aperture). Since that time lenses have begun to emerge which don't cost an arm and a leg, may give better image quality and provide all the creature comforts (crutches?) for the photographer who needs them. For what its worth adapted manual focus 35mm lenses cost about ¼ of what one would pay for a modern equivalent.

However there is more interesting information available in this comparison yet. While the depth of field may be reasonably equal in a gross comparison there are some significant differences.

The 100mm at f2.8 has a more shallow depth of field at the subject

With both images I tried to focus on the back edge of the cap. Using the magnify zoom focus assist on the GH1 it was easy to get that spot. Looking carefully its clear that the 50mm lens on the 4/3 the focus zone is much deeper even at f1.4. By the distance from the ear to the eyelashes, they are starting to go out of focus on the 100mm at f2.8 but not on the 50mm at f1.4. This means also that you won't get that on the Olympus 45 f1.8 either.

This (shallow DoF) is exactly what one wants in a classic portrait lens.

The ability to have focus sharp and defined on the eyes (my wife wanted to keep a little more privacy) but be soft by the ears or the back of the head, especially when the head is turned slightly.

Before people mention anything about pixel peeping, this sort of thing will become obvious on a 8x13 print and more so on a larger photo. Even if you don't "see it" obviously here it will be what makes it "feel better" when you examine prints.

This is not to say that the micro4/3 is bad by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed its pretty bloody good.

While playing around with these images I noticed something else, and that was the 5D also had a better dynamic range. You'll notice that the blacks in the shadows were better resolved? Thats because they had less 'noise' (as well as not being covered up by the flare)

The above are both taken at f2.8 (*where the FD lens became quite equal to the OM), the details in the shadow (arrows) are present on the 5D (right hand) while being muddy on the GH1. At the same time the highlight transition to washout (elipse) was similar. See the differences in the hair clarity in the shadows? If you were trying to dig a little into the image to pull out more shadow detail then the micro4/3 would give you a little less clear shadow detail than you'd get out of the 5D.

Lastly I thought I'd present the difference that one gets using a camera like the 5D in terms of outright printable size. The 5D image is slightly more pixels wide (4368 vs 4000), so if you were wanting to keep the aspect ratio at 3/2 then you'll get a slightly bigger print from the 5D, so printing at 300dpi from native:

14 inches wide at native pixels on the 5D
13 inches wide at native pixels on the GH1

Which is not exactly startling is it. On the plus side the 5D will tolerate more enlargement of pixels (upsizing) from native because it has a slightly better image quality (as identified above) and has a bit more to start with. In my comparisons above I've scaled the 5D back to the 4000 pixels of the GH1 so as to make it easier to compare. Here is the actual pixel comparison from these images.

So there is a minor increase in size of features in the picture, but personally I feel that if you wanted to print BIG or you want to capture every last skeric of detail then the 5D would do it that bit better.

Ultimately my call here is that the micro4/3 gives you 95% of the image feel and 99% of the image quality that a 5D will give. If the pursuit of that few percent advantage is worth doubling your money in buying a camera (and lenses)

spinning and propagating bullshit

2011-10-20T13:56:00.007+03:00

One of the thing I have never understood is why it's so easy to get bullshit past most of the people for enough of the time that it stands. It has been said "never attribute to malice what can be explained adequately by stupidity"; which makes me wonder if most people actually swallow it or if the media just shovels it.

My case in point comes from this article in the ABC news where the waterways on the Gold Coast were rated as having extremely poor water quality. When this was put to the mayor his response was:

"it's as much the lack of rain as it is the new development, I believe," he said.

Well you know, isn't it funny that this year has been about the wettest year the area has had for decades.

We have had flooding and strong rains even in the dry season. The journalist didn't pull him up on that, and it just gets said as if its true. It seems that noone has the capacity to examine the answer they get and just accept it: "oh well then"

This is not an isolated incident; with politicians, company executives and community leaders often pulling a fish out of their arse to answer questions.

This is of course why I could never succeed in politics, because when asked a question I answer it as best I can. It seems that all our leaders are adept at pulling out some distracting bit of bullshit which preferably bears only a passing resemblance to answering the question.

So my question is: is this because people are stupid (and swallow anything), people don't think and only after go "oh hey..." (sort of related to stupid) or because both the leaders and the media collude to put any old shit up as the justification for problems and to allow them to continue?

Which takes me back to my previous statement at the start of this:

"never attribute to malice what can be explained adequately by stupidity"

hmm ...

In my own life I'm often agape at the complete nonsense people seem to believe and the lame ass explanations they have for phenomenon.

Dad worked as a salesman and owned and operated his own businesses. During my school holidays I'd naturally be press-ganged into helping the family business. About the only thing I didn't like was hearing his same old stories said to each customer and the same old micron-thin flattery and ass kissing when we went into each client location. I'd groan and not want anything to do with it.

I realised later that this was because I saw this as a pathetic attempt to suck up, and expected people to be a wake up to that and (rightly) be a bit insulted at being treated like idiots.

The thing is that in the main, they never did.

This lead me to wonder at just how much shit you could get away with. You can toss off answers to valid questions and get an "ohh .. well then" response that indicates people have been satisfied.

I'd just shake my head and wonder what the bloody hell was wrong with people, can't you see that you asked about X and got an answer of something totally unrelated? I would wonder what was wrong with their logic.

As I grew older (and more experienced, though perhaps not yet wiser) I came to think that there was a few likely explanations for this:

people are genuinely thick and have simply memorized the question (perhaps having been furnished with a few "trick questions" by a wiser friend but not having any clue what it meant that any answer would do
people's attention span was so incredibly short that they forgot the question and just "looked up to the salesman as someone who knows" and nod in agreement as he hands down the tablets of stone
none of it meant anything to do with logic and it was some sort of ritual joust and it was the speed of the riposte which indicated who won (irrespective of accuracy)

So I wonder about just how much planning and forethought really goes into things and how much is just "do what makes the powerful more powerful and the majority can play with their toys".

Back when we had

a world population of under a billion and
much lower demands on resources
much less impact on the environment from our actions
less dependency on our systems to survive

I suspect that it didn't matter as much but today I don't think we have such elasticity in our systems to tolerate much of a muck up without lots of people (millions) being impacted. Looking at how our leadership operates and the demands of accuracy and effectiveness that the public seem to have on them I reckon that it'll take a big catastrophy to change things.

even then I'm not sure it'll be any change, as has been said before

"plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" [the more it changes, the more it's the same thing]

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

people have too much money

2011-10-18T09:17:00.003+03:00

I know they'll scream that this is wrong, but how else can you explain that someone would be willing to pay $40,000 for a car and then accept loosing over $20,000 in three years?

no wonder people don't give a shit about the price of fuel, depreciation is so costly as to make fuel irrelevant.

There's something really wrong with this picture

Olympus 21mm f3.5 on full frame digital

2011-10-16T11:02:00.014+03:00

My first SLR was an OM1 and so my early years in 35mm photography were shaped by the compact systems that Olympus once made.

The subject of this blog post is the Olympus 21mm f3.5 lens. At 21mm it is a very desirable focal length for landscape wides, architecture interiors and indeed quite a number of photographic uses. Both it and the 21mm f2 are still famed for their sharpness within that focal length.

background

But the 21mm is not just a great tool for making images, its a great tool to use. Smooth to operate and light on the camera it feels as nice to use as the images you can make with it.

Pictured here beside my EOS 24mm f2.8 it is snug enough to slip into a pocket. The EOS lens operates nicely in AF mode, but if you want to operate manually that focus ring is just dreadful.

When it came to digital I was perhaps on of the early adopters. Digital cameras such as the Coolpix and IXUS cameras gave me better versatility and snapshots than any of the compact 35mm cameras could produce. At the time I never really thought I'd replace my 35mm camera with one of these digital things. Not because of any "better or worse" concepts, but simply because they did different things.

For me full frame digital has been one of the destinations of digital cameras since the first DSLR was introduced. For one reason of another I've never made the "commitment" and bought a full frame camera. The steep price tag however has always kept me at bay. So as a result I have never been able to answer an important question.

Is full frame worth the commitment?

I happen to like wide angle lenses, and as it happens shallow depth of field is something I like to take advantage of to make my subjects stand out from the background.

This image of the tree on the sand dune was taken with 35mm film and a 24mm lens at f2.8

I know from experience that had I used an APS DSLR for this image (such as my 20D) then the background would not be as distinct from the subject and everything would be more or less in focus.

So while I've had wide lenses such as my Tokina 12-24mm lens on my EOS 10 and 20D cameras there was always something missing for me.

Since getting my 21mm Oly I have not had a chance to use it on a full frame camera such as the Canon 5D. So this weekend I got to borrow a 5D from a mate (thanks Al) to allow me to think this through more and to also give me the opportunity to do some image testing on the Olympus 21mm f3.5, something which it seems there is not much of on the internet.

I took a few images in the back yard getting a feel for the lens and found that it was staggeringly soft in the corners. I only took one image at f3.5 and so I wanted to do something a little more through for a blog entry. So today we had fine weather (and I had some time) so I took my tripod off to the park and took some shots. So, lets look at the overviews of the two scenes I took today (at about midday) with the 21 on the 5D.

All images were taken with manual exposure, using exposure determined by my Gossen lightmeter. Naturally as I stepped aperture I also stepped shutter to compensate.

Image 1
In this image I focused on the building in the background. Below is a contact sheet made from the exposures starting with f3.5 on the LHS and moving to f16 on the RHS.

its pretty clear that at f3.5 there is some significant vignetting.

Image 2
where I tried to focus carefully on that middle green tree. Clearly with a 21mm lens once you focus on anything more than 3 meters from you its more or less the same as infinity.

The contact sheet.

The vignetting is (of course) strongest at the corners, but even at the middle edge of the frame its enough to be annoying at less than f5.6

Vignetting
As I mentioned above the vignetting at f3.5 was significant, so from Image 2 I've taken the left hand edge to show this. Not only is the image significantly darker but colour and contrast suffers somewhat too. Click on this image to load a 100% screen grab.

Sharpness
The middle of the image is unaffected, these are some from the center of image 1

so even at f3.5 if your subject is in the middle (as in my dune tree above) then it may not be a strong problem for you.

Corners predictably fall off badly, this is the lower left corner ...

and this is the upper right corner.

Click on this image and have a careful look at not only the sky density but also the definition of the building (well not that its not clear even at this size).

All of which leaves me feeling a little out to sea. I know from previous testing of this exact lens on 35mm film (both neg and slide) that I didn't see such stark and obvious vignetting or sharpness fall off. For example on this blog post where checked out this lens (using film) against the 9-18mm zoom on my 4/3 sensor digital camera. And again here.

So for those of you who may have been interested in obtaining one of these lenses (the Olympus 21mm f3.5) for use on full frame digital I can say it does an excellent job at f5.6 and smaller aperture, but just be prepared for some softness at f3.5 ... with foreground detail it can be quite a strong effect too. Click this image for a larger version to see what I mean (look in the branches of the tree in the right foreground).

This is the image which started me off checking the lens in more detail. If you look at the grass in the lower left of the image above, that's essentially in the out of focus foreground. So, if you like that look, then great, but you should be aware of if before you go get one.

conclusions?

Well now I feel stuck. This now has me thinking that for ultra wide lenses I'm actually going to be better served in staying with 4/3 (or in my case micro 4/3) while my previous experience with the larger full frame (on film) had me feeling that this lens gives better shallow renderings and being able to work at f3.5 higher effective shutter speeds (at a given ISO) than the Olympus f4~5.6 which is designed for 4/3 (and which is my other contender as a wide lens for my digital setup)

Right now I'm feeling more shakey about buying a Canon 5D than I have ever been.

The lens on film makes great images ...

its just that I don't normally use 35mm film much these days.

Perhaps I should?

pave paradise

2011-10-16T02:38:00.003+03:00

put up a high rise lot ..

Ahh ... the Goldie, despite the fantasy propaganda of luscious beaches where you can relax with your family, the mass construction cancer is spreading. So you're likely to see stuff like this unless you have tunnel vision

it doesn't take a genius to realise that with all this highrise right next to the beach that its not going to be the cliche empty beach with just you and your family.

living in my letter box

2011-10-14T07:17:00.005+03:00

Part of living near tropical areas is that much more lives around your house.

sometimes things take advantage of small sheltered spaces ... like letter boxes

with all the wet we've been having it seems that a Green Tree Frog has adopted my letterbox as a new home

he's so cute, and he comes out to hunt at night

Baltic Humor

2011-10-14T02:15:00.005+03:00

I noticed when coming back to Australia that we have an entirely different sense of humor here. I suspect its a combination of "unnecessary Victorianism" blended with the American cocktail of "liberated" + "deeply stifled".

A classic for instance is this alcoholic "party drink" called popsy. We bought it on a trip to Tallin from Helsinki.

It looks rather like a sperm ... doesn't it

and incase you were uncertain of that the nice little logo reminds you

so, is it trying to get you in the mood, or is it just a warning?

Can't imagine them being popular here ... despite the fact that its popular here.

Quote of the day

2011-10-12T06:15:00.000+03:00

"Man…. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived."

The Dalai Lama

peak life expectancy

2011-10-11T07:11:00.007+03:00

I'm sorry if this post is a little incoherent, but my point is that instead of helping ourselves we're also hurting ourselves with our modern views of what is good health and how we should live.

A fellow blogger posted some time ago about the topic of life expectancy and raised the notion that in developed nations in some places it was lowering, perhaps for the first time. He called his article "Peak Life Expectancy". For most of human history we have struggled to make our lives better, I would wonder if the revelation that life expectancy is now lowering in places where everyone is "healthy" is not some sort of indicator of sustainable development?

I happen to agree with much of what Cameron wrote there and cogitation on that (at least subconsciously) forms the point of this post. My feeling (based on what I see) is that from now its quite likely that we're going to start going backwards, trending towards being less strong and healthy in age and perhaps not living as long.

I have struggled with a notion that while we are trying to make things better, perhaps we have failed to sit back and observe that things are quite good and perhaps we can start to take advantage of our hard earned gains. A point which seems to be lost on people is the need to build capacity or a reservoir of strength which to draw upon as we get older.

The author Frank Herbert made the point in his novel Dune that people flourished in adversity. History seems to show also that empires which were built on tough conquest failed when the society fell into indolence and decadence.

My dad is in his 80's and he's a tough old bastard. In his younger days he worked in bloody tough conditions, doing such things as out at sea whaling or commercial fishing. He grew up in a tough time and during his life he worked hard. Its no wonder he's a strong tough guy because a lesser man would probably have been dead.

Today almost noone works hard, plays sport or even does much physical activity in the west.

Why? well our economies have been transformed to "service sector" and if anything we obsess about workplace health and safety like a pack of worried nannies. Fewer people get enough exercise because we are too worried to walk or ride a bicycle anywhere (and perhaps even rightly too). We drive more and more and of course this effects our health in poor air quality as well as poor physical health.

People wouldn't consider riding a bike 12Km to work, but they'll spend some hundreds of dollars for a gym membership (the wealthy ones) where they sit on an exersize bike and ride 12Km. The non wealthy ones either buy crap exersize stuff off TV or just watch TV.

People "slim down" by diets rather than genuine exercise (which also builds strength) often robbing themselves of core strength. Medical science is just starting to catch on to this with recognition that osteoporosis is actually simply prevented by simple stuff like aerobics, weight bearing, and resistance exercises.

When my dad (or even I) was young there was nowhere near the amounts of food intolerance or various allergies as we have now. People speak of virtual "epidemics" of allergy today and interestingly much of the evidence is pointing to things like:

us being too clean (not properly building and using our immune systems)
use of too many new (newly synthesized) chemical cocktails for general life
over exposure to a host of new toxins

As one with a history of tertiary study in microbiology and biochemistry I will say that the overwhelming majority of benefits to humanity come from the most basic of medical development. Simple stuff like hygiene, washing food, not shitting in your water supply, access to good nutrition has been responsible for the greatest improvements in life expectancy and quality of life.

So while stuff like MRI is truly fantastic stuff, but you need to keep in perspective that bang for buck it has done far far less for human health than washing your food and keeping ourselves away from parasites (or this guy).

steam driven

2011-10-07T06:44:00.003+03:00

in an age where we have everything electric I thought I'd put up a quick post to remind us that in the main we're still all steam driven.

after all, in power stations we boil water and make rotational energy:

in order to to drive a generator to generate electricity
in order to transfer that energy from the station to your home
in order to power your fridge or light your house.

sometimes its the simple things which we forget which really count

:-)

reviewing some older shots

2011-10-05T14:23:00.001+03:00

led me to stumble across this one

nice place ... thanks Mikko

growth rates vs consumption rates

2011-10-04T03:14:00.011+03:00

Back when I was doing my Masters research I wanted to address the question (among others) of "as our population has expanded on the Gold Coast have we also consumed more water per person rather than just consuming more water?"

My research indicated that the increase was only marginal, which went against the accepted view in the community that we were using more water per person. The graph here shows population as series one and the water extracted divided among the population. Its irregularity is perhaps a source of research but I'm of the feeling that it would be explainable by the rubbery accuracy of data by GCW.

None the less I think this demonstrates that we are not actually consuming more water per person although as the population goes up we are consuming more water.

At the moment I would be interested to know however about the impact of the population growth on our use / need for energy? Is it like water or not? For instance. I find myself driving further and longer to get to work these days. I live in a city where there are essentially no meaningful jobs (the Gold Coast), and as a result commute to another city (Logan) for my work. Back in 2004 it used to be to Brisbane, so perhaps I'm not so badly off.

However I notice that more and more people are joining this same road so that it is now almost always totally at capacity.

Australia is rapidly urbanising, with this page suggesting that the urbanisation rate is 1.2% and that the population growth rates are about 2.1%.

I'm not sure if this results in more or less efficient use of energy. My gut feeling is that its more, but its a subject I would like to have time to research properly.

This page suggests that Australia has been growing its energy consumption rates at about 2.3% which is slightly higher than the population growth rate. The data however is only until 2005 so I'd be interested to learn what it is in the last 5 years.

I did some back of the envelope calculations the other day and came up with the figure that we use about half a million liters of petrol on the freeway between springwood and the northern end of the gold coast every day just for commuting to work.

So this has me wondering if we're ramping up or its just population growth. That quick back of the envelope mentioned above gave me a figure of around 5,300 cars traveling on the highway between my work and home, which is a scary number and WAY more than it was just 5 years ago. I looked up stats from data averaged over the period 2008 to 2010 and found that its actually less than my calculation but pretty close.

It gets mighty busy and fast from 5am and ramps back at 6pm. I can say from my personal experience that this isn't how it is now with it still being busy in the 8pm segment and way busier on the weekends till much later.

Either way I think its not a good sign.

scaly breasted Lorikeets

2011-09-25T11:04:00.004+03:00

went over to visit dad this arvo and he had the usual bevy of screeching Lorikeets in the back yard.

The Rainbow Lorikeet is done to death on the internet so I thought I'd put a few images up of their slightly smaller *(but not to be pushed around) relatives the Scaly Breasted Lorikeet.

love these little guys...

Panasonic GH1 - Canon FD 200f4 via adapter

its life Jim but not as we know it

2011-09-22T23:58:00.011+03:00

Understanding living things can be hard. Sometimes things that don't appear to be living can be.

summary

In this post I will argue why we should consider large bureaucracy and corporation as actually living things. They are not actually made of the same stuff that we are familiar with living things being made of, but they are none the less alive. I think its important to understand these creatures, grasp how they perceive the world and perhaps then we can begin understand their cognition.

introduction

I have often argued that people are unable to comprehend what they can't see. We build a variety of tools to enable us to see into things which are beyond our ability for observation in part to allow us to see and understand more.

Microscopes are a good example of this principle. Before we were able to observe the microscopic we had no idea what were bacteria or how much of what modern medicine is built upon worked or that it even existed.

In my blog I occasionally make reference to a concept that I call "The Machine". In this article I will attempt to explain what this concept is. The Machine is not just a mechanism, The Machine is actually a kind of living organism but one which certainly not entirely organic and transcends a couple of layers of conceptuality. This is what makes the concept difficult to grasp and for many it will seem just some sort of fancy.

So what is a living thing? Seems at first like an easy task to identify that which is living and that which is not. I would like to venture a definition; I think that anything which can:

make an observable change on the world
reproduce
make a decision
die

is a living thing. Seems pretty obvious, but perhaps many will struggle against this definition set when I apply it in a moment.

How often have you heard some politician or company director or person employed in some role in a company, say

"I didn't want to do it, but I had no other choice in my role"

Quite often I'm sure.

People have struggled for as long as we have written records (and probably longer) to understand what is it that makes a person or an animal alive. The various sciences have grappled with the question and we have uncovered many things about the nature of the bodies of living things to expand our understandings. While we understand much about biology, biochemistry, anatomy and even the electro-chemistry of nerves we just don't know why people are alive or why they die.

In this essay I would like to turn the question around, instead of looking at us I'd like to look at things outside of us, things we can't see but yet like the common cold know exists. We often call then systems.

Lets start with a system called Government.

Once upon a time in history we were manged in less complex groups and had a person who was our leader. We might call this person a King. Eventually the area of power under the control of a King grew too large and he called upon others to administer his authority for him.

This can become so large as to overwhelm the King and others in the system that the King has created. Eventually those who the King gave power to realise that they command more power than the King. So when something occurs to give them reason they can challenge his authority and even wrest power from the King.

Since I'm Australian and since Australian government derives its existence from the English government I thought I'd examine the this history (not because its special in any particular way).

In 1215 members of the King of Englands system Barons rebelled against him and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. This essentially took power from him and imposed a codified system of written ideas called laws.

These laws removed his power to act in any way that he wished and imposed upon him punishments (punishments upon the King!) if he resisted these laws.

a committee of 25 barons who could at any time meet and overrule the will of the King if he defied the provisions of the Charter, seizing his castles and possessions if it was considered necessary(wikipedia).

So for the first time in English history the King, the person who ruled the land according to his will, was subjugated to rules written on paper.

I would guess at this point that some are saying: But these are just rules, just writing, they are not living, they are not something which can constitute as a living thing.

This is true, they are just a set of rules. But then so too are all the chemical reactions which define how our bodies work. These rules of chemistry and physics can also be used and manipulated to effect us and our thinking. Anti depressant drugs are a good example of this.

Lets consider a system with some very simple rules. Imagine a checker board for a game, but one which only has white squares. The rules of our game are simple,

if a checker exists on our board then that square is "alive" and if no checker is on a square then that is "dead"
Any live square with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.
Any live square with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
Any live square with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
Any dead square with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live square.

This is essentially the rules of the game called Life by John Conway. It seems very simple, just a set of rules or laws governing what happens to the checkers. It also defines a method of spawning new life and a circumstance where death occurs.

Yet from this simplicity of rules comes something which if we represent it as it moves through time we see something amazing. Sometimes things seem to be alive, like the walker represented here to the left.

The graphic at left is an example of stepping though these rules and showing how this "thing" moves across the board in a simple movement behavior. Sure, its not living, perhaps its not even real ... but then when you look at the biochemistry of just one part of your body (say insulin production) that doesn't look alive either.

The same set of rules with enough pieces to act upon can make amazing things. For example:

this combination of rules and its effect on the pieces creates a system which is self perpetuating and grows forever.

So is this a machine? Well classically we call things made of metal that use energy and go round and round machines. Stuff like this classical representation of a 4 stroke engine. It used to be harder to think of a machine as being something just composed of rules.

It is in fact exactly that when you look at it from an engineering or scientific perspective. The engine is a collection of the rules of thermodynamics, chemistry and physics.

By applying these rules (collecting things together in the correct manner) we can create a machine.

Since the advent of computers it becomes perhaps easier to understand that a system can in fact be just a collection of rules, after all programing languages are actually just descriptions of what to do and what decisions to make.

Clearly computer programs require computers to operate them and equally our government system requires humans to execute the instructions and do the tasks.

So people have become the base hardware for the machine which we run and execute.

If this sounds like something out of the matrix, or something out of fiction which could not be possible; ask yourself this question:

Can you imagine a person doing something that that don't want to do but have to do it because its their job and that they are compelled to do this by law?

so what about reproduction?

Well consider that the English Government started colonies in Australia, when on 13 May, 1787, the First Fleet of 11 ships set sail for Botany Bay. They intended to establish a colony. That would require governance and that governance was clearly going to be modeled on that of England. The English government had successfully spawned a child. This child then became children with the creation of additional colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and so on.

Eventually some years later these colonies consider unification and the creation of a new governing body; the Federal Government was spawned in 1901.

When it comes to rules for the system to have complex morphology have a look at the list of legislations below, each one of them being far more complex in nature than the simple 5 rules which defined the operation of the "Life" simulation above.

If Government is a living thing then clearly Government is a very complex living thing.

It is not however only Governments which can be considered as living things. Companies too (especially under corporate law) are legal entities; they hold property, employ people, and make decisions.

So it would seem that we already have in our midst an organism which lives, yet does not breath and can not be easily touched. It shapes our lives and controls us in ways which expand with the rules which it creates.

If you doubt this then consider this article in a UK news paper where a child is accused of being racist by calling a boy ‘broccoli head’ and another was said to be homophobic for telling a teacher ‘this work is gay’. The article goes on to mention:

Schools are forced to report the language to education authorities, which keep a register of incidents.

and that

In total, 34,000 nursery, primary and secondary pupils were effectively classed as bigots because of anti-bullying rules.

The school can keep the pupil’s name and ‘crime’ on file. The record can be passed from primaries to secondaries or when a pupil moves between schools.

And if schools are asked for a pupil reference by a future employer or a university, the record could be used as the basis for it, meaning the pettiest of incidents has the potential to blight a child for life.

This does not sound like the sort of reaction a human would have on how to treat their kids but yet this is the reaction that the machine has for sorting us out.

What about this? It sounds more like a system protecting its component parts rather than something designed to look after humans.

I believe that there are far more examples and comparisons I could make to support my argument that Government and Corporations are actually living things, but rather than do that I'll leave you with a couple questions.

How do you negociate with such a machine?
Will it listen to you?
and can it be directed by human will?

holding the system responsible or even punishment of the system

If we decide that we don't like the party in control of government and we vote them out, does that change the machinery of government or just put it on a different PC?

As it stands at the moment we have very little understanding of this life form. We as yet are perhaps uncertain that it is a living thing, but make no mistake this thing can control our lives, alter the environment and exert influence.

The simple rule based system above called 'life' created stuff not so much different to observing bacteria growth, look again at the list of rules below which form our Acts of Law in Australia and tell me that does not form the basis for even more complex interactions. Combined with the execution on the human computing platform I think its almost certain we have something alive here.

*List of Australian Commonwealth acts (and don't forget the State legislations either!):

* 1901 - Acts Interpretation Act 1901 (No 2 of 1901)
* 1901 - Customs Act 1901 (No 6 of 1901)
* 1901 - Excise Act 1901 (No 9 of 1901)
* 1901 - Pacific Island Labourers Act (No 16 of 1901)
* 1901 - Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (No 17 of 1901)
* 1902 - Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 (No 8 of 1902)
* 1903 - Judiciary Act 1903 (No 6 of 1903)
* 1903 - Defence Act 1903 (No 20 of 1903)
* 1904 - Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904 (No 13 of 1904)
* 1906 - Designs Act 1906 (No 4 of 1906)
* 1908 - Quarantine Act 1908 (No 3 of 1908)
* 1914 - Crimes Act 1914 (No 12 of 1914)
* 1918 - Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (No 27 of 1918)
* 1928 - Transport Workers Act 1928 (No 37 of 1928)
* 1938 - Passports Act 1938 (No 15 of 1938)
* 1942 - Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942 (No 56 of 1942)
* 1948 - Australian Citizenship Act 1948 (No 83 of 1948)
* 1958 - Migration Act 1958 (No 62 of 1958)
* 1959 - Banking Act 1959 (No 6 of 1959)
* 1960 - National Measurements Act 1960 (137 of 2008) [1]
* 1961 - Marriage Act 1961 (No 12 of 1961)
* 1968 - Copyright Act 1968 (No 63 of 1968)
* 1973 - Insurance Act 1973 (No 76 of 1973)
* 1973 - Seas and Submerged Lands Act 1973 (No 161 of 1973)
* 1974 - Trade Practices Act 1974 (No 51 of 1974)
* 1975 - Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (No 52 of 1975)
* 1975 - Family Law Act 1975 (No 53 of 1975)
* 1976 - Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (No 156 of 1976)
* 1976 - Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 (No 191 of 1976)
* 1980 - Crimes (Taxation Offences) Act 1980 (No 156 of 1980)
* 1982 - Freedom of Information Act 1982 (No 3 of 1982)
* 1982 - Taxation (Unpaid Company Tax) Assessment Act 1982 (No. 119 of 1982)
* 1984 - Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (No 4 of 1984)
* 1986 - Income Tax Act 1986 (No 108 of 1986)
* 1986 - Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act 1986 (No 125 of 1986)
* 1986 - Australia Act 1986 (No 142 of 1986)
* 1988 - Extradition Act 1988 (No 4 of 1988)
* 1988 - Financial Transaction Reports Act 1988 (No 64 of 1988)
* 1988 - Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988 (No 106 of 1988)
* 1988 - Privacy Act 1988 (No 119 of 1988)
* 1988 - Higher Education Funding Act 1988 (No 2 of 1989)
* 1989 - Lands Acquisition Act 1989 (No 15 of 1989)
* 1990 - Patents Act 1990 (No 83 of 1990)
* 1991 - Social Security Act 1991 (No 46 of 1991)
* 1992 - Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (No 135 of 1992)
* 1992 - Radiocommunications Act 1992 (No 174 of 1992)
* 1993 - Native Title Act 1993 (No 110 of 1993)
* 1996 - Workplace Relations Act 1996 (No 60 of 1996)
* 1997 - Telecommunications Act 1997 (No 47 of 1997)
* 1997 - Euthanasia Laws Act 1997 (No 17 of 1997)
* 1998 - Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 (No 22 of 1998)
* 1998 - Native Title Amendment Act 1998 (No 97 of 1998)
* 1999 - Federal Magistrates Act 1999 (No 193 of 1999)
* 2001 - Corporations Act 2001 (No 50 of 2001)
* 2001 - Intelligence Services Act 2001 (No 152 of 2001)
* 2003 - Intelligence Services Amendment Act 2004 (No 57 of 2004)
* 2004 - Corporate Law Economic Reform Program Act 2004 (No 103 of 2004)
* 2004 - Australian anti-terrorism legislation, 2004, incorporating:
o 2004 - Anti-terrorism Act 2004 (No 104 of 2004)
o 2004 - Anti-terrorism Act (No 2) 2004 (No 124 of 2004)
o 2004 - Anti-terrorism Act (No 3) 2004 (No 125 of 2004)
* 2005 - Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 (No 127 of 2005)
* 2005 - Repealed Workplace Relations Amendment (Work Choices) Act 2005 (No 153 of 2005) - (Repealed by Parliament, 2008).
* 2009 - Fair Work Act 2009 (28 of 2009) [2] (Passed as Replacement to repealed Act No 153 of 2005)

SS Australia

2011-09-22T09:00:00.006+03:00

SS usually means Steam Ship however sometimes I wonder if it means Sinking Ship

A fellow blogger writes some very interesting posts about economic issues over here and has written a good summary of why Australia can't really have something like the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Norway.

Two graphs from that essay sum it up.

Firstly the levels of current account balance for:

Norway
China
Germany
Japan
Saudi Arabia
and Australia

Being below 0 isn't a good thing, it means we're spending more than we're saving.

So while you may be asking why we don't save anything it all comes down to the same problem many households have ... we spend more than we earn.

and it seems to be getting worse. So while we copy the UK and the USA in their dance with debt I really don't think its a smart thing to be copying. That's the problem here in Australia ... we only focus on countries who speak English.

Thanks Cameron for the leg work there!

no limits to growth

2011-09-22T05:03:00.007+03:00

people who object to the Thomas Malthus "limits to growth" concept and insist on there being no limits to growth seem to insist on seeing things in a blinkered way.

They insist on the ignorance of a balance of the equation which logically must exist. You see for every benefit there must be some cost. There is no free lunch for long.

So (in my view) while it is perhaps possible that the human population can go on and on growing that it will come with some costs and changes if we are to avoid population corrections like famine or disease.

I read an interesting article in the SMH this morning about exactly one of those sorts of changes to the human condition. The American author Jonathan Safran Foer is one of the anti-meat eating campaigners who is now a full on vegan campaigner.

He writes that the 'factory farming' of meat products (something which springs from the industrialisation of farming which is part of the industrial revolution) is both abhorrent and environmentally destructive. I happen to think he's right. Its clear however that if we are going to feed our population we need to employ strategies like this or quite simply we could not feed our population.

His premise is clearly that we cant tackle our population problem and that need to be ethical in the way we source our food. So for him vegetarian is the only logical choice.

This is where I feel we fail, we don't know how to address our swelling population. Instead we turn to ways to supply it and encourage growth, perhaps because some people get richer that way.

Some quotes from the article:

Modern industrial farming comes at the cost, Foer says, of animal welfare, the environment and our health. In Eating Animals, he writes of chicken factory farms in the US where "illness is always rampant; suffering is always the rule … death is invariably cruel".

and

One of the worst aspects of factory farming is not just its practices, Foer says, it's that most of the meat is produced this way.
"We have something that is the most destructive thing we do to the environment, to animals and, at some point, the most destructive thing we do to ourselves and we have virtually no alternative. That's really surprising to people.""

So perhaps there are no limits to growth, but if everything comes at a cost then the cost of growth is to hide our terrible ethics and pretend that we are nice and lovely people while eating our chicken nuggets.

As western nations approach the sorts of population densities of places like India and China we will have to make greater changes to how we do things in order to provide food for ourselves. Even more so as places in Asia start trying to supply their own populations with food.

Perhaps we'll eventually have to turn to solutions that appeared in science fiction, but then we have to ask ourselves ... will we still be people even if we are the same species?

broken nest

2011-09-21T00:44:00.003+03:00

I noticed this morning that the bird wasn't on the nest. So I thought I'd pop down quickly and get a quick shot of the nest

Looking at the picture I noticed what seemed to be the first signs of the egg breaking. I though that this was a little early and could mean a problem.

Sure enough a closer look with a longer lens reveals the egg has been pecked.

I'm expecting this to be the currawongs. These are vastly increased in number around here due to local 'goody-2-shoes' dopes who have migrated here from Sydney or Melbourne to retire. Not knowing a currawong from a crow from a wren think its nice to have a bunch of birds around their house and feed the bloody things.

So now we only have large black birds which after the kitty cats these people move in with do their best at destroying the local small bird population.

can't add up

2011-09-19T11:55:00.006+03:00

Got my power bill today and with it came some "news letter" filled with helpful ideas on which products I should spend money on to save money.

Wow, that's so helpful. Leading the helpful advice was the page

Cutting Down Can Add Up

This suggested that:

according to the 2011 Origin Index research* [ya gotta love those stars] 63% of Australians look to conserve energy, but around half of the country don't understand how the basics can help reduce power consumption.

So they're saying we're too thick to work out how to save energy ... well after speaking to people for some years and asking stuff like how much energy does your X use or how much do you pay per kWh for power, I can't say I doubt their research.

However they do precious little to help this building of capacity within the community and instead foist up some confusion and (when you go to their site) outright misinformation by implication.

Lets start at the bottom of this segment as its my favorite, the "solar heat pump".

Now if you go to their website they list the Dux Airoheat heat pump under solar systems, and here in this ad they imply that linkage by

1) putting it on the same page as the Dux Solar Hot Water
2) criteria such as "no solar panels required" and "a great solution where your roof shading does not permit solar hot water"

Well guess what ... no wonder it doesn't need panels BECAUSE ITS NOT SOLAR

It is infact just an electric system, one which uses the principle of a Sterling Engine, which is also used in many reverse cycle air conditioner units.

The only way (and man is it remote) that this system can faintly be called solar is that if you live somewhere hot then that heat will help to drive the system in heating the water up. Of course if you live somewhere hot its likely to be caused by the sunshine, so I guess in some way it could be solar. Strangely it seems to qualify for the STC solar rebate ...

right ... good one. I would be quite simply stunned if you can find out such a simple description of that system as I've just given. I can only surmise that the reason for that is if you put enough bullshit around something you'll perhaps get the punters to believe in it.

Now the next point is costs.

Now lets assume that this system uses no power (unlikely if not impossible) at the pay off of $145 per month (assuming you get the rebates) it will take ten years to recover the costs of this system compared to just the power bill that my regular hot water system uses on off-peak power.

My off-peak hotwater typically 133 kWh of energy per month, even at the current charge for that (11c per kWh) I only pay $16 per month.

Next we need to look at something else ... heat. To maximise the effectiveness of this technology you need to be heating the water when the air is at its hottest.

Uhm, that would be during the day right? Well surprise surprise off-peak power is normally supplied at night ... which will lessen the effectiveness of it.

Then there is the noise, if you read into it more these systems use a fan (just like air conditioners) which generate noise. A bit of googling around will show you that there are a number of people who have had to remove their system because neighbors complained about the noise from the fan. So just be careful in tight urban areas where houses are built occupying 90% of the land area.

The real solar system

I notice that you have to cough up $5000 for the system and while you may feel warm and fuzzy about the energy savings (and the reduction of drain on the power grid) you'll notice the little bit I marked in red: "electric boosted solar hot water" ... yep, you'll be paying some money for those cloudy or rainy days ... so just like my solar floor heating, its only part of the answer.

I hope none of this breaks down or blows up in the decades it takes to brake even ...

So I guess that its lucky for Origin that customers can't add up or they'd be wondering why the hell would I spend this money on something like that?

The New Hospital

2011-09-18T00:24:00.006+03:00

The new hostpital is being built to the west of my home. You can see the cranes over in the sunset.

Its perhaps a sign of both the growing population and the spread of high rise development here. Its designed to perhaps replace the one which was to the east of my place which was built in the 1980's to augment the one which was built there way earlier.

I live in a beautiful place, which of course means that greedy bastards come here to make money out of selling the natural beauty to people looking for somewhere to retire to. In every environment creatures find unexploited niches and exploit them. So it didn't take long before other creatures realised that tourism from afar was a "good thing" and "developing" the place took on new meaning.

The Gold here is on the coastal real estate, and the beaches and local geography is actually about as good as it ever gets.

In that shot above I've tried to minimize the intrusion of the development on the scenery, but in reality its more like this

Of course people how live in places like this:

are not disturbed by the high rise because its still less than they have, plus its what they see on TV when they watch Hawaii five Oh or CSI somewhere. Perhaps worse if they've come from Asia. They often don't have the faintest clue that the place once looked quite different.

Its only the people who have lived here for their lives that can tell you that "Sure the Goldie looks like an overdeveloped slag with pockets of lovely areas still in it, but you know, it wasn't always so"

Looking at Southport from the sky you can see (in the red) exactly which areas are going to get another high-rise in the near future.

the place with the arrow at the bottom is the pair of houses pictured above.

You can see by the shadows the high-rise already there. When you add to this new construction to the already high population of the region it does not take a scientist to work out we've got growth problems.

Strangely there is very little planned development for infrastructure such as roads and nothing I'm aware of for water (except for the Desal in Tugun) and the existing dams and flood mitigation devices in Brisbane.

While the Coast may be "Famous for Fun" its more infamous for just being a showcase of exploitation and greed; pushing around the locals while fat cats make money.

Its like the old Vulcan logic "the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the one" transformed into "the greed of the few outweighs the needs of the many"

weaklings

2011-09-17T00:10:00.005+03:00

Modern society is generating a mass population of weaklings. I feel that its gone so far now that we've tipped past where its actually even healthy. Now I don't expect anyone to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger and carry a log on their shoulders (as in this clip)

but seriously we bought a small gazebo in a box which was marked "two person lift" the other day and it made me laugh. Have people really become such lame assed weaklings that they can't lift something as small and light as this without "warning" printed on it?

The box was not big and didn't weigh more than 6Kg.

My wife is not anything like Arnold (weighing about 60Kg or about 130Lbs) and as you can see here carries it without the need of a "team lift"

Add to this the mania of "workplace health and safety" mandating in many of our workplaces you can't pick up anything more than 10kg and its only further tipping the scales of us being less likely to do ANY activity in our daily lives which may lead to developing or maintaining your fitness.

Sometimes I find myself hearing my grandfathers words come out of my mouth.

Poppa was a grazier and worked on properties all his life. He was a tough wiry sort of fella who loved to play tennis and work on his garden.

I don't recall him saying this particular thing, but I'm sure he had his ideas about what was making us too soft back when he was telling me to stop being so lazy. He was a man how wasn't afraid to walk 2Km into town to get groceries, or haul something around by hand.

Meanwhile today everyone starts up their car to drive 2Km into the shops and then spends another 5min trying to get a park and fuming at all the other cars. People pay money to go to the gym where they ride stationary bicycles and think I'm crazy for riding a bicycle to work.

The entire occupational "work place health and safety" nutjob we've foisted upon ourselves sees a consolidation of this thinking with the local wine shop having more and more cartons of wine being boxed in 6 rather than 12 ... because 12 would be too heavy to lift. The machine of government is doing a good job in subjugating us and making us weaker.

While the intention is to protect us, I'm sure this can only have a negative impact on our health and fitness as people.

Strawberries as a metaphor

2011-09-14T04:19:00.005+03:00

Often things in Australia seem driven by bigger is better. Noone here seems to have any clue on what things should actually taste like and so we have stuff on sale in the supermarkets which has little or no resemblance to what it may have been originally.

Strawberries are a good example of this.

Supermarkets also seem to prefer things which give them lower spoilage, so producers are encouraged to produce bigger and brighter things which last longer on the transport -> shelf gig. How it tastes seems to be secondary (if at all any consideration).

This huge strawberry is typical of what seems to be prized here. Its big, its red and crunches like an apple when bitten into.

While it may be bitter and sour that's just because it needs more whipped cream or some sugar.

Isn't that how food is meant to be? Tasteless and needing tomato sauce or something sweet over it to "bring out the flavour"

Once upon a time Strawberries were little fellas ... like this

They had delicious flavour and were sweet all on their own. They don't however transport well so that rules them out in feeding up to people who living in cities.

Camera systems - limits desires and wishes

2011-09-09T02:32:00.010+03:00

musing missive

Readers of my blog may know that (among other things) I've ruminated about wanting a full frame 35mm camera for some time. As a nearly disengaged Canon EOS user, I still keep an eye on the auction for the prices of a 5D (first version) and ponder about the benefits to me in my photography of the fuller frame size.

I have mainly organized my camera gear around the 4/3 format and have moved away form EOS (read sold my stuff) to facilitate that. For almost everything the 4/3 format seems to me to be the best compromise of:

light weight and compact
lower cost
high quality images
access to great optics outside the camera system

Since the majority of my photography benefits from this set, I've abandoned APS digital SLR and moved to 4/3. Perhaps part of this is that coming from 35mm I felt that the APS size was fraught with compromise. My lenses didn't look right on that format, wides and normals were no longer that (due to the 1.6 multiplier) and wide APS specific zooms were both bulky and expensive.

Recently someone posted a comment on my post about "shallow normals"

I have been thinking about full frame for a while for the same reason in part (also resolution). Unfortunately it means either ponying up boatloads of cash or switching systems to Canon and still ponying up lots of cash (though not as much). Of course, film still works well for me in my trusty film SLR, but I need a good scanner to really make it work. My flatbed is lackluster.

and it started me thinking again (not that I stop for long) about what I'm missing with my existing 4/3 camera system, and that is of course shallow depth of field with a "normal" lens.

If I want infinite depth of field I'll choose a compact digicam and just about every photo will have exactly that: everything in focus. Its a bit dis-interesting if you ask me. What makes some pictures jump out is that ability to focus on the subject. In fact its so important a concept we actually incorporate it into our language:

Bill, you have to focus on the job if you're going to get it right.

Just to recap on what it is which makes a shallow depth of field, it is in the main the ability to open up the aperture to a large diameter. It is not (as is commonly thought) just the F-Number. A normal lens for Full Frame is 50mm, and a typical aperture for shallow would be f2 or so on that system (f1.4 even better). So being able to open the lens aperture to 25mm wide or more will give a nice shallow field of focus. This is a diameter of half the focal length of the lens. Smaller formats make this difficult to achieve because (for example) on a 4/3 system a normal is about a 25mm. So such shallow normal would need to be 25mm in diameter, which makes for a lens diameter equal to that of the lens.

As it happens a shallow normal on full frame (or bigger) is as cheap as it gets, but on smaller formats becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to achieve.

Most of what I like to photograph is in the wide to normal area. In the ten or more years I've been using Digital I've waited for the time when digital can allow me to completely replace my 35mm film bodies and replace them with Digital. While it can do most of what I want to do, it doesn't do everything.

Its a little strange to me that in the twelve years after buying my first digital camera something which will more or less replace my 35mm camera has not emerged. What has happened however is; I get better telephoto than I've ever had (and for a much lower price), by using Digital I get better control over the process than I've ever had, get access to images quickly, and get in the main much better images than I did before.

I'm pretty clear in my mind now that smaller formats are better for telephoto, and larger formats are better for wide. The image below is a wide angle taken with 6x12 format on 120 roll film.

I just would not have been able to achieve that with a smaller format.

So when I'm thinking of using my longer lenses, 4/3 format is what I would reach for, but when it comes to "normal" to wide I struggle with the limits of the smaller format.

Clearly with telephoto getting shallow depth of focus is easy.

In fact it can be so shallow you can miss the target and get a useless image. If you look at that image of the Tit there the tail feather was already out of focus.

I would argue that had I used a small digi cam for this shot and had the background in focus that the shot would be far less interesting, you eye would not be drawn to the birds body (well ok, butthole) and the background would distract rather than enhance.

The same is true I wanted to use a normal lens (not tele, not wide), many images look better having shallow depth of field. For example in this image below which was taken with my 50mm f1.8 on my full frame camera when putting a family member to rest.

The focus is on the subject that really drives your attention to the matter and the background is not lost, it remains in the picture yet focus is not on it.

This is what can be done with a shallow normal and smaller formats just don't have access to this because it is a function of angle of view, capture format and aperture diameter (not f-stop).

Modern (read young or only "digital native") photographers are usually completely ignorant of this because they don't think in sensor size as commonly as film photographers thought of film format sizes. In fact if you think "full frame" is large (and you don't know much about large format) then I suggest you read this post.

For example, this is 35mm negative overlaid on 120 roll film in 6x9 format.

Kirk Tuck on his blog is currently re-discovering what the advantages are of shallow normal lenses in portraiture using 120 roll film cameras (which are the format in black and white in that above image). On his format a shallow normal still needs 20mm aperture diameter. His 80mm is a normal and f4 is a 20mm diameter.

options

So many things are about compromise, taking photographs can be too. So for me then, what holds me back from going for a 5D which would give me full frame and access to shallow normals?

I can summarize this as size, weight and money.

Despite selling most of my EOS and EF stuff I have kept the following:

EF24 f2.8
EF50 f1.8
two EOS film bodies (like really, wouldn't get anything for them)

For quite a while the twin pair of 24mm and 50mm were my main pair of lenses. Since going digital I have acquired the following:

Olympus 21mm f3.5 (gosh I love this lens on full frame)
Olympus 50mm f1.8
Olympus 100mm f2.8
a bunch of Canon FD stuff which I use on my 4/3 system

Essentially for me to go with a with an EOS 5D I'd need to add $1200 mostly what I'd gain would be shallow normal (and shallow wide). I could just use 35mm film for those specific shots and keep using my existing 35mm bodies (which would be 2 EOS film bodies as well as an OM body or two).

One thing that the 4/3 stuff has in its favor is low price. You can get a used G1 for peanuts and I could go buy a new G2 right now for less than $300.

The irony is that while the bodies are cheap in 4/3 the lenses are not. While a 50m f1.8 is under $200 for almost every full frame system, the equivalent in 4/3 is double that: around $400 (or more here in Australia).

The options of the 4/3 system has spoiled me in price expectations in some ways, as I struggle to feel that a used 5D (which is a 7 year old camera) is worth the extra $800

As well as the additional cost that I'd be lumbered with a blob of a camera. I've had 10D and 20D and trust me the micro 4/3 camera allowed me to breath a sigh of relief for carrying on hikes. This comparison of the G1 with the very useful 14-45 lens fitted to a 10D with a lightweight fixed focus lens like the 50mm f1.8 shows the difference in both bulk and weight (check the numbers on the scales)

And comparing the 10D and the 20D are about the same size an so when comparing them with the 5D we see that there is not much difference in size between all of them.

In some situations the size of a camera like these is not an issue, but in other situations it is. Hiking is one such situation as is attending a function. Just recently I've heard people suggesting that in street photography the bigger cameras are obtrusive and put people off, while smaller cameras are tolerated.

So size does matter, both camera and capture format. I've previously observed that the G1 and the older Olympus 35mm OM cameras are actually the same size. In these pictures the camera taking the shot does not change location, and the cameras are placed in exactly the same spot

the G1

and the an OM-10 35mm film SLR:

So if they can produce small phones with the electronics to power an 8 megapixel camera, then I'm quite sure that a camera the size of the G1 is entirely possible.

If I could get that then I would not hesitate at all. It would be ideal if we could have different sensor sizes available in the same body size so that we could have an excellent situation: we could extend what our lenses covered by just changing bodies.

my 21mm would be an excellent compact wide
my 50mm f1.8 would be both a great shallow normal (on FF) AND a portrait lens (on 4/3)
my 200mm f2.8 would be the great compact and light weight effective 400mm that it is
my 300mm f4 would be the great effective 600mm that it is

that would take the angst out of the decision for me.

So in the mean time I'm probably unlikely to move towards the Canon 5D despite the allure of the shallow normal in my photography. I'll leave you with one last shallow normal shot, to your health!

a conversation about magpies

2011-09-08T02:22:00.002+03:00

A discussion on 612 ABC's facebook page contained a great comment

"Angela Cartwright: I have a great idea, kill all the sharks, kill all the bats, kill all the swooping birds, kill all the snakes, kill all the possums, kill all the bush turkeys! What a lovely city/country we would have then. When did we stop loving our land?" When did Australians (othre than aboriginals) love their land? All the plans were weeds for the first settlers and animals weird freaks of nature. Cut it down and bring in proper plants from the old world! Build houses and more houses to replace the last koala habitats! Build artificial islands and sandbanks to make the beaches and harbours more functional!..

I wonder the same myself, as I blogged a while ago about Koalas.

No one seems to want to alter the nature of urban development, despite general agreement that its both costly and increasingly difficult to provide infrastructure to these sprawling urban areas.
So while roads are not allowed to threaten the Koala population that relentless urban development is. So areas just around where I live which were once like this:

are bull dozed over and turned into this:

There are certainly other models of development than this, which if we are to live in the area and not destroy the very reasons we find it beautiful need to be explored.

This will require planning and community involvement. I hope that this can happen so that we don't have to say good bye to both the Koalas and the natural beauty of the region.

Relaxing before the clamor

2011-09-08T00:47:00.003+03:00

Just the other day I noticed a spotted dove building a nest outside my kitchen window.

This morning I see the new soon to be mum and dad resting and relaxing in the beautiful spring morning.

Soaking up the sun and taking it easy. Perhaps they know that soon it will be chirping hungry mouths and not a spare moment.

Quote of the day

2011-09-07T03:12:00.001+03:00

"Remind me to write a popular article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers."

Jubal Harshaw

now, go have a look around Facebook or the news sites

Spotted Dove

2011-09-06T00:57:00.004+03:00

I notice this morning looking out the window that our local spotted dove has chosen to make a nest just outside the window.

sorry about the scruffy shot, but while she's setting up the nest I don't want to disturb her ... which also means we'll be putting off the fence construction for a bit

The Kindle Surprise

2011-09-04T10:28:00.004+03:00

The KINDER Surprise is a chocolate egg.

It has a little toy inside which is the surpirse...

The Kindle surprise is when Amazon takes the excellent Kindle e-book reader with its great easy to read eInk display and fucks it over into yet another version of the iPad.

But this will be no iPad beater, as it looks to be dumbed down on price and use older versions of the Android OS.

So they'll loose full daylight reading, loose high battery life and loose what differentiates them in the market.

IDIOTS

What makes this worse is I am just about to buy a Kindle 3G because I love the screen so much for reading ebooks. Looks like I better go get my dodo before Kindle manage to kill it off.

This is so typical of consumerisation, where a good product gets killed by exposure to non savvy markets and then the savvy who steered the sheep to it abandon the product.

Ozzie Cultral Cringe

2011-09-04T01:10:00.008+03:00

Good old Ozzie Cultural cringe.

I read this piece this morning and found myself in some agreement with the author (Nick Bryant) who seems to be a Pommie "come to gods own earth" to observe our politics. However I think he's missed the mark on an important aspect.

Personally I think that observations from outsiders can be valuable, and with the English being so culturally similar to us (compared to say the Chinese) it can be quite insightful. The relationship between "mother England" and Oz-tray-ya has been a fraught one, at times a good mother son relationship, at other times the sort which would have the police remove the children for their own protection (should such exist between nations). None the less it is within this frame of reference that we see the basis for the "cultural cringe" which was once so commonly discussed and effected life here in Australia. I think Henry Lawson's quote from that above reference sums it up nicely:

The Australian writer, until he gets a 'London hearing', is only accepted as an imitator of some recognized English or American author; and, as soon as he shows signs of coming to the front, he is labelled 'The Australian Southey', 'The Australian Burns', or 'The Australian Bret Harte', and lately, 'The Australian Kipling'. Thus no matter how original he may be, he is branded, at the very start, as a plagarist, and by his own country, which thinks, no doubt, that it is paying him a compliment and encouraging him, while it is really doing him a cruel and an almost irreperable injury

Clearly Henry had it first hand as well as any of use ever had it dished out.

Now getting back to Nick's article, he suggests that previously the Britts thought of Australian PM's as "rougher around the edges, with prodigious drinking capabilities, and a penchant for giving the entire country a day off at times of national celebration" (wonder if he's thinkin of Bob Hawke?). I think Monty Python thought the same thing:

With the PM Quoted as saying to the Queen:

"It's hot enough to boil a monkey's bum in here, your Majesty," he said and she smiled quietly to herself. "

sums it up nicely really.

Nick observes that a couple of changes have occurred in the Labor party, firstly that Kevin Rudd differed from the stereotype and was "well briefed but with the personality we associate normally with Nordic prime ministers or EU agriculture commissioners" and "the Rudd phenomenon was a personality cult without a personality" (hardly a truer word spoken if you ask me).

This then extended to surprise that we'd then get a female PM citing the reaction of "Strewth, there's a sheila running Oz" was how my former paper, Britain's Daily Mail, described her rise.

It is of course interesting that she managed to take power (from Kevin Rudd) rather than be elected. Nick seem to think that we've moved from Cultural Cringe to Political Cringe, which is possible but I don't think its the real explaination of the issue.

Instead I think that its exactly the same thing which drove the Cultural Cringe and made manifest by a significant change of fortunes (and I mean money here) of a demographic of the Australian population: the bogan.

I think if we look to the Wikipedia definition of Cultural Cringe as "an internalized inferiority complex which causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries. It is closely related, although not identical, to the concept of colonial mentality, and is often linked with the display of anti-intellectual attitudes towards thinkers, scientists and artists who originate from a colonial or post-colonial nation" that we go a long way towards understanding the issue.

Add to this Isacc Asimov's quote:

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

which dovetails nicely in with the way of the Australian Bogan. Looking closely at that above definition of Cultural Cringe we see the theme anti-intellectual emerge. Others too have made the observation that this is key to the things Bogans like. Another author (who specialises more in satirisation of these observations observes:

Anti-intellectualism the bludgeoning device the bogan deploys against the nerds of the adult world. It affords the bogan the opportunity to validate its poorly-informed opinion on complex issues, by stating that a lifetime of studying the subject at hand actually serves as an impediment to any ivory tower elitist’s analysis.

The bogan believes its knowledge of the ‘Real World’ (which is limited to Today Tonight, explosive domestic arguments, and last summer’s trip to Dreamworld) trumps the intellectual’s access to the university’s considerable research resources and decades of wide reading within the field. This is because the Bogan is a moron, but yet can’t stand to be wrong, even about things it only has a passing interest in.

I feel that the mining boom with workers being paid well over double the national average, has had a large hand in this. Combined with the destruction of manufacturing and its replacement with housing construction as some sort of "industry" has meant there is a rise of highly paid "tradies" who have essentially sub high school education and some training in an area like Plumbing, brick laying, household electrical wiring or simple concreting. This pool of "skilled workers" are now earning significantly more than the factory workers of the 50's and often more than the well educated and once previous holders of the middle class.

The Bogan is now representative of the new middle class in Australia.

A number of social and media factors has combined with TV education (along the lines of "Australia has Talent") to form a group who no longer have any inferiority, consider themselves fantastic, and have a misshapen view of how much they know.

This is the reason we now have what Nick identifies as Political Cringe.

I believe that this is the reason we have the constant polling on popularity, the need for twitter updates per second on political identities and the absolute lack of analysis of what politicans do or parties do.

As the ignorant are running the nation now in the manner of "Australia's Got Talent" I wonder when we'll have $1.95 SMS your vote on "who's most popular PM" ?

bogus bose headphones

2011-09-02T07:55:00.006+03:00

Back a year or so ago my work offered to buy me a set of noise canceling headphones. I was a little skeptical and thought I'd try them out first before asking the office to cough up $500 for a set (yes, they're bloody dear aren't they)

So I bought a set of Bose QC-2 headphones on ebay, and I was amazed how well they worked! They were fantastic.

Now I'm a bit of a fusspot with this sort of thing, having been trained as an Audio Engineer back in the 80's and being a bit of an amateur recorder. I was impressed how well the Noise Cancellation (NC) worked and I have compared them to Sennheiser and Sony offerings.

The genuine thing works well, you turn them on and the ambient noise just drops away like a coin down a well. I'm guessing they drop the background noise by something like 28dB (but it would be hard to know if it was on the A scale or what) and as its active it will depend a bit. This essentially means you can use much lower listening levels (to preserve your hearing) in a noisy environment and hear the audio well while still not hearing the background noise. You really do need to try them to appreciate how good they are.

Quite simply if you're not stunned then they're probably copies.

I accepted the work ones, and due to tight (personal) budgets at the time sold my others to a workmate. Recently I have decided to acquire another set for outdoor field recording and have been shocked to find that the last 2 in a row I've bought of fleaBay have been fakes.

So just a word of caution out there. There are quite a few assholes out there knowingly selling shit copies to the unwitting.

Here is an auction showing the sort of thing you may find.

Quick give away is low price, and little feedback points.

If you haven't tried the originals you may not know that you're getting crap. The originals are really really good ... these ones you can 'barely notice' something has happened when you turn it on.

I'll update this blog post more with more details what the originals look like, but warning signs are:

if they can't prove they are genuine
if the seller only has a few points of feedback
if the case is not original the original case
if no case then that's sus ... noone would toss out the original case

then its a cheap knock off and you'd be as well off to get a set of cheap Sony's off DSE.

The original case is not only handy but beautifully made. There are cheapies on the market but they are not like the original case.

I'll post more info on my headphones to update this post next week (when I'm back at work)

iron ore and our economy

2011-08-28T01:17:00.009+03:00

Well firstly I'm no economist, but that may go for or against me depending on who you ask.

This morning I was reading the Australian and noticed in a discussion on the down turn of fortunes of BlueScope Steel I find this comment:

Since 2003, iron ore export prices have jumped from $US10 a tonne to $US140 a tonne and coking coal from $US50 to more than $US230.

Which would seem like a "wow" sort of figure, that seems like enormous growth in the value of iron ore and coal.

But is there more to it than that? Well I think there is.

the comparison is in US Dollars, which have been taking quite a hammering in value over that period. There have been numerous articles in proper literature (not newspapers) complaining that the US Federal Reserve has been printing too much money and causing inflation. This leads to situations where the dollar becomes worth less. Even if you play monopoly and have an extra stash of money under the table the other players will get angry with you won't they?

So what else can we compare it with? Well I say that money is a formalized exchange media, and that its "floating" is an experiment which history has indicated to be a little unreliable. Other commodities can be a source of exchange. Normally we pick something which is:

rare
impossible to counterfeit
desirable (my used tissues are rare and impossible to counterfeit but noone wants them)

For some greater part of human history Gold has been exactly this commodity (and also used to underpin currencies until governments over spend and have to un-pin)

Looking at Iron Ore prices in the context of another commodity (Gold) we see a different story.

Both have undergone quite large changes in their "worth" when measured in US Dollars.

So has their "worth" gone up, or has the value of the purchasing unit (the US Dollar) gone down?

Personally I would argue that it is in fact the fiat currency which has undergone deflation in value and that the commodities are undergoing far more normal sorts of supply and demand "valuation" changes.

The Australian starts their article with this quite interesting graph of the data of world Steel Production. It shows some interesting comparisons on the factors such as the Japanese Industrialisation and then the Chinese Industrialisation (which is not yet as matured as that of Japan).

its interesting to note how world steel production remained quite flat between 1971 and around 2000 (the point at which China started to increase its production). This becomes quite clear in the relationships presented in that graph.

This would make it seem reasonably clear that it is actually China driving much of the new demand and is perhaps also inserting itself in the market place and displacing other makers. Either way China has a lot of industrial growth to catch up on if you compare the state of China in the mid 1980's to what other industrialised nations were at that time to that same comparison now.

Eventually China will have to plateau out as did the previous historical demands, perhaps that may be in 5 years, perhaps that may be in 20 years. However "when" is not the question in my mind my question is "what happens then".

Economic theorists would suggest that we arrange our economies such that the author of that article has suggested: "that nations prosper from trading with each other after specialising in what they do best"

This is an ideal world in which many factors (often called externalities) are ignored in the analysis. I would doubt that anyone would suggest that we (for instance) give up on having an armed forces and allowing the nation who does that best to specialise in our national defense?

The natural systems which we observe fail to provide any real examples of this sort of concept, except perhaps the insect world. If things are made in the one place that 'specialises' in it, then diversity will vanish and we will suffer as a result.

Now people may claim we would get diversity because "the market place would demand it", well over the last 40 years of my lifetime equally as many good ideas have vanished from the market in the homologation of product lines as have entirely new products emerged. Just because I can get an iPad now and couldn't then doesn't mean that other tools and products which I valued and were very useful then are all still available now.

I can buy a whole new hand saw for $12 at Bunnings but try to find a tool for sharpening and putting set back on the teeth?
Increasingly people know less about stuff and how to fix it, just dump it and buy another.
Stuff is increasingly less repairable.

My family and I benefit from my simple solar floor heating, which will also lend itself to an interior gas powered floor heating system at night. I was able to design and install that for next to no money. If I had to pay some one to install that it would have had a much longer (perhaps infinite) payback period

None of this matters however if you just stay living in the hive.

Let me adapt a quote from Robert Heinlein to take it outside the context of his novel "Time Enough for Love"

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher an animal hog, design a building, write a poetry, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Maybe they would wish us to evolve as a society into something like insects, but I think there is a flaw in that theory. While White Ant hives operate in the manner these economists would direct us, the reality is that we do not yet have a global hive with a single purpose and single ethic. That stuff is the realm of Aldus Huxley and I for one will not be assimilated.

PS: a good question by Joshie Boy ... this is that growth in price for Iron and Ore normalised on the value of Gold

new micro43 stuff

2011-08-26T13:09:00.005+03:00

Regular readers of my blog may know of my interest in the micro 4/3 camera system; a system which promises smaller lighter cameras with big sensors as in most DSLR cameras.

Today I read that Panasonic have now released a new lens in the micro4/3 system range which at last brings compact zoom to interchangeable lens cameras.

I found this comparison image as part of an image on the dpreview site (here) and I think it shows just how compact they have managed this new lens is.

The new lens seems to draw upon the sort of motorised lens extension that all digicams have had since about the year 2000. So you get a compact lens for travel that opens out a little for use.

It would seem that the new lens is nearly as compact as the 14mm pancake or 20mm. But importantly it gets OIS while the others don't.

This is actually really significant when doing video. Even though fans of the 20mm will tout how much better it is to have the extra stops of light that only counts for something in stills. In video having OIS means with a reasonably steady hand you've got vid as smooth as if it was on a tripod.

FANTASTIC

As I have mentioned before we just don't see many (until now) compact lenses in the micro4/3 lens range and why can't we have digital cameras with interchangeable lenses which are compact.

Below is my Panasonic G1 with Pentax 110 lenses; a camera from the late 70's which used film of almost exactly the size of the sensor in the 4/3 cameras.

You can see that these lenses are quite compact and light. The one on the left is a 50mm which equates to an effective focal length of 100mm ... that's right a portrait telephoto.

Well it seems that since 2009 we are now starting to see movement at the station.

Fantastic

solar floor heating - rainy windy and overcast results

2011-08-24T11:51:00.003+03:00

The last week has been windy, rainy and overcast, so I didn't expect that the solar system would be making any significant impacts.
But a quick trip outside in the day reveals the quiet bzzt bzzt bzzt of the motor pulsing a tiny circulation of water through the floor pipes. More so when there is a break in the clouds and it springs into action immediately.

This is a good sign as this means that at least some thermal mass (of water) is being circulated and doing something to make the floor warmer.

My temperature readings over the last 24 hours (in the blue) indicate that we've kept our inside max temp at the same level of the outside max temp which is great IMHO. Previously if we had a max daytime temp of (say) 20°C during the day the house would never get warmed up that much and would be at more like 16 or 17°C peak and with the inside often being just a few degrees (like 2 or 3) warmer than the minimum (see the magenta line).

I'm quite pleased with these results in the light of the energy input requirements (like freely environmental available) and the floor insulation not only helps bring this into the house but also keep it there.

I'll be very interested to see how this goes when I add in the component of gas heating in the night. I'm guessing that it will bring up my bottom and keep it from falling so low. Mmmmm nice even temps.

NOTE: as I write this at 7pm local time the outside temp has dipped to 16.4°C and the inside is remaining steady at the 20.0°C down from the 20.8°C its was at lunch time.

Keep Australia Beautiful

2011-08-23T00:51:00.003+03:00

I heard this morning that litter is getting worse in Queensland compared to each of the mainland states (does this mean that Tassy is the worst?) and that Keep Australia Beautiful have released figures suggesting that:

"The biggest increases in Queensland litter, were recorded at shopping centres and carparks (both up in volume and number), highways (up in number, down in volume) and recreation parks (down in number up in volume)."

See the report here

As one who has been associated with environmental education folks for some time I find this trend to be exactly what I predicted over ten years ago.

I recall a conversation with 2 educators on Fraser Island (while we were collecting shit off the beaches there left by wankers who call themselves fishermen) that the last thing you want to do is encourage more people to come to national parks, even if it does somehow liberate more funding from the government it won't pay for the extra damage caused by the extra bogans.

solar floor heating - why solar will only be part of it

2011-08-21T03:41:00.006+03:00

I've been quite happy with my solar floor heating home improvement project, but I am under no illusions that it is a complete solution in itself.

Why not?

Firstly it doesn't work well at night ;-)

Secondly on days like today for instance, it started out raining, with the rain moving in late in the evening. This allowed the temperature to drop (no cloud cover keeping the place warm over night) and then little or no effective solar energy to heat the water or drive the pump. The graph below was obtained from the BOM site just this morning and sums up nicely why an auxiliary power supply is needed on some days.

So you can see from the graph that not only is it cooler its also more humid and (dangerously from the perspective of mold and fungus as I have already blogged about) the dew point is VERY close to the ambient temperature. This is reflected in the relative humidity (which is sitting at about 87% outside as I write this).

By heating the interior of the house at this time we get some significant benefits (apart from being warm) by effectively lowering the relative humidity inside the house and thus preventing everything becoming sticky and damp. Also as the sun comes out now and then and starts to heat up the air outside we don't have the problem of the interior of the house being cooler than air outside and thus causing some condensation of moisture happening as the warmer moist are comes inside the house and touches cooler things.

That green line of dew point means that water will start to condense out of the air when things are at (in the case above) 13 or so degrees C. That's why glasses with cold water in them start to look frosty and why polished wood starts to feel tacky.

Insulation also works best when its got some thermal mass to insulate. An empty thermos bottle won't stay warm long with no water in it (try heating the interior with a hair dryer and see for your self). Since our house has no thermal mass heated up to a higher temperature for the walls, floor and ceiling to insulate it will loose heat quickly at night and over time the next day without the addition of heat.

So by modifying my design to have the common pool:

I can now incorporate something like a gas heating system to heat the water and a small auxiliary power supply for the solar pump (on the floor circuit) to heat the water in the common pool, and then move that warm water around the floor pipes; without wasting that heat in the solar heat collector section.

In my view gas provides the most effective way to store and purchase energy for heating. It gives excellent efficiency and burns very cleanly (no nasty toxins such as sulphur). However I don't want to burn gas inside my house, as it will produce micro-soot; CO₂ as well as potentially leak gas in the house.

This is of course not news to Canadians who have been burning their furnaces in a way that keeps house air separated from combustion and puts combustion gasses back outside where they belong. Even open fire places have a chimney right?

My solution to this is to get a small low flow gas hot water systems such as this one. These are designed for caravans and other low flow outdoor situations. They are rated at about 6Liters per minute which is a bit more than I'll need. I can turn the water temperature (meaning gas consumption rate) down as I need only have the water at about 35°C

By using a water heater like this I then get to keep my combustion outside and not mix it with my internal house air.

I can run it of a 9Kg cylinder and pump the water through it to the common water bus with a low power 12v pump.

My intention is to set this up on a timer which will turn it on at about 6pm, run it for busts (say 20min on 20min off) till about 10pm then turn it on again at about 5am to start heating the floor.

This in turn will make my solar system more effective as the water will already be warm in the morning when it starts up giving it a head start on warming it up.

Of course this adds to the complexity and cost of the system, these systems sell for about AU$200 and I'll probably need another $100 for the pump, timer and circuitry.

I'm estimating that the gas use will be something like 18Kg of gas for the winter months (or about $50 today).

We get to have polished wooden floors that are slightly warm underfoot and that heat the house. Just like the large surface area radiators are not too hot to burn you (unlike smaller bar radiators) the floor heating has an even larger surface area and so keeps the house warm too.

Polished floors are cleaner than carpet (got any pets? Cat hair and carpet ... mmmm my favorite for allergy, oh and do you see carpet in many hospital rooms?) and feel lovely under foot when not cold. So now that we're heating them there is even less reason to cover them up with festy filthy carpet.

Low cost, low energy and effective ... not bad I'd say

why discussion gets nowhere

2011-08-21T02:16:00.010+03:00

I often here in the news and among some segments of the community that we need to have a debate in the community about this or that topic. This seldom happens and when it does all too often becomes nothing more than a yelling match, especially when one or the other side is not "winning" the arguments.

I see that there are some fundamental flaws in the way we go about this and the preparedness of the vast majority of community to actually engage in such a conversation.

I was impressed in Japan when discussing things with "ordinary workers" that people in that society had an assumption that "I'm an ordinary worker, so I don't know about that", which was in total contrast to Australia where people are more willing to step up to the plate and say "I think that's wrong" soon to be followed by resistance and defensiveness when you start establishing they are wrong.

Yet they often started out not knowing a bloody thing about the topic. So if we begin with a debate (rather than asking questions) people take sides and then defend their choice.

This is perhaps because debate is a formalized argument which is intended to produce a winner - not explore an issue.

I don't think its helpful for the community to be taking sides and attempting to win the argument, this is simply a form of conflict, and I think we already have enough of that now.

If the community has polarized views on topics then arguing will just lead to entrenching that division. Further there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that no matter what people just are unwilling to accept any new facts if it conflicts with their existing viewpoint. A Professor from Georgia State University, Jason Reifler conducted a series of experiments that looked at whether people changed their views when they were presented with the correct facts. He found that not only did they not, but it reinforced their will to keep a grip on their existing facts.

Clearly this has a significant effect on the politics around any public dialog; a quote from an (ABC interview) with him:

ELEANOR HALL: What hope is there then for truth in politics?

JASON REIFLER: The downside of the research that my co-author and I have done to date is that it's very depressing. We don't have a terribly good understanding yet of ways to try and improve public debate, to try and improve political dialogue.

So people seem to treat discussion like a footy match; with a winner and a looser at the end of the match and go home still rooting for their team.

as just mentioned people are unwilling to accept that discussion may lead to them being wrong or that they may learn something they didn't know before (which should lead to them changing their point of view).

One of my favorite cartoons recently was a graph, it tries to sum up the ideas above in a nutshell.

Essentially when you have zero knowledge you still have some confidence in your viewpoint being right, the more you begin to learn the more you gain confidence in your views.

Its only after you learn enough that you start to question your views and wonder if they are right. At this point we see the graph starting to fall. Eventually when you know quite a lot you actually have very little confidence that your views are correct.

This is what we commonly call wisdom. The vast majority of the community do not have much wisdom. In fact if asked don't usually value it or do anything to obtain it. They'd rather have a beer and watch the footy.

Recently I was watching the program Catalyst and was left simply stunned at the incredible ignorance people have of the most basic physical facts. I was totally gobsmacked to see that people just didn't grasp that something feels cold because its a good conductor and feels warm because its a good insulator. If we were talking to the most primitive uneducated tribal native they would be no less unaware of these basic facts and perhaps even more aware of them.

I was particularly stunned by the guy in the green jacket, its hard to imagine someone making more wrong conclusions and yet he probably reaches conclusions on issues like global warming. My favorite comment from him was

"Alluminium would be bad for the environment because it was thawing out the ice a lot quicker"

So kiss bye bye to any meaningful climate change community debate when people can't even grasp these dead simple issues.

the comment "we're creatives not intellectuals" sums it up to me. Yet the blond girl was the only one who seemed to have have learned from the book and the hard drive that her assumptions may have been wrong. But she was in the minority there...

[note: in case that video doesn't work please try to download segment mp4 or wmv (average size 10 MB) or go to the ABC web page here.]

I was very encouraged how each of these people accepted the outcomes as described by the presenter. All of these people (despite thinking he was lying) eventually seemed to accept he was right. The guy in the green jacket also accepted that he "wasn't a scientist" and also seemed to accept the logic of the demonstration.

All these people would (if asked separately) quite likely identify themselves as being smart, as having meaningful input into discussions on (say) climate change, and quite likely all have gone to high school and on to University. That they don't know much about the ultra basics of the modern world speaks reams about the total failure of our educational system to actually bring people up to speed with the complexity of the modern world.

Yet all these people vote, and its likely all these people will go into a debate feeling their opinion is right and in the context of a debate, most likely be unwilling to listen to the other side.

It will be a win or lose event.

If enough of these people then behave as Jason Reifler observed in his research then I'd say we're fucked. But the above video also seems to show that if the arguments are presented appropriately that people do accept them.

The problem remains however how to deal with people using tools like straw man arguments, syllogism and many other logical tricks to prove their points and convince the less rigorous listener.

So as I say often, with the rights in society come obligations. If you want to be part of the political process then you have an obligation to participate to in that and not just get fooled by the shells game played by many politicians.

buying Australian made in Australia

2011-08-20T09:22:00.006+03:00

In the past I was never one to buy Australian made unless it also happened to be what I wanted. Years of living in Finland with my family who are stout "buy local" products combined with my personal views on environment and sustainablity (that would be the three pillars of sustainable development as outlined in the Johannesburg convention of 2002) have led me to feel that I should (unless there is an overwhelming case against it) prefer to purchase as much Australian product as I can, especially food items.

So since returning to Australia I have been trying to do just that (just as we bought Finnish food in Finland).

The problem is that its increasingly difficult to do.

Today while shopping I noticed that my normal brand of Orange Juice has changed from being 100% Australian oranges to
- not mentioning it (and having in the fine print "made from local and imported ingredients") to
- now having an attempted apology printed on the label. The text reads "Due to an orange shortage in Australia ... bla bla"

Well that's strange isn't it, as just a few days ago on the ABC Radio I heard representatives from the Orange growers saying that due to the dollar being so high now it was almost impossible for them to shift their product.

So it seems that there is actually a glut of Orange product on the market in Australia; but these guys are saying there is an orange shortage in Australia?

They can't both be right ... Hmmm ...

I thought I'd link to that particular program here which has a mp3 podcast associated with it for you to download and listen.

So if you would prefer to buy your OJ from our free trade partner across the pacific (who isn't buying ours I bet) then go for it, but mean time I'm really pissed off with Nudie for trying to pull this stunt off. Clearly its aimed at increasing their profit.

Sorry guys but if I wanted to buy cheap OJ I'd buy one of the cheap brands, not pay premium prices for a product which pretends to support our farmers and our economy and gives jobs to Australians.

So the bottom line is : read the labels carefully as there are assholes out there trying to trick you into buying their product.

United Nations. (2002). Report of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations.

solar floor heating - part 3

2011-08-20T01:59:00.007+03:00

developments

I've had a time to complete a bit more of my ideas and have a few findings in my Solar Floor heating project which I thought I'd take the time to document and pass on (to anyone who finds this and attempts to replicate my work for their own benefits).

I've completed my next phase of prototype for heat collector. Essentially this is a length of poly pipe wound around onto a wire mesh backing with a sheet of PET plastic to cover it. The first one was just one length of poly pipe (Bunnings sells them in 20 meter lengths) wound around a wire mesh to hold it in a coil and face the sun ...

The version I wanted to complete next takes this concept further by putting more pipe per square meter and adding a covering of clear wind proof insulation material to act as a "glass house" to reduce (eliminate?) losses of gathered heat due to wind convection cooling the pipes (while the sun is heating them).

The collector is about 1 meter by 1 meter and the pipe is wound tightly around with care taken to not kink or fold the pipe which would restrict the water flow.

This collector now contains 60 meters (or $12 worth) of poly pipe and with the PET sheet ($15) is now far more effective at gathering water than my older one (which only had 40 meters of pipe too).

problems (and solutions?)

It seems that this experiment is not without problems which need consideration to find solutions. The first is:
Bubbles
The system works on the principle of least energy required, so moving the water around the system requires that the principles of a siphon are used.

But as my inlet bucket and outlet bucket are the same point (as you can see in the above video) the water will simply remain in the pipe.

That would seem pointless if it wasn't for the fact that 1) my pipe is what is gathering the heat and 2) I have the pump to move it around.

I was finding however that after a week or so the flow would be markedly reduced. Flushing the system (with a more powerful pump called the garden hose) revealed that bubbles were coming out and it was this air in the system which was causing my system to fail.

I am still not entirely certain what the problem is, but I suspect that it is gasses such as chlorine (used in the reticulated water system) coming out of solution in water (as say the temperature changes) and then gathering in a location ...

I am not sure where the bubbles are forming, in my floor circuit or in my heating circuit. As I have also been wondering how to provide alternative heating systems to this (like to heat it at night too) I thought that an elegant solution was to employ a "bus" solution or "common pool" which would mean that:
1) heating siphon was separate from floor
2) heat could be added by a third (separate) circuit which simply heated the water in the common pool.

Just roughly this looks like the figure below where I have my old single circuit on the left and my new multiple circuit system on the right.

This allows me to

work out if bubbles are in one side or the other
add a night time heating of the water (say by gas or off peak electricity)
not waste my heated water by putting it through the solar heating panel (which would just act as heat loss out into the night air and give me no return)

I'll keep you posted on this as I only completed this section yesterday.

Lastly

I thought I'd provide a little more details about the pump. As I mentioned I bought if from Jaycar and it cost $49.95 Its the 7v model which moves about 140L / hour of water (in full sunlight).

I thought that this was a 'good number' (upon experimentation) to start with and the more expensive 12V model (twice the price) moved 200L / hour which I thought may be too fast for heat gathering.

As it turns out I think that the 140 would be too fast, but as it also turns out there is enough resistance pumping the water around that it works out to be about half that in practice.

For reference: Part 1 and Part 2

lego humor

2011-08-18T12:19:00.002+03:00

Matches and petrol sold separately. Facebook and Twitter accounts not included.

ohfukbutdatzfunnyinnit?

sometimes I miss travel

2011-08-18T05:44:00.004+03:00

Alberta Canada is a beautiful place

click for larger view

not much else to say really ...

PS: just for balance living in these places brings with it stuff like this when driving your car.

how to meet carbon targets

2011-08-16T07:26:00.005+03:00

stop doing anything industrial in the country and move it all to another country. Import everything and transform our economy to a 'service based economy' where we don't make anything but charge for it.

from there we can cast off with all nasty and dirty jobs (like growing food) and we can all live in...

... a housing bubble (BTW I love that poor lip syncing in that clip there. Unlike our leaders who actually say what the mean, not just what someone tells them to say)

Ok, so after that brief examination of policy detail, can someone tell me again how it is that with WA being among the largest Natural Gas producers on the planet, they can't get to keep enough of that gas to meet domestic needs?

Ahh ... must be helping meeting carbon reduction targets.

stranded on a beach

2011-08-08T08:48:00.006+03:00

I heard on the news today that a whale calf had beached itself on the beach opposite Surfers Paradise, and that people were trying to get it back into the water.

My wife toddled down and took these pictures

a video of the rescue team leader describing what they were going to do:

so with the tide coming in the plan seemed to be to dig a ditch up the beach to allow the water to float it off

I'm told that the litle fella was very happy to be returned to water and splashed about for a bit before being led out (herded?) to sea by some people on JetSki's.

Hopefully they find the mother and the calf will be ok

:-)

electric or petrol

2011-08-03T06:01:00.006+03:00

why not both?

A common axiom in software development is that if your tool is a hammer then everything starts to look like a nail.

There are people who are "pro" Electric Vehicles and people who are anti EV. Personally I'm a pragmatist and a flexible one at that. I take the position that both nail guns and hammers have their best use still, and that one does not cancel out the other.

A favorite among PRO-EV crowd is that the internal combustion engine is at its end, and that Electric is just starting. This ignores the fact that we have had EV's in society functioning in roles for as long as we have had petrol ones. Clearly this argument is a QED only for the ignorant and very young (and if your older live in the west and remain ignorant well ... that's your fault really).

I don’t think that combustion engines are at a dead end any more than burning gas to heat your water or cook your meal is. Petrol may have a number of nasty disadvantages but it is a very compact energy storage method. We have come to make a large number of assumptions about vehicles and one of the nice things about concept cars is they allow us to remove ourselves from the baggage of conventions and imagine how things could be.

When you examine any of the working and effective electric cars you find at the heart a few assumptions which if applied to petrol engined cars would afford similar efficiency gains. Its just that somehow when you tell people that a petrol car will weigh 300Kg have reduced acceleration, reduced interior comfort and reduced collision protection they go “no way” while being willing to accept it with electric ones.

I submit that a vehicle more like a recumbent trike with some aerodynamics and an efficient fuel injected petrol motor driving electricity generation for battery replenishment would be lighter and sufficiently powerful. It seems to be accepted technology in the diesel electric locomotives we have been using for some dozens of years (nay decades). Such a small motor could be tuned to operate at a static RPM and be exceptionally efficient as well as quiet.

I have no doubt I could make the journey on the highway to work at 80Kmh and have efficiency of the order of 1L/100km and minimal exhaust emissions. Heck, I could probably run it on LPG or other biofuel too

The thing is however we would need to remove the freight and other heavy traffic from the roads as they would make impacts fatal.

Of course we could simply just use bicycles?

solar floor heating - Part 2

2011-07-31T15:24:00.007+03:00

Things are still moving in this area, but sadly with life getting in the way of tasks its a little slower than I'd desire since Part 1. Naturally (as with all things efficient) a balance of input and protection is required: so part of the solar floor heating is to not loose that warmth. So I'm installing some basic insulation between the joists of the floor boards of my house; to reduce the heat losses and increase the heat transfer to the floor.

This can be a filthy job with shit falling in your face and whatever dirt and shit that lives under the house in your nostrils while you work. (for those who've never gone there think about every local cat which explores, pisses and drags food down there as well as whatever building materials the tradies dumped while doing their work).

So its important to protect yourself while working.

This mask is rated to organic vapours and works so well I couldn't even smell the festering rotting cane toad that I found in the laundry back in the wet season which had died and been half consumed by rats ... but trust me it stank.

Its important to take precautions especially when doing home reno as health effects from exposure to building dusts is an increasing issue in Australia (as more people do their own). And as you can see in this quick video shit was falling down right onto my face:

So it is well to cover eyes (with my swimming goggles) and breathing intakes (mouth and nose) for safety.

Today the interior of the house actually got 3 degrees above outside temperatures without any other inputs. I'm pretty happy with that as normally it lags behind during the day (that roof insulation preventing the sun from heating the house in summer works the same way in winter). So with the temp overnight being something like 11 (this graph is for the sea way which is actually a bit warmer than we are here just a couple of K inland) the house is often only 3 or 4 deg above the outside minimum and then the same amount below the outside maximum.

Rather annoying really, but so common in Queensland where houses are often colder inside than the outside is soon after sun rises. People sit around alternatly saying "how cold it is" and "how dear the electricity is for heating".

With only 1/2 my downstairs floor area fitted with heating (and I can't fit the insulation till I've fitted the pipes) its all looking quite promising.

We're also attempting a poor mans double glaze with fitting of 1mm clear PET plastic sheets over the windows. You can barely notice them and as heaps of heat is lost via windows (glass being a good conductor not an insulator) we should have a warmer house again.

gold wages and houses

2011-07-27T08:34:00.004+03:00

A blogger called Bullion Barron has done a nice (well researched) piece on the relationship between wages expressed in gold (here) and house prices (here),I recommend you toddle over and have a quick read of that.

Mean time I was ruminating on some of the data and wondered if I could do a quick and dirty shift of some of his graphs to fit the same axis of time scale. So here is his data of wage to gold overlaid with house prices in gold

to me the peaks and falls seem to be related. Although there was a period where our salary buying power went up in these units but there was a lag in house prices until 2003. I would wonder if this was when fiscal policy became looser and people began buying with "all that cash" they now had ... bears further investigation that does.

none the less, then the wages (in gold) fell there was a bit of noise in the system before that followed the same logic. Perhaps we need the quivalent of a Schmitt trigger on the logic systems to work that one through?

I hope Bullion Barron doesn't mind me working his data like this....

time lapse photography

2011-07-27T02:44:00.002+03:00

Been considering this for myself for some time. Seeing this one today is quite inspirational.

Great use of technique at work here

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

hats off to this fellow

Coombabah conservation area

2011-07-24T02:37:00.011+03:00

The Gold Coast is perhaps one of the prime examples in modern time of the pressures of urban development and the need to set aside well considered conservation areas.

The Gold Coast City Council has done exactly this in the Coombabah area with the Coombabah Lakelands Conservation Area.

As you can see on the map below the area has been heavily urbanised in the last 20 years.

View Larger Map

and the population growth in the region has been very high, going from around 30,000 when I was born (here) to over half a million and doubling during holiday seasons

So its more or less essential to preserve this area (as much as it can be all things considered) to provide some sort of remnant habitat for some species. Its actually working (as we'll see in a tic)

A quick peek around the general area of the wetland can be had in this video.

We went there on this occasion as there was a Gold Coast City Council (GCCC) guided walk to introduce locals to what may be there (and perhaps get them more interested in their local real area). So we joined a group to take a walk around the wetland.

As you can see above there is also a nice boardwalk there making it possible to get out into the wetland area more and see it from a vantage which would normally require a boat (or getting wet). This certainly helps reduce the impact.

The area does act to keep some of the local fauna living there (remember, they were there all along, we just encroached on their space) with some Wallabys:

and the less shy grey Kangaroo population never disappoints and one can often see one in the area. Basking in the sun after a morning feed

where there's one there's two, and if there's two there's more

Droppings are also an important indicator of what's hanging around the region

and shows us evidence of Koalas (this is Koala droppings below)

The use of movement sensor triggered video cameras also helps with park management understand what moves around both day and night ...

after all you need to know what you've got to manage it right?
As it turns out lots of animals are killed in the region by animal attack (as well as cars) and well meaning (strongly opinionated self ordained expert yet drastically ignorant) local residents think its all "just natural" ... its natural that dogs hunt and kill. True, but then in a natural system there would not be such a large population of dogs living in the area because they'd starve ... because they couldn't go home to a bowl of dog food. Looking at the urbanisation rate in the above satellite image its pretty clear. Often they just kill their prey for fun (better food is had at home).

Local feral dogs and cats are a source of strong predation on the local wildlife. The managers try to understand what is done by domestic dogs and by Dingos.

Australia has lots of reptiles and Carpet snakes also live (and hunt) in the area. These lovely guys help keep our rat population in check, but it would seem in this case it was a ringtail possum (but hart to tell after digestion)

So as we wind up our tour of the wetland area one of the local butcher birds keeps an eye on us as we depart:
So the GCCC has helped make this area that little better to live in amid the influx of population in the region by keeping some of the natural areas. This means its more likely I'll see fellas like these

in my back yard (or my dads)

Its by providing a good balance of natural areas in the midst of human communities that makes Australia nicer to live in than big cities tend to be.

NOTE for the photographically inclined: all these images come from my Panasonic GH1 using a mixture of the standard zoom lens as well as some old Canon FD series lenses which I use via an adaptor ... very handy

digital vs neg: Australian light

2011-07-23T09:49:00.007+03:00

Back in Finland I compared my m4/3 camera (Panasonic G1) to 35mm film and found that in situations of higher contrast that negative film captured the scene better and that in situations of lower contrast digital revealed more of the subtle textures.

As Australia has different light to Finland (perhaps more contrasty) I wanted to explore how well my findings held here. It was also an opportunity to compare fuji frontier scans with what I get from my Nikon LS-4000 as I have done previously with Noritsu systems.

As mentioned in a previous article, its amazing how well negative does in coping with contrasty light like this:

Good shadow details, great highlights.

summary

I was impressed how well I could pull images out of RAW files from the GH1, with the right processing tools you can do outstandingly well compared to negative.

Noritsu machines scan better than what you get with Fuji Frontier

Getting a high quality scan out of a Frontier operator is like getting milk from a stone, and you just wouldn't buy a digital camera producing as few a megapixels nor as shitty a quality.

discussion

So, getting on with it, I made the comparison using my EF 24 f2.8 lens on the 35mm camera and the 14mm end of the 14-45mm Zoom on the GH1. I was expecting that the 14mm would equate to 28mm on the 35mm frame, but wondered how aspect ratio (width over height) would effect this.

I used Photomatix 4.x (which has a nice little batch processing mode) to process my RAW files to get that little bit more out of the file (for that little less effort). See my posts here and here about that.

As it turns out the 4000dpi scan of the 35mm frame using a 24mm lens produces pixel for pixel sizes which are quite close (but not 100% exact) to the 14mm lens on the 4/3 frame. The angle of view and amount of scene captured varied ... you can see that below where I've overlaid the frames as best I could.

So the 24mm (as expected) reveals a wider frame than does the 14mm on the 4/3. You may notice how well I've matched the colour and contrast between the two VERY DIFFERENT media.

This makes comparisons a bit tricky as at 100% views (pixel peeping) because magnification is different, just as 100% views of a more telephoto image will reveal more detail than a wider angle. Essentially the digital has a slight 'resolution' advantage in this. None the less...

So, lets take a look at a central portion of the image where there is some shadow detail and bright reflective objects in full sunlight.

Firstly, I see that seven though the 35mm image covers a wider capture than the 4/3 does the feature size of things on the scan is actually a little larger than on the 4/3, which is impressive. The dynamic range capture is pretty equal although the digital looks a little punchier which suggests it wouldn't quite be up to the wider range of highlights than the negative is.

Next I notice that there is greater details in the brickwork and lovely smooth texture in the wall of the building on the digital.

This smoothness of texture really shows itself on skies:

The smooth clear blue is perfect and the small clouds are almost lost on the negative. I guess this is where film folk liked Slide. But to me if you're going to swing with blocked up shadows and blown highlights that slide film brings (without a projector) then you just may as well use digital anyway.

The digital from RAW with this processing is impressive stuff and makes me really question where and why I'd use negative ... I'll need to test this again on a 5D and see how that goes. I've read they have less noise in the shadows than the 4/3 does, which would really assist with this sort of processing.

Lastly I thought I'd present a comparison with the out of camera JPG and the RAW processed in the manner I work with.

Look to the left over at the building and see how much better the contrast range is reproduced, check out the shadow details under the trees, and generally just how much punchier it looks. Sure you may not like the saturation, but that can be dialed down easily!

Lastly I'd like to present 2 images take looking into the light:

Negative:

Digital

the sky blowouts are a little offputting on the digital as is the slightly garrish colour which no doubt came from handling highlight recovery of blown channels. Clearly some HDRI or plain old under exposure would help with on the digital, but then the shadows will either be ink or noisy.

So Negative still copes with the really harsh conditions better ... well in my view at least.

conclusion

The Photomatix processing of RAW files (automated batch) is now giving me in full sunlight the sort of contrast handling that I once reached to negative for, meaning that I'm now more inclined than previously to reach for my 4/3 digital than I am for negatives. There remain some issues which digital needs to be handled with care.

Its not black and white is it :-)

the grinning bogan

2011-06-23T07:41:00.003+03:00

I spotted this image on a web page today

and it mad me think for reasons I can't explain Julia Gillard reminds me of Wallace from "Wallace and Grommit"

not in the personality of Wallace, but in the mannerisms and simpleminded-ness

I wonder if "Julia Likes Cheese" ...

solar floor heating - Part 1

2011-06-19T05:14:00.011+03:00

Premise and purpose

Queensland often has sunny days which are warm outside. The paradox is we build houses which are often cold inside. I can only blame our colonial heritage.

Sitting around inside the house it is often still at 15°C at lunch while outside has risen to 20°C in the sunshine. (Its fcuking stupid isn't it!). I had been thinking about a roof mounted solution, but as it turns out the northern side of the house is actually in full sunlight most of the day. When doing any gardening on that side you have to strip back to a T-shirt or you'll start getting hot. So my goal was to work out how to get the heat of the winter northern sun into my house without spending a lot of money.

We have a reasonably typical old house here, raised 40cm or so from the ground on stumps with hardwood floors. They get mighty chilly in the winter. The solution to that from the 70's was carpet, but I think carpet is filthy stinky stuff which people don't quite get how impossible it is to clean and rarely think about it (or if they do think, quickly realize that "its stinky stuff which is impossible to clean").

discussion

So I got to thinking that the nice warm sun on the north side of our house would be able to heat my floor making the inside of the house warmer.

So for less than $200 I've bought:

100m of 13mm black poly pipe for both collector and floor heating section
a solar powered water pump to circulate the water
some cable ties and staples to attach the pipe

and after a bit of crawling around under the house I have it fitted

so ... next is to add some insulation under the floor (was going to use builders paper but a better idea is some thin foam) and make a more effective collector.

Right now, with just a single circuit, its just slightly cool to the feet while the unheated areas are uncomfortably cold on my feet (read need slipers). Not bad for no extra cost as time goes by...

For my next stage I reckon that I'll change this test collector to 4 collectors of about 500x500mm with clear plastic covers (to reduce wind induced heat losses) and black backs (to capture more heat), this should significantly increase the efficiency (reduce the losses) of the heat absorber and allow me to run solar 4 pumps to shunt the water around.

Right now I'm just running a single circuit of water (say the blue line in the figure to the left) so with the extra heat collector, I'll double up and reverse the direction.

If you look at the figure left, the blue line comes in and zig zags up the floor then come straight back to the heat collector. If I run the other circuit in the opposite direction (like the green line) then any heating change (as the water cools) of one circuit will be countered by the other which will have any temperature gradient in the other direction. This way I'll get 2 pipes between each floor joist (where as now I only have one) which should further increase the transfer of solar energy to my floor.

When choosing the pumps, there were 2 types, one was 200L/hour for $80 and the other was 140L/hour for $40. I reckon that 4 pumps covering the floor area under the house will (in combination with the insulation layer under the floor) actually make the floor warm to walk on in winter!!

Another point about the solar water pump is that it only turns on when the panel gets enough energy (which means the heat collector is now hot and ready) and turn off when the sun goes down (or when it goes behind a cloud) meaning that I do not need any other regulating system in this (to prevent it pumping cold water under my floor).

Simple, effective and cheap.

Further the system is then easily adapted to have GAS heat the water (using a simple and low cost instant heat gas system and a regular electric pump) if we want to keep the floor heat in the nights or to use on rainy or cloudy days (which aren't actually as cold in the evenings as the clear days are).

Water temperature on the outlet end of the pipe (after its gone around under the house) is coming out at 34°C