Cameras

I've never complained about my camera, well maybe I have, but it wasn't like that. This would be a wannabe photographer's amateur review, which means it's my own opinion only.

I have been using a Canon IXY 910 (the Japanese version of IXUS 860) for a few years now, it never really fails to satisfy my needs (which is not that much, usually I take a lot of macro, landscape and embarrassing moments in parties). I've only been using 5MP of the 8MP its sensor provided in a less compressed (superfine) mode. The colour that this little guy gave me has been amazing even without tuning, and I got compliments for my photos when I upload them on facebook. It's quick, silent and to the point.

Then I came across this Nikon S9100 that my parents brought when they came visit me, I've heard good things about it and my parents are willing to swap it for my Canon. I actually loved my Canon but I wanted to see what difference this Nikon can make so I accepted the deal (part of my superficial reason is that now even my phone has an 8MP camera, but the 18x optical zoom comparing to 3x on my Canon makes me drool too). From the photos my parents took with them I could easily tell that they didn't use the camera right. There was two shots with very little difference in time and position taken, one is completely normal but the other is totally redded out. I assumed they might've set something wrong on the camera.

A glitch (probably not considered a serious one but) that immediately annoyed me about this Nikon S9100 is that when in review mode of the photo just taken, the shutter refuses to work, on my 4YO Canon you can just take a photo blindly and immediately in review mode. This prompted me to disable the review function, but the difference this made was marginal, because it wanted to go over the focusing process again every time, while the Canon would just use the last known setting (either that or the Canon's focus works extremely fast that you barely notice). It is the moment that's important, not the review of what you've taken, Nikon people!

On the telescopic side of lens, very slow and inefficient focus, even in sufficient light, which sort of destroyed the purpose of the telescopic lens. The IS is probably not good enough for my shaky hands on the telescopic end too. During focus generally, it tends to make noises all the time shifting lens even when the green in focus label is present instead of telling you "I'm ready" in a click and stayed there, I'm not really sure whether this is a good or bad thing.

On the image size selection, only the full 12MP size offers a "star" option (equivalent to "superfine"), which means when I use my normal 5MP setting the image would be quite heavily compressed. I'm a bit concerned but I'll see if shifting to normal 8MP mode covers the problem by increased canvas size.

I noticed I took a lot of ghostly photos under low light with the Nikon, and found out that the auto ISO selection is not really doing its job. The manual did say when you set it to auto it would shift up to ISO 800 in low light, so why were all my ghostly photos taken at ISO 200 or even 160 and at shutter speed of 1/3s to 2s? That doesn't make sense, 1/10s at ISO 600 would solve the problem beatifully.

On the plus side, the colour is pretty neutral comparing to the Canon. The build of the camera itself is very sturdy (I dropped it a few times already, don't tell mom). Noise level of low light shots are relatively low. Also I liked the design that the flash needs to be separately lifted up because I'm never quite a flash person unless I absolutely have to use it. Video taking now have a dedicated button, which is good too, the thing is I don't really make a lot of videos. The manual focusing system lets you move the cursor around to focus on the object you want to focus (a step forward than my Canon which you have to focus a few times until the AF guessed what you wanted to shoot right, especially in macro mode which I use a lot), but a touch screen as seen on Sony or smart phones would actually do a better job.

I didn't have this camera for long enough to discover too much good things about it, well I hope I would later. For the time being I am a bit disappointed about it, because on the overall experience it is hopelessly losing to my 4 year old Canon. I can't imagine why Canon came up with a slick and witted camera 4 years ago while this new Nikon is still struggling to catch up (if it cared to at all) and it just feels sluggish. Canon and Nikon were both supposed to be very good brands I thought? Maybe only in professional (D)SLR areas. Nikon doesn't seem to care too much about the user experience of their consumer cameras (Maybe the developers were too good to use a camera like this? Then why is this thing even on the market?). Canon on the other hand took care of everything and the experience is just smooth.

A bit of hope, a firmware upgrade could definitely address the shutter and ISO problems, but that's only if Nikon's up for it. Second thoughts, do people to custom roms for cameras?

Android

I'd been using the iPhone 3GS for 2 years and finally got sick of it. I decided to switch to Android and recontracted a Samsung Galaxy S II with Optus. I've had the new phone for more than a week now so here's a few thoughts on this phone and more importantly on Android as well.

I'm not really gonna brag about the hardware of this phone cos you probably have all heard about it. Duo-core processor, super AMOLED plus, 8MP camera and mobile high-definition link (MHL). A bit of overkill to any current iPhones, but the best part is it's cheaper than the iPhone 4.

After my first long phone call on the SGS2 I realized it is a phone, while iPhone was anything but a phone. I can't really remember how many times I had to call out 'sorry what was that' during calls when there's only digital gibberish coming through and then the call dropped. I don't really have to do that with the SGS II unless it was my limitation in English. And they say 3GS was not the worst iPhone in terms of reception.

The Android system does take a little time to get used to. you have a bit more space than just the dock to place your favourite apps, but the home/apps button has to take one of the four spots on the dock. You got multiple home screens you could put various widgets on to see contents without having to opening the app, or if you like shortcuts of apps from the app page. They are easy to use generally and I am happy with them.

I haven't rooted my system but I will definitely do it soon because I need to remove some of the apps that comes with the phone which I don't need but cannot remove without root access. Even without the rooting the customization on Android is beyond belief. I spent like 3 hours just to adjust my live wallpaper to a pattern that I absolutely love and had great fun doing so. Btw iOS does not offer live wallpapers at all and when I first get it it doesn't even support wallpapers except on the lock screen. To install apps not from the market place however, all you need is to check that option, nothing like jailbreaking or the like.

The screen is absolutely amazing. It doesn't have the resolution that iPhone 4 has, but you won't believe the colour because of the technology of the display itself. There is no true black on any LCD screens because those pixels cannot completely shut off the back light, while the AMOLED screen doesn't need a backlight, the pixels light themselves up. I didn't realize how much difference that made until I turned on my iPhone again one day.

The back of the SGS2 is openable which means you can change your battery or have a spare one with you. It takes Micro SD cards too. I've already ordered a 32G one from eBay and it's already on its way.

The only thing that I found Android being inferior to iOS so far the touch screen. While the hardware technology should be the same Android lacked a bit of friendliness. In iOS if you tap and hold on say a webpage there would not be anything until you release or swiped, but in Android there would be some annoying menus popping up that I had to close again and again. I can't just hold it and then slowly navigate through as I read. This might be my bad habit brought over from iOS but it really annoyed me. The soft keys "menu" and "back" are handy because they freed quite a bit of space on the screen but they are a bit too easy to be mistouched especially when you are operating the phone with one hand. Also in a lot of cases the "back" key registered twice when pressed once for me.

I don't think I'd regret this choice, and I don't plan to go back to iPhone.

Set Sail!

It's called Uncharted Waters Online, but I knew it as Daikoukai Jidai from my teenage years. None of the previous (non-online) versions of this game was ever translated to Engslish and I played the IV in Chinese Traditional (the Taiwanese release of this game). It is still my favourite game of all time but I can't play it on my current computer because of both system and language encoding issues. (it doesn't even support Windows XP being released around 1998). The online version has been around since 2003 in Japan (2006 in Mainland China which I have briefly played) but only just arrived in the English world late last year. Of course I am gonna jump onto it as soon as I get a fast and reliable internet like now.

I loved the world map in the game was real world and all the ports were at exact places where they should be, although they are sometimes called a different name than we call them now because the time was set around the Renaissance, where every European country struggles to get out of Europe and explore the world. Every player is obviously one of them.

I have been playing as a Venetian adventurer (chosen over trader and maritime), fisherman to be exact. I have been enjoying it from the start. The sailing school was a bit too much to read but useful afterwards, I am still struggling to finish the advanced adventurer school at the moment since I need to get any one of 'archaeology', 'geography' or 'biology' skills to rank 4, which is not that easy.

There are a few things that I found interesting although it is reasonable to do so in game to make it fair. Cattle disappears after you milked it and chickens disappear after you collected eggs are amongst them. And you could actually make profit by simply taking eggs from chicken or ducks then hatch them to get more chicken or ducks. Another interesting thing is that eggs that you get from chicken might hatch into ducklings. And when you are bored just kill all the chicken and ducks and process them into meats and sell at 10 times the price of your original cost.

I actually think this game is quite amazing :) I just got eligible to get aides and I got one, will need to figure out what they do though...

Tom Milsom

I've grown a love to some quite different music these days, such as, Tom Milsom.

Young, cute smile, emo but not always dark hair, bad teeth, debuted from youtube, never officially released a physical CD. Tom Milsom looks no where near my taste of music (which has come all the way from J-Pop to trance to Baroque with a bit of side tracks into easy listening and pop-rocks). However he has that wicked modern simplicity and care-free attitude and of course sweet voice and dazzling talent. He's eager to try new stuff (such as the free download Geology EP which when I first listened to I thought the files I downloaded was broken because it's like a monotonal beep all the way, but after reading his notes to those tracks they start to make sense to me and I started accepting them although they are definitely not my favourites) but still keeps his unique style.

Well I'm probably quite slow in terms of even getting to know such a person exist as Tom Milsom's obviously been around for quite a while now and I remember seeing it on my iTunes genius (the cover of 'painfully mainstream' doesn't really represent his style although cool that cover suggested he's following Lady GaGa's big shade) so I didn't even bother checking out then. But anyways I'm glad now I have something new to listen to :)

New One

I've actually been bit of regret purchasing this monster, but I did and there's no turning back anyway. It was in a two day sale with $150 off plus free speakers (I will sell the speakers as I've already got way better ones and hopefully get another $100 out of that)

Looking back I do think I did the right thing in terms of the price I got it for. The Studio XPS 435 which is just out is from over $2000 and with worse components, just better expandability and less noisy, with way larger chassis as well.

I've seen that many comment on this one that it's bit noisy, so I expected that and it's true. It is noisy but not that bad that you would throw it away. The expandability of it actually surprised me. The sales from Dell told me in the online chat that there would be only one PCI slot free so I was like 'well, I will not get a PCI WiFi card then, get a USB one instead and leave it for say a better sound card' and I did. But when I opened the chassis when it arrives, It actually come with 3 free PCI-Express x1 slots, well I only need one for a sound card anyway, probably a Creative X-Fi Extreme Music. Lucky I didn't get a PCI WiFi card prior cos that one doesn't actually fit in PCI-Express x1 slots...

There had been some frustration with the software side of this thing. The dardisk wasn't partitioned properly out of the factory, so I obviously have to divide it again and I actually had to hide the recovery partition myself! And after that I had to reinstall Windows, there are problems with the bluetooth thing comes with it, which I can't manage to install a so-called 'bluetooth peripheral', however it does not affect the bluetooth communication among my phone, my desktop and laptop so I just leave that alone. The Windows Vista 64-bit is bit weird, especially when it comes to media playing. I'll have to try to work this out some time. Or I'm actually considering Linux, I was to switch to Linux for my laptop but now I started to consider maybe this one is the thing that I should switch. The only thing worried me was the compatibility of the hardwares and stuff, I won't start until I got them relatively clear.

The power system is another concern of this desktop to me. It is probably more of a living room computer than a workplace one, I can't imagine my computer has lights on when it's not turned on but it has. The light itself is not a big issue, I could just turn the power supply off, but as most of my appliance is on the same surge protector I still want my phone charger on!

Hmm for the customized build part, I basically only chose the basic parts for it, although it's already more than appealing. The core components are Intel Core i7 920, X58+ICH10, 3G DDR3 1066MHz, 500G HDD, ATI Radeon 4850HD 512M. It is obviously not worth it to spend almost $1000 to upgrade to i7 940 as there's nothing much more than a 133MHz higher clock speed which I think I actually could overclock my CPU to if I want it cos the basics such as number of cores and amount of caches are absolutely the same, while the RAM and HDD could be added by myself easily later. It was said that a RAID series would match better with the performance of the system than a single hardisk, I guess so when it becomes the bottle neck of the system, with all those hi-end CPUs and graphic cards. I would actually prefer a graphic card by nVidia but it didn't provide me with a choice...

Well that's about it, my new computer. I've yet to try it on one of those hard core games but I'm definitely eager to get my hands on Diable III whenever it comes out, and I'm ready with this thing hopefully.