The Canon Powershot G10

I've had the camera for a couple of months now, and so far I've been happy with it, given the expectations I had of it from the start. The key to my satisfaction? I knew full well that it could not aspire to be at the level of SLR performance. What I needed was an upgrade of my beloved Canon G2, something compact (that much easier to sneak inside all sorts of venues, heh!), light, and easy to use, yet can produce images at par, if not better than what I've been used to with my G2.

The G10 is a beautiful piece of gadget, retro looking but also sleek. The small size took some getting used to at first, but I got the hang of it. Now I'm very happy with it especially since it's easy to hold while taking videos, say at a concert. Whee! The audio is superb on the videos, too. Check out some samples in this playlist I posted at youtube: Michael Johns at Trinoma (Nov. 18, 2008). Below are some test shots I did. Not too bad, if I dare say so myself:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

For more info on the shots above, check my flickr gallery. (Click on each image to get the info for each shot.)

Itching to get Globe's iPhone 3G? Hold your horses.

Since Globe announced that it would be accepting reservations for the super.fantastic.sleek.new.iPhone.3G! people have been scrambling to their nearest Globe service center to make sure they will have the new phone in their hands by August 22. Just to give you an idea of how ridiculously overpriced the thing is, a prepaid kit costs Php 41,899 for the 8GB model, and Php 48,899 for the 16GB. Well alright, that's the extreme. To see a matrix of Globe's iphone plans, go here.

It's really nice and sleek and sosyal, with a lot of bells and whistles, but do you really need all that? Internet access, iPod, youtube, GPS, tons of applications and I don't know what else. What, is it so crucial to have youtube access in your pocket? The only thing that might tip me over is if one can buy music from iTunes (can somebody please tell me?). And then again, it's easy to talk myself out of it. There are other ways to get iTunes-available music after all (I'm talking about iTunes gift cards, lower your eyebrows). It's a 3G phone, nifty. It will allow you to make video calls. But a lot of other phones have 3G already, minus the hefty price tag. How advanced is 3G technology here in the Philippines anyway? (My K800i is 3G capable but I've never bothered to use it. And poo, turning it on uses up the battery faster.) GPS? Sure is handy, but how practical is it to use in the Philippines? It can't read the MMDA's myriad of u-turns, can it?

If you want to get the iPhone for a lower price you can opt to buy it from *cough* other places, but be aware that you will most probably have to have it unlocked to be able to use it. The software might have been hacked already and you can't use all the other services apart from making calls and texting. And you have to go back to those *cough* other places if you want your firmware upgraded (assuming they can do that), and then be charged with a ridiculous fee for something you should have gotten for free. And oh, for all those hi-tech features, last I heard iPhone doesn't have MMS support. What's worse, you can't even forward or copy-and-paste text messages. You have to get a third-party application (like this or this workaround). Gee, what a cute quirk. (Oh lookee, I found this just now: 10 Things the 3G iPhone is Still Missing.)

If that's not enough to make you think twice, you ought to know that there are alternatives out there that might turn out to be better choices. It always pays to check out the competition - other brands might actually offer more value for money. (For me that's actually my basic assumption: that I can get better for a more reasonable price. In the end I almost always go for the competitor of the perceived leading brand.) You might like to check the Samsung Omnia, for instance. If, after watching a load of Samsung commercials during RPN's Olympics Opening Ceremony you already felt like wanting to buy the Samsung F480, hold on, the Omnia is actually a newer model. (Check out more pics here, and the specs, here.)

I haven't actually studied all the specs or read the reviews to be able to make a comparison and conclude that the Omnia (or something else) is indeed a better choice. I think I'll do that when Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1 comes out. Because heh, check out how sleek it is. Oh dear. (Check out the full specs here.)

It won't be available til late this year, so if you can wait, why don't cha? Me, I don't really need a new phone right now, no. In a couple of years perhaps, when prices are more stable and glitches in the technology have improved. In the meantime I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised if I ride the tricycle and the driver makes a quick stop to take a call on his iphone. Last time that happened it was a Nokia N-series phone. Sheesh.

You have about 2 days left to watch Joss Whedon’s epic. supervillain. musical!

Joss Whedon, geek/writer/director/producer extraordinaire, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Serenity, has unleashed Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a 3-part miniseries available only in the internet until midnight of July 20. Why? You’re asking why? Here, read his Master Plan.

Neil Patrick Harris stars as a mad scientist applying for membership in the Evil League of Evil. In Act I we see him planning his next heist (hello freeze ray!) while mooning over a girl from the laundromat. Naturally, he breaks into song! We also get to see his arch nemesis, the wonderfully self-absorbed Captain Hammer (played by Nathan Fillion). I don’t know what happens in Act II because I haven’t seen it yet. Which is why I have to wrap this up. So. Click on Dr. Horrible below to go to the official website:

I’ll bend the world to my will, and time will stand still… with my freeze ray I will stop the world

Creative comes out with a new one

Check it out, Creative's newest media player:

The Zen X-Fi. Really noice and sleek and spiffy. No, it's not quite like the iPod Touch, but what do I care, I'm not an iPod'er. I don't care about the status symbol, but functionality. Creative gives me more value for my money. And it actually sounds better. A fellow poster at pinoyexchange.com compares Creative players and iPods like so: The former have a warm, clear sound, while the latter have sharp, tinny sound. Warm and clear is exactly how I like my music. And with the X-Fi Crystalizer turned on? It becomes even crisper and richer. Aah heaven! (Don't think for a second that I can actually grasp what an X-Fi Crystalizer is, I'm just taking this reviewer's word.) There are other features that come with this model but they aren't that much of an advancement over the current Zen. The wireless feature actually only means you can access the music in your computer without having to use a cable. Duh, it's not internet-capable.

I don't know why I'm even talking about this though. I just got me a Zen Vision W a month ago. And I had resisted buying it since it came out what, 2 or 3 years ago! Sheesh. I'm enjoying it, check out the large screen:

And whee, with Media Monkey I can even load album art. Sweet!

Plus, I can even load the contents of my compact flash card onto it, very nifty when travelling. And because it's a hard disk drive, I can also load data into it like a portable drive. In any case, they still have to work out some kinks with the X-Fi. In a year or two perhaps, it will be much much better. My other Zen's still working anyhow. *justifies to self*

It's an mp3 player, y'all

Seriously. Bwah!

" The thing has 1GB internal memory, built in speaker and charges through USB. The USB port is very conveniently placed in the dog's butt and the headphone jack is located in the front. It might be worth the $18.67 shipped just as a conversational starter, after all how many times have you seen a table with a plastic dog and a USB plug up it's butt playing "I will survive"? "

From anythingbutipod.com.

Turns out the creature is not a dog, but an alien character from a HongKong movie, CJ7, from the creator of Kungfu Hussle and Shaolin Soccer.

Beowulf: How to take liberties with a classic and not get away with it

I had been looking forward to seeing Beowulf in 3D and finally I did it. So now, 450 pesos later (that’s 300 for the movie ticket and 150 for lunch – let me tell you, don’t attempt to watch a 3D film while eating lunch; I gobbled up my burger and fries 10mins before it started as I didn’t want to get distracted), here’s my verdict.

As usual, I didn’t read any reviews or join any discussions about the movie beforehand, but I did get wind that the story was a bit thin. No kidding, it should have been epic, it’s a classic piece of literature after all, a great hero story. It would have been so easy to make an animated feature of epic proportions, right? Well, apparently not. Don’t get me wrong, it WAS entertaining (I’m no purist) and it WAS a sight to behold (not perfect though), but what about the story?

Beowulf stands proud as one of the best known Old English hero epic poems in history. It’s a classic, and classics are called that because they are great stories. So with a base material like that, how can one go wrong? It is when one takes the risk of changing it. As it turns out, Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman took liberties with the plot, and oh mama, what huge liberties they were! (I am not sure though how much of Gaiman’s contribution was retained; I read that a rewrite was done somewhere along the way.) Now I don’t have a problem with writers making changes in movie adaptations (especially when I’m not intimately familiar with the original source material to begin with *cough*), as it’s always interesting to me to see if it will work or not. For this particular movie, I found that replacing the archetypal hero story – you know, great noble hero fighting many great battles against unimaginably formidable forces of evil and whatnot -- with a 21st century proclivity for anti-hero themes could have been so much more powerful than how it actually turned out. (I happen to be a fan of anti-hero stories.) It had potential which wasn’t quite reached.

If you like your heroes as perfect, infallible, noble warriors then you won’t like Beowulf at all. In the first half of the film, he is portrayed as this boastful, self-centered Calvin Klein-ish metrosexual (I don’t know, did anyone else get that vibe?) with a taste for hyperbole in the retelling of his heroic deeds. (But hey, it must have been a bitch being a hero in those times, being pressured into acting the part of a character you know would later be spun into songs and tales orally handed down from generation to generation for ages. If you were to be in a song or tale, wouldn’t you want to look good? I would have exaggerated too, heh. And on another less relevant note: that Ray Winstone sure sounded good, such great voice and delivery that I forgave him the annoying “I... am Beowuuulf!”) So uh, where was I? ...Ah right, Beowulf as the flawed hero. They could have made so much more of Beowulf’s burden, the king’s shame (both Hrothgar’s and Beowulf’s), the price of their ambition, and the demon (Grendel’s mother). Beyond the semi-naked Lara Croft in demon pigtails (hee hee) and heels (hwaar har), the only demonstration of evil shown was the visitation of her awesome power (which we didn’t even get to see, maybe it will be in the DVD’s deleted scenes? *sarcastic*) on Beowulf’s thanes in Heorot upon Grendel’s death. And uhm, oh yeah, I suppose seducing Beowulf, and more so, Anthony Hopkins, is evil. Seriously though, the notion that the greater demon is greed, pride, and ambition, that in itself could have been played much better. There were moments that could have been epic (e.g. the battle between the demon and Beowulf, Beowulf’s realization of his mistake as Hrothgar practically handed him the kingship, Beowulf’s death) but weren’t. In my opinion, the technology got in the way of telling and experiencing the story. If I hadn’t been so wrapped in the details perhaps I could have taken it more seriously. Instead I was thinking: Hmm, nice stones, very gravelly. Why are their garments so flat, hanging there like they were paper clothes on a 3-dimensional head? Oh look, Unferth has newly rebounded hair. John Malkovich, man, you act so much better in person. Never ever do this again. Ooh Anthony Hopkins, that was him – eww, I don’t want to see him naked thank goodness everything is CGI’ed. Why is Beowulf’s head old and weathered while his body is still Calvin Klein model-ish? Nice detail on Angelina’s face, soft down of tiny hairs. Eh, are my 3D glasses broken? Oh right, it’s a night scene, 3D doesn’t do those well.

I could go on and on here, but the long and short of it is, yeah it’s quite entertaining and engaging. I even turned my head away in reflex when a piece of wood hurtled my way (sitting at eye level is recommended). But don’t watch it for the story. Maybe Neil can do that better in graphic novel form. Also, here’s what I’m wondering: could Peter Jackson and WETA have done it so much better? Ahem.

Is Amazon Kindle™ prompting a trend that will eventually make us set our books on fire?

It's an exciting time in the U.S. right now where book and gadget lovers alike are concerned (drats, when will we have access to this I wonder). Amazon very recently announced a new device that took 3 years in the making: the Amazon Kindle™, a wireless electronic book that has been described as nothing short of revolutionary. It was sold out in 5.5 hours.

I'm normally skeptical of e-books. I don't cherish the thought of reading novels on a computer monitor as I get tremendous eyestrain. And back pain. I'd rather curl up in bed with a book in hand. Don't you just love fondling the paper, smelling in between the pages (for new acquisitions, not old ones eh), tucking the book under your pillow or lining up your books beside you on the bed when it's time to go to sleep?

But after reading through Amazon's Kindle Product Page and watching the videos there, plus checking out some third party reviews, I'm stoked. Good thing we can't get it here because it's $399. Gah. Check out the display. It's called digital paper. And darn does it look crisp, as near an illusion of the printed page as any, dayum. There's no backlighting, ergo it will not cause as much eyestrain as does a computer screen. And judging by the demo video, using the device is highly intuitive. Successful technologies are marked by their capacity to disappear or become invisible. Those devices which you become so accustomed to that you no longer even think of or are conscious of when you handle them ("Oh hey, right, I'm reading a book with an electronic device, I forgot all about that."), those are the ones that have clicked. I think Kindle (admittedly imperfect as it is right now) just might be on the right track to replacing the printed page. ("Horrors!" I heard `ya!)

In any case, let's not let me babble on, best to point out just the crucial points. The best being: portability. You don't have to lug your books around, whether you're going to the coffee shop nearby, your school or office, or on a long vacation or a long road trip. No need to decide before you leave which book you want to have with you - take several! It's also a very attractive selling point for those who have serious storage problems (like moi). Load the Kindle with as many as 200 books at a time. When you're done and have no more space, delete it, and have it stored by Amazon online, ready to be downloaded again (at no cost) when or if you feel like reading it again. You can also use an SD card if you want to have all your books at your fingertips.

Come to think of it, portability and convenience are its two most important selling points. Perhaps I would get one even without the extras. Which are nice to have though, mind you: a built-in dictionary, the ability to bookmark, highlight passages or clip pages, to store personal photos and documents (yo hey, you can load your own novella in-progress if you like reading it to yourself every now and then), access to newspaper subscriptions, blogs, and hah, you can even load mp3s and have background music for your reading! And I almost forgot: with wireless technology (3G technology I gather), buying a book takes less than a minute. You just go to Amazon in your Kindle, choose a book, and ting! presto! you have your new book.

All this sounds fascinating, doesn't it? Don't take my word for it though, check out The New York Times: An E-Book Reader That Just May Catch On. Also Guardian Unlimited: The Kindle Doesn't Light My Fire for a contrary viewpoint, and BoingBoing Gadgets: Amazon Kindle eBook Review which spells out some problems but calls the device "promising". And google for more reviews.

Sudden thought: what about booksignings? Will it eventually become a forgotten tradition? Eh.

Disclaimer: Yeah right, easy for me to give a thumbs up. Because I can't get a Kindle of my own I'm just rambling on without risking any moolah on it. This is just my initial impression. Chalk it all up to excitement for the idea of the thing (I admit I'm quite susceptible to that.) If and when the Kindle catches on, and if it gets to these shores, hopefully with a more realistic pricing structure, maybe I'll get back to this.

Shelfari with me, why don't cha?

I admit I haven't been reading much lately (apart from Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix which I read nightly to put me to sleep), and my eyesight hasn't been getting any better (I haven't been using my eyeglasses). But I will get right down to it. Here's a glimpse of the contents of my Shelfari Reading List of the moment. (Click on the image to see my Shelfari shelf.)

Shelfari is a social networking site of sorts, but it is books that binds people together here. The interface is much like Flickr's (which I love). You can build your shelf, add friends, recommend books for them, browse their shelves, join groups, participate in discussions, and so on. Membership is free. Shelfari got a much coveted partnership with Amazon, which pays them a small amount for books bought at Amazon through a referral made by Shelfari. (Note that you do NOT have to buy to keep your account.) There are still some kinks and bugs they have to fix -- well ok, it's not only "some" kinks if you ask me, but that's only because I complain a lot and want so many things all at once - Flickr has `em, why can't Shelfari too? Like I was supposed to post a widget above, but there's something up and it wouldn't display properly so I just posted an image of the widget. Had it been working you'd have been able to click on each of those books on the shelf and gone to that particular Shelfari book page. Sounds nifty, huh? But alas something got lost in translation. Maybe the javascript, maybe it's blogger, who knows? But they've got a shiny new spanking techie team working on the site right now. That's what they're saying anyhow.

Still and all, I like what I see so far and I'm inviting you to come join me. Go to www.shelfari.com and let's get reading. (Or else I'll keep bugging you with invitation e-mails. Half-kidding. Shelfari got a lot of flak from their first invitation e-mail program because it kept sending itself to all the people in members' address books. But worry not, that has been fixed. As with most things in the world wide web, it's best to be careful: read before you click. That was the primary flaw of the invitation before - it required un-clicking a lot to keep the program from doing the annoying thing, and only one click to get it going.)

Tenacious Player

To test if this thing will work, let's bring in the funny. Hee hee. You have to admit, the guy can sing. I believe Let's Get It On is the song he sang in the John Cusack movie High Fidelity.



Haaah it works! Seems to be loading a tad too slowly though, is it me, my connection, or my file host? Hmm.

Here's to fancy flash players

I've been knocking my head on the wall for the past few nights trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. I've had good advice, a nice space to play around in (that is to say, yaminion webspace thanks to Laclos), and oh, hooray to shareware and open source codes! And of course I couldn't have gotten a complete I'm The Man mp3 without the help of my friend Berg (who did the splicing) and Anj (who provided the missing first few lines) (ey, fellas!). These took quite a few steps - audio extraction (from videos), audio editing, file conversion (with correct sampling rates, the debil!), code writing (more like code lifting, but with good guessing added), and uploading. And nope I'm certainly not a techie, I just went by what little I knew and understood. Everything else I did intuitively. (Until I hit dead ends, that's when I did research and consulted my personal gurus Laclos and Incidior of RoyalMisfits.)

Here's the result of my labors. Well, this is only a picture of the result of my labors, you have to click it to actually get to the flash player and use it. Check it out, it's nifty! ;-) Here's hoping I can post players here directly soon (might take another couple of nights of head banging, heh).

The slideshow below? Really cool.

I mean the slideshow generator itself is cool, not necessarily my slideshow. I discovered just now that if you click on a photograph, it will show you the same captions I have in Flickr. But the pic is cut off to the side - that's my fault. I adjusted the slideshow frame size (original width was 500, I made it 400). Anyhoo, scroll down and check.

ETA. For those who want an even nicer, bigger slideshow, watch it in Flickr. Go to the album, click on "View as a slideshow", and when it begins, click on the "i" to see captions along with the pics.

I love Flickr.

Blogging in un-real time: Why aren't there enough hours in the daytime?

That's rhetorical, of course. Flashback to 2005. It's late fall in California. The setting sun always catches me off guard, even after being here several days already. There just isn't enough time to enjoy the afternoon, to have leisurely walks, take photographs, take one's time to bask in the daylight. The latter half of the day goes like this: We eat lunch, perhaps take a little rest, and then what do you know, the light is fading already.

Cut back to now. I've started to organize my California pics, these are what I have so far. This slideshow - different from the one I used a few entries back, lookee, it's automatic! - was produced with the Flickr Slideshow Generator, wonderful wonderful toy. If you point your cursor at the top of the black box below, you'll find some controls. If you point it at the lower bottom portion, a strip containing the pictures in the set will appear. Detailed captions and anecdotes can be found in my Flickr gallery (go to the California and Yosemite albums; or go to Tags > California).

Embedding a Pictobrowser slideshow

Testing this new gadget I found floating around the web...



Huh. Ok, kinda nice I guess. Changed the background because the original code indicated white, I thought it looked boring here. Eh, it cuts off some of the pics. I suppose that can't be fixed, unless I resize the photos in my Flickr album. Or hmm, maybe it's because I changed the display size.

By the way, you can get your own Pictobrowser slideshow by clicking on "Info" above. You'll be asked to enter your Flickr username and presto, you'll get the code.

Flash poem, anyone?

You know how things turn up when you're not looking for them anymore? Well this file is something I had been trying to find for ages. Finally found it when I cleaned up during the holidays. (Good thing the diskette is still working.) A few years ago I attended a Macromedia Flash workshop. This animated poem was one of my projects. I must say, the poem itself isn't one of my better pieces, but it was rather well-suited for translation into Flash. The thing wouldn't convert into a Quicktime movie for some reason, so I just made it into an animated gif.

(Click on image to view a slightly larger version. Point the cursor on the image; if you see a "+", click again to further enlarge. The poem loops continuously. Just refresh the page if you want to see it from the very start.)

Sizing up the SE K800i

Time to size it up. Do I love the K800i or do I LOVE the K800i? There's the sleek sonavagun right there. Maybe not as attractive as the newer Nokia models (and then again it depends on one's tastes; I do like how it looks), but it sure packs a wallop in terms of features. And must I say it, the Cyber-shot label alone is enough to make me want it (ssh I've secretly desired Cyber-shots time after time). My phone no longer looks like this, though. Just today I chucked out the crystal case in favor of a screenguard and a leather case (a pink one, hee!). See, after a week of use I felt like becoming a potential candidate for tendonitis, the case made the whole thing bulky, I have small hands! Pressing the tinier buttons (like at the top and sides) was a bitch. So what the heck, goodbye crystal case. At least you got photographed.

I should also say though, it's true what CNET says about the joystick and navigation. The joystick, cool as it is, can be a bit sluggish sometimes. Not always. I don't mind it too much. As for the keypads, squished together like that, I can no longer text as fast as I used to. I actually have to pay attention to what my thumb is pressing, how about that? Maybe it'll get better with time. If not, well, maybe I'll send less text messages and looking at the bill every month will become less painful.

One thing I'm enjoying with the K800i is how it allows for so much customization. (Pardon the ingenue, my former phones were all Jurassic compared to this. I was quite content with low-end models until I laid eyes on this one.) The sunflower wallpaper I'm using now (the one in the pic above) is one of mine (not taken with this phone, though). Uploading your own stuff is easy (once you figure it out, that is. The dang software was rather problematic, I have not been able to actually use the programs. So far I've only managed to get the computer to recognize the phone as an external drive, and I do my business through there. I am told that perhaps I have to get updated firmware.) In any case, just having the ability to choose wallpapers, themes, and so on and so forth allows for so many possibilities. I can set up my own shortcuts also, what a delight! I never was good at memorizing shortcuts devised by other people. Heh. And lookee, I can set up the phone to sound an alarm say, at 6am, and at the same time have an image of Aragorn throwing a torch at me and whispering elvish into my ear (or shouting "Fire!" or "Charge!", remember from the Battle at Helm's Deep in Two Towers? Ehrm, sorry for the random geek reference.) I mean, truly, can you see it, the myriad ways we can simultaneously automate and complicate our daily lives, huh?

Plus there are many other stuff I won't get into anymore: the multimedia messaging (I can send mini slide shows! With text and music and recorded audio and so on. Oh fun! Problem is, not all phones can receive the mms the way I set it up.), the internet access, the games, the radio, music player, the organizer, the video call! Ah sweet 3G technology, may I keep away from thee as much as possible, for the pocket's sake. Really, this thing has more bells and whistles than one has time to tinker with.

As for the camera. The slide cover at the back is smartly designed. The position of the shutter button is good, the lcd large and bright enough, and the features? Very nice. First off, 3.2 megapixels baby! Also, there are enough presets, cool shoot modes (Best Pic which allows you to pick the best out of 9 shots made with just one press of the shutter; Panorama with which you can stitch together 3 images; and Frames which can be fun), a macro mode, white balance controls, a timer, effects (e.g. b&w, sepia), etc. There's even exposure compensation, hah! As far as I can tell, the image stabilizer comes on automatically in particular preset modes (for example, Landscape). After taking the picture the PhotoDJ also lets you adjust light balance, brightness and contrast, red-eye, and add effects and text, frames and clip art. You can get very creative with your multimedia messages. The K800i also takes video, but from what I've heard it's not that good compared to Nokia. It's not a problem to me as I'm not an aficionado. Besides, if you want high quality video, use a camcorder.

Sample Picture Parade
[Note: Keep on clicking on the images to see the largest versions.]

Enough blabbering, let's have `em sample piccies. First off, the photo I posted in my last entry came out grainier than I would have liked. I thought then that it was because of the low light level and picture quality setting ("Normal" which is apparently code for "rather crappy edges").

I took another shot, this one with macro on, pic quality set to Fine. My brother said his K750 takes better pictures. So I checked the EXIF data and it turns out that ISO level (equivalent) was at 400. Unfortunately, you can't choose the ISO level yourself, the camera does it for you. Because it was an interior shot, the light level was low. Presto, grainy shot even with flash. I don't think it was camera shake because the fuzzy edges would have been uniform all throughout the pic, and the EXIF tells me shutter speed was 1/250 (0.0040 seconds). It was the same with the wider shot I mentioned above - all conditions were the same or at least comparable except for picture quality.

Another shot under the same conditions (digital zoom at 1.2x), with slightly better results:

I figured that outdoor shots should be much better (if not, sell the thing! Hee.). Here's one, shot in macro mode. Not tack sharp but for macro on a point-and-shoot, it's not that crappy, is it? For a wide shot version (macro mode off), view this.

Digital zoom 1.4x
Shutter speed 1/320
ISO equivalent 80.

Another one:


ISO equivalent 100
Shutter speed 1/2500

Pretty good I think. I mean for a cellphone, huh? (Pardon the boring subject matter, I will try to take prettier ones next time.)

We can all have our own parameters for judging whether the phone we bought is nice. Or great. Or is highway robbery. So let me say it straight. For me, the K800i is a nifty point-and-shoot that doubles as a cell phone. (Yeah, you read that right.) Kewlness. I just love it. I admit it, I've always wanted a Sony Cyber-shot all along. Hah, but only as a back-up camera. (For the serious stuff, make mine Canon!) This I can carry everyday. No more days wishing you had a camera on you.

My Zen's beauty wrap

I recently got my Zen player a beauty wrap from GMask. Lookee, it's purty. *purrs* :

The GMask wrap is not only decorative but protective as well. You can choose from a variety of designs, or if you like, you can make your own. The wrap takes 45 minutes to an hour to do. The attendants are very helpful and accomodating. All sorts of electronic gadgets can be wrapped: cellular phones, personal music players, digital cameras, PDAs, even laptops and notebooks. Learn more about GMask from their website.

(And yeah, I'm a Creative user, not iPod. Creative's mp3 players are much more functional - you have an FM tuner, recorder, and data storage in addition. Plus, with the accompanying software (Creative MediaSource), you can record audio from the web or your computer. And oh, audio quality is excellent.)

* Friendly reminder to fellow PMP users: Listening to your PMPs constantly, for prolonged periods, and at high volumes can make you deaf sooner (like at 40!). Following the 60-60 rule is recommended. Read about it here: How music to the ears is deafening for the MP3 generation.

Random book thoughts

Breathlessly anticipating a pearl of a book. Actually, a book of a Pearl. *smiles* After that most excellent, exhilirating literary fiction, The Dante Club, Random is soon set to release Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow. We don't know much about it yet except what libraryjournal.com tells us:

Trust the author of The Dante Club to turn in another stylish-sounding thriller, this one starring Poe fanatic Quentin Clark. Clark wants the real-life model for C. Auguste Dupin, Poe's fictional master of detection, to look into the author's suspicious death. But then someone else claims to be the actual Dupin. With a 14-city tour.

Ah yes, I have very fond memories of Pearl's debut novel, The Dante Club. How can one forget that graphic, heart-stopping opening chapter? Maybe I have been watching too much CSI, but I swear Gil Grissom and company would have had a field day with that murder scene. Grissom particularly, as the first victim was being gutted alive by maggots -- and if only the setting had not been 1865 Boston. The detectives of the novel are none other than the famed Boston Brahmins: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell. Picture it: a group of well-respected poets, celebrities in their own right in their heyday, running against time to find a serial killer who patterns his murders after the punishments in Dante's Inferno, a curious detail, since they themselves had been working on Longfellow's English translation of Alighieri's epic poem. Pearl ingeniously mixes historical fact with fiction, not only writing beautifully and fluidly, but pacing his story like a jaw-dropping movie. Who could have thought the novel sprang from his graduate thesis? *sigh* I'm so excited I almost feel like reading the book again, if only I hadn't lent it. Yeah, as if I didn't have enough unread books already. And why read that one again, when there's a similarly-styled second book coming soon? The Poe Shadow will be out May 2006.

Book publishing made easy. Speaking of debuts, Kabayang Kyo has come out with his first book, Chroma, produced through that marvel of a site, lulu.com. Bookmaking has never been as accessible as now. With lulu, you can publish and sell your own books for free. What's more, you have full creative control, you retain the rights of your work, and you can set your own royalty fee. Sounds too good to be true? It probably is, so read the terms carefully. (I will write more about this some time, hopefully when I've had some firsthand experience. *wink*)

Chroma is a collection of color photographs taken around the San Francisco Bay Area. Go check it out and take a peek inside the book from here. If you want to see more of Kyo's images, go visit his website.

Beam me up, Willy (eck, doesn't have as nice a ring to it as Scotty does, but you catch my drift, `ya?). And speaking of creativity. My friend Queena Lee-Chua invited me to her Irwin Chair lecture, Venturing into Science: Creative Writing by Non-specialists, on Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 3:00 p.m. at the Social Sciences Conference Rooms 1 & 2 of Ateneo. To be presented during the lecture are the steps taken by her 15 students, all non-science majors, the challenges they faced and the techniques they utilized (drama, analogy, definition, process, character, scene, real-life applications) as they tried their hands at creative science writing this semester under the English Department. Excerpts from their works will be read.

Talking to Queena about this special writing class of hers reminded me of a book I enjoyed a few years ago that goes into a related topic, that is, the impact of emerging technologies on storytelling. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace by Janet H. Murray, takes off from Star Trek: The Next Generation’s notion of a holodeck: a computer’s projection of “elaborate simulations by combining holography with magnetic `force fields’ and energy-to-matter conversions”. With a holodeck, you can program any world you want into the computer, step in, and join in the creation of a story. Take it as a very high-tech virtual world that you can actually experience with all of your senses. (Needless to say, the holodeck is only one among the many reasons why Star Trek: TNG is the best ever sci-fi tv series in my book. *beams* *Oh hey, that's a pun!* *amused*)

In the book, Murray envisions the future Shakespeare as half hacker, half bard. Considering how so many more advancements have been introduced since Murray wrote it in 1997, Hamlet on the Holodeck merely touches the tip of the iceberg with its discussion of hypertext narratives, interactive fiction, electronic games (games as stories or stories as games), and various hypermedia productions. Even so, today the book still remains a compelling and relevant read.

Murray wonders about whether the world is ready for a new narrative format that is delivered in a fully digital environment. Will hypertext fiction, for instance, ever be an accepted art form? I did try a couple of hypertext stories myself, (e.g. Jackson’s The Body), but I must admit that I never got to finish any. I was thinking (at least five years ago when I first tried them), it may be that my brain had not yet evolved to the point where I could efficiently absorb and process the narrative and still appreciate the art form – heck, I couldn’t even get past a third of Danielewski’s House of Leaves, and that was in print, an experimental fiction that relied on a lot of extraneous bits of information scattered in the form of footnotes, images, lists, diary entries and such other scraps thrown into a dictionary-sized tome. It is the scourge of linear thinkers, surely! But I digress. The point is, who knows, perhaps now I’ve been able to adapt to calling up several references at the same time (e.g. opening window after window of not necessarily related webpages), processing data and filing some latent meaning into the brain that I can later appreciate and contemplate?

Taking the subject of hypertext fiction alone, think of the challenges that are posed to the author: how does one create a non-linear story that will still be coherent in the end, no matter how your reader proceeds with it? And how in heck do you still make the end surprising? Or hmm, ok, the concept of an “ending” presupposes a structure like that of the printed word. Let’s just say, how do you construct your story such that your audience will still get a satisfying revelation when they are done? One random thought: the idea of postmodern hypermedia creations is mindblowing. How can one take advantage of the nature of digital environments in creating a narrative that refers to itself? If the computer takes its position as the storyteller, in how many ways can you muck up your audience, eh?

But seriously now, beyond Murray’s discussion of the aesthetic aspect (the chapter on the characteristics of digital media is quite riveting, imo) of the digital narrative are fascinating questions that such a device raises, questions that touch on moral issues even. Since the future of storytelling increases the stakes and makes us participants, each and every format carries with it its own issues. Some questions are old, some are new. (I am now going into forms that Murray did not necessarily refer to since they either did not exist yet or were not prevalent at the time she wrote the book.) One may wonder: Are we in danger of losing our humanity in the virtual world? Does it reduce us it into nothing more than unthinking hedonistic animals? Does electronic gaming promote violence? Is blogging essentially narcissistic? Are cyber-relationships destructive? Is `social' interaction within a virtual environment as valid as human contact? Is a person being unfaithful to a real life partner if he has an online significant other? Are Mary Suisms* in virtual fan fictions potentially pathological (I mean if such existed, I just made this up; but hey, surely we aren’t far off from multi-user virtual fan fiction environments (maybe there already are MUVE** fan fictions, I haven't checked yet)? Think Counterstrike or World of Warcraft or Ragnarok meets Me-as-my-favorite-celebrity’s-lover-in-a-fan-fiction-made-
especially-for-me-cyber-novella. Yiiicks, scare you much?)?

Don’t get me wrong, Murray starts off on an optimistic note, and ends her book still hopeful. And then again, all that scary, negative stuff, it also came with the advent of the printed word hundreds of years ago. Come to think of it, they’re still the same issues, albeit draped in fancy techno-talk. But the difference, imo, is that this time around, there’s much greater risk of losing this thing we call reality.

Hmm. Perhaps that wasn’t particularly uplifting. Let me get back to this later. *sigh*

Notes:

*In fan fiction, a Mary Suism is that propensity to insert a new character into an already established fiction/world that in truth represents the fan fiction writer himself/herself. Thus, for example, a Princess Arianna can write herself into a Lord of the Rings fan fiction say as the tenth member of the fellowship, the elven love interest of Legolas. I kid you not, such things do exist on this earth and can be found in the worldwideweb. If you want to know more, google fan fiction.

**MUVE stands for Multi-user virtual environment, a.ka. MUD or multi-user domains or multi-user dungeons. Check the definition here, and its history here.

And what about the Canon Rebel XT?

Postscript: Some notes on the Canon Rebel XT. For those who have been asking me how I liked the Rebel XT (which my brother lent me during my trip): Very much indeed, I fell in love with it after 10 minutes of usage! Ehehe. Kidding aside, I found it easy to handle, as the contours of the body fit snugly in my hands. Start-up was amazingly fast (my G2 has an abominably slow start-up in comparison) – I could have easily captured any moment as I spotted it, if only my fingers worked as fast as my brain did. Naturally it was a tad heavy, considering how accustomed I have become to carrying a compact *slouch*, but the extra weight is nothing when you consider the added versatility and creative potential. (Except at extremely cold weathers, a coat and layers of clothing, plus a bag, a camera, and a tripod do bring strangulation to mind.) Moreover, the batteries seem to last forever, ah yesssss. *contented sigh* Can't say much for the image stabilizer except that it's nifty, I didn't have much camera shake (duh). Wasn't able to conduct any intelligent tests to check out exactly how useful it was to me. Too bad I didn’t have the camera long enough to test its many other features. *hint maybe? ehehe*

However, there was this slight annoyance: the XT sometimes had a hard time focusing on scenes with harsh lighting, say landscape shots. I have had to switch to manual focusing at such times. Is it the camera body or is it the lens? (You’re not looking at a technically savvy shooter here, see.) Last month Jim told me about a certain Canon 17-85mm IS lens review, the same one I used with the XT (silly me I didn’t even get to test my Vivitar wide angle with it *slaps self for forgetting*). It seems the same flaws reported in the article can be seen in my pictures. *sigh*

First off, there seems to be a slight vignetting in the Caesar’s palace lion pic, most visible at the upper righthand corner. Aperture was f5.6. It is more noticeable at f4 and a focal length of 17mm, as reported in the review and as seen in this Caesar’s Palace pic. I’m not sure whether the distortion in the same pic (check out the line of the roof and the building to the left) is normal given the angle at which I was holding the camera? I also noticed a bit of flaring with some night shots such as in this one.

So (whether I illustrated that correctly or not) it isn't perfect apparently (at least the Rebel XT and 17-85mm IS lens combo), but I'm happy with how fast it focuses under normal lighting, and the noise level which seems acceptable even at higher ISOs, such as in this pic taken at ISO 400. Noise and grain seem passable even at ISO 800 (which doesn't necessarily mean that they are passable to you guys. Maybe I have low standards.). And of course I am tickled pink at being able to go as small as f16, f22.

Not to disparage my beloved G2, though. I am very happy also with its Vegas performance, such as in this and this shot. I only wish the same could be said of its performance in interiors. Yeah yeah right, it's time I got an external flash unit.