If you didn’t know that Sean and myself have been on the air for the past semester, shame on you! It’s OK though as I’m sure you’ll make it up by listening to our final two shows for the semester (see the sidebar for more details)… Anyway, I realized yesterday that I’ve been talking a lot lately about our radio show, The On-Air Stylings of the Fickle Finn and Sonic Smee, and figured that I’d take my camera along to today’s show and give those not attending Hamilton a glimpse into the world of WHCL 88.7.
Queuing the Next Track
WHCL is a not-for-profit college radio station, broadcasting throughout the academic year. We’re off during breaks and usually during the beginning of the semester when scheduling begins. Being a college station, we play mainly alternative, indie, and rock music but every DJ is allowed to play whatever they’d like on their show, as long as they follow FCC guidelines such as no swearing in songs until after 10pm.
›› Adobe Buys Macromedia for $3.4 billion :: Does this mean Dreamweaver will be replaced by GoLive or the other way around? I can remember the time when GoLive was owned by CyberStudio I believe…
›› Make FireFox Look Like Safari :: Instructions to turn your FireFox installation into a more Safari-looking browser. Now, if only there were a way to add spell checking to form elements…
›› We’re Rich, You’re Not. End of Story. :: An interesting, although in my opinion, flawed analysis of quality of life in Norway (and generally, Scandinavia) versus America. A few things not mentioned or breezed over include overall quality of life including differences in vacation time, cultural tendencies such as the tradition of eating out, and universal access to health care and education. However, still a good read.
›› Armstrong to bow out after Tour :: Lance Armstrong is calling it quits after this year’s Tour de France. Ever since I was small, he has been one of the few athletes that I could call a role model and I wish him all the best of luck in this year’s race.
›› DC Resource Review’s the Canon Digital Rebel XT :: Yes, I know that I already own the camera but I figure this link might be helpful in those deciding whether or not they’d like to step up to a digital SLR. Besides, I can already boast of having “converted” one person already…
›› On-Air Stylings of the Fickle Finn and Sonic Smee (Shoutcast) :: Listen live today from 10:30 am to noon on WHCL 88.7 FM to my radio show with Sean. There’s only three show’s left in the semester and we promise it will be good! Playlist available (after the show) here.
This weekend’s been a busy one, yet for the most part, enjoyable. The sun has been shining for some two weeks now (knock-on-wood) and over the past three days, the temperature has climbed up from the mid 50s to the high 60s (for those of you living in Europe, thats around 13C to 20C). Although I had to budget quite a bit of time to write a paper on Crime and Punishment for a writing conference today, I was able to spend a large proportion of the time out in the sun! One of the best things about living on the first floor of the suites, facing minor field, is that you can simply open your window wide open, place a chair outside the window, and just enjoy the sun while listening to your music. Add in wifi and you’re all set.
Spring is almost Here
Of course, being that I just got my new digital SLR, what would this post be without a couple of photos. This afternoon I headed for an hour-and-a-half walk in the glen, following various off-the-beaten-path trails and took a couple of shots. Given that spring is just starting, there weren’t too many flowers blooming but I was able to take a couple of relatively good shots (for a novice). Interestingly, the shot of the bee on top of the flower was completely by chance; as I was finishing photographing the flower, a bee landed right on top of it and stood steady long enough for me to capture it. Continue reading to see a couple more shots…
Two weeks ago, I picked up a SanDisk ImageMate 12-in-1 Reader/Writer from BestBuy, pretty much as an impulse buy. It’s function is both straightforward and fairly obvious; it reads and writes to different memory cards. Apart from no longer having to dig up the sometimes proprietary USB cable shipped with digital camers, what could this device be useful for?
SanDisk ImageMate 12-in-1
First of all, it will speed up the transfer of images from your memory card to your computer. Many digital cameras, including the Canon PowerShot S60 that I have, only use USB 1.1 as their connector to the computer. The SanDisk ImageMate, as well as most other readers on the market, uses USB 2.0 that is theoretically 40x faster. A second reason is to save battery life. One of the most power consuming tasks for a digital camera is reading and writing to the memory card. By physically transferring the card from the camera to an always plugged in, self-powered reader, you can save the power in your camera’s batteries. Finally, it’s also a useful tool if you plan on working with photos in general as no matter what format card is given to you, you can get the photos off of it (as long as the reader understand it).
I’ve now had the Canon Digital Rebel XT for three days and have taken many random photos to learn the controls and functionalities of the camera. In the past three days, I’ve finally begun to understand the intricacies of ISO levels, setting the correct F Stop, and so forth. Of course, there’s many, many more days of testing needed before I’ll even grasp a small percentage of the knowledge needed to take quality photographs!
Digital Rebel XT Sample Shot
Here’s a photo that I took a few moments ago with the camera set to the ‘P’ mode, allowing for control of depth of field, exposure controls, ISO, and focusing. One thing that I found extraordinary is the amount of detail the CMOS sensor captures - it is 8 megapixels after all. I was unable to see when shooting with my own eyes a spider’s thread but upon magnification of the image taken, I was able to clearly see it in the picture (it took me a few minutes to determine that it wasn’t an artifact or scratch)!
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