Gizmodo isasking you to Boycott the RIAA for the whole of March. That means no buying music (CDs, or DRM’ed content I assume) from the major labels: Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal, and Sony BMG.

I’d like to extend that internationally to the RIAA’s equivilents in other countries. For example, ARIA in Australia.

Instead, support labels like Intertia-Music who sell high quality non-DRMed music on a competitive (read: identical or cheaper) price-scale to CDs.
As for price - they’re identical to the iTunes Australia store - AUD$1.69 per track, and whole albums for less usually.

The Microsoft Photography Blog talks about an issue with the way Vista handles RAW files created by the Canon EOS 1D and 1Ds models.  (Though, why Canon chose “TIF” for a Raw File extension, I’ll never know - CRW and CR2 should suffice, surely)

The good news from it is that there is confirmation that Canon will be releasing a RAW codec for Windows Vista.    I just wish they’d hurry up and join Nikon and others that already have that support ‘out-of-the-box’.

I shoot almost exclusively in RAW now - So I usually need to install some bits of software to actually get at my photos (even for just a basic preview).

Canon have released the specs of their new Canon EOS 1D Camera, and it looks particularly nice:

• APS-H Size Sensor (NB: NOT Full-Frame, see below “1D vs 1Ds”)
• 10.1 Megapixels
• 10 Shots/sec, for about 110 JPEG Photos
  (Note: They tested on a 1GB CF Card, I assume that with a faster and larger card, you might get more)
• Weather sealing (as per all 1D and 1Ds)
• ISO 100 to 3200 (plus expansions to ISO 50 and ISO 6400)

The significant improvment in shots-per-second (10 shots per second, Up from 8.5 on the 1D Mark II), even with larger file sizes (10.1Mpx, up from 8.2Mpx on the 1D Mark II) is due to having two “DIG!C III” image processing chips running in parallel.

The sensor is also very very low noise - even at ISO 3200, the image appears to be almost as good as that from my 20D on any setting. So, when Canon say that the ISO 6400 setting is “highly usable”, they’re not bluffing.

They have added some other features - like a “Live Preview” - i.e what you get on a Point-and-shoot camera by default. It’s not something I’ve been particularly hanging out for on a DSLR - at least, not since I got used to using an SLR anyway.   The larger preview screen, however is probably more useful. Even if the pro’s do call it “chimping“.

 Lets just hope that Canon finally included the current ISO setting in the TTL preview, something several others have complained about before.

Oh - and go gawk at the sample images.  Oh, and all (bar one) of the samples were taken with L-series lenses - some of them worth over AUD$11,000.

EOS 1D vs EOS 1Ds

A lot of people get confused when talking about the Canon EOS 1D and Canon EOS 1Ds.  Here’s the differences:

There are, of course - other differences - but these are the major ones. Both models have weather sealing too.

Basicly, the 1D has always been aimed more at the sports and wildlife photographer or papparazzi type - those that have little time to get the right shot, and no possibility of a second chance.  i.e the ultimate in “spray and pray” photography.  

The 1Ds has been aimed more at fashion and others that need very large exposures, but don’t want to, or can’t use a digital medium-format camera. Plus, if you have a significant investment in EOS lenses, you don’t want to go re-purchasing them all again for a medium-format.

Engadget is a great site - really, they’ve got a constant stream of interesting stuff. However, they’ve got this annoying habit.  It’s called self-linkification.

This irritating habit shows up far too often.  Here’s an annotated screenshot from a recent Engadget post about the Optumus 103 Keyboard.

Excuse the cruddy screenshot - my MS Paint skills leave something to be desired. Like, say, a decent photo editing app.  Despite the quality of the screenshot, I think the annotations show what I’m talking about pretty well.

The two links in this Engadget post, point back to Engadget. Not that this is necessarily wrong, but when they don’t point to an actual article, but instead are (basically) “Related Stories” links, it gets f’ing annoying.  The actual story behind the post, is hidden, right down at the bottom of the page.

If you’re going to have a “Related Links” option, put it at the bottom. If you simply want to provide tagging, then just add tags. Heck, they’ve got them up the top as “Filed Under”.

I had seen some video clips by “Midnight Juggernauts” on Rage and JTV fairly regularly, and decided to grab their album.

Well, turns out they don’t have a full album yet - just a 6 track EP. One major chain were charging $14.95 for it. A little bit of searching later, and I found that the label they’re signed to - Intertia - have some smart people working for them.

Not only are Inertia selling the EP cheaper ($11.95), but you can buy individual mp3s (encoded at 320Kbps, no less) for $1.69 each. No DRM restrictions, just regular MP3s, at a high quality. 

It works out (slightly) cheaper for me - plus, I can get the music now. Very very nice setup, folks.

PS: Create a (free) account before March 31st and get one free download.

I’m making an effort to not be so cranky. Yesterday I had a follow-up meeting with the same outsourcing/vendor folks from before. It went rather well, they had more of an idea what they were after, and I could offer a bunch of alternatives/suggestions that would make things easier for all of us.  All up, a rather productive meeting.

I thought I was doing fairly well, until I got this call from some random person in one of our IT Areas:

Random: “I’m just calling to ask a few questions about [Application], are you able to spare a few minutes?”
Me: “Yeah, sure - what did you need to know?”
Random: “What are the operational hours for [Application]?”
Me: “…I don’t understand the question? It’s a web application.”
Random: “What times can people use it?”
Me: “It’ll work whenever people access it, aside from weekly maintenance periods.”
Random: “Right… okay,”

[snipped stuff about support contracts]

Random: “So, you’re the person to contact for all support issues?”
Me: “Yep, during business hours.”
Random: “Okay, so can I just get your details? You’re located in…?”
Me: “Uhh.. Newcastle”
Random: “Right, but what address?”
Me: (confused why he didn’t look it up in Outlook’s Employee Address Book) “The same one in Outlook. [...address...]”
Random: “And your phone number?”
Me: (Thinking “wtf?”): “The same one you just called me on.”
Random: (sounds of flicking pages) “Right… uhm…. What area code was that?”
Me: *sigh* “02 [....my number...]”

Grrr..

…I just had a realisation. I’m becoming that cranky/cantankerous geek that growls at people.

Just now, I was on a meeting with someone from work, and a few outsourced/vendor folks who are building an application for another area at work.
They wanted to find out if I could modify one of the applications I own, and we were throwing around technical ideas, there were several different approaches discussed, ranging from fairly simple, to rather complex.

Vendor: “So, can you do these modifications?” (not having picked any specific alternative)
Me: “Yeah, sure - I’ve got plenty of experience with [all these technologies]”
Vendor: “So, will this be able to be done by [our timeframe]?”
Me: “I can’t answer that, it’ll depend on a number of factors, and whether I’m assigned to do the work.”
Vendor: “So…. How long will these changes take?”
Me: “I can’t answer that until the decisions have been made as to the final requirements.”
Vendor: [rephrases previous questions]
Me: “That’s not up to me, [our rep], would need to go through the process to get me assigned. My Manager(s) assign me work, and that’s what I work on.”

Steve Clayton “Geek In Disguise” has a post up about something very cool.

Well, I’ve got no idea what it is - there’s an embedded video of some sort from (I believe) Brightcove - but it has… “issues”. 

The first issue I encountered was that it complained about the connection speed.
Work’s connection isn’t that bad, depending on the site I can pull down 50-100K/sec from most well-connected US Sites. 900K/sec+ from Australian sites isn’t unheard of either.  (Using a Speed-Test site I get between 4Mbit and 6Mbit down - which isn’t bad.)

The the other major issue is that it crashes Firefox (latest release) randomly. Loading it up in Internet Explorer 7 I just get a spinning “Loading Video” icon for something over 5 minutes (I wasn’t prepared to wait longer).

It’s also difficult to find out what Steve is referring to - since he just links to the RSS feed for the Business Two Zero blog - no descriptive text, nada. Perhaps Steve is referring to the Multi-touch screen?

These issues aren’t Steve’s fault - but by not providing any helping text, made it inaccessible to someone who can’t see/use the video.

Aside from that - Steve’s blog is generally pretty cool… just, this once thing annoyed me I’ve had a few of these Brightcove embedded videos show up in my Google Reader recently, both times resulting in a lockup and crash.

Today’s comic from XKCD explains why the world is f’ed up and the only people who know how to fix it are being ignored. (They’re the somewhat weird guys shouting about some random gibberish).

Just checking my email now and I see I got an invite to the LOTRO Beta.

(Looks like Paul did too… )