Sinterklaas has brought me two presents, a new TV and a new photo camera. This is about the Canon EOS 1000D. More on the LCD tv and the 5.1 home theater set, when I am finished installing all that!

Not that I am dissatisfied with my Canon Powershot A710 IS, not at all. It has proven to be a perfect companion on my travels, delivering good photos. Of course it is a compact camera, with the small size and low weight as advantages, and the disadvantages such as lack of options and noise in low light situations that makes a DSLR more interesting. For taking the standard photos with auofocus, in normal light conditions and reasonable distance, it is a perfect camera. In fact, it is hard to make bad photos with this camera.

My first camera, that served me well, in fact all the older photos on my travel website are made on slides with this camera) was a Practica SLR. Bulky, heavy, three lenses (wide angle, standard, tele), but with all the facilities that make a SLR so much photographics fun.

So I have added a DSLR to my photo equipment, the Canon EOS 100D. Wth the quality I expect from Canon.
A basic setup first, with a 18-55 mm IS lens. Builtin flash, autofocus, Image Stabilization, ISO values usable up to 800, all the manual controls or auto you want. Raw photos, large sensor without noise. It is all there.

The first experiences show me that this is not the userfriendly, point and click, always a good photo, kind of camera like the Powershot. I am totally spoiled by these handy cameras! No, this requires relearning all the trics of a SLR like focussing, zooming, ISO, light, diafragms, with the added DSLR functions like autofocus, basic point and click standard programs and the powerfull ‘creative’ settings.

To my disappointment, the Live View function (showing the picture on the LCD screen like the compact cameras do) is only available with the ‘creative’ programs, not the basic auto settings. This means I have to learn again looking through the camera viewfinder instead of holding the camera at some distance and seeing the picture in preview on the lcd screen. I wear glasses, so I hate to make the glasses dirty by touching with a viewfinder.
Another shock was the noise of the mirror clicking and clacking when taking a picture! This is a SLR!

Technically this is an enormous amount of power. Autofocus is brilliant, with complete control of depth and light. It feels like a real camera, rock steady in your hands, I wish the FS100 video camera was a bit more like this. Much, much to (re)learn.

So what do I take on my next vacation? I am not sure, but the Powershot A710 IS might be a better choice, since it low weight, small, quiet and so easy to handle and with good results. The Canon 1000D will be used for high demanding jobs, like photos of my collection. First photos are on line, on the retro website page on the Cosmicos.

Een zelfbouw radio, dat leverde veel plezier op in mijn jeugd, met de Pionier zonder solderen een radio in elkaar zetten.

Helaas is de Pionier al jaren niet meer leverbaar. Gelukkig zijn er nog steeds mogelijkheden om een zelfbouw radio cadeau te geven aan een beginnende elektronicus.

Model Blauw kristalradio

Via de site kristalradio.nl is een kristalradio voor zelfbouw te verkrijgen die erg lijkt op de Philips Pionier 1. Spoel, germanium diode, oortelefoon de klassieke schakeling voor een kristalradio. Te bouwen zonder solderen. Prijs Euro 4,50 en dat is een koopje.

Conrad Retro radio

Een bouwpakket van Conrad. Wel solderen vereist, en wat geavanceerder dan een kristalradio. Dit ontwerp lijkt het meest op de Philips Pionier 3. De verpakking is de uiteindelijke behuizing, net als bij de Pionier 3. Geen karton, dus een stukje steviger. De techniek is ook een simpele middengolf ontvanger, een ferrietstaaf, een variabele draaicondensator, een middengolf IC TA7642, en een eentransistor eindtrap. Grappig is de paneelmeter, een variant op het afstemoog!

From the Electrolux design room: a design for an USB based toaster.
Now you can have your toast show any picture with this device!

Designer -Sung Bae Chang South Korea

People who don’t have time to wait for bread to toast can take their toaster to work, hook it up to their computer and even print articles and snapshots on it with Scan Toaster.

The appliance is one of nine finalists out of more than 600 entries from 49 countries in the Electrolux Design Lab 2008 competition. This year, the sixth year of the global contest, undergraduate and graduate industrial design students were invited to create appliance concepts for the Internet generation.

I got the idea from looking at my scanner and printer beside my computer, explains Scan Toaste’rs creator, Sung Bae Chang, a design student at Sejong University in South Korea. I was chatting with my friends and suddenly thought, How about scanning to a piece of toasting bread and then started to brainstorm the idea.

So I researched the Internet generation and found that they like new things that are fun and interesting. I feel that my concept fits into that by giving them news articles or snapshots on their toast.

I read this funny line, from an interview with Andrew Tanenbaum.

Q: If Linux’s Tux penguin and MINIX’s raccoon faced off in a fight to the death, who would win?
A: Raccoons are quite aggressive. Penguins are not. There would be chicken for dinner.

The rest of the interview focusses on Minix, a micro-kernel OS.

Q: What made you decide to make MINIX based on a microkernel rather than a monolithic kernel?
A: Good software engineering principles dictate that your programs are modular. You don’t want a bug in one piece to bring down the whole thing if that can be avoided. A microkernel is much better engineered and is more modular and easier to understand. Monolithic kernels are still too big
and unreliable. My metric is the TV set. The system should run for 10 years with a total of zero failures for 99.9% of the users.

This guy knows how to do software engineering. He had a large influence on me when I was a student before 1980 attending his classes. His book on Operating systems contains readable code written in C, an exception as writing readable code is extremely difficult for C programmers.

I love oldfashioned christmas tree decorations. Silver coloured, glass, o so breakable ;). Especially birds with feathers like swans.

Just the day before Christmas day 2007 I acquired a new collection of birds. Here you see some.

See here: http://producten.hema.nl/

It is always hard to find a gift, unique and surprising! On geeks.com I found this, the USB powered greenhouse!

Not that this is of any practical use, who keeps his PC running 24×7 to grow plants? Ah, I hear the dutch think: grow cannabis (for your own personal usage … ) at the office! So ask one for Sinterklaas.

A real geek will of course order a USB powered Plasma ball! So boys, this is what I want for my birthday….

But please, not a USB powered aquarium! Filled with real water and plastic fishes.

Always handy, a pocket torch when it is dark and the power is down. Of course, at that moment the battery of the tortch is always empty.

So I got myself a very old type of device, in a new incarnation: a dyno torch! Just press the handle several time and the two bright white LEDs start to shine. Keep on pushing and the builtin battery is recharged, so light for free and at the right time!

I was quite pleased with the Canon Powershot 420 I took with me to Venezuela. After the first day I switched form the inferior Fuji E500 to this conventient camera and it served me well the rest of the vacation in Venezuela. Since this camera was meant for my friend in Venezuela, I shipped it to Caracas on my last day in Porlamar.

So I was in the market for a new camera. Canon is my choice of manufacturer, though I am still pleased with my Casio QV400.
What I wanted was:

After some research and reading reviews I stumbled upon the recently introduced Canon Powershot A710 IS, a 7 megapixel, 6x zoomlens with a quite large lcd screen. The price is reasonable too (244 euro), it fits my specifications, and it feels easy to handle.

So here it is: my new camera for the next holidays, ready for some tests the next weeks: