FZ200 - The F2.8 bridge camera

Just a quick note, Panasonic Lumix FZ200 is an impressive camera on paper. I wonder how well it will fare in practice.

The f/2.8 lens allow the use of a huge aperture at the end of the telephoto, this is great to blur the background/foreground and to avoid the use of high ISO, thus increasing the delivered quality in the photos.

Usually Lumix cameras are quick in operation, but their sensors could fare somewhat better. FZ150 did an excellent job for what it was.

So, with all this in mind I searched for some samples online, and found a few, sadly most are low resolution or/and pre-production samples, thus making it hard to assert a conclusion over this unique camera.

The best samples I found were in http://www.quesabesde.com/noticias/panasonic-fz200-analisis-fotos-muestras-video,1_8941

They are the best samples simply because they are RAW files, they don't display the performance over the entire ISO range nor zoom range, but they already gave me an idea of what the camera is capable.

The good thing on the camera (aside from the f/2.8 available through the entire zoom range) is that lens sharpness seems to be very good in center, with some variations in the edges and corners. At its worse the sharpness in the corners is tolerable and quite acceptable for such specs. Same thing goes for chromatic aberrations, even though they are a bit on the high side in some situations.

The bad thing is.... Noise and dynamic range, not that much of a surprise, but at ISO 100 it is just plain bad to have that much noise. Dynamic range is bad, but tolerable, shooting in high dynamic range setups would result in blown skies far too easily though.

You can see the converted RAW files here: https://picasaweb.google.com/113342388960491676361/FZ200RAWSamples?authuser=0&feat=directlink

So ... what that leaves me with? A camera that is not that good, but packing some very nice specs. In the end is not the camera that will mark the difference, even though the f/2.8 lens are unique to it. Price will be scary at the release, but will get down to tolerable values in 3~6 months after the release.

Given the compact design of such lens, one can hope that a f/2.8 12x can be made with roughly the same size, while sporting a bigger and better sensor on the back.

And as an end note, LX7 samples that I found were quite impressive (specially when compared with the FZ200 ones)

Oh well, micro four thirds still has a huge distance over the compact realm ... specially with the new G5 and E-M5 cameras... as for me, the old GH1 will fit the bill till it is rotten.

How to pick a camera (or try to)

Many people ask me stuff about gadgets, cameras nowadays are seen as gadgets given their presence in mobile phones and integration with printers and other strange stuff, however the purpose of them has not changed even if it's either a digital or analog medium: To record an image.

So, I receive lots of requests asking me if camera X is better than camera Y, if feature A does any good or if price is good for camera Z.

To pick a camera, you have to define answers for these questions:

• How much are you willing to spend?
• For what are you going to use it?
• What quality is enough for you?

There are obvious answers to the second and third question that mean that your budget is not enough, however you can reach a compromise for most of the time.

And talking about compromises, please note that there is no perfect camera for everything, so don't expect perfection.

To understand the third question I'll expose you to where image quality can be evaluated:

• Sharpness - this depends on several factors:
  • You, if you don't stay steady when taking a shot it will come out blur, this is probably the biggest factor. Also, panning to keep a moving subject steady on the frame is not exactly easy.
  • Lens, if the lens are not good, sharpness, color and contrast can take a hit for the worse
  • Sensor resolution, not as important as it may seem, specially as modern cameras are all above 6MPs
  • In camera noise processing, some cameras over cook the image making it look quite bad, other make a great job!
• Low light noise - When light is missing recording an image might be troublesome, cameras usually 'pump' the ISO and this will mean more noise or heavier image processing by the camera (making it lack sharpness), if the camera has a good flash you might get away with it by using it, or if you can use a tripod and the scene is static you can take night photos quite well.
• Optical defects - From color fringing in high contrast scenes, distortion (barrel or pincushion effect), coma, astigmatism, flare, etc.
• Bokeh - bokeh is the term used to describe the out of focus blur, it is related to the optical proprieties of the lens and can be good or bad, it is often subjective, but most agree that smooth bokeh is better than a 'harsh' one. It is quite useful in macro and portrait photography.

Other useful points in choosing a camera are its speed, both focus and image recording speed, video features, flash, tripod mount, etc. Avoid to pick a camera because it has 34 creative modes, you will most likely not use them. HDR and panorama may seem useful, but if you can control exposure you can stack several exposures on the computer and panoramas can be done, on computer as well, by stitching several photos - most of the time you will have better control over the process if you use the computer to do it.

I solved to divide this guide in camera purpose, and will try to give some suggestions for several price tags.
When I mention "Search for a camera" I meant check for reviews websites with real use samples.

First, read a guide about photography in general, something that explains how a photo is recorded, what aperture, focal length, shutter speed and ISO are.
If you are lazy and don't want to do that I'll make a very resumed explanation here:

• exposure time/shutter speed – time that the sensor is exposed to light, longer mean blurred movement, shorter will freeze action, this also means that longer exposures will make your hand shaking more apparent;
• aperture size/value/number – the size that the lens diaphragm (hole) has, f/2 means more light (bigger/brighter aperture) than f/4, out of focus areas will be blurrier with bigger apertures, most lens limit you to smaller apertures as you use bigger focal lengths;
• sensor/film sensitivity (ISO) – how much light need to be recorded, ISO 100 means twice the light of ISO 200 is needed to record at the same exposure level;
• Focal length – bluntly it defines how much 'zoom' your camera has, it is often compared to 35mm film equivalent, a 50mm means a 'natural' view (what our eyes perceive), 24mm is a very good wide angle, 100mm is a telephoto focal length and bigger than that past 300mm can be considered super telephoto. For identical apertures, the photo taken with bigger focal length will have the out of focus area blurrier.

Exposure – the photo requires the sensor to be exposed to light for a given time time (shutter speed), the correct exposure is a balance between sensor sensitivity, aperture size and exposure time, if you mess with one, you'll have to mess with other.

Record mementos - for small prints, social networks and email share - the lowest budget possible:
If you want a camera to snap some special moments to remember later and share online, a mobile phone camera might suffice, by that I mean that any camera would do, however, if the quality of the photo matters (because you may print or edit the photos taken) something a bit better than a lousy mobile phone camera is probably required.

There are lots of cheap cameras that already offer more than enough quality, I suggest that you seek one that behaves well in low light as most of the time you don't want to/can't use a flash and the light indoors means that your ISO will have to be at a higher value than the ideal. If you know that you will use the flash, check how well the flash illuminates a given scene.
Search for a camera with an acceptable quality at ISO 800 and you should be okay, but bare in mind that when light is non-existent (night shot) you will need to use either flash or a tripod, usually you would only use a flash in this kind of camera. You won't be needing lots of zoom or other gimmicks, but video is always a good thing to have.

For this kind of use, Canon A800 or Canon A1200 are good cameras for their price, with them you can even print fairly large (A4) and get a nice quality, obviously in low light they will start getting a hit, you can check similar cameras as well and use these as a comparison term. Search for cameras with wide angle lens... this is hard to define but 24mm equivalent is a very good wide angle in a compact - this makes group shots easier to take.

Compact and versatile - take it every where, record everything:
If you think in using the camera to explore photography in general, but you are thinking in spare some change on your wallet it may be a bit tricky to select a camera, you will probably want some zoom capability (10x is pretty nice) on some wide angle lens (at least 28mm in film equivalent terms) with good manual modes (check for P,A,S and M modes on the mode dial) and low light capabilities (Check samples online from ISO 400 to ISO 1600). This is very tricky to find at a low price, be prepared to make some compromise.

Often you have lots of features you may or may not want, be aware of that (will you really use slow motion video features? or GPS?).

If you want it to record video as well, you'll be happy to know that most of he modern cameras allow you to record in HD, however not all are worthy of being selected for just that. Some cameras have really bad video quality, so check samples online. Avoid interpolated video recording and while it is up to personal preference, prefer cameras with 24/25 fps video recording instead of 50/60 fps, this will give a better feel to the video, however higher frame rates allow you to do slow motions at ease.

I'll leave some camera suggestions as terms of comparison, Canon SX220 HS (or SX230 HS - it has GPS as an extra, might not worth the extra price though) and Sony HX9V. For something cheaper you have Olympus SZ-10, for something with even more zoom you can either look at the bridge segment or the peculiar Olympus SZ-30MR, but, in either case, be prepared to some serious downgrade in image quality.

You may as well take your time and look at older models, some are quite good, but the new EXMOR Sony sensors and HS Canon system deliver quite a nice deal. Search for samples is always a good idea.


Do-it-All camera:
So, you kinda want a camera that does everything, a compact super-zoom even though it does it already is not enough? Well, you have bridges, older bridges could not do what a modern compact super zoom does, but you want more ... well, be prepared to get less, when an huge amount of zoom is present some sacrifice as to be done, often lens have less aperture, images will not be as sharp and there might be other issues. However, in terms of versatility you will have everything in a single place.

It is somewhat hard to pick one of those camera... Kodak Easyshare Z990 seems to be the cheapest on worth of attention, where the latest Panasonic Lumix FZ150 (or the cheaper and with less features Panasonic Lumix FZ47 / FZ48) and Sony HX100V are considered the best of the best when comes to quality of the photos taken.

Picking the right one, like I said before, is not easy, they usually have many features that make comparison harder, just stick to what you want/need and choose the best priced one.

---

At this point I could enter in the ILS (Interchangeable Lens System) where the lens can be swapped, but most of people who take family/holiday shots won't have the need of such system with the modern travel zoom cameras (like the Canon SX220 HS). There are also some premium compacts that offer greater image quality, but for the same reasons, I won't be entering in that segment discussion.

Bare in mind that the camera suggestions I give are not meant to be the best, however I consider them a good starting point to search for a good camera.

Last, but not the least, make sure the camera size and ergonomics are suitable for you, if possible also check the camera menus and interface (many manufacturers have camera manuals online), you may not like some and it can be a decisive factor in picking  the camera.

So what websites do I suggest to check for reviews? Any that has full size samples from the camera, also please consider that a slight noisy photo of a 16MP camera may have more detail than a perfectly sharp 10MP one, compare images at the same size, if this is hard for you, resize all samples to 10MP (or other well defined resolution) and compare them directly, a sharp 10MP can be used to print in A3 sheet sizes without issues (a 6MP will fulfill most of your needs), so take that in mind.
If you read all this till here, congrats! I'll will spare you to search for review websites and dump a few in here (but feel free to search for more):
http://www.dpreview.com/
http://www.photographyblog.com/
http://www.imaging-resource.com/
http://www.cameralabs.com/
http://www.photoradar.com/

If you are at loss of what cameras are available on the market check the in the manufacturers websites, most of review websites make some sort of comparison with other camera models though.

If that was TL;DR

So is camera X better than camera Y?

Google for the camera X and the camera Y, find review, check image samples, what looks better at different conditions? Are the other features useful?
Bare in mind that not all cameras are better than others in everything.

Does feature A does any good?
What is feature A? Google it!

Is price is good for camera Z?
Check for similarly featured camera, what is the price of those? Are they better or worse?


So ... there you have it ... the only person that can really pick a camera is you. Do your research and don't let anyone else do it for you, you might not get what you are looking for.

Oh... Good luck!

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic - Camera

Because my GH1 solved to commit suicide (I may post the repair process later - once I get it repaired), I solve to check what my 'old' 5800 was capable when it came to photo image quality (if you can call it that).

**WARNING - RANT ABOUT NOKIA AHEAD**
After N95, Nokia did not release any mobile phone worth of it's price. Anne update was a mess, most of the devices expected to have it as an update are still waiting for it, battery drain issues (probably processes running astray), etc. - I talk about this update because it also bring some extras to N8 camera (leaving E7, C7 and C6-01 in the cold - hardware could be the reason, though).

Belle is now arriving to the market, the interface useability looks like a copy of android in many points, but I'm okay with that. But thing is ... Symbian is dead, mostly because it got too bloated and fragmented to be maintained by a single company, the attempt to open the code with S^3 failed and now Nokia tries to make it pretty (Yay for marketing!) so it can sell devices while preparing the WP7 ones.

I wonder how Nokia will survive on the market with 250~300€ devices that are almost identical to 80~100€ android devices (except for the screen, Nokia has the upper-hand on that part - but in RAM is the other way around)
** END OF RANT **

Well, I went ahead and ranted about it, back to the camera stuff, 5800 is plagued with something called JPEG compression... Noise reduction doesn't help obviously, and when it comes to ISO let's say that it's better to stick to 100 even though there is no exact control over it. And that's exactly the point, when a digital camera is bad, you can usually control the variables to make it a bit better, 5800 allows for 3 levels of ISO: low (up to 100), medium (up to 400) and high (up to 800). So far so good, since you can't control lens aperture (f/2.8 by the way), nor focal length (3.7mm or around 40mm in 35mm film terms) the only thing left to control exposure is the time, the exposure time is not tweak-able and that's quite a pain: you can set the camera to night mode and get the shutter to go to up 1/5s, but is not exactly accurate and it could be longer like 1s or so (assuming you could put the phone on a resting surface).

So, what else? Well, some guys noticed the JPEG artifacts and hacked the phone configurations to obtain the 'goodies', that was quite good indeed, but hacking is not for everyone and there is also the risk that you break something up.

I tried to override the camera exposure time by making an app for the phone, sadly Symbian is a nightmare to program, with bloated and confusing APIs, even installing the IDE is a challenge by itself (not to mention that I end up by having it crash all the time). So the only thing that would do was python for Symbian, it's a lot more direct to the stuff, but the APIs are limited, I noticed it has a camera API, so I gave it a try.

Sadly python only allows for the basic access to the camera, using the profiles (night, sports, etc) in camera setup. So ... what else? ... hmmm, did someone though of the same but had experience in programming stuff in low level for Symbian? Apparently yes, it's called CameraPro an application that does what's expected to do.

Here goes a few comparison crops so that you can have an idea, I disabled flash in all modes (click on the photo to see it at full size):

As you can see Auto mode is horrendous, it picks ISO 600 (592 to be exact with 1/17s exposure), giving a desaturated photo, filled with blurriness from the noise reduction acting up. There is also a noticeable green tint, specially on the right edge of the photo, probably some electromagnetic interference in the sensor from the phone internal wiring.

The second column, has a tweak from my side, I pick night mode, and ISO medium setting, It gave me an ISO 300 (ISO296, 1/6s), it's noticeable better, the green tint is lower, the detail is a lot better, but there is still some annoying 'mushiness' on the image.


On the third column, I tweaked it, further limiting the ISO setting to low, surprisingly, while I set night mode the camera gave me ISO97 and 1/17s exposure, since it looked dark with the first attempt (I can only check the EXIF on computer) I set the EV to +2, hoping that it got it right, but no, same result: an underexposed photo, not exactly bad it terms of detail, but shadow noise is noticeable, and if I had post processed it to correct the exposure I would have a noise filled photo.

The last column shows the result of CameraPro with the settings: ISO100, Exposure mode: Very Long, JPEG quality at 100, the resulting photo reports in EXIF: ISO 97, 0.52sec exposure (1/2s). It's not hard to see that quality wise, while not perfect, it's a great result when comparing with the other photos. Video seems to have so extra tweaks on it as well, but I haven't tested it.

Well... this just means that the device hardware manufacturer didn't do a good job with the software, requiring third party software to take the best of the hardware.

This reminds me of Canon cameras and CHDK... thing is ALL digital cameras adquire raw signal in the sensor, some sensor chipsets have the JPEG engine inside (usually tweak-able), but for most it is possible to acquire the RAW data, manufacturers choose to not implement RAW feature on compact cameras, when it would increase the camera value for the enthusiasts... Oh well... Let's wait for camera with 50MP 1/8" sensors and 50x Zoom lens and then complain that my 5800 takes better photos :/ (for the ones that don't get the hint, I'm exaggerating)

Playing with blender (UPDATE v2)

I've always looked at blender as a complex and hard to use tool, at least when compared with Art Of Illusion, however it is a very powerful and complete tool and since my trouble with using it is the lack of experience, I solve to give it a try and create a 3D model of one of my favorite cars, the VW Polo.

After 2 hours fighting with the keyboard shortcuts, cameras and lights, I managed to get a very nice model of the VW Polo overall shape done, I rendered it, and it looked quite nice... The metal of the car body was complete.

I saved and then quit, thinking in continue it later.

A few minutes later I though in render it and show it on the blog, so, I run blender, load recent file "VWPolo.blend", and.... only the first save was kept, so ... only the front of the car!
I tried the recover thing blend has... without success, I searched the entire hardrive for blender files ... nothing... It vanished.

This is what survived ... FML

I obviously give up of doing it on blender... or on anywhere else (this was actually the second attempt of doing the Polo, the first was on AoI... it crashed when I saved)... most likely my luck will strike again and delete it no mater what...

UPDATE:

After struggling into understanding what happened, I found out that after the first save, blender asks for file overwrite when saving... the way it does is by showing a dropdown menu... if you move the mouse out of the dropdown menu it disapears and file is not saved D:

Well, as a bonus I did a low poly version of the 3d model I attempted earlier:

Around 1000 triangles and a 512x512 UV mapped texture

This is my first attempt with textures on blender... pretty easy... but a labyrinth of menus is what it takes to do it.

Texture itself was mostly a side view photo and brushes on GIMP, not exactly the most refined one, but it serves as a nice test.

Perhaps I try M3G export and start doing JSR 184 enabled apps ...

UPDATE 2:

And I did...

Running on emulator

On my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic runs at 14~16 fps (if I run with fullscreen, without J2ME Commands, it will probably be less) .... hmmm ... maybe I should do some little game. Probably I won't...

Line of code of the day #5

Another LOCOTD.... just for me to remember those nice *cough cough* code lines that i come around from time to time.... i'm currently working as a trainee (until February), i'm currently implementing a custom featured content management system (CMS), i'm using php, mySQL, xhtml, css and a bit of JS for some slideshows... but this LOCOTD is about SQL ...
Store Procedures (SPs), as you may not know, are supported by mySQL for quite some time, however not quite perfectly as you might expect.... On SPs, you basically build a wrap box around one or more SQL statements, you can set variables, use the usual SQL stuff.... in my case i was using a SELECT, like i did for the rest of the dozens of SPs i did before, i was implementing a page like feature in the CMS, for that LIMIT clause is god send, but guess what.... in SPs you can't use non-constant integers in LIMIT parameters... yes.... you can use the arguments of the SP anywhere, except on the LIMIT clause...
So ... "How to solve it?" that would be the question... one way would be using a prepared statement, like this:
CREATE PROCEDURE `fooTable`.`sp_fooTableList` ( limit_arg int ) 
BEGIN
SET @sql = concat('SELECT * FROM `fooTable` LIMIT ', limit_arg); 
PREPARE STMT FROM @sql;
EXECUTE stmt; 
END

An obvious problem with this, is that it broken the extra security provided by SPs... but it is a valid workaround.... quite simple as well.... but because this prepared statement kinda defeat the purpose of having a nicely wrapped SQL statement, i found a way of doing it without recurring to it, i say found and not invented, credit goes to Gert Brigsted, it's easy to follow and understand how and why it works: 
CREATE PROCEDURE `fooDB`.`sp_fooTableList` ( limit_start, limit_end )
BEGIN
SET @rownum:=0;
SELECT *
FROM ( 
  SELECT ( @rownum:=@rownum+1) AS Rownumber, `fooTable`.* 
  FROM `fooTable` 
  ORDER BY `fooTable`.`mooCol` DESC
) AS t
WHERE Rownumber > limit_start AND Rownumber <= limit_end;
END

It looks messy, but it works... sure, it has some impact on performance, but that's the price to pay for security... until LIMIT clause accepts variables as parameters.

Perhaps you are thinking, "That surely is, or will be, fixed in current iterations of mySQL" ... you are right it is, in versions 5.5.6 and 6.0.14, it is 'fixed' ... But not all servers allow you to change mySQL version installed... so, I guess you may run into this problem and have to use one of the above workarounds...
As a side note, this was submitted as bug #11918 by 13 July 2005 and 'solved' by 24 September 2010 .... more than 5 years to 'fix' this 'bug' ... i use quotes because wasn't exactly a bug but more like a non-feature...
Hope it helps someone out there bashing at "ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near: s_limit, e_limit;"

Canon Power features...

I don't own a Canon camera... but for the ones that own one and have that feeling that the camera could gain with some extra customizable options in menus, or just want to try advanced photo technics without have to pay a premium price for such features, CHDK might be what you're looking for... http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
Please note that not all cameras are supported by such free 'add-on'... if your camera is on the list .. you're a lucky one... now you have no excuse for don't try HDR exposure bracketing technics, motion detection technics and don't even dare to take over/under exposed photos again (unless playing with exposure technics), multi focus technics and lightning shot tricks are also possible ... this puts canon cameras in quite some weird place... really... now you can even play games on one... or just remote shot via USB... ... but really this kinda makes me buy a Canon camera just for the goodies in firmware... Digic II, III or IV are the possible engines that cameras have... they have a list on that wikia on the link above... have fun!

Stuff..

Hello bloggers... i wonder who still reads my blog... well ... today i'll provide something entertaining ... my junk album on picasa account was updated... feel free to visit it... I also added an Experimental album with something done with 2 photos with different exposures... after contrast blend, noise reduction filter and selective saturation enhancement you can see the final result... i was expecting something quite worse...

That's all ... oh! ... Having trouble with input on J2ME for 5800xm due to lack o numerical keypad? search for Virtual Keyboard S60 0.91 or 0.94 (1.01 is buggy - 0.94 is tricky - 0.91 is beta) it will help on some of your needs ... (i wonder why nokia doesn't have something like that for legacy applications - Adobe PDF Reader non-Touch is free ... but LE edition with touch it isn't... lame...)

On a side note... Galaxy on Fire 2 was released .... you can download it for free (be warned that to play it till the end you'll have to pay for it - nice marketing manouver by Fish Labs - Same goes for one of their car racing games), i've mastered GoF (first version) on my old mobile phone, but never finished it ... with more than 45h of gameplay i hadn't visit all the planets >_> ... GoF 2 is also big... and while playing on the first solar system is free, after that you have to connect to internet to check for activation EVERYTIME ... so .. enjoy that one solar system ... it's free XD ... try to get all the stuff from it... is a nice quest ... Oh... good summer vacations... i won't have them... *goes emo*

Ovi Suite + Nokia Maps 3.0 + Nokia 5800

Hmmm ... i installed Nokia Ovi Suite, that by the looks of it should replace the old Nokia PC Suite, it is still beta, but seems to work well... till i checked for updates there and it told me that i had an update available for my 5800... nokia maps 3.0, i read in engadget that the updated was expected ... so i happilly download it and installed it... to see it completely f*** up my phone ... ... after some bashing i restored my phone hability to ... well... phone... but surprise ... i have a phone with GPS ... without working GPS software, when i try to run nokia maps on phone it tells me that i must update it and requests me to go to nokia maps website and follow instructions... i did ... and ... same thing keeps showing on phone >_>' ... Bad nokia ... bad, really bad... well... i'll bash a little more ... Edit: Deleting most of memory card contents solved the issues ...

Zapp ... noticias!

Bem ... já há muito queixei-me do facto da Zapp possuir um limite invisivel (no plano ilimitado) de 300Mb por dia (mais coisa menos coisa), no qual findado provocava um abrandamento da velocidade oferecida... algo que estava em violação do contracto em 2 pontos diferentes. Ao que parece esse limite desapareceu ou foi aumentado (para cima de 500Mb - foi o maximo que fiz até agora)... posso agora fazer update chatos sem preocupação de ficar com a net 'lenta'... provavelmente algum utilizador menos paciente e mais irritado resolveu 'puxar as orelhas' à Zapp e pelo menos para os utilizadores iniciais o limite desapareceu - existe a possibilidade da Zapp ter acrescentado uma clausula nos novos contractos para permitir o limite sem justa causa. Bem... pelo menos posso ir pro tutubas (que não é p2p - é HTTP - por isso não violo o contrato :p) sem me preocupar muito ... :p Boa proclastinação...

Line of code of the day #4

Weee... another LOCOTD ... (no ... that doesn't mean Crazy Tower Defence) ... today i present here the following line of code: 
solution[i] = solution[j] | (~0)&(1<<z)

The most familiarized with C and pointers will notice that if i is not related in bounds with j value (or vice-versa) something really bad will happen with memory access/write... the lovely usual segmentation fault or worse... the line should have look like this:
solution[j] = solution[j] | (~0)&(1<<z)

Or in a more compact form:
solution[j] |= (~0)&(1<<z)

I lost 3h to find where the error on my code was... you see, when instead of j the i was there I was writing in some area, that area was where a pointer inside a struct was, at first I though the error was in functions that manipulate variables of that struct... when I noticed something very strange when I switch some entries on struct... it looked like something impossible to happen, but after I've done it some stuff worked, so struct control looked fine... only answer would me that I was modifying struct data unknowing it... after a bunch of printf's (like... everywhere) I tracked the error down... cost me a lot of time... and now I 'only' have to finish some algorithmic stuff that is implemented, polish some of the code and optimize some memory accesses...

Well... good coding... i hope you have better luck than me...

Vista + ICS + NSU

So... with N97 and a few other touch devices from nokia a new update is to be expected for 5800xm, i was trying to check for updates when NSU (Nokia Software Updater) refused to work... it said some components were missing... and i was like "???" ... how can they be missing this was working yesterday and i didn't shutdown the PC?... hmm.. what i have done that could possible damage NSU instalation? Well.. i have configured ICS (Internet Connection Sharing - or w/e) on Vista, so i could share my conection via wi-fi to my mobile phone... right... well.. after disable it, the NSU worked like a charm. -.-'' Nokia or Windows issue ... that is surelly bad... I really hope 5800xm gets wrt widgets for standby screen and landscape on it as well... is totally possible... is just a matter of Nokia being smart enough to sell some extra 5800xm... samsung and LG are really putting lots of effort in standby interface... nokia did it on N97 ... so why not enable that on a 5800xm? N97 belongs to a diferent market so it shouldn't be canibalized by 5800... yes... they are touchscreen mobile phones with nHD screens, but N97 has a really powerful CPU, hi build quality and a physical thumb keyboard... on a very similar (in size) package... the price is twice the 5800xm... but you're paying for the extras... i'm very happy with my 5800xm ... but improvements are always welcome... and we (5800xm users) sure deserve it since we were guinea pigs for symbian touch interface... Ah well... till next time... code i must, code i will... bye~

Cleaning fail...

So... today, after have some work done i solve to clean up and desktop since my sister is using it, she cares little over the dust that accumulates on filters... My computer case is very nice, a Thermaltake Tsunami, so i got the moment to clean up the cables as well, a year ago or so, i buyed a lcd panel for temperature monitoring and a card reader, sata plugs and usb extra plugs were freebies (even with the case usb plugs my motherboard still has room for more) by the time i connected everything and just rearrange the cables just enough to allow a good air flow. So today, i rearrange the cables not only for the air flow, but to give it a cleaner look, since the 5,25" panel has around 40 cables that was no easy task, but i'm happy with the result, even the graphic board agrees, since now it won't fire the fan into hi-speed (hi-noise) that easily. So... where is the fail? well... after all the work to clean and correct stuff, i ended up with this: Link (i wonder if this link works properlly) Well, not exacly that one, but you get the idea. A screw from the floppy drive went missing... just to be found right after close the case and connect all cables... oh well... i won't mess with the case any time soon again >_> *resumes work*

Hmm...

Well ... i'm dead tired, have a pile of work above me and it each time i try to reduce the pile, it increases size.... Hmm ... right... i won't sleep till i finnish this piece of code, so ... don't expect for me to be very cooperative into helping in something... In 5 days or so, we shall see if i'm alive after being up and wake working non stop for more that 4 days... not that i never did it before, but by the looks of it i gain a couple of years (or lose, depends on view point) each time i do it... So... 'till then folks *resumes work*

Swine Flu...

So.... first was the avine flu ... well ... now is swine flu... evolution ...

Line of code of the day

Hmmm ... you know... sometimes you create pieces of code that look like crap but do wonderful things and very fast... so i'll paste a line of a VHDL architecture module... now imagine that 90% of the rest of the module is similar... yes... a nightmare to debug... div_buffer <= (NUM_VARS-LOG2_NUM_VARS-1 downto 1 => '0')&((offset-(stack(top)(NUM_VARS+LOG2_NUM_VARS-2 downto NUM_VARS)&'0'))&'0'); But work! I might clean up the code later ... anyway, this calculates a divider for a bit vector calculation ... in software takes around 2*N clock cycles to calculate the bit vector, in hardware takes N*log(N) clock cycles... i would say my implementation is efficient .. XD In other news, my pen tablet and gimp (or should i say GTK+?) are always punching eachother... i found a way of solving the issues ... reboot! ... This only happens in windows Vista... so... yeah ... Vista is not only sluggish, slow and bad... is even worse ... specially since my pen tablet says "Certified for windows Vista" ... go figure!

LCDs...

Hmm... you want to buy a new screen for your computer, or even for your living room, but have no idea of what to choose and how to see if it's really good that cheap one at the store in the next corner? Well, then i have something to you! Was not made by me, but you may want to see if, even if you are already happy with your current screen. LINK You don't need to be an expert to know that my laptop screen does suck, you just need to glance it, but how bad it is? The answer is 1:50 contrast ratio! ... Yes ... i have a freaking laptop with a crappy contrast ratio, sadly, i usually use it to image edition, getting somewhat shabby results because of my pour color choices... go figure! ... Well, i'm happy with my laptop, it's freaking fast beating my desktop in every point, except for the screen... well, at least i can conect it to a proper screen :p EDIT: After a few more tests, i found out i wasn't holding the camera perfectly perpendicular to the screen, since my screen viewing angles are .... bad, i was getting such values, it's not like it's much better, but the after all the testing the results i've obtained were 386:1 contrast ratio and 180cd/m² on maximum luminance... my pda screen has 580:1 and 295cd/m² ... one can easily see the diference just by looking at their image, oh well... Hmmm ... in other news, gimp and my new tablet went in disagreement, since only gimp gives me trouble i would guess that it's gimp's problem, but since it does detect my tablet correctly, but looses track of pressure information channel, i would say that is a less ordinal aproach in drivers implementation with some gimp implementation choices that cause trouble, oh well, at least openCanvas 1.1 beta 72 revision 1, never fails me, but it does lack some features xD. Oh, it works everytime in Adobe applications too, well, my 30days trial over photoshop are over, so i can't exacly see if it works there now... well... stuff done with my pen tablet can be found here, some stuff (like the comic with BOOM letters - lineart came from snafu-comics.com) is not entirelly done by me, but you can have fun watching stuff appear there in a random fashion...

A new pen tablet!

Finnally i got my hands on a new pen tablet, and now a review over it! It costed me 68,99€ so, my last tablet costed 69,99€, first, let's look at the specs and compare them with my old tablet... I had an Wacom Volito2, it was little but precise, i loved it, 2000lpi 512 pressure levels, A6 area... Now i have an Trust (Aiptek hardware in reality) tablet, it's the 7300, has 4000lpi, 1024 pressure levels, A4 area, it's.... huge... Short after buy it, i installed it in a friends laptop, was pretty linear, and after a bit trouble with ink and graphic modes i was ready to go, openCanvas 1.1 beta 72 is the oldest program i have that uses pen pressure, it worked pretty well, then i installed gimp, and after some changes in shortcuts i even had zoom feature in wheel pads to work, pretty awesome. The worst part was when i arrived home and tried to install it on my laptop, wacom drivers were installed, then entered in conflict with the tablet, it was a mess, even after removed wacom drivers it wouldn't install correctly, so i did what i felt to be the best thing to do, uninstalled every pen tablet driver aplication that was installed and removed all the drivers that could mess up, to make it worse, i have 3 point devices, the synaptics touchpad, the G5 logitech mouse, and a generic HID USB mouse, i removed everything except for touchpad. After all cleaned and rebooted, i installed the drivers (not the aiptek ones, i think they work fine, since in all the mess they were installed once and pen was working, but pressure wasn't recognized in gimp) and then plugged the tablet, a success was what i obtained. About the features and performance of this pen tablet. One funny thing i noticed is that you don't want to work on it with your UMTS enabled phone near it, the pointer will shake a bit, while it's not important for general use, it will screw up if you're editing image or something similar... so turn you're phone off, or just give a meter or so of distance. In gimp it behaved very smoothly, i putted settings of drivers to 0 on sensitivity (that is maximum sensitivity) i can say, that a -10 would be nice, since the lighter strokes aren't quite sensed, it requires a bit of pressure to start sensing the strokes, but compared to my old wacom, is almost the same, a bit more smooth maybe. While the wheel pads are two, they behave as one, and are hardware coded into Scroll, Zoom and Volume features, so using them for other purposes might be tricky, the one thing i can say is that Zoom feature throws Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- keystrokes to system, so if your aplication can be customized in shortcut keys, you know what to choose to have them do what you wish. Build quality is similar to my Volito2, actully both pens and tablets look like use the exact same materials, if wasn't for the brand logos i would that they were build by the same company. Given the price of it, i may say i'll never buy another wacom product (unless they get a lot cheaper), sure pen uses an AAA battery, but i have rechargable batteries for everything, and it's a little bit heavier and bigger, but since my hands are a bigger that the average person ones i really don't care (it's not that big the difference in pens). Just one tip, you may want to use Grab and Drag extension for firefox if you have a pen tablet or a tablet pc, it will improve your experience a lot! There are also smaller versions of this pen tablet, my guess is that quality and performance should be very similar. Oh, and in case you're wondering, i usually hate Trust devices, tumbs up for this one!

Questing for a Pen Tablet...

Well... my old (not so old ... but old enough to be dead) Wacom Volito2 is dead... so... i searched for a new pen tablet.... my experience with Volito2 told me that a bigger area than A6 is desirable for the kind of stuff i do.... so an A5 area or an A4 would be better... what choices do i have? After google a bit i come to join this conclusions/facts:

• Wacom pen tablets are .... overpriced... no doubt there...
• Wacom pen tablets are the only ones that use battery-less pens
• Wacom pen tablets replacements/extras are .... well.... overpriced... (as expected)
• European Wacom pen tablets are ... more overpriced than the rest of the world
• Other brands seem to have identical models - Aiptek, Genius, Trust
• New Wacom Intuos4 is very very nice .... and expensive (among the Wacom offer is the less overpriced one)

So... to put things shorter (please note that Intuos4 pens have tilt and rotation sensors):

Genius G-Pen M609	A5	1024 pressure levels	4000lpi	70€
Genius G-Pen M712	A4	1024 pressure levels	4000lpi	90€
Wacom Bamboo One M	A5	512 pressure levels	around 2250lpi	180€
Wacom Intuos4 S	A6	2048 pressure levels	5080lpi	220€
Wacom Intuos4 M	A5	2048 pressure levels	5080lpi	370€

I really liked the Genius A4 area and price.... according to reviews some people complains of pen size and weight... but since my hands are big and i'm used to heavy ink pens (bigger inertia, steadier strokes, my calligraphy is horrible) i'm quite tempted to try it... a Wacom pen with the same area costs almost 5 times more... if that isn't overpriced... i don't know what to call it... also in european countries intuos4 doesn't come with a mouse... while in other countries it has it included (as well as some extra software from adobe, and conversion ratio from dollar to euro is like 1:1 - considering that mouse costs 70€ i would say dollar worths more than euro for the given prices/hardware...).

Well after easter i might buy one Genius pen tablet... If i do so, i'll review it... hoping that someone with the same trouble will save some zeny

EDIT: On a side note... after hacking the drivers of genius, i can confirm that genius tablet is in reality an Aiptek ... i did check the one from Trust (that i'm willing to buy since is the one available in stores around here) and the aiptbl.ini file is a little give away... xD oh.. acording to store that sells Trust one, it is supposed to have 60º tilt sensor! I can't wait to get my hands in one...

EDIT 2: 60º tilt seems to be a fake feature... but in the other hand i found the A4 tablet at 68€!

Blender...

Ah... o blender ... aquele programa de modelação 3d que 'ninguem' consegue usar devido a uma interface intragavel... bem... eu nao o consigo usar mas isso nao evitou que perdesse uma hora a tentar fazer algo ... lol... bem o resultado fica aqui exposto para todos os que quiserem ver... eu puz texturas ... mas nao faço a mais palida ideia de como as renderizar correctamente...

"fear the mad kitty" XD

Wacom tablets...

Hmmm ... tomorrow (25th) wacom will reveal something (my guess would go to intuos4) but i'm not here to rant about it... this actually happen a 'long' time ago...

Wacom tablets are good, yes, very good indeed, i had (well... have) one that stop working for quite some time now...

After my pen tablet (a volito2) stop working i solve to open it up to check if a wire from usb cable was broken or something... what i found left me a bit.... out of mood... i was expecting to find some state-of-art circuit board, what i found was 6 small chips (big enough to be hand soldered) and a some cooper tracks... a simple design... the worst part is that for the looks of it, 70€ isn't exactly a fair price.... at least in my opinion... i didn't open the pen... but ... 70€ is way too much for something of that complexity... Wacom is ripping off customers... but ... there are not much alternatives anyway... at least not with the system that wacom has patented... and that is what i guess customers are paying...

If each pen tablet (at least the low-end ones) costs like 5€ to make (i'm estimating - could be wrong of course) and they want 70€ (the new bamboos cost even more and are worse or the same) they are making rivers of money... *sigh* i serious doubt i will buy a wacom tablet soon, mainly because a 400€-500€ cost 150€ on other brands (i'm talking about a A4 area, 4000dpi, 100rps, 1024 levels of pressure), well, yes they don't have extra pens or such, but wacom extra pens also cost awfully a lot...

In the end it is customers choice, wacom's top quality vs other brand's awesome prices... in low-end i actually think wacom is nice, because of the crappy quality on other brands tablets for that segment... but when the features increase quality differences get reduced, making the choice harder.... oh well... i guess my G5 will have to do the job... (G5 is a logitech mouse - i have the 1st revision one, it's OLD ... but works better than any other mouse, specially for it's age)

Oh well... but this is just me ranting ... yes... i was bored when write this (i corrected some - ugly - algorithms that by some reason continue to work wrong)