ariff sidi's untitled blog

Bye Bye Canon 40D

admin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:37:55 +0000

Well that wasn’t long. The previous post was just raving about how I was the proud owner of a Canon 40D DSLR camera, and now I’m saying bye bye to it?? Well just after my fiancee got it, Canon went ahead and announced the 50D, the successor. Thankfully she got the 40D from Costco which has a pretty good return policy. So now I’m toting around a 50D instead.

The 50D has 15MP vs the 40D’s 10MP, but what I’m more impressed with is the improved speed (the 50D uses a newer Digic processor) and the low-light performance. The 50D can really crank up the ISO as compared to the 40D. While I’m not super interested in max’ing out the ISO setting, what I read from that is that Canon has made improvements in reducing picture noise. From some of my test shots, this certainly seems the case.

The 40D is a fantastic camera (I shot about 600 frames with it on a trip to Croatia), but it made no sense to keep it given the fact we could so easily upgrade to the 50D. Now if I only I had any photographic talent.

Canon 40D

admin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 05:58:28 +0000

I’m the proud owner of a new Canon 40D Digital SLR camera! A wonderful early birthday gift from my fiancee for us to use later this summer on a little european excursion.

Why the 40D? I flip-flopped back and forth between a couple of Nikon and this Canon. I don’t really buy into the Nikon vs. Canon debate as they’re both solid brands. However, I’ve had good luck with Canon in the past and I already know a couple of folks who own this particular camera, which should come in handy as I attempt to learn its various features (and there are A LOT!). I should mention that it as Automatic Exposure Bracketing which should help with my attempts at HDR photography.

I must say, even with the little bit of exposure (no pun intended) I’ve had to it so far, I’m very impressed with both its build quality and its picture quality. As I get more skilled with it, I’ll post some photos and further commentary.

Unfair Advantage?

admin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:36:32 +0000

I’ve been doing, or more accurately, I did, triathlons for a few years up until a couple years ago. During that time, myself and other technology geeks like me would marvel over each others’ aerodynamic, carbon fiber bikes or slicker-than-skin, speed-increasing wetsuits. I suppose I’ll admit to trying to improve my times through purchasing better equipment so I could spend a few more mornings sleeping in instead of training.

During this same time I witnessed hundreds of competitors with one or more prosthetic legs competing in the same races that I was. These racers had really incredible prosthetic attachments shaped like inverted question marks and made of the same materials used on my fancy bike, like titanium and carbon fiber. (I’ve since learned that the Icelandic company Ossur is one of the leading manufacturers of these prosthetics).

Now while I’m of course thankful for the use of both my nature-given legs, being the techie that I am I couldn’t help but wonder when the technology in the prosthetic limbs would outperform nature’s own technology. After all, the pace of technological innovation is broad and all-encompassing. Wasn’t it just a matter of time before snapping on a lightweight and super-strong carbon fiber lower leg provided strength and agility surpassing that of a “traditional” leg? That is, if it didn’t already.

Anyway, the reason I was reminded of all this was because of Oscar Pistorius’ attempt to qualify for the Olympics. Now, he failed to qualify by less than a second, but he also uses two lower-leg prosthetics. An Olympic-level athlete with TWO lower-leg prosthetics - surely a sign of things to come.

Not that I can speak about it first-hand, but it seems there was a time when amputees were either pitied or looked upon as curiousities. Maybe we’re still in that time - I don’t know, I hope not. But I’d be willing to bet you that we’re not too far away from the days when athlete geeks gather ’round and instead of chatting about each others airfoil-shaped bike frames or dimpled, disc race wheels, they’re admiring the latest developments in limb “improvements” and asking who gave them the best price on that optional titanium knee replacement. Human performance? More like human sub-performance.

Good Article on Online TV Advertising

admin — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:47:41 +0000

Albert gave an interview to VideoNuze.com regarding Disney/ABC’s position on broadband video advertising. This is a pretty good article that boils down some key issues to basic terms.

There will certainly be some fascinating new dynamics for advertisers and broadcasters to contend with as a result of the proliferation of online video/TV, and I’ve got some theories as to what those changes will do to the industry, but I think it will take at least a couple years to see what happens.

High Dynamic Range

admin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:32:50 +0000

Thanks JB for turning me onto niche of photo-geekiness called High Dynamic Range. I’m not photography geek, but the amazing results of HDR photography really make me want to give it a shot. Take a look at the picture on the right.

Anyway, it’s essentially taking multiple photos of a single scene at different exposures and combining them into a single image. It effectively increases the amount of color data per pixel and broadens the visual range of the image. Pretty interesting.

ABC.com Wins Webby Awards

admin — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:36:59 +0000

ABC’s online video player won both a Webby and a People’s Voice award for best broadband website!

Webby Awards

Interesting Music Video

admin — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 01:53:39 +0000

I had to delete this post because the video wsn’t embedding properly - causing all sorts of problems every time I updated the blog.

I’m Engaged!

admin — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:24:39 +0000

On December 30, 2007 in Paris, France. Just fantastic!

New Car!

admin — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:11:02 +0000

Okay, well that didn’t take long. As I noodled my house vs. car debate, two things happened. The first was additional news came out saying that the housing market would become even worse in 2008 - which I read as “wait, prices will go down.”. The second was that I stumbled across a mint-condition, low-miles, 1 year-old, 997 Porsche Carrera S Cabriolet. IMO, it’s not worth buying a car like that brand-new when you can find them for low-miles and practically brand-new but after the massive first-year depreciation.

So there it is! I’ll look at houses again next year.

House vs. Car

admin — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:00:41 +0000

Okay, that’s not meant to sound as pretentious as it does, but that’s the dilemma. I’ve been itching to get out of my condo for a while now and get something without shared walls and with a backyard. But the more I look, the more I know what I DON’T want in a house. I’d love something with some sort of interesting, and atypical, architectural or geographic feature. A city light view would be great. However, I’m not having much luck finding the perfect home. Now I could do what Mavro did in Seattle and build my perfect home, but it’s not much easier to find decent land, if not harder, than it is to find a decent home here in LA (at least not in my price range).

On the other hand, I’ve always wanted to have a convertible to drive for a year or two and that itch also hit me pretty hard when Spring rolled around this year. As you can imagine, there’s no problem at all finding a sporting convertible here in Los Angeles.

Hence the dilemma. Hold out (i.e. be smart and fiscally responsible) for the right house or splurge a little (you only live once!) and go pick up a decent convertible for a couple years? At this rate, it’ll be Winter soon and it won’t matter anyway - I’ll just have to worry about if I should attempt to break my arm snowboarding again.