Panamatic

Panamatic, mounted on a Manfrotto 709 tabletop tripod

I bought a Panamatic on Saturday at Henry’s. It’s a very simple panorama mount, with a large level, and fixed 30° click stops.

It works extremely well, and is quick to set up. The image below (larger image if you follow the link) was taken with my Cybershot P100, and stitched with hugin:

Kennedy and Eglinton on a Quiet Saturday afternoon

I’ve highlighted the overlap between the images with a bright blue background, and only cropped the image for width. The Panamatic gives very even and level results.

There are a couple of downsides: you can’t correct for lens nodal point location (thus giving woozy effects if you used it for an animated cylindrical panorama), and the click stops are fixed at 30°, so you had better use a near standard lens. Apart from that, it seems pretty well made, and easily worth $40 for hassle-reduction alone.

p100 sensor size

so I don’t forget: the crop factor for the Sony Cybershot DSC-P100 is 4.786. All will become clear soon …

Lego, ergo sum

… he returns to his building blocks in preparation for the exhibition, rummaging through a bag of Lego. “Hear that sound? They feel so great. You know that feeling, when your fingers are chafed because you’ve been sticking so much Lego together? And that sound!”

Coupland continues to move his hand in a rhythmic, circular motion, making the hundreds of Lego bricks rattle up against each other. “I love Lego! I just love it!”
 — from Douglas Coupland has a plan: Let’s live in Legoland, The Globe & Mail, 4 June 02005.

I have always loved Lego. Not in a grown-­man-­builds-­working-­model-­of-­Pickering-­A-­out-­of-­Lego-­Technic kind of way, which would be weird (and would be more than nuclear engineers could do with the real Pickering A). Lego was such an integral part of my childhood that there was seldom a seat cushion that didn’t have a brick or too under them. And by Lego, I mean the real stuff; hundreds of little regular blocks (mostly red), not the modern stuff that you can make a B’Zurqar Battle Cruiser out of just two simple pieces. Things made from Lego were abstract. You had to use as much imagination to believe they represented the object you set out to make, as to make the object itself.

I predate Technic, though I had some of the proto-Technic gears and blocks. I used to make absurdly high ratio gearboxes out of the plastic spur gears and shafts, and crash them with satisfying gronks. We even made it to Legoland (for all of about 25 minutes), as we raced to catch the Esbjerg ferry in 1977.

The article about Coupland set me off on a serious Lego tactile jones yesterday. The Eaton Centre was about to be a site of great disappointment when I saw stacks of Lego buckets by the door of Toys Toys Toys. And not just any Lego; this was a classic 4028 Creator set, with hundreds of simple blocks. And it was reduced to $13!

So, yes, Lego still hurts to make — the sharp corners make a satisfying impression on the fingers. Prying them apart is still hard. And that sound!

Lego Owl

compose yourself!

Just one of the things that I really, really hate about Windows is its lack of a sane way of entering accented characters. People are forced to do is remember arcane character codes, like Alt+0235 to get ë. I’m sorry, but I don’t get why one should need to remember these numbers.

Suns have a Compose key, that works conceptually a little like backspacing on a manual typewriter. To get e-umlaut, you type Compose + (either together, or one after the other) then e. It’s a system thing, and it works in all applications. A table of compose key sequences shows the huge range of special characters you can access in this way. Most Linux machines support this too; I have right Alt bound as the Compose key.

I need the same facility for Windows. An MS tech staff blog entry basically hints that it can’t be done. But it is being done, admittedly half-heartedly, by MS-Word; if you search for accent in the Help, you can find Insert an international character by using a shortcut key. Word has done this for years, so why isn’t it in the OS?

lone go

Again, I was the sole passenger to get on at Kennedy Go station. A few folks got off, which makes a change.

Since it’s bike to work week, I felt very subversive taking my Brompton on board. GO Transit doesn’t like bikes on weekday trains, so basically you’re SOL if you have intermodal commuting needs.

Kennedy Go Station works

The second train ever to pull into Kennedy Go Station

It finally opened, with a big free breakfast bash (which I didn’t know about) and much Transport Minister appearances/festive atmosphere. Amidst all of the party, the GO staff at the station were a bit surprised that a) I wanted to get on the train, and b) that I actually had a valid ticket.

So the train arrived a couple of minutes early, and I got on — the only person to do so. We grumbled off down the line (the Stouffville regulars saying hi, in a friendly way) and got into Union with just enough time for me to pick up a coffee and make the Burlington train. There was actually very little time or money saved, but there’s virtually no hassle.

And just to prove I really did get that train:
yep, that is the ticket

now reading: Jean Shepherd

Jean Shepherd‘s In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. I have rather a failing for the works of midwestern humorists, and Shep reads like a hopped-up Garrison Keillor. You’d like him.

a bit bitey

Did some weeding tonight (with a propane torch, of course). Got bit by my first mosquito of the year, a droning monstrosity resembling nothing less than a single-prop bush plane. Haven’t these mozzies heard that I’m not allowed to give blood because the wussy canadian donation system can’t handle gude scottish blude European blood might have brain-melting cooties?

selling stuff on ebay

stewart_russell is selling:

Voigtländer Super Wide-Heliar lens, Bessa-L body, and Kaidan panoramic tripod mount.

* Voigtländer Super Wide-Heliar 15mm-f/4.5 lens, Leica screw fit, silver. Clean optics, slight rub on lens cap. Complete with cap, finder, manual, and box (but no rear cap). A very rewarding super-wide optic.
* Voigtländer Bessa-L camera body, Leica screw mount. Bought last year, never had a film through it, essentially unused. Complete with manual, strap, body cap and box. A simple, metered manual body for wide-angle lenses.
* Kaidan KiWi VL panoramic tripod mount for Bessa-L. Allows for complete 360° cylindrical panoramas. Used once, as new. Complete with extra click-stop plates for different lenses, manual (on CD) and box.

Westmark Industries Raytex PL39 pinhole lens, Leica screw fit

Westmark Industries Raytex PL39 pinhole lens for Leica screw mount. A well-made, precision machined pinhole lens. As it’s bright aluminium, I’ve blacked out the back to cut down reflections, and an written exposure/f-stop reminder on rear flange. Lightly used. Complete with manual, instruction sheet, and box.
Nippon Camera Bessa World magazine/book (in Japanese)

Published in 2001, Nippon Camera “Bessa World” mook (magazine/book). Produced to support the then newly-released Cosina-Voigtländer Bessa rangefinder cameras. Now out of print, this is quite hard to find. 128 pages, 210×280mm, good condition.

Please note, this publication is written in Japanese. If you don’t read Japanese, it’s still an interesting picture book about the Voigtländer Bessa cameras.

pictures here.

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black smoke

heavy black smoke coming out the chimney stack of the Oakville Humane Society — that can’t be good.

the old laptop / a new kernel / a new laptop!

Upgraded the Thinkpad T21 to kernel 2.6. Fairly painless, and things look like they are moving more quickly.

Major annoyance is the T21’s built-in 3Com mini-PCI ethernet/modem. It seems to hate all the power-management goodies that ACPI gives, and will only work under the older APM. It seems the solution is replacing the 3Com board with the Intel PRO/100 SP mini-PCI board, and all may be well.

canadians++

Mailed off my citizenship application form today, since I’ve now lived here for more than 1095 days.

filesystem error mashup

Occasionally my iRiver’s filesystem will throw a wobbly, inserting a section of weirdness into a familiar tune. Tonight, near the end of Neutral Milk Hotel’s The King of Carrot Flowers Pts Two & Three [which, inexplicably, freedb has tagged as The King of Carrots and Flowers (parts two & three); it used to be correct. So much for the self-correcting nature of volksmetadata …] it inserted eight seconds of The Blind Boys of Alabama’s Look Where You Brought Me From.