Fourth Test Post

04:31 Thursday, 17 October 2013
Words: 4

Some text goes here.

Little Camera

00:29 Friday, 17 October 2014
Words: 468

(Click for larger version at SmugMug.) Shot this with my little Olympus XZ-10 compact digital. (You can make out the silhouette of an Osprey in the tree on the right.) Olympus, like most camera companies, was taking a beating from smart phones with cameras. Simple compact digital cameras were just being buried by phones. One of the ways camera manufacturers tried to compete was in making more sophisticated compact cameras. The XZ-1, its successor the XZ-2 and the XZ-10 were three examples by Olympus. I own both the XZ-1 and the XZ-10. They're compact cameras with relatively small sensors, the XZ-10 uses a 1/2.3" sensor (6.17mm x 4.55mm), which is still larger than the iPhone 5s sensor, which is 1/3.0" (4.8mm x 3.6mm); but they have very high quality lenses attached to them. The iPhone has a wonderful little camera, but there are some things it's just not terribly well suited for, and this type of long exposure is one of them. First, you'd need a tripod for the iPhone; the XZ-10 has a thicker body that can sit upright on a stable surface, in this case a fence rail. Second, the ZX-10 image processing engine will perform a little trick for long exposures. After you expose the shot, the camera closes the shutter and takes another exposure of the same duration with no light hitting the sensor. The resulting image is merely the electronic "noise" of the sensor. The image processor then subtracts that image data from the first image to remove much of the noise in the image. I believe someone could write an app like that for the iPhone, but, to my knowledge, it hasn't happened yet. There are some other significant advantages, a real zoom lens being one of them. The XZ-10 can shoot much wider than the 5s, and it can optically zoom from 26mm (35mm effective focal length) to 130mm efl. You can also vary the aperture from f1.8(wide)/2.7(tele) to f8. This can give you some additional depth of field control, although not a great deal. The iPhone's camera is a fixed aperture and fixed focal length. The XZ-series cameras have all been discontinued. You can find them for sale from time to time, sometimes at a great discount. Olympus seems to be focusing more on super-zooms and rugged compacts now, which is kind of a shame as these were some very sweet little cameras.

What a BlogLink Post Looks Like (Maybe)

00:03 Monday, 17 October 2022
Current Wx: Temp: 80.55°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 62% Wind: 1.99mph
Words: 35

And this is what that might look like in the Tinderbox file that is the marmot.

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Super Moon

05:40 Thursday, 17 October 2024

Current Wx: Temp: 54.07°F Pressure: 1021hPa Humidity: 73% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 54

Technically, it's a couple of hours from being officially "super," but close enough.

Photographically, the full moon (100% illuminated) is less interesting. No shadows to generate relief. This is contrast enhanced, but little detail.

Sure was bright up there though.

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Just a Walk On a Fall Day

09:43 Friday, 17 October 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 44.4°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 79% Wind: 4.21mph
Words: 520

Took a walk with Mitzi yesterday morning. Beautiful day, but kind of chilly. Temps in the 40s.

One of our neighbors was out loading his truck. I'd met him before, but he hadn't met Mitzi yet, so we stopped by to say hi. Nice guy, in his 70s. He's an electrician and actually wired the house we live in. We talked to him about getting a generator connection.

The EcoFlow 3 Pro battery/inverter power station and spare battery arrived. Very heavy. Charged them both to 85% since they're mostly going to sit idle unless they're needed. I need to put a load on it to make sure the inverter works, but haven't done that yet.

The news has me kind of in a funk. Spent some time yesterday playing around with Virtual ][, figuring out how to get Beagle Compiler working. I use a disk image that I can transfer to a micro-SD card and use in the Floppy Emu with the //c (or the //e when I get one up here). I want to get the programs configured so I can switch efficiently between Program Writer, an Applesoft BASIC editor, and the compiler.

Everything works if I boot from a 5.25" disk image of Beagle Compiler, but I'd like to be able to run it from a 32mb virtual HD image. When I try that, it fails for some reason. Research continues.

Kottke linked to a Kickstarter effort for a book about the Sphere personal computer. I'd corresponded with Ben Zotto a couple of years ago when I encountered his web site about the Sphere. I backed the project because it's a pretty remarkable story that I think deserves a book, not just a web site.

Caitie is in NYC as of this morning, visiting a friend. On Monday she'll take a train up to Albany and I'll meet her at my Mom's where we'll visit and spend the night. Then we'll head out here to Winterfell for a couple of days. I'm hopeful that the weather cooperates, but you never know.

It turns out that the house the OM-3 grip was delivered to is next door to the house with the Trump sign. I drove up there a couple of days ago, but no one was home. Tried again yesterday, but brought a note to leave in case no one was home. This time there was someone home. Tillie (Tilly?), a charming woman and her dog Obie (golden-doodle). She said she did get the package, didn't make the connection with our place down the road and stuck it back in the mailbox.

I enjoyed meeting Tilly and invited her to drop by anytime.

So I checked with the Post Office, and they recalled the package and thought I'd refused delivery, so they returned it! So now I need to reach out to SmallRig and see if I can get it shipped back to the proper address.

I'll be down in Watkins Glen tomorrow for the No Kings protest. I love America and I hate what Trump is doing to it.

And the beat goes on...

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