A Few Thoughts for Siracusa

22:40 Friday, 5 August 2016
Words: 1108

I'm a fan of Accidental Tech Podcast. I don't listen to every show, but it's probably the one podcast I listen to the most often. I like all the guys, but John Siracusa is my favorite. I've even bought two ATP t-shirts, last year's and this year's.

This week's show started out with a large segment on John's vacation and the camera and lenses he rented to record it, because his wife didn't feel his Panasonic super-zoom was up to the task of taking "good" pictures.

Marco Arment, another member of the podcast, is a smart, opinionated guy. Sometimes his opinions are a little hard to take. They're not often technically wrong, it's just that they sometimes seem to miss the point. He's a gear head, and so was I for many years, have to have the best of whatever it is you want to have, within your budget of course, and sometimes even outside it.

I believe Marco's wife is a photographer, and Marco's been into cameras for some time now. So, he knows quite a bit about cameras.

Notice, I didn't say "photography." He's into cameras. The gear. The sensor, the lenses, the number of megapixels, the lines of resolution, the signal to noise ratio, all that stuff. Because, as gear-heads, that's what's important. That's what makes one camera "better" than another. And, of course, we all want the "best" camera.

John is a guy who has some strong opinions as well, but, in my opinion, his are often on point. Which is why I like to listen to his opinions.

Casey Liss is another member of the show, and he's entertaining, kind of the comic relief. He also had, at one point, an Oly E-M10, which is a very good camera. He's a bit of a gear-head, but not as much as Marco I think.

Anyway, I'm listening to this show, and Marco is spouting off all of his technically "correct" opinions about the relative merits of sensor size and lens design, but, as usual, he's missing the point.

So, John, if you're reading, this is just kind of a corrective to Marco's correct, but misleading, recommendations.

First, and this is something of a repetition of some posts I've made recently, megapixels don't really matter. Where they matter the most, is in the matter of cropping an image, which may be important to you.

You're concerned about the reach of the affordable zooms for interchangeable lens cameras, that they don't match the reach of your super-zoom compact Panasonic. Well, if you have a 20MP sensor, and a 300mm effective focal length lens (35mm equivalent), you can crop that 20MP image to 5MP and the resulting image is effectively a 600mm 5MP image. So, having the ability to crop a high mega-pixel image effectively extends the reach of your more modest zoom lens.

But is 5MP enough for a "good" photograph?

Yes, it is. Unless you print images larger than 11"x14", 5MP is plenty. Here's a chart at B&H Photo, that some may disagree with, I'm sure Marco will, but I think it's a pretty fair assessment of print quality versus megapixels.

Regarding the quality of "kit" lenses. Marco is talking about something all gear-heads like to do, and that's "pixel-peep." They display the image at 1:1 resolution on their monitors and look for sharpness, acuteness, micro-contrast, etc. Perfectly valid thing to do, but utterly irrelevant for assessing whether or not something is a good photograph.

Any kit lens shipping with any camera today, barring some defect off the assembly line, is going to be "adequately sharp." That is to say, at normal viewing sizes on your monitor or at reasonable print sizes, say up to 11x14, any properly focused image is going to appear sharp, which is to say, not soft.

Long zooms can be a bit softer, but they're also usually adequately sharp. The biggest challenge with long zooms is motion blur from holding the camera. That's where image stabilization helps out. The affordable ones also tend to be somewhat "slow," inasmuch as they don't offer very large apertures, and the sweet spot for sharpness tends to be one or two stops up from wide open. So the ability to hold the camera still is important.

Where inexpensive zooms fall down because of slow apertures is in capturing action, the high shutter speeds required to freeze a bird in flight, or an athlete in motion; and speed of focus. The higher-end zooms are often brighter, which aids focusing, and have better focusing motors and achieve focus faster. So if you're interested in shooting action shots, there's some value in higher-end glass. That's not to say "kit" quality glass can't capture action. These images were shot with an Olympus mZuiko 14-150 (28-300 efl) consumer-grade super-zoom mounted on my E-M1. That's about a $500.00 lens. It's my most used lens.

Regarding jpeg versus RAW. RAW is costly. It costs in storage and time. Nearly all camera manufacturers' jpeg engines are excellent. Unless you're in an extremely demanding, high-contrast environment, or a very important event where you wish to ensure you preserve all your options for obtaining the technically "best" image, just shoot jpeg. If you like to shoot sequential shots, jpegs won't fill the camera's buffer as fast, and clear the buffer faster than RAW images. Furthermore, if you don't think you're going to need to effectively double your focal length, set your camera to shoot at reduced resolution, 5MP or 8MP. If you're just printing 4x6, 5x7 or 8.5x11, you don't need any more. If you're sharing on Facebook or Flickr, 3MP is plenty. If your friends want to pixel-peep to assess your gear, they'll be disappointed; but is that why you're taking pictures?

You don't have to invest a lot of money into a high-end camera to get better images in low light than your Panasonic super-zoom currently affords. You can buy the Sony A6000 for a lot less money than the 6300, and have just as good pictures.

Finally, spend some time on Flickr or SmugMug and study the images captured by the cameras you're interested in, and lower-end cameras you might consider. You may be surprised what can be achieved for relatively little money. It's important to keep the "big picture" in mind, and don't get bogged down in a lot of technical minutia that clouds your brain and keeps you from focusing on the real objective: seeing what is before you that you wish to capture.

Better Today

21:13 Saturday, 5 August 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 79.3°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 9.22mph
Words: 773

Slept normally last night, and I feel pretty well today. Still a little groggy, but much closer to "normal," whatever that is anymore.

I mentioned the other day being distracted by old Hewlett Packard handheld computers. Well, that turned into owning another HP. I already had an HP-71b, the baby brother to the HP-75C.

I was a little bored, and I made the mistake of looking for calculators on shopgoodwill.com. There I saw an amazing "find." Someone donated a fairly complete HP-75 setup, computer, micro-cassette drive, thermal printer, 8KB memory expansion, RS-232 interface, a bunch of magnetic strips, several rolls of thermal paper and a couple of micro-cassettes. And the boxes and docs! I "favorited" it and planned to make a bid. The auction ended last night.

I know how these Goodwill auctions go, at least for "vintage" electronics. The prices get crazy. So I went to eBay to see what 75s were going for these days. There I found a roughly similar set-up, although not as all-inclusive: 75, cassette drive, thermal printer, HP-IL cables for all. Only one wall wart for the lot, no docs, no mag strips, one micro-cassette. Seller didn't appear to normally offer electronics and it was listed at $350, which was where the Goodwill listing was sitting right about then. They had a "make offer" option.

Price-wise, $350 was a reasonable deal with the peripherals and the case, but I always make an offer and it was accepted at $325.00.

That package arrived yesterday, prompt shipping and well packed. Computer works, but the battery pack is shot, which was no surprise. I've ordered an adapter battery holder that allows me to put rechargeable NiMH batteries in place of the NiCads. I won't charge them in the computer.

Computer is nearly pristine, so I'm quite pleased. Haven't tested the peripherals yet. Rubber rollers seem to be the main things that fail. We'll see.

While I was waiting for the Goodwill auction to come up, I looked for an 8KB expansion module, and found one of those and made an offer. Computer comes with 16KB onboard, 8KB more is nice to have, though not essential for the little "fun" diversions for which one buys these things.

Also spotted an HP-IL video interface, which was kind of pricy at $225, no "offers" entertained. Looked brand new, but who knows? Bought that too. Isn't here yet.

So last night I had to figure out my strategy. Computer looked like it'd seen use. Photo of the manual showed it was very worn, and there were little figures or something added to the keyboard. So that added some uncertainty about the state of the peripherals. They didn't have a closeup of the computer, but I'm confident the one I already have is cosmetically superior.

I did my math and figured that to buy that lot piecemeal on eBay would come in over $700. If I won the auction, I'd keep the best of everything and sell the remainder as a lot by auction. So entered my bid of $713 with about 56s remaining on the auction. Someone came bid $687 with 23s left, which wasn't enough to beat me. Don't know what their final bid was, but same bidder was able to get another one in with 11s remaining, and got it for $714.

Shipping and "handling" was estimated at over $40, so I'd factored that into my price. Add some sales tax and I think the final bill likely approached $800. The buyer can probably make some money piecing it out on eBay, but I don't think it'll be a windfall. Of course, if they're a collector it's a decent price, but not an eye-popping bargain. You're paying for the convenience of getting nearly everything in one package, though.

I'm not terribly disappointed. I went back on eBay and bought a package of mag strips for a ridiculous price, and the manual for the micro-cassette drive. I have pdfs of all the manuals, but I like paper ones for important things. I'll get a couple of new battery packs for the printer and micro-cassette drive. I won't miss the RS-232 interface very much.

I ask myself what the hell I'm going to do with this crap? I don't know. Leave it as a problem for my kids to figure out, I guess.

The HP-71b I bought came with the HP-IL interface module already installed, so it can use the other peripherals as well.

Lesson here is to stay off shopgoodwill.com when I'm bored!

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Every Picture Tells a Story

05:55 Monday, 5 August 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 78.24°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 11.5mph
Words: 84

A reminder that you can get a near-realtime view of Debby and other weather features from NOAA at this address (which covers the southeast U.S.).

I'm pretty sure you have to refresh the page periodically to get the latest loop, which seems to be about 10 minutes time-late. (Close enough to realtime for me.)

A government service provided to everyone at no charge, which would be privatized under Project 2025.

It's 78°F outside, 96% humidity and raining. I'm staying indoors.

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Still Smokey

06:44 Tuesday, 5 August 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 57.36°F Pressure: 1025hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 2.53mph
Words: 486

Still can't see the far hills. I suppose I should look at the news and figure out where these Canadian wildfires are.

But it reminds me that we watched The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout on Prime Sunday evening. If you have Prime, it's worth seeing. Even if you don't have Prime, I suppose you can find it somewhere.

It's about atomic testing in the Nevada desert, and fallout contamination at the St. George, Utah shooting location. It's an awful story, and the kind of story that helped sow the seeds for the "conspiracy theory" culture that thrives in social media today.

One of the things mentioned in the film that struck me was that Howard Hughes was only 70 years old when he died. I had the (false) impression that he was much older. Crazy, but much older. I can't help but think of Elon Musk when I think of Howard Hughes now. Both ego-maniacs. "Spruce Goose" and Starship? I don't know. Seems like there's some similarity there. Someone keep an eye on Elon's fingernails.

There was a fascinating article in The Guardian the other day about the collapse of civilizations, including this one. One of the causes of the collapse of prior civilizations is inequality and the rise of "elites." Howard Hughes and Elon Musk being examples of such, along with the members of the Atomic Energy Commission, filled with a distorted sense of their own importance and responsibility by their proximity to power, both nuclear and political. Makes sense. It's spot-on with how I think events are unspooling today.

The article is about the book, Goliath's Curse, by Luke Kemp, which you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find. I guess linking to Amazon is bad now, so I'm confident you can copy and paste and search with the best of them.

Great quote from the piece:

“History is best told as a story of organised crime,” Kemp says. “It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.”

What's taking place in America, well, specifically, the Trump administration and late-stage capitalism, is certainly a story of organized crime. (American spelling.)

There is no such thing as "power" when it comes to politics or society. There is only "authority." Money is a liquid form of authority, and the more money you have, the more people you can bend to your will.

Coercion is not "power," it's violence. The illegitimate use of authority is violence. Authority without responsibility and accountability is an error, a bug in the code. But it's not "power." (See: ICE.)

The only power that exists in anyone's life is the power to choose. And it's an exceedingly weak power, and it's seldom exercised consciously.

But we've been over all that before. For all the good it ever did.

The beat goes on...

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Looking Up

08:12 Wednesday, 5 August 2026

Current Wx: Temp: 65.91°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 78% Wind: 5.79mph
Words: 590

I've been deleting images from Photos trying to recover some disk space. That inevitably brings to mind various cameras I've owned and enjoyed. For reasons that are unclear to me, I've always just enjoyed the jpeg renderings from the 12MP Panasonic CMOS sensor Olympus used in several cameras, including the early Pens, the E-620, the E-30 and the E-5.

I had a number of those bodies, and sold all of them. Later, just because I liked that sensor and jpeg engine combination, I bought a used E-PM1 with a broken image stabilizer. I took it out yesterday and played around with it a bit. This image was taken with it this morning before my walk. I debated bringing along with me, deciding not to and thinking I'd probably regret it.

I did. Saw what I think would have been a very nice shot, shook my head and kept moving.

It's an unremarkable photo in most ways. If you pixel-peeped you'd see noise, and it really isn't a good example of what I like about that sensor, but I wanted to post a pic today, so this is it.

We're making progress on the house. Max the electrician came by yesterday and we discussed all the issues regarding bringing utility power to the house. It's probably going to be about $10K-$15K, which bites, but we really don't have a more affordable option. We talked about laying the conduit for the garage at the same time so we can do all the digging at one time. We'll put conduit in for the fiber at the same time as well, so all the have to do is pull it through conduit where it'll be at least 2' below grade and we're less likely to stick a shovel through it at some time in the future.

Energy Vanguard has completed their design for the HVAC system. We'll have a meeting to discuss it, and then I'll have to start shopping it around to get a quote or two.

We ordered windows on Monday. We couldn't get a price on the front door because it's not in stock at the local warehouse, but a comparable one is north of $8K, for a door! It is an 8-foot door, so there's that, but still.

Brad is working on the basement interior framing for the load-bearing walls. Once those are up we can set the floor trusses and get the subfloor down so he can start setting blocks for the main floor.

Mitzi and I were in the basement yesterday afternoon and noticed something that Brad had mentioned. The ICF is white and it reflects the heat inside the basement, kind of turning it into an oven. It's going to be a bit warm today, although not hot by any means. Working in that basement makes it feel otherwise.

Tomorrow I go see the doc to go over my bloodwork and talk about next steps. I'll be picking up a home sleep study kit to see if I have sleep apnea. I don't think I do, but we'll see.

Friday I have my first appointment to begin the process of removing my cataracts. I feel like I'm starting a "service life extension program," something the Navy used to do with its carriers. Hopefully get on a GLP-1 and drop 40-50 pounds, get my vision cleared up. Start working out on the regular.

If I take care of myself, I might live long enough to enjoy this place!

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Back to the Future

08:49 Wednesday, 5 August 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 68.99°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 77% Wind: 6.26mph
Words: 643

Kanasfest, the annual get-together of Apple II enthusiasts, was a couple of weeks ago, so I've been seeing various reports here and there. Somehow, somewhere, I learned of a new product for the Apple IIc, the MegaFlash for Apple //c. The idea is to have four mass-storage devices, virtual hard drives, stored internally. It also offers some modifications to the Apple IIc ROM that correct a couple of bugs in Applesoft, a 400K RAM disk, and a routine that intercepts Applesoft floating point routines and performs them in the onboard Raspberry Pi Pico, in effect a sort of math-coprocessor.

Naturally, I ordered one.

It came in a while ago, and I've been preoccupied with house and health, so I didn't try to install it. Yesterday I decided I needed a break from house stuff and broke out my IIc to install it.

To make a long story short, it works! It has a wifi interface and you can connect it to your local wifi network, and it'll get the date and time from a network time server, then it provides that to ProDOS as if you had a clock card installed. It boots into a program called Apple II DeskTop, which is a GUI interface to ProDOS. I played around with it for a bit, and while it's definitely slow, it's usable.

I had some issues with my internal disk drive and to rule out any problems with the machine itself, I reverted back to the stock configuration and verified the drive worked fine and the IWM (Integrated Woz Machine) disk interface was working. It may have been an issue with the BMOW Floppy Emu mods I installed, so I removed those as well.

In reinstalling the MegaFlash, I bent one of the pins on the riser socket for the cpu and broke the pin when trying to straighten it. Bummer.

Well, the huge advantage with this device is that you can have an enormous amount of software available internally. Which makes working with the IIc in confined quarters, like I have here, much easier and more entertaining. The Applesoft floating point acceleration is a nice bonus since I like playing around with BASIC and graphing programs.

When I ordered the MegaFlash for the IIc, they didn't have one for the IIc Plus in stock. When I checked yesterday, they did, so I ordered one of those as well. I also emailed Joe to see if he could throw another riser socket in the package, and he replied promptly and said it would be no problem.

So I'll be installing both boards when the IIc Plus version arrives. I'll probably mostly use the IIc Plus, since it runs at 4MHz and everything, except games, is a lot snappier.

I'm really looking forward to getting this house done, so I can get my two Apple //e computers set up. I've got another IIc in storage. I hadn't intended to buy another IIc, I thought I was buying an external disk drive for the IIc, but it came with the computer too! Unfortunately, the seller didn't package it well and the external drive did a number on the keyboard, breaking a number of keys and the drive door latch. I've since replaced all the keys but the space bar, since that seems to be unobtainium. The issue with the space bar is the stabilizer wire, and the two little clips that hold it in place.

It dawned on me the other day that those plastic clips are also present on all the other stabilized keys, like the Shift key, which isn't unobtainium. The challenge is those clips are glued to the bottom of the key cap, so I'll have to carefully razor-knife them off, then glue them to the space bar.

Anyway, keepin' me off the streets!

The beat goes on...

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