Absurd Singularity

Tropic Thunder

Finally polished off one of the three Blu-Ray discs currently on loan from Netflix.

Prima donna cast
Lost in jungle adventure
Become better men

I'll give it a 7 out of 10. The special effects were quite good (and obviously some were knowingly over-the-top). Really did enjoy watching Tom Cruise in this one and the rest of the cast had their moments.

Initial Thoughts on the Eye-Fi Pro

So, earlier last week, I heard that Eye-Fi had released the new Pro version of their wireless SD card. Clocking in at 4GB and with the ability to transfer not just JPEG, but RAW AND video files via wireless network, I decided to finally take the plunge and test it out with my Panasonic LX3.

Set up was a little trickier than I was expecting. The Eye-Fi Pro comes with its own USB card reader (although you can use your own) that you just stick in to an available USB port. After installing the Eye-Fi Manager software that's in the card, I ran it and immediately ran into connection problems. The software attempts to test incoming and outgoing connections through your computer's network connection and for some reason it was having issues on my MBP with incoming connections. So I hit the support site and tried everything I could find in their FAQ and forums, to no avail. Then I rebooted the computer and BOOM, connections all ready to go. After that, you sign up for an account on the Eye-Fi site and you're ready to go.

Configuration management for the card is done through the browser on their site and is pretty darn easy and comprehensive. I configured the card to connect to my wireless network at home (WEP security not supported if anyone's still actually using that security algorithm) in seconds. A very cool feature is that you can have the card do different things depending on what type of file it's transferring to your computer. For example, I have JPEGs being downloaded to the default Eye-Fi photo folder that is created under /Users/[your username]/Photos. But my RAW files go directly to the LX3 RAW directory I have on my Drobo. And any video files get automatically imported into my iPhoto. On top of that, you can have them automatically upload your JPEGs to any available websites that you set up like Flickr, Facebook, SmugMug, MobileMe, etc. The list is very comprehensive. The same can be done for video. And then, on top of all that, the card can geotag your photos before transferring them as well.

Sounds pretty nifty right? But how well does it actually work? If you're out and about and you have the setting turned on, the card will try to log in to any public wireless networks to upload your images and video. I have not had the chance to try this yet or if I had, I wouldn't know, because there's really no way for you to tell when the card is doing anything unless you happen to have a computer with you so you can keep an eye on what the card has transferred via the Eye-Fi management site. Transferring across my home wireless network works pretty much as advertised. The Eye-Fi Manager software will pop up a little window when it detects files being transferred that displays a thumbnail of the file and a progress bar.

Now, what are the cons with this setup? Well, the Eye-Fi card needs juice to be able to work. Which means your camera has to be on for it to do its thing. Which means pretty significant battery drain. Typically with my LX3, I carry it around for about a week at a time before needing to charge the battery. Over this past weekend, I took it out for one day, took about 90 RAW shots with it plus a few video clips, tried to keep it powered on long enough to transfer everything when I got home and it died before it could finish transferring. Now I didn't check to see how much power was left in the battery to begin with but I'm pretty sure it was at least over half full. This coming week I'll test it more fully. I'll probably set the LX3's LCD display to turn off quicker to save on battery power. And if it's still draining a lot, I'll turn off Hotspot support to see if that helps anyway. I also purchased an extra battery just in case.

Now if your camera's battery is kaput, you can also just stick the Eye-Fi card into your regular SD card reader. Once it gets power, it'll continue to transfer wirelessly. However, if the card's already in a card reader, what's the point in transferring wirelessly? Transfer through the card reader itself is much faster especially since it seems that the wireless transfer often works in little bits and pieces.

So, I'll withhold my final verdict until I'm able to test it out a bit more in the following week. I'm probably an abnormal user case anyway since I shoot only in RAW. JPEG files tend to be much smaller so if you shot only JPEG, power consumption possibly would not be as much of an issue unless you just take TONS of photos at once. At first glance, I do like the concept of the Eye-Fi. I also like the fact that you can direct different file types to different locations on your computer. And I have not yet tested the web service transfer functionality since I need to post-process my RAW files before uploading them to sites like Flickr. I can see this being useful for Erin's camera though where she just goes out and shoots and then the shots get automatically transferred to me when she gets home.

Never a Dull Day...

after Apple announces something.

Well I was in the midst of typing up a long-winded, rambling, and highly-sarcastic jab at the new iPhone 3G[S] price complainers when Gizmodo beats me to it. Oh well, guess that's why they're the experts.

As for myself, yes I pre-ordered. No I wasn't lucky enough to get the low noob/out-of-contract price but I wasn't shafted with the high end price either. On top of that I have a non-smartphone-inclined wife ("It's too big and I barely need a cell phone much less a smart one.") which means the proceeds of my existing 3G sale let's me get the new one for even less than AT&T's lowest price. Of course it would have been nice if I could have gotten AT&T's lowest price first which means the 3G sale would have actually made me some money but... not complaining.

So, I'm psyched to check out the new camera on the 3G[S]. Extra speed will be nice but the cam is what it's all about for me.

Backpackin'

Devon received a backpack for his first birthday from his aunt and we didn't break it out until recently.

As is the case with most toddlers, they love new things and this backpack was no exception. We loaded it up with a few of his current favorite toy cars while he added 2 CDs, a change purse and a plastic clip and headed off to dinner and then an after-dinner riverside stroll.

At first we were afraid he had already outgrown the backpack without even having worn it once but that turned out to be an unnecessary fear. It's not the largest of packs but it's pretty darn cute.

Devon was quite happy to have a new bag to carry his items around in. Of course he hasn't quite worked out how to wear it without parental supervision but we're working on it. ;-)

Cool

The day I took these photos was notable because it was the first time Devon actually decided it was ok to wear my sunglasses for longer than 2 seconds. Actually it was the first time he let me seat it on his face without balking.

And he really likes 'em. Previously, whenever he would see them, he'd tell me to put them on. Now, he takes them from me and puts them on himself. I think it's time to get him his own pair of sunglasses. =p

Deluge

So I've had my Flickr account for about a year now and for the last month or so I've averaged about 50-75 views per day (if that). I don't put a lot of stuff up since my 365 Project photos trickle in at one per day and most of the time I'll post photos directly to either my blog or Devon's site.

For the prior 2 weeks, the New York International Auto Show had been in town and so I had taken a bunch of pictures when we visited one day. Those photos I uploaded as a set to Flickr where they sat around for about 4 or 5 days before apparently suddenly hitting the limelight. Late two evenings ago, I started noticing a rather significant uptick in my Flickr stats. By the time I woke up the next morning, my current day view count was already up in the 30k range. I kept an eye on it throughout the day and was amused when every refresh of the stats page showed an increase in the hundreds.

I took the above screenshot when the Flickr day ended. As you can see, I supposedly amassed 68,945 total views across my Flickr photos, photostream, and sets. The prior day (which isn't shown here) my total was a bit over 600. Prior to this huge surge, my total view count since I created my account a year ago was 9,884. So in one day my total view count increased almost 7X.

Here you can see that the photos that were on the receiving end of all this attention were my shots from the auto show. And apparently, Bumblebee is a HUGE draw for people. Or is he? And why are my photos getting all this attention now when they had been living in relative anonymity for the past week?

Delving into the referrers chart reveals some answers I believe. Apparently, a good chunk of my shots were picked up in Yahoo's "Community & News" module for their Auto Show section. And guess which photo shows up in the #1 spot. Right, Bumblebee. So it appears that a good # of visitors came in from Yahoo Autos through the Bumblebee photo and then ping ponged around the rest of my car show set and even my photostream.

Some questions remain though. Like why is Bumblebee in that first spot? He's not the first photo in my set. And why are all my photos from that set showing up in that module? I can't be the only one who took photos at the auto show, tagged them and released them under Creative Commons. And what the heck is this "Unknown Source" referrer that's apparently piping in a bit over 20% of views. Plus, are these views actually from visitors coming through Community & News? Or are views being counted if someone just visits an auto-related page on Yahoo that calls up the Community & News module? I tend to think that they are actual visitors since I assume Yahoo's overall traffic is even heavier. And if that is the case, wow.

Anyway, not that I'm complaining or anything (except for the fact that this sudden spike of traffic is going to ruin that topmost "Daily aggregate views" chart for me for the next month. ;-p
Plus the interest seems to be dying down as traffic today is nowhere near yesterday's levels. Still high compared to my previous numbers though.

Devon's First Easter Egg Hunt

This past weekend we took Devon to his first Easter egg hunt at Hamilton Park. It was an interesting day for all of us as Erin and I discovered that we should not tell him beforehand what we would be doing later. Cause if it sounds exciting enough to him, he has no problems skipping his afternoon nap time in anticipation. And it's not like we upsold him on it or anything. I just casually mentioned that we'd go looking for eggs later.

Actually it was the first Easter egg hunt for all three of us. Maybe not for me, but if I had went on any in my youth, I certainly don't remember them now. But kudos to the Hamilton Park Neighborhood Association for setting this up. Plus it turned out to be a gorgeous day weather-wise for such an outing.

So turnout was pretty good and luckily we made it on time. As usual, Devon looked a little bewildered at the crowd of people about us but he also spotted the little plastic eggs dotting the landscape immediately. We milled about while waiting for the hunt to start and when the trumpet blew, headed off to the nearest open field. Luckily we wandered in the right direction as they had sectioned off parts of the park by age group and we happened to walk onto the 2-4 section.

It didn't take him too long to figure out what he was supposed to do and with that, he was off! We'd lead him to egg-laden areas and he'd clean 'em out. Overall the pace wasn't all that hectic but it did wind down relatively quickly as kids can be pretty fast at gathering stuff. Which is why I mentioned that it was lucky that we arrived on time. If we were late by 15-20 minutes, the egg hunt itself would have already been over.

So for his first Easter egg hunt, I thought Devon made out like a bandit. He came away with 24 eggs in his little basket. Unfortunately none of them had orange slips in them which apparently meant you would win some prize but the little candy and toys inside them (plus the actual plastic egg shell themselves) kept him pretty occupied and happy as is.

Afterward he climbed up the big, central gazebo in the park to watch some older boys climbing and jumping up and around a short gate at the top.

Then he relinquished his basket of eggs to Erin for a while so he can try out this new (to him) slide.

Then he settled down at a nearby table to take a closer look at his loot.

While there another young boy, Cody, stopped by to look at Devon's stash. Cody unfortunately had arrived late with his mother so had missed out on the hunt. So I gave one to him which didn't make Devon happy. But when we requested that he give Cody another one, he did so without complaining. We left Cody with 3 eggs before Devon wandered off.

Mission accomplished, we headed off to our regular weekend food court at Mitsuwa to grab a late lunch. He even stayed awake for most of the ride home. He only napped for an hour at most before awakening. First word out of his mouth? "Egg."

Comcast - Improving

So, late last night our Comcast high-speed Internet went down. Called up support, chatted with the sweet-sounding customer service rep for awhile and the final solution was to have a technician come by later between 7-9am. Rep said the tech would call half an hour prior to arrival. Standard operating procedure.

Went to bed.

Dragged my ass outta bed at 7am to wait. Noticed that the network was working again. Cool. Figured I wouldn't bother calling them to cancel the appointment since in my prior experience with their techs, they would call (or not) and if no one answered, they'd move on to whoever was next on their list. So putzed around for awhile and then went to work.

10:30am, someone's calling my cell phone from a number I don't recognize. Ignore the calls as I usually do with numbers I don't recognize. Few minutes later, Erin calls to let me know the Comcast guy's inside poking around. Told her to tell him the problem went away which she did but apparently the guy figured since he was already there he might as well check the cable box and the cable modem and whatnot. Call Erin back half an hour later and she said the guy didn't stay for long (understandable since nothing was wrong) but replaced a coax cable. Uh, okay.

So in summary, the good:

• Customer service rep actually helpful and courteous.
• Appointments available really early in the morning (so ideally they can come before I've left for work, usually a little before 9am. Ideally.).
• Technician actually showed up.

The bad:

• Technician showed up an hour and a half after appointed time and didn't call before coming.

Contrast this with my last experience with them where I waited around for the tech, called support after tech hadn't called at the end of the supposed appointment time range only to have them tell me that the tech called and because no one answered, I'd have to reschedule. Even though there was no way I could have missed the call cause I was waiting at home for the past 4 hours just for them.

So yeah, it was an improvement. Now if only they'd stop with these creeping rate increases. =p

The Kensington Expert Mouse

After a few days of use, I decided that the previously reviewed Kensington Slimblade Trackball could not overcome the handicap of not being able to program its two top buttons. Being unable to easily go back or forward a page while in a browser was severely crimping my style. ;-p So I picked up the 6 year old Kensington Expert Mouse instead. As you can see from the photo above, the two are pretty similar physically from a width and length perspective.

But as you can see above, the main difference in the dimensions of the two are in the height. Although here the difference isn't as bad as when compared to the even older Turbo Mouse Pro. And the trackball itself is interchangeable between the Expert Mouse and the Slimblade.

Functionally, the scroll ring around the trackball of the Expert Mouse is super easy to use. At first I was afraid it would be too stiff but it's actually quite loose. There is a little bit of a grating noise when you're spinning it but nothing horrible. The faux leather wrist rest is nice, something I did miss with the Slimblade.

Most importantly of all, I could program the top two buttons again. However, not everything is all roses. The main issue I ran into is that Kensington's Mouseworks app absolutely does NOT want to recognize its own peripherals when they are connected via USB hub. Could not get it to work no matter what I tried. If I plugged the trackball in directly to my laptop or desktop, they were detected just fine. And without recognition by Mouseworks, programmability can not be achieved. Luckily, other 3rd party shareware exists that fill in the gap, namely Steermouse on the Mac and ATNSoft Key Manager on the PC. Yes I do lose functionality like chording but I never used that anyway. As long as I can finally program my top two buttons, I'm happy.

So I guess I'm done fiddling around with my at-home pointing device. Still disappointed that the Slimblade Trackball didn't work out. Hopefully Kensington will eventually come to their senses and make their buttons programmable again. Or at least throw in dedicated back/forward buttons. =p

The Kensington Slimblade Trackball

Long time listeners will undoubtedly know that I'm a big trackball fan. So I was pretty stoked when Kensington announced their first new trackball in 6 years, the Slimblade Trackball. Yeah it isn't wireless (grrrr....), but it is a trackball. So I preordered one from Amazon and it was delivered to me a few days ago. So I figured I'd post a few unboxing shots and my initial thoughts on this highly-anticipated (ok, not really =p) trackball entry.

The box is fairly compact and nothing to get excited about obviously. Big photo of the trackball on the front and description of its functionality on the back along with some marketing mumbo jumbo.

Opening the box reveals a one sheet "manual."

Removing the sheet reveals the trackball covered by a form-fitting plastic piece.

The unit itself is very slick, made of shiny black plastic with grey rubber trim, a chrome border ring, and a dark red ball. The USB cable is now made of that mesh fabric material that some companies are using on their earphones (like the v-moda Vibe Duo). A rubber tab sticks out of the top left edge of the unit and a corresponding slot exists on the top right edge. Prior to release, I couldn't figure out what this tab and slot was for looking at the photos but according to a review on Amazon, if you have two of these trackballs, the tab of one will fit into the slot of the other so you can merge the two together. For what? No clue. Still makes no sense to me.

The Slimblade is definitely slimmer than trackballs of the past as you can see here. Another interesting thing about it (which I didn't take a photo of unfortunately) is that the receptacle that the ball sits in is open on the bottom. But the ball itself never touches the table.

As can be seen above, the Slimblade is significantly smaller than my old Turbo Mouse Pro. The 4 buttons surrounding the ball on the Slimblade no longer look like four individual buttons. Instead the entire top plastic face of the Slimblade is one piece of plastic that's just cut in the appropriate places so that the edges closest to the center click like a button. The ball for the Slimblade is also a little bit smaller than the one on the Turbo Mouse Pro so you can't take the one from the Turbo Mouse Pro and use it on the Slimblade.

From the above shot you can see that the old Turbo Mouse Pro has a much higher angle of decline from the top of the unit to the bottom. Kensington also has done away with the rubber wrist rest that you can attach to the bottom of their older trackballs which is kinda disappointing. I guess because the overall angle on the Slimblade is very gradual, they felt it wasn't necessary anymore.

Moving on to functionality, how does the Slimblade fare? Well, for one thing, it does not work with Kensington's venerable Mouseworks software. Instead you just install the driver for it (download only - available for WinXP, Vista and MacOS X) which basically just turns on the "control panel" feature whenever you click on one of the top two buttons so that you know what mode it's currently in. Let that sink in for a minute there. That's right, as of now, the buttons on the Slimblade are NOT programmable. What kind of freakin' travesty is this??? It really irked me because I'm used to programming the top left button as my "back" button when I'm using a browser. Pretty much all mice have a dedicated back button these days so to not have one on the Slimblade is a huge disadvantage.

When I emailed Kensington support about it, the support person sent back a reply basically saying that the buttons are non-configurable because the trackball is "designed to be used as a media controller." So sorry for the inconvenience. This is really problematic and hopefully something they will change their minds on in the near future.

Now a new feature of the Slimblade is that it now works on 3 axes. Besides up/down, left/right, you can rotate the ball on the horizontal plane to scroll. Since there's no dedicated scroll wheel. There is a problem with this though. I usually use only one finger to control the ball. In order to rotate, I now need at least two fingers. However, using two fingers, scrolling isn't as consistent plus you push the cursor all over the screen at the same time. So to consistently use this feature and NOT have the cursor jump all over, you've gotta pick your hand up from its regular position and rotate the ball with at least 3 fingers and your thumb. Anything that requires my hand to move from its regular position is a huge no no.

Another option to scroll is to toggle into View mode (top right button). Once in that mode, moving the trackball up and down normally will scroll. Which I guess is ok but forces me to keep track of what mode the trackball is in. Plus it doesn't work consistently at times. In a browser, most of the time it will scroll the page up and down. But on some pages that have a video embedded, it fast-forwards/rewinds the video instead.

As for the no dedicated back button, the only current option is to first right-click and select "Back" from the pop-up menu. Definitely a pain.

There's also the new Media mode which allows you basic control of iTunes or Windows Media Player when they are running no matter what app you're currently on. You can switch tracks by moving right/left, play/pause by hitting the left button and stop completely by hitting the right button. And you can raise/lower volume by rotating the ball. Works pretty much as advertised but not sure how often I'll be using it since I don't really listen to music all that much when I'm in front of my computer.

So, overall, I'm still pretty peeved that I no longer have a dedicated back button and scroll wheel which are pretty big negatives since they directly impact stuff that I do a lot every day. Right now I don't know if I want to keep this thing. Don't have very many choices unfortunately. My old Turbo Mouse Pro is now keeping me company at work and they don't even make it anymore so I can't get a second one for home use. The Expert Mouse may be an option but even with that I'll have to see how its scrolling wheel works although I can't imagine it being harder to use than how it is with the Slimblade right now.

Brief 24-70 Showdown

Ok, I don't have as much time as I used to in my prior pixel-peeping posts so I'm going to make this quick. I'm posting a couple of 100% center crops at f/2.8 and at 24mm, 35mm, and 70mm for the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G AF-S and Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM lenses and my thoughts on them. All shots were taken on a tripod, no flash, ISO 200, RAW, opened in Photoshop CS4 with NO sharpening whatsoever and color/exposure adjusted to match across the board. Saved to JPEG w/quality set to 10. Each individual image below contain 4 slices: 1 each for Canon and Nikon and 2 for Sigma (1 w/autofocus (AF) and the other with manual focus (MF)). Focus was on the white book with purple lettering and light grey lines. The white book to the right of this one is at the same depth. The two books to the right of that is about 5/8" in front while the two books to the left are 5/8" behind. Before I took the crops, I had to shrink all the shots taken with the Canon 5DII down to the same dimensions as the D700 (5616 to 4256 width). Make sure to click on each image to see full size.

So, at 24mm, besides some color differences with the purple lettering, everything looks acceptable across the board. Although it appears that the Nikon and Sigma AF are front-focusing just a bit.

At 35mm, the Canon and Sigma (MF) look quite comparable. Nikon looks pretty good too but shows a little bit of front-focus as the red book all the way to the right seems to be more in focus than in the Canon and Sigma (MF) samples. The Sigma (AF) crop looks fuzzier than the others but the red book on the right looks well in focus.

And finally at 70mm, everything looks comparable except for Sigma (AF) which is way fuzzed out. This is the front focus issue I mentioned in my earlier post.

So, what's my conclusion? Well, when it comes down to center sharpness, all 3 lenses are quite comparable in my opinion. Sigma's downfall is its unusually bad autofocus. When the focus is on, it's darn sharp. If I really want to keep it, a trip for the 5DII body and lens to Sigma would definitely be necessary.

This copy of the Canon that I currently have is the sharpest I've seen wide open at the long end and I've been through quite a few. Downsizing the Canon 70mm sample caused it to lose a bit of detail since at native size, it's quite apparent that the light grey lines on the focused-on book are zig-zag which I've only seen resolved by 3 other lenses wide open that I've tested: the Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 IS at 55mm, Canon 70-200mm f/4 IS at 200mm, and the Pentax 17-50mm f/2.8 at 50mm. Actually with the full sized, manually focused shot of the Sigma, you can make out the zig zags a little bit as well.

As for the Nikon lens, it's no slouch either. This particular copy may be front-focusing a little bit on my D700 body but it's definitely not as bad as with the Sigma and is probably something I can fix with the micro-adjustment feature if it really bothers me (which it doesn't at this point).

Anyway, if you want to check out the non-cropped, full-sized shots (JPEG) for each lens so that you can check out the edges and corners and color and whatnot, you can download them all here. I didn't bother putting up stopped down samples cause there wasn't anything out of the ordinary with them and nothing new that you can't tell from the wide open samples. A bit sharper than at f/2.8 and not much difference between the brands.

So, is the Sigma worth it? At $900 it's about $350 cheaper than the Canon version and $800 less than the Nikon. If you want to take a chance that you'll get one with perfect autofocus, then yeah, the combination of size, IQ and price is pretty great. Especially if you're in the Nikon camp. Even if you're a Canon user, $350 is nothing to scoff at. But definitely test that focus at 70mm immediately if you do get one. Hopefully you'll have better luck than me.

My Camera is a Loyalist

So in my previous entry I mentioned I was working on a 3-way shootout between the Canon, Nikon and Sigma 24-70s. Unfortunately I've run into a bit of a snag. Specifically, the new Sigma 24-70 refuses to autofocus properly with my Canon 5DII body. It front focuses by a good 5/8th of an inch at 70mm which is more than the AF microadjustment feature on my 5DII can correct for. I'm sure it front focuses at 24mm as well, it's just not as noticeable. And to top it off, this problem has happened with 3, count 'em, THREE, different copies of the lens. Manual focusing works fine though. Which would make me believe maybe there's something wrong with my 5DII. But then again, focus seems to be fine when I use my Canon lenses.

Anyway, I've got one final copy coming in from a different source on Monday so we'll see if that shows anything different. If not, I'll just go with what I have. In one of my Flickr shots, I mentioned that I wasn't particularly impressed with the Sigma's IQ at that point. Now I know it's because of the front focus issue. If I ignore the focusing problem and look at the areas of the photos taken with the Sigma that ARE in focus, they look pretty good. Even wide open. So I'm hoping this last copy will work out for me. Stay tuned...

UPDATE: Well it's official, my 5DII just does not like the Sigma 24-70 lens for some reason. The 4th copy that I just received also front focuses significantly. To the point where I can tell just by looking through the viewfinder that it's not completely in focus. *sigh* I'll still run my sharpness test with it but I'll have to focus manually. I'm not that great of a manual focuser but hopefully it'll work out.

New Pixel-Peeping Post Soon

Hopefully. =) Got my hands on one of Sigma's new 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM lens so will be testing it out against the esteemed Canon and Nikon models post-haste.

Physically, Sigma did one heck of an amazing job shrinking this lens. Usually 24-70mm lenses with a wide f/2.8 aperture are big and heavy but this new Sigma is nice and compact. Still heavy though. Plus the hoods tend to be huge (with the Canon & Nikon versions) so I'm not sure how Sigma's getting away with these shallow hoods on their 24-70s.

It still retains the 82mm filter size from its older brethren but at its full extended length, it's just about the length of the old model when retracted. Plus they finally went against the grain and made the lens short at 24mm and long at 70mm. All the 24-70s prior to this one were physically longer at 24mm and shorter at 70mm which I always found kind of strange.

Build-wise it's typical Sigma EX quality so nothing unexpected there. So physically it's beat the Canon/Nikon on size alone. The 24-70 is my main walkaround lens but I've often wished they were smaller and less noticeable than they actually are and this new Sigma delivers big time in that aspect. Hope the image quality will prove to be comparable to the big boys as well.

UPDATE: Well I ran my usual focus/sharpness tests last night and found this Sigma to be front-focusing significantly. Even the 5DII's lens microadjustment feature set to the max (-20) couldn't fix it. But got a new copy this morning so we'll see how this one goes...

UPDATE 2: Well that's 2 for 2. Second copy front-focused as well. Not as bad, but still there. On to lens #3. If this one doesn't work, I give up.

My Bags

It never really occurred to me until Erin pointed it out the other night but I think I may have a bag accumulation problem...

My Kid's a Smartass and He's Only Two

So this morning I have Devon in my lap at my desk and he's rummaging around like he normally does. He grabs the little Kagami figure (thanks, Lee) that's sitting on top of my KVM switch and throws it to the floor causing it to separate from the little stand that it's usually on. I pick it up, give him a brief scolding and put it back in place. Devon moves on to the loose lens caps lying around on the desk.

A little while later, he picks Kagami up again so, using my "I'm giving you warning" voice, I tell him he better not throw her or else he'll be in big trouble. He holds on to her for a few seconds, and then indicates that he wants to get off my lap and onto the floor. Once on the floor. he separates Kagami from her stand and then neatly places her and the stand on the floor pretty much exactly where she had landed when he previously tossed her. And then he shoots me a "Well, I didn't throw her" look.

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I couldn't help but laugh.