Maybe I shouldn't have bought this camera...

Well, it's a powerful machine. I was so excited to play with this feature rich time fighting machine, but then I realized I have nothing to take pictures of. Either that or I suck. I can't get people around me to be excited about it or to share in my passion for it. So I have been taking pictures of the wall basically. I guess I can't force people to do anything, but as is life. It'll be better in the summer, I hope when the weather is better and there are more colors than white, brown, and black.

Ultra fast refresh LCD TVs

Samsung LN-T4071F

Yesterday out of boredom, I decided to make a trip over to the local Circuit City to look around. I came expecting to see the same stuff I see everyday but with just slight upgrades and much higher price tags to justify the "new features." I was pleasantly surprised when I came across their display of the 120Hz refresh rate Samsung 46" LCD. It was in some sort of special demo mode where half of the screen was refreshing at 60Hz and half was refreshing at 120Hz.

I stared at that screen thinking "they must've slowed down the motion on the 60Hz side because it looks so choppy compared to the other side." I wasn't about to let myself be fooled by their trickery! But I do have to say the motion on the 120Hz side of the screen was so real and the detail was so great, I can honestly say it was like looking at real people moving around in a room through a window. Of course, that room had spectacular lighting and everybody was beautiful. Even close up, I felt that the 1080p resolution looked better than the neighboring 1080p LCDs. Of course, this was probably because of the ultra-smooth motion and the 25,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio.

This Samsung TV was an all around winner, and If I ever get an LCD TV, I know what one I'm going to buy. This TV is truly an outstanding example of technology and for the first time I feel like the price is justified, because with all the features this TV has, it is easily leaps and bounds above your average 720p LCD or plasma TV. You should make the trip out to your local Circuit City and see the display for yourself if you don't believe me.

Breakaway weekend

This weekend I went on a church sponsored trip to a winter camp in Michigan. Besides the horrific bus malfunctions and delays, the trip was wonderful. If I were in middle school I would've been so excited about the whole trip. And the whole time it was action packed and there were a lot of fun activities to do including snow tubing (tube-ing), paintball, swimming, rock climing, basketball, video games, Euro-bungee, and lots of other fun stuff. I really have to compliment the church on how well they cater to kids desires and make the camp fun and even make the worship services entertaining (all 3 of them). There were supposed to be four. However, the bus ride took an extra 3 hours on Friday so they had to cancel that evening's events by the time we arrived at 2AM. I really appreciate how they make the services entertaining for kids and that the messages are tailored to fit their lives. If I had this as a kid I probably wouldn't have went through my super pessimistic stage regarding religion. It is truly amazing that they were able to have 19 busses full of kids behave as well as they did too, but that just goes to show how tailoring everything towards the kids can subdue their boredom and keep them from going crazy :P

Personally, I really enjoyed going and I was able to connect more with a lot of the other leaders. I hadn't really talked to any of them up to this point and it was really nice to finally have a couple conversations with these people and learn that mot of them aren't really that different from me and that they also had their periods of un-religiousness. You know, I'm still on the fringe, but I'm trying here :P I, of course don't let the kids onto any of this. I don't want to be the reason that they leave the church! But back to the main topic, I also took a lot of pictures while I was there. I really wish I had a DSLR camera so that I could take a virtually unlimited amount of pictures. I got off about 25 shots, but because the film was old, most of the low light pictures have a very washed out appearance and the colors are off (probably because the film lost some of its sensitivity at different levels for each color mask) I learned that color film actually has 4 layers of "photo receptors" one, for each primary color and one for black and white. The pictures I took outside with ample lighting came out very well though. Because this weekend was so good for me and I think that the kids loved it too, I would totally do it again!

It's happening!

So the first step is happening in my home building journey! I made an offer on a lot and the seller accepted. After a good year and a half of serious looking, I finally am about 2" from having something to show for it!!!! I am so excited.

the lot

Safe!

I randomly ran across an Aldi ad for a "special purchase" of some Sentry fire storage protection safes. I had wanted one of those safes for a long time, but they were pretty expensive. So I didn't ever get one. But Aldi had one for only $99! I couldn't resist. If only I had stuff worth putting in it like gold bars or something :P You can even bolt it onto the floor :) And as an added bonus, it has a digital keypad!

Leeks

So today I bought a couple leeks. Why? you ask.... Well because I wanted to try a new vegetable that I haven't tried before. And a couple months ago I saw an episode on Leeks on the Food network. They are in the onion family, but they don't cause the tears that onions normally cause because they don't have the compound that is found in other onions. So this will be fun! I don't know what I'm going to make, but I'm sure it will be delicious. I may make a leek soup. hmm. What do you think?

Impress your special friend...

http://www.whitecastle.com/valentinesday/

Me Want!

Sony Alpha A700

If I were to get anything that I don't need that's over $1000 it would be a DSLR camera. I've been wanting one for so long, but I just can't convince myself to put that kind of cash down for something `i'd probably only use about 30 times a year.

But I think after using my dad's DSLR, I'm almost ready to buy one. Half of the reason I don't take so many pictures now is because I feel so limited with only 24 exposures and I have to wait for development. My compact camera just doesn't capture the dynamic depth of field or have the ability to use different lenses for different situations. So if I'm ever feeling arty, I always lean towards an SLR.

And the DSLR I am leaning towards most is the Sony Alpha A700. It works with my existing Minolta lenses and has built in image stabilization. This comes only in the lens with Canon, and that really increases the cost of ownership of a Canon. The noise level at ISO 1600 is better than the EOS 20D and they say the light metering on the camera is spectacular. As soon as this camera hits $1000, I'm gonna buy it. Right now it's $1199, but I figure it'll drop pretty quickly as soon as they release their flagship model. I can't wait.

Picture taken with Sony Alpha

They fixed the draft!

Yeah I had this huge draft in my apartment but I called the office and they put some of that 3M plastic window draft sealing magic saran wrap stuff on all my windows and I swear it feels nice to have a floor that is the same temperature as the rest of the apartment. And my heater doesn't turn on every 3 minutes after the temperature dropped 5 degrees! I bet my energy bills will be cut in half now, seriously. Go 3M!