Went to the local go-kart track to celebrate our son's birthday. He's not as timid as he used to be, but it's still his friend who managed a most monumental crash to the tyre barriers. No bodily harm done, confidence slightly bruised...
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
I like palm trees
I've always wanted to live in the shade of palm trees swaying in the wind. In that sense living in Palm Meadows is a winning proposition. Today was especially nice with a slow wind rustling the foliage in bright sunshine.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Creatures of light, creatures of night
... and the latter eating the former for dinner. Saw this in Sri Lanka: a skylight was drawing insect in large numbers and every night a swarm of bats would whoosh back and forth hunting the same. It's amazing and a little creepy too how close to people walking underneath the bats would fly and how silently they zoom past.
Shot with Nokia N8.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Mmmm, Marabou...
Never so true this old advertizing slogan for Swedish chocolate from my youth. A crocodile patiently waits for the dinner to pass through it's mounth. This time the stork walked by a bit too far, though.
The Yala National Park, where this brief play took place, is an almost 1000 sq km home to hundreds of more species, many of which can be seen from Jeep safaris organized daily.
The Yala National Park, where this brief play took place, is an almost 1000 sq km home to hundreds of more species, many of which can be seen from Jeep safaris organized daily.
Back from Sri Lanka
Went on vacation last week, this time to Sri Lanka. The country has been through a lot as of late with the 2005 tsunami and the 25 year civil war that ended only last year. Even forgetting this context, Sri Lanka is a fantastic destination. Compared to India there's hardly any traffic, the roads are perfect, every place is clean and people are really friendly. One week of beachlife, some sighseeing and a wildlife safari just whizzed by.
We spent our time in the southwestern coast, which is the traditional tourist area in the country. I think we need to go back to see the mountain ranges mid-country before leaving India.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Happy Diwali!
Festive rangoli floor decoration courtesy of our maid. Next week India is celebrating Diwali. We'll be escaping the massive fireworks displays to Sri Lanka, hopefully to properly unwind.
Our villa, as seen from India
This is where we live as non-residents of Palm Meadows see it. Or rather, don't...
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Thank you for the music
Our son Joona's school staged a Mamma Mia musical show the past Saturday. I had bought a Nokia N8 the previous Friday so this was a good opportunity to try both the still and the video camera in pretty challenging lighting conditions.
Here are the results. If you're into the technical stuff make sure to check out the picture in large or original size as well as view the videos in 720p resolution.
I must I was really amazed at the student body talent making this musical happen, but the geek in me was equaly in awe of the camera and camcorder performance as well. During all this I was also following play by play on atpworldtour.com from Stockholm Open where Jarkko Nieminen was playing in the semi-final. Convergence happens.
Here are the results. If you're into the technical stuff make sure to check out the picture in large or original size as well as view the videos in 720p resolution.
I must I was really amazed at the student body talent making this musical happen, but the geek in me was equaly in awe of the camera and camcorder performance as well. During all this I was also following play by play on atpworldtour.com from Stockholm Open where Jarkko Nieminen was playing in the semi-final. Convergence happens.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Streetlife in Bangalore, part II
Ventured out of Palm Meadows again to practice photographing moving subjects. Tried to get some motion blur into the motorbike shots with some success. When the streets are where many people live it's amazing how much life you can capture by just sitting still and watching for an hour...
Saturday, October 2, 2010
On the state of tech "journalism"
As marketing has gone to Internet and people's purchase decisions are more and more shaped by influencers and bloggers, the temptation must be great to start leaning towards a particular brand in order to enjoy preferential treatment and perhaps some funding as well. Case of Eldar Murtazin and Samsung is a prime example. I should think every consumer brand now has their list of friendly sites and this is I think quite okay. The fiercest battle has for a couple of years been in the smartphone space - there is no bigger prize today in any business than selling the leading smartphone.
For me the boundary of brand-friendliness is crossed when one starts to tamper with the evidence to get a desired result. Engadget published a comparison between Nokia N8 and iPhone 4 cameras and to the surprise of many the results seem to favor the iPhone.
That's an interesting result, as the N8 should from hardware point of view have a camera that's miles better. The N8 has a 12MP sensor while iPhone sports a 5MP one so it should be able to capture a lot more detail in each shot, unless constrained by the optics. N8 The Carl Zeiss optics are claimed to have a great resolution too, so what gives? For reasons only known to Engadget, the comparison shots have been resized to 800 by 450, so almost all the additional details in the N8 original shots are obviously lost. It's like comparing the topspeed of a Lada to a Lamboghini and running the latter only in reverse gear. So obviously the comparison is rigged heavily towards iPhone from the start, but still I couldn't get over how bad the N8 pictures looked.
For some reason Engadget also included the N8 (but not the iPhone) originals in the article. I took one of them and resized it to the resolution used for the comparison shots with Photoshop. If you click on the pic and view it in the original resolution can clearly see that the comparison shot published by Engadget for N8 has been heavily softened compared to the original. Just look at the flags and flagpoles in the building in the background, the water of the fountain or the pigeon behind it. Or the leaves in the trees, which in the Engadget comparison shot are just a dark green mush. The added details were not invented by Photoshop, they were there in the original but got somehow misplaced by the person who made the comparison.
The Engadget article states, that "Naturally, all the images are entirely unretouched (but for our masterly watermarking)". Haha. I don't know if this true for the iPhone shots as they neglected to post the originals, but for N8 I call that statement BUSTED...
For me the boundary of brand-friendliness is crossed when one starts to tamper with the evidence to get a desired result. Engadget published a comparison between Nokia N8 and iPhone 4 cameras and to the surprise of many the results seem to favor the iPhone.
That's an interesting result, as the N8 should from hardware point of view have a camera that's miles better. The N8 has a 12MP sensor while iPhone sports a 5MP one so it should be able to capture a lot more detail in each shot, unless constrained by the optics. N8 The Carl Zeiss optics are claimed to have a great resolution too, so what gives? For reasons only known to Engadget, the comparison shots have been resized to 800 by 450, so almost all the additional details in the N8 original shots are obviously lost. It's like comparing the topspeed of a Lada to a Lamboghini and running the latter only in reverse gear. So obviously the comparison is rigged heavily towards iPhone from the start, but still I couldn't get over how bad the N8 pictures looked.
For some reason Engadget also included the N8 (but not the iPhone) originals in the article. I took one of them and resized it to the resolution used for the comparison shots with Photoshop. If you click on the pic and view it in the original resolution can clearly see that the comparison shot published by Engadget for N8 has been heavily softened compared to the original. Just look at the flags and flagpoles in the building in the background, the water of the fountain or the pigeon behind it. Or the leaves in the trees, which in the Engadget comparison shot are just a dark green mush. The added details were not invented by Photoshop, they were there in the original but got somehow misplaced by the person who made the comparison.
The Engadget article states, that "Naturally, all the images are entirely unretouched (but for our masterly watermarking)". Haha. I don't know if this true for the iPhone shots as they neglected to post the originals, but for N8 I call that statement BUSTED...
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