In this case, that would be a cheap lens.

Pentax K-1000
December 30, 2006
Gran Teatro, Havana

I wanted to buy a macro and a wide-angle lens for the Pentax for the Cuba trip, but lenses are ghastly expensive and I didn’t want to spend much money, I just wanted to do some experimentation. So I bought a Phoenix 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 lens at B&H in New York City the week before Christmas, and I simply could NOT get the lens to read the light meter properly. Also, it produced a super-grainy wonky colour effect once I got the roll developed. I haven’t posted any photos with that lens until now, because they’re so bloody awful. But I’ve come to grudgingly appreciate how the pictures look now — at least a little bit — instead of outright disliking them.

My little workaround for the terrible colour casts and grain is to make them monochrome and bump up the contrast, like so:

Generally, I would never buy a lens for a trip without some testing first because there is always the risk of losing all those once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunities. But I figured if I didn’t take TOO many photos with it and relied on my trusty 50mm and even the 80-200mm I wouldn’t be putting all my proverbial eggs in one basket. I booked the Cuba trip within hours of leaving Toronto and I had only a day in New York, so there wasn’t much time to research lenses. In lieu of that, I bought cheap and now those photos look like they were taken with expired film from 1976 with a camera that’s been dropped a few times and lost its ability to focus. Maybe if I don’t tag the photos like I normally do, it’ll look like it was on purpose.

Technorati tags: Havana, Cuba, Pentax K-1000, Phoenix lens

As seen on a Mustang Ferrari on University Ave.

Gah, I’m so frustrated. I wasted an entire evening on car maintenance that mostly didn’t happen. Just getting spark plugs from the Ford dealership reminded me of when I went to them to complete the car importation back in the spring and they were complete jerks. I’m beginning to think I should forget about car maintenance and drive the car until it won’t run anymore and then use Zipcar if I need one like I used Cooperative Auto Network in Vancouver. Because I imported the car in a duty-free category, I can’t sell it for two years, so I’m pretty much stuck with it. If I need to go on a road trip, I’ll rent a car.

Flight by Cat Faery Shari

So I’ve been posting photos I’ve taken with the Nokia 6682 mobile phone for the past few days, but its convenience doesn’t touch on what you can achieve with a regular digicam.

Shari took this photo last month with a Canon PowerShot SD500, which is in the category of “regular digicam” (like my Canon PowerShot A80). Cameraphones like the Nokia 6682 don’t have the shutter speed range to capture fast-moving objects such as birds in flight. (Great shot, Shari!)

However, I was fairly pleased with the phone’s results yesterday to get some shots of the kids on swings. The challenge was not only the kids moving, but that it was cloudy and coming up towards early evening.

More photos from yesterday.

I like the photo on the right, but there’s no in-camera cropping tool. You can only see the expression on Jakim’s face if you view it at full size, which is 1280×960 for this phone. It has 6x digital zoom, but digital zoom is a useless feature for capture. After all, if you want to zoom in on your subject AFTER the photo is taken you can on the phone (and any other device after upload), but digital zoom is not “real” zoom, i.e., you are only enlarging the available pixels, not capturing more detail at a closer distance. Anytime you see “digital zoom” touted somewhere, it’s merely a marketing gimmick, not a selling point.

more…

I put in an online order for Bell’s landline service so I could also order their DSL.

I had Roger’s cable service briefly in Vancouver, and it was horrible, so I switched to Telus ADSL and had that for years. Years of smooth sailing, until some colossal blunders in 2004. I had incredibly good fortune with their wireless service, though, so I am not anti-Telus everything. But I do still remember the shoddy cable internet service from Rogers, even though the technician hooked me up with free cable TV until customer service figured it out months later. By then, I decided I wasn’t watching enough of this free cable TV to keep putting up with the horrible internet service.

So I decided to get a stripped-down, very basic phone service with Bell ($15.95 for landline plus three features) and get their Sympatico DSL service. I’d never dealt with Bell before, because Telus had the landline monopoly and Bell had only broken into the Western telecom market in recent years with wireless service.

I submitted the online phone service order last night and was pleased to see a prompt e-mail this morning from Bell. more…

Who keeps airline socks? Anyone? I found some in a drawer this morning and they were PERFECT for putting over David’s swollen ankles to go to clinic this morning. Who knew?

It’s been a long, tiring day. Both of us had a hard time getting through the prolonged time at the clinic, where the radiation machine needed maintenance and consequently delayed all the appointments. We were late getting over to the hematology and oncology clinic next door by nearly two hours!

We made good use of the wheelchairs at the clinics, too. There was a lot of back and forth between radiation, blood work, and the injection clinic today, and the cane was wholly inadequate. We requested a scrip for a wheelchair, but we didn’t have time to pick one up today.

There was also the rigamarole with the increased painkiller dosage that the insurance company is not allowing the pharmacy to fulfill. more…

Hip!
Hip!
Hooray!

The other night I successfully completed my first attempt at creating a photo book, and I used recycled materials:

• cardboard from Amazon.com shipments
• ribbon from gifts received
• an old tablecloth dug out of David’s junk storage containers

It’s amazing how much stuff can be recycled rather than buying things new. At the same time, I can’t believe the things that people throw away.

I went to the dollar store yesterday near our house for the first time, and I’m feeling guilty as a result of it. Why?

I found large numbers of items which EASILY cost more than $1 to produce. Dollar stores are everywhere, and how they manage to make a profit is that everything comes from China, where the labour costs next to nothing. I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the idea of supporting an economy with such an atrocious record of human rights violations, especially one where obviously people are not getting paid a working wage. If they were, we’d be paying more than a dollar for many of those goods on the shelves. I’m not saying most of the inventory is worth much more than that — the stuff barely holds together after it leaves the store — but there’s still the cost of human labour in addition to machinery, importing, distribution, etc.

It’s not that I wish to pay ridiculous sums of money for cheap goods at a big box store rather than a dollar store. Dollar stores have a limited selection of goods, anyway, they’re not direct competitors for any one type of store. There will always be a market for cheap goods. But what makes things worse is that because the items are so incredibly cheap, we don’t think twice about throwing them away. Then buying more of the same! It’s not really the act of buying that I’m railing against, it’s the consumption-quick disposal-consumption cycle that gets fed by the steady increase of a wider selection of disposable goods at prices which cannot support fair costs for labour. They may not label themselves as “The Disposable Goods Store”, but society views dollar stores that way. Either our desire for quality items (manufactured by people getting paid properly) is diminished, or our consideration for the energy that is required to make a product is superseded by what we’re willing to pay for it. In other words, we don’t care if Chinese people work for pennies as long as we don’t pay more than pennies.

How this relates to me fumbling around with making a photo book from recycled materials is that it took me so long to create the damn thing that I had time to ask myself the following questions:

“How much would I pay for someone to make this for me?”
“How much is the other person worth to me that I would make this for them?”
“How much easier it would be if I just BOUGHT one?!?”
“What can I do to make this easier next time?”
“Do Chinese people ask themselves, ‘Why would a Westerner pay for such crap?’”

1:30am Saturday

I sent this pic from my cameraphone on the way home from New York. I tried to send it while walking down to the metro, but the photo hadn’t finished uploading when I lost the signal, which resulted in an aborted upload to Flickr… which might’ve answered my question whether Cingular sends the data in one packet or in parts (or is that at Flickr’s end? I’ve seen partial uploads/corrupted data before). I was wondering, since Cingular botched my cameraphone upload of Hugh’s pumpkin inspection last weekend, sending it SIX TIMES, three days later.

Speaking of baffling the consumer, I went to JP Morgan Chase (or is it Chase Manhattan?) to change my pound sterling to U.S. greenbacks this afternoon. It’s been sitting in my wallet for five weeks now because I can’t find a single outlet, bank or otherwise, that will convert foreign currency around here. You’d think I was trying to change Lebanese or Egyptian pounds instead of pound sterling, but the banking officer I spoke to said nobody deals with foreign currency at all in Scranton. Call me a cynic, but I’d probably get laughed out of the bank if I showed up with Canadian dollars or Mexican pesos — even though they’re from next door.

I was supposed to be in New York today, anyway, so I figured it was high time I got the GBP done and converted. I went to Chase because the last time I was in New York to pick up Lucy from JFK, she was able to change it there without too much trouble. She had to show her passport, but at least they didn’t require her to have an account. I remembered to bring along my passport, and stood in the glacially slow Friday afternoon line of clientele impatient to get their weekend money.

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Over in the business accounts queue, an irate customer pointed to her watch.

“But I was standing here right at four o’clock!” She looked around for validation.

“Right on the dot of four! How can you not take me?!? I’m the last person!” She did have a point, why single her out? Penalty for not rushing the counter?

Meanwhile, I carefully guarded my spot in the queue. This is New York, after all. Those ‘keep one car-length’ and ‘don’t tailgate’ rules don’t apply here, for vehicles or people. When I finally reached the counter, I put the money through the little security trough. I don’t do bank chit-chat, I’m an advocate of speedy, efficient transactions. Besides, this looks like a lynching mob.

The teller asked me three times what the currency was called. BRITISH POUND STERLING. STERLING. POUND STERLING. BRITISH POUNDS. GBP. She also picked up and rotated several notes like she’d never seen security holograms before, or different editions of the same denomination.

I could see the little thought balloons floating above her head: “Oooh, look at the colours! How pretty!”

Then she took out some forms and asked the next teller how to spell the currency on the forms.

Hello? Is this not Chase Manhattan in TIMES SQUARE, the busiest, most famous intersection in all of the United States? There are more tourists here than the population of Scranton, for crying out loud, does nobody change money anymore? I’m a card person, myself, but you’d think Queen Elizabeth II’s face has made enough rounds in the past sixty years or so that she might be recognised by a bank teller in Manhattan. And when all else fails, one might consult the print on the notes.

Then she asked ME how much money was in the pile. The natives behind me were getting restless, so I told her the total quickly, and offered that she might want to check it. I jumped through all their little hoops, showed my passport, filled out my address, signed it, blah blah blah, then went on my merry way downtown towards the financial district… where they had better know what GBP means!

Took the 7 train eastbound, then the express 4 southbound, but it still seemed to take forever. That’s Friday rush hour for you. Got out at Bowling Green, which should change its name to Construction Central. Yeesh. In the end, I had to be fetched from across the street at Duane Reade because the Ritz-Carlton sign was completely obscured by a tree. (Who’s idea was THAT? Trees grow, even in New York. Whoa Gail, sarcastic much?)

I was there to meet up with Mister M and Mister B* for some nosh in the 11th floor lounge before their flight to Vancouver. Mister B was on Bangalore time, so he was nodding off. I hadn’t seen Mister B for nigh on a year, so I was well out of the loop on his offshore activities, and it had almost been that long since I’d seen Mister M. There was much to catch up on, but as usual the clock ran down far too quickly. The car service to the airport was waiting downstairs after only half an hour. We continued the conversation in the car, which was quite full already — the trunk was chockers, and the front seat piled high with carry-on luggage. But we made do sharing the back seat and were quite glad we didn’t have to manoeuvre through the Friday gridlock through Midtown and along Van Wyck to JFK. It was zooish, to put it mildly. They checked in to Cathay, and I backtracked to Manhattan.

It’s been a bit of a wacky day, and transportation loomed large on the agenda:

• car to bus station
• bus to Port Authority
• subway to Financial District
• hired car to JFK
• AirTrain from JFK to subway
• subway to Port Authority
• bus to local station
• car to home

The day started off wacky, thanks to an overambitious Photoshop project and a very funny phone call from Hong Kong. Days like this should be framed and put behind glass, for posterity.

* It’s Mister B who’s privacy-conscious, but for consistency I cloaked them both in mystery. Ha! Mrs. M would laugh if she read this.

Shoppers Drug Mart Optimum Points Donation Program

I was at Shoppers Drug Mart earlier tonight, and when I was at the counter there was a sign that said points could be donated online to charity. As of January 12, more than $677,000 was raised this way for the Canadian Red Cross Tsunami Relief Fund!

I’ve always wondered what to do with my Optimum points. I carry around all these cards and make sure I whip ‘em out to collect whatever I can (I flew to London last April on the Airmiles program), but I usually participate in programs to get airline tickets. As far as merchandise is concerned, only now and again does it motivate me to participate. Shoppers Drug Mart on Davie Street is just up the hill from the apartment, and much closer than London Drugs (which I actually prefer), so I end up there more often. Also because there’s a post office in the store, and that’s the outlet where I have to pick up larger packages that don’t fit through my letter slot. (The carriers usually ring my bell and save me the trouble… bless ‘em.) So, I’ve been passively racking up the points, but now I can offload them to my preference over merchandise — charity.

[Now, if I can only do that through Safeway -- I must've collected a bajillion of their Club points by now and never used them towards anything. I see that Telus Mobility offered a choice of several reward options over Christmas -- I believe the options were 1) credit towards Telus Puretracks (the online music store before iTunes opened up in Canada), or 2) something too boring to remember, or 3) to donate $20 to one of the charities on the list. I think I chose an arts and learning-oriented progam... I can't find the link (or much else in this apartment), otherwise I'd post it.]

OK, this is disturbing:

This guy created an image gallery dedicated to the opening of British Columbia’s first Krispy Kreme store, in Delta (south of Vancouver) in February. He’s even taken photos of the construction in progress!

MY KRISPY KREME PHOTO GALLARY (sic)

One of life’s great passions!!

Please note that I have no connection with Krispy Kreme … just a life-long fan who loves … fresh … hot doughnuts from them … I feel faint …. DOUGHNUTS !!! DOUGHNUTS !!!

Somebody get this man a doughnut before he passes out!

Personally, I don’t get the hype. I’ve been hearing about Krispy Kremes for years and how much people go bonkers over it, so last night I popped my Krispy Kreme cherry and tried one for the first time, since David had a coupon for a dozen of them. We got home, and I paused from drinking my latte to take a bite. I swear, my blood sugar level spiked at that very moment — IT WAS SO SWEET!!! I couldn’t believe how sweet it was; I took a swig of my coffee and was thankful I gave up sugar ages ago. Oy!!! How can people handle this stuff??? If I were back in BC, I’d stick to good old Tim Horton’s — less hype, less sugar. (OK, maybe the same sugar, but not as sickly sweet.)

I was going to be an EARLY-early adopter, but I waited months before diving in. I have Telus Enhanced ADSL, so I thought I might as well get my money’s worth and ditch the Telus landline since I can’t claim it on my taxes. Also, Telus charges a small fortune for features such as Caller ID, voicemail, Call Forward, etc., that even though I pay for those features in a cheaper bundle, it adds quite a lot onto the total.

Advantages:

1) I can take the phone number with me, just by bringing the gateway router and plugging it into any broadband connection. Anyone who phones me can reach me at the same number, even if I’m overseas;
2) Calls are free between Primus Broadband customers (obviously would need more people on this system for this to be a usable feature);
3) More features available that Telus does not have;
4) Bigger voicemail capacity, messages held on system indefinitely;
5) Cheaper!

Disadvantages:

1) The word is out whether my broadband connection can handle this much traffic — I already use it all day for VPN with the office, in conjunction with PCAnywhere to remote control my office computer, plus the regular stuff like e-mail and surfing;
2) No Advanced Call Forwarding, which I use all the time to forward the home phone to my mobile… I often forget to forward the phone, so I usually end up doing it on mass transit or in the car. Now I have to do it from the phone itself using *72;
3) No 411 or 911, the former which I never use and the latter which I hope I’ll never use (I have one charger at home and one at the office, and keep the mobile phone on full charge all the time);
4) I’ll have to get a better cordless phone, because of all the equipment in this room affecting the line quality (Ross already complained about it today);
5) This is the only phone currently hooked up to the gateway, so it should be cordless, anyway; if I want to hook up another phone, I’ll have to use the splitter, which means even more cables/cords… right now I have three power bars full, running from two power points in this part of the room. It’s a cable/wire crazy mess.

Right now I’m in the middle of the process called porting, where Telus gives up the line to Primus. At the moment my incoming calls are ringing on the landline, but not on the broadband line. I can make outgoing calls on either the landline or the broadband phones. I thought my intercom wasn’t working, but it turns out I forgot I’d turned the ringer off while Matt was staying here. Feeling a bit sheepish about that, since I was totally convinced the intercom was hardwired into all the apartment phone jacks, not routing through the phone company (as it does with new buildings; yay for old buildings in the West End!), then convinced myself otherwise when the courier companies couldn’t reach me. When I asked the building manager about it today (before I checked to see if I’d turned off the ringer), she said half the tenants in my 32-storey building don’t even have landlines in their suite — they just use their mobile phones. So, for sure the intercom should work.