* Posts by caerphoto

17 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jul 2008

Airbus secures whopping 180 plane deal

caerphoto
Alert

Sharklets... with frikkin' laser beams!

I sense a new avenue of military research opening up...

Gawker rooted by anonymous hackers

caerphoto
Badgers

Up yours

Does the server not check that the post wasn't written by you? On the forum I'm making I hide the Delete and Edit links for posts that aren't yours purely out of UI/usability concerns, but even if you fiddle with the request URL in an attempt to edit someone else's posts or what have you, the server-side code will just tell you to get stuffed because you don't have permission.

SanDisk, Sony pitch über CompactFlash spec

caerphoto

"at the moment"

"At 300MBps it's plenty fast enough for anything around at the moment"

Yes, but this is for a storage card to be used years from now, where 300MB/s might seem a bit slow - recording 4K raw video, for instance.

Phosphor World Time Curved E Ink watch

caerphoto

KISS

I would really like a simple e-ink digital watch that tells the time and date, is durable, water resistant to 100m (or better, 200m), not stupidly big, and not over-priced.

It doesn't need world time or any other gimmicks. Just something cheap, durable and lightweight - ideal for outdoors activities.

Apple rolls out two new MacBook Air models

caerphoto
FAIL

Cut and paste

"2. No messing about needed at all. Cutting and pasting implies that you have to open windows anyway. And what happens if you get that 'never exptected crash' before you've managed to paste?"

Usually when I cut&paste it's because I HAVEN'T got both windows open. I Cut the file, navigate to where I want it moved, then Paste it.

As for the crash nonsense, you do realise that Windows doesn't actually move the file or anything until you Paste it? When you click Cut, all you're doing is tagging it as "waiting to be moved". If the power goes out, or Explorer crashes, no big deal, the file will still be there. Sure, if the crash/power-out occurs during the move there will might be problems, but again, the original file isn't touched until it's first been copied to the new destination.

Google renews vows with Chrome OS

caerphoto

Use a smartphone?

"Sounds to me like Chrome OS is only going to be of use to people who'd be better served by a decent smartphone."

Or, you know, people who want to browse the web and send e-mails on a screen that isn't tiny. People like my parents, hell even myself, who want an easy to use (for them, not for people like us who are tech-savvy) computer that is relatively inexpensive and isn't beholden to a mobile phone company.

Honestly, some people need to take a peek outside their own little bubbles and see what the real world is like.

Ten Essential... Gaming Mice

caerphoto

Logitech G5

Good lord, £100 for a mouse?! I thought the £40 I paid for my Logitech G5 was a lot.

Still, the G5 has served me very well. It's very comfortable for those, like me, with big hands, the grippy surface helps you keep a firm grip in the hot weather. The sensitivity and acceleration are just right, and the large teflon pads mean it slides around nicely.

The only downside is the wheel - it's fine for scrolling but because it has a tilt function it's sometimes hard to just press it straight down. The wheel on my Razer Copperhead was nicer (albeit the only really nice thing about that mouse). Still, the tilt function is quite handy so I'm not sure I'd want to give it up.

Mobile Broadband Best Buys

caerphoto

Three's latency

When we moved into our new flat, we initially balked at the £110 connection fee BT wanted for setting up a landline, so we decided to try mobile broadband. For no good reason I chose 3, with the £15 one-month rolling contract and 5GB allowance. We are both heavy World of Warcraft players, and while during the day with only one of us using the connection it's quite playable, with 300-500ms ping times, once it gets to around 5pm things rapidly go downhill, with frequent huge (10 seconds or more) lag spikes, and disconnects every 15 minutes or so. Even web browsing was painful - pages sometimes stop downloading for no apparent reason.

All this despite the 3 connection manager showing a 5-bar HSDPA connection (in Crewe CW1 area).

So, at least for gaming I can't recommend 3. Possibly the problem is due to their rather slow upload speeds, I dunno - if so maybe Vodafone would be better.

World of Warcraft film makers thicken plot

caerphoto
Headmaster

Hate? Really?

You actually /hate/ WoW? Why? And the people who play, too? What, did you have a bad experience with the game or something?

Pentax K-7

caerphoto
WTF?

Mine is bigger than yours, ner ner

"So you have an image stabilised auto-focus 300mm f2.8 then?"

Who really cares? Hardly anyone actually buys lenses like that, and if they do, they probably know in advance not to get a Pentax. It's not exactly sort of lens you buy on a whim.

"If you need to justify why you bought Pentax, fine, but I suggest it wasn't for the wide availability of lenses..."

Look! My camera system has more lenses than yours! It MUST be better!

No. Maybe people buy Pentax (or Sony or Olympus or Panasonic) cameras because those systems have the actual lenses they need, along with cameras that have the features they need.

Nikon Coolpix S1000pj

caerphoto

Viewing distance

> "The eye can't see more than 4 pixels per mm anyway, which is about 1MPx on an A4 sheet."

That clearly depends on how far away you view the print from (which is generally a function of print size) and how good your eyesight is.

Eye resolution is measured in "x" per arc-minute, so is independent of distance.

Fujifilm Finepix F200EXR

caerphoto

High-end compacts

"If you require the versatility of RAW format, you understand why you want it and you have the programs to get the most out of it (Photoshop et al) then you don't need a compact camera, with all the restriction in capability the design and the small sensor gives."

Not true; just look at the market for high-end compacts like the Panasonic LX3, Canon G11 or aforementioned Ricoh GRD3 - all compact cameras with full manual control, raw, and other features wanted/needed by advanced users. Furthermore, raw is more precisely about control over the final image: tonality, colour reproduction, that sort of thing. It's better in that images can be made to more accurately conform to the photographer's vision, rather than because of any measurable technical benefit.

"This sort of criticism is as relevant as saying that the only problem with a £2000 Nikon DSLR is that it wouldn't fit in a shirt pocket."

There's nothing wrong with wanting the image- and build-quality of such a camera in a more compact form factor, hence the introduction of Micro 4/3, and cameras like the Leica X1.

caerphoto
Headmaster

Effective

"For low light shooting and solid dynamic range, the Ricoh GR DIgital 3 is nothing short of stunning- even if it does cheat by effectively having a prime lens.."

"Effectively"? It's a 6mm f/1.9 prime lens. No "effectively" about it, unless you mean in the sense that "it has a prime lens and this makes it an effective camera".

Mozilla plots Firefox interface overhaul

caerphoto
Stop

My god, what a bunch of whiners

I'm always baffled by the amount of whining in these comments. The menu bar is gone! OH NO, THE SKY IS FALLING!

Seriously, how often do you actually use the menu bar? What on earth do you use it FOR? Should you choose to answer this, bear in mind what kind of user you are. If you're a developer or anyone else heavily involved in IT, YOU ARE NOT NORMAL. You are in a tiny minority compared to the regular users who just browse the web.

I've been using Chrome for months and the number of times I've needed to use a menu (at least one that isn't the right-click menu) I can count on the fingers of one hand. For those rare situations, the Page and Spanner menus suffice.

As for the tabs-on-top thing: it makes more sense that way. The contents of a tab are the page and the address of that page combined, thus it's logical to have the tab visually contain these elements. There is perhaps an inconsistency here with the bookmarks toolbar, however.

Microsoft's browser ballot bodge gets the nod

caerphoto

Re: Waste of time...

"supplying IE pre-installed doesn't prevent users from choosing to install a different browser"

You don't get it. The vast majority of Windows users don't even know they can change the browser. Most of them don't even know what a browser is. To them, that blue 'e' icon on their desktop IS the internet, thus they will never change their browser for something more secure/advanced/whatever because they don't know they can.

Samsung steels itself for Twittering yoof touchphone release

caerphoto

Tocco Lite

So it's like a Tocco Lite but with different colours on the back?

Nikon D40 entry-level digital SLR

caerphoto

Re: Can Use Old Nikon Lenses Too!

"I can use any Nikon K mount lens granted they wont be autofocus so back to manual but great if you have a lot of old K mount lenses lying around from a old forgotton film Nikon."

Er, K mount is Pentax. Nikon is F mount.

And here's another recommendation for the Pentax K100D Super. Has built-in anti-shake, a proper status LCD, runs on AA batteries, and has better compatibility with old (i.e. cheap) lenses (can use all metering modes with some types (the "A" ones) , vs. M only with Nikon manual lenses).