Mostly Harmless

Mostly about my amusement

Year: 2011 (page 5 of 6)

March 3, 2011

No Batteries Required

olympus-trip-35

This started with my looking for a good compact digital camera with a viewfinder. As a result I bought a film compact camera that was manufactured in 1972.

I prefer cameras with a viewfinder because I take better photos when I hold the camera close to my face (my arms shake). There are several good digital candidates such as the Canon G11/G12 or even the Nikon P7000. But they’re also not inexpensive and I already have a fine DSLR that I take hundreds of photos with.

Why not go back to film? I hadn’t even owned a film camera since 1997. So I started looking on eBay and Flickr and was inspired by the cult following that the Olympus Trip 35 has created.

About the Olympus Trip 35

The Olympus Trip 35 was sold between 1968 and 1984. It’s been reported that ten million units were sold, but that’s questionable since that number may have included other Trip models. Serial numbers shared online never seem to reach 6 million.

Less than 6 million is a respectable number. But what I find amazing is that virtually the same model was sold for 16 years. Today that’s unheard of for a consumer product to be left alone with just minor internal production changes.

The Trip 35 has 4 zone focusing at 1 meter, 1.5 meters, 3 meters, and infinity and takes a 43.5mm filter size. You guess the approximate range and set the focus accordingly.

This camera does not use batteries. The light meter is a selenium cell that moves a needle. That movement determines the aperture size and shutter speed. You can read up on this at the top of this web page and see the light meter in action at this YouTube video.

It’s a solid camera made out of metal and has some weight. It’s not bulky and it feels comfortable to use.

So you bought one?

I ordered 3 and there is a method to my madness.

The first one I ordered was from Paul Lamb’s Trip Man website in the UK. This company obtains these cameras, refurbishes them, and puts on a replacement for the original leatherette. They have a selection of colors, textures, and accessories.

This is a good buy because the camera comes with a 6 month warranty. This is not a modern SLR that you can get serviced anywhere. While I am not mechanically clueless, I want to be able to enjoy the camera without replacing the light seals or un-sticking the aperture blades. Trip Man has earned a good reputation and many people recommend him. I had made a small mistake with my order and this was responded to very quickly and satisfactorily.

If you want to buy a Olympus Trip 35 that just works, then get one from Trip Man.

The second Trip 35 was from eBay and sold as-is. That one arrived first (pictured above) and I bought it with the intention making repairs, replacing the light seals and leatherette.

The purchase was inexpensive and came with a strap, original leather bag, and original lens cap. This camera was going to be my experiment in stripping the old leatherette and possibly take apart and clean the aperture blades. See this link for a great step-by-step with photos for taking apart one of these cameras.

A great plan except this second camera is apparently perfect! The camera is in wonderful condition and only needs replacement light seals for the film chamber and possibly a little cleaning of the view finder.

I shot a roll of Kodak ISO 400 and will get it developed tomorrow. If the exposures are mostly good then I’ll leave this one alone and just replace those seals. Stripping the leatherette would feel like tossing a rock though a window. I may do it sometime, but not this month.

And my third camera from eBay? I want one that works but has not been refurbished. Call this one my reference model, it’s a late version with a black button. A quick bid and I have another one on the way.

So, what next?

Now I take pictures. Lily and I use Costco which not only develops 35mm film but for about $3 more you can get a DVD with scans of your film. Near where I work are a couple of labs that a friend recommends. Film is not dead yet, it’s just hibernating.

At this time I’m not interested in developing my own film. That may change but I’m more interested in improving my photography.

This is a 1970’s era viewfinder camera. While the exposure and aperture are automatic, you have to think before take the photo. When I use the DSLR I intentionally shoot hundreds of photos and cherry pick the best ones. Those end up on Flickr.

I am hoping that by using this film camera that I’ll learn for compose my shots better. Not just point and click but plan my shots. I’ll still waste film, but the ones that I like will be posted online.

February 21, 2011

Yep, F.E.A.R. 2 really is creepy

Okay memory, my bad. F.E.A.R. 2 really is creepy. I remembered it differently and the updated UI, graphics, etc. really make the game more playable.

After I completed the first game again, I instead replayed the DLC add-on F.E.A.R. 2: Reborn. That went quickly and I then started F.E.A.R. 2 from scratch. The key bindings are a little different from before (F is flashlight, E is use) but the game play really flows.

Just like the first game, playing the game late into the night and in the dark can freak me out a little. I’ll still complete the game quickly but I really can’t wait to get the third game once it comes out.

February 18, 2011

Finished F.E.A.R. again

Once again I have completed F.E.A.R. and even played it in the dark. According to STEAM, it took me 9 hours. I must be out of practice because I had to quick save the game a lot. Due to the graphic violence and language I couldn’t play around the kids. The final scenes still gave me goose bumps.

Now to move on to F.E.A.R. 2. Project Origin. This game came out in 2009 and has updated graphics. The first time I completed this game, I rushed through the game a little quickly, this time I’ll take my time.

February 13, 2011

Over 5 years later and it’s still scary

Since I have the F.E.A.R. games all on STEAM, I’m playing them over again from scratch. Between the music and sudden appearance of creepy bad guys, the game still is frightening.

This game was released in 2005. The graphics are definitely dated but the play is still very good. The next installment is supposed to have a more random appearance of bad guys but the original still feels like you are starring in a gruesome horror movie.

February 13, 2011

Reeder for the Mac

I have a 90 minute commute to work and about an hour of that is on the train. To make my ride more entertaining, I use my iPhone to listen to music, browse the web, and read up on my RSS feeds with Google Reader.

Google Reader is OK but it’s a web page based app. Frequent page reloads, jumping to a new page in another browser window is not the best experience. So I downloaded and installed Reeder for the iPhone and have not been sorry. It’s $3 that was well spent.

I generally do not like RSS feed clients. The one’s I’ve used on Windows were just wrappers for Internet Explorer (ugh!) and felt like crude hacks. But on a whim I installed the beta Reeder for the Mac and have been playing with it.

It’s a clean app and so far I like it. Since it’s a beta it is not-quite as filled out on the Mac as it is on the iPhone, but that’s probably because I’ve not found all the shortcuts.

The best feature I like is that when I get an excerpt in my RSS feed, I click on Readability and the full post comes up. It doesn’t work on all feeds such as Gizmodo but clicking the link will bring up the post within the app. The articles are all well laid out and the view is easy to read.

The only thing that I can see is missing is easy navigation to the next article; it supports swiping but haven’t figured out how to do that with a magic mouse. I’ll keep playing with it, this beta is definitely worth the time.

Update: Ha! Read the funny manual. Keyboard shortcuts work fine.

February 6, 2011

Upcoming 2011 video games

I’ve been waiting for the next installment of Crysis to come out but have recently gone back to playing some F.E.A.R. via Steam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KpKc-i43p8

Looks like F.E.A.R. 3 will be a worthwhile game. When the first game came out, the horror factor was so well done that some scenes scared the jeebies out of me. Even now, playing that game in the dark can be startling.

Compared to recent games the original game shows how much FPS games have evolved. The second game was more refined although the story line was much less creepy.

This trailer shows that the 3rd game will have a good storyline and the I’m counting on the graphics being up-to-date as well. I doubt they’ll be on par with this trailer but here you can see what the game play should be like.

With Crysis 2 and F.E.A.R 3 both arriving in 2011, I’m expecting lots of good game play.

February 5, 2011

Opensource is still the best

As part of my ongoing home IT challenges I have set up a basement server running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. My normal method of managing my servers is to do everything by ssh.

That’s geeky, but not much fun. So I looked for a free X server and came across Xming. It’s a not GPL’ed but is it freely available and the license is not burdensome.

Using XLaunch, I setup the parameters I want and saved that to a file. That .xlaunch file extension is registered to Xming so I just need to double-click the icon and it starts my desktop remotely using X windows.I’ve got the desktop in a neat 1280×1024 window using “-screen 0 1280 1024” as an Xming command line argument.

The only problem I am having is that I am launching gnome-session and it’s not exiting cleanly at then of my session. Most likely that’s not quiet the right program to initiate an X session but for now it’s acceptable.

January 23, 2011

Light bulb! moment with FIOS

Speed test while wired into the FIOS box

Every now and then I recall the words that one of my friends always asked when we were doing some work.

“Right. What are you trying to accomplish exactly?”

I had migrated a while back from Optimum Online to FIOS and put my new cable model where the old one was in the basement. I hooked it up to my Linux home server/firewall. At the time that was a good arrangement since Optimum did not provide me with a firewall like device.

The design from Optimum at that time was very simple. You hooked up your PC to the cable modem and got a valid IP address. If you wanted, you could replace that PC with a Linksys like device with Wi-Fi and hide your PCs behind that device. But you had to provide that device yourself.

My old setup had the PCs in the basement hooked up to the cable modem and a pair of draft-N wireless AP used to bridge the basement and the second floor. Once of those PCs was a Linux box doing double duty as a NAT’ing firewall.

This worked out only marginally well and my transfer speed was ~12 Mb/s download from my main PC upstairs.

FIOS comes with a cable modem/4 port hub/802.11B/G access point. It also doubles as a RFC 1918 private network so you can hide many IP devices behind it.

When I upgraded from Optimum Online I just replaced the old cable modem with the Verizon one and turned off the Wi-Fi and enjoyed the same slow speeds upstairs and contemplated running Ethernet cable from the basement to the attic. Running cable would be the best solution but unlike my previous early 20th century homes, this house has no straight runs from the basement to the attic. That translated into a lot of work and I was not really looking forward to that task.

The light bulb moment occurred when I realized that a) no one used the network in the basement, and b) I already had TV cables running upstairs.

Speed test using Wifi from another floor

All I did was turn off my 2 draft-N APs and moved the FIOS box up to the second floor. My main PCs run directly off of the FIOS device (and get amazing kick ass speeds!) while the rest of the house gets 802.11G. The Wi-Fi speeds are not bad at all (see graphic) and peace and harmony once again resides on my network.

This does mean that for the time being I do not have any network connected PCs in the basement. But except for an occasional goofing off in the basement that is not a bad thing.

The Linux firewall was suffering from a lack of updates and patches. I was running an old distribution and updating to something newer has been on my to-do list for months. Now all access is via the Verizon box. It’s one less moving part and should be easier to support than my old setup.

And in the meanwhile I get to enjoy the benefit of the speed that I’m paying for from FIOS. It also means I have to rip out all the cables from my main PC setup. It’s a huge mess and screams “FIRE HAZARD!” just looking at it.

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Jan Dembowski

Jan Dembowski

I am a software enthusiast who is easily amused and definitely mostly harmless.

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