It's official... Size Matters

Well now before you say "But Vraxx, you're HUGE!" I'm talking about memory capacity. With a little help from the Rebate-fairy I opted to pickup a nice 8GB CF card for my EOS 30D (this also means I can retire one of my 4GB Micros to my 10D). The main reason I made the switch however was to shoot more in RAW. I've been itching to really do the majority of my work shooting RAW+JPG but on freeform and action shoots it's just too cumbersome to remember to swap out your cards. Granted, nothing like the days of shooting 35mm with a frigging bandoleer of the things across your chest. Trust me there were days I felt pretty much like a Western cliche with those things, "Press badges?! We don need no stinken badges!"

The 8GB SanDisk Extreme III will get its first formal test during tomorrows (3/17) lab shoot for the Kawaii Kon 2007 Photography Panel. I have to thank Zarli and Ken for coordinating w/the cosplayers and setting up time/place. Lord knows I haven't had time to do much planning this month. In RAW only shot configuration my EOS 30 estimates around 800 frames at ISO 400. In RAW+JPG I'm looking at most likely 500 frames. This go around since I don't expect to be doing a lot of burst, I'll probably shoot RAW+JPG to make extraction quicker and so that I can post a general web-gallery (before the Kon) while using the RAWs for actual post-processing and blow-ups.

I'll be updating this particular blog posting once the shoot is concluded.
UPDATE: I'm grateful the shoot went well and my 8GB CF card did not disappoint. Shooting in RAW+JPG the card was about half full and managed to take 430 shots (ok technically 860 files). Now of course there's the not-always fun task of parsing through all of them and picking the good ones...

MySpace truths

Now let me be frank. I'd normally be posting on my MySpace blog, but well, in a twist of irony, the blog system is throwing those oh-so descriptive "A System error has occurred" messages... Soooo here I am on Blogspot (ahhh) giving you some basic truths about MySpace.

98% of the friend requests you receive will be porn. Or at the very least, porn-esque. Your bulletin page will have all but 1 useful bulletin. Your photo gallery will invariably become an opportunity for folks to critique EVERYTHING about the photo (whew lord knows I'm guilty)

Now I'm not trying to say MySpace is bad... no, wait actually yes yes I am. MySpace confounds me however in that despite the fact that it has about the worst base layout, horrible customized layouts (I mean really what good is a layout if it means I can't read word-1 of your page), is about as stable as a two legged high chair, and frankly is as secure as a top-down convertible at night in Oakland, yet somehow is the poster child for social networking. People let me tell you, if MySpace is any indication of how fucked up society is, we are seriously in for a rocky future.

And now for something completely different

OK now I admit I do not advocate zealots or the desire to see Bill Gates on a pike, but this was mildly amusing.

Humor!

Vista/Exchange/Office Oh My!

OK I don't often say a lot of positive things about Microsoft, but that isn't to say I can't. Attended the local Launch Across America event hosted by MS to demonstrate their offerings with Exchange 2007, Office 2007 and Vista.

Now thankfully I had coworkers with me and we got to also enjoy some good team building and stuff, but really for me it was just a chance to see how MS could spin things for me and what type of direction they're heading and what they espouse to admins out there. Let's face it, knowing what your client base is being told by the vendor is important.

Vista and Office 2007 were as they were in the betas. Promising, a few quirks, and of course some annoyances (urgh still not sold on the UAC model). More interesting to me at least were the inclusions of PowerShell (formerly Monad) and the simplification in Exchange 2007. The improvements in deployment options and the increase of rights to user is also a positive step in my view. As an added bonus, Free copy of Office 2007 :) Now of course I'm not all about taking the plunge all the way for my home systems (just yet) so this will be used for testing within my VMWare lab. So, good presentation, good idea of direction of MS and where they see business going. Now to see how that plays out here in Hawaii.