Archives: January 2007

WordPress 2.1

WordPress 2.1 was released on 01.22.2007. Upgrading looks like a total bitch. Here goes nothing.

EDIT: Done. Went well.

EDIT2: Well. I broke the anime weblog’s ability to post with the visual editor and the theme I was using (lowstream) even after I upgraded the software to current. I’ve swaped themes at least for now and it seems to have fixed things. I lost a LONG post in the process.

EDIT3: The spell checker in the visual editor also seems broke.

EDIT4: Lowstream 2.2.4 seems to have fixed my visual editor issue.

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Product Photography and Everglades

That Hyperdrive I got for my trip to Tibet stopped working. Hard drive appears to be dead. Testing replacement but that might not be working out.

Product photography at a location seems to suck ass. Especially with no experience and no information beforehand about what the task is. If they turn out useful, I will be glad but still will not have enjoyed the task. I had a real hard time with the D200 and SB800 in wireless mode. Never got it working. Wound up using the flash on hotshoe and bouncing the light off a reflector. iTTL has so far not been my friend. If i only had a sync cable.

I broke out the 70-200VR at the Everglades National Park. Wasn’t even the biggest dork there. There was a couple with longish zooms set on tripods. That 70-200 on a cropped sensor was an ideal focal length for shooting at the Glades. Wildlife was always very very close and did not spook easy. It was much better than shooting at a zoo where I find 300mm optimal. I don’t have any of the shots processed so I won’t know if I have any nice ones for a few days but I suspect I have a few very nice bird shots.

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Florida Trip

Took a road trip to Florida to see some friends during the opening of their restaurant. Long drive. A bit less than completely satisfied due to a push for getting to the destination instead of enjoying the travel. I don’t like Florida as a state any more than I did before. The Everglades National Park was nice. I forgot Zoe. First time that has happened.

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Impending need for TV upgrade

So today I ran into the first time, well second, that my current ‘media center PC’ had problems with playback of something I was watching. Honey and Clover II at 1280×720 encoded with h.264. The computer just could not keep up. I was trying it on my desktop too and it had problems even when I did not have the noise reduction turned on. I will eventually, and maybe soon, have to upgrade my TV and the computer I use to output video.

This is not something I can afford now but at least I kind of know my game plan. I do not know if FFDshow can use 2 CPU cores so I expect to need a moderately fast one. It will also need to be a modern 3D video card. Pixel shaders are being used by at least the renderer. I can also take advantage of h.264 decoders that use the video card in other ways too since with a TV upgrade I will not be using a video out but rather monitor out. So that means my next TV will need to be able to accept a computer digital output directly. This also means 1920×1080 is the resolution I want.

Such an upgrade will allow far greater control over how good my video looks. I can use all sorts of post-processing now.  And fancy renderers. And the resolution will be sick. But processing power will be key. For both the processor and the video card. Core2duo suddenly looks appealing…

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Zoom Player 5.00

Zoom Player 5 was recently released. I tried out the RC for a bit and was very impressed. I’ve been a ZP user for quite a long time and think it is fantastic. The new version adds a super fantastic skin and much improved codec/filter management. The options screen is also much more smartly laid out.

On a related note, I recently switched to using the Haali Video Renderer instead of the overlay renderer. It is suppose to use pixel shaders. I don’t see a difference but that is pretty neat.

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