Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55/2.8 @ 28mm — ¹/100 sec, f/9, ISO 640 — full exif & map

While on the short outing last week that yielded the surreal foliage image, I happened upon this scene. While sitting on my scooter, I whipped out my camera and took this picture.

I have no idea what they were waiting for; I doubt it was their transportation, since it was a one-way street heading in the direction they're looking. The street was positively packed with people, so the few cars that were around were going very slowly. I was lucky to get a clear shot.

On the temple grounds is a temple-run preschool (the sign on the gate above the kimono-clad lady with the cell phone says “Eikando Preschool”) that we visited while considering schools for Anthony. They have very cute, but expensive, uniforms.

Anyway, for some reason, I like this picture.

Getting sort of sick of having to reboot my horribly flaky Windows system 10 times a day (I kid you not), I've finally succumbed to getting a new system.

Despite being a geek for the better part of 40 years, I didn't buy my first computer until I was 30 (and I still have it below my desk — almost 10 years old, it's the machine with which I wrote my last two books). In the years since, I've bought two laptops, a system for Fumie while we were in America, and systems for both of us here.

I built my current system from parts, building exactly what I wanted.... except stability and disk performance. So this time I opted for a pre-built mass-market (hopefully no-headache) system, from Dell.

Because I want an English version of Windows, and I want it to be pre-installed by the company that builds the machine (again, the emphasis being on “no headaches”), my choices were limited. HP also sells them, but I hate my last HP printer so much, I just couldn't think about going with HP.

Dell lets you customize a machine extensively during the order process, which is great. I ended up getting a fairly bare-bones system — it has, of course, CPU, memory, power supply, disks, graphics card, and the like, but the only “extra” component I added was a Firewire card. I didn't even get a monitor, but that's because the Dell 20" LCD I've had for years is still spectacular.

I'd decided a week or so ago to get it, but hadn't placed the order because the current promo special wasn't something I would benifit from. My waiting paid off, because when I looked yesterday, I found that they had a one-day 10%-off special. Sweet! Saved $300.

In the end, I ordered a Dell® Precision™ 390 with:

• 2.66 GHz Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6700 Processor (4MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
• 4GB Dual-Channel DDR2-SDRAM (667MHz, ECC)
• SATA RAID 10 disk controller
• Four 320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s NCQ 7200rpm Disks
• ATI® FireGL™ V3400 Graphics Card (128MB DDR, DVI × 2)
• DVD +/- RW Dual-layer multidrive
• Windows® XP™ Professional (English)
• IEEE1394 (Firewire) board and front-panel port
• 13-type front-panel card reader
• Dell Entry-level English keyboard/mouse

I could have gotten a 3.7GHz dual-core Pentium D system, and on the surface 3.7GHz sounds faster than the 2.66GHz I ended up with, but after surfing around, it seems that the newer generation of Core 2 processors beat the living daylights out of the previous-generation processors, even though the latter are running at 40%-faster clock speeds.

Apparently, these Core 2 Duos can be massively overclocked while still maintaining reliability. I've seen reports of 4GHz for simple air-cooled setups. Unfortunately, Dell won't let me do that. Oh well.

My primary use of the thing, besides work, will be for photo processing, which means mostly Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. Lightroom is much more demanding, needing every ounce of CPU and disk performance pretty much all the time. (In comparison, Photoshop doesn't really require much disk performance, and its CPU needs are more on and off.)

Sort of off topic, but I was so impressed with Lightroom when I first tried it that I bought Adobe stock. At the moment it's doing well enough that the profits (were I to sell) could buy me about five of these new systems, which is nice. (Had I bought the stock just a week earlier than I did, it would have added another three of these systems to the current paper gain — doh!) And it might sound odd, but I wish I hadn't bought the stock. You see, I also bought Apple Computer on the same day, and it's done much better than Adobe. In retrospect, I wish I'd put it all into Apple.

(Traditionally, experience has shown that I come from the “Buy high sell low” school of investments, so these nice gains are woefully off my normal track record, so the long-term investor would be wise to heavily short both of these companies.... at least until I sell! 🙂

Anyway, Dell's web site tells me that my machine will be shipped from “overseas” on about Dec 18th, and that it'll take about a week to get to me after that. So it looks like I have a Christmas present from myself to look forward to....

Home-Built Calendar

We like to use a loose-leaf calendar to keep track of the family schedule. Yahoo! Calendars is still invaluable for things like remembering birthdays and when the property tax is due, but for what events are going on this week, we find it more convenient to use a loose-leaf calendar that we can write on and leave near the dinner table.

Very occasionally, I end up with a nice picture that might look good on a calendar, so I thought I'd make my own. The one shown above was made while testing (it's my sister-in-law becoming my sister-in-law... and oh, yeah, my brother's in there too).

There are plenty of Photoshop calendar templates available, but I found all of them lacking in one way or another, so I wrote a Photoshop script to build a calendar.

It's highly configurable, and so I thought that perhaps it might fit the bill for others' needs as well, so I've made it available for download at Jeffrey's Calendar Builder home page.

I couldn't help but to laugh at the irony when I saw this Associated Press article on Yahoo! News:

Considering how pejorative offensive the term “Xmas” is (it is, after all, “Christmas” with “Christ” X'ed out), you can't help but question the journalistic integrity of the writer (Tom Breen) and Associated Press.

Take this headline in comparison: Ariz. cop had black men rap away ticket, which, like the first, is currently on Yahoo's “most popular news” list. I don't think anyone would put up with this headline rewritten as “Ariz. pig had black men rap away ticket” or “Ariz. cop had niggers rap away ticket,” so why do people put up with “Xmas”?

UPDATE: Derek commented that the use of “Xmas” shouldn't be a problem because (1) it doesn't bother him, (1) it's only a newspaper headline, and (3) my argument is not meaningful because I used the word “pejorative” instead of “offensive” or “insulting.”

I have to admit that I used “pejorative” even though I knew “offensive” was probably more appropriate, because I liked the ring to “pejorative”. 🙂 However, as to “Xmas” not being offensive or insulting, well, if you can't imagine that crossing out the whole point of the holiday would be offensive to those who still consider that point, I'm not sure I can explain it to you. (And along the same lines, using a word that's offensive is fairly pejorative, no?)

I understand that Christmas has no religious meaning to many, and that's fine, but it doesn't reduce the offensive nature of “Xmas.” I'm not a police officer, but I consider “pig” to be offensive. I'm not black, but I consider “nigger” offensive. Even if you're not Catholic, I would expect you to consider “Xmas” offensive.