Tuesday 25 September 2007

The console wars

Having never really subscribed to a particular brand I am suprised at the amount of people that do. I'm talking of course about the great Xbox 360 vs Sony PS3 debate with each camp shouting about how great their consoles are and belittling their rivals.

I have owned both Sony & Microsoft consoles from launch with the PS and Xbox, I never really considered it an issue, a great game made me want the console, nothing else.

Now this weekend I went out and grabbed a PS3, the sole reason for this was the ability to play avi's out of the box, the BlueRay was an added bonus. Now it seems that the damn thing doesn't support all AVI's so that was a serious waste of some hard earned cash :

On the flip side, it does look good on my HD TV and Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom is a great game, also has Lemmings which the missus loves :)

Guess I will have to keep re-encoding my AVI's to WMV's and running them through the Elite, one more point to MS!



H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Monday 17 September 2007

Been a while

Well it's been a while since my last post, had a very busy couple of weeks and nit had time to sit down and relax never mind blog :

Haven't been out with the camera for a while so no exciting photographs for you, managed to grab some shots of my lenses the other day. Might put them online for you but will see how I feel later, pretty whacked at the moment.

Need to clear out my garage, build a couple of bikes, service both cars and generally catch up on the bits I've been putting off. Winter is coming in fast so I need to get moving.

Also need to build 'Rabbit-opollos' at some point in the next two months. My missus doesn't want them outdoors this winter so it's either that or move the lot back into the shed.

Anyway it's getting late in the day and I have work to do so I will catch you in the next installment. Hopefully then I will have some pretty snaps for you to look at.



H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Friday 7 September 2007

Canon 180mm f/3.5 L Macro

Some test shots as promised from the newest lense in the fold as promised.










And the obligatory battery shot :)









H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Thursday 6 September 2007

Stock Issues - Part II

Well after tracking down another retailler who 'alleged' to have stock I ordered the part, this time from B&H in the states. This will be the first time I've ordered from the states [as far as I can recall] so I'm eager to see how this shapes up.

I have had confirmation that this has shipped now and will be coming to be for $65 which equates to around £33 and I potentially need to add VAT [@ 17.5%] to this figure so the final could be £39. Expensive for the adaptor but I'm just relieved I will be able to use the MT 24-EX again and get the best out of the 180mm Macro.

Hopefully I have the adaptor for this weekend, should allow me to get out and about taking some shots. I have thus far been under-whelmed by my efforts with the lense but thats mainly down to lighting and local conditions. We'll see what the future brings.


H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Remotes - How Many! - Part II

Well my Philips Pronto Pro RU970 arrived after a fashion, the seller used the wrong postal service, sent me a 'small' refund which didn't even cover the difference and has generally been awful in their communications.

The remote itself has a dud battery so I ordered a new one which will be here on Friday, disappointing experience though really. Tried programming the remote last night and it's a bit of a nightmare, it's not as simple as the manuals would have you think. I did manage to get the TV and Sky HD sorted through it though so thats a bonus.

More to follow but for now it doesn't seem to be the saviour I once thought it would be :


H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Monday 3 September 2007

Remotes - How Many!

Well after getting myself an Xbox 360 Elite and a HDMI switcher to go with it I find I have yet another damn remote to put on the table. This table is getting seriously cluttered with remotes, Sky HD, Surround System, 360, HDMI and of course the TV remote all adorn this little 1ft square table.

I decided to dip my toe into the world that is programmable remotes. I have a friend who uses one and swears by the Philips Pronto range, pricey but very customisable. I looked at the entry level system which could be had for £60+, the mid-range at £250+ and the Pro range for £500+. Quite obviously I'm not about to pay £500 for a remote! I would rather suffer the collection of remotes I have or get the lesser system.

I did however resort to eBay and found myself bidding on a Pronto Pro RU970 with a colour touchscreen. I lost this in the dying seconds but soon lined up another, I grabbed this one in the dying seconds for £205 delivered! That's less than I was prepared to pay for a new Mono device with less Flash RAM.

Should hopefully be here in the next couple of days, can get to programming macros then. This would allow me to turn on the TV, start the DVD, set the volume on the surround and dim the lights etc at the push of a button.

I might have to get use RF for the 360 as when I use the IR remote it controls both of them : Will cross that bridge when I come to it though.


H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net

Photo's A Progressive Diary

After reading some pretty scathing comments on some of my photo's at www.randomphotos.net [you know the type " this is shite" etc] I decided a little prune was in order.

Looking back I just uploaded anything and everything regardless of quality, nowadays I tend to be more selective. So I wandered through 90% of my galleries and had a little prune, even to the point of deleting whole galleries. Makes you think though, back then some of the shots were awful but still made it on-line. Now I tend to upload less and less as they fail to meet my criteria.

I also tend to use my Nikon P&S to take alot of snapshots, these days I tend to shy away from using the dSLR for these kind of shots simply because of the nature of the beast. Lense selection, RAW conversions etc all take time and can make you miss the moment. The Nikon allows me to shoot and upload in minutes so I'm missing less these days.


H4rri
~~
www.randomphotos.net