joining the Dark Side.....

.....does not involve dressing in black or making heavy breathing noises whilst trying to strangle people with the Force. Nor does it mean that I start to paint my finger nails black, listen to dodgy music and start to write terrible excuses for poetry.

What it does mean, is that I have bought myself a new phone.....

The perp?
Samsung E900



As usual mu main and probably only real concern is how big the phone was going to be. I walked into the usual shop (name omitted to prevent flagging) wanting to have a look at the D900 (also from Samsung) because the promised thin factor of the new phones seemed promising. Alas, what they fail to tell you that while the phone is quite thin (12.9mm according to Samsung) they fail to tell you about how big the "face" of the phone is. As you can see above, the E900 has a smaller face than the 6230. Although it is a little wider, it is also thinner and has a smaller "pocket-profile" than the 6230. The D900 on the other hand, has a face almost as big as my metal tin does (probably smaller...). On first impressions, it srikes me as being pretty much the same sized when closed, as the Motorola RZR phone so while it is thin, it would still take up valuable pocket space in terms of width.

Anyway, the E900 looks better than the D900 which is probably what counts for more....


After buying this thing, I had a quick look at what other people have said about the phone. What strikes me is that nearly everyone who bought one and didn't like it, complained about the touch sensitive buttons and how doing certain things like sending an sms is maybe one or two button presses more than what they were used to.

No offence to these guys but if you wanted a phone that worked in exactly the same way as your previous phone, then you might as well go and buy another phone from them (no prizes for guessing who this probably is). Why bother complaining about it? Sure, the phone (and every other phone for that matter) is never going to be as simple to use as a Nokia and depending on the model, probably isn't going to be as stable either (Esp. Sony Ericsson) but that's the price of buying something that is slightly different. Of course, in an ideal world, everything is done easily and without problems but in a world where each brand has to be slightly different and where one brand has a near perfect user interface, it's hard to be as easy without being the same.

i have no problem using the phone and c'mon, the differences usually only relate to which button you press. If you can't be bothered to learn to press a different button, then you're better keeping your old phone and donating the money you were going to spend to charity.

I have to say though, two things do kinda bug me about the phone....
Firstly, that lovely and shiney front facia, like the ipods that inspired it is going to be a bith to keep grease and smudge free. I can already image a religiously regular cleaning and polishing going on.
Secondly, the stupidly annoying animations and screen images when you access certain features. If you know about cars, then you'll know that on the new-ish Aston Martin V8 Vantage, when you have turned the ignition and have just pressed the starter button, once the engine turns over, the display screen shows a little bit of an animation and three words come up:
"power... beauty.... soul...."
Ugh.... cheeso supremo
and that is exactly how these animations and images make me feel.
Samsungfun? (ok.. it's the name of that users/owners club...)
No thanks.

For the record, if I do wear a lot of black and make heavy breathing noises, it's not because of the Dark Side...

happy birthday to who?

From BBC News

Well now I think I've heard it all....
From the start of the new school term, many schools in the US will be banning the tradition of Birthday cakes.

"What is this horror?", I hear you cry.

I remember when I was in primary school; when it came to a kids birthday, if the school kitchen was informed by your parents, they would prepare a little cake for you that they'd bring to you during your lunch and everyone around you could sing you that song, very much like what they do at TGIs (or Ozer for that matter....).
However, this isn't what happens in the US.
There, the tradition is that on your birthday, you would bring in a sackload (I imagine my hyperbole isn't far off) of cupcakes and what-not to share with your friends. Isn't there a statistic that says that if you put 12 people in a room, at least 2 people will share the same birthdate? That means in an average class of 30-40, there will be around 14-18 birthdays every school year. Allow for the 36 week school year and assume even spread of birthdates and you end up with something like a month, you get a free stuffing of cakes. Sometimes, it might be a double stuffing of cakes.
let's get that clear.
That is, on average, ONCE a MONTH.
And how many cakes do you get when your mate little Willy has his birthday?
2 cakes per person? 3 cakes? 5 cakes?.

"What are you getting at?", I hear you ask.

Well, the reason for this banning is that the schools claim that this is an unhealthy tradition. Of course, this is part of a wider scale banning of junk food, much like what is happening here but still, isn't it a bit misguided? Sure, you have to target all areas of junk food intake but don't you think this one is a bit personal (imagine the therapy involved: "they cancelled my birthday....") and next to pointless when there is no support of the junk food ban outside of the school.

As we have seen in the UK, in the schools where a healthy school dinner meun has been implemented, kids use the journey to and from school as opportunity to stock up on the junk that isn't available in school. Let's not even mention the growing number of parents in the UK who actually consider a trip to the local McD (or whatever fastfood joint) as an acceptable dinner for their children, or the lack of proper cooking at home; things that I gather are common place in the US.

Fact is, banning foods in the school environment isn't going to amount to a hill of beans if nothing changes outside of it. In the case of banning cakes in the US, I really can't see how that would make a change, even when implemented as part of a wider ban of junkfood. The kids still aren't getting enough exercise and are still going to be eating junk outside of school.

Interestingly enough though, is this from a couple of months back. Again, the principles of it are sound; I mean, reduce the outlets, reduces the possiblity of people eating it. Thinking a little deeper though, I can only imagine the emergence of supersized outlets selling super sized portions or worse yet, internet only based places where they only do deliveries, thus reducing their street presense while maintaining a healthy business.
Once again, it is in a way the wrong thing to target when trying to deal with the obesity problem.

Plenty of people have done studies as to why people are getting bigger. In all cases, the simple answer to this is that in general, people are simply eating too much and doing too little. Fat and sugar contents in food is higher than it used to be and in general, our calorie intake is much greater than our calorie burn. Any fools blind monkey can see that the proper way to deal with obesity is to
i) reduce fat and sugars
ii) increase activity

Related studies have shown that you get used to the taste of junk food to the point that everything that isn't saturated in fats and salts and sugars are well, bland. This also has the nasty habit of actually dulling you ability to tase foods properly. What this implies, is that if you can get a child used to a wide and varied diet with little (does not mean no) exposure to junk foods, in the long term, it is unlikely for them to go down that route. What this leads to is that once again, you have to target the real cause of this obesity epidemic: the home.

Another case of people not taking responsiblity?
Absolutely.
It doesn't help that a couple of years back, it was fashionable to target and blame big corporation for the failings of the person. It's Mcdonald's fault for making me fat.
Right.....
My kids are fat because there are too many KFC joints around.
Kiss my skinny ass.

Parents take responsiblity.
Your kids' obesity problems are because of you.
Just you, You and no one else.....

weak of will

First of all: Sod's Law.
I finally buy myself a new camera to play with two months later, Pentax release a new one with 10MP to it's name.

WTF?

Firstly, I've been taking photos with mine now for pretty much everything and at full resoultion as well, taking advantage of 1GB SD cards. Now, at full resolution, the resulting images are bigger than anything outside of an LCD HD television and even then, you'd have to be looking at the photos in landscape to see the whole thing. I can only guess at how big a full resoultion 10MP image is.
Who on earth needs that in a pocket camera?
Bragging rights?

I mean, lately, I've been taking photos at 6MP resolution and that is enough for daily use. I can't imagine many people needing to take photos of entire buildings like I do that would require an 8MP photo to maximise clarity of image.
What on earth would the average camera user do with 10MP?
Turn it down to 6MP.


Anyway.
My one looks better....


* * * * *

I've been pootering around with my lovely pentax pocket camera for a while now and hve so far taken it on site to take photos for referencing when drawing and as much as I think it is a fantastic pocket camera, I can no longer ignore the fact that it is still not entirely suitable for what I need of it.

I am also aware that I simply can't and shouldn't be spending a whole bundle of cash to buy a full of DSLR.
As as result I've been looking at the intermediate choice that sits between the pocket camera and the full on DSLR.
At the moment, this one has caught my eye




this one has also caught my eye.



The canon is a traditionally styled camera that i know has accesseries for wide angle photos, the thing that I really need. It also has a very useful 12x zoom. On the downside, it is still, while being quite small and compact, a bit too chunky. Of course I know that it comes with the territory.

Which is where the Nikon comes in.
It offers nearly the same spec as the Nikon but in their compact camera shape with the twist open to use form. A friend of mine had an older model of this camera and the best thing I liked about it was the in camera filing system that actually uses folders for you to organise your photos very much as you would on a pc. Very nice. The camera also had wide angle adapters that you fit over the lens but i'm not sure if this newer model has these.
The last time I checked, this camera is also, when closed, pretty much the same size as my old camera which isn't as small as my new one but is still small for you get in it. It loses out to the Canon in the zoom stakes only having a 10x but that's what you get for size.
it also runs on well, not as good hardware internally for the same reasons (bigger case = bigger ccd and all that). With that in mind though, the specs of both are pretty similar in terms of nubmers illustrating performance but obviously, the Canon is ultimately the better camera.

If only camera shops do test drives like they do with cars....