BPI inside

For a few days now I've been actively looking for a digital camera. More specifically I've put my attention onto the Fujifilm FinePix F31fd. But it's not so easy to get my hands on this cam since it's a discontinued model which was introduced 2005 or 2006 and has now reached its end of production. Which is a pitty, because from almost all of the reviews I've been digging through and sample images I've compared, the F31fd leaves the arena as winner. It produces better images than many of today's high MP-cameras and has excellent picture-quality even in low light situations. (Example Review)

I'm trying to get it from eBay, but the bids there easily reach far over 300EUR.

Not that cheap for a 6,3MP camera it might seem, but given today's megapixel-craziness people are fooled into thinking that more pixels mean better pictures. To the contrary, more megapixels on smaller sensors mean that they have to be more sensitive to catch enough light for image recognition. But this also raises the noise which then again has to be fought by the camera logic, effectively using some sort of blurring which again lowers the final resolution of the image.

If you'd like to know more about the megapixel-hype and what's the reality behind it, head over to 6mpixel.org for the technical reasons.

In the meantime, I'll keeping an eye on eBay...

Update 2008-01-24: Just about today, Fujifilm has anounced some more cameras I'm keeping an eye on, these really look promising and don't cost too much. Damn, now I have to wait and choose wisely:

• S100FS
• F100fd

Posted by Kosi2801 on 7:34 PM tagged as Personal, Photography | Permalink

Recently I read an article in the german webzine Telepolis about a quite unusual game, Dwarf Fortress. At first I thought, well yeah another of this small games which would be able to entertain me for an hour or two but after reading the article and digging through the games website and wiki it really seems to turn out as a huge enjoyment.

In fact, this game doesn't have fancy graphics or an easy user interface, quite the contrary. You have to cope with a, at first at least, disturbing ASCII-graphics-interface and an unintuitive menu system. But these hurdles are soon forgotten when one gets into the extremely deep environment where one cannot directly control the dwarfs but rather tell them what to do. If they then really follow your orders depends on the current state of the dwarf as well as his mood and running orders. The complex interactions between the many elements of this yet-to-leave-alpha-status game seem like the individuality of a hundred Tamagotchis thrown together and distilled.

I'm not completely able to express my curiousness about this game so I'd rather like to point you to this small introduction and the followup posts on that in the archives of that page. You have to read the posts from bottom to top, sorry 'bout that. Also have a look at the Dwarf Fortress Wiki for more info.

Update: Also, I imagine if someone unfamiliar is watching someone other playing DF it must look like as if the player is looking at the Matrix itself. I really have to take care, that I wait with digging deeper into Dwarf Fortress until my exams are over this weekend.

Posted by Kosi2801 on 9:09 PM tagged as Games, Personal | Permalink

After a bit more than a week the transition of this webpresence to the new servers has finally been finished. The new server is a lot faster than the old one as far as I have experienced it. I have now also reenabled the comments again and replaced the old, partly hand-written, spam-check with Jay Allen's comment challenge plugin which adds a text-based check to filter out spam-bots. Furthermore all of the publishing problems I've experienced on the old server seem to be gone now :)

If you experience any problems or inconsistencies, please let me know in the comments.

Posted by Kosi2801 on 8:20 PM tagged as Blog | Permalink

I just recognized, that my hoster will change its server environment for my hosting plan. I'm unsure how this will change the experience for the visitors of this site and what exactly I personally have to do to migrate successfully, so please bear with me... I'll let you know in time.

Posted by Kosi2801 on 5:45 PM tagged as Blog | Permalink

Why is it, that all opinions which interfere with a relationship I'm looking for are concentrated in a few persons minds within in the family circle? Everyone else, even friends who know me better than most of my family members, support me with every decision I think is best for me and the person I want to have a relationship with.

Posted by Kosi2801 on 5:27 PM tagged as Personal | Permalink