Despite all the rules out there, my composition is largely or entirely dictated by the AF points of my camera. If my AF points are mostly in the center then my subject is in the center.
Back in the days when manual focusing is the norm, you have a focusing screen with rangefinder split, micro prism ring and matte screen focusing aid and it's relatively easy to off center focus as the focusing aid is a piece of real estate on the optical viewfinder instead of just a focusing point.
The current Nikon models provide a 51 AF points which is kind of enough but composition can benefit if more points are present.
PS: I just don't believe in or do focus and recompose.
Saturday, October 03, 2015
Winner, Quitter and Loser
The winner wins, the quitter quits and the loser doesn't do anything. Complaining and whining all day but doesn't do anything. I think that's the worse. If a person quits it just shows he knows maybe something is not worth pursuing and cut the loss. A quitter can be smart and decisive. Most people tend to make quitter a loser. But I think there should be a difference.
Friday, October 02, 2015
FM Radio Trigger
I finally broke down and bought a set of radio trigger/receiver. This set comes with one trigger and two receivers.
Between feeding your family and buying more photographic gears, sometimes you just have to make the rational choice: buying more but cheaper equipment but never stop buying.
This is a pretty generic trigger set and seems to be branded depending on who is selling them. If it's sold by cowboy it is called cowboy. This set I got is branded Neewer and has four different channels which I have no reason not to believe despite not checking each and every channel. There are similar models that have sixteen channels. Wow. The quality isn't great but it isn't bad either. I need to jiggle the battery trap door more than I like to open and close it. In the first hour that I used them I managed to drop the receivers twice from the desk top four feet above the floor; it could be the same one or it could be once for each. Nothing was broken. So that's good news. Overall they seem pretty well built or well built enough, no sarcasm. The mis spelling of "Tigger" is just endearing and somehow assures you that it's honestly made by engineers who couldn't care less about spelling English correctly.
I tested them on my Nikon D700 and Sunpak 120J. They just worked. Just for the fun of it. I also put the trigger on my Yashica Mat 124 G (next my Hasselblad 500C/M). I used the provided PC sync cord plugged into the PC socket of the Yashica. And it just worked. The receiver also has the PC socket so if your flash or strobe doesn't have the hotshoe it would work with the sync cord. And they certainly work on my Sunpak 120J that doesn't come with the hotshoe. It's the little thing that warms my heart. It's the little thing that enables and enchants. No, you don't need line of sight between the trigger and the receivers for them to talk to one and other.
If you look for fancy features, you should look else where. This set is only $16.05 shipped free from a warehouse in NJ. And they just work.
UPDATE:
10/3/2015
Yes, it does work with the Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, with the 80mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss lens PC socket. People who think you need to have some electrical or electronic camera is mistaken. The $16.05 can be cheaper than a sync cable actually. The PC socket totally works.
Between feeding your family and buying more photographic gears, sometimes you just have to make the rational choice: buying more but cheaper equipment but never stop buying.
This is a pretty generic trigger set and seems to be branded depending on who is selling them. If it's sold by cowboy it is called cowboy. This set I got is branded Neewer and has four different channels which I have no reason not to believe despite not checking each and every channel. There are similar models that have sixteen channels. Wow. The quality isn't great but it isn't bad either. I need to jiggle the battery trap door more than I like to open and close it. In the first hour that I used them I managed to drop the receivers twice from the desk top four feet above the floor; it could be the same one or it could be once for each. Nothing was broken. So that's good news. Overall they seem pretty well built or well built enough, no sarcasm. The mis spelling of "Tigger" is just endearing and somehow assures you that it's honestly made by engineers who couldn't care less about spelling English correctly.
I tested them on my Nikon D700 and Sunpak 120J. They just worked. Just for the fun of it. I also put the trigger on my Yashica Mat 124 G (next my Hasselblad 500C/M). I used the provided PC sync cord plugged into the PC socket of the Yashica. And it just worked. The receiver also has the PC socket so if your flash or strobe doesn't have the hotshoe it would work with the sync cord. And they certainly work on my Sunpak 120J that doesn't come with the hotshoe. It's the little thing that warms my heart. It's the little thing that enables and enchants. No, you don't need line of sight between the trigger and the receivers for them to talk to one and other.
If you look for fancy features, you should look else where. This set is only $16.05 shipped free from a warehouse in NJ. And they just work.
UPDATE:
10/3/2015
Yes, it does work with the Hasselblad 500 C/M camera, with the 80mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss lens PC socket. People who think you need to have some electrical or electronic camera is mistaken. The $16.05 can be cheaper than a sync cable actually. The PC socket totally works.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Electrical Works
I had very little idea how electrical appliances work. In secondary school I took some wood and metal work class that involved lathe and drill. I am glad (I still have my 10 fingers) I did I mean not that I had any choice at all. Back then it was all decided by the school and you just accepted the arrangement. No question asked. Looking back I wish I had known more electrical stuff. I hardly know anything about voltage, watt, amp, joules or watt per second that kind of things. I think it is really a handicap. As a little kid, one of or actually my only electrical primitive toy was a motor. Sometimes a propeller or fan was attached and I thought it was fun. And then there was this motor boat but I don't think I ever got its maiden voyage in any open water or water bigger than the toilet basin or any plastic pail in the bathroom. Some of my more gifted, intellectually and every each way, friends were playing more serious motor model boats powered by engine. Or even building PCs in the late 70s. I think the guy was 14 or 15 if not younger. I was and still light years behind them.
I am trying to build a battery pack for the Sunpak 120J, so Google is my friend.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Battereez
I am sold!
This tops carrying my blackberry on my belt. NO doubt.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Macbook Pro Upgrade
UPDATE:
9/18/2015
There are issues. Every morning, when the lid is opened, the MBP fails to operate normally. In one instance, it gives me the "recovery" screen, in another a folder with a question mark, and yet another an actual login screen--I thought I had it fixed. But after logging in, I can't open applications, and "ls" is not recognized as a command at the command window. In all instances I do some sort of restart if I can do the menu if not, the button, the machine is able to boot up with no problem.
I suspect it has something to do with waking up from "hibernation" or some deeper "sleep." As the MBP always comes back to life between shorter sleep or what I think is shorter sleep:-close and open the lid. This problem only happens during longer stretch of "sleep"--technically I am not sure if it's actually sleep or hibernation at all. I reset the Energy saving screen, I can always hit the reset even I don't change anything. I did the permission verification, command option p r. But still not solving this wake up issue. Oh well.
9/18/2015
Just reinstalled Yosemite from Apple. It was like I wiped out the SSD, it was just the OS, the programs and data are intact. So far so good but you or I don't know what's going to happen overnight.
9/21/2015
This "SEEMS" to solve the problem. Uncheck Put hard disks to sleep when possible.
I read on Apple's doc. it "seems" to suggest if you don't have a spinning hard drive then it doesn't affect anything or only affect some external attached hard drive. But in my case it does seem to affect something even I have a SSD and the system reports as such.
10/9/2015
The struggle is real. I guess the above Energy Saving setting doesn't really matter. As it continued to give me trouble. The more I read about it the more I feel like I don't know. At some point I don't know if the MBP actually goes to sleep or not. As the screen goes dark doesn't mean it's sleeping, that's kind of news to me. So my problem could be the MBP never goes to sleep instead of going to a deep sleep and can't wake up. So that's some crazy thought to me. I proceeded to disable two programs or service, one is a virtual machine and the other is Time Machine. And again that seems to really take care of the problem.
NOTE: Not all Macs are created the same. Not all of them are upgradable. Mine is an old mid 2012 15" MacBook Pro unibody with non-retina display.
I upgraded the RAM to 16GB immediately after I bought it used or should I say refurbished directly from Apple.(Apple officially says the max is 8GB but I can install 8GB on each slot for a grand total of 16GB)
My pictures have been eating up the 500GB stock drive so I have decided to upgrade the MBP. (a real reason and an excuse to find some more distractions)
After much reading, I have decided to upgrade (in terms of performance but not capacity which is a downgrade actually) the hard drive to a 240GB SSD, bought another 2.5" 1TB SATA 6Mbs 7200RPM drive and put it to where the Superdrive is. The Superdrive doesn't get much or any use at all. Anyway, I got an enclosure for the Superdrive so at least I can use it when I really need it (unlikely but). I ordered everything from OWC or macsales.com. The site provides the most comprehensive instructions in text and video, as far as I know. With that being said I don't think it's a total step by step hold your hand guide, especially when it comes to software, so you do it at your own risk, as always.
Personally I think the physical aspect like opening the case, removing and putting everything back in isn't too bad. It's not easy as my eyesight is failing. The tools provided by OWC aren't great but good, better than disposable I guess. Just make sure you have some print-outs or another computer/screen to follow the instructions while you are actually doing it.
Once I placed my order, OWC emailed me and stated that I can call or email for support. I took up that offer to question or confirm my understanding of the whole process. At that point I had watched and read up quite a bit but still I had questions--when should I physically remove the existing or old HD and put the SSD? I thought I should do it the toward the end. I want to make sure my Superdrive slot can take the SATA 3 or 6G hard drive, there are some conflicting or confusing information out there. Is it actually doable to specify the SSD just for the OS and programs installation? Because I am cheap I bought only the 240GB SSD which is only half of what the existing hard drive. So many questions!
OWC answered some but not all. And I am still a bit confused as I have never done this before. To my surprise OWC actually suggests to put the SSD right in and install the OS X from then on from scratch. I was like for real? You know how sometimes support answers questions. It's like never complete.
I went ahead anyway even though I am not 100% sure what I am doing.
I do have a latest copy of Time Machine backup.
Power down the MBP
Out the HD and in the SSD.
Out the Superdrive, in the data doubler with the 7200rpm hard drive.
Put back everything
Once I attach the AC power cable the computer actually come back to life even the lid is closed so that's a surprise.
It shows a folder with a question mark as if I have the answer. My response ...
Power down and up again and per instruction, do a command R (I was expecting it to go to the 4 options Disk Utilities of whatever is called screen). But instead it goes to ...
It goes to Internet recovery, which I read about before but didn't expect that (that's why I don't fully understand when the OWC support suggests me to install the new drive first, when the heck it gets the utilities to install or recover as the old drive is detached)
It gives me a list of wifi network, I picked mine and entered the password
It then count down with a globe spinning for a good 15 min I think.
It gave me the screen I expected with Disk Utility as the 4th choice.
I went ahead and formatted the SSD and my 1 TB hard drive. Things began to look good meaning doing things I expected.
I backed out Disk Utilities and chose Reinstall OS X
But crap it gave me Lion as the OS X to continue, I want Yosemite! (I think it gave me Lion as this was the OS that shipped with the machine. Yosemite was a free upgrade) I don't want to do Lion and then Yosemite again,
So I USB re-attached my time machine hard drive thinking OK maybe it can re-install Yosemite from my Time Machine
But that's not how it works I guess.
I restarted again
I chose to re-install OS X, and holy cow now it gave me Yosemite but before giving it to me it asked for Apple ID and password, reasonable enough. I think that's the way it goes if I am not connected to the old drive or using Time Machine. It looks like I am re-installing the OS from Apple's server directly. I thought it would take forever given I am connected to Wifi ... but it was faster than I thought.
It took some 30 minutes to install (not counting migration) and toward the end it actually prompted me to migrate the data, So reinstalling the OS and migration can be one process actually or two but it doesn't really matter. I chose Time Machine but immediately I knew it was not going to work as it didn't give me the choice to pick what to reinstall and actually said I didn't have enough space to put it to my SSD after some calculating.
So I plugged in my old Macintosh drive I just removed using the enclosure and do the migration again--no need to reboot and back out, the old Macintosh would show up as a choice when plugged in , just like the Time Machine drive. I had the good sense to buy the USB 3 enclosure and put it together while re-installing Yosemite.
The MBP saw the drive and I picked it. It prompted for a password, that made sense as I don't want anybody to just use the hard drive. And with this drive it allowed me to pick what to migrate, like users, applications, network settings and pictures. It took its time to calculate the size of each available option to migrate. And Pictures I un-select as it took up most of the HDD space. And that's it. It took maybe another hour or less to migrate. I suspect if I don't do the migration, it would be so much faster just for the installation of Yosemite.
As I am typing this, the MBP just rebooted--or restarted, it seems like people no longer say reboot? The menu says restart.
Despite the migration, I still have to enter a bunch of IDs and passwords like those for Facetime, Apple. And the wallpaper is gone and defaulted to the stock Yosemite wall paper--which I think makes sense as the wallpaper JPEG file is with the old hard drive and now gone.
Success.
9/18/2015
There are issues. Every morning, when the lid is opened, the MBP fails to operate normally. In one instance, it gives me the "recovery" screen, in another a folder with a question mark, and yet another an actual login screen--I thought I had it fixed. But after logging in, I can't open applications, and "ls" is not recognized as a command at the command window. In all instances I do some sort of restart if I can do the menu if not, the button, the machine is able to boot up with no problem.
I suspect it has something to do with waking up from "hibernation" or some deeper "sleep." As the MBP always comes back to life between shorter sleep or what I think is shorter sleep:-close and open the lid. This problem only happens during longer stretch of "sleep"--technically I am not sure if it's actually sleep or hibernation at all. I reset the Energy saving screen, I can always hit the reset even I don't change anything. I did the permission verification, command option p r. But still not solving this wake up issue. Oh well.
9/18/2015
Just reinstalled Yosemite from Apple. It was like I wiped out the SSD, it was just the OS, the programs and data are intact. So far so good but you or I don't know what's going to happen overnight.
9/21/2015
This "SEEMS" to solve the problem. Uncheck Put hard disks to sleep when possible.
I read on Apple's doc. it "seems" to suggest if you don't have a spinning hard drive then it doesn't affect anything or only affect some external attached hard drive. But in my case it does seem to affect something even I have a SSD and the system reports as such.
10/9/2015
The struggle is real. I guess the above Energy Saving setting doesn't really matter. As it continued to give me trouble. The more I read about it the more I feel like I don't know. At some point I don't know if the MBP actually goes to sleep or not. As the screen goes dark doesn't mean it's sleeping, that's kind of news to me. So my problem could be the MBP never goes to sleep instead of going to a deep sleep and can't wake up. So that's some crazy thought to me. I proceeded to disable two programs or service, one is a virtual machine and the other is Time Machine. And again that seems to really take care of the problem.
NOTE: Not all Macs are created the same. Not all of them are upgradable. Mine is an old mid 2012 15" MacBook Pro unibody with non-retina display.
I upgraded the RAM to 16GB immediately after I bought it used or should I say refurbished directly from Apple.(Apple officially says the max is 8GB but I can install 8GB on each slot for a grand total of 16GB)
My pictures have been eating up the 500GB stock drive so I have decided to upgrade the MBP. (a real reason and an excuse to find some more distractions)
After much reading, I have decided to upgrade (in terms of performance but not capacity which is a downgrade actually) the hard drive to a 240GB SSD, bought another 2.5" 1TB SATA 6Mbs 7200RPM drive and put it to where the Superdrive is. The Superdrive doesn't get much or any use at all. Anyway, I got an enclosure for the Superdrive so at least I can use it when I really need it (unlikely but). I ordered everything from OWC or macsales.com. The site provides the most comprehensive instructions in text and video, as far as I know. With that being said I don't think it's a total step by step hold your hand guide, especially when it comes to software, so you do it at your own risk, as always.
Personally I think the physical aspect like opening the case, removing and putting everything back in isn't too bad. It's not easy as my eyesight is failing. The tools provided by OWC aren't great but good, better than disposable I guess. Just make sure you have some print-outs or another computer/screen to follow the instructions while you are actually doing it.
Once I placed my order, OWC emailed me and stated that I can call or email for support. I took up that offer to question or confirm my understanding of the whole process. At that point I had watched and read up quite a bit but still I had questions--when should I physically remove the existing or old HD and put the SSD? I thought I should do it the toward the end. I want to make sure my Superdrive slot can take the SATA 3 or 6G hard drive, there are some conflicting or confusing information out there. Is it actually doable to specify the SSD just for the OS and programs installation? Because I am cheap I bought only the 240GB SSD which is only half of what the existing hard drive. So many questions!
OWC answered some but not all. And I am still a bit confused as I have never done this before. To my surprise OWC actually suggests to put the SSD right in and install the OS X from then on from scratch. I was like for real? You know how sometimes support answers questions. It's like never complete.
I went ahead anyway even though I am not 100% sure what I am doing.
I do have a latest copy of Time Machine backup.
Power down the MBP
Out the HD and in the SSD.
Out the Superdrive, in the data doubler with the 7200rpm hard drive.
Put back everything
Once I attach the AC power cable the computer actually come back to life even the lid is closed so that's a surprise.
It shows a folder with a question mark as if I have the answer. My response ...
Power down and up again and per instruction, do a command R (I was expecting it to go to the 4 options Disk Utilities of whatever is called screen). But instead it goes to ...
It goes to Internet recovery, which I read about before but didn't expect that (that's why I don't fully understand when the OWC support suggests me to install the new drive first, when the heck it gets the utilities to install or recover as the old drive is detached)
It gives me a list of wifi network, I picked mine and entered the password
It then count down with a globe spinning for a good 15 min I think.
It gave me the screen I expected with Disk Utility as the 4th choice.
I went ahead and formatted the SSD and my 1 TB hard drive. Things began to look good meaning doing things I expected.
I backed out Disk Utilities and chose Reinstall OS X
But crap it gave me Lion as the OS X to continue, I want Yosemite! (I think it gave me Lion as this was the OS that shipped with the machine. Yosemite was a free upgrade) I don't want to do Lion and then Yosemite again,
So I USB re-attached my time machine hard drive thinking OK maybe it can re-install Yosemite from my Time Machine
But that's not how it works I guess.
I restarted again
I chose to re-install OS X, and holy cow now it gave me Yosemite but before giving it to me it asked for Apple ID and password, reasonable enough. I think that's the way it goes if I am not connected to the old drive or using Time Machine. It looks like I am re-installing the OS from Apple's server directly. I thought it would take forever given I am connected to Wifi ... but it was faster than I thought.
It took some 30 minutes to install (not counting migration) and toward the end it actually prompted me to migrate the data, So reinstalling the OS and migration can be one process actually or two but it doesn't really matter. I chose Time Machine but immediately I knew it was not going to work as it didn't give me the choice to pick what to reinstall and actually said I didn't have enough space to put it to my SSD after some calculating.
So I plugged in my old Macintosh drive I just removed using the enclosure and do the migration again--no need to reboot and back out, the old Macintosh would show up as a choice when plugged in , just like the Time Machine drive. I had the good sense to buy the USB 3 enclosure and put it together while re-installing Yosemite.
The MBP saw the drive and I picked it. It prompted for a password, that made sense as I don't want anybody to just use the hard drive. And with this drive it allowed me to pick what to migrate, like users, applications, network settings and pictures. It took its time to calculate the size of each available option to migrate. And Pictures I un-select as it took up most of the HDD space. And that's it. It took maybe another hour or less to migrate. I suspect if I don't do the migration, it would be so much faster just for the installation of Yosemite.
As I am typing this, the MBP just rebooted--or restarted, it seems like people no longer say reboot? The menu says restart.
Despite the migration, I still have to enter a bunch of IDs and passwords like those for Facetime, Apple. And the wallpaper is gone and defaulted to the stock Yosemite wall paper--which I think makes sense as the wallpaper JPEG file is with the old hard drive and now gone.
Success.
Tuesday, September 01, 2015
Friday, August 28, 2015
US Open 2015
Rafael Nadal is winning.
I made my way to the US Open ... qualifying round and practice. Because it's free. You don't think I can afford that, do you? I had been absent for the past three years.
Friday, August 21, 2015
D700 and F5
I got myself from eBay the MB-D10 almost immediately once I received my D700. The MB-D10 comes with the MS-D10 AA battery tray as well as MS-D10EN for the whatever battery, OK, EN-EL3e which lasts for at some 1000 frames I think, or more. I haven't really measured it. I don't gain on the frame per second department on this grip as I don't have that special military grade battery. With the motor drive I can always carry an extra EN-EL3e and some AA batteries. So running out of battery shouldn't be happening. I like the grip but I think I even like it better if it's integrated with the camera. Just like the F5 pictured above on the right. The F5 is smaller and cleaner when compared next to the D700 with the grip attached.
I can't believe that the D4s was just introduced in 2014. With the introduction of D810 and D750 and a myriad of other Nikon products, the D4s just seems old, though the price certainly doesn't reflect that as it's still in production. Unlike the D700, which is really a 2008 camera and out of production.
I think the D3s actually makes sense plus if what I read is correct, there is some improvement in the high ISO area making it like 1.5 stop better than the D700 or the D3 which could be significant. The D3s with the integrated grip may actually be smaller than my D700 and grip combo.
A D3s makes sense to me.
Sunpak 120J
I used my left hand as the flash bracket, raised slightly over my head to the left of the camera. This was shot at ISO400, 250/s, f/8 and 1/8 of manual power. I am happy with the light and it was as I envisioned, except a bit better. As the shot isn't over or under exposed as is, not to my eye anyway.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Nikon D700 and Sunpak 120J
I am talking about the old Sunpak auto 120J professional, the made in Japan model.
I use a paramount sync cord to connect it to my D700, and it works faultlessly, the flash fires and the camera doesn't get toast because of any high triggering voltage. On page 383, the manual says not over 250 V applied to the accessory shoe. I wonder then if the PC terminal is immune to any negative or high voltage.
I use a paramount sync cord to connect it to my D700, and it works faultlessly, the flash fires and the camera doesn't get toast because of any high triggering voltage. On page 383, the manual says not over 250 V applied to the accessory shoe. I wonder then if the PC terminal is immune to any negative or high voltage.
According to the "internet" the triggering voltage of the 120J ranges from some 10.9V to 24.3V. If the internet is to be believed, then the triggering voltage of the 120J is very safe for the D700. My experience with it on the PC sync terminal is definitely positive. I mean the 120J model I have doesn't even come with any hot or cold shoe at all.
On another note, I have the original Sunpak 3-prong household sync cord, which surprisingly doesn't work well on the D700 as the tip is not long or snug enough to give it a 100% connectivity to the D700 PC terminal. The paramount cable, on the other hand, works better, or without fail.
"What camera should I get?"
I find this almost impossible to answer. I know what I want but I could never figure out what you want.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
PCIe WiFi Card that Works with Ubuntu 15.04
My good old Ralink RT2561 card gives me too much trouble on 15.04. The connection speed has never been great especially when compared to my other computers. With 15.04, the WiFi is practically unusable. In the event it got a connection, it can be as slow as 1Mb/s and tops out at 11Mb/s and then before I know it, it msysteriously disconnects. I tried many cookbook method or snakeoils to fix it, alas to no avail.
So I decided it's about time to give the computer an upgrade.
I have to say since most things worked on my Linux box right up until 15.04, I haven't been following vendors that have been Ubuntu or Linux certified.
Long story short, my facebook friend gave me a link to ThinkPenguin and finally I got myself a PCIe card. It's a housebranded card using b/g/n standard with dual antenna and allegedly can reach top rate at 300Mb/s.
I just did a iwlist rate and it gave me at 58.5Mb/s. At times, it says 65Mb/s. So it's a big improvement compared to the old one which is only b/g with top speed at 54Mb/s, which is simply an unobtainium speed.
The card is not 100% plug-and-play. The wicd manager doesn't know or doesn't guess right the wlan number. So I have to manually change that. The second thing is when the computer wakes up from sleep or suspend, it cannot re-establish the connection. Even human intervention is hit or miss. Since I removed network manager--my snakeoil approach to fix my last card, I don't know if network manager would work better with the card.
lspci returns:
02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
dmesg | grep AR92 returns:
[ 17.965148] ieee80211 phy0: Atheros AR9280 Rev:2 mem=0xffffc900129e0000, irq=16
lshw returns:
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)
vendor: Qualcomm Atheros
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: wlan3
version: 01
serial: 00:22:43:4c:ad:2f
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.19.0-25-generic firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.14 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
resources: irq:16 memory:fdaf0000-fdafffff
ThinkPenguin lists the chipset as
Atheros AR9281 and its model being TPE-N300PCIE4 ($29 PLUS USPS 6.95 = $35.95)
In any event, I can say that it works, 99% of the time, and definitely better than my last card on 15.04. It no longer drops connection left and right or connects at ridiculously slow rate like 1Mb/s. The only issue so far is once disconnected, like from suspend, it can't connect automatically or even manually with certain reliability. Further investigation needed.
Maybe if you just go out and buy any Wifi card with the Atheros AR928X chipset, it would work on 15.04. Who knows?
UPDATE
8/17/2015
Finally got the chance to remove wicd and reinstalled network manager for GNOME. Now the wifi can reliably reconnect after suspend. While I removed wicd, I got no wifi, I have to plug in my RJ45 cable to my MBP to share its wifi connection in order to install network manager--I can't install network manager if I have wicd installed.
So I decided it's about time to give the computer an upgrade.
I have to say since most things worked on my Linux box right up until 15.04, I haven't been following vendors that have been Ubuntu or Linux certified.
Long story short, my facebook friend gave me a link to ThinkPenguin and finally I got myself a PCIe card. It's a housebranded card using b/g/n standard with dual antenna and allegedly can reach top rate at 300Mb/s.
I just did a iwlist rate and it gave me at 58.5Mb/s. At times, it says 65Mb/s. So it's a big improvement compared to the old one which is only b/g with top speed at 54Mb/s, which is simply an unobtainium speed.
The card is not 100% plug-and-play. The wicd manager doesn't know or doesn't guess right the wlan number. So I have to manually change that. The second thing is when the computer wakes up from sleep or suspend, it cannot re-establish the connection. Even human intervention is hit or miss. Since I removed network manager--my snakeoil approach to fix my last card, I don't know if network manager would work better with the card.
lspci returns:
02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
dmesg | grep AR92 returns:
[ 17.965148] ieee80211 phy0: Atheros AR9280 Rev:2 mem=0xffffc900129e0000, irq=16
lshw returns:
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)
vendor: Qualcomm Atheros
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: wlan3
version: 01
serial: 00:22:43:4c:ad:2f
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.19.0-25-generic firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.14 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
resources: irq:16 memory:fdaf0000-fdafffff
Atheros AR9281 and its model being TPE-N300PCIE4 ($29 PLUS USPS 6.95 = $35.95)
In any event, I can say that it works, 99% of the time, and definitely better than my last card on 15.04. It no longer drops connection left and right or connects at ridiculously slow rate like 1Mb/s. The only issue so far is once disconnected, like from suspend, it can't connect automatically or even manually with certain reliability. Further investigation needed.
Maybe if you just go out and buy any Wifi card with the Atheros AR928X chipset, it would work on 15.04. Who knows?
UPDATE
8/17/2015
Finally got the chance to remove wicd and reinstalled network manager for GNOME. Now the wifi can reliably reconnect after suspend. While I removed wicd, I got no wifi, I have to plug in my RJ45 cable to my MBP to share its wifi connection in order to install network manager--I can't install network manager if I have wicd installed.
Friday, August 14, 2015
Zero Halliburton
This is a print ad that appears on the February 1995 Popular Photography. I don't know when Zero Halliburton started to reinvent their cases by, gosh, adding wheels.
I can't help but look further to the history of Zero Halliburton. It looks like the present Zero Halliburton is not that tight as far as web site, grammar, and proof reading or good style in general is concerned.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Sunpak 120J, Vivitar 283 and 285 from March 1993 Popular Photography
According to Popular Photography 1993, here are the specifications of three of the most popular flashes on earth. Both Vivitar 283 and 285 have impressively short flash duration which make them uniquely suitable for fast action photography, I think--just to cover my behind as I have absolutely zero flash fast action photography except knowing a bit in theory. I thought the 285 is the more powerful one but with a guide number of 70 while the 283 is clocked at 118 I guess the 283 is the more powerful one.
I suppose Popular Photography is pretty reliable.
update 8/14/2015
February 1995, Popular Photography has totally different spec for the two Vivitar models, which seem to be more reasonable. As far as I know, which is not a lot actually, the 283 and 285 are almost the same. So the below specifications make more sense.
Sunday, August 09, 2015
UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Windham 2015
This is one of those sports or should I say extreme sports that I have to witness to believe it. It is insane. My pictures don't do justice to how fast and dangerous the sport is.
My legs are gone after shooting the event from 12:30 to 5, the total 6 hours driving to and from Windham doesn't help either. The environment is just not for an old man like myself. When compared to shooting track in a velodrome, this is harder. First the velodrome is very much a controlled environment. The riders ride in circles and always come back for you. I am a lazy person so I pretty much pick a spot and stay there waiting for the riders to come to me. For downhill forget about it, you shoot a sequence and she is gone, downhill, for good. Navigating the mountainous terrain is a challenge and a hazard for an old man, add two cameras and an assortment of lenses and accessories is almost suicidal. It is no joke. I was staggering and tumbling down the mountain most of the time. The fact that I am still alive is a minor miracle. I must thank the media room at Windham, especially Penny, for the hospitality.
Photos: Missy Giove doing her thing. The album can be found here at Flickr.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Ubuntu 15.04 and Ralink rt61pci Problem
update 8/12:
The latest is I removed network-manager and use wicd to "manage" the network. I think it's better than before but still iffy. I know it sounds very not scientific but that's me because I am not scientific. Basically the Wifi support for Ubuntu 15.04 has been terrible ... for me if not for everybody. I think this article kind of resembles what I experience. In the last post it says "removed network-manager package, and used netctl for managing wifi, and the problem is gone" I am not wizard so I have a difficult time figuring how to install netctl in Ubuntu GNOME. In the end I gave up and installed WICD. At some point it got stuck at 1Mb/s but if I wasn't dreaming I think it did connect at 36Mb/s. It now connects at 11Mb/s. I am not exactly complaining as long as it is double digit. All in all it's iffy. Not good.
Before I did all the above I also ordered a card that supposedly works out of the box on 15.04, I will find out soon. It's a b/g/n card with max rate at 300Mb/s. I doubt I can reach that but I would be thoroughly thrilled if it reaches 50Mb/s, the top speed of the router.
I guess I was happy too soon. The connection drops and wouldn't reconnect. And when connected the rate drops to 1Mb/s, like modem or something.
I am counting on my new card now.
Basically I have very slow connection rate, from 1Mb/s to 11Mb/s or mostly no connection at all with this combination. Prior to 15.04, 14.04 LTS or 14.10, the WiFi connection has been pretty stable and the quality has been satisfactory, I don't think I ever reach the 54Mb/s rate but at least I got some where at 20Mb/s. (My WiFi connected MacBook Pro get more than 50Mb/s and noticeably faster)
I thought ndiswrapper would be the solution. Alas it was, only momentarily.
So the struggle continues.
PS: I should have left it at 14.10 because seemingly the WiFi is solid and I have no random reboots like I have had on 14.04 LTS
PPS: In addition to the WiFi problem, I have had a few random reboots in 15.04 already.
PPPS: Shotwell unequivocally continues to suck. Part of the library continues to disappear, the import is still very very problematic. I wonder does anybody ever get it to work like normally? Part of my motivation to get on board to 15.04 was to see if Shotwell would work better. Now I know.
PPPPS: So in a nutshell, the 15.04 offers no benefits to me.
NOTES TO SELF:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1433233 back in 2010
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/solved-ralink-rt2561-rt61-wifi-problem-15-04-beta2/828/7 this is where I got the idea. Unfortunately just like one of them, the ndiswrapper doesn't quite work for me, it drops connection just like the Linux driver installed originally.
http://us.edimax.com/edimax/download/download/data/edimax/us/download/product/home_legacy_products/home_legacy_wireless_adapters/ew-7128g/ manufacturer's support site
http://www.mediatek.com/en/downloads1/downloads/rt2501pcimpcicbrt61rt2561rt2561srt2661/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/30ish0/ubuntu_14041504_uefi_restartpower_off_problem/
The latest is I removed network-manager and use wicd to "manage" the network. I think it's better than before but still iffy. I know it sounds very not scientific but that's me because I am not scientific. Basically the Wifi support for Ubuntu 15.04 has been terrible ... for me if not for everybody. I think this article kind of resembles what I experience. In the last post it says "removed network-manager package, and used netctl for managing wifi, and the problem is gone" I am not wizard so I have a difficult time figuring how to install netctl in Ubuntu GNOME. In the end I gave up and installed WICD. At some point it got stuck at 1Mb/s but if I wasn't dreaming I think it did connect at 36Mb/s. It now connects at 11Mb/s. I am not exactly complaining as long as it is double digit. All in all it's iffy. Not good.
Before I did all the above I also ordered a card that supposedly works out of the box on 15.04, I will find out soon. It's a b/g/n card with max rate at 300Mb/s. I doubt I can reach that but I would be thoroughly thrilled if it reaches 50Mb/s, the top speed of the router.
I guess I was happy too soon. The connection drops and wouldn't reconnect. And when connected the rate drops to 1Mb/s, like modem or something.
I am counting on my new card now.
----------------
Basically I have very slow connection rate, from 1Mb/s to 11Mb/s or mostly no connection at all with this combination. Prior to 15.04, 14.04 LTS or 14.10, the WiFi connection has been pretty stable and the quality has been satisfactory, I don't think I ever reach the 54Mb/s rate but at least I got some where at 20Mb/s. (My WiFi connected MacBook Pro get more than 50Mb/s and noticeably faster)
I thought ndiswrapper would be the solution. Alas it was, only momentarily.
So the struggle continues.
PS: I should have left it at 14.10 because seemingly the WiFi is solid and I have no random reboots like I have had on 14.04 LTS
PPS: In addition to the WiFi problem, I have had a few random reboots in 15.04 already.
PPPS: Shotwell unequivocally continues to suck. Part of the library continues to disappear, the import is still very very problematic. I wonder does anybody ever get it to work like normally? Part of my motivation to get on board to 15.04 was to see if Shotwell would work better. Now I know.
PPPPS: So in a nutshell, the 15.04 offers no benefits to me.
NOTES TO SELF:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1433233 back in 2010
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/solved-ralink-rt2561-rt61-wifi-problem-15-04-beta2/828/7 this is where I got the idea. Unfortunately just like one of them, the ndiswrapper doesn't quite work for me, it drops connection just like the Linux driver installed originally.
http://us.edimax.com/edimax/download/download/data/edimax/us/download/product/home_legacy_products/home_legacy_wireless_adapters/ew-7128g/ manufacturer's support site
http://www.mediatek.com/en/downloads1/downloads/rt2501pcimpcicbrt61rt2561rt2561srt2661/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/30ish0/ubuntu_14041504_uefi_restartpower_off_problem/
Thursday, July 23, 2015
2015 Kissena Twilight Series Week 14
This is done with pan. The yield should be higher if only I remember to stay very focus, and just follow and predict where the movement is going to be.
UPDATE: If you feel like you haven't suffered enough, you can check our the About Me page, My Instagram and Facebook account has the full collection.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Sunpak auto 120J
Every so often, I got myself into some photographic gear obsession. My latest infatuation is the bare bulb flash from Sunpak from many many years ago. I got one with a hair line crack which turns out a bit worse than I thought or led to believe on the listing. Whenever I pivot the head, the casing moves and the crack actually expands.
So I got myself a little project. I got myself some epoxy. I could have just applied it on the crack. But I thought it would be cool and more thorough to disassemble the flash to apply the epoxy.
I know I am not a handy kind of man when it comes, actually everything. Still I go ahead. Because I need to desk adventure or maybe I secretly wish I would screw up. The moment I opened it was the moment I regretted it. But I never learned. I applied the epoxy when inhaling the toxic fume and got my fingers glued together. Next time if there is a next time, I will wear gloves. I waited for the following day before I put the casing back together.
A picture is worth a thousand words. So here we go. A bunch of iPhone pictures.
I only disassembled the base and mostly the top half. Lucky that there wasn't any electronic part to fix. But just to open it up and putting it back together is such an ordeal, for me, anyway.
I was pretty much sure I couldn't put it back together. But lucky me.
Well I hope the pictures will be of some help to some folks. I did try to search on service manual or repair manual or any diagram or pictures but to no avail. I dare not nor do I need to open the head. So I guess the pictures won't be a lot of help.
Do it any your own risk. You may get electrocuted by simply opening the case.
So I got myself a little project. I got myself some epoxy. I could have just applied it on the crack. But I thought it would be cool and more thorough to disassemble the flash to apply the epoxy.
I know I am not a handy kind of man when it comes, actually everything. Still I go ahead. Because I need to desk adventure or maybe I secretly wish I would screw up. The moment I opened it was the moment I regretted it. But I never learned. I applied the epoxy when inhaling the toxic fume and got my fingers glued together. Next time if there is a next time, I will wear gloves. I waited for the following day before I put the casing back together.
A picture is worth a thousand words. So here we go. A bunch of iPhone pictures.
I only disassembled the base and mostly the top half. Lucky that there wasn't any electronic part to fix. But just to open it up and putting it back together is such an ordeal, for me, anyway.
I was pretty much sure I couldn't put it back together. But lucky me.
Well I hope the pictures will be of some help to some folks. I did try to search on service manual or repair manual or any diagram or pictures but to no avail. I dare not nor do I need to open the head. So I guess the pictures won't be a lot of help.
Do it any your own risk. You may get electrocuted by simply opening the case.
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