Apologies for the lack up updates in the last month. I've had some pretty major system problems, which have necessitated the purchase of a new iMac. It is of course doubly annoying given that I had just completed the site redesign, and needed to upload the new gallery and movie pages. Now I have a working system, these should be added soon.

Test post because it crashed last time

I'm slowly going through and syncing my Flickr sets with the sets available on this this site. I've uploaded another six sets today, and will add more as time goes on.

So once again changes galore. I've been meaning to do this for a while, as I always thought having the blog as the main page looked a little untidy.

The idea of the new site is that I wanted to show that the site had content beyond the blog. I'm still heavily using Flickr and Youtube for photos and video respectively, but they are now much more tightly intigrated with the site itself. I've pretty much given up on .Mac galleries. They look lovely, but the upload speed takes the piss, and so does the download speed. I'll probably link to the occasional file on it, as I can password protect individual galleries. The galleries I'm adding now are also dynamic, so if I upload a new photo to Flickr and add it to a set which has a gallery page here - that photo will automatically update on this site. You can also visit the Flickr page by clicking the little 'i' next to the thumbnail. There you can leave comments on each picture and download higher resolution copies.

One other change is the tech-toys section. I wanted to create a section to talk about gadgets, and more specifically how they work in real life and how they integrate with the Mac. Whenever I buy a new product, I look around the internet for reviews. There tend to lots of reviews, but no real feedback on what its like to use the item. I've had seen enough searches hitting the site to convince me that other people are looking for the same thing. Obviously the 'reviews' if you wish to call them that, will be limited because I will only talk about things that I use myself. I'll also write up little bits and pieces about Mac apps and iPhone apps as I seem to use a ton of them.

Last but not least is the name change. If you've got nezza.net bookmarked, it's not going anywhere so no need to change. I've had somewheretorant.com registered ever since a drunken night when I managed to register it without even knowing I'd done it. So now I'm putting it to good use. However since my hosting it for nezza.net, all the sublinks will reflect that address. Complicated? Maybe a little, but anyone visiting won't see a difference.

I've uploaded a few photos from mine and Ada's birthday weekend in Jersey.





As always the full set can be viewed on Flickr.

Thanks everyone for making it such a great weekend. I certainly enjoyed my first weekend away this year, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

I'll also be adding some photos from Jersey Zoo when I get around to it.

In a conversation did not happen in any way, shape or form like this...



Steve asked me to link to his website www.salin.org in an effort to improve his webrank. God knows why he asked me. The only traffic I get are the lost and the dammed (that little sentence should snare a few people looking for info on the GTA expansion), and a whopping 25% of searches are looking for this photo of my watch

really annoyingly is by far my most viewed photograph on Flickr.

So remember kids visit www.salin.org today. There are loads of pictures of watches!

So I've had the TG3 for a couple of days now and I've had a chance to play. I have to say I'm loving this thing!

I just wanted to give a quick example of why.

On Saturday I went out with both the TG3 and the camera is is replacing, my Canon FS100. Attached are two screen grabs from video taken at Jerberg point.

First the Canon


Then the Sony



Even shrunken down you can see the difference, but click on the images to view size to see the real difference.

The Sony HDR-TG3 Flash Media Camcorder

Last April I linked to a press release of a new Sony flash media camcorder called the TG3 (or TG1 in the States).

And today I finally got mu grubby little mitts on one.



At the time I said:

It sounds like it beats the hell out of my little Sanyo, but I get the feeling it will be rather more expensive as well. Still brushed aluminum would look good next to my macbook Air.

Well I was right about it being better then the Sanyo, and I was right about it being expensive. I was wrong about it being brushed aluminum though - it's actually made from titanium, and yes it does look good next to a Macbook Air. I haven't had much of a chance to play with it yet, but the first impressions are very favourable. It feels very well made. Is actually slightly heaver then I expected, maybe a touch heaver then my LX3. First video has been a little mixed. It was practically dark when I got home, and indoors isn't exactly well lit. Actually its terribly lit. but it does appear that low-light shooting is not the TG3's strong point. The clips I've seen on Vimeo in daylight look much, much better. So I'm not exactly worried.

Mac Compatibility

As usual Sony excels itself by providing zero support for the Mac. Keeping up their perfect record with other Sony products I have owned - The W880i phone, the PS3 (media link) and the Reader 505 (despite using Adobe Digital Editions for DRM and loading the books - a program that functions perfectly on the Mac). However iMovie 09 recognises the camera immediately and imports the video with no problems. I could leave it there, after all the process is painless and works but there is a catch - and its a huge one. The camera uses the AVCHD codec for video, and iMovie transcodes this into the Apple Intermediary Codec. This has the effect of hugely inflating the file size of the video - and I do mean hugely.

A recording totaling 4 minutes 14 seconds, came in a ginormous 503mb - over half a gig! I've taken to converting the video using the now defunct, but still excellent, Visualhub. I convert to MP4 using H.264 and the filesize for that particular file has come down to a much more manageable 84.4mb. Whilst I can understand iMovies need to convert the original video. I do wish that it would allow me the option of choosing which codec I want to use.

I'm really looking forward to using this little beauty, and I hope it it gets me filming more in the same way that the LX3 has rekindled my passion for photography.