Blog - Links to other blogs: October 2005 Archives

There's a wonderful blogrant called Petteri's Pontifications. In his most recent episode, Petteri Sulonen pontificates on full-frame DSLRs and the Canon EOS 5D. You may not agree with him, especially if you're a Nikon aficionado, but it's an interesting read. Now all Petteri needs to do is shell out the $3 for a real domain name.

On the DS-HUM list, a link was recently posted to a wonderful article by Mark O'Brien on disability and sexuality:

In 1983, I wrote an article about sex and disabled people. In interviewing sexually active men and women, I felt removed, as though I were an anthropologist interviewing headhunters while endeavoring to maintain the value-neutral stance of a social scientist. Being disabled myself, but also being a virgin, I envied these people ferociously. It took me years to discover that what separated me from them was fear -- fear of others, fear of making decisions, fear of my own sexuality, and a surpassing dread of my parents. Even though I no longer lived with them, I continued to live with a sense of their unrelenting presence, and their disapproval of sexuality in general, mine in particular. In my imagination, they seemed to have an uncanny ability to know what I was thinking, and were eager to punish me for any malfeasance.

Whenever I had sexual feelings or thoughts, I felt accused and guilty. No one in my family had ever discussed sex around me. The attitude I absorbed was not so much that -- polite people never thought about sex, but that no one did. I didn't know anyone outside my family, so this code affected me strongly, convincing me that people should emulate the wholesome asexuality of Barbie and Ken, that we should behave as though we had no "down there's" down there.

.....

Frustrated by my inability to get The Answer, a blinding flash that would resolve all my doubts and melt my indecision, I brooded. Why do rehabilitation hospitals teach disabled people how to sew wallets and cook from a wheelchair but not deal with a person's damaged self-image? Why don't these hospitals teach disabled people how to love and be loved through sex, or how to love our unusual bodies? I fantasized running a hospital that allowed patients the chance to see a surrogate, and that offered hope for a future richer than daytime TV, chess, and wheelchair basketball. But that was my dream of what I would do for others. What would I do for me?

Read more.

OK, I thought I blog on relatively obscure things, but Paul van Walree wins the geeky photographer award of the month. Please visit his encyclopedic articles on the optics of lens hoods (lens shades in Britain), on lens flare, and vignetting, all of which are part of a larger collection of articles on optics.

I found a blog called HDforIndies.com which is an equipment review/discussion site for independent filmmakers. It's a wealth of information on DV/HDV and recording equipment. The only problem is that I can't get Netnewswire to subscribe to their RSS feed -- it keeps asking for a username/password. I'm not sure if this is a bug on the HDforIndies site or in Netnewswire. Can someone try to subscribe using another program?

Luminous Landscape has a wonderful review of the new Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS lens. It sounds like a winner, except for the slightly increased barrel distortion. Contrast and resolution apparently is higher. The new lens was released this October and has the new 3-stop IS; increased weatherproofing; increased contrast/stray-light control; and features 18 optical elements (3 aspherical) in 13 groups.

I have the old EF 28-70mm f/2.8 L lens and while I'm generally happy with it, it does suffer slightly wide open at wide angles in the corners. I was thinking of replacing it with the new 24-70mm L lens, but for fieldwork, it looks like the 24-105mm f/4 L IS is a better choice since it is smaller (83.5mm Dx 107mm L), lighter (670g), and has longer range. The MSRP is ¥145,000, B&H has it for $1249.

The buzz on Slashdot and other blogs is that all four major digital camera manufacturers are releasing service advisories that the Sony-made CCDs on their cameras are subject to failure due to a faulty design that lets moisture in. See the info here: Canon, Fuji, Konica-Minolta, and Sony.

It's no big secret that I'm a big gadget fan and so of course I have a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. There's a wonderful blog essay on the "all I ever needed to know, I learned from my Roomba."

One more reason not to shop at Walmart, and in particular, not use their photo processing services.