Thursday, August 28, 2008

I was wrong


Have a lovely Labour Day weekend.

We're off to Michigan for Shannon's wedding. She'll be getting married at Saarinen House at Cranbrook, where she and her betrothed, Tom Lauerman, went to art school and where she'll be teaching in the fall.

So it turns out that I was wrong about there not being a kick-ass DSLR that also takes good movies. Its the new Nikon D90. David Pogue has what can only be called a rave in today's Times. One (with a lens) can be yours $1,300. We've been very happy with our D60. I'm still not sure what to do--if anything--for video. The more I read about the Flip cameras, the more convinced I become that they haven't made much progress on resolution and clarity since the first generation of Flips.

Posted by jwb at 9:31 AM  · 0 Comments   

Friday, August 15, 2008

Welcome back to the show


Has it been almost a month since our last post? Yikes! Sorry about that. We've been really busy plagiarizing our dissertation from Wikipedia. (See here if you don't get this admittedly kind of lame joke.) We're almost finished, so blogging should be less sporadic, at least until Baby B arrives. After that, all bets are off. I'm not a very good napper, so it's entirely possible that I will die from exhaustion at some point a week or so after October 20.

In comments to my second to last post in July, Monica gave me a polite beat-down for my ignorance of gardening technique. It turns out that Massachusetts and New Mexico are in the same zone. I have to confess that I would not have guessed that in a million years. (I do know more about composting than you might guess, though perhaps we'll save that topic for another day.) In my own defense, check out my badass tomatoes (at right). Yes, they are a little too close together, but it doesn't seem to bother them very much as long as you clip back the more aggressive plants periodically. We've had cherry tomatoes for a few weeks now, and should have some other varieties any day now.

Some big news on the home front: Jenn got a promotion and will be taking a management position with her company in Chicago after she comes off maternity leave in early '09. We'll be moving there in February or March. The timing is pretty good all around, especially for Buzzy, who will have a whole new city to pee on. Though we will miss all of our peeps in Boston, we are looking forward to it.

On the camera front, it turns out that a good camera that takes good movies and a good camcorder that takes good still shots do not really exist. (I mean "good" as in "good", as opposed to "not good" or "bad".) After much indecision, I decided to buy a decent DSLR--a Nikon D60--and worry about the camcorder next month. The new generation of Flip cameras are out and we may just get one of those. (We have one of the original ones. The video quality is pretty good if you don't blow up the image too much. It is not good if you do--as you can see here in these cute but fuzzy videos of Buzzy. One imagines--though one ought to confirm this--that the resolution is somewhat better on the new ones.) Alternatively, we could spend some serious coin on an HD camcorder. However, you then are forced to navigate some very dangerous technical waters--tape versus hard disk or flash. Dave Pogue, ici--in his excellent "favorite gadgets of 2008" list--says that you are compromising on resolution unless you go with tape. But--sigh--who wants to deal with all those tapes? Anyway, thanks to Andy (in comments) for being a smart ass and to Susan (also in comments) for some genuinely helpful advice.

Anyone out there watch "Mad Men"? If not, that's OK. No hard feelings.

Posted by jwb at 7:30 AM  · 5 Comments