Recently, I was curious as to which lens I had been using the most. A Quick search of the metadata in my images in Adobe Lightroom yeilded that my SMC Pentax 50mm/f1.4 is hands down my most used lens.
In fact, it leads the number 2 lens by more than double the images. That’s an overwhelming win for this lens, and despite what dpreview recently said, this lens produces some of the most pleasing images, even wide open. I imaging my results are quite a bit different than theirs since I don’t photograph resolution charts 
This post is my attempt at a real world impression, not a review. Reviews photographing test charts, and other scientific measurements do nothing to show weather a lens will be considered good, or useful.
More after the jump…
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apeman Pentax, articles, photo, pictures, tech 50mm, Lenses, Pentax, photography, SMC-P FA50/1.4
After about a month of usage, here are my initial findings on what you can expect in terms of battery life from your Pentax K100D Super digital SLR camera.
Using the set of Alkaline batteries included with the camera I was able to take approximately 90 shots with about 60-75% flash usage.
I also picked up two sets of 4 Energizer Lithium Ion single use batteries. I plan to keep these as the emergency set in my camera bag. I expect this set to perform close to, or exceed the anticipated number of shots in the manual. If I were to take a long trip, I would also consider picking up a set or two of CRV-3 Lithium batteries as these are supposed to yield 1000 – 1100 shots.
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apeman Pentax, articles, photo, pictures, reviews, tech batteries, K100D Super, Pentax, photography
I origionally switched to Linux over 10 years ago because my modest hardware could not keep up with Windows, and I was rewarded with a reliable, stable, and responive system. Fast forward 8 years and I am now a very satisfied Ubuntu user, however, I have never been a fan of desktop enviroments such as GNOME and KDE. I normaly prefere something very light weight such as WindowMaker.However, I found a way to keep a “mostly default” Ubuntu install with a light weight desktop. I had used Xfce a couple of years ago while experimenting with Redhat 8,9 and Fedora, and I quite enjoyed it.
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apeman DIY, articles, howto, linux, reviews, tech, ubuntu
BlackBerry Curve (8300) Review
Some have called it the best BlackBerry ever, and I tend to agree with them. The curve is only my second BlackBerry, previously I was using a BlackBerry 8700r.
Now there was nothing wrong with my 8700r, and the only reason to upgrade to the Curve/8300 was the fact that the rest of my department was in the process of standardizing our phones.
Its going to sound corny, but the Curve is sleek, its stylish, and its very light. Did I mention that this phone is *light* its incredible. It took a couple of hours to get used to the trackball, having used the famous BlackBerry wheel for a year or so, but now I would have trouble going back to just the wheel.
[continue reading after the jump....]
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apeman 8300, articles, blackberry, reviews
After updating to Ubuntu 7.04 “Fiesty Fawn” I was surprised to find out that it did not come with Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0. Well, this happened because the new version of Mozilla’s popular email program was released a couple of days after Fiesty Fawn, at which point it was simply to late.
If you want to install and use Thunderbird 2.0, here is your quick and dirty guide:
The first thing we need to do is download Thunderbird 2 from Mozilla, save it to somewhere you will remember, the default is your Desktop under Ubuntu. This brief how to will assume that you saved the file to your Desktop.
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apeman DIY, articles, howto, linux, tech, ubuntu
After upgrading my Toshiba Satellite Pro A100 laptop to Ubuntu 7.04 “Feisty Fawn” my sound card stopped working. The only mixer options available are related to the built in 56k dial up modem.
My A100 uses an ATI SB450 soundcard, which worked out of the box in 6.06, 6.10, and the early beta stages of 7.04. From what I can see, this problem is related to the release kernel not detecting the sound card model correctly.
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apeman DIY, articles, howto, linux, tech, ubuntu
Hugh at Digital Home has his list of HD channels available in Canada up. its current up to April 2007, and its worth a look if you are looking at switching from Cable to Satellite or otherwise.
The main reason for the update to the list appears to be the addition of HDNet to StarChoice and Shaw Cable’s lineup. (not too surprising, StarChoice is owned by Shaw). Bell has had HD for a while now, and they still appear to be the HD leader in Canada.
I’m not expecting to see many new HD channels this year, Bell is expected to focus on upgrading to MPEG-4, adding additional bandwidth for HD channels, as they try to stay ahead of the Cable, and IPTV providers.
apeman HDTV, PVR, articles, expressvu, home theatre, news, shaw
Recently, I was curious as to which lens I had been using the most. A Quick search of the metadata in my images in Adobe Lightroom yeilded that my SMC Pentax 50mm/f1.4 is hands down my most used lens.
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