Places

At home in FL

This is a short video recorded in the yard of our home in South Florida, in December 2008. It features flora and fauna typical of our sub-tropical climate, such as palm and pine trees, ficus, lizards, and various flowers. I recorded these sequences with a (then) new digital camera, the Kodak EasyShare Z1015 IS, a 10 megapixel, 15x optical zoom camera that also takes 720p HD videos.

Given my fairly positive experience with the Kodak EasyShare v610 camera, I thought the Z1015 IS would be a good step up. It would have been, except for certain flaws which made me return it, such as its unacceptably soft and grainy images at 12-15x zoom, and heavy banding and compression artifacts visible on a lot of the HD video clips I shot with it.

Perhaps I’ll post a fuller review of the Z1015 at some point. It would still be relevant, even though it’s been almost 1½ years since I tested it, because Kodak still lists it on their website, and the price is only $20 below its original $299 tag.

The video was intended to be a test of the camera’s capabilities. The only editing/manipulation I did was to image-stabilize some of the clips in iMovie. The camera’s image stabilization work alright for photos at long focal lengths, but it has a difficult time keeping up when video is being recorded at 7-15x zoom. The audio is unchanged, so you’ll get a good sense of the microphone’s ability, and the colors are what the camera gave me. It’s in HD, so watch it full screen to enjoy it.

Watch “At home in FL” on blip.tv | YouTube

Standard
Thoughts

SmugMug now supports oEmbed

According to this GetSatisfaction discussion, SmugMug have implemented support for oEmbed. When I first tried it a few weeks ago, putting a one-line URL in a WP.com post didn’t show the video, but it worked on WP self-installs. Still, you had to hack the URL by prefacing the video URL from the address bar with the SmugMug oEmbed API URL (http://www.smugmug.com/services/oembed/?url=), so that was a hassle. I have found out since that the folks at SmugMug are working with WP on simple video embeds (like the ones at YouTube or Vimeo or blip.tv) — see the GS discussion for the details.

Tonight, I decided to try the old hack URL on my blog (hosted at WP.com) to see how things are coming along. Surprise, surprise, videos play nicely! Have a look below. It’s a video of my tom cat, Felix, sleeping in my arms. The direct URL to the video, in case the embed stops working at some point, is this.

http://www.smugmug.com/services/oembed/?url=http%3A//www.raoulpopphotography.com/Other/My-Videos/8635949_WoFHs#741544973_ZdwRZ

Standard
Thoughts

Our Children Will Accuse Us (2008)

Have you seen the trailer for the French documentary entitled “Nos Enfants Nous Accuseront”, made by Jean-Paul Jaud in 2008? You should watch it. It’s about the effects of pesticide-laden foods on children’s health, and the bio (organic) movement in France.

More info is available on the documentary website, at nosenfantsnousaccuseront-lefilm.com.

Standard
Reviews

BMW 325i build quality problems

I put together a short video review of the build quality problems in the 2006 BMW 235i sport sedan. These are things like:

  • Rotting or loose rubber seams on the outside
  • Easily scratched/worn door handles
  • Faulty cup holders
  • Flimsy, easily melted cigarette lighters
  • Soft plastic finishes that disintegrate and scuff right away
  • Broken window shades
  • Plasticky, snap-together feel of ceiling consoles
  • Fading radio display
  • Various cockpit noises

Watch the video on YouTube | blip.tv

As one of the commenters in a BMW forum puts it, it comes down to “BMW’s choice of low quality materials in high wear areas“. That is a wonderfully succinct explanation of the problem.

These things keep breaking down, they get replaced, then they break down again. If BMW would bother to add up all the service costs they incur for repeat repairs to the cockpit, they would realize it would be cheaper to make them better in the first place. This is my plea to them: start building better cars — a bad cockpit ruins the driver experience and takes away from the wonderful handling and performance of a BMW.

Standard
Thoughts

Still working at 100

At 100 years old, Dr. W. G. Watson is the world’s oldest practicing physician. He’s been working as an OB/GYN doctor since 1947, and everyone in his town knows him. He says he doesn’t go anywhere without seeing one of his patients, some of which he’s followed for over 50 years. And he still makes house calls!

Watch video on YouTube

Standard