Month: July 2003

I’m off to bed.  I’m catching an early flight in the morning.  I’ll be posting here and moblogging at textamerica.  I’ll be bringing a laptop to sniff the WiFi out there, but most of my connectivity will be via GPRS.  I’ll try to stop in on freenode while I’m out there.

I’ll be keeping up a little bit with my wap aggregator, but I don’t have all 278 feeds in there.

Kathleen Day reports on the Freddie Mac investigation in The Washington Post today:

The report is the result of an eight-month investigation by James R. Doty, a former Securities and Exchange Commission general counsel. Among the steps he and his team of lawyers and forensic accountants took were sealing the offices of 20 employees when they learned documents may have been altered and listening to 11,000 minutes of taped calls by company traders completing the transactions used to smooth earnings.

The emphasis is mine.  In the current climate of corporate scandal, it looks like at least one job will be in demand.

testing to see if I can still post to my blog via email. I’m getting ready for a weekend in California.

From a Nikon newsletter:

“…pricing will not be provided until approximately 30-days prior to planned beginning of delivery.  The current delivery is scheduled to begin during the early part of this calendar’s 4th quarter.”

I caught part of an episode of MI-5 on A&E last night.  It is an imported version of Spooks renamed and reworked a little for the US.

MI-5 is, in my opinion, the best parts of CSI, 24, and every spy flick ever made.  Someday I’ll have to find the DVD box set of Spooks and scare up a region-free DVD player…

It looks like new episodes are airing Tuesday nights at 10pm.  They seem to be rebroadcasting the current episode several times in the middle of the night throughout the week.  I’ll have to set the VCR up for that one.  (Yes, technofreak that I am, I do not own a TiVo.)

Can anyone hook Russ up with his dream job?

Design Technica takes a look at an amazing little VAIO laptop, the PCG-TR1A.  It has a 10.6 inch wide screen and features a 900MHz Centrino under the hood.

It looks like the cat is out of the bag.  DPReview:

Nikon has today made official the camera leaked all over the net in the last week. The D2H is a four megapixel digital SLR which can shoot continuously at eight frames per second. Its buffer is large enough for 40 JPEG or 25 NEF (RAW) frames shot at this rate. The sensor used in the D2H is Nikon’s first in-house designed sensor and based on a totally new ‘JFET LBCAST’ technology which appears to be similar to CMOS but capable of outputting data at a far higher speed. The D2H supports an optional accessory, the WT-1 which provides direct wireless transmission of images from the camera by WiFi (802.11b), images are sent using the FTP protocol. The D2H has numerous other new features and improvements such as; 11-area Multi-CAM 2000 AF module, 80 ms viewfinder blackout, ambient WB sensor, new Lithium-Ion battery, 2.5″ 211,000 pixel LCD monitor, orientation sensor, more viewfinder information and support for the advanced i-TTL flash lighting system.

More information can be found at their 5 page review, DigitalReview.ca, and Imaging-Resource.

Other rumors were confirmed today including two lenses designed for the DX series of cameras:

Along with the introduction of the new D2H Digital SLR Nikon is also introducing two ‘complementary’ DX format lenses. The Nikkor AF-S DX 17-55 mm F2.8 G provides an equivalent field of view of 25.5 to 82.5 mm on a DX format digital SLR (D2H, D1 series, D100), having handled this lens I can say that it is slightly smaller and lighter than the Nikkor AF-S 28 – 70 mm F2.8 lens. The other amazing lens is the new AF DX 10.5 mm F2.8 G fisheye, on a DX format digital SLR this lens provides an equivalent field of view of 15.75 mm.

A new flash for the D2H, the SB-800 was also announced:

Nikon has today announced the new SB-800 Speedlight. This new flash unit is designed to complement the D2H digital SLR and incorporates many new features associated with Nikon’s i-TTL ‘Creative Lighting System’ including Flash Value Lock, Auto FP High-Speed Sync and Flash Colour Information Communication. The SB-800 also facilitates advanced wireless lighting, “Up to 3 SB-800 units can now communicate monitor pre-flash data with the Master unit for fully automatic multiple flash exposures, removing the need for flash meters or manual calculations. The D2H Digital SLR 1005-pixel Matrix metering sensor is utilized to calculate exposures, and transmit each Slave output changes back to each Slave unit.”

It’s interesting to note that most of the rumors held up pretty well.  There is absolutely no mention of the D2H at Nikon USA’s website, and no mention of it at Nikon’s dealer website.  I’ll relay pricing information as soon as it becomes available to me.

Rod Waldhoff has compiled a list of characters (and their shortcuts) for coding on a Sharp Zaurus.

PocketPC Thoughts notes a Samsung press release announcing a 533MHz mobile chip.  PocketPC’s and smartphones should be seeing this chip around Q4 2003.