Thursday February 18
 
11:27
 
Are your photos worth $5000 to you?

I was looking though the photos I’ve taken since getting the D90 in Lightroom.

Most of my photos are “memories” type photos – ie, photos of family, friends, etc.

As a result, a lot of them are indoors, in bars, in the evening, etc so I always knew I use high ISO a lot, but looking in Lightroom I was astounded to see just how many shots I had at ISO 3200 and ISO 6400. Thousands.

It got me thinking. OK – a D3S is a lot of money at about $5000.
But later in life, what is going to be more important to me?
Looking back at grainy D90 ISO 3200/6400 photos and thinking “I saved $5000″, or looking back at ISO 3200/6400 photos which are almost perfect (in terms of noise)?
In that context – saving our memories – isn’t $5000 worth it?

Heck, I look back at my pre-DSLR photos and wish I’d bought a DSLR sooner. It’s irrelevant to me now that I “saved money” by waiting until they became affordable.

I’m really beginning to think that maybe blowing $5000 on a D3S isn’t such a bad idea…

Monday February 15
 
10:32
 
Aaarrrrrgghhh GOOGLE!

A very pissed off letter I want to send to Google Adsense but can’t because there’s no contact option:

Dear Google,

I have been an Adsense user for a long time.

Suddenly you have decided that my earnings must be shown in Japanese yen because I live in Japan. It’s not something I want, but I have to do it to continue with adsense – fine.

However, you tell me I must accept new terms and conditions and these are only shown in Japanese. I don’t speak Japanese. Just because I live in Japan, it doesn’t mean I speak Japanese.

My computer is set to English. My browser is set to English. My account is set to English. But you insist that terms and conditions are shown to me in a language I don’t understand? Ridiculous.

There is no way in Adsense support to contact you about this. No way to get help about the terms and conditions. What am I supposed to do?

It’s bad enough that every time I go to http://www.google.com/ you ignore my PC OS language, browser language setting, Google account language setting, the fact I’ve clicked on “Show Google in English” millions of times, and you redirect me to http://www.google.co.jp/ – but presenting Japanese terms and conditions to me and forcing me to accept them without giving the option of a different language or even be able to contact you about them is just taking the biscuit.

Repeat: PC has English OS. Web browser has English as the primary encoding language. Google account is set to English. Stop thinking that what I really want is Japanese!

Arrrrggghhh!

Of course this letter will have zero effect and I’ll be forced to accept terms and conditions I don’t understand, but writing it made me feel a whole lot better.

Wednesday January 27
 
18:01
 
Korean music

일본에와서3년이나됐는데도아직도내가자주듣는음악은한국음악이다
Even though I haven’t lived in Korea for 3+ years, even now most of the music I listen to is Korean. The latest Jaurim EP is superb (“제목 없는 음반”).

I most listen to:

1. Delispice 델리 스파이스
2. Humming Urban Stereo 허밍 어반 스테레오
3. 3rd Line Butterfly 3호선 버터플라이
4. Rollercoaster 롤러코스터
5. Rainy Sun 레이니썬
6. Nell 넬
7. You-me 유미
8. Casker 캐스커
9. Lucid Fall 루시드폴
10. Cherry Filter 체리필터
11. Jaurim 자우림
12. Loveholic 러브홀릭
13. Jadu 자두

Know them? #1, #2, #4, #7, #10, #11, #12 and #13 should be known to most Koreans - the rest, probably not. If you like Portishead, you must listen to #5. The last 4 I only like a subset of their music.

Wednesday January 27
 
14:40
 
Lenovo one key recovery – how to fix it

Before I bought my Acer netbook, I bought a Lenovo netbook.

Right from the beginning, I got disk error. I decided wipe the C drive and install Windows 7 over the Japanese OS. It worked OK, but the initial disk errors bothered me, so I decided to restore the laptop to original state and return it. And there I hit a problem. Windows 7 had repartitioned the disk and one key recovery (OKR) no longer worked.

Eventually after a day of investigating, I did finally manage to get OKR to work again, restore the netbook to original state, and return it for a refund. So that time isn’t wasted, I’m going to post what I found out about OKR – because after searching around, I know lots of people are having issues with it.

Switched off, the OKR button is supposed to boot you to recovery mode to restore the hard drive. But if anything alters the partition information of the HDD, it stops working – instead it boot you into Windows.

The reason for this is that the recovery partition is special – it has a #12 partition ID, which is a Compay Configuration/Diagnostics Partition (details here). Most partitioning software doesn’t know about this partition ID and when you change partition information, such as by adjusting partition sizes or creating a new partition, that ID gets reset to something the partitioning software knows about. That stops the OKR key working.

To restore the ID, you need gparted on a USB key or on CD. Search Google and you can get it easily enough. Method:

1. Boot into gparted.
2. Identify the disk identifier for the recovery partition – eg /dev/sda4
3. Open up the gparted console
4. Type fdisk /dev/sda (ie. take the number off the identifier)
5. Type m for help if you want
6. Type p to print the partition table – check you get the same number as above
7. Type t, then 4 for the partition number (replace with the number of your partition)
8. If you want, type L to list codes
9. The code you want is 12, enter 12 and then type w to write
10. Do not use the GUI from this point – if you do, it will remove the code 12
11. Exit gparted and try the OKR button. It should work.

An alternative is to set the boot flag on the recovery partition. The lenovo will then boot using the recovery partition.

Wednesday January 13
 
15:17
 
@ Lemonsoju award for stating the blooming obvious

Many beaches are very popular on warm sunny days.

via Beach – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.