1449 - Early Autumn

Well, I slept long, rose late, and then I spent hours in a furniture shop seeking inspiration for the new kitchen next year. Later I added half an hour in our local electronics market, and that was actually quite interesting.

I got to play a little with the Panasonic LX5. When I had been there last time, its batteries had been empty, but this time I had more luck. I can say that I really like it. It feels good, is quite intuitive, has a great lens, decent high ISO capabilities (at least if you shoot RAW), and it can make squares. Yeah, that’s great. It’s quite a difference whether you crop to square after the fact, or if you can compose squarely on the display. I still won’t buy it, but if I were out for a compact camera, this would be it.

The other interesting thing was playing with an iPad. I spent about ten minutes browsing my own website, searching on Google, using Wikipedia, and though I’m impressed with the speed and fluidity, I am rather underwhelmed by the so much touted display. Reading on it hurts my eyes. It’s pretty OK in landscape mode, but when the page scales down in portrait mode to accommodate the lower width, things get a little fuzzy and less readable. The other thing that bothers me is the smear. I tried to clean the surface by wiping it with my T shirt, but the smear did not go away. And of course in typical Apple style this is a mirror.

Before I tried it, I was more or less determined to buy one, but the stress on my eyes made me reluctant enough to get over the impulse, and that’s good. At home I wanted to find out whether the iPad supports the Ogg Vorbis audio codec (maybe there’s an app for that?), but it does not seem so, and you need even iTunes to put files onto it. Well, there is an alternative app for $10, but just forget simply using a USB cable. Oh dear!

A little research found me the Archos 10.1, due in October, a 16:9 Android 2.2 tablet, and not only does it support Ogg, it also has two USB ports, one where it is host (simply add a big hard drive or USB stick), and another where it acts as a drive to your computer. It comes with 16 GB storage, can be expanded with micro SD, is lighter, thinner and finally cheaper as the iPad. I guess I’ll have a look at as soon as it is available. Not that I have any hope for a better monitor or less smear, but it fits my desire for a gadget where I am in control 🙂

The day had started out foggy and cloudy, but during the afternoon and while I was in the shops, it cleared up and grew warm and sunny, and so I even ended up with an image.

The Song of the Day is the Johnny Mercer song “Early Autumn”, and while we had Ella Fitzgerald two years ago, this time it’s Anita O’Day on her 1958 album “Anita O’Day Sings the Winners”. Hear it on YouTube.