New camera

OK, so after more than one or two small "drops" out old faithful point and click camera is a bit unreliable. So with bubs arriving in a few days I could justify going out and buying a new one. A serious lack of cash meant I had to go real cheap, but as I want to get a proper camera again in a couple of years time anyway, I don’t mind.

Picked up a Canon A450 pretty el cheapo from tricky dickies. Bang for your bucks seemed pretty good, sure for under $200 you get sweet fa… but as I said 2 more years and I get a real camera again .

I took a few sample shots to see how it went, pretty happy with it for a point and click. For the hell of it I posted a few copies below.

The macro focus is impressive, and pretty quick (try getting a 4 year old to hold still for more than 1-2 seconds).		I just like this one, I know its just a mandarin but I like the way the colours came through.
Colours are pretty good and normal focus was very quick.		Handles mixed lighting pretty well too.
Super macro feature is great for close ups.		Again the focus is quick and the colours nice and vivid.
Was even able to capture a quick sad face from my girl who refused to pose for me.		Whiskey tells me the camera smells nice too.

I have to say although its just a point and click it takes pretty reasonable snaps. I haven’t tried it inside yet with the flash so that will probably be a weakness, but that’s not a killer.

New phone – BB8800

Cant believe its been a month since I last posted! OMG how time flies!

Anyways there has been a heap of stuff happening, thought I’d slowly get up to date with it all, starting with my new toy…

I managed to score myself a decent smart phone, I use my phone mainly for work and email is pretty critical for me. My old Nokia, although great in its day, wasnt cutting it. So I did a major upgrade to a Blackberry 8800.

I first saw the 8800 at CeBit and what amazed me was how sexy a BB could look, ok I mean sexy when you compare it to the traditional blackberry’s, or with other smart phones. It also had GPS built in which I felt was appropriate as here at Rakon we are pretty focussed on the development of GPS in cell phones.

OK so the new phones a bit on the wide side, but it does have a full qwerty keyboard. But its thin, about 14mm which is thiner than a closed Razor. It fits in the pocket nicely and sort of feels like a light wallet.

The email is fantastic, I no longer have to take my laptop home each night and go through the hassle of logging in. The emails arrive on my BB at exactly the same time they get to my PC, just like a text message. I can be corresponding with our guys in the UK while watching the latest episode of Lost and dont have to trudge off into the cave and fire up the PC.

The phone its self is good, all the features you’d expect and once you get used to the keyboard then its a breeze to use. I’ve got a bluetooth headset with it so you dont have to hold this wide thing up to your ear all the time, but when you do it still isnt too bad. Only problem with the headset is that you look like a dork standing there talking to yourself, I find unless I’m driving I need to get the phone out and hold it so at least it looks like I’m talking on the phone.

Anyways overall I’d rate the BB 8800 as the best smartphone I’ve owned, its more reliable than any of the windows based devices the other guys at work have, its good looking (for a smart phone), its got fantastic battery life and its got GPS.

I’ll post more soon!

Navman R300 Sports Tool Review

So what I really want for Christmas now is the Garmin Forerunner 305 (or 205, forget the old 301/201). I’ve had my little Navman sports tool for a few weeks now and really like it, I thought I should post a proper review of it. It’s not as cool as the Garmin product, but hey its less than half the price and designed in lil’ ole NZ.

For the newbies to the GPS Sports Tool worlds this is a device that uses GPS satellites to calculate your position as you "do your thing" and then tell you information, such as how far you’ve gone and how long it took you.

Sure you can do this with a watch and a map, but this is a bit of a hassle unless you run the same route every time. You cant get live updates while your running. Plus doing it with a gadget is always going to be more fun (that could be just a me thing though).

Now the review proper…

New shoes, running & booze

Well my angelic behavior continues. I have pretty much recovered from my run in with the evil bottle but am gunning for a whole 4 weeks without a tipple… I think my body will thank me for it.

Speaking of body thanking I have managed to end up in the dog box, again. I have been enjoying my running lately and thought I should really invest in a pair of running shoes. Off I go with a massive budget of $100, I warn my darling wife that I may spend up to $120 for the “right” pair.

Well a pleasant trip to Athletes Foot $220 later (plus $20 for some socks) I knew I would be trouble! To be honest $120 doesn’t get you a lot of shoe these days. The girl in the shop was great, foot measured, my balance analyzed, my walk criticized, shoes tried on… Quite an experience. She also promised that if the shoes were no good I could take them back and they would fix me up with a different pair…kewl…

Anyway the proof is in the pudding, or pounding in this case (as in pavement).

The shoes are New Balance 857.They come in extra wide (which is great for my paddles), have a high toe (which is interesting), and pronation control (which I think is good)…

They are very light, flexible and have great cushioning. Basically very comfortable. I have quite wide feed and have certainly found that New Balance has by far and away the best shoes for the horizontally challenged foot!

The high toe of this shoe had me a little worried. What I found was in the toe I had about 1cm movement up and down in my toe, this is an unusual feeling and had me worried that I had too much movement in the shoe for running. However in my test run yesterday I found the extra room very comfortable and actually helped keep my feet relaxed.

The width is good as for a change I am not pushing the sides of the shoe, in theory this should lead to a longer life for the shoe, but we’ll see about that. Certainly it means my foot is well within the sole of the shoe which makes it quite comfortable.

Pronation control is interesting. Apparently my stride rolls in and this shoe is designed to help correct this. I was a little dubious of this and felt that any attempt by the shoe to change my movement may result in discomfort or even pain. But what I have found is that the shoe is very subtle in its control, it feels quite natural which I think is key. I really need a few longer runs to see if there is any negative affect and will update this post accordingly.

After running in x-trainers for the last couple of weeks I found the 857 very, very light. In fact I had trouble getting into a rhythm as my feet were moving faster through my stride than normal, again this is something I will just need to get used to. More miles on the road should sort this out. So all in all very happy with the shoes. I have only run about 3-4km’s in them so far so I’ll give it another couple of longer runs this week and see how they go. If I notice anything about them I’ll update this post.

Great CD

I was a bit of a closet Rockstar Supernova fan for the latest series, wasn’t happy that Lukas won it but hey they were all pretty damn good. Anyways I bought Ryan Star’s CD that he released last year. 20 songs, real intense, moody, piano based “rock”. Bloody good. Would definitely recommend and hope to hear more from him in the future…