Focusing speed

I've two zoom lens: a Canon EF-S 18-55 f3.5-5.6 IS kit lens and a Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS, and three prime lenses: Canon 50mm f1.8 II, Canon 100mm f2.0 and Canon 200mm f2.8L.

Interesting enough is that, both zoom lenses have IS. I found IS pretty useful when the ambient light is weak, for examples, for all indoor settings, or when the aperture is small. All my prime lenses have relatively big aperture and thus, even without IS, they work pretty good.

When we talk about focusing speed, IS couldn't help. In dimmer light, those prime lenses are really fast and accurate. And being prime, they are intrinsically faster in terms of focusing, and with the added aperture, they truely shine. Actually, IS could slow down the focusing process, since the focusing will not be done until after the stablizer works. So, in case you want faster focusing, switching off the IS mechanism will help.

I always think that prime lenses are better for creativity, but of course, the zoom are unbeatable for convenience.

The Beauty of Pencil

We used to use pencil when we're in primary school. And then when we grow up, we are somehow taught to use ball pens instead. And then habbit carries on.

Recently, I'm learning a new language and I've to erase and correct quite often, and therefore, I begin to re-discover the beauty of pencil! It's just easy to use, way easier to correct than ball pen. Nowadays when correction tape are fast and clean when compared to correction fluid, but then nothing work better than faster than a eraser.

Maybe that's my elder daughter who is using pencil these days, otherwise, I might forget about pencil entirely.

It makes me think of one thing. When people are going to the space, regular ball pens no longer work with the absence of gravity. Some clever guys enhance the ball pens with some electronic parts and pumps so that the ink will continue to flow in space without gravity. Guess what, some even smarter guys proposed that we can use pencil in this case!

Simple and elegant, simply unbeatable!

Canon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L for close up work

It's not bad a lens for this purpose, this is not a macro lens, but it's serving its purpose pretty well if you're not very serious about macro imaging. This lens is truely versatile. I found push-pull zoom extremely handy and it's faster than any zoom ring can provide.





Remember, this is the first time that I tried to use this lens for close up work, and therefore, with more practice, it's going to be even better!

LED Light Bulb (E27)

I got two of them from ebay recently at around $30 HKD each, the price is nice and the brightness is acceptable for soft illumination, the problem is that the light is closer to blue than white. The standard E27 interface worked out great.

Again, if you want them for soft illumination, the blue color is going to work.

I would say that cheap LED illumination technology is not yet ready. I wonder why, because it works pretty good for flashlight, and in that case, they're bright and truely energy saving.

I shall wait for another six months and longer to buy another small batch.

Refilling ink

Just successfully refilled the ink cartridge of my printer, the cost different is a kind of crazy, more than 60:1!!!

The ink was purchased online from DealExtreme, now one of my favorite shopping place, and I will always check the price there before heading outside, it's usually cheaper and better yet, it features site-wide free shipping.



There is no trick in re-filling ink, and the instruction inside the package is more than enough. I failed for the first time simply because that ink cartridge was broken originally, the print head was leaking, maybe it's too old or maybe I've handled it improperly before.

I've ordered a re-fill set for the color one as well, will do it later, but it seems the method is a bit different.

The old fashion way about downloading

Last night a friend of mine asked me to have a look on their internet connection, I did a ping and it works, and apparently, it was the browser which failed. Therefore, I proceeded to try Firefox, however, it was broken as well. So, how can I download another browser for them?

Yes, the answer is the old fashion ftp which is available even for command line!

Among all the browsers which I tried, only Firefox and also Mozilla still got ftp site which easy-to-guess name, i.e. ftp.mozilla.org

On (cleanly) removing the old Firefox and reinstall the new one which I just fetched from the ftp, it does not work still. So, I tried to install mozilla, and it works!

Afterward, I have also downloaded the google browser for them, just as a backup. But then it requires another browser first and in that case, it's mozilla.

As a summary, old fashion technology still has its place, especially when the new fancy stuff failed badly.

Source of noise from PC speaker

Some people reported that their on-board AC97 had noise, and I found a similar situation on my new PC. When you move your mouse, or when the hard drive begins to spin, you can hear the subtle noise, especially at night when the environment is relatively quiet. Therefore, I proceed to buy an external USB sound card in the hope to fix the problem.

However, the problem persists.

Then I know why, my speakers are drawing power from the USB port of the motherboard, and those were the real source of the noise. I tried to power the speaker from some other sources and the noise was gone!