I set my camera up on the top level of the members grandstand. It had a view of the start/finish line, a bit of the grandstand and the area behind “Jennian Homes” as well as across to Buckland and the skies above the track. This time, I had the power of 3x spare batteries up my sleeve. Or so I thought. Turns out I grabbed 2x Spares and a spare for another nikon camera that has *very* similar looking batteries. Le Sigh. But I didn’t know this when I set up my tripod.

Basing my calculations on a 4gb memory card and two batteries every 3 hours, I should have been home and hosed, but given my f**k up with the spare battery, I had to change my plan and it worked in my favour I think.

Equipment:

1x D200
2x 4gb CF Cards
3x EN-EL3e Batteries
1x MB-D200 Battery grip
1x Slik Tripod
1x Tokina 12-24 f4 Lens

I used my auto focus to focus a point on the track just in front of the flag point at pit exit and then engaged the clutch on the lens to manual and adjusted the focus. The images are very slightly out of focus, but there isn’t much I can do about that now, and you wouldn’t know looking at the video either.

Set to ISO 200 and aperture to f11 and the camera in Aperture Priority mode, I left the camera to make the best decision about shutter speed. While this does deplete my battery even faster, it allows for long shutter speeds as the light fades. And the lower the ISO, the longer the shutter speed. That whole triangle of exposure thingymajig. We kicked off with a shutter speed of 1/200.

Using the built in interval timer in my camera, one exposure every 15 seconds. As the light failed, and so did my batteries, I darted out onto the balcony and changed it down to one every minute and by then the shutter speed was adjusting itself to 1.5″ every minute. Awesome.

Over two compact flash cards, I came home with 1597 photos. It took a while to import them all into Lightroom. From there, I adjusted the exposure for the sky to bring the clouds out more and cropped them to 16:9 widescreen for HD video format. I took the finished product and exported them to ProShow, where I dropped the image count down to a more respectable 1326 frames and display them for 0.125 seconds, and so, the whole positioning period, safety car, rolling start, race, safety cars etc and to parc ferme are all captured.

Of course I’m really impressed with the results. Dropping down the shutter at the end of the day means a lot less boring stuff at the end, but meant I was able to capture the whole race. Funny how these things work themselves out.

So without further ado, I present 300x Laps, 1326 frames, 6 hours all squeezed into 2:47

So without futher a-do, I present a pictorial blog post of

The Handbag : Unloaded And On My Desk

And now, click on one of the images below for the close up:

]]> http://blog.alikatnz.com/2010/10/the-handbag-unloaded/feed/ 0 http://blog.alikatnz.com/2009/10/data-demons/ http://blog.alikatnz.com/2009/10/data-demons/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:29:45 +0000 alikatnz http://blog.alikatnz.com/?p=610 On Wednesday night, I attended the Vodafone Get Smart event at their HQ in Auckland. Traffic was a nightmare, but I got there on time. I have a thing about being late. I commence anxiety attacks if running just slightly late. I was offered a free car park by Hamish Sansom via Twitter. According to his twitter profile he’s the head honcho for mobile data at Vodafone. Nice. I found my way through the carpark, to the elevator and then to reception. They had name tags, but I didn’t. But of note, they had a name tag there for someone who I knew was attending the event in Christchurch. I could have stolen it and pretended to be Andy Ghozali for the evening. But I’m the wrong gender for that. Never to mind. They made me a label.

Vodafone put on a very nice spread of beer, wine and nibbles. As I am always super organised, I had consumed some sushi at work before driving into the city. But I had some wine. Seriously, whens the last time you got something for free from Vodafone? I had a lovely chat with Hamish. We discussed awesomeness like 14.4k modems and the days where the BBS was better than the internet. It was. Once upon a time, in the early 1990s.

We were moved into a room off the Vodafone foyer. There we were given colored dots and broken up into groups of 5.  But before it all got kicked off, we were introduced to the Data Demons. These five boys/men are located at Vodafone owned stores in the central city and north shore and are experts in all things smart phone related. This is a new concept by Vodafone Retail to have these Data Demons accessible in store, 7 days a week. Not a silly idea in my book. I can think of at least one occasion where I have dished out smartphone advice to a Vodafone retail employee.

Sorry about the angle of the photo, but I’m sure you get the idea. Daniel and his crew of Data Demons did a presentation that in the past, you would have carried around 7kg of “crap” whereas this now fits into an approx 120gm smartphone. You can now have your GPS, Phone, Calendar, Documents, Notes etc in the one device and not spread across many. He showed a few slides of smartphone market growth etc and then told us how the evening would work. We were split up into our coloured dot groups and sent to various corners of the V’Nue suite. He also proved that Data Demons are human and had some issues with his laptop. C’est la vie.

First up for our Green Group was the Blackberry Bold. This told me nothing I didn’t already know about Research in Motion and the Blackberry Bold as a device. I’ve come across Blackberrys and I know people who love and people who hate them. But the gentleman who did this presentation did a very good job and covered everything one would expect in a first meeting with the Blackberry.

We then moved on to the Nokia E71. This was the phone I was going to get before I found out how much I loved the iPhone. Again, a really nice presentation of slides and excellent MS Paint skills for this presenter. For the other people there, I think they got this phone more that the BB Bold. Instead of someone holding up a phone going blah blah, we had slides, and I’m a visual learner. I admit I may have learnt a wee bit about the operational side of this phone.

By the time we got to the Mobile Broadband display, the whole group thing had kind of disintegrated. I learnt that the white/black vodems are different, and well the netbook, I had one of those.

At the end of the evening, with half the people left, they had a draw for the HTC Magic. I was pleased that the guy who won the phone did in honesty. It would have been better going to me, but he had this horrible, bulking winmo phone and the HTC with its static-glass touch thing will change his life.

My highlights of the evening were photographing Paul Brislen’s desk, Hamish explaining the magnetic floors and an old lady announcing that she had only come to get a battery for her trusty Nokia 3320. WTF!?!? But these things happen.

Congratulations to Vodafone on a good evening. Sorry I didn’t learn much, but considering you had the Amway function next door, and congratulations on that too, but you did an excellent job and overall I rate the Data Demons 4.5 out of 5. They’re all nice young men, well spoken and knowledgeable. I would love to chat to them in a store any time about mobile data.

Yesterday when I got home from work, I found my Internet not working. The last time I had seen my PC online from logmein.com was earlier that morning. I rang your 0800GETXTRA number at 5.30pm and selected the appropriate selections to get your help desk. After eliminating my modem & computers as the cause of the outage, it was determined that there was a technical fault at your end. I was informed that they would call me back, which may have happened. But I had to call back at 7pm to find out if it was indeed a technical fault. I was patched through to Peter (not his real name) in Auckland, who was excellent and very helpful. He explained that I was most likely mis-jumpered at the exchange. This had happened to me before back in February. But he would get a technician to look into it. But this could take until Thursday afternoon but they would be in touch.

Today I rang at 12.30pm to check on the status of my connection mishap and was told that I would have to wait until 3pm tomorrow for reconnection. I found this wait unacceptable and expressed my concerns about this delay. As far as I’m concerned, I’m paying you top dollar for an Internet service, a service which I am not receiving through no fault of my own.

Tonight when I got home at 5pm, I reset my router and checked the connection as a matter of course, hoping for a miracle and yes, I had my miracle, it was working, and the ADSL2+ had been turned on as well. For this I thank you. As per the advice of the help desk worker earlier in the afternoon, I called The 0800 GET XTRA help desk again to arrange a credit for my inconvenience. What I didn’t realise is that this phone call would take up another 60 minutes of my time and counting.

Tonight the person I spoke to (T######) tried telling me that I pay $59.95 a month for my Internet, which I don’t, and decided to argue with me about it. I was then offered an insulting $1.59 credit for being without Internet for over 24 hours and spending over 3 hours on the phone, plus the inconvenience of having to take unpaid leave from my job to meet a technician due tomorrow. When I had this problem back in February, I received a $79.95 credit for one months broadband as the fault was Telecoms, and then back in February, that issue was only resolved once I involved an acquaintance who works for Telecom Broadband. When it became obvious that the person I was trying to converse with didn’t listen to what I was saying, or read the case notes, I asked to be transferred to a NZ based tech. I was told they cannot do this, yet the person I spoke to on my 2nd call last night was able to do this. I’m confused as to why some people can and some people can’t transfer me to NZ based customer services representatives.

When I found that this avenue was going nowhere, I asked to speak to a supervisor. I have knowledge that there are 3 supervisors per floor and I should not be on hold for more than 5 minutes to speak to one. After 10 minutes on hold waiting to speak to a supervisor, I got told I was not speaking to a supervisor, but a senior technician, still based in the Philippines (T######). I reiterated that I wanted to speak with a supervisor. After laying down that I asked to speak to a supervisor, I am entitled to speak to a supervisor and she was going to put me through to a supervisor, did she put me on hold again. I again was on hold for over 5 minutes waiting for a supervisor. I finally got one. (T######). He told me that I still had to meet the technician, which I am quite happy to do, regardless of the fact I am going to lose income to do so, but would like to get to the bottom of this problem. He did not agree to increase the credit. I informed him that I was insulted by the paltry amount being offered given that I have spent over 3 hours on the phone and to his credit is going to follow up my complaint that T9###### argued with me regarding my broadband plan.

I would love to know how is it that telecom can cause the fault, make me do the running around on the phone and meeting technicians, yet not offer anything close to decent compensation for the trouble this has caused. I was earlier planning on moving my familys mobile calling to telecom (added business of $120 a month, minimum) however, given this recent experience, I am reconsidering that decision and also looking at moving my broadband and calling to another ISP. To say I am disillusioned with your company is an understatement.

I look forward to hearing Telecom’s response to this appalling customer service I have received.

1. Ericsson Model Unknown (Telecom Prepay)

Purchased 1999.

I bought this when I bought my first car sometime in. Kept 10 numbers in memory. Stolen in 2000.

2. Alcatel 301 (Vodafone Prepay)

Insurance Supplied 2000

The Y2k bug came and went. My insurance company gave me this phone to replace the above phone. I had it a month or so and then it met a watery grave in the carpark, MIT Arts Faculty building.

3. Nokia 5110i (Telecom Prepay)

Purchased 2000

Back in the day when I got this, only Telecom could text Telecom and Vodafone could only text Vodafone. Dark days indeed. All my friends at polytech had Telecom phones, so this was the only way to keep in touch.

4. Nokia 3315 (Vodafone Prepay / Vodafone Contract)

Purchased 2002

My brother worked at Bond & Bond Manukau and got me this phone on his staff discount. It was well travelled, including a trip to Bathurst in 2004.

5. Motorola Model Unknown (Similar to C118) (Vodafone Contract)

Purchased October 2004

Chinatown, Sydney in 2004. Was tiny. Still is compared to most phones around. But it always sounded like you were talking to people from a toilet cubicle.

6. Sharp GX30i (Vodafone Contract)

Purchased 2005

Yes I forked out the $1000 asking price. It was an awesome phone and I wish I still had it. It met its fate in the toilet one evening after I had been out for a walk. I forgot it was in my back pocket. Woops.

7. Sony Ericsson V800 (Vodafone Contract)

Insurance Supplied 2006

The Vodafone 3G network had just been released and this is the phone my insurance company gave me. I hated it. It always clicked when you opened it and was no better in size than my original brick phone in 1999. Last seen heading on a courier to Christchurch where my brother uses it as a spare phone. Maybe.

8. Motorola V3x (Vodafone Contract)

Purchased March 2007

Vodafone were doing a contract deal to get this phone for free. Compared to my V800, this was a nice phone. And it was a nice phone. Until a month out of warranty it started making a very weird, loud, beeping noise from all the speakers. Worried that it was going to blow up, I sold it to a co-worker for $50. He threw it at someone and broke it. Life goes on.

9. Nokia 6121 (Vodafone Contract)

Purchased April 2008

This is an excellent phone and I still own it. I just use it as a broadband modem now. But its with this phone, I learnt so much about mobile Internet and playing with phones beyond the calling/txting/pxting boundaries. I am very attached and have fond memories with this awesome, tiny phone. its a smart phone in disguise!

10. Apple iPhone 3G 8GB (Vodafone Contract – but for how long?)

Purchased June 2009

My current cellphone and I am in love with it. It is totally awesome and I wouldn’t be without it. Its the best phone I’ve ever purchased by a long shot. And you will hear me say that so many times on this blog.

So there you have it. My complete cellphone history. 10 Phones in 10 Years. Not too bad if I do say so myself. Sure there are some dubious choices in there, but hindsight in 20/20 and knowledge is power. I think I just set a record for cliches. But cliches aside, If I could change some of what I’ve bought and the decisions about telcos, maybe things would be different.

That said, I also have the Acer Laptop as well, which has been very handy indeed with the quick burning of Linux ISO’s to disk.

However, theres one thing I can’t deny. All these 1am finishes are catching up with me, so I am exiting Geekdom for the weekend and having a nana nap. Back to work tomorrow after a long Christmas break.

Last night I couldn’t decide what I was going to do for my next attempt at geekdom. I had a black Compaq sitting around here, which was rescued from the bin at work. Redundant technology. Very, very redundant. So I installed a CD-RW in it – my trusty Sony one which I’ve had since 2002 and its never, ever let me down and pinched a HDD from slim.

After much frustration about not booting off a CD and how to make bootable CDs. I slept on the problem. At 5.46am it hit me. I hadn’t connected the IDE cable to the mobo. Simple but stooopid! So went to connect it and found a few bent pins on the mobo end of things. A pair of pliers soon fixed that. And I was away laughing.

I have installed Linux Mint on the Compaq. Its an Ubuntu based. Version 5. I just need to figure out now how to boot it up without my bootable CD. But at first impressions, I am very, very impressed with the whole system. I’ve always been a little scared of Linux since I first heard about it over 10 years ago and never really wanted to dip my toes in the water so to speak, but now that I have, I’m pleased.

I just need to figure out how to get it to boot up off the HDD instead of the CD now…. might not sleep on that problem, I might go shopping on it….