Key Points

Bridge Camera Panasonic DMC-FZ150 vs Sony DSC-HX200V

lawnz — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:44:20 +0000

I have to get a new camera for my next travel coming soon, I have couple of point and shoot cameras, they either have problem with noise or are very slow, I have to wait for seconds between shots, it is worse when shooting in low light condition, the flash takes long time to recharge. I don’t like bulky DSLR cameras, I just need a nice bridge camera with great zoom and easy to carry, after reading lot of reviews on Internet for couple of days, I also went to BestBuy and Frys Electronics stores, I eliminated Canon SX40 and Fujitsu bridge camera, I still had hard time to choose Panasonic DMC-FZ150K (24X optical) or Sony HX200V (30X optical), until I found two very useful online tools from two websites,

online photo image comparison tool 1, Panasonic DMC-FZ150 vs Sony DSC-HX200V,

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/studiocompare.asp

online photo image comparison tool 2, use full size to compare IQ of Panasonic FZ150 and Sony HX200V,

http://www.imaging-resource.com/IMCOMP/COMPS01.HTM

it is clear to me Panasonic DMC-FZ150 is a better camera than Sony HX200V, I still need to check the video quality, there are a lot of videos on YouTube, this one is most helpful to me, FZ150 video quality is good too,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bML1OTqin8U

I just received my Panasonic FZ-150, wow! it is fast from shot to shot, even in complete dark room, the flash did not cause long delay between shots, when I install the camera software on my laptop pc, it gives detailed instruction that tells me how to play back videos, Panasonic engineers did a very good job, some people complain video quality, but video quality is also dependant on what software you use, and how you tune the setting of the software, see the instruction of panasonic camera software installation,

Here is link to show FZ150 speed test, first 12 pictures are shot in complete dark room, camera is set in iA mode with flash, look at the time by second, it is about 2 seconds between shots. the second set of 12 pictures are shot with ceiling light on and without flash, it is about 1 second between shots. I tried my point and shoot camera Sony DSC-WX1, there is no comparison to this FZ150.

http://www.keypoints.com/pub/photo/panasonicfz150_speedtest/

I am satisfied with FZ150, here is the list of accessories I got:

1. SanDisk Extreme 32GB 45MB/s SDHC Flash Memory Card SDSDX-032G-X46,Black

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004Q3C98S/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i02

2. RainbowImaging 100 Meter 2.4GHz Wireless Remote Shutter Release. it does work with FZ150, make sure you insert the battery correctly, the cable two ends are different, plug one end with three threads into camera, the other end with two threads into remote transmitter,

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004EDPYHI/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00

3. Two Pack Battery And Charger Kit

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004FSBIZY/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00

4. Panasonic DMW-LMC52 52mm Protection Filter for Panasonic Digital Camera

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FUO1BY/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

5. Sigma DG 52mm Multi-Coated UV Filter

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009R6JT/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i00

6. Cosmos ® Khaki Green Shoulder Canvas Outdoor Camera Bag

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DBEA52/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i01

Website icon image favicon.ico not working in IE

lawnz — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:27:17 +0000

favicon.ico is a website icon image file, this image appears in the URL field of web browser, I found this image sometimes does not show up in IE Internet Explorer, it always works in FireFox and Chrome browsers, I did some research on Internet, and did some tests, now it seems works in IE reliably, here is what I did:

1. create png file, use a online tool to convert it into a _REAL_ ico file, upload the favicon.ico to root directory of the website, the online tool is at

http://www.favicon.cc/

2. add these two lines to header block of index file, say index.php, doesn’t have to be index.html,

3. go to Internet Options of IE, delete temporary files and browse history

I noticed after I login to my Yahoo email, there is no site icon image for Yahoo email web URL in IE, but it shows up in Chrome. again Google has better engineers, their site icon image shows up in all browsers.

Camera for low-light shooting

lawnz — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:02:24 +0000

I had couple of cameras in the past, most cameras do a good job in bright light condition, few can do a decent job in low-light condtion, I always thought large sensor was the only factor to choose a good camera for shooting in low-light condition, I found a good article explains both sensor and lens affect picture quality in low-light condition, here is the link,

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385965,00.asp

“Some cameras tout one or the other: a large sensor, or a bright lens. The Canon Powershot G12, for example, has a large sensor but an average lens, and the Panasonic Lumix FX700 matches its bright lens with a standard sensor. You really do need both, though—having a large sensor is pointless unless the lens can pass a lot of light to it, and a bright lens can’t pass all its light to a small sensor.”

Noise is very noticeable in low-light shooting, read another good article which shows the pictures with noise comparisons, those pictures remind me of my campact camera Canon, Nikon, Panosonic, and Sony, Pentax K-5 is a good camera, here is the link,

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/pentaxk5/12

User rating of Pentax K-5 is 5 stars on amazon.com website, however Sony NEX-5N has better AF, and JPEG IQ, here is comparison posted by real user,

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/non-pentax-cameras-canon-nikon-etc/160932-i-bought-sony-nex-5n-5.html

Jeremy Lin

lawnz — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:21:18 +0000

It is nice to see the rise of Jeremy Lin, this guy plays real basketball, it is more fun to watch the whole team play than a self-serving individual, I watched only NBA playoffs on national TV channels, now I watch more NBA games, even at sports bar when games are not available on national TV channels. I remember when Tiger Wood just stopped playing the golf, the golf viewing dropped 50%, that is how a sport star can affect viewing. Lin is a Harvard grad, listening to his interviews on TV and YouTube reminds me of president Obama who is another Harvard grad, both are very likeable.

These fun videos are on YouTube,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2tfilVIgu4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD5I4Y2N5HA

Updated Mar 20, 2012 I thought this is funny, Jeremy Lin promotes Volvo vs LeBron James promotes ice cream : ) here is Yahoo news link,

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AjQMNSrJObcLSOvJrRx1zh.8vLYF?slug=ap-lin-volvo

Lady Gaga

lawnz — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:20:27 +0000

Lady Gaga has done a lot of performing art (sort of) than just music, wonder if she was in any movie or broadway show, she reminds me of Michael Jackson, I like see Michael’s performance more than Gaga though. I have practiced dance myself, Michael’s performance requires talent, years of practice, to lift his performane to the level of art.

Gaga does mind what people think of her, and even her songs’ rating, here is her own tweet, “You did it Monsters! Born This Way is #1 in 14 countries + were #1 again on Hot 100! Thank you for believing! Video Monday 28th 11am Est.”.

Turn Off Facebook Notifications

lawnz — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:02:00 +0000

I received a lot of Facebook notification emails, I don’t use Facebook much, never touched the default settings, I found the hidden Notifications link, see the attached picture, click on Account Settings link on the drop down menu, then click on Notifications, I can disable most of notifications.

update Feb 14, 2012 – I am still getting friend’s update notifications, I already went through the list of notifications on that page, disabled all notifications I could think of. I found my Yahoo email has an option to block email addresses, it is under Advanced Options > Block Addresses, I block all facebook emails from facebookmail.com, that works.

Adele

lawnz — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:12:24 +0000

I stopped buying pop music since Britney Spears, a friend was chatting with me about Adele, Kate Perry, and Gaga on Grammy award, she said her mother bought Adele CD, (not Kate, not Gaga), I was very curious about this singer Adele, so I watched the 2012 Grammy award, saw Adele singing Rolling In The Deep, she is amazing, no surprise Rolling In The Deep is song of the year, she brings pop music back, I am going to get her albums too, I think listening to her songs will make my driving more enjoyable. hope she will take care of herself, not go down like Whitney Houston.

Britney Spears

lawnz — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:46:54 +0000

One time I was listening to Britney Spears singing on radio, I lost focus for a while, somehow it started sound pretty good, then I said wait a second, was that from backup singers? : ) seriously I wonder she made more money from news or music.

Web Hosting

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:46:35 +0000

I have been looking for web hosting companies, I found the performance data “uptime” which is from uptime command to show server load in 1, 5, 15 minutes, not the BS number 99.9999% up time, say your server is 100% up, but with overloaded application running, that up time does not do any good, read this blog about pair.com,

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=152564&highlight=pair

“This is what I’m looking for in a host. Server loads ALWAYS in the 0.00=0.x0
range. Never even hitting 1.”

updated Feb 10, 2012 – I signed up a new account with pair.com, really like their server, I run a cron job to record uptime every hour, in 24 hours uptime rarely hits over 1

updated Mar 12, 2012

I asked Bluehost support why their server uptime load hits over 1, their level 1 support engineer explains:

{{{

20 is insignificant in our environment, that is significantly under any
level that would cause concern for two reasons:

1. The load of 20 is across 24 cores, this means the actual load per core is
.83, which is under 1.

2. Our load reports very differently than other servers, due to our
proprietary throttling system. Load is the number of processes waiting for
CPU time, and our system forces any account that is using more than 7% of a
core’s CPU to waitlist processes. Again note: your server has 24 cores.

}}}

so that is not too bad, keep in mind Bluehost has couple of hosting plans, this is for pro account.

Women Harder To Predict Than Men

lawnz — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:23:39 +0000

Men do what they think is right, women do what feels right, there is a very wide range in what feels right, many conditions can also change what feels right, I think women harder to predict than men.