resistance to persistence

a long road ahead

i’m now posting regularly to my photoblog, photo-persistence, again. i stopped posting when i lost my father earlier this year. i was just drained spiritually and artistically and really had no energy for posting photos. in my absence i’d still been taking photos the whole time with my new dSLR so i’ve got a good backload of pics to post. it’s time to move forward and leave the pain behind.

don’t do this. shred that credit card application instead

you know all those useless credit card applications you get in the mail? you just rip them in half and throw them in the garbage right? me too. but it turns out you should be shredding them. tearing them up won’t stop identity theft as Rob Cockerham from cockeyed.com proves. he conducted an experiment. he ripped up an application into small squares, taped it back together, changed the address and sent it in to the credit card company - simulating what someone could do if they grabbed your garbage to take your identity. a few weeks later, the credit card arrived at a different address in his name. Read more on the story at cockeyed.com. This “amature prankster”, as 20/20 calls him, has some funny pranks on his site as well.

Also, watch the story on 20/20:

taken with the trusty nokia 6682 on king st at sherbourne, toronto

a common occurance around town. this looks like a tv show. funny when you see a single person on your tv screen you never think about the 6-8 people behind the scenes doing stuff

if you have to take some photos in moist/sandy/harsh environments, here’s some tips on how to keep your camera protected from the elements.

Camera Zip-lock
You’ve got a snazzy digital camera, but you want to take it into a wet, dusty environment. Protect it with a simple zip-lock bag and a filter.

check out this free stack of tunes i got! it’s like christmas

Yesterday I walked outside my office building to see a few people with boxes of music CDs, opening the cases, throwing the CDs on the ground and stepping on them. Not something you’d typically see. They work for an online music sales/download company (I won’t reveal which one, but thanks to them!) explained they have to get rid of the CDs and they can’t give them away to charity (tax implications maybe? I’m just guessing as I don’t understand why) so they have to destroy them…or people could just take them. Hundreds of CDs, free for the taking. The pickings were slim, but depending on your tastes, there were some good choices. Barely any hip-hop, but I got what I could. I walked away with a stack of 8. 4 of them were even still in plastic wrapping. My coworkers came away with a similar amount. My coworker Pete Nema also does music reviews, so maybe he found a gem in his pile of tunes.

what i got
snoop dogg - tha last meal
david banner - baptized in dirty water
juvenile - tha g-code
juvenile - 400 degrees
treble charger - detox
our lady peace - healthy in paranoid times
sarah mclachlan - selections from afterglow live (for my wife)
just the hits 2005

chinatown world tour

The chinatown world tour continues. Alist is in London right now, with his exhibit opening at dpmhi.

There’s photos posted there from the show opening as well as the show announcement.
Sales of his work are available as well. I’ve seen this jacket and it’s amazing. The entire back is stitched perfectly. Alist looks good modeling it. Order your soon to be collectors’ items now as they’re limited supply.

A bag full of phone toys

nokia is doing a new buzz word-of-mouth promotion giving their phones out to bloggers in the hopes they’ll spread the word online and talking to friends, posting photos and videos taken with the cellphone. i’m thankful i met the criteria and it worked out perfectly as I was just starting to look for a new phone as well. it’s all voluntary, no obligation or contracts. i don’t have to do any of this, but since i usually write reviews like this anyways, i have no problem writing a voluntary review as thanks for getting a phone and gear for free. and i’ll even be impartial about it.

Fits nicely in the palm of my hand. A bit bigger than most phones, but still small enough.

on with the review… the Nokia 6682 is stacked with features. 1.3mp camera with a flash and does video. mp3 player. bluetooth. big screen. full sync with outlook for contacts, notes and address books. it’s great at keeping everything updated and now i don’t have to check my palm pilot anymore. one less thing to carry around.

the phone sound quality is great. it sounds just like my home phone. no static and the sound quality is good.

camera
the camera is great, at least for a phone. i couldn’t believe the quality of daytime shots. i’ll be trying out some more photos soon. the flash is surprising bright as well for being a led. the sliding cover over the eyepiece is a great touch. my last phone always had dirt & lint on lens from carrying it in my pocket.

video
recorded video is actually watchable. i’ve tried converting videos to the phone’s 3gp format and they play well and maintain a reasonable filesize. i might convert some ipod videos for watching on my phone since my ipod doesn’t do video.

screen
it’s got a great big screen, nice & shiny. i hope it stays that way. putting the phone in my pocket, i’m sure it’ll get some scratches. i’ve discovered there’s a thin plastic layer on the screen, which the manual mentions to take off. i’ll be keeping mine on until it gets too worn. then i’ll be looking for some replacement stickers.

interface
the UI is nice with lots of colour and tons of menu items. i’m still not used to the menu system. the motorola menus and interface made a lot more natural sense to me. one thing that has been bugging me is menu options change based on which memory card i have in the phone. if i leave in the supplied 64Mb card, i get additional applications (example - voice dialing) and themes. if i browse the card, i don’t see any of these applications or themes from the file manager. if i take out the memory card, i lose these applications and themes. i’ll need to finish reading the manual and hopefully it’ll explain what i’m missing. i don’t seem to be able to edit the menu structure and layout either. minor frustration.

the predictive text entry doesn’t appear to be as good as on the motorola as well. i’m hoping i just haven’t found the best settings to enable it yet. it makes a huge difference when you’re trying to type out a long text message.

the buttons have a good solid feel when you press them with a good layout. function keys work well. the start/end call keys are thin & shiny. i didn’t even realize they’re keys when i first got the phone. there’s also a menu button which takes you to the main menu and shows you which applications are running, like alt-tab on Windows.

it also comes with lots of applications preloaded. quickoffice for viewing ms office documents. pdf viewer. image/video editing. i’m sure you download anything else you’d need. i’ll explore that later.

the bundle of goodies also came with more than just the phone. they threw in a 512mb memory card (good for recording lots of photos and video), a bluetooth earpiece (good for the car), and a set of music earbuds (big and a very strange design) since it’s also an mp3 phone.

earphones
the music earphones are weird earbuds, huge, square boxy. not a sleek design. but then again earbuds aren’t their thing. it’s a strange cord wrapping, like thick plastic covered rope. this phone won’t replace my ipod (many reasons - ease of music transfer, settings, capacity), but i’ll keep a few songs on there when i need a tune to listen to. the phone also comes with a connector cord to plug in existing headphones like the ones from your ipod.

headset
the bluetooth wireless headset is very small and lightweight. and the rubber covered ear grips are surprisingly comfortable. i’ll use this in the car when needed.

all in all, i’m very happy with everything, not just because i got it for free. if i needed a full featured phone, i’d definitely consider this one. it’s like a minor blackberry or treo.

pros:
- great camera quality
- stylish and sleek
- more than just a phone

cons:
- text entry not as powerful as i’d like
- size is a little bigger than most, but that’s expected when you pack in all the features it has
- more than just a phone (sometimes you just need something simple)

if you’re looking for a basic phone to talk to people, this isn’t for you. if you’re looking for a sophisticated phone and don’t want to carry around a camera, palm pilot and ipod as well, this phone is for you.

check out more photos of the nokia 6682 on my flickr page.

if anyone would like to contact me to do a review of their product i’d be definitely happy to do so. email me at blainekendall (at) gmail (dot) com.

other recipients
A few others that have also gotten their Nokia 6682: marmalade.ca, ohmpage, tripledoubleyou, wholesome goodness, netchick, jillmurray, singer.to, james bow and stillmemory. Who else has got one?

i bought another camera on the weekend. this one is to replace my original point and shoot, not my slr. i picked up a canon a610. i’ve been looking at it for a while now, the price has been dropping regularly and i was waiting for a $50 costco coupon to happen (only for one week). after the coupon, the price was $270. pretty dang good for nice portable shooter.

• 4x zoom, 5MP
• full set of manual modes (aperature, shutter, manual, etc)
• 2″ flip out tilt screen - great for shooting above people, down low, self-portraits
• great movie recording - good enough for a photo camera at least
• small enough to shove in a large pocket

i’ve been really impressed by canon cameras. if i didn’t already have nikon lenses i would have bought a canon dslr instead of my nikon one. the image quality is great and the controls are really great as well.

so now i’m going to sell my other point and shoot digital, fuji finepix 3800 (review). it’s proven itself really well and i like this camera a lot too. the selling feature that made me have to buy it was the long 6x zoom. at the time i couldn’t afford a long zoom slr, so i wanted to at least get a long zoom p&s. the fuji was the one for me. if you’re interested in buying it from me, leave a comment or email me. if you want to see the quality of the photos, just check my photoblog - 95% of the photos from 2005 were shot using it.

i decided to part with the fuji this year since 1) i now have a long zoom and so many other capabilities in the slr 2) the square body was too wide for me to fit in my jacket when snowboarding and i needed something slimmer. it was perfect for walking around though. but i still needed a p&s since i can’t carry the slr everywhere (parties, concerts, etc) and people tend to freeze up a bit for photos when you shove a big slr in their face. and i want J to have something she can use to take photos as well - the slr is a bit too much for her so far. she’s got a great eye for composition as she proved on a lot of our honeymoon photos. sometimes i couldn’t tell which ones i shot and which ones she took.