Umbral Echoes Blog

• 19:24 Thought of the day: If you’re using a Chinese girl as furniture (e.g. a rug or ottoman), would you refer to her as Asian or Oriental? #

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• 15:39 "We’ve had 1% downtime due to hardware failures. What can you do to compensate us?" "Upselling, let me do it you!" "…We think not." #

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I was hanging out at Stephen and Amanda’s place the other night, and Amanda tells me that Stephen was trying to get her to play World of Warcraft.  I paused and just blinked, confused.  Why doesn’t he just play himself?  Well, apparently he used to like watching his roommate play when stuff was going on (raids, whatever), but things liek the grinding and the travel time just bored him to tears.  So he’d just say, “Let me know when you get to the place,” then he’d come watch.

This struck me as pretty interesting, and I realize that I’ve done this myself in the past.  My Louisville crew used to be really into EverQuest, and though I never once played the game, quite frequently I’d come over and just chill at their house, munching on some Taco Bell and watching them raid.  It was vicarious gaming, and it actually kept my interest pretty well.  I’ve done this with roleplaying and console gaming, too — just take it in as someone else plays.  Granted, it’s not quite as fun as participating yourself, but there’s also much less of a time (and monetary) investment.  So while it seemed very odd at first, upon further thought it makes sense.

But regardless of the fact that it makes a weird kind of sense, I still find it pretty funny that Stephen asked Amanda to start playing WoW so that he could watch.

• 11:35 @sunflour81 Happy birthday! Should I come up to Charleston to give your birthday spankings? #
• 11:38 @thegreategress That sounds awesome, and one of the few worthwhile interruptions to The Dark Knight. My email same as my twitter, @gmail btw #
• 19:43 Kink Patrol is tonight. Anyone else in Atlanta going? #

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• 14:39 Final Fantasy XIII is coming to XBox 360 too. Maybe we won’t need a PS3 after all. Well, except for that whole BluRay thing. #

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• 15:12 I am so not with the times. Just now learned that you can use AIM to send an SMS message to someone. #
• 16:20 I don’t have to appear in court after all. Woot! #

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• 12:25 @burtlo I’m not even eligible for the $200 off until August 4th. I hope they’ll have restocks in by then so I won’t have to wait longer. #

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• 09:31 @thegreategress Progress never seems to progress quickly enough. #
• 18:06 Oh. My. God. "Dracula Vampire Grillz." ping.fm/11pa2 #

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• 11:36 Lost digital camera at Dave Matthews concert last night. Is not at lost and found. Curses! #
• 15:13 Sparred some last night, and it felt great. Except for the sore hip today. No clue what that was from. #
• 19:43 I normally try to avoid simple sugars, but this Cheescake Factory cheesecake is just too tempting. Every man’s will has limits. #

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Last night I went to a concert, and my camera ended up falling out of my pocket (one of the disadvantages of a point-and-shoot camera).  No luck with lost and found, so looks like I’m going to need to get a new one.  Which sort of sucks, because I hadn’t really had the previous all that long.

When I went to buy the last one, the main thing I looked at was low-light performance.  I tend to take a lot of pictures indoors and in low lighting conditions, so this was pretty key for me.  The king at that time was the Fujifilm Finepix F31fd (link shows some samples taken at high-ISO settings, compared to some other cameras).  No other compact digital camera even came close.  But they had stopped making those, so I settled for an F40, which ironically didn’t do as well in low light.

So I go researching again, and discover that these days, the king in this arena is… still the F31.  There have been a couple more models released in that line, but none of them has the performance that the F31 does.  What gives?  Aren’t later versions of a product supposed to improve on the original?

I’ve just put in an inquiry with Fuji to see what crack they’re smoking (though of course I put it in much nicer terms), and asking if they ever plan to make a camera as good as the one that they stopped production on 4 years ago.  These things go for close to $300 on eBay — this for a camera that has been out of production for that long, when you can get a new digital camera for about $100 these days.  It performs that damn good — and this isn’t just some cult following.  Looking at the actual results taken at 400 and 800 ISO settings versus other cameras, the F31fd actually looks better than some dSLRs.

I’m actually considering buying one.  I just didn’t want to spend that much, and it also uses an older card format (xD card), whereas I was hoping for a camera that can use an SDHC card (high capacity SD).

I wish someone would just put a dSLR-sized sensor in a point and shoot camera.  It would make it more expensive than other point and shoot models, but the quality would blow the rest out of the water, and would still be much less than a dSLR.