So apparently, I can now blog from my phone. The character limits imposed by the SMS system are a bit annoying, but not having to wait for computer access before making a quick post or two should be worth the annoyance.

So I actually bought a hardcover book new...

So yesterday, I did something that I haven't done in a LONG time. I bought a brand new hardcover book solely for my own personal reading pleasure. I've been following Eric Flint's 1632-verse ever since I read the free e-books made available by the literary crack dealers fine folks at the Baen Free Library and I'm rather engrossed by the story of world history as it would have been if a small coal mining town from 1999 West Virginia had been dropped into the middle of Germany during the Thirty Years War. Given the cash outlay involved, I'm pleased to say that the latest book in the series, 1636: The Saxon Uprising, is a really fun read. Indeed, it was just one of those books that you just plain have trouble putting down, and I ended up reading until about 2:30 AM (and not even realizing how late it was getting) in my quest to finish things and I suspect that anybody who like good, exciting fiction will probably feel the same way.

Gear lust

As a photographer with a keen eye on the available gear on the market, I occasionally fall victim to that greatest of photographic curses, gear lust. While my (lack of) finances preclude me from actually going and buying any of this stuff, I still spend way too much time dreaming about it...

Anyways, this time the particular bit of photo gear that's got me going is the Pentax 645D, which has been out in Japan since May and will be coming out in the US in December. Weighing roughly the same as one of the current generation of Mega SLRs from Nikon and Canon (the D3whatever and 1Dwhatever type bodies), but packing a medium format-sized 40MP sensor, the whole camera just oozes a bizzare mix of insane quality (40 million large sensor sites... drools) and actual hand-holdability (at least for short periods of time). Add in a robust and reasonably fast autofocus system and a wide array of high quality lenses, and its easy to see why I'm currently obssesed with this camera.

Of course, the $10000 price tag rather kills it for me as I don't even make that much money in a year and most of the money I DO make goes right back to my college, but I can still dream...

1635...

I just finished Eric Flint's latest entry in his massively popular alternate history/time travel series and I'm still not quite sure what to think. On the one hand, 1635: The Eastern Front, has plenty of the gripping action, devious plots and soap operatic relationships that previous books were known for, the whole book seems like its lacking in the sort of "Truth, Justice and the American Way conquer all" type feeling that made the earlier books such a guilty pleasure. Instead, the book really ramps up the shift towards darker plots and less happy endings that has been occurring in past books. The "bad guys" are ascendant throughout the book and characters who were merely annoying in previous books are starting to look rather evil in this latest entry. In short the s**t really hits the fan hard.

While these changes aren't enough to make me lose interest in the series, but they do make me wonder just how much longer the 163x series has left.

Starting a blog

For approximately the fifty-thousandth time, I am starting a blog. In this blog, I'm planning to talk about anything that interests me, which probably means that there will be a fair amount of talk about photography, science fiction (and fantasy), classic computers, printing and typography, art history and shortwave radio. A rather nerdy collection of interests, but then again, I'm a nerd, I've got a blog and it starts now.