I've been on vacation for over a week (the subject of another post), but one of the better things I read while catching up was TOP's "Voja Mitrovic, Printer to the Greats". It's a well-written, interesting story and worth your time. If you like that post, catch part two here.

There have been persistent rumors around a D700 replacement for awhile, but maybe the current iteration of the rumor is true. Nikon Rumors notes that the current Nikkor 24-120 f/3.5-5.6, a lens unworthy of being part of the original D700 kit, is now listed as discontinued on Nikon Japan's site. Given the other rumor that a 24-120 f/4 VR N is coming at Photokina, one has to wonder if it'll be the kit lens for a D700 replacement.

I like the idea of a 24-120 f/4. Since using the VR II version of the awesome 70-200, I've frequently wished that the 24-70 f/2.8 had it as well. I have to wonder how big that lens will be, though. When I had a brief dalliance with Canon, my favorite lens was the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM. Having a reasonably fast f/2.8 zoom with IS/VR is really nice. I know a lot of people think it's unnecessary, but it really helps in seriously low-light settings, like this one from a visit to India, taken at 1/6 sec. hand-held wide-open:

As for the D700 replacement, I wonder what they'll do. I think it's a given that it'll do video--something I couldn't care less about. But I can't get enough high-ISO performance, and frequently find myself shooting at high ISOs even in light that otherwise wouldn't require it just to get more shutter speed. Better quality across ISOs and lifting the current top would be great.

One other thing I'd love to see, even though it wouldn't appear on a spec sheet, would be improved controls around the Auto ISO controls. Right now, you can set a minimum shutter speed, but I'd like to see a setting where it defaults to something like the 1/focal length rule. Ideally, it could be customized per-lens. Also, the "My Menu" can save the setting to turn Auto ISO on or off, but you can't put the menu of all the options there, which I'd like to see fixed. Best of all would be a custom setting to assign Auto ISO on/off and minimum shutter speed/maximum ISO for Auto ISO to the function button (and other buttons you can customize).

Enough with the wishing. Here's hoping that Photokina brings some fun news.

I've frequently thought this idea was something I'd like to have Safari be able to do with the iPhone/iPad. I don't know if I'd like this as much as the idea behind Firefox Home--which syncs tabs automatically, albeit to its own app instead of the built-in Safari browser on the iDevices--but I like the direction they're both heading. Hopefully Apple notices and bakes it in. Even better (but unlikely): Apple opens an API to allow 3rd parties to extend Safari.

Interesting post from Gruber on the Verizon iPhone rumors. While it's true that they've been persistent for a long time, there's something about the fact that they're coming from all directions all of a sudden that does make them feel more likely to be true this time.

I’m going to say it’d be an event. I don’t think the lines would be as long as they were this summer for the iPhone 4 on AT&T, but I think there are going to be lines — especially in places where AT&T service is poor, like New York and San Francisco.

I'll bet the lines would be even longer.

I think underwater photography would be a lot of fun, and I love my Panasonic GF1, but this is pretty crazy. I mean it's way, way more than the price of the camera. Why not buy a housing for an SLR if you're going to go this far? Still, it looks cool, so I can appreciate it on that front. It definitely makes the gadget lover in me swoon.

This Wired article wins for best title I've seen in awhile. The article is good too.

“We both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wireline world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly,” the joint statement said. “In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the [Net Neutrality] wireline principles to wireless, except for the transparency requirement.”

That’s fancy language for: Verizon and the nation’s telecoms have yet again won; Google officially became a net neutrality surrender monkey; and you, as an American, have lost.

Interesting, if creepy, information from The New York Times' article on the plane crash that killed Sen. Ted Stevens:

Mr. Stevens survived another plane crash on Dec. 4, 1978, that killed five of seven people on board, including his first wife, Ann. He was traveling on a Lear jet that crashed when landing at Anchorage International Airport, which was renamed Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in honor of the senator in 2000.

And:

Before that 1978 crash, Mr. Stevens reportedly spoke of a premonition that he would die in a plane crash....

CTS-V, originally uploaded by JSFauxtaugraphy.

The Wall Street Journal has an entertaining review of the new Cadillac CTS-V that exclaims that the Caddy is better than its German competition.

The CTS-V is more fun to drive than the M3 or the RS 5. Importantly, I’m not saying it’s a finer, more advanced performance machine, even though the Caddy – bigger and heavier – is quicker around the Nurburgring than those two cars, and anyone who says American cars don’t handle is a pathetic hater. I’ve driven lots of performance automobiles, from Alfa 8 C Competiziones to Zondas, and I can assure you, the CTS-V – with the big racy rubber, the magnetic dampers, the limited-slip diff, the Brembo land anchors, the gut-bucket torque – gets around corners wonderfully.

Nice! I’d love to drive one and see for myself.

Gah. Deadwood is one of my all-time favorite shows. Now the "complete" series is coming out on Blu-ray. I put "complete" in quotes, since no one can really call Deadwood complete. Better to say that all the episodes HBO cared to make are in the set. Yes, I'm very bitter about Deadwood's premature demise to this day. ;)

The set has a pretty hefty price, and one I probably won't shell out. But if there's a decent sale, maybe, otherwise Netflix is my best option. Either way, I'll have to watch it and have my soul crushed once more.

I've finally moved this site away from Movable Type. I've thought quite a bit about how I was going to write my own software to scratch my itches. I started writing pretty rusty-but-serviceable Ruby code to get me there, and then I came across Jekyll. It had a lot of the same goals I had in mind when I started writing mine: it's written in Ruby, so I'm comfortable hacking and extending it; it renders simply, to a static site structure that can be served with little fanfare; it allows me to post simply by putting a formatted text file (in Markdown, Textile or HTML) in a spot on my server. Best of all, it was farther along than mine.

I initially tried to use the bundled Movable Type migration script, and even worked on it to fix a few problems (it didn't use the originally authored on date for posts and didn't include a lot of metadata about the post that was available). Come to think about it, I should send a pull request--that might be useful for someone else. But I ultimately hacked up a converter I wrote to use a Movable Type export file to create the posts for Jekyll. That code is pretty specific to my case, but it could be used pretty easily by someone with a will to get a better export of their data.

Anyhow, this site is now Jekyll-powered, and I'm free to add a few things it's missing to get me back to having the features I want here, but none that I don't. Really, the big missing things that were here before are categories, monthly indexes and search. Search isn't too worrying to me; since everything here is public, I'll let Google handle the indexing. Speaking of Google, it's the main reason that I need monthly and category index pages, since that search engine has those pages ranked pretty highly for the site and I want those URLs to resolve to something useful. The categories are a bit of a shame--the category handling in Jekyll is a low point for sure. I exported all of the categories and tags from Movable Type and have them included in each post so once I write some code to expose them, the data will show itself again.

Then I'm planning to add a few things I've wanted more control over, but wasn't willing to invest the time doing on MT. I want good handling of picture-related posts. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I'll probably come up with a way to share pictures as a type of post all by themselves, hopefully with a decent way to link up to my Flickr photostream. I also want a way to create posts that have a permanent life here from other sources of data: Twitter, Strava, etc. MT had Action Streams, and I even wrote a quick plugin to support Garmin Connect in it, but I want the data to be persistent like a post is.

Anyway, the basics are in place and now I just have to find some time to code. :)

Adobe has a release candidate of Lightroom 3.2 (and Camera Raw 6.2) available on Adobe Labs. On top of fixing a slew of bugs, there are a bunch of new lenses available to LR3's Lens Correction feature. Of particular interest to me are the Nikkor 50mm AFS f/1.4 G and, surprisingly, the Zeiss Distagon T* 2/35 ZF.2. I have the ZF (not the .2), and wonder if it'll be the same. (I know it can't auto-detect that lens, but I still wonder if the corrections are the same.)

Also of note is a small-lens camera that has been added: the Powershot S90. Disappointingly, the Panasonic GF1 (and other Micro Four-Thirds cameras) are still not in. Still, that's a pretty good first dot release.

Update 2010-08-10: Somehow I missed a new feature: There's a new publish service for Facebook now too. Nice! I don't upload pics to Facebook often enough to pay for a plugin, but I'm happy to have it there as a free, built-in service.

Fireworks Show, originally uploaded by Stmpjmpr.

Fireworks Show, originally uploaded by Stmpjmpr.

I'm not a coffee drinker, so this problem hasn't occurred to me yet, although I guarantee that I'd vote with my wallet on this one. I almost never sit down to drink or eat in this manner without something to read, and these days that pretty much means reading on my iPad. I'd stop going to an establishment that said I couldn't read while I drank or ate. I understand that some inconsiderate people hog all the space in a place, but I say target them and not the person catching up on some reading or email over a drink.

Here's a review of the new OmniFocus for the iPad.

It's out. I've already plunked down for it and done my daily review with it. So far, it's better than I'd hoped, although not without (very) minor issues. Some people have been complaining about its $40 price which, while high for an iPad app, is not too high in my mind; its an extension of one of the single most important pieces of software I use. In fact, imagining OmniFocus on the iPad is one of the things that convinced me I needed one.