Something I just had to blog...

I received a tantalising email today from a company called Rutlands, the title of which was: 'Introducing The World's Finest Butt Chisel Set'! The strap line alone was enough to crack me up ;-)

Being thoroughly intrigued and open minded I tentatively clicked the link in the email and hoped for the best. I was both surprised and relieved when the page loaded. Perhaps you will see the funny side of this as well...

Nikon WT-4 partly working...

Well I managed to get the WT-4 working last night but of course only using a network router as a go between camera and computer. It's not too shabby either in terms of file transfer speed. Still no peer to peer result though although I did manage to get the camera to talk to the airport card in my Mac. For some reason thought it then cannot route the TCP/IP requests to the local ftp server.

I set my Mac up using a neat applescript called Aperture Hot Folder where basically any image file that gets dropped in there will then get imported into an Aperture library project. So I have configured my apache ftp server to drop the files in this folder when received.

Encounter with Subaru boy

Had the stereotypical brush with Subaru boy (SB) this morning as I was parking my car at the local Costco store. SB of course burns past me in the car park and steals the space I had just spotted. He then performs the fastest stop and 'reverse into parking space' manoeuvre possible. As I drive past him at a leisurely 3 miles an hour I indicate with up and down flat hand movements that he needs to slow things down.

I park and of course before I have the key out of the ignition, SB is outside the drivers door. I open door to be met with tirade of abuse like 'you a*sehole if you weren't so indecisive' etc etc He then walks off shouting that I am a 'd*ickhead' at the top of his voice repeatedly and giving me the finger. Of course SB is only recently out of nappies (diapers) and is a tradesman designate. He doesn't own a single wheel on the souped up Subaru boy racer and probably borrowed it from a mate, no doubt 1 year older than himself. Had this taken place in the USA he would probably have blown me away with a .45 or such like and then gone off for a burger to go. When I lived in Miami, dafter things happened.

What was really strange about this was that SB then proceeded back to his car and drove off. Possibly he was just exercising his aggressive parking skills and road rage handling but you never can tell...

Perhaps one day we won't allow young idiots to own ridiculously powerful cars like this one and then we won't see so many deaths. In my town where we are surrounded by roundabouts and dual carriageways, speeds are excessive and I regularly see boy racer's cars wrapped around trees, lamp posts and anything else they manage to tangle with. I couldn't begin to estimate the fatality count but it has to be stupendously high.

Nikon WT-4 Wireless Transmitter

I guess this is a rant but more likely a cry for help due to today's frustration with a new gadget that arrived this morning - the Nikon WT-4 Wireless Transmitter!!!!

So, what the hell is a WT-4: it's a neat little wireless transmitter that connects to your Nikon D3/D300 camera via USB and can transmit images as you take them back to a host computer - super cool for studio work where you can be snapping away and you can have another guy editing the shots as they are made. Or if you are a sports photog you can have them relayed to a laptop and then they can be sent direct to your newspaper. The system can support up to 7 photogs firing away and then someone back at laptop can see the 7 feeds as thumbnails and pick and choose real-time. Very schveet and also very pricey for what it is.

So first up would be the rant bit. Out of the box the thing looks like it's made of toy plastic and will break/scratch at the first contact. Basically the cheapest plastic case you can imagine x 10 on the crapiness scale. This unit is designed to go on your belt or hang around your neck and really needed some sort or rubber armour. Next is the simulated leather carry pouch - almost as crappy as the belt strap thingy on the back of it which is vertical and not horizontal. The unit has a screw on aerial - that attached ok. Has a DC adapter socket but of course they don't supply a transformer with it. Requires an EN-EL3e Nikon camera battery, also not supplied (luckily I have a spare). User manual covering XP, Vista & MacOS installation & use.

So, being a Mac user I install the Mac software: Nikon Wireless Setup Utility and Nikon Thumbnail Selector. All goes well. I configure things to work peer to peer so my WT-4 can talk directly to my Mac using Wi-Fi without the need for a router in-between. Of course this is the first thing that I cannot get to work - period. The camera just won't connect. I try launching the thumbnail application but of course that crashes out and tries to launch the Nikon Message Center application which also crashes. So at this stage I'm feeling pretty good about my purchase. The thing is, I kinda figured I would have this pain. On not one occasion have I been able to use any Nikon software on a Mac without some sort of issue.

It's at this moment that I suddenly discover they do not support Mac OS X 10.5, the latest incarnation of the mac operating system. It's only been out for 6 months and Nikon still don't officially support it or have updates. This is a general woe I have with them, they want to be like Apple in that they want to control hardware and tied in software but they really cannot get the software thing right. Basically they know how to make cameras and lenses but not a lot else. As an example you can look at Capture NX their RAW editing application, does a beautiful job but it's core feature is it's u-point technology, something they bought from another company. Anyway, Capture NX is a rant for another day as I have just run through their new version 2 of this. I'd give you a lionk to this software on the Nikon site but for some reason it's nowhere to be found :)

So, having determined my peanut sized brain was incapable of figuring out the camera link setup after 3 hours of trying, I decide to ring their ludicrous 10p a minute support helpline. I ring, a computer answers, I press 1 for professional product support, I get Richard who knows jack all and says I need to speak to an expert in the professional support team :) go figure. After a lengthy wait on a silent line (no lousy elevator music) suddenly a lady answers. This time, she knows nothing about WT-4, the 2 guys who do are on other calls...she takes my number and promises they will call...and of course they don't. Supremely professional in every way and I felt truly serviced.

So now I am thinking, this thing gets re-packaged and returned to Park Cameras. If they cannot support me then I have wasted my money. I'll just have to lump it and keep swapping compact flash cards. Not quite so impressive but a helluva lot cheaper :)

Going online bigtime

Wow, so this week I have set up facebook and blogspot, two things I had avoided doing for quite some time, basically I think because I didn't feel like committing too much of me in the public domain. Maybe that's an unfounded paranoia, but I guess since I started posting my photography work on flickr I have mellowed a bit and decided it can't be that bad a thing.

So not a bad start, I managed to get 2 surruptitious web links into my very first paragraph, how cool is that! Now you ask, why are you called 'Nikkors n Chips' - well Nikkors because I am a Nikonian (i.e. I only use Nikon cameras and lenses) and nikkor is Nikon's name for their lenses. Chips because I only use digital cameras and as we all know, digital means microchips.

Lastly then, why 'supergeek'? Well I have come to discover that when something technology orientated doesn't work and I can't fix it (which is quite a rare thing) I end up calling some tech support line and nine times out of ten I discover within the first few seconds that I actually know more about their products than they do. On one level this makes me feel incredibly good about myself but on another that quickly fades into dismay as I realise my problem is not going to get resolved anytime soon. So I know a fair bit about computers, cameras and most things hi-tech and when I say know I don't mean just how to switch it on, I mean how it really works inside. This helps somewhat because I have surrounded myself with more gadgets than most people ever dream of. I have full height computer rack systems in the garage computing prime numbers, video projectors, huge camera lenses and lots of computers: Apple macs and pc's and to me this is incredibly comforting. I work from home and so I get great benefits from this (some seasonal) in that I get to play with stuff a lot and the really power hungry gadgets kick out lots of heat to keep me warm in the winter months :)