Aquarelle

by Ion Minulescu - 1920

In the city where it always rains three times in seven days
All the citizens on sideways,
Walk by two while holding hands,
In the city where it always rains three times in seven days,
Covered under old umbrellas
Sighing, bending,
Wet from raining,
All the citizens on sideways
Look like automated puppets taken out of the storefronts.

In the city where it always rains three times in seven days
You can only hear on sideways
Steps of those who walk by two,
Counting
In their mind
The falling
Of the raindrops from umbrellas,
From the gutters,
And from sky
With the power of a cry
Giver of a life that's latent,
Useless,
Monotone
And absent.

In the city where it always rains three times in seven days
An old man and an old woman -
Looking like two broken toys -
Walk on sideway hand in hand...

Guess Who's Buzzing Today

At 4:57 PM today i came from a short walk. My neighbor at Nr.9 came down the stairs with a pair of barking dogs when i wanted to climb so i backed down. I went to the car and then to the mailbox. Exactly when i reached the car, a plane flew just above the building. I mean, not 1500 feet as the legal limit, not 500 feet, not even 300 feet but merely ... what? 150 feet maybe? It could have touched the building at Nr.45 across the alley. Almost no noise at all which means the pilot cut the engines down to idle. Really dangerous at that altitude in a residential area full of trees. It was also pretty foggy. I waited patiently two hours (actually more than two, as i forgot and then remember because of the OHSU helicopter flying more recently and really shaking the building, vibrating the walls' panels and pumping outside the dust from the walls and the mineral fiber in the attick, like every time where you have an enclosed volume within elastic walls, when those walls vibrate, the air inside is getting slowly pumped outside and the other way around.) so i can look at the history of flights on Web Track. I was curious to see what airline that was. Look for yourself and wonder. Beware that data on the site is slightly erroneous as it shows the plane flying some 900 feet SE of the building and 2700 above sea level which would be 2000 above the ground, well within legal limits. I mean i couldn't have seen it from outside near the west side of the building if it was flying as it says there, right? (It is not well shown here but the building i live in is oriented NS. That site http://webtrak.bksv.com/pdx worked right for me since i first started looking until a few month ago. Map is clickable.

Screenshot, webrak, Mountain Park, OR, Sat 12 Jan 2013 04:38:40 PM PST

Fall on Tualatin River

Clickable!

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, Sherwood, OR, 2012-11-15

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, Sherwood, OR, 2012-11-15

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, Sherwood, OR, 2012-11-15

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, Sherwood, OR, 2012-11-15

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge, Sherwood, OR, 2012-11-15

JR Ewing and Ceauşescu

For many years it was the only thing we were waiting to see on TVs in Romania. Saturday, at 8 or 9 PM. I think it was for a decade or so. Didn't have color. I mean there was no broadcast for color TV until 1983 and receivers until much later

Pamela and Sue Ellen were the prototypes for any male's subconscious dream. Bobby, the gentleman and JR, the tough guy. And the drunk. Larry Hagman, may God forgive him might have given a dreamy sense to many of my conationals' pre-revolutionary cirrhosises.

And yes, it is true. Dreams sometimes can be stronger than reality as a sexy woman can be more attractive than a real beautiful one. (I'm seeing all the time sexy women and poses on the internet and on TV that are sexier than sex itself.)

Why it was allowed? Now i hear Ceauşescu was a fan. He was projecting the episodes obsessively in a private cinema. But now we all also know how much a weak mind can be influenced by his own advisers and trusted entourage.

But not only that. Every singer and type of movie was imitated by different officially professional artists in Romania, and this for not to say mocked.

If it might have contributed to the demise of the communist regime in there? I'd say definitely yes. If it was not the main cause, it was a very important factor. What we knew of the west behind the iron curtain? Anything we saw on TV. But with a twist. Since most of the characters in the soap were rich, we didn't quite realize that it could not have been us and we were all fantasizing. The result can be seen even today as every man with a college degree in Romania, a bit of understanding of English when liberally drinking thinks himself rich.

But that's not all. I have a shred of suspicion that JR's face is a geometrical average between Jimmy Carter's and Bill Clinton's. I see lately less and less conspiracy theories about subliminal messages and stuff. Don't let them die because those theories might be our only hope. If we have not already succumbed to the economic crisis and dare not think any more.

AGFA. CCD vs CMOS

My compact camera just broke. I say just broke but in reality it slowly died for a few years now. I dropped it too many times, it was all bumped at edges and the lens lid wouldn't close anymore except if i hit it strongly. Now it refuses to focus anymore no matter what. Goodbye Coolpix L18! It was one of the best spent 100 dollars!

I needed badly a small camera to fit in my pocket and still make quality pictures when i couldn't take the big DSLR with me (Sony DSLR300 that by the way has a 2/3 CCD sensor).

And started looking around. And a brand popped on the screen. An old aquiantance. In the 70s at the Children's Club in Câmpulung Suceava we used to have 16 mm film cameras that where using the AGFA brand films. They were also the magnetic tapes for recorders. And i looked in the wikipedia and saw that there is still such a brand, as a holding company, still in Germany. Most of the cameras in US today are Japanese. Never saw a compact camera brand from Germany until now.

So i ordered at Amazon an AGFAPHOTO Digital PRECISA 1430 for 75 bucks. At AGFA site it is 59,95 €. THEN i downloaded the manual and looked at the specs.

Many of the spec are smilar or slightly below competition at that price.

But a few things caught my eyes. 7 elements lens. Live Histogram. CCD sensor. Artificial Intelligence Metering (wow, what can that be ? LOL).

I keep saying for years now that CCD sensor always seemed better to me. Since there is not any on pixels processing, the signal is sent outside the sensor area for processing, the signal capturing area of the pixel is bigger than at CMOS because it's not used for other components but just for light capturing. Don't know exactly but probably twice bigger. So it captures more light and there is less noise in the output signal. Probably the equivalent CMOS sensors would be twice bigger as area. According to this theory a good CCD 2/3 sensor could give better quality pictures than a full frame CMOS but that's my opinion of course. On CCD there is also more signal uniformity because of not processing each pixel on its own different components. There are more arguments here, you can read them in the site framed at the bottom. Until i get it, without even having it on my hand i dare recommend this to all. I don't know yet if they could improve color depth as well on any compact but i will come back with that.

For my Romanian friends, i see there it is not available yet in 14 MP but there is in 12. Who needs those megapixels anyway?



"In a CCD sensor, every pixel's charge is transferred through a very limited number of output nodes (often just one) to be converted to voltage, buffered, and sent off-chip as an analog signal. All of the pixel can be devoted to light capture, and the output's uniformity (a key factor in image quality) is high. In a CMOS sensor, each pixel has its own charge-to-voltage conversion, and the sensor often also includes amplifiers, noise-correction, and digitization circuits, so that the chip outputs digital bits. These other functions increase the design complexity and reduce the area available for light capture."



Got it today 10-05. QED or this is why they say 1 picture=1000 words.

From kitchen window, Dec.1 2012. clickable! (try middle click)

Directly

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OXKFe7QkBNk/UL_nZjCYnwI/AAAAAAAABOM/YY2oSIkBJHs/s1600/APDC0035.JPG