If you’re concerned about buying a third-party battery for your charger, my experience with a Pearstone has been fairly positive so far.
Over our train trip through California in December and January, I left my camera battery and charger connected to the in-seat power outlet on the southbound Coast Starlight. I had the battery and charger since I bought my Canon 20D camera in November 2005.
Thankfully, the battery is pretty common as it was used in almost all Canon digital SLRs until the 40D but was the battery for the 5D Mark II. Since there are so many of those out there, it’ll be a while before these batteries become rare. However, original manufacturer batteries can be expensive, so it’s tempting to look for third-party brands.
To replace my lost battery and charger, I bought the Pearstone BP-511A battery and the matching Pearstone Compact Charger. I’ve used it for about four months, and so far, I haven’t noticed any diminished performance. Only time will tell if it will hold up to repeated charging cycles. My original battery would last for well over 1,000 exposures, even after over seven years of fairly regular use.
Good luck.
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Obscura Day
Saturday was my first Obscura Day. This year’s lineup didn’t seem as exotic as past last year’s events around the New York area. Sarah, for instance, went to the Vanderbilt Museum on Long Island, a place that I never would have visited on my own. I didn’t go in 2011 2010 because I didn’t want to miss a softball game, but this year, I was ready to make an early-season sacrifice.
The one event that caught my attention was Thirteen Steps Around Dutch Kills, a walking tour of Newtown Creek. It was led by a true expert of the area, so I was excited to take the tour. It was an eye-opening perspective. It’s not like I haven’t been around the industrial zones of Long Island City and Greenpoint. I have either biked or driven past those spots over the last several years. It’s just that one tends to overlook the industrial blight around Newtown Creek. Perhaps the best part was finally taking the ironically named Nature Walk path around Whale Creek, behind the new sanitation plant.
In the evening, I sacrificed yet another softball game for a tour of nineteenth-century drinking establishments. It was basically a tour of watering holes in Lower Manhattan that have been around for a long time, such as Fraunces Tavern, Delmonico’s, and the Paris Café. Despite having lived in New York for over a decade, I had never been in these spots since I never went below Chambers Street unless someone was in town or I had to report for jury duty. I felt a little under-prepared as there were people there in costume. I really appreciated that because it made the experience a little more authentic.
We have Verizon FiOS in Long Island City, and in April 2012, our connection significantly worsened on the upstream.
In March, our Verizon FiOS broadband had significantly improved, not in terms of upload and download speed, but the latency and packet loss had improved dramatically. I had posited that Verizon technicians had done some work to improve our connection. I was very happy.
The monthly SamKnows report arrived today, and it looks like it reverted back to a pretty poor connection. SamKnows performs hourly tests for download, upload, latency, and packet loss. In April, our download speed remained robust at a little over the advertised 25 Mbps rate. However, around April 18th, the upload speed plunged to about 7 Mbps, less than a third of the advertised 25 Mbps rate.
At the same time, the packet loss climbed dramatically suggesting that there was a compromised connection on the upstream causing this problem. This is unacceptable. The reason I came to Verizon was for the robust upstream. I upload a lot of files, as is the joy of being a media scholar and shutterbug, and I need a zippy symmetrical connection.
If anyone in the neighborhood finds this and wants to report their results, please share in the comments.
While the New York Post received Mayor Bloomberg’s nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, it was another story that sent a few chills down my spine. Will Hulu be tied to a pay TV subscription?
the move by Hulu toward the new model — called authentication because viewers would have to log in with their cable or satellite TV account number — was behind the move last week by Providence Equity Partners to cash out of Hulu after five years, these sources said.
The major networks founded Hulu to prevent everyone from circumventing revenue-producing way of watching television. The move has been great. It has been a formidable way to get TV shows, and I have been a subscriber of Hulu Plus since the service launched. The appeal has always been that I can watch the television shows I want to watch and when I want to watch them.
This move could threaten the a-la-carte model that Hulu provides in favoring of bundling a package of channels that I’m never going to watch. While the Post article indicates that Providence Equity Partners is behind this strategy, I question that thinking for two reasons.
- the fact that one of the owners of Hulu is Comcast, the biggest and least favorite cable MSO in the United States, and a deal like this really help retains its customers; and…
- Hulu was up for sale last year, but then the sale was pulled due to its “unique and compelling strategic value”.
Free Press has launched an online petition to save Hulu from its possible fate as some “TV Everywhere” service that will only inflate cable bills.
(Via TV News Check.)
The New York Nineteenth Century Society is among other things staging a series of games according to different set of rules.
The Columbus Capital Base Ball Club plays by the rules and regulations of base ball as adopted by the National Association of Base-Ball Players on December 12th, 1866, when the team was founded.
The Gotham Base Ball Club of New York play games according to 1864 rules, when pitchers pitched underhanded, a foul ball was not a strike, a ball caught on one bounce was a put-out and the fielders wore no gloves. The team was founded c. 1853.
The Flemington Neshanock Base Ball Club plays by 19th century rules, uses authentic replicas of 19th century equipment and wears 19th century uniforms. As was the custom in the middle 19th century, all fielders play barehanded and do not wear gloves. The original Flemington Neshanock were established in July 1866 and comprised mainly of the town’s prominent constituents.
I am most intrigued by the Gotham Club and the 1864 rules. The lack of fielding gloves makes it seem a lot like Chicago style softball.
I guess there’s always next year.
Does NYU Have Bieber Fever?
As I bicycled to and arrived at NYU this morning, there was a huge security detail around the Stern Business School. While there was the usual presence of NYU Campus Safety and NYPD officers, a new batch of guards wearing Tribeca Film Festival badges were also on the scene. After some quick online searches, I found that the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards ceremony is here today at Stern.
The third annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, hosted by NYU Stern School of Business, on April 27. The 11th edition of TFF runs April 18 to 29.
Lifetime Achievement Awards will be given to Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, and John Wood, founder of Room to Read. Wood has opened over 13,500 libraries around the world at a cost of $5,000 per library. The Book of the Year honor will go to Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) will be returning this year with Agency Program Manager Dr. Gill Pratt showcasing the Hummingbird, DARPA’s prototype nano-drone, as well as a new prototype making its debut from DARPA’s M3 program—the Cheetah. The roster of other award winners is a colorful and eclectic group spanning several realms of culture and society, among them pop superstar Justin Bieber and manager Scooter Braun, honored for the historic discovery of Bieber on YouTube and his subsequent social media rise; producer Rick Rubin, for founding Def Jam Records 30 years ago in an NYU dorm room; and oncologist Steven A. Curley for his advances in cancer treatments.
While there are a good number of heavy hitters attending, I suspect that the larger-than-normal detail is due to Justin Bieber.
I don’t think I saw this level of security when David Cameron spoke on campus in March, and he’s only the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
(Via We Are Movie Geeks.)
My iPhone 4 developed bright white spots on the display over the last few months. These spots are the same as those described in an Apple Support Communities post. As the original poster describes, the spots were especially visible when the phone displayed a white background. I had learned to live with the occasional imperfection as the spots had developed over a time. However, the spots appeared to become bigger in recent days.
I’ve had the phone since “Launch Day” in June 2011, but I am still covered by AppleCare so I took it to my local Apple Store. A Genius inspected it and, without hesitating, offered to replace the phone. He said that the display was the problem and since there is no way to simply repair the screen, he would have to replace it.
If you are still covered by one-year warranty or by AppleCare, take the phone to your local Apple Store. Chances are good that they will replace your phone or at the very least replace it. Of course, your mileage may vary.
There’s so much to cover with Raise the Red Lantern (1991), a film I screened in this week’s History of Cinema class. There is the film’s historical portrayal of Chinese feudal society in the early twentieth century. The particular depiction of misogyny is also instructive because it reveals a great deal about the treatment of women in this polygamist family. However, for this review, I want to discuss the way the film’s style portends the fatal ending and that endlessness of the women’s subjugation.
Warning: Spoilers are afoot
Think of the film as depicting a cycle.
First, we see the new mistress coming to the home and being introduced to the older mistresses. As we see each one, we understand that each mistress almost perfectly represents a generation of women. We know little of the Second Mistress other than her desire to bear a son for the Master. The Third Mistress, on the other hand, was at one time a working opera singer. The Fourth Mistress, as a university student, stands as the most ambitious of them all. Each one is more professionally and socially accomplished than the previous one. However, each of these “generations” are compressed into a matter of years, although the actual length is indiscernible.
Second, the Master’s physical absence throughout the film amplifies his power, especially compared to the mistresses, servants, and even Doctor Gao. The Master is conspicuously absent for most of the film. The film employs a variety of tricks to obscure him, such as cutting away at a key moment, having objects block or screen him, or simply framing him from a great distance to render him indistinct. Such techniques give him a spiritual quality that makes him almost immortal.
Third, the film foreshadows the ultimate doom for two of the mistresses. When we see the Third Mistress on the roof of the building, which will be of great narrative significance in the film’s penultimate scene, she resembles an apparition. Her red dress contrasts with the blue sky and monochrome stone structure of the house. As the wind blows and she sings, she has a ghostlike quality. This not only a sign of her fate but also a manifestation of women whose spirits are unsettled. Fourth Mistress punctuates the spiritual tone of that scene when she later confides with First Mistress, “This place is haunted.”
Finally, after the Third and Fourth mistresses’ fates are sealed, we see a Fifth Mistress join the house. She is presumably the youngest of them all.1 As the cycle begins anew, there are some unsettled ghosts in the house. Fourth Mistress attempts to “unleash” Third Mistress’s ghost by lighting her lanterns and playing a gramophone recording of her singing. Moreover, Fourth Mistress has apparently gone mad. Her life is spared but the trauma of witnessing, and to some degree causing, Third Mistress’s death. But the house and its generations of tradition continue undisturbed. The film suggests that there will be no end to this cycle.
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It seems significant to note that Fourth Mistress’s downfall begins on the day she turns twenty years of age. ↩
A Star Wars Musical? Never Say Never
In Tuesday’s History of Cinema class, I discussed some ways that Hollywood franchises spawn entertainment vehicles beyond movies. One such vehicle is the Broadway musical, such as the 2008 Shrek: The Musical Broadway production. In an off-the-cuff remark, I said, “At least, there hasn’t been a Star Wars musical.” One student proved me wrong.
Although Star Wars: The Musical is not a Broadway show, produced in conjunction with George Lucas, LucasFilm, or 20th Century-Fox. It is a work produced by fans of the franchise, available for free download.
File under: Never say “never.”
(Via Ryan Hecht.)
Ramblers vs. G00nies
The Ramblers are a team I played with last fall, and I even shot some photos of them during their last game. I signed up for the spring/summer team, and I won a spot in the pitching rotation. We played two games on Wednesday night at Whitey Ford field, in the north-west tip of Astoria, Queens, and won two games, each by a ten-rule mercy-rule margin.
This team has some really strong hitters. They’re not necessarily going to hit balls into the East River, but they hit hard line drives. Everyone in field is solid, and I’ve never seen such smart aggressive base running in a long time. Those skills are key to winning in New York City softball.
Robots Off
The Robots didn’t play this weekend because the league took the day off.
Ball Busters Rained Out
The Ball Busters didn’t play on Sunday either. April showers washed out my two softball games this Sunday
