Monday 27 August 2007

New toys!


Dammit! Gonna have to save up some pocket money, 'cos Nikon just announced two new toys that I just gotta have! The Nikon D3 has a full-frame sensor - a first for Nikon. The D300 is an update on the D200, still with a DX-sized sensor.

The D3 is particularly interesting for me, along with the new 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom they also announced. With my current DX-sized sensors and Nikon's 12-24 f/4 zoom, I get the "35mm equivalent" of an 18mm lens at the widest setting. The D3's full-frame sensor means that with the 14-24 zoom I'll get the full field of view (FOV) of the 14mm setting. That apparently small gain of 4mm translates to a considerably wider view, invaluable for my real estate and architecture photography. For that reason alone, I'm putting in my order in now!

See the full story at the ever-excellent dpreview.com site.

Ana's eyes


Ana is my muse. She has the most delicious eyes, so I thought I'd show everybody just how delicious they are with this image...

I'm a Flickr clickr!

It had to happen, I guess. I joined Flickr. So now I can inflict my pictures on an even wider audience.

Go straight there: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyesland/

No Entry to Heaven?


Spotted this just around the corner from my office. "Portas do Céu" means "Gates of Heaven" in Portuguese.

Wednesday 8 August 2007

Microsoft is dumb!

I'm English. I live in Portugal. I speak some Portuguese, but for technical documents I definitely prefer to read them in English. I have indicated this in my IE7 browser settings (under Tools/Internet Options/General/Languages) where "en-GB" is listed as my preferred language for viewing web pages.

So how come Microsoft doesn't use this setting itself? It's visible to any web server. Yet, when I went today to download some updates from Microsoft and then clicked to read the associated documentation, it was presented to me in Portuguese? Yes, my IP address will be listed as being in Portugal, but that should not override my stated language preference.

This is a clear case of incompetent techie-ness. The IP address location should not be used to make assumptions about my language, only my physical location.

What hope do we have for updates and fixes if Microsoft can't/won't use their own technology intelligently?