Jamie Thingelstad

I got to try out my new Sony noise canceling headphones on my recent trip to New York. My impression is mixed, but overall I’m pleased with them. I haven’t tried other companies so I can’t comment on how they differ. Here are my key comments:

• Reviews will say that all noise cancelling headphones create a sense of “pressure” when activated. This is certainly true, and was more pronounced than I expected. On a plane your head is already all messed up from the cabin pressure so it isn’t as noticeable, but in other situations it is very noticeable.
• The noise canceling works best when the noise generation is perpendicular to you. I got some odd results when my head was rotated 45 degrees making the sound hit them at an angle. Interestingly, after a couple of seconds it goes away so I would guess it is just the noise cancelling process catching up to a slightly different pattern.
• The NC circuitry does impact the sound. If you are a purist, you need to trade off a lower noise floor with some impact to the music.
• I found them comfortable to wear for a couple of hours. My ears didn’t get overly hot.

I stepped off of my last flight, from Dallas to Minneapolis, and wanted to immediately go and get a pair of noise canceling headphones. I made a rookie mistake. Hoping for an empty middle seat back in coach I had moved from a row in the middle of the plane to the last row in the plane. I lost my bet when they shoved one last person onto the plane to sit in between me and the other guy in our row.

Add to the misery of losing the “empty middle seat bet” the fact that the plane is narrower at the back (less room) and the engines were about 6 feet from my head (ridiculously loud). It was a miserable 2 hours and 28 minutes.

This weekend I picked up the Sony MDR-NC50 headphones. Best Buy had a really good deal on them with a coupon I had. I fly on Tuesday and Wednesday so I’ll get a chance to give them a workout.

If you like to feed birds you are completely aware of the ever-lasting battle with squirrels. They will go through amazing gymnastics to get at the wonderful food in your bird feeder. However, the other morning this scene caught me off guard!

Slightly larger than a squirrel, and I don’t think there is anything I can do about this one. 🙂

I just spent the last 4 hours assembling my Align T-Rex 450SE. Luckily I got the high-end one that comes 80% pre-assembled. That is why it was 4 hours rather than 40. Man are the parts small. Physically this helicopter is all together, and I’ve even slapped the electronics on it, but now I need to wire it all up. Time to break out the soldering iron and then start getting it all “setup”. That means getting everything just so and finally able to fly with the thing. I expect this process to take close to infinite time. 🙂

I’ll get another update when I have some breakthrough. I got the Reflex XTR training software for my PC and I’m hoping the actual helicopter is a bit easier to fly than the trainer, or that I had the trainer setup wrong. I crashed over and over and over.

Oh, and I got a new video solution for the remote control stuff. I’ll see if I can get a test video out sometime soon.

Happy Valentines day! My wonderful, beautiful wife and daughter decided to get me an iPod Nano for Valentine’s day. How fun! When the Nano was first released I convinced myself that I didn’t really care. Then a little after it was shipping I went to Best Buy and touched one. I shouldn’t have done that. The form factor is just so small, and the screen is nice (if small) and it just feels so nice in your hand.

I updated the firmware on it, got it setup in iTunes and I’m downloading a ton of photos to it right now (the other reason I wanted a to upgrade from my iPod Mini). I like it so far, of course what is not to like.

I was considering the idea of getting the “big” iPod at somepoint. No need to now, however I may reconsider if the rumors of this big screen, wide iPod turn out to be true.

Yesterday I received my recent order from Helidirect, a wireless video camera. This little toy is to be put on-board of various radio control things to record video from the car, helicopter or whatever. I gave it a run for the money today, the results weren’t great, but I’m encouraged that it can get much better. Feel free to jump to the videos right away.

Find video `heli-20060212`.

Find video `car-20060212`.

I have to figure some things out. First of all, the E-Sky Llama was almost impossible to fly with the 27g of the video camera and the 9v battery strapped to it. It did get off the ground, but it took a lot of force. The T-Rex I just ordered wont suffer this problem, but as it is, not really flyable to any extent. The other issue was my mount on both helicopter and my nitro car. I just slapped it on there which didn’t work so hot. First of all, the car throws a lot of force around and the 9v battery flew off the car. On the heli, there is a lot of vibration that messes with the picture. I also think I need to deal with interference off of the electric motor.

I plan on working on this a bit. Need to develop a real mount that attaches to the car/heli for real, along with a battery carrier. I’m hopeful that will get rid of a lot of the video noise.

I’ve started to take more digital video now, and I was appalled by the quality of audio I was getting on my camera. My video camera is a high-quality camera, but it suffered miserable audio quality. This quote from a shotgun microphone comparison about sums it up.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the camcorder-mounted microphones that are standard issue on most DV camcorder’s are really about as useful as a breadstick in gathering high quality audio.

The problems with the built-in mic were mainly quiet audio from the people in frame, and the my booming voice whenever I spoke.

I decided to upgrade to an external microphone and went with the Røde Electronics VideoMic. Panasonic theoretically makes a hot-shoe microphone for my camera, but I never found it in stock anywhere. The Røde VideoMic plugs into the external microphone and requires a 9v battery. One of the slightly annoying things is that you have to remember to turn it on or you get no audio, but I’ve only done this once so far.

And it is well worth it. The audio quality is excellent. The shotgun effect is very effective. If the person operating the camera speaks it sounds natural and not booming. The only downside is that background noise in the video frame will be much more noticeable. It’s size may put many off, but there simply isn’t a good solution to getting audio recorded in a really small package.

About three months ago I decided to have a new roof put on our house. We are in the process of putting solar heat on our house and our shingles needed replacement before we put the panels up. I contacted a couple of contractors and ultimately decided to go with Minnesota Statewide Roofing & Remodeling. Their estimator was prompt to come out and give an estimate, and they provided a good price. I told them the timeline I was looking at and that I needed to coordinate the installation with some other work. Everything was fine.

They were scheduled to start the job on Thursday, November 10th. I took the day off so that I could be at home when they got started, and to be there for a couple of other contractors that were visiting for some smaller projects. I expected a roofing crew to show up early and get going on the roof. Statewide had told me the job should take a full day with a half-day for finishing work.

At around 9am a vehicle pulled up. I was working with one of the other contractors who was on time and saw that one person got out of the vehicle and looked around. After I got done showing the other contractor in, the vehicle that I thought was the roofing crew, was gone. At 10am, with nobody here still, I tried to contact Statewide.

This started the most frustrating part of my entire interaction with Statewide. They were simply impossible to reach. I had cellular numbers for everyone but they never answered their phones. I would leave several messages and would be lucky to get a call back from them. This frustrated me beyond belief. In retrospect, I think if they would have simply been reachable, attentive to my calls and honest with me, I wouldn’t have been so frustrated.

Back to the installation. They never showed up on Thursday but Statewide assured me that they would be their first thing on Friday, November 11th. I didn’t stay home that day but called home at 10am and nobody had shown up yet. I left messages for Statewide but got no call. At noon nobody had shown up still and I placed more calls into Statewide. Finally in the early afternoon Statewide called me and told me a crew was driving to my house to begin the job. I went home early that day so I could be there and they never showed.

At this point I felt I was simply being lied to, flat out. How could someone be driving to my house and never show up. It just didn’t make any sense. I was infuriated and still unable to reach anyone at Statewide. That night they contacted me and said that they would be there tomorrow. I just couldn’t believe how poorly they seemed to be running this engagement.

That Saturday, November 12th at 11:00am a roofing crew finally showed up at my house. It was clear that rain was coming soon. They got on the roof and ripped off a bunch of shingles, and then left after 3 hours when it started to rain. I have no idea why they even felt like starting. They put down some tarps and left. That night a huge windstorm came in blew all the tarps off of the house.

To Statewide’s credit, they did get over to my house on that Sunday and nailed down the tarps and then 5 days passed before they started working on the roof again. In the meantime nothing was done. On the next weekend they came out, starting at 10am everyday and finished the job. If they would have started earlier they could have finished a day earlier, and the job took 3 and 1/2 days, more than twice the time they told me it would take. However, their materials and dumpster were at our house for nearly 3 weeks.

After the job was finished I was so frustrated I didn’t even want to talk to them. They never called to see how the job finished. We saw Statewide at our house one day looking at the roof but they never even bothered to speak to us or ask if everything was okay. Over a month later they finally sent a bill however the roof hadn’t passed inspection. I told them I wouldn’t pay until it did, and they promptly resolved the inspection.

I’m sure many have had worse roofing projects. Our roof did get done after all. However, the lack of prompt communication and professional service should be noted. I chose to write this note so others would have a reference. They had several reference letters about how great they are, and it should be balanced with other experiences. I’ve filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau as well.

For my birthday this year Tammy surprised me with a new lens for my camera. She got me the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM ultra-wide zoom lens. I’ve wanted an ultra-wide lens for a while because I find wide, landscape photography to be so much fun.

Here is an example shot with both lenses. Note the toaster is in the center of both shots. The one of the left is taken with my EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens.

Add image 20060103-173300-4937.

Add iamge 20060103-173318-4938.

You can see how much wider the shot is right away. There is some distortion on the corners of the shot which is unavoidable with such a wide lens.

I can’t wait to give this a shot on some outdoor photography in the summer.

Continuing my trend of mentioning new restaurants that we really like I would be remiss without highlighting Yum Kitchen and Bakery mentioned at The Rake. Before you go looking for a website, it seems they do not have one yet. They are very new, but it"s a bit shocking to me that they do not have a website. Luckily though they have great food.

We tried it out today and it was very good. It’s a very interesting deli/bakery kind of setup. The inside is designed in an interesting way — you order food in one place, get beverages in another, pay in another. Now that I think of it, kind of like a cafeteria. Don"t let that worry you though!

We had the chicken chili and it was very good. I also have been on some odd trip to find really good macaroni and cheese. I’m pleased to say, theirs is very good. Last but not least, the desert counter is pretty amazing. Definitely worth a visit!

I recently got my after-Christmas Christmas present. What’s that? Well, if I had something on my list and I didn’t happen to get it, I thought I should clean up that list. We don’t want to have things sitting on their forever now right?!

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to get a pair of binoculars. The primary use is for looking at wildlife around our house, and checking out birds. I’m sure that every time I mention bird watching I lose 10% of the audience to this website. Anyway, it is fun. The last use is for astronomical viewing. When out with the telescope, it’s nice to have a pair of binoculars to do some viewing.

The binoc’s you want for birding are completely different than those you want for astronomy, so I compromised with more emphasis on wildlife. I decided to get the Canon 12x36 IS II, mainly for the image stabilization. I got them a few days ago and it is very impressive.

The image stabilization works wonders. I was testing them and I could easily read text on objects far away with the image stabilization engaged. Without it, it was just too jumpy. I also find that I don’t get queezy when looking through them as I often do with binoc’s.

They are small, compact, lightweight, have a great grippy feel. I’m very pleased thus far. They run on a pair of AA batteries.

Have you played Sudoku (Wikipedia: Sudoku) yet? My mother turned me onto it. She figured I would like it in part because I like math. Turns out there really isn’t any math to Sudoku, but there are a lot of numbers and that can be fun. Sudoku reminds me a lot of Minesweeper, but it’s a lot more fun, and you get several “A-ha” moments while playing.

I would play it more, but it just burns time in a big way (hint: great for flights!) and I’ve already got a huge backlog of stuff I need/want to do.

I may be in a minority of people running a web site and still creating content by typing into a web page. I’ve decided to get “with it” and try a desktop blogging client. I’m giving BlogJet and Post2Blog a run. They have some wonderful features, one of the key selling points being the ability for me to easily attach images and other binary objects and have it automatically uploaded to another hosting provider. The other big win is that I can write things offline and upload them later. We’ll see if I think it’s worth the (low) cost, but so far so good.

I also looked at w.bloggar, but it’s just not as slick as either of these two tools.

I have decided that as of 2006, I’m going to officially make the transition to shooting all digital photos in RAW instead of JPEG¹. I’ve been thinking about making this transition for a long while now, but I’ve always had reasons not to. I’ve decided I just need to “bite the bullet” and deal with the workflow, conversion and storage issues as they arise (and, boy do they arise fast!)

If you are asking yourself what is RAW, let me give you a two second overview. 99.9% of people shoot digital photos in JPEG. Think of JPEG as a developed photograph, and RAW as a negative. In practical terms, the majority of people with digital cameras are walking around with a digital equivalent of Polaroids. While Polaroids were fun in their time, they had limitations, and many of these limitations apply to JPEG files as well². With a RAW file you get an undeveloped version of the photo, that requires further processing on your computer. The upside of this is that you can make image corrections native in the photo. If the picture is underexposed, you can compensate. If white balance is off, you can fix it. The advantages are huge, but there are challenges.

It takes, using most programs, 80-90 seconds to convert just one RAW image to a JPEG or TIFF file. If you take a bunch of photos in a day, you can easily have your computer working for an hour or more to convert them. Additionally, with more knobs comes the opportunity to make your photo look worse. It takes good software and skill to make a great photo (this is similar to the chemical process used in the film world). Of course we have the storage problem, which will now start becoming worse, but I can play governmental politics and let a future administration deal with that. 🙂

So why go through the hassle? A number of reasons. Out of every 50 or so shots, I get a picture I really love. And a lot of times, unfortunately, the exposure or some other variable is just slightly off. Without the RAW file, I cannot deal with this easily. Additionally, there is a whole new breed of software being developed to do amazing things with RAW files. For example, software that simulates the effects of different specialty negatives. You have nearly limitless future potential. I particularly like the fact that I will be able to hand down to future generations not just a box of polaroids, but a box of perfectly kept negatives.

I’m now trying to find a good software solution for RAW processing. I’ve been a BreezeBrowser Pro user for years, and love it. It deals with RAW files well, but I think there are better options. I’m playing with RawShooter, CaptureOne and Bibble right now. If you know of others that should be investigated let me know. I’ve also made some hardware upgrades as a result of this. I’m moving to a FireWire based compact flash card reader (Lexar CompactFlash Firewire) and I’ve finally gotten an accelerated 2G CF card (Sandisk Extreme III 2G).