Levi Buzolic

Sure screen savers are old news, but I was toying around in Flash a while ago and came up with this simple little experiment. It simply randomly selects a letter from an array, animates it in, out and then destroys itself. After a few loops the colour flips and the process continues. It’s not the most exciting bit of code in the world, but I think it works nicely.

The font used is Hand of Sean by the talented Sean Johnson.

You can download the windows installer (sorry, no mac version yet), grab the source code or see an in-browser version.

PS: For those playing with the source code, set the blur variable to true, looks much better, but the performance hit is pretty bad.

I just did a quick little test and it turns out that Sandisk Ultra II’s are definitely up to the task of recording video from the Canon 5D Mark II. This is great news, because it opens up a huge list of cards that–based on speed tests–should be able to work with the 5DMkII’s video mode and it means we have more cost-effective storage solutions for such a task.

According to Rob Galbraith’s tests; the 5DMkII writes files to the Sandisk Ultra II at around 10MB/s. So, theoretically any card that writes faster than 10MB/s should be able to handle the data rate required by the 5DMkII’s video mode.

Because the Sandisk Ultra II sits around the halfway mark on the chart, that leaves us with plenty of options to consider, including (but not limited to):

• SanDisk Extreme Ducati 8GB, 4GB
• SanDisk Extreme IV 45MB/s Edition 16GB, 8GB
• SanDisk Extreme IV 8GB, 4GB, 2GB
• SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s Edition 32GB, 16GB, 8GB, 4GB
• SanDisk Extreme III 16GB, 12GB, 8GB, 4GB, 2GB, 1GB
• Lexar Professional 300X 16GB, 8GB, 4GB
• Lexar Professional 233X 8GB, 4GB
• Lexar Professional 133X 8GB, 4GB
• Lexar Prof. 80X (3rd ed.) 2GB, 1GB
• Transcend UDMA 300X 16GB, 8GB, 4GB
• Transcend 266X 8GB, 2GB
• Transcend 133X 32GB, 16GB
• Transcend 120X 32GB, 4GB
• Hoodman RAW 300X 8GB
• Hoodman PRO 150X-133X 4GB, 2GB
• Hoodman RAW 280X 8GB, 4GB, 2GB
• Kingston Ultimate 266X 8GB, 4GB, 2GB
• Kingston Ultimate 133X 8GB, 2GB
• PNY Optima PRO UDMA 266X 8GB, 4GB
• PNY Opt. PRO UDMA (2007) 8GB, 2GB
• ATP Pro Max 1GB
• ATP Pro Max II 300X 8GB
• A-Data Turbo 350X 16GB
• Dane-Elec 300Xs UDMA 8GB
• Ridata Pro 150X 8GB, 2GB
• Delkin PRO 305X 16GB, 4GB
• Maxell standard 2GB

Because you can only store a little over 3 minutes of 1080p video per GB, you really need to consider a card larger than 4GB though 8 & 16GB cards will probably give you the best GB-per-dollar value.

Looking around at some Australian online stores I found a few good deals:

• Transcend 133X 16GB – $63 (0.254GB/$)
• Transcend 133X 8GB – $39 (0.205GB/$)
• Transcend 133X 4GB – $26 (0.154GB/$)

It would seem Transcend 133X cards are the cheapest around that can manage the speeds required by the 5DMkII’s video mode.

If you’ve found a great deal on CompactFlash cards that would suit the 5DMkII, then feel free to leave a link in the comments.

Well it’s here. Just not here.

China, Japan, USA, Australia and Europe have all received their limited initial shipments and the numbers aren’t too impressive. It will probably be weeks before pre-orders are filled in most places, though it looks like Australia’s numbers are the worst of the bunch.

Rumours floating around DP Review and OCAU suggest that Australia’s first retail shipment was just shy of 80 units, 7 of which were said to have made it to Western Australia — that’s not many at all.

The good news is; additional shipments should be arriving every week through December. So I’m hoping I’ll have mine in hand well before Christmas.

If you didn’t even know about the 5D MkII yet, here’s the short version:

• 21 Megapixel Full Frame Sensor
• 3.9fps RAW Shooting
• 1080p High Definition Video
• A massive 50 – 25600 ISO range
• And a lot more

Vincent Laforet said this thing is going to be a real game changer, and provided proof to back it up.

I’ve been a part of the US Closed beta for more than two months, and I’m now in on the Australian beta too. Though is it really fair to still be calling it a beta when the software version is already up to 1.01?

So, you download the ‘game’, install it, run it and create your ‘character’; where you get to choose from an amazing range of six shirts and five pants! And if that’s not impressive enough, you then get to spend what seems like an eternity loading the first level (Home refers to them as both ’scenes’ and ‘locations’) which turns out to be an mostly empty room (MER) that, no matter what you to do it; will look almost exactly the same as everybody else’s MER.

From here you’ll predictably try head out to the ‘Plaza’ where you’ll be greeted with a painfully slow download, followed by yet another strangely tedious loading sequence. Then whoosh! You out into the Plaza and this seems much more like it; there’s people here and plenty of room to stretch your legs. But be warned, upon ’stretching your legs’ you’ll come to realise something; this place is just as boring and uneventful as being locked in your little ‘Harbour Apartment’. Sure there’s some chess tables and posters on the walls, but, beyond that; not much really.

The one small thing Home has going for it at the moment is that the graphics are quite pretty. But, with the graphics aside; it’s slow, clunky, empty and boring.

The thing about home is; I really don’t think Sony knows that they’ve made it for.Is it just a slow and awkward chat window, or severely gimped version of The Sims? It just doesn’t make any sense. The closed beta has been going on for what seems like forever; during which they’ve added a couple of locations, revamped the plaza but really Home today is almost exactly the same as it was when I first downloaded it more than two months ago.

So if you’re not in on the beta yet; don’t feel too dissappointed, you’re not missing out on much.