drplokta

Took the camera and walked along the Thames on the way to work yesterday. Got a few decent pictures, with some heavier post-processing in Aperture than the last lot.

( Photos behind the cut -- I'm using Flickr's Large size now, 1024 pixels wide )

Like autopope (in a friends-locked entry), I have a shiny new camera.

(Note that all Micro Four-Thirds lens focal lengths given below need to be doubled to get a 35mm equivalent.)

Unlike autopope, I decided to go for a Micro Four-Thirds camera, the Panasonic GF1, with the 20mm f/1.7 prime lens included, and also the 45-200mm zoom. With £50 cashback from Panasonic, I won't lose any money if I decide to keep the lenses and sell the body on eBay, and buy an Olympus body instead.

The plan is to have a camera (with the 20mm lens) that I can easily carry around on holidays and excursions (It's just about pocketable, with largish pockets), with the zoom in the camera bag for times when I think I'll need it.

(The following is according to reviews, not personal experience.) The GF1's advantages over the Olympus E-P2 are quicker auto-focus, a better prime lens bundled with the camera, and it's cheaper. The Olympus's advantages are better JPEG processing, wider range of art filters built in, in-body image stabilisation (so it stabilises all lenses, and not just those with Panasonic's in-lens stabilisation built in), and a high quality electronic viewfinder (the Panasonic has a much worse one as an optional extra, which I've not bought). The first two of these can (I hope) largely be overcome by shooting raw and processing in Aperture.

I also quite fancy a wide angle lens (Panasonic do an extremely good one that's mind-bogglingly expensive) and a macro lens (Leica do a nice-looking 45mm f/2.8 one), which is also pretty expensive. And Panasonic are coming out with a 100-300mm superzoom later in the year. But this way lies madness, or at least bankruptcy. Of course, if I don't mind manual focussing, there's a large array of lens adaptors available, and thus access to lots of other lenses (although probably not anything with a very wide angle, due to the doubling of the effective focal length from the smaller sensor).

42. C is for Corpse by Sue Grafton
    
43. Contacting Aliens by David Brin & Kevin Lenagh
    
44. D is for Deadbeat by Sue Grafton
    
45. E is for Evidence by Sue Grafton
    
46. The God Engines by John Scalzi
    
47. F is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton
    
48. Seeker by Jack McDevitt
    
49. The Devil's Eye by Jack McDevitt
    
50. G is for Gumshoe by Sue Grafton
    
51. Marsbound by Joe Haldeman

ETA: The God Engines, which I forgot about because I read it on paper and not on my phone, so it wasn't on the handy screen of recently-read books.

Looks like I'll have to make a point of going to see Alice in Wonderland at a Cineworld (or maybe a Vue) in order to teach Odeon that it's none of their damn business how soon the DVD is available after the cinema release (except that they could make a lot more money selling DVDs to people leaving the cinema, so perhaps they should be campaigning for simultaneous release in cinemas and on DVD).

We're going to have a major purge on the books, which are taking up a lot of space, especially given that 80% of our reading these days is ebooks.

So I'm drawing up a checklist of reasons to keep books, with the idea being that a book that checks none of the boxes will go. Here's what I've got so far -- anyone got any other reasons for keeping books?

• flickgc or I will probably want to (re-)read it some time
  
• flickgc or I might want to (re-)read it some time, and it would be hard to repurchase/get an electronic version
  
• The book is rare or valuable
  
• The book is an attractive or interesting object in its own right
  
• The book has sentimental value, or has a story attached to it
  
• flickgc or I might want to lend it to someone else
  
• It's a reference book
  
• It's currently wedged under a piece of furniture to stop it wobbling

(According to the catalogue, we currently have 4,229 books. And I reckon the space each book occupies costs around £20 at current London property prices.)

ETA: The library is online here.

So far, Blackout, Connie Willis's first novel in eight years, is rather irritating.

(There are probably some very minor spoilers in this.)

It's a direct sequel to her 1992 Hugo winner Doomsday Book, which I recall was also rather irritating.

The first problem is that while it's allegedly set in Oxford in 2060, it's actually set in the 1980s or thereabouts. All the characters are continually running round Oxford looking for each other, and/or receiving garbled messages, because no one has a mobile phone and no one has email (or at least, they don't use them). You could just about get away with this in a 1992 novel, but you certainly can't in a 2010 novel.

Second, she hasn't really done her research (again). Inability to use Victoria station wouldn't be much of an impediment to getting round London in 1940, when it was only on the District line and wasn't an interchange. There aren't any garter snakes in England. Nor is there any skunk cabbage. London is not laid out in blocks. Russell Square Tube station was involved in a terrorist incident in 2005, not 2006. No English person who's studied crosswords in the history of games could be unaware of the existence of cryptic crosswords, even in 2060. Charing Cross wasn't the right Tube station for Trafalgar Square in 1945, because it was what's now called Embankment. What's now called Charing Cross was two different stations called Trafalgar Square and Strand, and you'd have used one of those for Trafalgar Square.

Authors, if you're going to set a book in a country that you don't live in, try to get a native to read your book before it's published.

30. Making Money by Terry Pratchett
    
31. Mission of Honor by David Weber
    
32. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
    
33. Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold
    
34. Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold
    
35. Escape from Hell by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

No re-reads this time. So far this year, I'm just slightly under one book per day.

As far as I can tell from all the noise and confusion, Amazon and Macmillan both suck, but Amazon sucks more than Macmillan does.

In my view, the "fair" approach to ebook pricing at present goes like this (all prices in US$, since that's where the current problem lies). Wholesale prices for the ebook and hardback edition of the same book should be pretty much the same -- printing costs a dollar or two per unit, but ebooks have some additional production overheads that are currently spread over fairly low volumes. The publisher and author will then make the same amount of money whichever version they sell, and shouldn't care about ebook sales "cannibalising" their hardback sales (Macmillan lose points here, since they apparently do care for some reason). Over time, as ebooks become more widespread, their wholesale price should come down to two or three dollars less than the hardback, since their production costs will be spread over more copies and the hardback's will be spread over fewer -- that will probably happen by pushing up the hardback price rather than reducing the wholesale price.

(This is complicated by the fact that we're currently comparing a rental price for the ebook with a purchase price for the hardback, since Macmillan insist on DRM -- let's assume for the time being that they will eventually come to their senses and we can compare apples with apples.)

The retail price for ebooks should be much lower than for hardbacks, since the distribution channel takes about 60% of the (rather nominal) cover price for a hardback, and should be taking 10% at most for an ebook. Amazon would rather keep getting 60% (or 20%-30% once they've discounted below the cover price), and thus quite rightly see ebooks as a threat to their profitability. But they can't win in the long run, so they lose lots of points for trying to defend an untenable position so aggressively.

Macmillan, however, lose some more points for trying to set the retail price for their ebooks rather than the wholesale price (which is illegal in many jurisdictions), and for practically begging their ebook distributors to screw them over by using DRM and restricting who can sell their ebooks.

So what we should see is new release hardbacks and ebooks sold for a wholesale price of somewhere around $10, which then translates to a cover price of $25 for the hardback, with a discounted retail price of around $15-$17, and around $11 retail price for the ebook. Amazon's profit is thus $5-$7 for the hardback, and $1 for the ebook.

Slowing down a bit, I think.

19. The Rebel Worlds by Poul Anderson *
    
20. Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold
    
21. Legacy by Lois McMaster Bujold
    
22. Hyperion by Dan Simmons *
    
23. Asimov's February 2010

* indicates a re-read.