I like writing, sketching, and I like to play with the odd electronic gadget, so I thought this IOGear “Mobile Digital Scribe” (AKA the GPEN200N) seemed an intriguing device. This weirdly technologized pen can be had for $44.95 at Amazon.com, at least until the end of September.¹

I bought and received mine, taking funds from my geeky-and-probably-unnecessary-device budget. A close look reveals that there are two parts to this gadget; The pen and the base station. The base station clips to a piece or pad of paper, and is used to record the movement of the pen, it features a single button that can be held-down to turn the base station on and off², and can be pressed quickly in order to indicate that the user is sketching a new page (up to 50 pages worth of scribblings can be recorded at a stretch). The base connects to the computer via USB cable, and the included software will instantly transfer any recorded notes to a specified location on the computer as TIFF images. The USB connection also charges the base station’s internal battery. The pen uses a couple of those tiny watch or hearing aid batteries, and shuts itself off whenever its not moving, so apparently they don’t need to be replaced often.³

I connected the base to my computer, updated its firmware to 1.76 so that it’d work with Mac OS X, rebooted my computer, unplugged the base, clipped it to some paper, wrote a bit, then plugged the base back into the computer. Everything I wrote transferred over to the computer automatically as a tiff file (deposited into a folder I’d pre-designated), and looked very very good. I’d guess that the base unit stores pen movements in a vector-based format, which is then rendered to a tiff file after it’s transferred to the computer.

I tried the bundled OCR⁴ software, “MyScript Notes Light” on Windows XP inside VMware Fusion. On my first test, it worked surprisingly well. Subsequent tests were not so successful. I think it gets confused when it tries to emulate the layout of text written in lines that are not completely horizontal. I also scribbled a couple of Chinese characters (ni hao) and it recognized those and converted them to text (in a separate pass with the OCR software set to simplified Chinese). There’s no reason that the high-resolution TIFF images created by the pen couldn’t be opened in more capable OCR software, perhaps resulting in more usable transcriptions.

Mouse mode does work, the pen can be used to draw and drag on the computer. A click can be executed by pressing the point of the pen down or by clicking the pen’s side button. There’s a bit of lag, which would suck for gaming, but mouse mode could potentially be of use with photoshop (note: the pen is not pressure sensitive).

I half-busted one of the base unit’s clips trying to clip it to a stack of paper larger than it can accept. So my recommendation would be “don’t do what I did”. Other than that hiccup, my thoughts on the IOGear Mobile Digital Scribe (or GPEN200N) are positive so far.

1. It’s currently marked down from $129 (WTFLOL) to $64.95, and then there’s a $20 mail-in rebate. [↩]
2. It took me a day to figure this out –the little guide it ships with says nothing about this, and holding the button produces some bizarre twiddlings of items on the base station’s LCD display, animations that don’t appear to portend an imminent shutdown, before it indeed shuts down. [↩]
3. Whether or not those batteries will ever need to replaced will depend on whether or not I tire quickly of this new toy or actually find it useful and take notes with it daily. [↩]
4. Optical Character Recognition – it converts one’s writing into text. [↩]

I saw this wine bottle on the clearance rack at Meijers and, though this alcoholic beverage likely has nothing to do with any two-wheeled self-balancing electric scooter, I couldn’t help but remember all the Segway hype from 2001.

The quote in this post’s Title is from Segway creator Dean Kamen, who has invented many extremely-cool devices, but his predictions for a future built around that scooter have yet to be realized. This Slate article does a good job recapping the more outlandish bits of Segway hype and expectations.

I remember rumors circulating before the Segway launch that Kamen was going to release some kind of antigravity flying machine based on the Stirling engine. I have no idea what that means, but the diagram of a Stirling engine over at Wikipedia is the most unintentionally suggestive engineering-related image I’ve ever seen. I’ve put a tiny thumbnail of it at right, but for greater impact view it at full resolution over at Wikipedia.

Hints of chocolate, blackcurrant, and outsized expectations.

I’ve not only just purchased a restaurant supply pack of three 1-liter bottles of my favorite salad dressing, but I am having it sent to me here in Michigan while working on location. As if that doesn’t already sound a little extreme, I also made the purchase as a “subscription”¹ at Amazon, so that the price drops another %15, and an order will automatically be placed for me every 6 months².

If you’ve never had Annie’s Naturals Shiitake & Sesame Vinaigrette, and you like your salad dressings savory and tangy, I’d highly recommend giving it a try. Once you’re addicted, the most economical way to satisfy your craving is the aforementioned 3-liter pack at Amazon.com.. Your supermarket likely has the 8oz bottles for around $4ea, or 50 cents an oz. My seemingly insane purchase gets the price down to about 20 cents an oz. Cheaper than water! I might just drink the stuff straight for the first week after delivery. The second week it’ll be on the rocks.

Suffice it to say that I eat a lot of lettuce and other tortoise-approved foods.

1. I can cancel it any time I want to. I just don’t want to. [↩]
2. which is about how long it’ll take me to get through 3-liters of the stuff. [↩]

The title kinda says it all. For some reason Amazon.com is selling the Criterion Edition of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Blu-ray for $14.99¹

This particular release includes 2 discs. The first includes the film with audio commentary from director David Fincher. The second disc is all supplementary material, with hours of video and still photo galleries covering all aspects of production. A taste of these extras can be found on Amazon’s page for the film, where one can watch a 6-minute excerpt of the making-of featurette about some of the film’s visual effects.

I don’t know what prompted this price drop, but I’d be happy to see many more Criterion titles fall into such a price range. Criterion discs are known for the quality of their extra materials and featurettes, and they generally cost more than the average disc. I like the idea of lowering the barrier to entry to give more people access to high-quality behind-the-scenes information that can illuminate the filmmaking process.²

1. Disclaimer: I worked on this film. I’m in the credits and everything. I mean to minimize the gloatiness of this “disclaimer” by making it a footnote, set in small type. Yeah, that oughta do it. [↩]
2. I’m looking forward to receiving my Blu-ray disc, and I am hoping it includes a 2-hour featurette on the Excel spreadsheets and web apps I coded to help track VFX clips in the timeline. (Kidding.) Given how often I end up using Excel on productions, I may have to put together an exciting spreadsheet sequence for my editing reel. (Might be kidding.) [↩]

Sorry to seem to be pushing this camera so frequently, but enough people have asked me to keep them apprised of deals on it that it’s easier for me to just mention it here than contact each interested party individually. This post is for them, or you as well if you’re looking for a solid-state camcorder.

At the moment, Amazon’s page for the Creative Labs Vado HD 720p Pocket Video Camcorder doesn’t list a price, and you have to place it in your cart to find out that it’s $129.99 with free shipping. I expect this price will last Amazon’s sold out again and then subsequently their page will list the higher price of the item from one of the other vendors who sell the camera on Amazon.

I posted my impressions of the camera the last time it was on sale at this price. You can also read more about the deal on this camera at the Fatwallet Hot Deals forum, and that forum thread includes comparisons of the camera’s image quality to other solid-state camcorders as well as links to reviews.

Several people who have seen me grab the occasional bit of video footage using this tiny and relatively cheap solid-state video camera asked me to let them know the next time a good deal popped up. It seems that every couple of months Amazon sells the “Creative Labs Vado HD 720p Pocket Video Camcorder discounted to $129.99 (down from $229.99)¹. Now is one of those times.

The camera captures 2 hours of video to its 8Gb of internal storage as 1280×720 AVI files. Image quality is surprisingly good for the price, and this model distinguishes itself from similar cameras with its wide-angle lens² (and its price when on sale).

It’s small, fits in a pocket³, and doesn’t draw a lot of attention to itself when in use⁴.

The camera shows up as a drive when its built-in USB connector is connected to a computer and files can be easily copied off of the camera. It also charges its internal battery over USB. I’ve also used my Vado HD as a USB flash drive to ferry large non-video files between computers. It’s a very convenient device, and at $129.99 is about $40 more than Amazon charges for the older, 2Gb, standard-definition (640×484) version of the device.

I’ve uploaded a non-spectacular but representative sample clip to vimeo. You can watch it below as an embedded flash clip, or you can download the original full-resolution clip directly from vimeo⁵. if you’d like to examine it more closely. There are a number of other clips shot with the Vado HD also available for perusal on Vimeo.

If you’re looking for such a thing, you know who you are. Here’s another link to the product.

post-finish cool-down from ZachFine on Vimeo.

Runners stagger around in mylar blankets after finishing the 2009 San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon.

1. Perhaps the periodic discounts occur when Creative Labs needs to improve their quarterly sales figures? [↩]
2. Its wide-angle lens makes it easier to fit friends into a shot when in a small room, or to hold the camera at arm’s length to shoot myself. As an aside, I’d recommend against bothering to “zoom”. This and other cameras in the category have fixed lenses and do a useless “digital zoom” which just blows the captured pixels up larger. [↩]
3. Well, it fits in my pocket. It’s small enough that I can carry it through an entire marathon without complaint. [↩]
4. The Vado HD looks a lot like a cell phone. [↩]
5. look for the “Download AVI Version” at the lower-right corner of the Vimeo page. [↩]

No joke.
 
I think this is my sister’s book club pick for this month.

Posted via email from Zachary’s posterous

“Shure I2C-MP Stereo Earphones / Headset (iPhone Compatible)” $19.99 at Amazon.com

Additional Note: These may be now be out of stock at Amazon. If so, the link will take you to the same item but likely at a different price, provided by a vendor other than Amazon. The different and likely higher price, and the lack of free shipping if your order hits $25, may be less enticing.

I bought a pair of these earbuds when they were marked down to $40 and have been using them for running. They’re very high-quality earbuds that are cheap enough that I don’t worry about destroying them with sweat or excessive wear and tear. These produce better audio than any earbud or headphone sold for under $50, probably better than any under $90 but I may have lost track of the market a little and am being conservative in my superlatives.

I wrote a little review of the i2c’s the last time they were on sale, gushing over what a great deal they were at double the current price. $19.99 is ridiculously low, I wonder if these have been discontinued? The previous review is worth a read if you’re considering this purchase.

If you do purchase these earbuds, I’d also recommend getting foam sleeves for them as it makes a huge difference in audio quality. The earbuds don’t ship with foam sleeves, but thin silicon sleeves that just hold the earbuds in the ear and provide negligible isolation from ambient sound. There’s also markedly more¹ bass when listening with foam sleeves.

Here are links to a few options for replacement foam sleeves:

• The Shure Black Olive sleeves work well, though it takes a little work to fit them onto the earbuds.².
• A slightly better sounding, but uglier and quicker to wear out set of foams are the Shure orange foam sleeves. They’d probably suck for running as they’d get saturated with sweat and are not easily washable.
• The fancy ‘comply’ viscoelastic foam tips might be the most expensive and highest quality option, I’ve never tried them.

I’ve linked only to the large sizes of all of these foam sleeve options, as I figure the larger they attempt to expand the better seal they’ll make in the ear canal, leading to more sound isolation and better sound. But if you’re not sure you’ll find the large foams comfortable, they’re all also available in medium and small sizes if you poke around those web sites.

1. but not excessive or muddy [↩]
2. The tubes in the black olive sleeves are slightly too narrow to fit, but can be momentarily stretched with a set of mini needlenose pliers just before installation on the earbuds. The tubes then shrink and hold the sleeves very tightly in place, which I think is a positive thing [↩]

“Shure I2C-MP Stereo Earphones / Headset (iPhone Compatible)” $39.69 at Amazon.com

I previously owned a pair of Shure e2c earphones, which were very nice. When used with the foam earpieces, they isolate from ambient noise and produce a very detailed sound with a decent amount of bass. I ended up listening through them at a much lower volume than I would have with less isolating headphones.

Shure makes a set of earbuds called the i2c, which are simply their e2c earbuds with the addition of thicker cables, an inline microphone, and an iPod connector (looks like a standard 3.5″ stereo jack except it has one extra conductor for the mic). As an iPhone headset, the i2c has faced some criticism due to the fact that it lacks an inline answer/hangup button. Perhaps because of this minor inconvenience, Amazon.com has recently dropped the price of the i2c headsets from $119 to about $39.

I don’t care about the button, or the mic, since I don’t have an iPhone. For a nice pair of earbuds, that price happens to be a great deal. I placed my order last week thinking that if the iphone plug wasn’t compatible with my ipods that I’d cut it off and solder a standard miniplug in its place (ignoring the mic wire). It turns out that the iPhone connector works fine in both my 1st-gen iPod Nano and 1st-gen iPod Touch. Right and left channels nicely separate, and the sound is good. The mic connector on the plug doesn’t seem to short or otherwise interfere with the contacts for the audio outputs –your mileage may vary. It’s working for me (I suspect the connector was designed to work in both iPhone and standard mini-stereo jacks, but don’t quote me on that).

If you buy a pair of i2c’s (or any in-ear monitors really) I’d recommend tossing the silicone sleeves they ship with (with extreme prejudice) and instead using compressible foam tips so that the earbuds really make a nice seal in your ear. The sound quality will be much improved, and the bass presence and detail will increase. Shure sells orange foams that works well, many on the net tout Shure’s tapered black “olive” foam sleeves for greater comfort and cleanability, and I’ve heard good things about the Comply viscoelastic polyurethane memory foam tips.

I ‘m happy to now have a nice pair of earbuds to use for running (My Future Sonics FS1’s finally died, and I don’t want to subject my FS Atrios to the same abuse). Yay. If you’ve been thinking of replacing your iPod earbuds with something better, this here’s a very good deal (on something much much better).

I received my Panasonic DMC-LZ8, and shot a few test photos today. In summary, I’d give the camera an A- for optics, an A for features, a B for user-interface (I have to click how many times to manually set the ISO equivalent?), and a solid D for image processing.

Why that low grade? Because after the camera has responded to the user’s commands, the lens has focused and zoomed, the image has been focused on the sensor, and the sensor has captured an image, Panasonic’s Venus Engine IV software goes to work. It takes the raw image off the sensor, processes it, and writes a file to the memory card. The problem is in the processing — digital images contain some amount of noise, and this noise can be reduced by applying noise reduction algorithms. But there is a downside to noise reduction, as these algorithms reduce the level of detail in the image. Every manufacturer approaches this tradeoff in their own way, but Panasonic’s decision is very unfortunate.

The Panasonic DMC-LZ8 (and apparently most other Panasonic digital cameras) suffers from an overly aggressive style of noise reduction. The user can set the noise reduction to be reduced in one of the camera’s menus, but it can’t be reduced nearly enough, and can’t be disabled. It doesn’t appear to be possible to shoot a photo that is not visibly mangled by Panasonic’s digital noise reduction.

Panasonic’s noise reduction may be useful for photos shot in low-light conditions, as such photos can have enough noise to warrant some smearing of detail in order to make the noise less distracting. Photos shot in bright sunlight should have very little noise and thus require little to no noise reduction, yet the DMC-LZ8 attacks such images with its noise reduction algorithms and leaves them noiseless but also a bit impressionistic, as if they’d been painted with a tiny brush. Definition and fine details are lost in the process. I dialed the digital noise reduction down to its lowest setting and shot a few more sample photos, but the noise reduction was still very apparent.

The problem is not limited to the Panasonic DMC-LZ8, as is attested by this internet petition which asks Panasonic to release a firmware update for several other Panasonic cameras to allow users to choose to disable noise reduction. I would also prefer to disable the camera’s noise reduction feature, because it is easy to apply noise reduction in computer to shots that really need it, and 9 times out of 10 I prefer the organic look of the noise itself to the painterly look of noise reduction.

Gripes aside, the camera seems nice in all other aspects, and for $111 I’m happy with it. It’s small, fast, cheap, and the images are reasonably good (they’d be great if not for the problem noted above). If I’d paid the suggested retail price of $179 I’d probably already be in the process of returning the camera and replacing it with the Canon SD870IS, but at $111 I’m content. I don’t intend to use this as my primary camera. Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.