Remember the toy boat kit Florence gave me that I made a few months ago? Watch this:
I love that we confirmed the use of the styrofoam piece 🙂
Category: Tech
The New Addiction
Meet Zoffy, of Nebulon, my avatar in the new Animal Crossing for 3DS:
The game is all sorts of awesome, especially if you’ve been hooked by any past game in the series. It’s wonderful to get back to village maintenance and chatting with your animal buddies:
Although I’ve only been playing a week (since returning from Japan), it’s obvious the game is much more expansive than ever, with a mind-boggling array of stuff to do. This is no longer just a game you play for half an hour a day!
One new addition is ‘Club Tortimer’, which is an island excursion where you can play with people from all over the world. Yesterday I did this, and found myself on an island at night with two Japanese girls:
The one on the left was called Mari, and was very talkative and spoke great English. She is a secretary in Kobe that likes Ultraman! (This came up because my character, Zoffy, is named after one of the Ultramen):
The girl in the middle (with the pink hair) works as a secretary in a Tokyo Hospital. She is a hardcore player, and even had this award:
Anyway while we were chatting, we were just standing in a line like in the first picture. They were asking me about America and what I like about Japan and all sorts of stuff when I said “Do you know Rilakkuma?”. Their reaction was immediate and astounding:
As soon as the famous bear’s name was mentioned, both girls started running about the island excitedly just saying things like “love”, “cute”, “gyu~~~!” etc. They were maniacal about Kuma to the extent that even the mention of his name sent them into paroxysms! It was very funny 🙂
Later in the day, I also met Audrey, who lives in Paris. She told me it was sunny and hot:
So I showed her a fish:
These occurrences and much, much more are what await you should you enter the world of Animal Crossing 😉
Jokes aside, the online component (random matchmaking) is somewhat restricted as you may expect from Nintendo. Also, with no way to friend these people or even interact much with them outside of one-line chats, it will probably be something I don’t do very often. But my first experiences of it were very amusing!
Now back to catching bugs…
Battle of The Cameras!
The other day, we purchase two new digital cameras, both because of our upcoming trip. They are the Nikon Coolpix S-01 and the Sony DSC-WX80. Here is a photo of me holding both on my palm:
As you can see, they are both very small. Even the Sony is about as small as any camera we have ever owned, and the Nikon is just tiny! Both cameras are smaller than and weigh less than an iPhone.
Nikon Coolpix S01
This 10.1 megapixel camera is remarkable for it’s size, and is indeed so small you could easily take it with you anywhere. It is rechargeable, and the 16GB of memory is internal and non expandable. Some may view both of these as negatives, but considering the size and cost (under $100) I don’t. The camera has 3x optical zoom, a touch screen and can record up to 30 minutes of 720p video.
DSC-WX80
This camera is 16.2 megapixel and can record full HD (1080, 60 fps) video. It has 8x optical zoom and a whole host of shooting modes including burst mode and full 360 degree panoramas. It also has built in wi-fi which turns the camera into a wi-fi transmitter than can then send photos or video to my iphone via a (free) app I have already downloaded and tested. And then there is the beauty correction, which I will get to later 🙂
Let’s compare shots from both cameras:
Two shots of my dinner last night. The first is the Nikon, second is the Sony. Aside from the slight difference in focal length, both cameras performed well in low light, with the Sony perhaps capturing more detail. I didn’t notice until doing this blog that the Sony had defaulted to 16:9 mode, which can be changed. As an aside, that food looks delicious doesn’t it? I may have it for dinner again tonight 🙂
Here’s another subject, this time using three different cameras:
From the top, the Nikon, Sony and my iPhone (also a 10.1 megapixel camera). Hard to tell any significant difference in these scaled down to 1000 pixel versions is there? At full resolution, the Nikon had more noise and the Sony was clearest overall. But for all intents and purposes the cameras all perform very well.
For all intents and purposes both of these cameras take remarkable photographs under various conditions. They were inexpensive (the Sony was under $150), easy to use and easy to get the photos off. Both will be used to take many hundreds or thousands of photos in Japan in a little over two weeks!
And so I move on to the bushel in Sony’s basket, the beauty correction mode! Take any photo of a human face, and built in software can make them more beautiful. For instance, take this dour shot of yours truly:
Ugly isn’t it? Well, through a miracle of modern technology, the camera magically makes me look beautiful:
AMAZING!
Here’s a few other examples, showing how the camera can remove blemishes, make eyes more attractive and even change skin tone:
What’s that you say? We went overboard, posing in unnatural ways and cranking all the settings up to maximum and effectively making us look inhuman? Furthermore – detractors may claim – these photos just look like bad use of a Photoshop blur tool and this technology should remain in the ???? machines where it was pioneered.
To me, saying such things is tantamount to saying “I hate beauty”. But if you insist, I will present a more subtle example. In this case I eschewed most of the beauty options, and allowed my vanity to permit only one. I think you’ll admit the effect is striking…
