Buying Your First SLR

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I get asked the following question quite a lot:

I want to buy an SLR, what one shall I get?

In my software engineering life, clients often approach me with a description of software they want me to write. What you really want is for them to describe the problems they are having that need to be solved. That way you might be able to design a better (simpler) solution. I’m sure it applies to every discipline, but a simple method for finding out the root problem is to just ask Why? a lot.

The trouble is, I get asked this question quite a lot and asking Why? to everyone multiple times takes too long so I’m just going to ask them all here as a default response to future question askers…

  • Are you actually interested in photography? If you are and you’re willing to learn how to use it properly, getting an SLR is a great idea. If your rationale is that you think it’ll just take better pictures on “auto” then I’m afraid it doesn’t. You really have to learn how to use an SLR before it’ll start giving you better pictures.
  • Most SLRs don’t shoot video (although they are starting to). Is this important?
  • What do you want to do that a compact camera does not do?
  • Do you want an SLR because you want a special camera for taking high quality photos?
  • Would you use it as your only camera? Would you be happy carrying a big lump of camera everywhere you currently take a compact? In reality, you may end up taking fewer pictures than if you just took a quick compact everywhere. Is this acceptable?
Here are some tips should you just want to go ahead and buy one…
  • I’d say choice is between Canon and Nikon (some argue Sony but I wouldn’t). Lenses and flashes etc. are not interchangeable between brands, so whichever one you pick, you’re kinda stuck with forever. (I’m on team Canon).
  • Good lenses are quite pricey. You can just get the body with a kit lens (probably about ~18-55mm range) and that’ll be fine for most situations. “Kit lens” basically means a cheap entry-level lens but you get a lot of bang-for-buck.
  • Consider buying second-hand. My first SLR (Canon 400D) is now half the price I paid for it 3 years ago. I’m not sure if that’s the average rate of camera depreciation (I couldn’t find any stats, can anyone else?) but it still takes good photos.
  • If buying new, don’t listen to sales guy that says you need a UV filter to protect the lens or some special insurance policy. Save your money, you should just be careful with it.
  • Ignore features like megapixels / max ISO / shutter rate etc. when comparing. This is just a sale arms race and they’re all more than good enough. Go in a shop, pick one up. More important features are: Does it feel comfy in your hand? Do you like the screen size/res/contrast? Does it focus quickly & quietly between dark objects in foreground & background? Is it too heavy/light?
  • Stating the obvious, but read some reviews online.
  • I buy all my stuff in Bristol Cameras on the top of corn street. Decent prices and it’s nice to be able to take something back rather than post (not needed to yet, touch wood).
If you pick a camera or get stuck between the final two choices, please ask me again…

Bristol Bike Rental scheme comes to an end…

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Bristol have been trialling a bike rental scheme for about a year and I had high hopes for it. I paid my £20 in support of the scheme even though there were no bike stations in the places I needed them. I feel if there were more bikes and more stations it would have been ideal. (see my comment from back then…).

Unfortunately, they’ve decided to end the scheme deeming it unsuccessful:

Dear Hourbike Member,

It is with regret that I have to report that the bike sharing

pilot project that we started in partnership with Bristol City
Council, The University of the West of England and First Great
Western Trains is coming to a close. The intention of the current
pilot was to test the acceptance of the concept and determine the
potential demand for such a scheme with the hope of expanding it
beyond a pilot. Feedback from yourselves and from enquiries has
clearly shown that there is an interest in this type of scheme
but the Cycling City project has determined that it has more
pressing priorities and therefore cannot commit further funding at
this point in time.

The support of Bristol City Council both in terms of finance but
also the credibility of the scheme is particularly important, and
though other funding was received from the other founding partners
- First Great Western and the University of West of England – the
significant majority of funding has come from private investment.
Without the support of the local authority the scheme is unable
to attract further private investment.

My apologies to any of you that have noticed the recent reduction
in the availability of bikes at the stands. Our discussions with
the city council have taken some time to come to a conclusion.

We are hoping to continue the rental stations at Parkway and UWE,
and of course your memberships are still valid at the growing list
of our other Hourbike operated schemes in the UK, so please keep
your card and membership number for future use. I am a strong
believer in the value of large scale public bicycle rental schemes
and we are being successful in other towns around the country that
are investing in similar services, and I believe you will shortly
be seeing other schemes becoming available across the UK. This is
not a decision that I have taken lightly, but hope you understand
some of the reasoning behind the change.

If you would like further information from us I will do my best to
respond to you personally.

Best Regards

Tim Caswell
Managing Director
Hourbike Ltd

I’m gutted :(

More details here (the Hourbike website isn’t particularly useful).

The Challenge: 1.5 stone heavier and 2.5 minutes faster

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Last night I ran a pretty shonky 21:33 (~7m/mile) for the Bridge Inn 5km. I used to be faster but haven’t really been running since last year.

I also need to put on some weight because at 6 foot I’m pretty puny weighing in at 10st 9lb. According to the NHS weight calculator I should be over 12 Stone.

I’m setting myself the challenge of knocking 2.5 minutes off my 5km time (I’ve never run it under 19 minutes before) and reaching 12st 2lb before the Bridge Inn 5km summer series finishes on July 27th (the website hints there’s one in August but I’m pretty sure it’s wrong…).

I’m not sure how hard this challenge is going to be since I pretty much plucked the numbers out of the air. I also don’t know how to find out if I’m on track. Should I aim for linear gains and therefore expect to be half way to each of my targets halfway through the challenge? Or is there some kind of curved graph in which I get most the way very quickly but it soon flattens out?

Anyway, I’m sure it’s going to be tricky since they are both conflicting targets. The heavier I get, the harder it will be to run faster, but the more I train, the harder it’ll be to get heavier.

I’ll track my progress on here as often as possible. It should be an interesting experiment…

Listeners and Events

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There are 8 Listeners to remember. We know there are attributes in 4 scopes because we know how to Pick the Right Scope Automatically, but you can’t listen to Page attributes, it doesn’t make sense, so that leaves us with RSA; Request, Session and Application. These tally with the objects:

  • ServletRequest
  • HttpSession
  • ServletContext
There is a Listener for each of these objects for lifecycle events, and for attribute events, so that gives us 6 of the Listener Interfaces:
  • ServletRequest[Attribute]Listener
  • HttpSession[Attribute]Listener
  • ServletContext[Attribute]Listener
HttpSession gets the 2 extra interfaces:
  • HttpSessionBindingListener – Attribute objects implement this if they themselves want to know whenthey are [un]bound
  • HttpSessionActivationListener – Listen here to have a nose when the session is gallivanting around

Events

There are just 6 events, one for each lifecycle event:

  • ServletRequestEvent
  • HttpSessionEvent
  • ServletContextEvent
and one for each attribute-related event:
  • ServletRequestAttributeEvent
  • HttpSessionBindingEvent – (It’s easy to remember this black sheep because its initials rhyme with the worlds local bank HSBE)
  • ServletContextAttributeEvent

11 EL Implicit Variables

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All the EL implicit variables are Maps except for pageContext.

To remember the attribute-holding scope objects, just remember to Pick the Right Scope Automatically and stick the word “Scope” on the end:

  • pageScope
  • requestScope
  • sessionScope
  • applicationScope

Then you have 4 param and header objects of the form : (param|header)[Values]

  • param
  • paramValues
  • header
  • headerValues
Then I just remember the last 3:
  • cookie
  • initParam
  • pageContext (not a Map, it’s the JavaBean)

Captain Pan PreVents Captain Hook

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This is (a rubbish one) just to help me remember the DD tags:

<context-param>

<param-name>n</param-name>

<param-value>v</param-value>

</context-param>

Whereas Servlet params are “in-it”:

<servlet>

<init-param>

<param-name>n</param-name>

<param-value>v</param-value>

</init-param>

…

</servlet

Direct a Film about Petal Ink

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I’ve made a timelapse film of some daffodils blossoming but I really should do another one of a rose with its stem split into two different bottles of ink.

Not a very interesting post, it’s just another think I need top remember from this book for my exam.

Direct a film about PeTaL INk
Boils down to:
Jsp Directives are Page, Taglib and Include

Tie up the JSP implicit variables with SCRAPROPE

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Use the acronym SCRAPROPE to remember the JSP implicit variables:

session
config
request
application
pageContext
response
out
page
exception

I should really credit Russ for coming up with the acronym. I think my attempts, SCORP RAPE and SPORE CRAP, weren’t as catchy.