On Debian GNU/Linux, the Linux Libertine fonts (Gimp screenshot) are in package linux-libertine. Counterintuitive,
I know.
I've been playing with a Tamron 17-50/2.8 lens on a Canon EOS 1.6x FOV crop body the past few days, and am debating whether or not to send it back. Here's some review comments.
First, some background on the requirements that drove this acquisition. For modern dance photography in practice studio spaces, I've found I often need 20mm or wider to get all the dancers in the frame, and at least f/2.8 to avoid excessive motion blur or ISO 1600 noise. The idea was to get a wide prime or zoom to replace my slow Canon 17-85 IS. I was hoping a Canon EF 20mm/2.8 would work, but the reviews were discouraging. Wide-angle L glass was out of my price range for this hobby/volunteer work right now. The $450 Tamron 17-50/2.8 had gotten good reviews of the "great for this price point" sort, so I thought I'd try it.
Having done a few hours of practical outdoor, non-dance shooting around Boston with the Tamron this week, I'll say that the lens is often decent optically, although it's definitely disappointed me several times.
Some cons I've noted thus far (some of which were mentioned in Bob Atkins's review):
It's occasionally exhibiting ghastly fringing near the frame edges, which is something not mentioned in any reviews I read. I don't recall anything this bad from even the 18-55 II kit lens.
I'm seeing many more soft shots on still subjects than I'd expect, which has caused me to wonder about the AF accuracy of this copy.
AF motor seemed many times louder than even the loudest other lens I've owned. I was expecting something closer in volume to a non-USM Canon, and I estimate the Tamron's AF noise as several times louder than the Canon XT's mirror slap. I'm concerned that dancers might be distracted by the AF during rehearsals, since they can hear the mirror slap.
Manual focus ring rotates with AF, and keeping fingers out of the way seems results in a grip that's less comfortable than on any of my other lenses.
Zoom ring rotates in the opposite direction of Canon lenses. I can train myself for the different modes over time, but it's cognitive overhead and error-proneness for now.
Zoom ring is a little stiff (but smoother than that of my 17-85).
The included hood feels cheap and fragile, compared to all my Canon hoods, and especially the similar hood for the 17-85. Compounding the fragility problem is that locking the hood in place requires more force than any of my Canon hoods.
Kinda ugly. Why couldn't they make it look like a 17-40/4L?
One side note is that, in taking some rather nice landscapes with this lens, I've found that lately I'm even more disinterested in landscapes than I thought. For a few years, I was all about the spatial context, but now I'm about zooming-in (figuratively, literally) on the most crucial piece, in maximum detail. The only thing I want a wide lens for right now seems to be dance, and otherwise I want my 70-200 mounted.
I received the Hakuda-branded LensPen Mini Pro II that I ordered from B&H, and am very pleased with the results.
Til now, I'd avoided ever cleaning my lens glass, since any debris is optically insignificant, and I didn't have proper cleaning tools and materials. But now I want to sell two of my lenses, and therefore I wanted the lenses clean, and, more importantly, I needed to ensure that there is no hidden damage to the front elements.
I got the Mini-Pro II, rather than a larger model of LensPen or a very different lens-cleaning product, to have something durable and unspillable that occupied minimal space in my camera bag. In practice, the smaller LensPen worked fine, although I imagine a larger LensPen would've been faster. As a bonus, the Mini-Pro II is small enough to clean the retracting lens on my Canon SD450.
I say "unspillable" but I did notice traces of what was presumably the "carbon cleaning compound" on my fingers as well as on the white cloth on which I'd set the open LensPen. I don't expect this to soil the inside of my camera bag, so long as the LensPen cap stays on.
(I almost ordered from LensPen.com for essentialy the same shipped price as B&H, but then noticed the statement, "Please allow 2-6 weeks for delivery." I knew that B&H would normally have it to me in 1-3 days.)
My laptop has been stuck at Linux 2.6.12 for a while, since that's
the latest version supported by Host AP version that's distributed as Debian
package hostap-source.
I finally took 15 minutes to dig through the kernel options in 2.6.17, where I was pleasantly surprised to find standard Host AP drivers. They seem to work fine.
I've updated GNU/Linux on the IBM ThinkPad X20, including the kernel config file there.
Neothoughts blog entry URLs Matter in Social Bookmarking made it to the Digg main page.
I've run into some of those problems myself, which was part of the rationale for my UrlSkip library:
The UrlSkip Scheme library provides a function that translates some of the Web URLs that might be used to track a user across sites, by removing intermediate HTTP redirectors or information that might identify the user. Such a function might be used as part of a privacy-enhancing Web browser, or to canonicalize or un-obfuscate URLs for Web analysis projects.
New Seymour Hersh piece: "Watching Lebanon," New Yorker, issue 2006-08-13, claimed post date 2006-08-14, viewed 2006-08-13
Reddit, the Digg.com wannabe startup incubated by Paul Graham et
al.'s Y Combinator firm, has a secret weapon: nsfw.reddit.com
"NSFW" is of course "Not Safe For Work," which in practice usually means "porn."
Nothing wrong with that, but I wonder why
nsfw.reddit.com is not listed in the effective directory on
sub.reddit.com.
A group of former Clinton administration lawyers are urging the American Bar Association to reject its panel's call for presidents to stop issuing "signing statements" that reserve the right to bypass laws, saying the problem is with President Bush's use of such statements, not the mechanism itself.
—Charlie Savage, "Group opposes loss of signing statements," Boston Globe, 2006-08-05
See also 2006-08-03 and 2006-07-24.
Two law professors criticize the ABA report on Bush signing statements, which I linked on 2006-07-24.
It may be that Bush has simply applied the same theories that other presidents have, but has done so more systematically. It may be that Bush has expanded those theories on the margin but that these expansions are justified under the proper reading of the Constitution or in light of changed circumstances. These are important questions that the Bar Association Task Force has ignored in its eagerness to jump on the antisigning statement bandwagon, which targets a useful device through which the president can announce his views in advance rather than conceal them until it is time for litigation.
—Curtis Bradley and Eric Posner, "Signing statements: It's a president's right," Boston Globe, 2006-08-03
Another quote from that article:
But a signing statement is not a line-item veto. A line-item veto nullifies provisions in a bill, so they have no legal effect. The signing statement does not nullify part of a bill; provisions rejected by the president remain enforceable in court. Courts always respect valid vetoes; they virtually never pay attention to signing statements.
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