I first became acquainted with DL skateboards through the website for SALT Surfboards.
SALT is a New York based surfboard company that makes well crafted, simple surfboards in California for the New York surfer.
Photo source: SALT Surf | www.saltsurf.com
Photo source: Csepel Royal | www.csepelroyal.hu
To create a bike that personifies the rider is a dream. Piece by piece, custom coloring, and… well.. EPIC! For every bike junkie out there, there is also a bike tweaker who cannot stop taking a allen key to their bike. This is their playground, this is their dream.
Introducing Csepel Royal, an opportunity to create a unique bike that matches your character. What do they offer? Well, if the photograph above doesn’t give you a hint, they offer all bike parts in single colors! Continue Reading →
I’ve recently got myself a new camera. I got this one to serve a purpose: mobility. This camera will allow me to take great photos while I’m on the run.
The camera is a compact camera, but not the smallest one on the market. It packs itself into a body thats 105.8 x 59.3 x 31.9mm, and as you can see from the photos the lens has a bit of that with a circular extend.
The body feels great to me. It’s a little tricky to get the power button depressed, but thats ok, I have enough capabilities as a human to depress the power button with my fingernail…. The flash pops up automatically at startup it seems, which is a bit annoying. I’m not a fan of flash, so I end up just popping it down, which kind of feels a bit like I might break it but then nicely closes. Simply placing your finger over the flash at startup cancels it from coming up. Easy.
The rate at which the auto feature adjusts the light condition is a little bit slow. I’m used to adjusting it manually with my other cameras, so it’s nice to see it adjust itself for me, albeit it takes around 2-4 seconds to adjust.
There are a tonne of built in features that this camera has, that I won’t even attempt to get into. But they are for the most part fairly generic to all point and shoot cameras like this.
The coolest thing about this camera is that it has a 35mm equivalent zoom that goes from 28-392mm. Thats pretty astounding to me. It’s one of the wildest range of zoom out there by any camera really. In fact, thats why I bought it. That and the great reviews it received.
The LCD screen is 3-inches horizonally. It’s nice and big. From the photo just above, you can see it has 14.1Mpixels. That’s a nice size.
The image stabilizing on it is pretty amazing. It’s a very great feature to have on a camera so that when you’re out of breath, or getting nervous for taking a photograph of somebody or something holding up traffic or forcing people to hold a smile for you, all the shaking that comes with it is somewhat taken out by the IS built in to the camera.
The menu, and features on the camera, and how to set the functions is familiar to myself for I’m already a big Canon fan. So anybody thats used to the Canon menus and scroll wheel will be able to handle this easily.
That little nob at the top there between the shutter release and the on/off button in the image above is the zoom knob. If you push it to the left, it zooms out (three trees) and to the right it zooms in (one tree).
The lens cover, it doesn’t come with a lens cap ( I don’t think I’ve ever seen a point and shoot that has) is interesting. It is held together by light springs, so if you put your finger into it, you can wiggle your finger and easily open up the ‘closed’ cover to expose the lens. It does snap back into place. I’m not sure why they have it this way. To me, a good camera is one that will protect the lens very well and sturdy when not in use, it seems that this leaves room for a lot of random things to get in there. For me, I bought it to carry with me everywhere, so I’ll be having it in my backpack all the time, which means that random things may get into there. I’m contemplating getting a case for it, which I don’t really like to do for it slows capturing the moment down a bit… All this said, the actual lens inside has a glass flat cover thats not the lens itself that protects the lens, although I think it would be just as harmful to get that scratched, for its implanted in the camera, and wouldn’t be easy to get out like a screw on filter would be (found on higher end camera lenses).
All in all, I’m excited with my new toy. To everything there is always one or two things that a person can complain about, but the quality of the pictures its taking is great.
I’ve been doing a lot of research on different solar powering devices out there, and trying to find the cheapest and coolest ones. I’ve come up with a few that I’ll showcase here.
The freeloader pico looks pretty cool, with a charge -up time of 10hrs providing an 800mAh battery supply. The solar cells are crystalline running at 75mA.
It goes for $27.69CAD it looks like.
Another product from Solar Technologies Inc is their 4W Fold-Up unit. Its specifically meant to charge car/motorhome batteries. It ouputs 4W@18V. It looks like a sexy bird, but also not relly compatible with plugging directly into your ipod.
Its $40.73CAD at their site.
The last Solar Technologies product I will showcase is their Freeloader. Its slightly bigger than the Pico, with a 1Ah battery, and 120mA crystalline solar cells. It comes in a much nicer body though, and the very nice usb connections, with the connectors to fit lots of various handheld devices.
Its $53.77 CAD (converted from their website).
This is a solar powered 2000mAh rechargeable portable emergency power with phone adapters and an LED light. Its the cheapest, and pretty cool too. Its the same size as the previous ones but looks more klunky/cheaply made. I guess this is why its so cheap. Who knows until you have it in your hand. It has an output of 5V 500mA.
It is from who knows where but it says that its $11.81. No idea what the currency is, although it is a .com, but its office appears to be in Hong Kong.
Another panel of theirs thats way less current capable at 900mAh with a built-in rechargeable lithium battery seems like its dated technology or just bad ranking system?
It goes for $18.30. Same deal.
I like the current rating on this one, at 1000mAh Li-ion battery. Very curious how well they keep the voltage regulated though..
The best deal of them all is $7.76.
One that I really think looks sharp, and I’ve seen it in adds before is the 1000mAh rechargeable lithium battery. It looks good and can be folded.
The final one I will review is the Dual Solar Panels (3W) Self-Recharge 2000mAh 4.5V~9V kit. Its pretty perfect, and has all the right things.
I’d be very interested to hear if anybody has bought from this last company. It sounds like this is the place to go. They have the biggest supply of these units, and they are all in a nice little bundle. It also looks like the shipping is free.
Which one do you pick?
So, to go along with my candy apple Audi S5 I’ve previously picked out I’ve decided my next best thing to have would be a Ducati Sport Classic 1000 SE. It comes in a few different styles, but my favorite is the Special Edition seen above with the gold highlights.
They made these bikes on a pretty short run from about 2006 to 2009, but boy are they a beautiful thing; its a damn shame they don’t make them anymore.
The engine is a L-Twin cylinder, 2 valves per cylinder Desmodromic with air cooled technology with Morelli electronic fuel injection, displacing a total of 992cc’s. This works out to around 92hp @ 8000 RPM. The torque on this sucker is 67.3lb-ft @ 6000RPM. Thats punch.
Its a 6-speeder and weighs ~ 394lb/179kg in the shop. The wheel base comes in at 1402mm, with 120mm of front wheel travel, 130mm in the back. The seat height on the stock ones comes in at 825mm.
The instruments on this thing are decent, hosting a speedometer, rev counter, high beam indicator, turn signals, oil pressure warning light, low fuel warning light, LCD clock, immobilizer.
To me, this is a thing of beauty. Its got the classic look to it with the traditional type headlight and taillights, and the open heart to see whats making the lovely sounds. I love these bikes that strip things down an leave it out in the open, but no doubt it would quickly get very dirty, thus requiring a lot of detailing, a lot of the time!
What do you think of it?
I must have the Sigma AF 150-500mm f/5.0-6.3 APO DG OS HSM. Simply must.
I’ve been thinking for a while now, trying to decide which type of lens I want.. A macro, telephoto, a better all purpose, the list goes on, but I’ve finally narrowed it down to this miraculous feat of engineering.
Lets get right to the thick of things.
Clearly, from the name, the focal range is from 150-500mm, and has an f-stop of f/ 5.0-6.3. The OS stands for Optical Stabilizer Function, and the HSM stands for Hyper-Sonic Motor.
Taken directly from the Sigma website:
Everybody I’ve talked to says that the lens is the most important part of the camera, and its ok to buy everything else used, but buy a new lens.
So, I’ve been hunting. I’ve managed to find this for a mere $1299.00 at Vistek, but $999.00 from Amazon… so I’ll be saving my change in my piggy bank until then!
Does anybody have this lens and would like to share their thoughts on it?
And my last question, does anybody know if this will fit on a Canon Rebel T1i?
So, my newest rave is an Audi A5 Coupe. I’ve decided this is a reasonable car to dream about. Currently I drive a VW Jetta, which of course we all know VW owns Audi. But, thats besides the point.
This beast has 354 Hp at 7000rpm, and 325lb-ft of torque at 3500rpm. Nothing else matters. Seriously, 250km/hr? Approx 12.1 L/100km.. Quattro All Wheel drive, with a 6 speed manual transmission. Ok, this car is simple off the hook. German engineering simply will not fail.
The exterior on this car simply looks beautiful with the factory spec 19″ wheels, and the interior looks just as amazing. Navigation system, state of the art sound system. Just looking at the inside of one of these beasts reeks of world class engineering not matched by any other cars in the world.
I’m just waiting for Audi to offer me a test drive in one of these to get the real grease of these beasts!
I’ve been thinking about how I will need to have portable sound sooner than later, when I’m doing this and that, out and about, and when I came across this I was blown away.
I found them at The Ghostly Store, but their made by Idea Design Collection, which if you look at their website, they have a tonne of really cool things on their site. I’m an engineer, and a company like this is where I’d want to work. So much cool stuff, kinda like the apple engineers. Innovating sexy with usefulness.
$75.00 is what they go for at The Ghostly Store, if you find any where cheaper I’d love to be informed! Especially in Canada. Does anybody have these already?
