Colossus of the North

Alive and well in Toronto

2013 Razor Orochi Review

Looking for a traditional buttoned Bluetooth mouse for your iMac or MacBook? Is Apple’s Magic Mouse not your cup of tea?

This is the 2013 Razor Orochi.

On the outside it’s nearly identical to its predecessor, the only real difference is green LEDs instead of blue. On the inside it’s a new beast; sporting Bluetooth 3.0 and a new 4G dual laser. Also new is the ability to use all the buttons and I highly recommend using Better Touch Tool to take full advantage of those extra buttons. As with the previous Orochi a braided USB cable is included, as is a small zippered carrying pouch.

When cordless power is supplied via two AA batteries and Razer claims 30 hours of continuos or one month of normal use. I use Powerex 2700 NiMH AA batteries and charge them about once a week and I’m a heavy mouse user.

Tracking and response time were excellent so now Apple users finally have a good great buttoned Bluetooth mouse easily the best currently available*.

Highly recommended, especially when paired with Better Touch Tool.

*Logitech’s Bluetooth 5500 Revolution MX mouse but it only came bundled with a keyboard. Although I never had a chance to test it, I do like the ergonomics of its not Bluetooth brother but it’s an older Bluetooth 2.0 design and isn’t officially OSX supported.

NEX-5N Back to Sony for Repair

In my last post I mentioned cleaning the NEX sensor. There was a smudge that persisted even after careful cleaning, so I took it in to Vistek Camera for a professional cleaning ($40 while you wait ~20min).

He told me there was a smudge under the lowpass filter so back it went to Henry’s Camera for service at Sony. Ah well, lets see what Sony has to say.

On a side-note; I did love using the 16mm F/2.8 it’s light and quick and was just perfect for shooting sweep panorama. It shutters faster than using the 18-55 kit lens which made double images (something moves between shots) less of a problem.

The tack sharp 50mm F/1.8 is an awesome but fussy lens, it wants light to focus and it takes several prefocus attempts before it’ll finally focus on a nearby face. When it does the photos are stunning and the backgrounds are wonderfully blurry. You might want to enable the skin softening mode on the camera though as this lens resolves every imperfection in a persons face.

Dust on the Camera Sensor

We just returned from a Paris to London vacation and during the London segment I noticed a lot of photos with blobs in photos with clear blue sky.

The last week of May in London seemed to be pollen week. I was sitting in a park near the Thames and you’d think it was snowing. Without thinking I swapped the lenses on my Sony NEX-5N and like a magnet the electrostatically charged sensor sucked in pollen and dust like a Dyson.

On the left is a typical 1:1 crop example of a sensor dust blob. Little choice but to clean the sensor and at $40 a cleaning I decided it was time to buy whatever I needed and learn to do it myself.

I bought the swabs, cleaning solution plus a SensorKlear™ loupe, pen and blower. Then I watched a handful of YouTube videos on sensor cleaning and decided to have at it. Blowing was tried first and did almost nothing to get the pollen off, so I braved a wet cleaning.

First came the wet swabs, looked much cleaner but the loupe revealed some stubborn smudges. A final brushing with the SensorKlear pen seemed to do the trick.

My only gripes are 1.5x cleaning swabs are hard to find although 1.6x seem to work just fine. Also the SensorKlear loupe won’t focus properly for mirror less cameras and you’ve got to hold it away from the camera body.

I’m delighted with the results and since it’s a beautiful day here in Toronto I’m off to snap some blob free photos after a Sunday brunch.

The Complex World of Pizza Math and a Pizza Pizza $5 Medium

As I exit the always busy Tim Hortons after my Saturday morning coffee a fluttering big orange sign proclaimed I could get a medium Pepperoni Pizza for only $4.99 (Pizza Pizza’s medium is 12″)

Pizza Pizza’s Pizza in general is pedestrian, the tomato sauce is sweet and bland, the crust is okay. In a nutshell it’s unoffensive cheap basic food, perfect for students and parties.

$5 got me 452 square inches of melt your face hot pizza, which is a pretty good deal considering a single $3.09 slice (1/6 of an 14″ Large) is only 25.6 square inches.

Still with me? Good, lets do some pizza math using Pizza Pizza as an example.

Classic Pizza Pizza Pepperoni

S  10"  78.5 sqin  $8.30   11¢ per square inch
M  12"   113 sqin  $9.99    9¢ per square inch
L  14"   154 sqin  $12.24   8¢ per square inch
XL 16"   201 sqin  $15.44   8¢ per square inch
Slice   25.6 sqin  $3.09   12¢ per square inch
Smile ½S  39 sqin  $2       5¢ per square inch
$4.99 M  113 sqin  $4.99    4¢ per square inch

Food for thought.

Sun Crisp Fish & Chips

Finally got ourselves to Sun Crisp which is definitely my favourite fish & chip spots in Toronto. It’s a small restaurant on Weston Rd and I’ve been eating there for over a decade.

This is the kind of fish & chips I grew up with in Etobicoke, no not McNie’s (McNie’s is okay but just doesn’t do it for me) but a long gone tiny shop in an even tinier strip mall just a few blocks from the house I grew up in.

A generous portion of crispy battered halibut and chips, cooked to perfection and served hot. Great batter too, not that odd foamy dark brown stuff that so many fish fryers use.

The only reason I don’t go more often is because I now live in the opposite end of the city.

Yes, I’ve tried Duckworth’s on Danforth but it’s no substitute for Sun Crisp.

Mac’s are Fussy and Fun

Fussy: Installed 8GB PC3-10666 DRAM into my wife’s MacBook and although it booted it constantly froze. Seems MacBooks are somewhat fussy about third party hardware, even though I bought “Apple” style memory. Solution was matching the DRAM closer to the original and PC3-8500 worked like a charm. SSDs (Solid State Drives) can also be temperamental and some may also need Windows7 for firmware updates.

Fun: Headphones that include an inline Volume / Pause / Play remote (or Bluetooth headphones) have a feature you may not be aware of. The Pause / Play button also functions as Skip (double click) and Rewind (triple click). Works on iOS and modern MacBooks too.

Extra points if you listen to Podcasts as some apps like the excellent Downcast app can use this mode to skip forward 30sec or rewind.

Sony NEX 101, Henry’s School of Imaging

Saturday we took an introductory Sony NEX 101 course at Henry’s camera in Toronto. We enjoyed the course but even at almost three hours it was indeed an introductory course, covering mostly the NEX’s menus, navigation and basic shooting modes. If you want to save yourself the $75 course fee, read your NEX owners manual or better yet the NEX-5N handbook  (generally applicable to any NEX). None of the advanced or unique features of the Sony NEX featured were covered or even touched upon.

Not covered: Movie mode, Sweep Panorama, 3D Panorama, HDR, Bracketing, Focus peaking, Manual focus, DRO, Custom buttons…

Unfortunately Henry’s offers no specific advanced NEX course and the Sony NEX could really use one. I’m seriously considering starting a Meetup group for local NEX users. I’m no expert but I am enthusiastic and technically minded. I understand the NEX from a technical standpoint and have drilled through it’s many many menus and options but I still feel I’m not using the camera to its full potential.

Reliable Fish & Chips

I remember an episode of Restaurant Makeover that featured Reliable Fish & Chips, 954 Queen Street East. The episode aired in 2007 a quickly and all I recall about the TV series was how they could gut and rebuild some dilapidated old joint with virtually no budget. Picture a low-budget, Canadian version of Kitchen Nightmares.

As for the restaurant: it’s small, decent layout, about a dozen seats, kitchen in the middle, clean.

If you’re hungry, it’ll fill you up but that’s about it. Middle of the road at best. They claim the cod is fresh not frozen but you could have fooled me. The flavorless haddock was slightly better, but batter on both was uninspired. The chips were not crispy but limp. Perhaps the halibut is better but I have no plans on returning for a second visit.

Cod or Haddock and Chips are $7.50, Halibut and Chips are $11.50, “Two and a Few” (2x Halibut & chips) $19.50

I’m trying to get back Suncrisp Fish & Chips on Weston Rd. They’re masters of the deep fryer and I’ve never had a bad meal there. Of course, I’ll post my review in the near future.

*Yes I like goofy apps, that image was made with Halftone.

Some minor site problems with the DDNS server. I’m updating all the image links over the next day or so. So if an image is missing I’ll be fixing it ASAP.