Kristof Goossens

Well, since we were expecting company, I started cleaning out the basement which has the look of a shipping base since all the stuff for the renovations and my bike upgrades comes in there. As i was doing so, I came across an old fire detector (We replaced those with a more advanced system by Bosh with central monitoring and double failsafe outgoing communication lines (Yes, as former telecom engineer, I like redundancy in all systems.) I’m also a paranoid bastard who’ll think ways around systems to see if they can be outsmarted. In this context, I also had to look to see if the old detector had fissionables in them since they can always come in handy when it comes to practical jokes (Note to Daphné, the resident counter-terrorism expert and lizardly-shoed one, it was unfortunately one of the newer type with optical detection). On a side-note the metal parts were unexpectedly sharp so It’ll be nine-finger typing on Monday. I really do wonder why all sharp things seem to have it in for my pinkie. (it’s Pinky and the Brain, yes Pinky and the Brain, one is a genius, the other’s insaaane…). So as I was opening up the stuff, my iPod (well, one of the pink backup iPods actually : ) switches over to the theme from mission impossible. I wonder how much Apple is starting to know about me to make such good predictions. By the way, trying to make left-handed images with a dslr of a finger on the right hand is nearly impossible if you’re right-handed and working with little light. On retrospect, maybe normal people would have grabbed a bandage instead of the right lens to get it in focus. Fortunately I had some disinfectant nearby from the time a got that Tribal tattoo on my shoulder. So no problems there. (just kidding, I know my mum reads this stuff too. Hi mum. how about that Canon 70-200 F 2.8 L IS and 7D body for Christmas or that CBF 125/varader 125? Oh and our daughter is really out to get the rear doors open of the VW golf. The VW Scirocco has no rear doors. Coincidence? I think not. Tell dad to get the one with the 170bhp diesel or 210bhp gasoline and DSG transmission. Shadowblue or Salsared, preferably with the VW Dynaudio Excite speaker upgrade package. Mann gönnt sich ja sonst nichts.

I recently bought a ring flash add on for my canon speedlite; it’s actually a big plastic circle which channels the light from the speedlite and distributes the light around the lines. It’s very big and costs about one stop of light, but that still means a lot more power than a regular ring flash, and also a lot cheaper. The two disadvantages that I found were that it blocks the red focus pattern transmitted by the speedlite and that it does not allow firing of a secondary speedlite in slave mode. It does provide a very cost-effective method of macro and ring flash photography though.

The following comparison shots were made when I came home with the new add-on. Notice the “what the heck has he bought now-look on the model : )

Straight regular speedlite

Speedlite sent trough the ring flash

You can find more info for it here.

well, that didn’t take long. the electronic measuring and filter system has broken down already. After only two refills, the display went dead when trying to reset it. I’ve opened it up to see what is inside and it’s the battery which went dead. So either this thing is pulling way too much power from the batteries or Brita is putting cells low on power in there. Fortunately, they can be replaced without destroying the sensor. everything clips into place.