An example of bad TV: Disney Channel

As father of four kids, I received in awe the news, sometime ago, that Disney Channel was going to be a free channel, available on digital terrestrial television, after years being restricted to payed channels. Thus I tuned in happiness Disney Channel, thinking it was devoted to broadcast the fine classic cartoons of Disney and similar stuff.

My dissapointment couldn't be higher: all my expectations were destroyed in a few days, when I realized that, instead of animation films of good quality, most of the Disney Channel time was used to air useless series of silly teenagers with stupid plots, awful actors & actresses, with one single purpose: brainwash kids to make them purchase all kind of products from Disney.

I recently spoke here about good tv, of which The Sopranos or the documentaries on El Bulli are excellent examples. Not all TV is shit, contrary to rumour. But then, I have to admit that Disney Channel is one of those examples that give reason to the bunch of TV dissers. How a brand which was a classic, responsible of so many great films, has become the producer of such incredible amount of bullshit per minute of broadcast, is truly hard to understand.

Shame on Disney Channel.

I prefer Elixer over Lotus flow3r or MPLSound

It's been a while since my provoking instintcs took me over, but today is another of those days. So there we go:

I was today listening to Elixer, and suddenly realized that, for a longtime already, I find myself listening to this album more often than Lotus flow3r or MPLsound. Which might suggest I prefer Bria's album to the two Prince albums.

It would be hard to argue why, you remember my mantra: it's all about tastes, tastes can not be reasoned by definition.

But fact is that I have been playing very often, lately, pretty much the whole album with the exception of 2nite and Kept woman. 2nite is too obvious to me, and Kept woman, being a good song, can't be compared to Tamar's take. The big problem is that I can't avoid to think everytime "this could be SO MUCH better if sung by a better singer".

The rest of the album, even with the down side of Bria's voice, is quite palatable to me. I think Immersion is my overall favourite song in here, but Home, Something U already know, Elixer, Everytime... they are not masterpieces but they are nice to listen to. There is a sophistication in the production and a relaxed vibe overall that I like very much (with the exception of 2nite). Furthermore, there is something that connects to Te amo corazón and that seems to me a good pathway for future efforts of Prince (when he decides, one day, that he's evidenced enough times how good funk and rock writer/player he is).

I'm tempted to say that the grooves here remind me somehow of Come, and man do I miss a continuation of that line: the electrofunkpop of Come was a major advance in Prince career (IMHO of course), and the brilliance of TGE interrumpted that kind of sound.

Who knows, maybe Elixer is a hint suggesting that we could listen to the continuation of the Come ideas in some future Prince album: crossing fingers here.

Now, I think the main reason why I like to listen to Elixer is this:

Because it sounds new. OK ok, Prince has done somehow similar stuff to this before (pay attention to the somehow). But listening to Lotus flow3r or Mplsound, in most cases (even in the good songs) there is a Prince-by-the-numbers sound. And I don't have that feeling when listening to Elixer, which by all means is a Prince album with a guest singer.

Ok, I said it. Now stone me if you will.

(BTW this does not detract a bit that I keep on thinking that A colonized mind is a masterpiece song).


PS Did I say that I adore to listen Clare's arrangements, as always?

Pentax K20D, bargain of the moment

A few weeks ago, Mike Johnston, at his website The Online Photographer, posted his traditional list of TOP ten recommended cameras. And in the number 2, there was a missing spot that, according to him, would be filled around these dates.

Today he posted explaining the story, stating that the original number 2 spot was going to be the Pentax K20D. But around that time, he was contacted by Pentax suggesting to test the new K-7, under non disclosure agreement. Therefore he removed the K20D (which was going to be replaced by the K-7) but did not disclose the name of the probable new candidate. Anyway, he explains the story in detail.

The point of this comment is that, according to his own story, the K20D was number two, but after the contact from Pentax, it joined the number 3 position; and in that position there were already, ex-aequo, the Nikon D90, the Olympus E-30, the Canon 50D and the Sony A700.

In other words: the K20D was above all the others, prior to the news on the K-7. Let me quote Mike's words:

the Pentax has a superb sensor that is capable of a very high level of detail and image quality; weather-sealing; peerless lens backwards-compatibility; and in-body SR (shake reduction, a.k.a. image stabilization). We’re not saying the Pentax is a 'better' camera than its able competitors below, necessarily, but those are features said competitors mostly don’t have...and for significantly less money.

Obviously everybody has his own opinions, but the fact that M. Johnston (whose reputation in the field of photography is out of discussion) puts the K20D over all its main competitors speaks volumes in my opinion.

In short, if you are not interested in getting the truly-last-top-notch gear in photography, or if you are on a tight budget, the Pentax K20D must be THE bargain of the moment: since it's replaced by the K-7, many people will be selling their cameras, with relatively small usage, in the coming months for very reasonable prices.

Plenty of interesting features in the new Pentax K-7 (no EVF, though)

Well, the wait is over and Pentax has officially released all the specs of the K-7.

All in all it looks like an impressive camera to me, although more time is needed to get a complete idea. As in previous cases, Pentax does its best job in the finer details, and certainly you need to use the camera to realize about its charms.

However, and given I had previously posted quite extensively on the possible/probable presence of EVF in the K-7, it is time to state that, fromt he officially released specs, there is NO EVF in this camera. End of speculation/discussion.

More info available at Pentax Imaging, although it is down at this time (possibly due to the huge interest generated by this camera).

Pentax K-7: HD video at 1080, "Superimpose AF area"

After looking carefully at the pictures posted in the Chinese blog discussed before, I found some of them being of special interest:

- First, the K-7 has output for video at full 1080 resolution; just have a look at this pic:



- Second, in one of the menus, there is the option of "Superimpose AF area", which might be (or not) related to the EVF idea discussed before:

Pentax K-7: First hands-on report (updated in English) with many pictures

Available here, including pictures of menus etc. Please notice this is an updated version, in English, with the same information posted in the original Chinese blog.

Diagram of the K-7 electronic viewfinder

It seems this picture belongs to the NDA material, but it has leaked already, so I will post it since once this kind of stuff is posted in public you can't do anything about. Someone with the nick of nosnoop posted this picture at a thread I started in Pentaxforums, discussing this very topic.

So this is the diagram of the electronic viewfinder of the new Pentax K-7; all signs suggests this is authentic and it seems a confirmation that the K-7 does indeed possess an electronic viewfinder, confirming my previous comments. All I did in that previous comment was to figure out why the K-7 would force competitors to "catch up", by "connecting the dots" from information already available in the net; and it seems my speculations were right.

Pentax K-7, the plot thickens

This was posted by Chanpei at Pentaxforums (coming from a Hong Kong forum):



The text (translated by Chanpei, thanks to him for the effort) is as follows:
"New PRIME II image engine
almost 100% view finder coverage. Pentaprism type
14.6M effective pixels CMOS sensor
3 inches with 920,000 pixels LCD with live view, HD video and HDMI output
Built-in SR image stabilization, Mag-alloy body with water and dust proof, supersonic dust removal system".

Given this is an official flyer from Pentax, I think these are the first fully confirmed specs of the K-7.

Pentax K-7, the big question: introduction of electronic viewfinder??

We are only a few days of the official introduction of the brand new Pentax K-7, and while pictures of the new camera were released recently, we still lack reliable information on its specs (regardless of what some people claim). The NDA have been strictly enforced this time and we are still in the dark.

But given some hints from people who actually have signed an NDA, it seems there will be some truly innovative features in the K-7. And for all I know, the main suspect here is the introduction of an electronic viewfinder (EVF) in the new camera, which would be the first utilization of an idea patented by Pentax in September 25th, 2008. This was suggested first (to my knowledge, at least) by an article I highlighted recently, in DSLR Magazine.

Roughly speaking, it seems this patent could enable to display in the standard, optical viewfinder of the dSLR camera information such as live histogram, or even live view with upped mirror. No other dSLR camera, not even the flagships from the big brands, provide this feature, and in this view, the introduction of the EVF in the Pentax K-7 could justify why Yvon Bourque speaks about other brands "catching-up" after the release of the K-7.

Obviously this remains pure speculation at this time, but still, founded speculation, since the patent exists and Pentax clearly patended the system in order to use it.

But then, if we speculate a bit further:
From the (supposedly leaked) features widely accepted as real in the new K-7, it seems we have:

- Improved version of the sensor used in the Pentax K-20D.
- Improved autofocus.
- Improved live view.
- 1080 video.

All these features would put the Pentax K-7 on pair with their main competitors from Canikon, with the additional advantage of being a very compact and extremely ergonomic dSLR camera.

Now, if the EVF is actually utilized in the K-7, Pentax would certainly go one step beyond the competition. It might represent for Pentax what the K10D represented when introduced: a fully specced dSLR camera with many innovative features, blowing away the competition at its price point.

Disclaimer: the image utilized to illustrate this comment is copied from the original Pentax patent linked above, which owns all rights about the image. This image is utilized here strictly for discussion purposes.

First full picture of Pentax K-7

Initial comment:

It has been posted today at Pentaxforums by Creampuff, and in fact is a screen capture from tv news from German Tagesschau news agency.
Here you have it: it is still small, but it is the first full picture of the new beast.

First update:

After digging a bit in Pentaxforums, it seems that the screencapture was a fake (with the K-7 pictures pasted on top of the Tagesschau screecap), although the image of the K-7 seems real to me: it fits perfectly with the previous parts of the camera whose images were leaked. Anyway, it seems somebody is playing ugly games with this image. We will see when official pictures are posted. In the mean time, please take a few grains of salt regarding the authenticity of this picture, as maybe someone is doing photoshopping to make noise in the net.

Second update:

Someone who claims to be the author of the pictures says they are faked ones. Whether it is the case or not, I don't know, as I decided to stop this game. I leave the pictures since I think they must be close to the real thing, but am writing this update to avoid confusing anybody. In short: huge doses of grains of salt are required with this stuff.

Third update:

After looking carefully at the pictures, it seems they are for real (or else done by a real master of photoshop). Comparing with other Pentax models, the overall distribution of buttons is different and there are a number of specific features not found in any other model. So my personal opinion is that these pictures are authentic.

Antonio Vega died yesterday

Antonio Vega, one of my favourite Spanish musicians and possibly one of the best (if not the best) of his generation, died yesterday. There has been a significant response in media, and there is little I can add to contribute: his problems with drugs made him a very troubled genius, whose work was progressively obscured due to those problems. But this can't hide the objective fact that he wrote and sung some of the most beautiful, moving songs ever in modern Spanish music. This fact has been widely acknowledged by the significant response of media to Antonio Vega's death.

So let the music speak. I'd just like to say thanks to Antonio for a long career, with highs and lows, creating beauty. May he now rest in peace.

"Una décima de segundo", my favourite song:



And his most known song, "Chica de ayer":



Finally, I found a jewel: the song "Me cuesta tanto olvidarte" from Mecano, written by Jose María Cano, and sung by Antonio Vega during the presentation of the musical "A", by Nacho Cano:

May 2009 in Córdoba

Córdoba, the place where I live, shows all its charms in May every year, and given this Spring was particularly beautiful, we had a truly good season to visit Córdoba.

But words are not needed, just have a look at the pictures. Most pictures were shot with with the lenses full open, with my Pentax K10D and 18-55 standard lenses, straight out of the camera, no treatment whatsoever. And yes, the purple rose is that astonishing colour, I did not modify a bit the original one.

Good tv: History of El Bulli

In some supposedly selected circles, it's almost a rule since a longtime ago to diss the television. You hear often that all television is shit and that it is a wasting of time to spend time watching tv.

While arguably that statement holds true in many cases (the clearest one being Big Brother, at the moment), it is also true that many shows or tv films or documentaries are really magnificent. And this week, this reflection came to my mind, after spending three nights watching the final episode of The Sopranos (that I discussed recently here) and later, an excellent documentary (in two parts) on the history of the current best restaurant in the world, El Bulli. They were broadcasted on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, and I was truly blown away by their quality. You can watch or download them from the rtve.es site, and if you can understand Spanish (and even if you can not), they are really worth to spend three hours. They show the history of this restaurant, from the begining, with many interviews of different people, starting with the chef Ferran Adriá and members of his team along the years, and also comments from journalists, critics, etc etc. The icing on the cake are many first quality pictures of the dishes prepared at this restaurant, whose look alone is astonishing (and I can only imagine their taste, as unfortunately I have been unable to have dinner in this restaurant... yet!).

I will write later on Ferrán Adriá & El Bulli, but for this time, just let me pay homage to the makers of these documentaries. And if you are interested, be ready as next Saturday there will be another documenary called "A day in the kitchen of El Bulli" which seems very promising as well.

100 posts... and counting

After posting my previous comment in this blog, I noticed it was the 100th post I had made here.

This blog started back on October 1st, 2007, due to some very specific events, with a comment entitled "Freedom of speech". From that date onwards, what was a mainly purple-focused blog became a place where I am writing personal comments on many different kinds of topics. And I am somehow surprised to see that this blog keeps alive after such a long time, when at the begining I was not sure at all if I was going to continue for more than a few little posts.

For good or bad, here I continue, and for good or bad, some people keeps on visiting this place on a regular basis. I hope you guys/gals are finding some meat here, and if so, it might be a good time to say "Hi!" in the comments.

Prince likes criticism... yeah, right

As it has been reported at many places, Prince gave last week an interview to Tavis Smiley. The transcript of the interview is available online.

I copy below some relevant parts which were rather shocking to me; and I found particularly, ahem, entertaining the parts shown in bold:

Tavis: How difficult is it to live in a world - and to your earlier point, which I take, it's a brilliant point; the world is already mean enough. We don't have to add to it. But how do you contextualize, emotionally, having much of your work judged by your personality rather than on the merits of the work?

Prince: Well, one reason is because I like criticism. I like constructive criticism from smart people. I'm thankful enough to - or blessed enough to be able to say that Miles Davis was a friend when he was alive, and he was a wonderful mentor and really, really funny.

And he could critique something you've done by humor and out of love rather than just call you a punk and just dismiss you. (Laughter) He wasn't like that, because people he cared about he tried to help.

When people criticize my work and attack my personality, it doesn't help me; I can't do anything with it. I don't know what they want. I've asked writers this before and a lot of times they tell me that they just write for each other. They're not really writing for (laughter) - "Oh, I really got him that time, didn't I?" Like, okay, well. I don't know, nobody learns anything from it, really.

Tavis: Who's qualified - I want to connect these two things. I said earlier that you were head and shoulders above everybody else in the music world and most musicians, I think, even acknowledge that. Who's qualified - and maybe qualified is the wrong word, but it's the one I'm going to go with. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Who's qualified to critique your stuff these days? You mentioned Miles Davis. Who's qualified to critique you?

Prince: Oh, anybody.

Tavis: Music critics? Fans? Other artists?

Prince: Yeah, I don't mind - anybody, if they do it with a sense of love, if they're trying to show me something about the work that they really feel is important for me to know. And I don't see a lot of that in journalism today. Most journalists are just lazy.

Tavis: You said you liked being critiqued and you love constructive criticism from smart people. How do people critique you if you are so ahead of your time, as you have proven to be consistently? If you're so ahead of your time, how can they critique what they ain't even caught up to?

Prince: Because they - listen, if they don't feel what I'm doing, they're going to let me know. If it's somebody I love they're going to tell me they don't feel it and they'll tell me the reasons why. And I can appreciate that. I write all the time, I record all the time.

I think some of you might understand why, after reading this interview, had a smile of incredulity in my face.

Some of the hardcores fans of Prince music (including me) have written in the past with good, constructive intentions about Prince work. And the response we received was, to be fair, not exactly a positive one, and we didn't exactly feel that Prince liked that kind of criticism. For instance, I wrote an open letter to Prince in 2007. And as stated in the article of the link, the good intentions of the letter had no effect whatsoever.

So when I read "Prince likes criticism", I can't avoid to think "yeah, right".

Posting about anything, and so what?

I just realized that I recently posted comments in this blog about new albums from Prince, the new Pentax K7 dSLR camera, some pictures taken during Easter holidays, the meaningless awards given by TIPA and Grammy, the recent success of Fiat, or the astonishing quality of tv series The Sopranos. And I am fully aware that there is little in common between those topics, other than I am interested in them. Now, a blog (for getting traffic, that is) is supposed to be focused on some kind of content, with a line enabling to connect the dots. And here, that line is missing: I know.

So what?

At the very beginning of this blog, I considered shutting down since it was unclear to me whether it might be interesting to others or not. It remains being completely unclear, but if google analytics hold any credibility, there is a bunch of readers coming here from time to time. Maybe some of them think this is interesting somehow: who knows. I hope some of them are perceiving some little details, beyond the occasional peaks due to information about new cameras, or reviews on new purple albums.

But even if that's not the case, I think I will continue. And I expect some of you with an eye on the finer details will be reading (sometimes...).

And in case it was not completely obvious already, just let me say that I don't give a s**t about the traffic of this blog being huge or ridiculously small: not making business here.

The Sopranos: chapeau!

Yesterday night, we watched the penultimate episode of The Sopranos. And by now I am, on the one hand, drooling in expectation to watch the final one; on the other hand, saying to myself "what a pity this comes to the end".

There's little I can add to comment the magnificence of this tv series: there is extensive information around in the net, and a bit of googling will lead you to many interesting articles/comments/analysis to read. But I'd like to post a little comment here to recommend, once more, to watch it if you have not done it already.

In the enormous vacuity of current television, which at least in Spain contains loads and loads of bullshit, quite often under the form of reality shows (led by the awful Big Brother, whose success I will never understand), series like The Sopranos represent an oasis of intelligence and class. The plots, the characters, the underlying view on the reality, the quality of the interpretations, the coherence... I could follow forever: The Sopranos are a class on its own, and mentioning The Godfather as a precedent would not make any harm to the prestige of The Godfather.

But if I had to stick to a single quality in The Sopranos, than it has to be the presence of real human beings. You don't see mafia cliches around, you don't see ridiculous killers, you don't see a binary world of good and bad people: you see a complex reality, killers enabled to warmly love their families, polices who prosecute criminals but have caring conversations with them, you see smart people who need to see the doctor beause they feel disorientated... one would be hardly pressed to point out a more convincing depiction of reality, be it on tv, movies or books, today.

There's no need to continue: I won't add anything to the overwhelmingly positive comments you can read pretty much anywhere, about The Sopranos. But let me say a big "Chapeau!" to David Chase and all the team, from writers to actors, who were responsible for such a wonder.

I seldom link to texts in Spanish in this blog, as I understand that all readers understand English; but I found a truly brilliant piece on The Sopranos written by one of the most respected Spanish film critics, Carlos Boyero. If you can, do not miss it. Among other pearls, he openly states that The Sopranos is among the 10 best films of the whole history (with the minor detail that this is a film never shown in large cinemas, and that it lasts for 4,300 minutes).

The stunning turnaround of Fiat

Fiat, an old, traditional carmaker company born in Italy, is about to make bold announcements if plans go ahead as expected. And they are truly stunning if we consider the state of that company, say, five years ago.

I own two Fiat cars by now, a mark II Punto, and a Multipla. When we purchased them (back in 1999 and 2002, respectively), the prospects for Fiat looked rather bad. Instead of their multiple technologic achievemetns (including first and foremost, the development of direct injection diesel engines in cars, then of the common rail technology, later licensed to Bosch by Fiat), Fiat was having very tough times, losing loads of money, and most analysts predicted that the part of Fiat devoted to making cars would be sold to General Motors due to lack of profitability.

Since that time, and after a troubled period with quite a few changes in the top management structure of Fiat, Sergio Marchionne arrived to the company, was promoted to CEO and managed to make a huge turnaround of its finances, from money-losing machine, to becocome the current Fiat: a company which is having significant sales all around Europe, in spite of the economic crisis, and whose financial figures have shown a tremendous shift towards profitability.

Fast forward to 2009: Chrysler just filed for bankrupcy and is hardly struggling to get some kind of support from the USA administration in order to be receive private funding... most probably from Fiat, who would become holder of 20% stakes in Chrysler. And today, a website specialized on news about Italian motor companies, Italiaspeed, posted that Marchionne, CEO of Fiat, is announcing today in Germany plans from Fiat to merge with the European branch of General Motor companies (including Opel and Saab) and the 20% of Chrysler, in a movement "made in heaven" since, according to this report, Morchione thinks that the background of Opel and Fiat in particular (who share technologies and platforms, due to past deals between Opel and Fiat) made this merger rather easy to accomplish. If this proves true, we would see the appearance of the first European company manufacturing cars.

Being no expert on the financial world, I think there are two recent examples of companies related to technology which made a whole turnaround in only a few years: one is a longtime favourite of mine, Apple, which moved from almost bankrupcy in 1997 to the trendsetter it is in 2009. And the other is Fiat, which has shown to the world of automobile companies how can you go from the very low to the very high in only a handful of years.

The nonsense of awards: what's the meaning of TIPA and Grammy?

One of my reference sites, the blog of Valentín Sama, posted recently an entry about the TIPA awards, with a reference about another article posted in another blog, hastalosmegapixeles.com. Both are in Spanish and I thought it would be interesting to make a short comment on both articles.

Basically they discuss something that might not be obvious to the general, amateur photographer: the TIPA awards, which supposedly are given to the best cameras of every category, are in fact little more than payed advertising. Companies pay in order to show the logo of this award with their products, in a way that is hard to differentiate from paying TO get the award for their products. Furthermore, according to reports, no awards are given if no payment is made, and if payments are made, the required categories are created in order to give an award to a specific camera model which is being targeted for its maker company as a strong item for promotion. I shall not give any specific examples, but if you look at the list of "camera categories", it is pretty obvious that there is no logic in there (other than "you pay, we make the category to give the award to the camera you want").

In short: these are rather ads than awards.

And this reminds me of another world that interests me, music, where the main awards, the Grammy, suffer of exactly the same problems: companies pushing their agendas by putting loads of Grammys on top of their favourite albums, invented categories to suit pretty much any possible album requiring promotion, a huge lot of media noise around them, and eventually increased sales in the awarded albums. But meaning? None at all, no serious music lover believes today that Grammys are actually awarded to albums which are outstanding on music merits alone.

Business is business, I know, but people should wake up and realize what are ads and what are quality labels. Furthermore, in an ideal world (not this, that's for sure), somebody should enforce rules that would enable the general public to make the difference between honest awards and paid advertisements.

(Now, don't ask me whether honest awards exist, as I truly don't know).