(As compared to the Canon EOS 1000D and its 17-55mm kit lens.) I have been getting into roller derby photography lately, and that means I could use all the light I can get. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted exactly, outlined in painstaking detail before. In the end I decided … Read More

The Testament I read somewhere, a few weeks ago, that there is such a thing as Grisham’s Law. And although I could find only a single definition—once you’ve started reading a John Grisham novel, it is impossible to put it down—this reminded me I had an unread book of his lying around, The Testament. What a disappointment. … Read More

In 2007 the BBC announced they were going to produce a new science fiction series “with echoes of Blake’s 7” (the Sunday Times wrote at the time). Good news for science fiction fans, and even better for Blakes 7 fans (the misspelling is intentional, as that is what the show was called). With all the … Read More

Last month I mentioned that I bought a new pocket camera, the Canon IXUS 300 HS (or Canon Powershot SD4000 as it is known elsewhere), but have so far failed to tell you much about it. In Europe Canon has two ranges of pocket cameras, IXUS and Powershot, where the former is aimed at those … Read More

Samsung Star S5230 Summary: could have used a little more testing As I wrote earlier, I bought me a Samsung s5230 Star mobile phone. My needs were extremely modest: A long standby time A built-in camera of at least 1 megapixel The Star’s aspirations are far from modest: it tries to emulate far more expensive … Read More

The Dogs of Riga I know I haven’t been blogging for a while, but I just do not have the time, so I will keep it short. People pay money for this? It’s not that Henning Mankell’s police procedural The Dogs of Riga is badly written, indeed for most of the time, and especially the … Read More

NIDF Canon EOS 1000D workshop product When I bought my Canon EOS 1000D camera earlier this year I got a coupon that allowed me to participate in a photography workshop (EOS is their range of so-called Single Lens Reflexes, the D stands for digital, and the large number signifies the entry level model). For 25 … Read More

Life Ascending, The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution product What little I remember about the organization of life from my few high school biology classes in the early 1980s is that the realm of the living was divided into animals and plants. The world of biology has not, it seems from this book, stood still … Read More

Restaurant: Kantjil & de Tijger business The Dutch have a love-love relationship with Indonesian cuisine stretching back to colonial days. The Rijsttafel, literally meaning rice table, is a colonial invention, putting together all the specialities of the Indian archipelago into a single menu. The darker side of this tale is the ‘Chin. Ind.’ restaurant, the … Read More

Sushi World business Don’t walk away, run Last month around this time I was having a heavy cold that wouldn’t go away, with a fever and a headache and a general under-the-weatherness that made me fall asleep every four hours or so. The past few days I had stayed home and done my own cooking, … Read More