Passing time

Not a great deal has been happening lately. I've been doing plenty of CompSoc stuff -- we've upgraded our two crappy NetGear switches to one 16 port Gigabit switch for the internal network and a 24 port 10/100 switch for the Internet-facing network. I've pretty much got the L20 tape library going (it just needs more testing) and on Friday we upgraded the two 200GB disks in RAID1 to four 200GB disks in RAID5 to triple CompSoc's storage capacity.

The weather has been so... well, nice, really, so I've not been out much. There was the whole focus screen fiasco with my Nikon FG... but even that's resolved now thanks to some funny liquid, an ultrasonic cleaning bath and Vlad being bored enough at work to sort it. But... I can't say I'm really happy with the FG. It's a nice little camera, but it falls a long way short of the Olympus OM-2 or even the existing OM-10 in terms of feel... by comparison it feels cheap, the shutter is all over the place and the winding lever is funny. But it's okay... because I discovered the Nikon F3 at the Real Camera Co. yesterday... what I want now is an F3.

The F3 is solid (like a brass brick), has all the useful functions (and a DoF preview that the FG doesn't) and is generally a great camera. It's fairly small too... bigger than the OM bodies, but not by a great deal. Again, it features an F-mount, which is the best bit. The only down side is that it's close to triple the cost of an FG for a body in good condition... I'm pretty much without cash right now so I'm biding my time until a great deal comes along.

In other news the second set of ball photos have turned up. This time the turnaround was two weeks, instead of getting close to two months. Partly the reason it wasn't even faster is because I was busy finishing my project report, which contributes some hefty amount of marks towards my degree.

With any luck I'll head out tomorrow and take some more photos with this FG before listing it for resale on eBay. I'll be very surprised if I don't cover my purchase cost (£35) and maybe make a little more. I need to shift the OM-10 then and I'm close to being able to afford an F3 (when the I get my share of the ball profits and the printing costs back :).



Last thing... I splashed out on a new 320GB hard disk and "Icy Box" USB caddy. It was an essential purchase to allow me to backup my photos and other things. I switched the order though: the old 200GB drive is in the caddy and the new drive is sat inside my Shuttle.

I'm seriously impressed with the enclosure... it looks smart sat next to my Shuttle, the blue LED is optional (woo!) and there is plenty of ventilation around the disk. If you're looking for an IDE USB2 caddy I'd seriously recommend this one.