It isn't.

Right, so I have this new camera! And this image is fresh off this new camera!

Pentax K200D has support for DNG raw files (as opposed to proprietary raw formats -- with DNG, I can ufraw, gimp etc.), CCD-shift shake reduction (as opposed to image stabilisation in the lens), some good amount of sealing against weather, dust-proof-edness, and it takes AA cells (as opposed to proprietary cells, and AA cells are easier to find). Voting with money. (Not my money, not so far -- until I pay the funding dude.) Everything's okay so far.

I wish it had a larger viewfinder, a separate thumb-wheel on the back for aperture control, CMOS sensor instead of the CCD one, but then it would become a Pentax K20D. The K200D would do just fine since I am not too sure if I deserve to spend any amount on a camera. The K20D has too many megapixels, and it weighs more. I mean, that cannot be good for the pack-light traveler within.

Right, Pentax lenses are hard to come by around here, but that is okay. Anything that should discourage obsessive compulsive lens buying disorder is okay.

And this wondermark strip.

Observation of the day night: Friday Saturday 1:26AM is a great time to suffer from a great deal of self-doubt. (And if the timestamp appears wrong in this post, I blame it on an ljupdate bug.)

Update: there was no bug, or was there a bug? Greater amount of self-doubt ensued.

Master Basho says:

No one travels
Along this way but I,
This autumn evening.

Kunjunni Mash says:

നീണ്ട വഴി
മഴക്കാല മൂവന്തി
ഞാനേകന്‍.

Which translates (quite poorly) to: A long way / Rainy day evening / I'm alone.

The Mullah recently quoted Master Basho ("Oh! the stillness - / The voices of the cicadas / Penetrating the rock; / Oh! the stillness!" and "The old pond - / A frog jumps in; / The water sounds - / The old pond!"), which re-sparked a haiku intrigue. On further interrogation, he also mentioned The Buddha Eye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School and it's Contemporaries.

I think I want to read that, but I also think I'm not quite ready for it yet.

After a bunch of Debian lenny upgrades, my pointing devices (that would be laptop's trackpad and the mouse, eh) started to act weird. Single clicks are double clicks, there was no way to single click upon anything, clicking on launchers on GNOME panel will not launch anything, etc. Switching to xfce did not make any real difference, and I'm too timid to go near ion3 again. I didn't want to install another "desktop environment" either. (I'm perhaps too old to have too many operating systems and desktop environments installed; but the wm doesn't really matter since I run terminal/Emacs/web browser full-screen all the time.)

( #485186 )

Dear Internet people: Is there anybody out there that know more about this song? (440K, wma.)

It came via a friend, who received it from a friend of his, but either of them do not know more. Search engines too have not been of much help, except in finding this thread in an indianguitartabs.com forum. Which says it is sung by Pakistani singer Ali Hazan, of the band Noori. Ok, perhaps they are right, but it doesn't un-intrigue me exactly.

Although I don't follow it word-by-word, I really like what it conveys: a bunch of friends having an awesome time together. Happy times to remember, laughter, and a guitar strumming. Perhaps it was a late night jamming session in a hostel room, or upon a rooftop, or they might have been sitting in a coffee house or a dining hall. Perhaps they were traveling together. Much respect to the singer and his friends. But come on, there has to be a story! A really lovely story!

It is a wma file alright, and worse, it comes with dubious redistribution rights. Please let me know if there's any objection to having this posted. Thanks in advance!