It’ve been dreaming about this lens for quite some time now - the legendary Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8D G-AFS ED-IF VR. It’s a bit on the expensive side - $1,614.95 new or around $1300sh used, and few years ago I just knew that I couldn’t afford it… which made things a lot more simple :-) Now, not having a mortgage or car payments, I think I could manage at least “ebay” version of it… Unfortunately, the problem is not so much in the financial aspect…

Being an absolutely incredible piece of optics which Nikon has ever produced, this lens takes astonishing pictures. Today I was going through samples of pbase images taken with this lens and came across Michael J. Masiewicz’s Nikon 70-200 VR Samples gallery (click on the image below to see it).

The lens is sharp… and it also delivers natural and vibrant colors. But there is something else about it that sends my heart racing - 70-200’s creamy-beautiful bokeh. For those of you who may not know what bokeh is - in few words, it’s the blury background which often deliberately caused to be out-of-focus to reduce distractions and to emphasize the primary subject. In my opinion, in portrait photography bokeh can either make or break a picture. One of the first lenses I used on my D70 was a cheap 28-300 Tamron. It was a very soft lens, yet its bokeh was quite impressive… Even since I just can’t get over the harsh bokeh of my 18-200 VR.

As you’re browsing Mike’s gallery notice how nice and smooth is the background on the close ups, and at the same time how sharp and vibrant is the main subject of each composition. Excellent bokeh, shallow depth of field and very natural colors - truly amazing glass.

So what’s the problem, you might say? Get yourself this lens and get on with your life! The problem is… this lens is very big and heavy. I know for a fact I won’t be able to take it with me on a trip to Europe, or to a party at a friend’s house, or on a night out… So what’s good is it to have such an incredible piece of equipment and not being able to use it ALL THE TIME??? As a matter of fact, few nikonians on the forums I’ve been reading admitted this being a huge issue for them as well. Hence my dilemma… I really really like the 70-200 VR, but I just can’t see myself lugging it around… :-((

I spent last several days looking for alternatives. I’ve been researching the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8D. Priced at $400 new it’s almost four times cheaper (which means I won’t have to part with my Fender, Trek and possibly 18-200 VR :-) and I’ve seen excellent examples of this lens’ superb performance in the bokes arena. Besides, it’s a light and very compact lens… however; I know for a fact I’m going to miss zooming capabilities. Anyways, I am going to keep looking, there are few other lenses I need to consider before making final decision.

Man, why can’t I have the 70-200 VR? ….. Life’s not fair :-)

We like watching movies, reading books, hearing stories about people who are in certain ways are better than us, hoping and believing that we too, at some point, can and will get there… about their lives, which may have certain aspects [we believe] we are missing in ours; yet [we’re sure] we have ahead of us in not so distant future… It fuels our dreams, our thoughts, stimulates our mind, erasing the boundaries between reality and imagination.

House is one of those people. Most of you would probably disagree with me right here - he’s miserable, he’s alone, he virtually has no friends, no loved ones and cares about nobody, not even about himself. So, why on earth would we admire him or his life? But wait, not so fast :) Look at it this way: • He’s brilliant at what he does • He’s got the job he loves • He has power (over his patients, but still, it’s power!) • He has admiration and respect of his coworkers as well as his superiors • He lives his life exactly the way he wants and wouldn’t change a single bit of it regardless of all the efforts of other people who in various ways would like to “help” him

Sure it’s all fiction, we all know that. Nobody in real world would put up with him, no matter how talented he was… Or would somebody? We all know that people with problems “connect” better with people… with problems. I think that’s exactly the case here, look at Wilson, Cuddy, as well as the rest of his gang - they all function on a formula “If the world puts up with me, the way I am, I can surely put up with somebody like House, the way he is”. I guess you might say we all are like that, to some degree of course, and what exactly is that degree and who and where draws the line… And you will be right :)

But here is another idea - I think a lot of us see in House ourselves, doing things “the right way” (the way we see it), and not the way we’re often told to… His actions represent something we’re all dying to see other people do (including ourselves) - make decisions, follow through and take responsibility for the results! We want our close ones to admit mistakes, make plans, love us, we want our peers to show leadership and responsibility, our colleagues to take initiatives, our bosses to recognize us, and our doctors to act, not to react…

I think that’s why we like House :)

PS: How does one switch on and off American accent? Just like that! Speaking of accents… is there American accent or is there British accent? It can’t be both, can it ? ;-)

The weather turned out to be gorgeous today - around 70F midday. This looked like a perfect opportunity to bring some variety into my cardio routine, which lately has been pure elliptical. As the early spring is kicking in (yeah, I know it’s still February outsite, but don’t forget - we’re in Florida ;-) days are getting longer. Now if I leave work at 5pm sharp I can be at Flatwoods park by 5:30pm latest. This leaves me a cool hour for the ride.

I haven’t been riding for a couple of months now (if not more). Quick tire pressure check (both the front and the rear ones were around 50psi, that tells you… :), refilled water bottle, picked up a helmet and a pair of gloves and around 5:40 I was in the saddle.

The air was crisp and fresh, bike handled quite well and overall I felt awesome. The sun was setting down and it was getting a bit cooler, which I usually appreciate as it makes riding more enjoyable. Besides, this particular park feels somewhat mysterious as last traces of the sun light are slowly retreating, surrounding the woods to the growing shadows… darkness is settling in…

This photo was borrowed from Alan Snel’s “Bike Stories” blog. I keep planning on snapping few of those myself, but at the moment, my D70 is just too much of a camera to take with me on a ride…

By now the park was almost empty - not too many cars in the parking lot and therefore I didn’t see too many people out on the track. I thought my butt would get sore after such a long “vacation” and I was prepared to make a couple of stops alone the way; however, to my surprise I felt fine and completed the entire 12 miles loop without any breaks. I was also amazed by the timing: usually after a prolonged break I clock around 43-45 minutes, and as I keep riding, in a couple of weeks I improve to 37-38mins. Today, without killing myself, I clocked 38mins. I guess those squats and deadlifts I’ve been working on for the last few weeks must be helping!

At last, after serving me proudly (I hope ;) for almost two years, my dear Lite-ON 811S DVD burner has retired. For the last couple of months it had troubles ejecting disks, and finally I decided that the time has come. I went online and bought myself a brand new burner.

I was going to be loyal to the brand at first. After all, the burner served me quite well for cool two years… I had my eye on LITE-ON 20X DVD+/- R/RW Burner when I noticed that alone with many good reviews it also had quite a few negative ones. It almost looked like it was going to be one of those hit or miss kinda products, depending on what you are going to use it for. So, I looked around a bit more and decided to go with SONY 16X DVD+/- R/RW. Priced at whopping $42.99 ($5 more than a bit speedier LITE-ON), this baby promised to be a rock-solid drive (at least according to newegg customers). Last thing that tipped the scales was the fact that (as somebody mentioned) this drive was a bit quieter than some of the other ones out there. To me this was a deal breaker :-) I’ve put quite an effort to build completely noiseless PC and this wasn’t about to change :)

Oh yeah, and while I was at it, I also picked up a new hard drive. My Biostar TForce 6100 MoBo has two IDE as well as two SATA interfaces. So far I’ve been using EIDE (ATA) drives, and lately I’ve been noticing that hard drive I/O was a bottleneck. In this department my pick was the Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive. And once again, according to the reviews, this drive was very quiet, and it’s 3.0Gb/s was going to be a stunning improvement over my current ATA 133Mb/s. Finally, it was priced at $69.99, which I couldn’t believe…

As usually, newegg.com didn’t take long to come thru with my purchases and last Monday, when I came back from work - the new toys were awaiting for me.

The new drive became my new primary hard drive. I re-loaded Windows, re-installed most of the soft I use on a daily basis and here I am, back in business. The new hard drive is flying - IT IS FAST! And what I really enjoy the most is the fact that I don’t hear it at all - not even when it’s seeking! Increadible. Today I also had a chance to test DVD burner. I used nero express to copy a standard (one layer) DVD - 18mins from the moment I inserted the original to the moment I extracted the copy - not bad at all. 16X is definitely an improvement over my old 8x LiteON.

Alrighty… changed my mind… the blog is back… don’t know for how long though :) Meanwhile…