Panasonic DMC-TZ30EB-R: Is this not a work of art?
I’m afraid my old TZ7 (which replaced my earlier TZ5 due to my clumsiness) has now had to be replaced with the new TZ30. The reason? At some unknown moment, my usual dollard-ish clumsiness put a scratch on the lens….. the whole recent trip to Australia is marred (to my eyes at least) by a fuzzy mark off-centre at 2 o’clock.
I wanted the red one as it’s a beautiful thing indeed. In fact, I hunted to get one at a good price within a reasonable time-scale, but have settled for the black one for cost and because I can get it now!.. (The Panasonic DMC-TZ30EB-K).
Gratuitous photo of Iggy Pop from October 25, 1977 at the State Theatre, Minneapolis, MN (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s now on the way so watch this space for my opinions and results later!!. I’m extremely hopeful due to the reviews I’ve read.
I’ve waited and have passed over the TZ20 and other incarnations due to unfavourable comments and lack of substantial change in their features. Now, the TZ30 has tipped the balance for me. The GPS feature introduced with the TZ10 hasn’t had much interest to me, but maybe this’ll change all that!
Specification Highlights for me are:
The 20x optical zoom (naturally) in a body that’s less obtrusive than my current TZ7.
Better ISO performance – reputed to be very good at low light down to ISO800.
Better burst mode shooting. It’s supposed to be 10 fps whereas my TZ7 only does about three…. I have some stop-action movie ideas that I started with my old Fuji FinePix F30 that I’d like to continue and expand upon. The F30 did reasonable frames per second whereas the TZ7 is just too slow for the effects I want.
Semi-automatic panorama shooting. Much better than the old manual stitch mode….
Rapid autofocus (AF) – reputed to be 1/10 second. Combine this with burst mode and nature and sport shots should be great with at least one being on the button.
The only one I’ve spotted that directly affects my expectations is that in burst mode, the auto-focus is fixed once the burst starts, at 10fps. However, to counter this the feature is more variable than I’m used to in that with burst mode set to 5fps autofocus and zoom work concurrently! This definitely needs playing with!
My Standard Expectations:
Minimal blue/purple casts or fringing at high contrast edges.
Wonderful summer shots with vibrant colour.
Much better focus changing in video zooming.
My Quantum Leap Hopes:
The same or better sound quality that the F30 and TZ7 delivered. Both produced full non-clipped audio sound at rock concerts! The TZ7 does it in stereo. (see my Iggy Pop video below, discussed in this post, Iggy at Hammersmith).
Much, much faster autofocus and burst shooting than I’m used to. This includes the continuous autofocus & zoom at 5fps mentioned earlier.
Much better auto-focus on video zoom especially and pictures generally. I’m hoping the intelligence of the thing has been re-jigged…… To explain…….
The tendency on my TZ7 is to focus on the near-field whether it’s bright or dark. Yet I want it to focus on what the human eye drifts to, i.e., bright objects. On the TZ7 I’ve had to use human intervention to override the camera expectations….
The video below shows this.
For me the prime purpose of a compact camera is to get the best shot possible as fast as possible.
At the Stooges concert at Hammersmith below, I’d waited for ages and then suddenly the band came on and kicked off immediately! There was no time to prime the focus because I knew I’d miss some performance, so I had to make allowances for the camera deficiencies by pulling back zoom and trying to get autofocus on the bright areas by field drifting.
Ideally, I should have asked Mr Pop to restart his concert so that I could stop the video, auto-focussing on maximum zoom to distance and then restarting the video before he kicked off again. ;-) Obviously that wasn’t going to happen so I did the best I could without missing any of the performance of my historic bête noire idol.
As it was, my guess was right, even to continuing filming without a break, because against all rumours and knowledge that the Raw Power album was to be played in order, it wasn’t! Search & Destroy immediately followed Raw Power.
A few test pictures using the “Starry Sky” setting on my Panasonic Lumix TZ5. The pictures were done using a tripod at the three timer settings that are inbuilt for that setting; 15s, 30s & 60s. The sky was quite brightly lit due to some thin mist acting as a reflector for the urban lighting....
After driving through blizzards to get there, I took this little video of King Edward’s Bay en route to the Gibraltar Rock Inn in Tynemouth. It was freezing and I was shivering…. What it demonstrates quite effectively, is the anti-shake at work on my camera and the fantastic level of zoom it has. The colours...
I’ve had a few site problems whereby my host Site 5, said I was using too many resources and crashing their systems. Naturally, I was appalled. I traced this to a variety of plugins plus some errors in php files which must have arrived either during the periodic updates or during editing. These were errors whereby extra text (either blank space or a carriage return to be precise) were added to the end of the php file, which usually makes it fail. This a is a Google search on the main error I received,
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent … ( This is then followed by error details; usually error on line xx, repeated several times for a variety of xx)
After battling for some time, I just gave up, exported my database key tables (things like posts, comments, etc but omitting plugin inserted tables and the very large options table which I deemed to be very bloated after over five years of continuous WordPress operation…!) and re-installed WordPress as a fresh installation on my server.
Weird Permalink Problem Following Clean Install of WordPress
http://strangelyperfect.tv/%post_id%/victory-or-is-it-victory-jesse-willms-surrenders-all-to-ftc-onslaught/ (error shown in bold)
…which redirected to the homepage of the site, http://strangelyperfect.tv/ This was not what I was expecting! So I played with the slashes, went back to original simple permalink structure, tried some of the suggested structures – and they all worked!
A custom structure of /%postname%/ worked as well, but not the one I wanted and have used for years.
Weird. So naturally, I tried Google.
Permalink Redirection Problem Solved.
There’s a lot on the web about this. Most is about getting .htaccess right with permissions and the code. But mine was okay, as were all the other suggestions to try.
Introduction A few days ago I got hacked. I quickly ripped out a heap of dodgy files left by the hackers but for some days now, Firefox, my browser, while viewing pages on this website, has been saying that it’s “downloading data from tructuyenso.vn… “. .htaccess This, of course, was not actually happening, as I’ve put...
The Intense Debate Install Story Along with some theme and plugins changes I’ve recently done, I’ve also had a play with Intense Debate (ID), a system complete with WordPress plugin for managing comments. Phase One Last week using my old theme I couldn’t get anywhere with the comment import. It kept crashing out at 9%...
In preparation for our next release, Spookhouse, I’ve set up a proper shop to sell it! Our intention is to sell everything ourselves via this sole outlet. (Click image for the UK shopping site.)
Kicking off the shop I’ve reworked (…er…shouldn’t that be ‘am in the process of re-working?…) all tracks from the two previous CD issues. Finally I’ve had a decent handle of the articles…
Some have been substantially changed which may upset the purists, my current modus operandi being to imagine myself back then using the current software and equipment I now have at my disposal, then to change the existing 2-track recordings to best fit this basic idea. After all, they’re already in the digital domain – so I may as well try and make them something like how I/we wanted originally, but was thwarted by technology.
In tandem with this, I’ve whipped out some jam and hidden parts in tribute especially to Paul, Jeff & Garry, because this was the core of many creations that appear on those two releases and turned them into something dark and tragic, as that’s how I currently feel about their absence from the planet.
As Steve Jobs once said,
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
All this stuff is competitively priced compared to the muffled output from the usual on-line stores.
Spookhouse
The Spookhouse design is currently being set. Downloads from the CD will be available following the CD release.
Other Items
These will be released, mainly as download, for other artists wanting to contribute to to the Foetus Products collective sound resource. This isn’t a joke. We really mean it folks!
Technical
I’ve set it up using open-source software on the foetusproducts.co.uk domain. All links are secure where they need to be using a SSL Certificate I bought from GoDaddy.com, as they were had a special offer going…! It’s security level is the highest you can get (it uses a 2048 bit key), which means folks should have no qualms about their bank getting raided or whatever if they buy from us.
Users will have a choice of two financial transaction processors – PayPal and Google Checkout for which I’ve set up merchant accounts. They’re ubiquitous and most people are familiar with their operation nowadays. I thought about using Amazon, but they don’t currently process for digital items.
The reason that we’ve gone this route harks back to our (i.e. Crawling Chaos’s) independence of spirit – and because our returns will be on par to going the iTunes route, say, for distribution. We lose about 10% commission in the transaction process compared to a lot more through online download stores.
Guidelines for a Better World Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made. Perhaps I should re-phrase this as: The Rules of Law and International Diplomacy are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made It’s a strange world out there. Two recent political events...
Crikey! I Never Realised! Maybe certain days have relevance above their station and mere numerical nomenclature? Who knows. So read on. See what happened today! 622 AD – The Hijra of Muhammad Muhammad runs away from Mecca to escape persecution. From this point forward, huge swathes of the globe took up Islam, Islamic empires spread...
If you think you’ve had your bank ‘cleaned out’ by any of a multitude of ‘life cleanse’ or ‘colon cleanse’ type internet scams, there is only one real remedy…
Ask for a charge-back against the company through you credit card company. Your reason, when asked, is that the company has either:
Not adhered to their own claimed ‘Terms and Conditions’ or
The company cannot be contacted through their advertised channels
If the company fails on any of these two key points they have no excuse not to refund you. In fact, if they deliberately make contact difficult, it’s criminal.
The redirect was still working on the user’s website (devoted to head and neck cancer, http://www.squamoussupport.info/). The key bit is to click on the head and then the Amazon Store link in the bottom right. Sure enough (today), you get taken to MyBookFace.net!!!
It’s like the return of a boil on the bum for me. Now, depending on how you access this shit-hole, you’ll see various things.
The first page is sometimes loaded with “White Teeth” ads, from you know who(see here and here for instance), which are accessed via a false newspaper ad containing the key(yukky)word “mom”. Sometimes it’s Mary Steadman — again!
I’ve had two popups, several hours apart during my checks, that both claimed I was the lucky 1,000,00th visitor to the site and thus deserved a prize! This popup by-passes the pop-up blocker in IE8. Give it a go – you too can be the 1,000,000th visitor!!!
If you allow further pop-ups, the fun really starts!
More Fun With MyBookFace.Net Popups!
During one session, using the ‘Private Browsing’ feature in Firefox, I got the Mary Steadman fake newspaper ad again – wahay!. In this were two adverts; for Acai and Colon Cleansing.
They both originated from the same place and had similar designs. The Acai one (at acaiberryexclusive.com) I left, because the Colon one has some VERY, VERY DANGEROUS CLAIMS in it. (The Acai ones were very similar, actually, but I’m trying to keep this post short-ish)
EffectiveCleanse.com
EffectiveCleanse.com loads with the strap line “Life Cleanse”. It’s contact address is in County Durham in the UK again! (just like all the UTAH scams). This time the address is:
LB LFP Internet Ltd.,
101 Deneside,
Lanchester,
Co Durham,
DH7 0LZ,
UK
A small hunt for this address produced several companies, all apparently squashed into someone’s living room only a mile or so from the UTAH scammers elsewhere in Co Durham! There are many unhappy folk about who’ve had dealings with companies at that address. Similarly for the company name itself...
EffectiveCleanse Claims
Effective Cleanse Antioxidant. Get Your Risk-Free Order Trial Now
Everything is visible on the full-screen dump in the image here by clicking on it. Their claims would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous. (In many respects, the claims are very similar to those of Monavie, currently being investigated by Vogel, Cyberxion, Food Tech of California and others on this entertaining post by LazyMan about the scurrilous Monavie here: http://www.lazymanandmoney.com/monavie-scam-was-my-wife-recruited-sell-snake-oil/#comments)
Possible the most dangerous claim that this company makes is that it will “Repair Digestive Tract”!!! This is seriously bad stuff. There are only two ways to repair your gut and that’s either surgery or a massive dietary change, usually by stopping all alcohol intake, reducing fat consumption etc. Some of the ingredients can relieve IBS and constipation by their topical application and ingestion from their fungicidal, antiseptic or mucilaginous properties . But this is not the same as “repairing the digestive tract” by any judgement. Indeed some ingredients will make intestinal damage worse!
It also claims to break down DEADLY TOXINS!! Again this is a wholly unsubstantiated and untrue claim worthy of a prison sentence. Let’s consider a few deadly toxins – cyanide & botulism, say. Do you really think these few internet pills will stop death from cyanide? Do you think that taking these pills would have saved the Jews in the cyanide gas chambers? Of course not. If they’d said “slightly bad toxins” that would have been more accurate. But deadly? That’s something else.
Helps prevent intestinal pathologies…. WTF! This one is good…. Pathology is the study and diagnosis of disease! So they are claiming that this product will stop you from studying …er…various intestinal problems? I repeat – WTF? !!!
The word “FLUSH” appears a lot – “flush out excess weight”, ” flush harmful toxins”. Should it read “make you go to the bog a lot”, because it will. Some of it’s ingredients also induce abortion and breast milk-flow but no warnings are given about this (shades of Thalidomide here). Some have been found to cause cancer. Some either bung you up or give you the trots dependant on the quantity taken! It’s a bit of a fine balance between flush and bung. I don’t think I’ll be using my guts as a testing ground!
Perhaps the funniest claim is that it will “Increase Focus and Energy”…. It’s a pity the author didn’t try and focus a bit harder. Because further down the page is the mind-numbing misspelt paragraph which reads (I kid ye not):
According to National Geographic – “Human waste is a sinisteer(sic) world of monstrous creatures that feed on living flesh- Parasites” (sic) Parasites feed on Humans ams(sic) your body may house more than you know. The US alone contains widespread parasites accross(sic) the nation.
My spell-checker has gone berserk on that. I can’t believe that National Geographic actually printed that!
And anyway, human waste in a healthy person is certainly not pathogenic. The bacteria in one’s gut DO NOT “feed on living flesh” as they claim. They are an essential part of living and without them, we’d all die. If they mean worms etc, then again, they do not feed on your flesh – they feed on your gut contents! They live on shit!
Terms Disagree with Claims
Effective Cleanse Antioxidant. Terms & Conditions
Well it had to be somewhere, didn’t it? Despite all the criminally outrageous claims on their front page, their T&C actually states:
Our Products have not been evaluated by the FDA or EU Health Authorities, and Our Products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
Fortunately, they have a UK contact number of 0044 20305 10825, which makes it a London number. Why not give them a call and see which bit is correct – does it cure, or doesn’t it?
You’ll also see here, in small print, only once, that you’ll be charged £69 per month for 30 days supply. Except it’s written thus: “At the end of your 15 day trial period you will be charged GBP 69.”
Of course, upon reading the consumer complaints listed at the bottom here, you’ll find that many people can’t get through on the phone. In that case, the information on their FAQ page to the question:
I did not place this order and do not recognize the charge on the credit card statement. I think it is fraud.
…should be taken with a large grain of salt. The answer they give is that making a false claim of fraud is a criminal offence. Er..no. It isn’t. All you are doing is to resolve a dispute over charges to your credit card that you consider erroneous. It’s not a criminal offence to dispute the bill!!!! This is what they say to frighten you, and it’s only to frighten you:
We take Credit Card fraud very seriously and considerate it a crime. Our Risk/Fraud Department will verify that the transaction is indeed fraud and was not ordered by you. In such case we kindly ask you to contact us and our Customer Service Team will be happy to assist you. Please prepare the following information before calling or writing to us: name on your credit card, descriptor(s) on the charges, amounts, and date(s) of the charges, your billing and shipping address.
We would like to inform you that making a false claim is a criminal offense and you will be prosecuted if such claim is made. All information that you provide us, along with all related log files and IP addresses will be forwarded to the local police department and district attorney. In addition the governmental cybercrime agency will use this data to investigate and establish the physical location and computer from which the account was created.
If you can’t contact them through the phone, as many have found to their cost, the above information is doubly bogus.
On the other hand, the claims they make for the product on their main landing page, really are criminal. There is no way in hell that GSK et al would dare say anything like this.
Conclusion
Anyone who has read mine and other’s Google Treasure Chest, Acai, Government Grant and Teeth-Whitening investigations will suspect that there’s more to this business than County Durham alone. They hide their domain WHOIS for a start.
Because of their secretive nature, their misleading and dangerous claims which are in plain contradiction of their T&Cs, and the ‘unreliability’ (and that’s being generous) of their customer service as evidenced by the many complaints, this bunch of clowns are much worse than a comedy act. Scammer or crook? I couldn’t possibly say, but fetch me a bargepole to poke them away. Tommy Cooper would say “Scam-Crook; Crook-Scam. Scam-Crook; Crook-Scam. Scam-Crook; Crook-Scam.”
I’ll finish now, using words taken directly from their webpage by saying:
The US alone contains widespread parasites accross(sic) the nation.
(Mostly in Utah, from my experience, but not exclusively in the US.)
Extra Links(Just a few of the many complaints about this lot):
http://cacaweb.com…tradingplanetltdcom-arnaque.html (French website which has done a brilliant exposure=connection routine and even demonstrates how the linked companies manage to ‘accidentally’ get the wrong country code in their WHOIS records!) Two new County Durham companies and addresses are now added to my catalogue of shame because of this….see below
Imprint of www.acaiberryexclusive.com
LB Cassiopeia Media Limited LB Cassiopeia Media Limited
118 Fines Park
Annfield Plain
Stanley
Co Durham
DH9 8QZ
Tel: United Kingdom +38 616 004 917
Imprint of www.effectivecleanse.com
LB Eridanus Entertainment Limited
57 Langden Close
Templetown
Consett
Co Durham DH8 7NG
Tel: United Kingdom +39 064 523 0442
Postscript (30/10/2009)
As with the Google Treasure Chest/Money Tree (Kit) bollox, because I’ve posted about the colon parasite scammers, this website is now attracting Google adverts from those very scammers. I use advertising to help fund the costs, my payments in a round-a-bout way coming from the scammers! I couldn’t possibly comment any further except to point you to my privacy policy page.
Introduction I knew there was something really, really dodgy about that MyBookFace.net crap highlighted in this post the other day. Not only are they connected to some serious malware (as detailed in the posting), but they’ve an interesting line in popups!!! Google Treasure Chest Rises Yet Again! Here’s what to do… Go to http://mybookface.net making...
Monavie, Gillmap, Idaho Falls, Google Treasure Chest and Oprah Winfrey Introduction Last June, a contributor to this website @Not Kevin made a telling entry here (http://strangelyperfect.tv/4308/google-revolution-different-name-same-scam/#comment-1589) that has direct prescient relevance to the court case in the USA that Oprah Winfrey has heaped onto a host of companies and individuals for using her name to...
The Information Tribunal ordered the DWP to name the companies and charities involved in workfare at an appeal hearing this work. A long running war of words has been waging between the DWP and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ever … Continue reading → […]
The DWP are advertising for a News Manager with experience of ‘crisis management’ to take charge of the endless stream of bullshit which pours out of the DWP Press Office. The advert, spotted by @SmithTonyD over on twitter, explains: “The … Continue reading → […]
