My Sigma 18~50mm has a wobbly zoom, and now the zoom runs when it focuses..  So it's in the shop. 

I bought a Nikon 35mm F2 today..  A few reasons:  First, the lens is small, and I am sick and tired of hauling the garage around with me.  Second, the lens is actually designed for film, so if later on, I do buy an FX, I will be able to use it.

I think Nikon should redesign some of their lenses; but this one isn't all that bad.  They should put out their 28mm F2.8 with the 8 elements in 8 groups one in an AF format and I would have bought that over this one.

One of the things I take a lot of pics of is food; and this is the perfect food lens.  It focuses very close, the "macroness" of it is quite good, and it's small and light.  So next time I'm out at dinner and want to bring a lens just for food, this is it.

I also find this to be the best indoor lens to mate with a flash.  Bounce flash this, and you get a "small group" (3 people) and/or a 3/4th shot of someone.  All in all, excellent lens.  But I highly recommend as with all camera lenses, that you buy it from a shop instead of ordering it online.  The reason?  I tested on out that was out for testing today, and it sucked badly.  Not very sharp at all.  I'm sure being the "beater" lens they put out to demo, I'm not surprised.  The lens I ended up buying though was MUCH sharper, and as always, there will be sample variances and so you should definitely try before you buy the sample you are about to take home.

 It's a front focus lens, and so the lens sticks out a bit when you focus in close, which scares me a little bit, and the focusing ring moves, which I don't like.  But the advantage of front focus vs. internal focus is that you will not get lateral cyan/magenta splits on the CA.  I've not noticed heavy CA on this lens, and I think resolution varies greatly with samples, so again, try before you buy.

I am a big fan of the 50mm perspective, the "way of no way" as Bruce Lee says, it's the perspective that isn't a perspective, and that lets me capture what looks natural.  The way I shoot, while there are lies, damn lies, and then there's photography; with my pics, I like to be as neutral as possible, I'd like for you to be able to take one of my pics, look at it, and when you get to that place, have you say "This is EXACTLY like the pic".  So a 50mm perspective gives me that.  The Bokeh is nowhere near as good as my Olympus OM 50mm f1.8's, (that thing was a cream machine) but it's not as bad as everybody says, and it certainly isn't as bad as my Sigma 18~50mm was.  The fact that there's no aspheric elements means that your bokeh circles don't look funky from aspheric element distortion.

On a DX, I think this is a superior lens over the 50mm F1.8, even though it's about $100 more.  F2 vs f1.8 isn't really a difference.  The 50mm is probably ever so slightly sharper, but honestly, most people have hands about as steady as a 92 year old drunk.  So most talk about sharpness, but they basically need to learn to hold a camera steady first before they open their mouth.  I've looked at hundreds of samples, I especially love to look at samples from people who complain about the lens sharpness, and when you zoom in, you see the smear that is handshake.  So if you think a lens is not sharp, let me ask, have you tried it on a tripod, with mirror up and on a timer?  And I don't mean that pigeon-toed 3 legged toothpick that people pass off as a tripod, I mean a heavy solid tripod.  If so, then return the lens.

 For me on a DX, this is the superior lens.  The Sigma 30mm F1.4 is a stop faster, but also 2x as heavy and not as good in the corners.  So make your decision accordingly.  FX lens that's light and compact, or absolute center sharpness.  I picked the former so I ended up with this lens.

This election, who did you vote for?  Well, if you voted for either Obama or McCain, then you've voted for big government, tax enslavement, and are basically unAmerican.

McCain is an angry and bitter old man with an enlarged prostate.

Obama is a wishy washy Muslim in disguise that over promises.

The only person in congress that has voted against taxes every single time is Ron Paul.  he is the man with the plan, and NONE OF YOU GUYS want a plan.  Who's the winner of this election?  McBama.  It doesn't matter who wins because both are tax and spend people.

So next time you see your son die in the middle east, or you see your paycheck crater from the taxes, just remember, you did this to yourself by not voting Ron Paul.

I have been watching a TV show called "The Big Bang Theory", it's a story about 2 nerds who live next to a hot chick that works as a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory.

If you are a nerd, you need to watch this.  The "nerd jokes" are some of the best I've heard, and it just cracks me up.  I really like the girl next door also, "Penny"; she's sensible and cute, and watching her tolerate the nerds is just great!

The fact that she's not bad looking at all, I'm sure helps.  (Cleavage shot)

And a Bikini shot..

What kind of nerd jokes can you expect??  Well, for example, one of the principle characters named Sheldon went to a Halloween party as "The Doppler Effect". (Shown on the left of the pic)

They do nerd things like have Halo III night.. I love this show!  It's America's answer to "IT Crowd", another great show about nerds, but British nerds...

This is the show to watch if you are a nerd, get calculus jokes, and just need a good laugh.  Highly Recommended.

I have one of these for my office, an Asus WL-500G Premium v2.  I originally wanted a v1, but all they had left was a v2.  I have a Asus wl-500g Deluxe at home, that was my old firewall/wifi router until I got the pix 506E.

Now this asus is horrible as far as software.  It's got alpha software at best, and not so stable. So I didn't even bother powering it up with the original software.

I first installed DD-WRT, but I didn't find it so stable.  I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to install Tomato on it.

So I tried and I tried.. and nothing..  So I looked up the chipset, and it was the same as the Buffalo WHR-G125, which was supported by Tomato ND.  So I tried it and I got it to work!

So let's first review the hardware.. then we'll get to the software.

The hardware is "not bad".  I like the asus better than the linksys because it's nigh impossible to brick the asus.  Hold down the reset button, unplug for 10 seconds, plug it in again while holding the reset button, and it will flash.. you can then use the asus utility (or tftp if you are on linux or don't have the asus utility) and reflash the router.  Done!  I've tried everything and it's never bricked..  And flashing it doesn't require you to do strange things like rub your belly while you pat your head.

The Buffalo WHR-G125 and theWL-500G Premium V2 both use the Broadcom 5354 integrated chipset running at 240Mhz .  It's the heavily integrated chipset, integrating just about everything you need in a router onto 1 chip. I don't know about the price (I think the Buffalo is cheaper) but the Premium v2 has 8 megs of flash ram, vs the 4megs on the buffalo.  So when more goodies come out, it's much more hackable.  

Here's info about the chip (from its website:)

BCM5354
802.11b/g Router System-on-Chip with BroadRange™ Technology

The BCM5354 integrates a high-performance MIPS32 processor, IEEE 802.11 b/g MAC/PHY, 2.4-GHz direct conversion radio, USB 2.0 host controller, SDRAM controller, and a configurable five-port Fast Ethernet (FE) switch. The BCM5354 provides wireless LAN connectivity supporting data rates of up to 125 Mbps that is backward-compatible with standard 802.11 b/g.

The BCM5354 supports a WAN connection via its configurable media interfaces. The per-port programmable four-level priority queues enable QoS (IEEE 802.1p) for guaranteed bandwidth applications, DiffServ/TOS, and L2/L3 IGMP snooping. The IEEE 802.1Q VLAN allows flexible implementation of VLAN grouping and WAN port segregation.

	Features

• 240-MHz MIPS32® CPU core with 16-KB instruction cache, 16-KB data cache, and 1-KB pre-fetch cache
• 2.4-GHz direct conversion radio
• The BCM5354 achieves the lowest cost and highest performance router system-on-chip (SoC) integration for residential and small office, home office (SOHO) markets
• Time-to-market is significantly reduced through stable Linux® and VxWorks® kernels, board support packages (BSPs), drivers and toolchains

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not a huge fan of the MIPS chips... but I like them better than the ARM.  Of the 3 smaller chipsets, I prefer PowerPC, MIPS, and then ARM, in that order.  I find that for the same speed, the PPC's kick everybody else's ass, the MIPS is somewhere in the middle, and the ARM is significantly slower.

I have been running my Buffalo HDHG NAS behind it, as both an ftp server as well as running mldonkey on it, as a downloader.  I push up a few hundred gigs a month, and a few hundred gigs downloaded, and router does just fine.  I turned on QOS on tomato, and it is not too bad.  While I haven't found that I can "overload" the router, I do find that when there's a significant load, you can feel it.  That's not true with my pix at home, of course I can't compare them both, one is near enterprise level (especially now that I hacked the 506E ) and the other is just a SOHO router.  But with tomato, it's a significant booster as far as speed and stability.

What I do love about Tomato are the real time graphs, and the QOS control.  It's small, light, easy to manage, and just works out of the box.  I love that.  If I hack my pix some more and it dies, I'll buy another one of these and put Tomato on it.  There's no USB support on tomato, but that's ok, I think of it as a router that happens to do wifi also.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with this router, and highly recommend it over all the other ones for a Soho router.  It's got decent speed, and with Tomato on it, I'm sure it will spank most routers 10x the price.  Running some ADSL speeds, it will saturate my entire office line of 10Megs down / 2 Megs up.  So unless you've got 100Mbits coming to your house, this should do fine.  Like all Broadcom chipsets, max connections is pegged at 4096, but this generally should not be a problem for all but the hardest of hard core home users.  Too bad tomato doesn't support VPN, but I honestly don't think you want to use any SOHO router as a VPN'ed router to the central office.  It is what it is, a great home router or a small office router that doesn't require VPN.  The speed isn't bad if you don't have too many connections, good for <8 computers or so.  It's perfect for the office since I have 3 computers and that's it.  It's not a pix, and doesn't perform like one, but it's not priced like a pix either.  Best Asus WL-500G Premium v2 + Tomato the best bang for your buck as far as SOHO routers PERIOD.

I have always wanted to have a pix.. and so I decided one day, yes.. I will run a pix firewall for my home firewall.  Overkill?  Sure..  But what's worth doing is worth overdoing, so the Mythbusters have taught me.

There are 2 PC100 RAM slots inside, so the first thing I did was buy another 32Megs.  Turns out, I didn't really need to because the ram usage never really topped 17Meg, which is what it starts out at, and never climbs.  The load on the CPU, which was a Celeron 300Mhz with a 66Mhz bus, was at a load of somewhere between 2~7%, depending on how many connections were open.  I manage to get it up to 49% usage, when I was doing 3DES VPN.  I picked 3DES to test because AES is much more efficient, and I wanted to load up the CPU.  The CPU runs really really hot..

Upon reading the Cisco Pix Wiki , I discovered that the botherboard of the 506E is the same as the Pix 525, which has a 600Mhz Coppermine Pentium III CPU.  So I put that on my todo list.  I surfed and googled around, and found a guy who hacks Ciscos.  I asked him about it, and he said it was a fairly strange idea but probably quite doable.  So researching, I figure I would try to mimick the specs of the original 506E but times 2.

Cisco Pix 506E's CPU  (Original):

300Mhz Celeron with 66Mhz Bus on Socket 370

(Ugly looking CPU with no markings on it..  It's made of ceramic, very heavy, and really hot.

Planned Modification:

600Mhz PentiumIII with 133Mhz Bus on Socket 370

The reason I picked these specifications were for a number of reasons:

1. I was scared that with the horrible heat distribution of the 506E, a super fast CPU might burn the mobo.
2. I didn't want to pick something with a 100Mhz bus because I wanted the multipliers to be multiples of the original. So in this case, 300Mhz => 600Mhz.  66Mhz bus => 133Mhz bus. I figure compatibility would be better this way and I'd have a better shot at making this work.
3. Because the 525 uses a 600Mhz and I assume the same motherboard, or at least it uses the same Intel 440BX Seattle chipset onboard.
4. The voltage requirement was lower than the Celeron, not higher.
   

So I found one on the Taiwanese ebay for $4USD.  So I bid and bought it.  Today was the big day.  I pulled out the Celeron and slapped in the PIII.  The "theory" was that I just slap some heat transfer compound, close it up, turn it on, and away it goes!!

And... (drum roll).. it just booted up.  Absolutely no drama whatsoever.  Now, the CPU runs at 0% all the time...  I am not sure if it's running at 66Mhz or 133Mhz, and don't know how I'd be able to check, but in theory, this chip is 4x faster (300Mhz vs 600Mhz) and (66Mhz vs 133Mhz) I doubled the clock bus speed as well as the CPU speed.

The other part of the good news is that the Celeron ran at 2.0V, while the PIII runs at 1.65V.  So the lower voltage should be a heatsource and power savings (hopefully).  The heatsink on the Celeron is MASSIVE.  The one on the PIII is really dinky, so I hope that heat transfer isn't a problem.

I don't really do any VPN or anything that drastic with my firewall.. If I did, I'd upgrade it to 256Megs of ram or something.  Anyway, my 506E is effectively running like a 525.

506E (New) MSRP $1549 USD

525 (New) MSRP $4000 USD

32Meg additional PC100 ram cost me $10.

PIII 600Mhz with 133Mhz bus, cost me $4.

So if you buy a 506E and dump another $20 into it, you will have a 525 equivalent.  Yes yes yes, I know, 525 will run the ASA.  You can hack the 506E to run ASA as well.  But I don't need UTM and so no need for me to.  I might do it though just so I can truly have a hacked 506E.  But for now, I'm super happy with the CPU upgrade.

You can pick up a 506E for cheap on evilbay, and PC100 ram is cheap, and so are PIII's.  If you are brave (or stupid) and would like to try an even faster CPU, knock yourself out.  But so far, no problems with the PIII.  I am still concerned about overheating so time will tell.

From Tom's Hardware :

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

	Celeron celeron	Pentium III
Socket	Socket 370	Socket 370 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_370 or Slot-1
Processor Speeds	366, 400, 433, 466, 500, 533, 566, 600, 633, 667 MHz	500, 533, 550, 600, 650, 667, 700, 733, 750, 800, 850, 866, 933, 1000 MHz
L2 Cache Speed	Full CPU clock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_rate speed	Full CPU clock speed
Operating Voltage	2.0V (366-533 MHz) 1.5V (533A-600 MHz)	1.60/1.65V/1.70V
L2 Associativity	4-way set	8-way set
Price of slowest model	$70 for 366 MHz	$175 for 500 MHz

Note that the L2 cache is much bigger on the PIII, 2x as big.  Also, the bus speed as well as the inherent CPU speed.

So there you go!  Hack your 506E into a near 525.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Update ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am curious, the "show version" shows PIII 448Mhz..  ???!?!  Oh well..

Copy & Past Below:

Cisco PIX Firewall Version 6.3(5)
Cisco PIX Device Manager Version 3.0(4)

Compiled on Thu 04-Aug-05 21:40 by morlee

pixfirewall up 32 mins 3 secs

Hardware:   PIX-506E, 64 MB RAM, CPU Pentium III 448 MHz  (Why 448Mhz??  I'm not sure.. Mobo restriction??)
Flash E28F640J3 @ 0x300, 8MB
BIOS Flash AM29F400B @ 0xfffd8000, 32KB

Since I don't have the budget of cisco, I really couldn't test the router in the way I would like to.. so I had to start thinking up creative ways.  So..

I created a 3DES VPN from my desktop (Windows XP) to the router.  I then looked for an open iperf computer online, (Thank you University of Florida! ) and begin to iperf the crap out of it.

I then did a

iperf -c [server] -u -b1000m -w2m -i1s

to see if I can get the CPU load up.  Well.. I ran 10 of these concurrently, for a full cached saturation of close to 80megs of data.  (I'm sure my ISP is gonna ban me now..) I got the CPU up to 75%.  So that means on this setup, I can reasonally expect about a 100meg ceiling for VPN.  (I picked 3DES instead of AES because the load is heavier on 3DES and the goal was to load up the cpu).  Without VPN, the load topped around 11%.  For regular usage though, the system shows 0% utilization.  So there you go, I haven't quite figured out how to spawn a ridiculous amount of connections to test, but I have over 200+ BT files going, and the connection load floats at around 1000+ at any given time, so it's not too bad.  All in all, excellent upgrade.  Will I notice a difference in my browsing?  Probably not.  Will I smile with pride and joy at hacking yet another piece of hardware?  Absolutely.

My actual pics:

Here's the Pix 506E opened up.  Notice the 2 rows of 32Megs of ram.  I will probably upgrade this later.

 

 Here's a pic with the CPU fan off, showing the Celeron.

 

Here's a Celeron vs PIII shot.

 

 And Finally, here's the PIII installed.

 

One more comment; I changed out the CPU thermal compound and the box got HOT.. which is a good thing, which means it's wicking the heat from the CPU much better.  I was originally concerned about the heat since the heat sink contact point on the PIII is so small compared to the Celeron..  The compound on the Celeron had hardened already, and so changing it out is a great idea regardless if you are going to upgrade the CPU or not.