This past weekend, I was invited to a corn maze tweetup as well, we were looking for a location for a photowalk as part of our No Compacts Allowed Facebook group. Seemed like a good idea to merge the two events and take a bunch of camera gear down to the Bose Corn Maze, deep in the heart of Surrey.
Here’s a couple of shots I took:
and with the help of my homemade steadicam rig, a little video of the corn maze:
Of course, I had to make it look a little creepy too:
My first trip on the newly opened Canada Line skytrain only took two minutes to go from downtown to the Airport:
UPDATE: Here’s Part Two of the video – the return trip sped up a little bit faster:
Recently, I stumbled across a useful and free iPhone app that I’ve been meaning to review on this site. This post is not that review. This post is about my recent experience(s) with it at Save-On Foods, which is a local grocery store chain.
As the post title implies, it doesn’t end well.
First of all, a little background. The useful iPhone app I found is called Cardstar which allows you to catalog all your retail reward cards in one little place. You simply find your merchant in the list within the app (they support a lot of major Canadian stores), enter the number from the barcode on your reward card and it creates a nice little screen on your iPhone that displays the merchant logo along with your barcode like on the right.
Pretty simple little app that means I don’t have to have a keychain that resembles the high school janitor’s or a wallet like Mr. Constanza. I’m pretty indifferent to these rewords programs…but they can save you some cash on sale items so it seems to be a necessary evil…plus I don’t like paying full retail if I can avoid it.
I was pretty sure that the scanning technology in my local grocery store wouldn’t be able to scan off the highly reflective iPhone screen but I wanted to try. So a few weeks ago, I went to Save-On Foods which is close to home and bought a few things and asked the clerk if she could use this method for my rewards card. She said she had never been asked before but would try. As expected, it didn’t work no matter what she tried. Cardstar says that in the event your info can’t be scanned, the number is there in a large, readable font (unlike on some of the rewards card) and the clerk should be able to simply type it in, which she did. No problem.
My wife also tried the same thing after I told her of my success and she had no problem getting the clerk to type it in.
So today, after being shut in for 5 days thanks to the flu that I seemed to have picked up while at PAX, I decided it might be a good idea to get some supplies since the cupboards were empty after being stuck indoors for almost a week. I spent about half an hour picking up stuff then went to checkout.
Me: “can you try this? (I show her my iPhone with Cardstar screen up) My card is at home”
Clerk: (tries) “it’s not working”
Me: “Can you type it in? The number is right there”
Clerk: “Oh no, I could lose my job if I did that”
Me: “Seriously?”
Clerk: “Oh yeah, we can only use the card numbers if they scan in since you could change it. They even changed the system so I can’t enter the number in manually”
Then the woman in line behind me offers the clerk her card.
Me: “then can you use her card?”
Clerk: “No…then she’d be benefitting from your purchase”
Me: (incredulously) “I’m okay with that…it’s not that much stuff, I just don’t want to pay full price for some of these items”
By now, the supervisor (or manager – I’m not sure) has come over and wants to tell me why I can’t do something that I’ve already done a couple of times recently. She mentions that I signed a contract to get the rewards card that I wouldn’t alter the number and only produce the real card to benefit from the reward. She (and the clerk) also mentioned that I could bring my receipt in and get the difference back later. So instead of paying about $35 for what I had in my basket, I’d get to pay 20-30% more now and have to remember to bring in my receipt (and real card) to get my refund. No thanks.
Perhaps if I wasn’t hungry and still a little out of it from the flu I would have argued with her but decided it wasn’t worth it and told them I wasn’t going to argue with them about it and simply go somewhere else…and that’s what I did, leaving all my stuff right there.
Strangely, the Safeway clerk didn’t appear to lose her job when I gave her my phone number for their rewords program which she manually entered. I haven’t had their card in my wallet for years because of this simple, easy method of delivering it to them.
I don’t blame the employees at Save-On for my experience…they were just doing as instructed. I can also understand (on some level) the desire to only scan real cards. But to not even accept someone else’s card behind me? That’s just stupid.
Fortunately for me, there are plenty of other stores nearby that I can shop at.
This past weekend, I had a chance to attend the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo (aka PAX) in Seattle, Washington. I’ve always wanted to attend but it’s usually been on the same weekend as my anniversary so it just didn’t work out before now. PAX is pretty much SXSW for the videogame set….including conference sessions, a massive tradeshow floor and tons of nerds.
The exhibit halls were filled with computers and videogame consoles showing the latest games – many not yet available. People would line up for HOURS in order to get a few minutes playing a new game before the rest of the world gets to. Nearly every booth also had some kind of game themed swag they were giving away. I think I was handed seven different free t-shirts in the span of about 20 minutes.
The exhibit halls were massive…so many games to see and try….not to mention the overstimulation of so many booths and displays…including a new take on the mechanical bull ride complete with fog machine:
It was a lot of fun…next year I hope to go again…although will definitely have to make better arrangements that don’t involve leaving home way too early to get down to Seattle first thing in the morning.
You can view my full set of photos from PAX09 on Flickr.
Today, On1 Software updated their remote control app for the iPhone to support Nikon cameras. I’ve been waiting for this to be released ever since I first heard about it earlier this year when it was unveiled but only supported Canon cameras.
Of course, I immediately downloaded it…I opted for the Pro version ($19.99) which has a lot more control options than the $1.99 lite version which is basically just a remote shutter.
First you download the software onto the iPhone and another app for your computer. This is a screenshot of the Mac version:
then you attach you camera to your computer via USB cord.
Launch the iPhone app and it should present a screen with your computer listed on it if everything is setup right. Your iPhone and the computer need to be on the same wifi network for everything to work. Click on it and then you’ll be presented with the control screen which works in either portrait or landscape mode:
Landscape mode is just basic ‘Fire’ operation. Portrait mode has a lot more options:
The settings screen (lower left hand corner icon to activate) has a number of options,
including one of the main reasons I bought the app – an intravalometer option for taking controlled shots over time.
So far, I really like the functionality the app has and the speed when running on the iPhone. Once you take a shot, you see it immediately on the iPhone screen and it saves the file (in my case, a RAW file) on the computer…there is also Live View support. You can even swipe to scroll back and forth between taken shots on the iPhone’s touch screen.
I’ve got a couple of studio shoots coming up in the next few weeks so I’ll be experimenting more with the app very soon.
Nearly every time I’m downtown, I like to stroll through Urban Outfitters as they tend to have an interesting, if overpriced, selection of weird camera gadgets and toys. My recent trip did not disappoint when I found something I’ve head about for probably years, just never saw in person: little plastic lens addons for your cellphone. They’re called ‘jelly lenses’ since they attach via a rubbery substance that doesn’t leave any residue and can easily be popped on or off.
They only had the kalidescope version in store but have a number of options available online. They sell for $8US online or $10Cdn instore (not cheap considering what they are). I was able to find them on ebay for as little as $4Cdn delivered so shop around if you’re interested…ebay also turned up complete sets of different effects for under $20 – just search for ‘jelly lens’.
This is what the kalidescope model looks like:
which results in something like this when attached to my iPhone 3GS:
Here’s a super short video so you can see the kalidescope in action:
Some fun possibilities are possible with these simple and relatively cheap addons. I’ve ordered the fisheye version from ebay so stay tuned for a future post that is sure to come once I have it.
