| Find your Digital Rebel's inner Holga
If you love the look of pictures taken with the Holga —those cheap, plastic cameras made in China—but don't want to deal with the oh-so-last-century idea of film, check out Holgamods' Holga Body Cap. Randy Smith, the man behind Holgamods, has taken the lens off a stock Holga and grafted it onto a Canon body cap that fits all of the Canon D-SLRs, including the Digital Rebel series, the EOS 5D Digital, the new EOS 40D Digital, and even the top-of-the-line EOS-1Ds Mark III (it would probably fit any of the more modern Canon film cameras as well). The result is pure plastic goodness without the darkroom. Like the Lensbaby (another of our favorite toys), the Holga Body Cap isn't an automatic lens. You'll need to shoot in manual mode, and set the shutter speed accordingly, but it's a lot of fun, and you end up those dreamy, variable-focus images that tell everyone you're just a little bit off-kilter.
JVC GR-D750
The final word: The GR-D750 is a solid little performer that punches well above its weight; offering impressive image quality for entry-level users. If you're on the lookout for a cheap miniDV camera, you could certainly do a lot worse than this. ON PAPER at least, the GR-D750 is the unmistakable runt of the JVC litter. With its low image resolution, rudimentary feature set and cheap looking design, we certainly weren't expecting much; yet it turns out that looks can be very deceiving. From its attractive price tag to its above average video performance, this is one of the best budget offerings we've seen in quite a while. It represents excellent value for money and is a perfect introduction to digital video - provided you can live without the bells and whistles. The GR-D750 is a standard-definition camcorder that records video to miniDV tapes.
Astronauts gear up for rendezvous and docking
The Atlantis astronauts, closing in on the international space station, are gearing up for docking today to wrap up a two-day orbital chase. Looping below the lab complex and then up to a point directly in front of the station, commander Steve Frick plans to manually guide Atlantis to a linkup around 12:25 p.m. Frick, pilot Alan Poindexter, flight engineer Rex Walheim, Leland Melvin, Stan Love and European Space Agency astronauts Hans Schlegel and Leopold Eyharts were awakened at 4:45 a.m. today by a recording of Garrison Keillor singing about powdermilk biscuits from "A Prairie Home Companion." "Good morning Atlantis," astronaut Shannon Lucid radioed from mission control. "And an especially great good morning to you today, Steve. It's a great day for rendezvous." "Hey, thanks very much, Shannon," Frick replied.
Tim Masters, wrongly convicted of murder, ready to get on with life
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) Tim Masters no longer has a burning desire to put Fort Collins squarely in his rear-view mirror.
Masters, who on Jan. 22 was released from a life prison sentence after serving almost nine years for murder, had initially planned to leave the city as soon as he could.
Too many bad memories, he said the day before his release.
Fort Collins police pursued Masters as a suspect in the 1987 stabbing death of Peggy Hettrick he was 15 when she was killed through high school and the Navy and eventually arrested him in 1998. He was convicted by a jury in 1999 but saw his conviction overturned earlier this month by a judge who agreed DNA evidence pointed to another suspect.
Now, Masters is a free man, although a cloud of suspicion follows him around.
Power pole knocked down after crash
A crash at Old St. Augustine Road and Pine View Drive knocked out a power pole, but no one was seriously injured. The intersection was blocked off for several hours after the 3 a.m. crash so the power pole could be repaired, but it is now open, said Lt. Ken Bergstrom, of the Tallahassee Police Department. .
Gadgets Kodak Shows World's First 1.4 Micron 5MP Camera Chip
Kodak cut its teeth in the world of print photography and film based cameras with a history going back for decades. With the advent of the digital photography revolution, Kodak has been reinventing itself as a player in the digital photography industry rather than a maker of film and film-based cameras. Kodak leveraged its vast patent library to devise a new camera chip that could make camera phones much more usable. Anyone who has tried to use a camera phone knows that typically the images turn out dark and blurry because the camera portion of most phones is something added on as a secondary function. Kodak sees its new camera chip as making the camera portion of the phone one of the main features in the future. According to the Associated Press (AP) the new Kodak sensor is the world's first 1.4 micron, 5 megapixel camera chip.
Led Zeppelin plays one-night gig in London
LONDON, Dec. 11 The surviving members of Led Zeppelin made a triumphant return to the stage, playing a one-night-only gig in London Monday night.
More than 1 million fans attempted to secure tickets to the concert and some 18,000 were able to actually see the show, which was part of an event honoring the late Atlantic Records founder and producer Ahmet Ertegun.
The band's set list included "Good Times Bad Times," "Ramble On," "Black Dog," "In My Time Of Dying," "For Your Life," "Trampled Under Foot," "Nobody's Fault But Mine," "No Quarter," "Since I have Been Loving You," "Dazed and Confused," "Stairway To Heaven," "The Song Remains The Same," "Misty Mountain Hop," "Kashmir," "Whole Lotta Love" and "Rock And Roll," the BBC reported Tuesday.
The concert, which garnered generally great reviews, marked the first time the band played a full set together since 1980, Entertainment Weekly noted.
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