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I have gone through "Uncle Bob" Martin's new book, Clean Code,which is a lenthy presentation of rules that will help Java developers write better code. It's similar to Kent Beck's Implementation Patterns,except more code-fixated. Clean Code has some good points, but it contains several weaknesses that seem to have gone entirely by the reviewers on Amazon. So, here's the scoop.
First of all, it's well hidden, but the book is only partially written by Bob Martin. Many chapters are written by other consultants who work at Martin's company--many of whom I've never heard of. The one stand-out exception is Michael Feathers, whose chapter on error handling is one of the clearest in the book. I wish he had written more.
The main body consists primarily of explaining various coding rules that Martin calls heuristics and to which he assigns coded abbreviations for later reference. Alas, unlike patterns that have meaningful names as shortcuts, Martin chooses meaningless notations such as C2 and G26. So, "the function should do nothing but compacting[G30]" is a shortcut for the author, but a pain for the reader who has to cross-reference these references repeatedly to know what Martin is talking about.
Unlike Beck's book, there is no theoretical framework to Martin's prescriptions. The book is a series of examples from which he teases this rule and that. Because of this lack of framework there is a certain desultory aspect--the rules come in seemingly random order.
Some of them make you want to leap up and clap. For example, his rule that Javadoc should not contain HTML. How many times I've come to the same conclusion! I want to read comments in code easily. The small lift that HTML brings to Javadoc pages is not in anyway worth the difficulty it adds to the reading of comments in code. Bob Martin's one of the first persons I've encountered to say so unequivocally.
Other rules are good, but later contradicted. For example, Martin states that you should never leave commented-out code in place. [C5] As he points out, no one knows why it's commented out and so it remains in place forever. However, later on in an example of refactoring code per his own rules, Martin comments out large blocks of code without an explanation of how that squares with his earlier advice. (p.374)
Martin also uses questionable coding preferences. For example, all of his code uses indents of 2 columns. 2 columns? It makes every routine look like a solid chunk of code. It's clearly not a practice to be recommended.
A large portion of the book is an example of Martin refactoring someone else's code. He takes a long piece from an OSS project and proceeds to "improve" it. I found this section uncompelling. Perhaps because in Fowler's masterpiece Refactoring,each refactoring magically transforms the code. By comparison, Bob Martin's work seems journeyman-like. I didn't find the initial code interesting nor did I find Martin's cleaned-up version luminous. I was expecting a before-and-after scenario that would make me sit up and take notice. Instead, the exercise felt preachy, condescending at times, and ultimately not terribly convincing.
My last gripe addresses an inexcusable error: typos. There aren't many but they are frequent enough to be distracting. For example, Martin seemingly does not understand the difference between it's and its. (p. 272, p. 296, among others) And his code contains typos too. (p. 309). This carelessness erodes credibility. Books that preach quality should be flawless at the level of spelling and grammar.
Overall, I think some organizations can use several of Martin's heuristics as a means of boosting their in-house coding standards. But I doubt that careful coders will find much of value. Those developers will be better served by Beck's Implementation Patterns,which is based on principles and so communicates much more information in fewer words. Since my review of Beck's book, I must confess my admiration for it has deepened, and it's the volume I would recommend if you're looking to write cleaner code.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Bob Martin's "Clean Code" Reviewed
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Amazon Profits Fall Despite Rising Revenue
Amazon reports fourth-quarter sales of $21.27 billion, but heavy capital expenditures led to a decline in net income in quarter and an overall $39 million loss for 2012.
January 29, 2013
Amazon.com grew revenue at a highly respectable 22% rate in its fourth quarter of 2012, but profits dipped significantly. It's the same unusual combination that produced investor impatience with Amazon.com in its third quarter, when it reported its first loss, of $28 million.
It's also the combination that produced a 40% run-up in the value of Amazon.com stock in 2012. CEO Jeff Bezos has said his firm is investing for the long term, and for the short term, that appears to mean reduced profits.
For 2012 as a whole, Amazon reported a loss of $39 million, compared to net income of $631 million in 2011. For the fourth quarter, net income was down 45% to $97 million from $177 million the year before.
If anyone doubted Amazon is maneuvering to expand its online retailing franchise as fast as possible, the combination of the fourth-quarter's depressed profits with the previous quarter's loss is proof. One obvious culprit is the rapid expansion of fulfillment centers. Twenty were added in 2012, allowing Amazon to take orders and then cut a day or days off the time it takes to get products to customers. It also introduced a host of new products and services, including high-end Kindle Paperwhite e-readers sold at competitive prices.
[ Wondering how's Amazon Web Services unit is doing? See Amazon's Cloud Revenues, Examined. ]
The priority on business expansion seems obvious enough. But Amazon.com CFO Tom Szkutak was tight-lipped about any immediate turnaround plans, and Bezos did not participate in the fourth-quarter earnings call Tuesday. If anything, Szkutak suggested more of the same was probably in the offing. "We will continue to go into locations that we like to be in. We will continue to expand our footprint over time and be closer and closer to customers." No target number for new fulfillment centers was mentioned, but it's clear that capital expenditure phase isn't over.
"Stay tuned," he said. We'll let you know as the year progresses."
Amazon was required to start collecting sales taxes that ranged from 7.25% to 9.75% on sales in California in mid-September. As the highly wired, most populous state, those collections may also have had an impact on profitability in the fourth quarter. New York and Illinois have passed their own e-commerce sales tax measures, and more states are likely to follow their lead.
For the year, net sales increased to $61.09 billion, compared to $48.08 billion in 2011. Operating income decreased 22% to $676 million, compared to $862 million the year before. Net loss was $39 million, or $0.09 per share, compared to net income of $631 million, or $1.37 per share in 2011.
The fourth quarter alone produced sales of $21.27 billion, up 22%. Operating income increased 56% to $405 million, but net income decreased 45% to $97 million, compared to $177 million in the fourth quarter the year before.
In his guidance for the coming first quarter of 2013, Szkutak said revenue of $15 to $16.6 million is expected, and an operating loss as large as $265 million or a net income of $65 million may occur.
Szkutak was questioned by analysts in the earnings call about the "attach rate" or follow-on sales from Kindle, Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Paperwhite tablet sales. The e-reader is viewed as a loss leader or break-even sale for Amazon, and analysts wanted to know whether it was generating follow-on sales that might be viewed as contributing to profits.
"We haven't given out a whole lot of detail on attach rates," said Szkutak, and he continued to hold that line. "Kindle is seeing good progress ... I can't give you specific numbers." The earnings announcement said the Kindle Fire HD, which comes in $199 and $299 versions, was the most frequently purchased electronics item on the Amazon.com site.
Amazon had 23 million digital media items, including movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, books, audiobooks, games and apps available on its site at the end of 2012, compared to 19 million at the end of 2011. The tablet sales are viewed inside Amazon as helping generate a wider market for its digital content.
Amazon's Prime Instant Video is now stocked with 36,000 titles, including popular television series The Closer, Falling Skies, Dance Moms, Storage Wars and Pawn Stars, after recent deals with Warner Bros., Turner Broadcasting, Domestic Television Distribution and A&E Networks.
Szkutak said Amazon was investing in additional geographic locations. "China is one of them," he said. It's also launched Kindle stores for Brazil, China and Japan stocked with thousands of local-language books.
Amazon Web Services revenues remained buried in a supplemental income that Szkutak said included some marketing revenues. The non-AWS revenues in the category are believed to be derived from co-sponsored credit card sales and media sales unrelated to the cloud service.
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When I sit down at a computer, my left hand falls automatically into the inverted-V shape known well by all of you; middle three fingers arched across W, A, S and D. Pinky hovering over left-shift, my thumb resting lightly on the space bar. There's a poetic comfort in this for me. I do it without thinking. These letters are the ones I always come home to.
I'm protective about my natural gravitation to those four letters. They've opened up huge new worlds for me: I've been to Rapture, Azeroth, the cutting cliff-faces of Dear Esther. I spent three and a half years working towards a games degree. I write about games now. This year, I flew to Los Angeles for my first E3.
Those four letters on my keyboard define me: I am a gamer, they say. This is what I do, what I know and what I love.
So last week at E3, it wasn't disappointing press conferences, my ruthless appointment schedule, not having time to eat, or even the nightly drinking that broke me. It was my forced separation from those four buttons.
It happened during one of my first appointments of the show, a half hour I'd booked to check out the sequel to a well-known military shooter franchise. I'd checked into the publisher's booth as media and had been told to wait at a computer for the next available PR person to assist me.
So I sat down, fingers falling perfectly across the keyboard. Before me, yellow grass swayed in the wind, and leaning on the W, I began to move slowly through its blades, watching the brush give way to glimpses of crumbling buildings and battered vehicles. It was a meticulously detailed scene and I wanted to absorb all of it.
This was how the PR representative found me a few minutes later, though it seemed he mistook my marvel for a slow-witted lack of comprehension.
"Do you play PC games?" he asked, frowning.
One of the publications on my media badge was listed as PC PowerPlay. It shouldn't have been necessary for him to ask such a question, but I answered. "Yes."
"Well, OK." I sensed a disbelief in the guy's voice. "But do you play shooters?"
I remember the silence that filled this space beyond this question. I was horrified that anyone could even ask such a thing. Here I was, sitting with my fingers spread across WASD, admiring a game world — and somehow, for some obtuse reason, being assumed to be someone who didn't know anything about the world or how to interact with it.
"I think I better play it for you," he said finally, prying my hands away and turning the keyboard towards himself.
And so there I was, hands twisted awkwardly and uselessly in my lap as a guy walked me through his game. In laboured detail, he explained to me simple mechanics that any shooter player would be well-acquainted with. He avoided the gameplay due to some apparent strange belief that I was not there to learn about shooting things in a shooter game, that perhaps my delicate girl senses might be offended by killing with guns and missiles. He pointed out rabbits in the grass with all the condescension of an adult trying to distract a noisy toddler, as if my interest in this simulation-grade shooter lay in some wildly misguided assumption that it would be full of adorable, fluffy animals.
I looked down the booth and saw gamers at the other computers playing their own games, their own hands controlling the avatars. No PR representatives were hovering at their shoulders, pre-empting that a lack of knowledge would lead to them playing the game "wrong". I felt ridiculous and unwanted. I felt it ridiculous that I should feel unwanted.
I left that booth having learnt very little about the game, beyond that it apparently wasn't a game that should have interested me. I was evidently a nuisance to these people because… because what? I had made the appointment because of my own curiosity. I had rocked up of my own accord, eager to play what I believed to be a game interesting enough to write about. Instead my presence was underestimated, and I was brushed off as not wanting to truly be there. I couldn't figure out why — besides perhaps that I was a woman in a pink skirt.
It continued to happen through the next few days of E3. Upon checking into a booth, I would often be asked by the PR rep whether I wanted someone to play my "hands-on" demo for me. During booth tours, I would more often than not be guided towards the Facebook games. Following demonstrations, I was often offered fact sheets just in case I didn't "understand". People would regularly take note of the publications listed on my badge and say, "But you don't really play, right?" I was assumed to be eye candy, the pretty face of a publication whose content was provided by people with actual talent. Every time I protested, the offender would say — as if it were a proven fact — "Well, girls aren't usually into this stuff, you know."
And you might say that it's silly that I might still find this so hurtful. After so many years of getting underestimated for being a woman in online games, in a games degree, in games journalism, why would it seem that I'm still not used to this? Why am I not tired of it already? Why have I not yet learned to shut up and realise that things will never change? If I'm so offended, why am I not determined to just keep my head down and prove the unbelieving wrong by producing good work?
And honestly? It's because we're f**king beyond this already.
So to be undervalued by the people promoting the games that I wanted to cover — games that I personally chose to cover — was a hurtful underestimation of my capabilities, both as a journalist and as a gamer. I wanted to accurately write about the games that I saw; instead, it was too often assumed from the outset that I would not be able to do this as a woman, and PR representatives took it to task to feed me condescension-laced spoonfuls of their games, lest my apparent black hole of knowledge sucked their product into the empty deadness of inaccurate, female-penned games journalism. And such behaviour on their part only confirms what they assume based on my long hair and my mascara — of course my hands-on recount is not going to be accurate, not when my own hands are batted away from the thing so that someone more "capable" could take point.
It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy that being prevented from playing a game myself leads to only shallow coverage of it, and to have it bylined with a woman's name only reinforces the idea that a woman might be no good at covering games anyway. Why this, when we've made such progress? It's not just an insult to me — it's an insult to my editors, to the publications I write for, to games journalism, and to gaming.
It's unbelievable that this is still happening. If this is how PR people feel about women's capabilities, no wonder the promotional side of games is so sexist. No wonder marketing people still think it's, on some level, OK to have a trailer feature a man ripping into a band of sexy nuns. No wonder we're seeing it filter down into the developers, who implement in-game achievements for looking up the skirts of 19-year-old women dressed like schoolgirls. No wonder we're watching it filter down into the gamers, who tell the ladies amongst us that they can't possibly know anything about the online games that they play. After all, what proof is there of that when women are not allowed to speak on an authoritative level?
When we've come so far, to have a woman be underestimated at such an internal, integral point of the games industry tragically diminishes what the medium can achieve, and undoes so much of what we've worked to overcome.
When I sit down at a computer, fingers automatically fanning out over WASD, I shouldn't have to be made to feel as though it's not my place. As if I'm a fraud, or wasting the time of the people who develop, promote, or publish games. I can be just as capable as any other writer or gamer. Let me.


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What & Why
What is a District Court?
The Legislature in Lansing established District Courts in Michigan about 28 years ago to help relieve the overcrowded State Circuit Courts. There are about 100 District Courts in the State of Michigan.The District Court has exclusive jurisdiction in all civil litigation up to $25,000, small claims, garnishment proceedings, evictions, and land contract and mortgage foreclosures.
In the criminal area, District Courts handle all arraignments, most misdemeanor cases, the setting and acceptance of bail, bench and jury trials, sentencings, and preliminary examinations in felony case.
The District Court handles all traffic cases including parking , informal and formal hearings, and trials.
Why The Court is Really For You
Over 200 years ago, the framers of our Constitution (a document written in only 90 days) asked the Courts to implement words laid down by radicals, dreamers and idealists. They contemplated that State Trial Courts would carry the burden of enforcing the rule of law and protection of individual liberties and indeed, District Courts like Royal Oak handle over 90% of all litigation in the State of Michigan in pursuit of these goals.A little over 25 years ago the Legislature in Lansing passed a law which allowed citizens to bring claims against another party without the need for an attorney. These cases are filed in Small Claims Court and the amount in question cannot exceed $3,000. Over 1,000 people use this branch of the District Court every year. Any citizen may pick up a pamphlet explaining our Small Claims Court at the court clerk window on the 1st floor of the 44th District Court, at 400 E. Eleven Mile in Royal Oak.
Although our Judicial system may not be perfect, it is still the best system in the world. How often we hear the words, "If our soft-hearted and soft-headed judges would put some of these people in jail, we would be able to stop crime". Well, we have more prisoners per capita in our jails than any other civilized nation in the world, and none of these prisoners went there voluntarily. They were all put there by judges.
First and foremost this District Court System is important because it is the first level of Trial Courts. It is the court where most of our citizens come and as a result, it is the most visible.


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Intricate and ornate architectural designs mark the terrain of urban Bielsko Biala located in the south of historic Poland. But simple countryside abodes have carved a special niche for themselves too. One home that caught our attention, is the Klimatyczne Mieszkanie w Bielsku Bialej, designed by In2Home, a group of interior architects. The residence's simple exterior hides contemporary and visually appealing delights. Watch out for random rustic and earthy touches, and sleek functional ideas.
The facade depicts a neat barn like structure that wears an elegant greyish hue. The home is surrounded by farmland style mud paths and plenty of greenery. The rustic slant of the roof with the shingles and the windows popping up every now and then, belie the sense of wonder that is about to meet us as we enter this homely structure.
The living room is a graceful space with a grey sectional that plays up the charm of the white sheer drapes and the smooth flooring. The modern and quirky table features storage advantages and acts as a source of unique visual interest. A delicate lamp sits behind the sofa and bathes the area with its warm glow.
The kitchen is layered with modern renditions of countryside style wood, filling this room with a warm glow. Breaking the monotony of the wood is the white sleek and glossy cabinetry that adds a refined touch to the entire space, and gives it a modern finish.
The dining table has a typical casual European style that rests against the wall on one side. The pine-hued wood exudes simplicity but is also likely lightweight and thus functional. The space is perfect for a romantic home-cooked meal. The setting is for two, with upholstered chairs in a darker shade of brown.
The hallway retains its brick walls and old solid cupboards that still shine with good health and well-designed qualities of sincere craftsmanship. A sewing machine is wedged in between the two closets to remind us of simpler days.
The pretty and cozy attic has been transformed into a bedroom with a low bed and layers of comfortable bedding. The windows and skylight ensure that plenty of natural light comes in while the stripped wallpaper gives it all a robust and cozy feel.
The bathroom too has been designed to be warm and rustic, albeit with more modern amenities. The play of wood and stone makes this earthy space, apt for soulful rejuvenation. The indoor plants in earthen pots add another dose of organic bliss.
With its medley of varying textures and materials, this simply but fashionably designed home brings the countryside charm to life. And that too in a contemporary manner, with sudden touches of quirk. Here is another tour that might pique your interest - A farmhouse from the pages of a fairytale.


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Three Sisters Dive Site
The Three Sisters, part of the impressive Milln Reef, can be found just a short boat trip from Cairns. The three large, colourful bommies are perhaps most famous for the Gorgonian Gorge, with the second and third sisters rising to within one metre of the surface – the three metre gap between them is constantly filled with schools of fusiliers and snapper. Immense schools of snapper, surgeonfish and sweetlips populate the peaks of the pinnacle, while larger pelagic fish are known to use the Gorgonian Gorge as their gateway between the coast and the Pacific Ocean.
Snorkelers and divers alike will find lots to see and do, with swim-throughs, overhangs and crevices to explore, as well as deep dives and pinnacles to swim around. The Three Sisters host a huge variety of wonderful coral, often visited by barracuda, reef sharks, moray and garden eels, lagoon rays and turtles.
Disabled access available, contact operator for details.


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October 1, 2012 · By Dr. Robert R. Owens · 2 Comments
With the economy staggering on the edge of a cliff, our foreign policy collapsing, our empire crumbling, and our embassies under attack, the big question is: why isn't Romney up by 25 points in the polls?
The Republican side of the Washington-based perpetually re-elected party of power has a habit of nominating candidates whose main qualification is that "It's my turn." Look at Dole, McCain, and now Romney. These three may have slugged it out in the trenches and proven themselves to be reliable workhorses and adequate fund raisers, but they don't inspire anyone.
The most memorable speech Dole gave was in a Viagra commercial. McCain spends more time reaching across the aisle to his Progressive comrades then he does trying to do anything even vaguely conservative. The best move he made was to nominate Sarah Palin, and then his team spent all their time trying to put a muzzle on a momma bear intent on going rogue. The most memorable event in his campaign was when he theatrically suspended his campaign to fly to Washington to deal with the financial collapse. Once there he blended into the background and whispered a meek, "Me too."
Now along comes Romney.
By nominating him, the Republicans threw away one of the most potent differences they had between themselves and Mr. Obama: Obamacare. During the rough and tumble of the primaries and immediately thereafter, Governor Romney proclaimed he would end Obamacare on Day One. Now he says he likes parts of it and will only get rid of the parts he disagrees with. Coming from the man who passed and not only defends, but also says he's proud of the mandatory program known as Romneycare, how will he credibly attack Obamacare in the debates when all his opponent has to say is your plan was the template for mine?
In the primaries, the former governor from Massachusetts, who has been running for President since he was elected Governor in 2003, was relentless in his negative attacks against his more conservative rivals. In the general election against the hard-hitting Chicago machine bent on doing whatever it takes to retain power, Mr. Romney seems to have lost his edge. It's like watching a boxer with oversized gloves constrained by the Marquis of Queensberry Rules fighting a gang banger from the South side in a cage match.
With the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media solidly in the Obama camp and using every opportunity to boost one side to the detriment of the other, Romney has to depend solely on paid advertising to counteract ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC. Every day, every network except FOX masquerades as news outlets as they work tirelessly to re-elect their Fearless Leader. The thrill running up and down their leg energizes them enough to advance their agenda day and night turning the worst debacle in American foreign policy since the hostage crisis into Romney's gaff or Obama raiding Social Security for hundreds of billions into Romney wants to throw Grandma off the cliff and starve her dog.
This is like watching a slow motion train wreck. Wake up Mr. Romney! If you want to win this thing you are going to have to win this thing. They may be starting to vote in many places but in Chicago they're already counting the pre-marked ballots. The Republicans are starting out with the cards stacked against them, and if Romney doesn't come out swinging in the debates he may join the ranks of also rans even if he has been running for ten years.
A little free advice: Instead of running away from your 47% comment, embrace it. You were correct. You don't have a chance to gain the vote of those who are dependent on government. However, unless this express-to-the-poorhouse is turned around, soon this might be the last election before the dependent class becomes the majority. And if that ever happens, the Democrats will never lose a presidential election again. Mr. Romney, don't equivocate about your wealth and your personal success. Hold it up as something anyone has a chance to achieve in a free society. Lead the way back to capitalism before we totter over the entitlement cliff into a nanny state nightmare of cradle-to-grave regulations guaranteeing a mediocre future.
Come on! You fought like a brawler to get this opportunity; don't throw it away because you're afraid of being called a racist, a vulture capitalist, or a tool of the elite. You're being called those things anyway. In that first debate, you had better punch Mr. Obama's ticket back to Chi-Town or this train is going to leave the station and you'll miss the boat.
If Mr. Obama is re-elected on his platform of using executive orders to take everything from the producers and give it to the non-producers, everyone who votes for him should remember elections have consequences and every once in a while you get what you vote for. And as sweet as the "I told you so" might be, it doesn't have to happen. Anyone who will stand up and offer to lead America back to America should be able to beat the worst president in living memory. Don't equivocate. Don't pander. Make a straightforward case for limited government, personal freedom, and economic opportunity.
This may be the last chance we have to turn this thing around before we hit the dustbin of History. The 47% are going to vote for "Give me more!" no matter what you say, so you might as well say what might motivate the undecided to finally decide and vote for freedom.
Mr. Romney could say that after spending trillions of dollars to revive the economy, recession is the new normal. He could point out that after years of apologizing and bowing to others, Mr. Obama has succeeded in changing us from the world's sole superpower to the world's punching bag. His campaign spots could remind everyone the workforce is shrinking, the lines for food stamps, welfare and disability are growing, and all the opposition offers is more of the same.
Since anyone who has lived in the Obama nation knows all these things, what should be the most effective campaign slogan Mr. Romney could use is "I'm not Obama." He's already using that; however, to win he needs to appeal to the hearts and the minds of those whose votes haven't been put on layaway by the federal benefits machine. This election will be won or lost in the debates. If Mitt Romney will stand up and say what he means and mean what he says, and if he will make a case for returning to Constitutional government he will win. If he soft pedals for fear of making a mistake or offending someone, he will deliver the Republic to the fate of all past republics: financial collapse and ruin.
Mr. Romney, you need to show the people of this country that you are in it to win it. Show some passion and fight the good fight for truth, justice and the American way. And whatever you do, don't surrender without a fight!
Note: Reader comments are reviewed before publishing, and only salient comments that add to the topic will be published. Profanity is absolutely not allowed and will be summarily deleted. Spam, copied statements and other material not comprised of the reader's own opinion will also be deleted.
"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the party over to the so-called moderates wouldn't make any sense at all." - Ronald Reagan, Nov. 10, 1964 |


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MTV 'Teen Mom' Allegedly Choked by Her Mother
MTV 'Teen Mom' Allegedly Choked by Her Mother
One of the young mothers from the MTV reality show "Teen Mom" was allegedly choked and then hit by her 54-year-old mom this weekend -- and mom is now facing domestic violence charges.
The Council Bluffs Police Department in Iowa tells TMZ Debra Danielson -- the mother of 18-year-old "Teen Mom" Farrah Abraham -- was arrested at around 1 PM on Saturday for suspicion of domestic abuse/serious assault.
According to cops, Farrah and Debra started arguing over childcare issues when Debra allegedly threw an MTV shirt at her daughter ... which landed "on or near" Farrah's baby, who started crying.
That's when Farrah claims she went off on her mother -- who then grabbed Farrah by the throat. Farrah told cops she pushed her mother's hand away from her throat, causing her mother to strike her on the right side of her head and mouth.
In the report, officers say they observed multiple cuts on the right side of Farrah's lips.
The story was first reported by the The Daily Nonpareil.


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The next generation of Ground Control frames have arrived, introducing the BIGs. A collaborative effort with team riders and our design staff, the BIGs are built to offer GC's trusted street attributes blended with smooth roll of a recreational frame setup. By increasing the height of the frame, increasing the width of the h-block, and lowering the side walls and outer edges of the center groove, we are now able to offer a frame that allows a maximum wheel size of 72mm that skates like a street frame. Complete with aluminum spacers, your wheels will roll smooth and fast with minimal resistance.
Ground Control will also offering matching 72mm/88A wheels with a profile that fits perfectly to the raised groove, offering an impressive level of wheel protection to keep from biting on grinds.
Note: UFS coupling mount height is 2mm (5/64") max. You might have to grind down the pins of certain soul frames.
Ground Control has been the heading producer of aggressive frames for around a decade now. Proven and very characteristic material used in frame production has found multitude of fans worldwide. Featherlite series and BIG frames are one of the most wanted products in our industry.
Ground Control is represented by: Nils Jansons, Chris Smith, Andrew Broom, Alex Burston, Josh Glowicki, Matty Shrock.


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- The Amen Break (YouTube) — fascinating 20m history of the amen break, a handful of bars of drum solo from a forgotten 1969 song which became the origin of a huge amount of popular music from rap to jungle and commercials, and the contested materials at the heart of sample-based music. Remix it and weep. (via Beta Knowledge)
- The MySQL Ecosystem at Scale (PDF) — nice summary of how MySQL is used on massive users, and where the sweet spots have been found.
- Lab41 (Github) — open sourced code from a spook hacklab in Silicon Valley.
- Fanulus — open sourced Hadoop-based graph analytics engine for analyzing graphs represented across a multi-machine compute cluster. A breadth-first version of the graph traversal language Gremlin operates on graphs stored in the distributed graph database Titan, in any Rexster-fronted graph database, or in HDFS via various text and binary formats.
"MySQL" entries
Dynamic columns in MariaDB
Add columns to a table on the fly without altering its schema.
MariaDB and similar SQL database systems allow for a variety of data types that may be used for storing data in columns within tables. When creating or altering a table's schema, it's good to know what to expect, to know what kind of data will be stored in each column. If you know that a column will contain numbers, use a numeric data type like INT
, not VARCHAR
. It's best to use the appropriate data type for a column. Generally, you'll have better control of the data and possibly better performance.
But sometimes you can't predict what type of data might be entered into a column. For such a situation, you might use VARCHAR
set to 255 characters wide, or maybe TEXT
if plenty of data might be entered. This is a very cool and fairly new alternative: you could create a table in which you would add columns on the fly, but without altering the table's schema. That may sound absurd, but it's possible to do this in MariaDB with dynamic columns.
Dynamic columns are basically columns within a column. If you know programming well, they're like a hash within an array. That may sound confusing, but it will make more sense when you see it in action. To illustrate this, I'll pull some ideas from my new book, Learning MySQL and MariaDB (O'Reilly 2015). All of the examples in my book and this article are based on a database for bird-watchers.
5 ways developers win with PaaS
Powering your app with open source and OpenShift
As a software developer, you are no doubt familiar with the process of abstracting away unnecessary detail in code — imagine if that same principle were applied to application hosting. Say hello to Platform as a Service (PaaS), which enables you to host your applications in the cloud without having to worry about the logistics, leaving you to focus on your code. This post will discuss five ways in which PaaS benefits software developers, using the open source OpenShift PaaS by Red Hat as an example.
No More Tedious Config Tasks
Most of us don't become developers to do system administration, but when you are running your own infrastructure you end up doing exactly that. A PaaS can take that pain away by handling pesky config and important security updates for you. As a bonus, it makes your sys admin happy too by allowing you to provision your own environment for that killer new app idea you want to tinker with, rather than nagging them for root access on a new VM.
On OpenShift, it goes like this: let's say you decide you want to test an idea for a Java app, using Tomcat and PostgreSQL (yes, we could argue about the merits of those choices, but work with me here). You can spin that up with a one-line terminal command:
rhc app create myawesomeapp tomcat-7 postgresql-9.2 -s
That -s on the end is telling the platform to make the app auto-scaling, which I will elaborate on later; yes, that's all it takes. RHC (Red Hat Cloud) is just a Ruby Gem wrapping calls to the OpenShift REST API. You could also use the OpenShift web console or an IDE plugin to do this, or call the API directly if that's how you roll. The key technologies in play here are just plain old Git and SSH — there's nothing proprietary.
Four short links: 27 September 2013
Amen Break, MySQL Scale, Spooky Source, and Graph Analytics Engine
Scaling People, Process, and Technology with Python
OSCON 2013 Speaker Series
NOTE: If you are interested in attending OSCON to check out Dave's talk or the many other cool sessions, click over to the OSCON website where you can use the discount code OS13PROG to get 20% off your registration fee.
Since 2009, I've been leading the optimization team at AppNexus, a real-time advertising exchange. On this exchange, advertisers participate in real-time auctions to bid on individual ad impressions. The highest bid wins the auction, and that advertiser gets to show an ad. This allows advertisers to carefully target where they advertise—maximizing the effectiveness of their advertising budget—and lets websites maximize their ad revenue.
We do these auctions often (~50 billion a day) and fast (<100 milliseconds). Not surprisingly, this creates a lot of technical challenges. One of those challenges is how to automatically maximize the value advertisers get for their marketing budgets—systematically driving consumer engagement through ad placements on particular websites, times of day, etc.—and we call this process "optimization." The volume of data is large, and the algorithms and strategies aren't trivial.
In order to win clients and build our business to the scale we have today, it was crucial that we build a world-class optimization system. But when I started, we didn't have a scalable tech stack to process the terabytes of data flowing through our systems every day, and we didn't have the team to do any of the required data modeling.
So, we needed to hire great people fast. However, there aren't many veterans in the advertising optimization space, and because of that, we couldn't afford to narrow our search to only experts in Java or R or Matlab. In order to give us the largest talent pool possible to recruit from, we had to choose a tech stack that is both powerful and accessible to people with diverse experience and backgrounds. So we chose Python.
Python is easy to learn. We found that people coding in R, Matlab, Java, PHP, and even those who have never programmed before could quickly learn and get up to speed with Python. This opened us up to hiring a tremendous pool of talent who we could train in Python once they joined AppNexus. To top it off, there's a great community for hiring engineers and the PyData community is full of programmers who specialize in modeling and automation.
Additionally, Python has great libraries for data modeling. It offers great analytical tools for analysts and quants and when combined, Pandas, IPython, and Matplotlib give you a lot of the functionality of Matlab or R. This made it easy to hire and onboard our quants and analysts who were familiar with those technologies. Even better, analysts and quants can share their analysis through the browser with IPython.
Now that we had all of these wonderful employees, we needed a way to cut down the time to get them ramped up and pushing code to production.
First, we wanted to get our analysts and quants looking at and modeling data as soon as possible. We didn't want them worrying about writing database connector code, or figuring out how to turn a cursor into a data frame. To tackle this, we built a project called Link.
Imagine you have a MySQL database. You don't want to hardcode all of your connection information because you want to have a different config for different users, or for different environments. Link allows you to define your "environment" in a JSON config file, and then reference it in code as if it is a Python object.
{ "dbs":{ "my_db": { "wrapper": "MysqlDB", "host": "mysql-master.123fakestreet.net", "password": "", "user": "", "database": "" } }}
Now, with only three lines of code you have a database connection and a data frame straight from your mysql database. This same methodology works for Vertica, Netezza, Postgres, Sqlite, etc. New "wrappers" can be added to accommodate new technologies, allowing team members to focus on modeling the data, not how to connect to all these weird data sources.
In [1]: from link import lnk In [2]: my_db = lnk.dbs.my_db In [3]: df = my_db.select('select * from my_table').as_dataframe() Int64Index: 325 entries, 0 to 324 Data columns: id 325 non-null values user_id 323 non-null values app_id 325 non-null values name 325 non-null values body 325 non-null values created 324 non-null values
By having the flexibility to easily connect to new data sources and APIs, our quants were able to adapt to the evolving architectures around us, and stay focused on modeling data and creating algorithms.
Second, we wanted to minimize the amount of work it took to take an algorithm from research/prototype phase to full production scale. Luckily, with everyone working in Python, our quants, analysts, and engineers are using the same language and data processing libraries. There was no need to re-implement an R script in Java to get it out across the platform.
Read more…
High Availability with MySQL and Moving to MongoDB
OSCON 2013 Speaker Series
Henrik Ingo (@h_ingo) is a MySQL architect, author, and OSCON 2013 Speaker. In this interview we talk about high availability in MySQL and why he switched to MongoDB.
NOTE: If you are interested in attending OSCON to check out Henrik's talk or the many other cool sessions, click over to the OSCON website where you can use the discount code OS13PROG to get 20% your registration fee.
Key highlights include:
- Why is high availability so important now? [Discussed at 2:25]
- Percona and Maria DB are not much different than plain old MySQL. [Discussed at 6:24]
- Moving from MySQL to MongoDB [Discussed at 8:40]
You can view the full interview here:
The Power of a Private HTTP Archive Instance: Finding a Representative Performance Baseline
Velocity 2013 Speaker Series
Be honest, have you ever wanted to play Steve Souders for a day and pull some revealing stats or trends about some web sites of your choice? Or maybe dig around the HTTP archive? You can do that and more by setting up your own HTTP Archive.
httparchive.org is a fantastic tool to track, monitor, and review how the web is built. You can dig into trends around page size, page load time, content delivery network (CDN) usage, distribution of different mimetypes, and many other stats. With the integration of WebPagetest, it's a great tool for synthetic testing as well.
You can download an HTTP Archive MySQL dump (warning: it's quite large) and the source code from the download page and dissect a snapshot of the data yourself. Once you've set up the database, you can easily query anything you want.
You need MySQL, PHP, and your own webserver running. As I mentioned above, HTTP Archive relies on WebPagetest—if you choose to run your own private instance of WebPagetest, you won't have to request an API key. I decided to ask Patrick Meenan for an API key with limited query access. That was sufficient for me at the time. If I ever wanted to use more than 200 page loads per day, I would probably want to set up a private instance of WebPagetest.
To find more details on how to set up an HTTP Archive instance yourself and any further advice, please check out my blog post.
Going back to the scenario I described above: the real motivation is that often you don't want to throw your website(s) in a pile of other websites (e.g. not related to your business) to compare or define trends. Our digital property at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) spans over dozens of URLs that have different purposes and audiences. For example, CBC Radio covers most of the Canadian radio landscape, CBC News offers the latest breaking news, CBC Hockey Night in Canada offers great insights on anything related to hockey, and CBC Video is the home for any video available on CBC. It's valuable for us to not only compare cbc.ca to the top 100K Alexa sites but also to verify stats and data against our own pool of web sites.
In this case, we want to use a set of predefined URLs that we can collect HTTP Archive stats for. Hence a private instance can come in handy—we can run tests every day, or every week, or just every month to gather information about the performance of the sites we've selected. From there, it's easy to not only compare trends from httparchive.org to our own instance as a performance baseline, but also have a great amount of data in our local database to run queries against and to do proper performance monitoring and investigation.
Visualizing Data
The beautiful thing about having your own instance is that you can be your own master of data visualization: you can now create more charts in addition to the ones that came out of the box with the default HTTP Archive setup. And if you don't like Google chart tools, you may even want to check out D3.js or Highcharts instead.
The image below shows all mime types used by CBC web properties that are captured in our HTTP archive database, using D3.js bubble charts for visualization.
Read more…
Ins and Outs of Running MySQL on AWS
Laine Campbell on why AWS is a good platform option for running MySQL at scale
In the following interview, PalominoDB owner and CEO Laine Campbell discusses advantages and disadvantages of using Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a platform for running MySQL. The solution provides a functional environment for young startups who can't afford a database administrator (DBA), Campbell says, but there are drawbacks to be aware of, such as a lack of access to your database's file system, and troubleshooting "can get quite hairy." This interview is a sneak preview to Campbell's upcoming Velocity session, "Using Amazon Web Services for MySQL at Scale."
Why is AWS a good platform for scaling MySQL?
Laine Campbell: The elasticity of Amazon's cloud service is key to scaling on most tiers in an application's infrastructure, and this is true with MySQL as well. Concurrency is a recurring pattern with MySQL's scaling capabilities, and as traffic and concurrent queries grow, one has to introduce some fairly traditional scaling patterns. One such pattern is adding replicas to distribute read I/O and reduce contention and concurrency, which is easy to do with rapid deployment of new instances and Elastic Block Storage (EBS) snapshots.
Additionally, sharding can be done with less impact via EBS snapshots being used to recreate the dataset, and then data that is not part of the new shard is removed. Amazon's relational database service for MySQL—RDS—is also a new, rather compelling scaling pattern for the early stages of a company's life, when resources are scarce and administrators have not been hired. RDS is a great pattern for people to emulate in terms of rapid deployment of replicas, ease of master failovers, and the ability to easily redeploy hosts when errors occur, rather than spending extensive time trying to repair or clean up data.
Four short links: 23 April 2013
Processing for Illustrator, Archiving Tools, Sweet Retro Art, and More Database Tools
- Drawscript — Processing for Illustrator. (via BERG London)
- Archive Team Warrior — a virtual archiving appliance. You can run it to help with the ArchiveTeam archiving efforts. It will download sites and upload them to our archive. (via Ed Vielmetti)
- Retro Vectors — royalty-free and free of charge.
- TokutekDB Goes Open Source — a high-performance, transactional storage engine for MySQL and MariaDB. See the announcement.
Four short links: 26 July 2012
Drone Overload, Mac MySQL Tool, Better Cancer Diagnosis Through AI, and Inconstant Identifiers
- Drones Over Somalia are Hazard to Air Traffic (Washington Post) — In a recently completed report, U.N. officials describe several narrowly averted disasters in which drones crashed into a refugee camp, flew dangerously close to a fuel dump and almost collided with a large passenger plane over Mogadishu, the capital. (via Jason Leopold)
- Sequel Pro — free and open source Mac app for managing MySQL databases. It's an update of CocoaMySQL.
- Neural Network Improves Accuracy of Least Invasive Breast Cancer Test — nice use of technology to make lives better, for which the creator won the Google Science Fair. Oh yeah, she's 17. (via Miss Representation)
- Free Harder to Find on Amazon — so much for ASINs being permanent and unchangeable. Amazon "updated" the ASINs for a bunch of Project Gutenberg books, which means they've lost all the reviews, purchase history, incoming links, and other juice that would have put them at the top of searches for those titles. Incompetence, malice, greed, or a purely innocent mistake? (via Glyn Moody)
The key web technologies that work together for dynamic web sites
An interview with the author of Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS
The technologies that led to an explosion of interactive web sites — PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS — are still as popular today, and a non-programmer can master them quickly.


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Basic Specifications | |
Full model name: | Sony Alpha DSLR-A850 |
Resolution: | 24.60 Megapixels |
Sensor size: | 35mm (35.9mm x 24.0mm) |
Kit Lens: | n/a |
Viewfinder: | Optical / LCD (playback only) |
Native ISO: | 200 - 3200 |
Extended ISO: | 100 - 6400 |
Shutter: | 1/8000 - 30 sec |
Dimensions: |
6.2 x 4.6 x 3.2 in. (156 x 117 x 82 mm) |
Weight: | 30.0 oz (850 g) |
Availability: | 10/2009 |
Manufacturer: | Sony |
Full specs: | Sony A850 specifications |
Your purchases support this site
Buy the Sony A850
4.0 out of 5.0
Sony A850 Overview
Review by Dave Etchells, Shawn Barnett, and Zig Weidelich
Overview by Mike Tomkins
Full Review Posted: 08/27/09
When it was first announced in September of 2008, the Sony A900 broke new ground in affordability for a full-frame DSLR. Since then, the competition has sharpened, with Canon's EOS-5D Mark II forcing an even lower price point. Now, slightly less than a year after the A900's announcement, the Sony A850 once rewrites the rules again, as the first-ever full-frame digital SLR with a list price of less than $2,000. While it's "only" $700 less than the current price of the A900, this is truly a landmark price point for a full-frame camera, let alone one with 24.6 megapixels of resolution.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Sony A850 is just how close it is to the A900 (which will remain in the market) in specs and behavior, at a price that's roughly 26% lower. Here's the very short list of differences:
Sony A850 differences vs A900
That's it! Sony tells us that the body, sensor, and electronics are identical to those of the A900, and our tests of the Sony A850 bear that out: Image quality is essentially identical to that of the A900, and other performance characteristics apart from the continuous-mode speed and viewfinder coverage appear identical as well. If you've been hungering for an A900 but couldn't quite justify the cost, the Sony A850 is the camera you've been waiting for. And if you've been wanting to get into full-frame digital photography but couldn't previously afford it, this might finally be your opportunity.
Because the body, user interface, sensor, and electronics of the Sony A850 are the same as the A900, the bulk of our verbiage in this review is lifted straight from our review of the A900 last year. We did completely redo our image analysis and performance measurements, though, because we never simply take a company's word for it that a camera or part of a camera is "identical" to another: We always test to verify, and arrive at our own conclusions. In the case of the Sony A850, though, our tests supported the contention that it's the same image-wise as the A900.
As with the A900, the Sony Alpha A850 gets a whopping 24.6-megapixel resolution from its full-frame Exmor CMOS image sensor -- the highest sensor resolution of any 35mm digital SLR yet announced. To handle all the data produced by the high-resolution imager, the Sony DSLR-A850 uses dual Bionz image processors, allowing for three frames-per-second shooting for up to 23 JPEG or 16 RAW frames (in our tests).
The sensor is mounted on a moving platter that allows for in-camera image stabilization, branded as SteadyShot Inside. That's another world's first for a full-frame digital SLR, and it's no mean feat when you consider that the sensor shift mechanism has to deal with the extra mass of a full-frame sensor. The various digital SLR cameras seen to date that feature sensor-shift stabilization all have significantly smaller 1.5x crop sensors. Sony rose to the challenge by designing a new more powerful sensor shift mechanism, and rates the Alpha A850 as good for a 2.5 to 4-stop improvement.
The Sony A850's body is constructed from five main magnesium alloy sections, and includes sealing to reduce ingress of moisture between the body panels, as well as at the various control dials and buttons. The Sony A850 has a Sony Alpha lens mount that also accepts Konica and Konica Minolta glass. A large pentaprism sits above the lens mount, both dictating the camera body's workmanlike visual aesthetic, and providing a very large and bright TTL optical viewfinder with 0.74x magnification. The rear panel features a large 3-inch LCD display with 921,600 dot resolution, equating to VGA (640 x 480) pixel with three R, G, and B dots per pixel. This is used solely for reviewing of images, as well as for menus and status display; the Sony A850 doesn't offer live view capability. There's also a small top-panel status LCD which indicates remaining shots and battery life, as well as the basic exposure variables.
The Sony Alpha A850 offers ISO sensitivity from 200 to 3,200 equivalent, but is expandable to ISO 100 to 6,400 equivalent. Shutter speeds range from 30 to 1/8000 second, plus a bulb setting, and x-sync is 1/250 second (or 1/200 second when SteadyShot is enabled). Metering is achieved by a 40-segment honeycomb sensor, and you can also choose from center-weighted or spot metering modes. Focusing is achieved courtesy of a a nine-point phase detection autofocus system with f/2.8 dual center cross sensor, and there are also ten supplemental AF-assist points arranged adjacent to the main AF points. There's no built-in flash in the Sony A850, with the design instead offering a hot shoe and PC flash sync terminal to allow for external flash strobes and lighting setups.
The Sony A850 has dual flash card slots, and hence can store images on either CompactFlash Type-I or Type-II cards, or on Memory Stick Duo cards. The Sony A850 draws its power from a proprietary NP-FM500H InfoLithium rechargeable battery that's rated for about 880 shots per charge, to CIPA testing standards. Connectivity options include both USB 2.0 High Speed for computer connection, and both standard and high definition video. For standard-def, there's NTSC / PAL switchable composite video output, while high-def is achieved via an HDMI connection.
Sony A850 Pricing and Availability
Pricing for the Sony Alpha A850 is set at US$1,999.95, with availability slated for availability in the US beginning October 8, 2009. The product bundle includes the camera body, battery, and charger, and eyepiece cup. There's also a range of software in the bundle: Image Data Converter SR, Image Data Lightbox SR, Remote Camera Control, and Picture Motion Browser. This last application is Windows-only, while the remainder are included in both Windows and MacOS versions.
Sony A850 User Report
by Shawn Barnett and Dave Etchells
It takes but a glance to see that the Sony Alpha A850 is unique among modern digital SLR cameras. The large, pyramidal shape behind the SONY logo suggests that a very large pentaprism glass element lies underneath. A quick glance through the viewfinder completes the impression: it's like a room in there, into which it seems you might fall if you're not careful. 35mm camera owners from the last century will find the Sony A850's viewfinder comforting, then quickly forget about it and begin composing with an impressive photographic tool.
Like its most advanced sub-frame predecessor the Sony A700, the Sony Alpha A850 is big and boxy, not attempting to appear sleek, it looks more like a big industrial device, as cameras once did. Yet it fits well in the hand: a machine to the eye that is nevertheless well crafted for the human intended to use it.
Its weight is substantial, at 2.07 pounds (939g) without a lens, but with a battery and CF card (that's lighter than the Nikon D700 and just a little heavier than the Canon 5D Mark II); and it measures 6.1 x 4.6 x 3.2 inches (156 x 117 x 82mm). We mentioned the bulk and weight of the excellent Zeiss 24-70 f/2.8 zoom lens in our review of the A900; a natural companion to the A900/850, but one that came at a heavy price, both financially and in terms of weight. Simultaneous with the announcement of the A850, though, Sony also announced a new and very intriguing 28-75mm f/2.8 optic, with is not only substantially lighter (only 20 ounces/565g, vs. 33.3 ounces/955g), but sports a list price that's over a thousand dollars lower than the previous Zeiss optic.
The Sony A850's front panel looks a lot like that of the earlier A700, though the handgrip bulges a bit more into the hand, and the Mode dial is positioned straight and level, while the A700's was mounted at a slant. Missing from the front of the grip is the Grip-sensor that was part of the Eye-start AF system.
Just under the bright orange Alpha logo is the PC flash sync terminal, covered with a rubber flap. Like all other rubber flaps on the Sony A850, this terminal cover swings open and stays open, as it's hinged to the camera, rather than the rubber itself serving as a hinge. That means you don't have to fight with it as you make your connection.
The Sony A850's grip has a comfortable finger groove for the middle finger, in which the infrared Remote Commander sensor is nestled. The inside of the grip is indented for a better finger grip, as is the front of the camera between the grip and lens, which is fairly obvious in the photo above: a very nice touch that those with long fingers will appreciate. Textured rubber surrounds the grip areas both left and right of the lens. The bottom of the body on the left (on the right side in this image) is tapered to allow a more comfortable fit into your palm as you reach your fingers around to the lens barrel.
The rear of the Sony A850 is laid out identically to the Sony A700. Positions are slightly different, with the LCD taking up less of the overall space, mostly because there's more width overall. The left side tapers away just left of the LCD, somewhat minimizing the bulk of the bulge at the left, giving your nose a little break as well, as you move your right eye up to the viewfinder.
The Sony A850's LCD is the same resolution as was on the A700, with 921,600 pixels, and a transflective (both transmissive and reflective) design, meaning that in bright daylight you can still frame images. Checking exposure accurately is a little harder, but that's what histograms are for. Note that though it's a hot feature on many of the latest digital SLRs, the Sony A850 has no live view mode; however, there is a new Intelligent Preview mode that can serve on occasion, and do a few tricks. More on that later.
Note that though there are still infrared sensors beneath the optical viewfinder, these are only for turning off the LCD when you put the camera up to your eye; Eye-start AF is no longer a feature on the Sony A850.
The rear Status display also opens up the option to change many settings right on the screen. Just press the Fn (function) button and use the joystick above it to navigate around the screen. Pressing down on the joystick activates your selection, which you can modify with one or the other control wheel (the rear or front wheel). It'll take a little time to figure out which wheel is necessary for each item, unfortunately. Some use only the front, others use both.
Here's the A900 with the big, beautiful Zeiss 24-70 f/2.8 zoom lens, a fitting if high-dollar mate to the Sony A850. We shot extensively with this lens, and found it to be better than satisfactory, worthy of the A850/900. It also balances out the camera's big body. See our review of this $1,800 lens on SLRgear.com.
Now's a good time to point out that there is no pop-up flash on the Sony A850, due partly to the very large pentaprism inside. I think many of the Sony A850's intermediate owners will miss the convenience of a pop-up flash, as an external flash unit significantly raises the weight of an already large and heavy camera.
The Mode dial on the left has only full Auto, Program, Aperture, Shutter, and Manual modes, plus three user-programmable Custom modes; there are no Scene modes. To the right there's a new top status display, one that's very simple compared to most high-end digital SLR cameras. It displays only numbers, usually the shutter speed and aperture values, along with remaining frames available.
The other four buttons on the top control Exposure Compensation, Drive mode, White balance, and ISO, working in concert with the rear control dial. While the front buttons for Exposure compensation and Drive mode are easy to press, we found the other two a little harder, comfortable with neither the thumb nor forefinger without removing your hand from the grip.
The Sony A850's rubber doors are the best-behaved doors of this type that we've seen on any camera, swinging open and staying put, rather than flapping shut when you let them go. In clockwise order from the top left, they are Remote, HDMI, USB/Video out, and DC In.
Sony A850 owners will have the option of using CompactFlash (including Microdrives) or Sony Memory Stick Duo format. Unfortunately, switching between cards is not automatic when one fills up, as is common on other dual-card digital cameras; still, you can access it on the rear Status display, which turns into an onscreen menu when you press the Fn (Function) button.
Steady there, big boy. Though it's big, Sony managed to stabilize their 35.9 x 24mm, 24.6-megapixel imager. Click the icons in the lower left corner to see animation. Animation courtesy Sony Electronics.
SteadyShot INSIDE. Sony says many experts thought adding sensor-shift image stabilization to a full-frame digital SLR would be impossible, but they managed to get it done nevertheless. They're moving a very large sensor at high speeds, so it is quite an achievement. We haven't tested it in the SLRgear.com lab yet, but in casual shooting it seemed to work quite well. Sony states that it offers from 2.5 to 4 stops of exposure latitude.
Though all of us like seeing the stabilizing effects of Canon and Nikon's optical image stabilization through the viewfinder, we also like (very much) the five-bar meter that appears in the optical viewfinder to tell you just how much the SteadyShot system has to work. This lets you pick a moment to trip the shutter when the camera is the most stable, increasing your chances of getting a sharp shot.
The same mechanism activates at startup and shutdown to shake dust from the sensor, and a new anti-static coating has been applied to the outermost glass to reduce the amount of dust that can stick to the sensor. (Note that we've found most anti-dust systems to be only somewhat effective, and the lower shaking frequencies of IS actuator-based systems make them that much less effective than those using a piezo element to produce the vibration.)
Improved EV bracketing. Recent Sony digital SLR cameras were limited to only two automatic bracketing settings: +/- 0.3 EV or +/- 0.7 EV. The Sony A850 allows a full spread of EV options, up to +/- 2.0 EV, a more useful spread.
Interchangeable screens. The Sony A850 comes with a Type G focusing screen, but two additional screens are available: Type M and Type L. Type M, called Super Spherical Acute Matte is superior for discriminating between in-focus and out-of-focus objects, but unfortunately it dims the view somewhat, enough that it's only usable with lenses with maximum apertures of f/2.8 or more. Type L is the same as the very bright Type G, but with a grid for alignment or applying the rule of thirds. As with other digital SLRs that have interchangeable screens, the user has to set the type of screen in Settings menu 3.
Sensor. Sony's Exmor CMOS sensor is what gives the Sony A850 its magic. Above you can see how the A850's size compares to the Sony APS-C-sized sensor. Its pixels are actually larger than those in the Sony A700's 10-megapixel sensor, making for greater ISO sensitivity. The 24.6-megapixel sensor is more than just a sensor, however, as it includes the analog to digital (A/D) conversion circuitry right on board the chip. Over 6,000 A/D converters work in parallel to convert the image data before electronic noise can creep into the signal-processing chain. That makes for fast data acquisition too.
Processors. From there, the dual Bionz processors take the large files and crank them through fast enough to allow up to five frames per second capture, even in RAW + JPEG capture.
Power like that also allows for sophisticated functions like Peripheral Illumination correction, which fixes vignetting problems in many situations.
AF system. The Sony A850 has the same new autofocus system that was introduced with the A900, with nine primary autofocus points and ten supplemental AF points. The user can select the nine AF points, but the ten additional points are used by the system to enhance the performance of the others when the Sony A850 is set to wide-area AF mode. A larger sensor in the center of the frame switches on when lenses of f/2.8 or larger are attached, allowing the system to take advantage of the larger aperture.
If you choose to use the Local AF mode, you can select from the nine AF points in the viewfinder with the joystick on the rear panel. Choose Wide, and the Sony A850 will choose for you. Choose Spot and the Sony A850 uses the more accurate center AF point. See the Optics section for a more detailed discussion of the Sony A850's AF system.
Lens compatibility. While the Sony A850 is compatible with the company's DT-series lenses, many of them, if not most, will vignette significantly with the full frame camera, since they were designed to deliver a smaller image circle to the company's APS-C format cameras. When a DT lens is mounted, the camera automatically captures an APS-C sized frame. Only four thin brackets inside the viewfinder indicate where the cropping will occur; it does not gray-out as seen on the Nikon D3. Incidentally, you can choose to shoot an APS-C sized image when a full-frame lens is mounted via an option on Settings menu 4. The image captured is 11 megapixels maximum in that mode. (Pretty amazing that you can crop the sensor that much and still have 11 megapixels to work with!)
Storage and battery. The Sony A850 uses CompactFlash (Type I and II as well as Microdrives) and MemoryStick Duo cards. The battery pack is the now-standard InfoLITHIUM NP-FM500H, a 7.2V 11.8Wh lithium-ion design, rated for 880 shots (same as the A900).
An optional battery grip is available for the Sony A850, the Sony VG-C90AM, which is light in weight, but increases the height of the overall camera to exceed the height of the Canon 1D-series and Nikon D3.
Still, the battery grip has a few interesting features, including the full array of buttons on the rear that duplicate the controls accessible by the right hand on the camera itself. The Sony Alpha system also uniquely has the unusual second shutter release location that is positioned slightly down from the right corner of the grip, which changes the balance dynamic of the camera. It puts the lens in the same plane with the shutter whether you shoot vertically or horizontally, and does distribute the weight more evenly in both hands if you keep the camera upright and use a lighter lens. The downside is that with a heavy lens, like the Sony 24-70mm f/2.8, most of that weight rests in your left hand.
Physical Comparisons
Sony A850/900 vs Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
Sony A850/900 vs Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Sony A850 vs Nikon D3x
Using the Sony A850/900
Note: In this section, Shawn writes of his experience with the original Sony A900. Given that the two cameras are the same size and weight and have the same user interface, we've simply copied Shawn's words about the A900 here to the Sony A850 review. Update notes about viewfinder accuracy and frame rate have been added as appropriate, though, calling attention to those two areas of difference vs the A900.
Though the Sony A900 is large and heavy with the Carl Zeiss 24-70mm f/2.8 mounted, I quickly came to accept that burden and just enjoyed shooting with the camera. It's a little like moving from driving a nice car to driving a big truck. Handling is different, somewhat unfamiliar at first, even a little ungainly, but soon you're tooling along like you've been driving a big truck for years.
The big Carl Zeiss optic is beautiful, and both looks and feels terribly precise. Focus and zoom rings are tight and smooth. Even the metal and plastic lens shade is perfection. It mounts to the machined bayonet slot tighter than a piston ring and snaps briskly into place.
Its bulkiness almost makes the Sony A900 look a little more primitive, like some kind of early digital SLR design, or else a film camera from an earlier era. It certainly looks different from other cameras on the market, to be sure.
That big optical viewfinder is wonderful, and it does indeed seem to show 100 percent of the frame, to my surprise. Sometimes it was an unwelcome surprise, because I'm used to framing with tighter, less accurate viewfinders. Often when I thought I'd get away without stepping back to include just a little more of the subject's boundaries in a tight shot, I found that the Sony A900 was instead quite faithful to what I saw in the viewfinder. Gone was the slop I had come to count on from other digital SLRs, whose viewfinders seldom show more than 95 percent of the frame.
A850 note:
This is one key area of difference between the A850 and A900. The view through the eyepiece is still huge compared to sub-frame SLRs; the jokes about being careful not to fall into the viewfinder still apply. The reduction in accuracy might be an issue for some pro users, but the 98% coverage of the A850's viewfinder is still quite noticeably more accurate than the 95% found in most prosumer-grade SLRs. We measured the VF accuracy on our A850 test sample at just a shade under 98% (well within the tolerance of our measurement vs the claimed 98%), and the image was centered to within 0.15 - 0.33% of the frame's height and width, respectively.
Controls. Most controls are well-placed, and the dials and wheels have the appropriate resistance. They're not too firm and not too light, and they don't feel cheap. The mode dial is also quite firm, locking into position well. Though I seldom expect much from joystick controls, the Sony A900's joystick is just right. You can toggle in four directions, and press down to activate many controls. It's especially useful for moving the focus point around in a hurry, as well as for navigating the Function menu.
Two controls are not perfectly placed, though. One is the Function button itself. It's a long reach from the joystick to the button, making the onscreen menu more difficult to use than it should be. Also vexing is how after making a change to a menu item, you're not returned to the Function menu display to make another selection; instead you're dropped back into the Status display. If you want to change more than one item, you'll have to make that reach to the Fn button again.
The other occasional problem control is the Depth-of-field preview button, which I have set to serve as the Intelligent Preview button. I too frequently press this button when shifting the heavy A900 from hand to hand, or while turning it to shoot in vertical format. Intelligent preview exposures take a few seconds to expose and appear, meaning that the camera is occupied for those seconds; more dangerous is that the camera will continue to display the image for some time, waiting for input, thus draining the battery without my knowledge.
Intelligent preview. Sony's innovative use of a limited RAW file to create the A900's Intelligent preview is useful in a number of ways. Though it's meant to be used to subtly tweak a sample image before making the real exposure, I found myself using it more often as a substitute for Live View mode when I couldn't get my eye to the viewfinder. I just pressed the Depth-of-field button to make sample exposure after sample exposure until it was framed just right, then pressed the shutter release. Intelligent preview is really better used for tripod work, where your framing is already set. It's designed to let you pick just the right white balance, exposure compensation, or DRO mode. If you're in Aperture priority mode, you can also adjust your aperture -- though you won't see a depth-of-field change; it's not that good. Similarly, you can adjust Shutter speed if in Shutter priority mode. Of course in Manual mode, you can adjust everything. Intelligent preview is pretty useful.
Many Sony A900 users will wonder why they can't just save the image they've tweaked, rather than take another exposure. The simple answer is that the A900 only captures a very limited-resolution RAW file to make quick, on-camera processing easier, thus delivering an adjusted image to the LCD as fast as you need it. If you accidentally captured that perfect smile when you pressed the Intelligent preview button, though, you'll just have to say goodbye to perfection and try again.
Shooting. Despite its size, the Sony A900 is really fun to shoot. The big viewfinder makes looking around in your potential image more like detail work than a rough framing job, as it is with most digital SLRs. You can carefully consider what's in focus, and select another focus point by moving the joystick (provided you've chosen to use Local AF area mode) to another position. As with other full-frame SLRs, the diamond-shaped AF array is small relative to the overall viewfinder area, which isn't as good for portrait compositions as you'll find in the A700 or Canon 40D, for example, as it's harder to get an AF point close to one of the subject's eyes in a head-and-shoulders shot.
The shutter sound tells of a very large mirror, one moving as fast as its large size will allow. We're told that the mirror is extra large not just for the full frame, but also to deliver that 100% viewfinder area. (A850 note: We don't know if the A850's mirror is the same size as that of the A900, or slightly smaller. Our contacts at Sony said it's the same mechanism, but tweaks in some unspecified aspects of the mirror/shutter cocking mechanism allowed the trade-off of slower continuous shooting speed to achieve lower production costs and therefore lower selling price.)
The mirror lifts, rather than flips up. It's a pretty cool compromise, necessary to accommodate the large SteadyShot engine, we're told, while still allowing that large mirror. The sound is just a simple click-click, with no winding sound, so it feels nostalgic and does the job without a lot of fanfare. Viewfinder blackout time is supposed to be improved, but it's still a little slower than I like. Again, it's a big mirror.
The Sony A900 is also able to shoot up to five frames per second, quite a feat for a 24.6-megapixel camera with a full-frame sensor. Its 1/8,000 second shutter speed makes it an impressive action camera, rivaling its more expensive high-res competition, the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III, which also captures five frames per second. The shutter mechanism is rated for 100,000 cycles.
A850 note: This is the other key area of difference in the A850 vs the A900: The A850 only gets to 3 frames/second. Still impressive for such a large mirror and huge amount of sensor data generated by each shot, but a step behind the A900 and most other full-frame DSLRs currently on the market.
Checking. Seeing whether you got the shot after capture is key, and of course the Sony A900's high-res 3-inch LCD really helps on that score. You always have to be careful with transflective displays, however, especially in sunlight. This can be complicated by using DRO modes, which, combined with the transflective display's metallic look, can make you think a shot is washed out more than it is. You can get used to this, and adjust accordingly, as I have, but checking the histogram is also a good habit, as is taking a few extra shots or shooting RAW when the work is critical.
Touching the Custom button (marked with a C) toggles on the Histogram screen, along with most of the exposure data. You get not just a luminance histogram, but red, green, and blue as well to help you gauge color casts.
You can zoom in by pressing the AF/MF button and turning the rear command dial. Zoom level starts at 1.2x and goes to 19x.
One disadvantage to the Playback system on a 24.6-megapixel camera is that it's very slow to bring an image up, especially if it's still writing to the card. I've pressed the Playback button a second time, and then a third, only to have the image finally flash to the screen after three seconds, then disappear for another two seconds, then reappear. Sometimes it gets even worse before I remember to just wait five or six seconds to see where the camera is in the cycle.
Once images are saved to the card, flipping between them is easy, and very fast. Just don't get stuck in Index mode, activated with the Display button. It takes some time to bring up those five thumbnails across the top. It's convenient if you have time, but not if you don't.
The function of the front and rear control dials varies from menu to menu, which can often leave you spinning the dial in vain waiting for something to happen. Sometimes it's one dial, sometimes it's the other, and sometimes it's both. In cases where only one dial controls a given function, it would make more sense for Sony to allow both dials to control the function.
Size has a price. There are those who go for the biggest and the best, and they're likely to slap down their largest credit card on the Sony A900 for 24.6 million little reasons. But while they're at it, I suggest they check their computer hardware and either upgrade or at least invest in redundant, multi-terabyte disks, because the Sony A900's files are huge. A typical outing for me with the Sony A900 is filling a 4GB card in a hot hurry. Some of that's shooting RAW, some of it is just the JPEGs I shoot, which average from 7 to 18MB each. Yes, I said 18MB for a JPEG.
Thankfully, Sony at least planned for the larger files and created a USB download pathway that is among the fastest we've ever tested, moving 12,568 KBytes per second. Still, when you take as many test shots as we do, it's an ordeal to move all these images around. The sample photos we've posted total almost 4GB of data.
Sony A850 Image Quality
Back when we reviewed the original A900, the only other camera with roughly comparable resolution was the $8,000 Canon 1Ds Mark III. Fast-forward just a year, though, and we find the Canon EOS 5D Mark II competing at close to the same resolution level and a price point of about $2,700, as well as the Nikon D3x, albeit at the same lofty $8,000 price as the 1Ds Mark III.
Before I continue my simple analysis, which is bolstered by the other, more in-depth tabs to this review, remember that the Sony A850 is a $2,000 digital SLR intended for both pros and enthusiasts, while the Canon 1Ds Mark III and Nikon D3x models are $8,000 cameras really only meant for pros. (The 5D Mark II is arguably within reach of the well-heeled amateur, but the $700 price premium isn't to be sneezed at.)
First, the Sony A850's image quality is truly awe-inspiring. Opening a file in Photoshop and hitting Command + to get to 100% reminds me of that scene in Blade Runner when Deckard uses the Esper photoanalysis machine. If you know the film, you'll remember that he finds tremendous detail in the print photograph from the year 2019: "Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there." In the end, he's found a reflection in the mirror that gives him an important clue.
While I'm not doing my searching via voice command (that now-old technology that didn't take hold for most), it takes six enlargement steps in Photoshop to make it from 12.5 percent in portrait orientation to the 100 percent I need to check focus. The image is 4,032 x 6,048, for goodness sake.
Most astonishing was to take a 24mm wide-angle photo of the World of Coke in Atlanta from across a large field and be able to almost recognize faces standing near the building. (Shot at right, captured with the A900.) You'd actually be able to recognize them, I'm convinced, had I not focused on the buildings in the background. And look at the detail in those buildings! Take anything to 100 percent, and it doesn't seem like a big deal, of course, but start dragging around in the frame once you're there, and you start to appreciate just how much the Sony A850 has captured.
Now let's compare the Sony A850 to some of its near-competitors, resolution-wise. These are crops shot in our lab using a Sigma 70mm f/2.8, the very sharp lenses we use for our lab testing to get more comparable results.
In terms of JPEG shots, the Sony produces larger images that are sharper, especially with the defaults from both cameras, but if you bring both to 100 percent and move around in the images, you'll find they're nearly the same. After all, it's only 3.5 million pixels between the two, and when you get out to 21 megapixels, adding a few more doesn't have that large of an effect. Detail is detail, though, and the Sony does appear to give you more at low ISOs. Some of the difference in the images below is in the sharpness, heavily dependent on the default sharpening, and the presence of luminance and red channel noise from the Sony A850, where the Canon 1Ds Mark III does a little better with those artifacts.
Here are a few samples to get you started, but be sure to explore the full test results on the other tabs of this review, where we go into much greater depth.
Sony A850 Detail vs Competition
Sony A850 ISO series vs Canon 5D Mark II
Analysis. As with the A900 before it, the Sony A850 presents a bit of a trade-off between detail and image noise. It's a camera with enormously high resolution, but also somewhat higher noise levels at high ISO settings than some of its competition. (Admittedly with some competing models selling for dramatically higher prices.) As with the A900, though, you can also achieve significantly better detail by turning its in-camera sharpening to its lowest setting and sharpening after the fact in Photoshop. And as usual, working from RAW files brings significant benefits.
What's sure is that the Sony A850 plays well against the field, holding its own even against cameras costing up to four times its breakthrough $1999.95 list price. I really enjoyed shooting with the original A900, and had almost as fun looking at the images afterward. The new A850 does indeed appear to offer very similar (if not quite identical) image quality as the original A900 and a virtually identical user experience, save only the slightly cropped viewfinder and somewhat slower continuous shooting speed. That it manages to do so at a list price that's $700 less is pretty remarkable. While the announcement of the Nikon D3x a little while back means that the Sony A850/900 no longer hold the uncontested DSLR resolution crown, the Sony A850 still offers truly amazing resolution for the price. It's not all about resolution, of course: As the last set of pictures above shows, high ISO performance is a very important factor as well, and more expensive models from the competition do still hold an edge in that area.
The most interesting aspect of the Sony A850 is the extent to which it brings full frame photography within the reach of everyman (and woman). Without a doubt, $2,000 is still a lot of money for a camera, so owning a Sony A850 does involve a fairly serious financial commitment. Nonetheless, it represents an important step in bringing full frame photography down to a cost level that non-professionals can afford.
As I've said of other Sony digital SLRs, what's nice about them is that they're relatively easy to use, and simple to learn as well. A well designed menu system, along with the Quick Navi screen make tweaking settings fast and clear, and now the new Intelligent Preview mode makes short work of complicated shots, making it a little easier to pay attention to the small details as you set up a shot.
Shooting with the Sony Alpha A850 can be summed up in one word: Satisfying.
Sony A850 Conclusion
Pro: | Con: |
Sony rocked the full-frame DSLR world when they first announced the A900, bringing unprecedented resolution at a price point under $3,000. In the intervening time, Canon announced a camera with slightly lower resolution and a price point below the original A900 (the 5D Mark II), and Nikon announced a camera with similar resolution but at a much higher price point (the D3x). Now, the Sony A850 decreases a couple of specs (viewfinder coverage and continuous frame rate), but brings the cost down to under $2,000. Isn't competition great?
The Sony A850 is a formidable camera. It's big, which won't work for everyone, but I found it more than bearable with my medium-sized hands, and even my daughter had no trouble hefting the A850 with the (very beefy) 24-70mm f/2.8 attached and firing off a few frames. If the image quality is as good as we're hoping for, the new 28-75mm f/2.8 will reduce both the overall price and bulk of a full-frame body/lens kit significantly.
If you want the most pixels in a small package at the best price on the market, the Sony A850 is where you'll find it. Canon's EOS 5D Mark II beats the Sony A850 in high-ISO capability and (slightly) in size and weight, and offers HD video recording as well, but at a price point that's $700 higher. Nikon's D3x offers the same resolution, but at a cost literally 4x that of the A850. If you're into landscapes or architecture, or need a studio camera with enormous resolution at a relatively budget price, the Sony A850 would make a great choice. It truly ushers in a new era of affordability for full-frame DSLR cameras.
Making full-frame digital photography more affordable than ever before, and at a level of 24.6 megapixels to boot, the Sony A850 is one impressive image maker, and a clear Dave's Pick.
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PORTLAND, Ore. – The Trail Blazers have alternated wins and losses for the past 10 games, which is not exactly getting them to the playoffs.
"We gotta figure it out," guard Raymond Felton said about the team's seesaw stretch. "We gotta figure out how to go on a roll for like five games."
But time is running out for Portland, which rallied with a 17-3 run after falling behind in the fourth quarter to beat the New Jersey Nets 101-88 on Wednesday night.
LaMarcus Aldridge had 24 points and nine rebounds for the Blazers, who led by as many as 16 points in the third quarter before a late surge put New Jersey in front in the fourth. Nicolas Batum added 20 points and 10 rebounds.
Batum said the Blazers are still working for the playoffs, even though they were 3½ games back of eighth-place Denver in the Western Conference with just 11 games left.
"That's the goal for us," Batum said. "It's why we play the game."
Portland's turnaround came when Kris Humphries was called for goaltending on J.J. Hickson, making it 86-85 for the Blazers with 5:16 left. Batum added a 3-pointer to extend it and New Jersey never recovered.
The Blazers (26-29) have gone 6-6 over the past 12 games under interim coach Kaleb Canales, who took over when Nate McMillan was fired at the trade deadline. Portland hasn't won back-to-back games since January.
Humphries had 21 points and 11 rebounds for the Nets (19-37), who were coming off a 91-87 loss to the Lakers the night before.
Nets guard Deron Williams was a late scratch because of the stomach flu, disappointing Blazers fans who are hoping the team will target him this summer in free agency. Williams is leading the Nets with 21.6 points per game.
Gerald Wallace was traded to the Nets from the Blazers at the deadline, the same day the Blazers fired McMillan. Wallace was greeted by cheers from the fans at the Rose Garden during pre-game introductions.
"It felt good. I didn't want to hear any boos, so I was glad for the cheers," he said.
But after averaging 20.3 points and nine rebounds over his past three games, Wallace had eight points and nine rebounds against his former team.
Coach Avery Johnson said the Nets tried to keep things simple without Williams.
"They came out like a team desperate to make the playoffs, and they put us on our heels," Johnson said. "But then, because this team is not a bunch of quitters, they fought some more and we get the game back and we're battling. Then we just kind of ran out of gas."
The Blazers saw the return of Jamal Crawford, who missed Portland's 102-97 loss to Utah on Monday with right knee tendinitis.
Portland jumped to a 21-13 lead early, but the Nets rallied to go ahead 23-21 on two consecutive 3-pointers from DeShawn Stevenson.
The Blazers pulled back in front 41-32 on Aldridge's layup and free throw late in the second quarter, but a late run by the Nets narrowed it to 46-44 at the half.
Aldridge went on a tear to start the second half, giving the Blazers a 64-48 lead on a fast-break dunk and a tip-in. Luke Babbitt closed the third quarter with a 3-pointer to make it 76-64.
The Nets chipped away at Portland's lead and Anthony Morrow's jumper with 8:32 left tied the game at 80-all before Gerald Green's running layup gave New Jersey the lead.
The Nets clung to the lead until Humphries goaltending call and Portland took off.
"Defense was huge in those five minutes," Batum said of the final run. "Control the rebounds, give them one shot every time, no second shot, no second-chance points. And don't let them score in the paint. So we controlled the pain. On offense, the last five minutes we just made good decisions."
Morrow and Green each finished with 20 points for the Nets.
Notes: The Nets have dropped three straight to Portland. ... A fan in the stands held a sign reading "Rip City Loves Wallace."... The Nets had a three-game winning streak snapped with their loss to the Lakers on Tuesday. ... The Nets fell to 3-5 in back-to-back road games, and 1-3 on the back end of back-to-backs. ... New Jersey is 11-12 against teams with a sub .500 record.