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Samsung claims its new mirrorless cam – the NX100 – is set to change the way we control cameras with its world-first i-Function lens. And as usual we're excited by the prospect of a new button to twiddle, in this case the massively twiddleable focus ring. But more on that later. First, let's take a look at the raw spec.
At base level, the NX100 is a update of the NX10, Samsung's first micro four-thirds-baiting camera to capture to a 14.6MP APS-C sensor (including 720p video). In that respect, the new camera is unremarkable. It's lost some bulk, but there's no fundamental spec boost.
Which brings us back to that i-Function lens, the real point of innovation on the NX100. Samsung has decided to shift control of shutter speed, aperture, exposure, white balance and ISO from the camera body to the lens. The i-Function button toggles the setting while the focus ring adjusts values.
It might turn the stomachs of die-hard purists, but in a world of same-same touchscreen interfaces, this is a bold, brave and exciting development in camera land. If it works, and improves on the NX10, which we awarded the full five stars in our test, we don't see why this can't continue to bother the micro four-thirds crew quite effectively.
Price and availability to be announced.

subset: commoncrawl


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Welcome to the Simple Homestead 210th Blog Hop!
We're so glad you've stopped by for a visit! Every week we get together here for another hop and I hope you'll join us. The Hop runs from Thursday morning to Sunday evening. Have fun exploring all the great ideas that have been shared, and add your homesteading, homemaking and homeschooling posts with us if you're a blogger. I'm sure you'll be blessed and inspired by all these great ideas!
Meet Our Great Co-hosts
Kathi at Oak Hill Homestead – Facebook – Pinterest – Instagram
Dash at Bloom Where You're Planted – Facebook – Instagram
Chelsea at The Green Acre Homestead – Twitter – Facebook – Pinterest – Instagram
Leah at Busy Gals Homestead and Leah's Lovely Lops – Facebook
Pinterest – Instagram
Nancy at Nancy On the Home Front – Facebook – Twitter – Pinterest – Instagram
Featured Posts
Each week we'll feature the most-viewed post from last week's hop. Each host also features her own picks from the posts linked the previous week. Visit each of our blogs to see if you were featured this week.
This week's featured posts:
12 Things I Do Not Spend Money On
Time to Move the Broilers: Homesteading Basics
How To Make A Sensational Salsa For Canning
Please stop by to congratulate the featured bloggers this week.
If you were featured be sure to pick up your Simple Homestead blog hop button below. Just highlight all of the text in the box and paste into your blog sidebar; the button will show up automatically.
Nancy On The Home Front
The Rules
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Share up to 3 posts.
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Only share content and photos that you have created or have permission to share.
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Posts that don't follow these few little guidelines will be deleted.
Let's start hopping!
You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!


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Our Saudi Allies
Patrick Notestine in "Paramedic to the Prince" on Saudi support for terrorism, pp 294-295:
A metaweh wrote on a popular Islamic web-site, "I'd like to say that the overwhelming majority of my fellow Saudis totally condemn terrorism. Sadly that is just not true. The majority applaud any action that discomforts the royal family whom we perceive to be unreliable in religious terms, and to be too friendly with the US. So we support any action against them, regardless of who dies. And I see this support for terrorists all around me, in overt celebrations, the smiling jokes among friends and the victory fist punched in the air."
Notestine describes his introduction to the true nature of Islam, pp 1-3:
I was working in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, in my office at the King Faisal Hospital, where I managed the ambulance service. It was late afternoon, on a Tuesday, in September 2001. I got a call from a South African guy who works in the military
hospital there. He told me one of the World Trade Center towers caved in, and they blew up the Pentagon.
"Huh, ri-ight."
"No," he said, "I swear to God."
I put down the phone, and ran into the office of the Assistant Director of the hospital, right across the corridor.
"What's going on?
What's the matter?" Short fellow, dyed black hair, a real slimeball. I correctly
suspect that his job is way beyond him.
I told him, "Something bad's happenning."
I ran to his TV.
"You got CNN. Turn on CNN."
We sit close and watch it. I'm from California and he's from Little Rock, Arkansas.
Guys start filtering in behind us through the open door. All the Saudi management, a few in western suits, but mostly in the long white thobe and red checkered ghutra. On the screen there's the New York skyline, sparkling white and blue and sunny, with a vast dark cloud rising from Lower Manhattan. They're leaning against the filing cabinets, and hunched over the backs of chairs, riveted, silent.
I look up at them, the Head of Personnel, several men from the finance department, and the rest of them, and the second plane is coming in. Live. You have never seen such broad smiles. They were joyous. It was wow, man, HIT IT. Nobody said anything.
Well, the aftershock lasted a couple hours, with everyone shaking their heads and bemoaning the carnage, and then nearly all of them left. I have a habit of saying what's on my mind.
"Salman," I said to my friend, his name's Salman Al Dubair, "do you realize, when that second plane hit the tower, how you and Ali Bougesh were standing there grinning? It means you're happy."
"Oh no," he said.
"We're always smiling. It's a terrible thing."
Not long afterwards Prince Naif, the Minister of the Interior and Information, explained publicly that this dreadful event had been a Jewish-American conspiracy. To single out the Saudi passengers on those planes at such short notice, as the FBI had done, was ludicrous; every one of them had been a harmless student or tourist. In the Jewish section of New York on that day, on the other hand, the Jewish community had been dancing in the streets. Not a single Jew had been killed in the World Trade Center, because they all had been warned to stay away. Four hundred Muslims had died in this conspiracy to incite hatred of Islam.
George Bush talking about a crusade really pissed them off. After that most Saudis believed that the CIA, or the FBI, or George Bush personally in collusion with Israel, was responsble for 9/11. It is the conventional wisdom among Saudis to this day, even highly educated ones.
I was talking to a smart, rich Saudi I know, who was complaining that religious education in Saudi Arabia puts a brake on scientific development. You couldn't get the students to think, he said, because they'd been taught to view the world from a religious perspective and never to ask awkward questions. The people in charge didn't want people to think they wanted a continuance of the status quo. Then 9/11 came up, as it always did for a few weeks afterwards, and he went on to tell me how exultant he'd felt. He and his friends had watched the whole thing and cheered.
"Because we hate Americans," he said complacently.
"But not the people, of course," I said. "It's like us in the Gulf, we were against the
regime, we didn't hate the people."
"No, the people, too," he said. "We hate all Americans."
He looked right into my wide blue eyes as he said it.
Labels: Saudi Arabia, terrorism


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Artifex, makers of the Linux Ghostscript Postscript interpreter, is suing Diebold for breaking the fair use terms of its software. Diebold used the freely-available software, which is fine, but when they authored some changes to Ghostscript Postscript, they neglected to follow the very reasonable rules such use requires. Biggies like HP, Xerox, and IBM all use Ghostscript legally and honestly, so why can't Diebold?
They neither publicly released the changes they'd made nor paid Artifex for the privilege to keep the changes to themselves, and in the hippie-dippie share everything world of Linux, that doesn't fly. Luckily our new President of the Universe Barack Obama won by a large enough margin that we can't question the results, but good god, it's beyond time to ditch this aggressively stupid company and get an electronic balloting system that, you know, works. [LinuxDevices]


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UT president: Strong shirt 'ugly,' 'racist'
SAN ANTONIO — A controversial T-shirt featuring University of Texas' new football coach Charlie Strong was dubbed "ugly" and "racist" Tuesday by the school's president, Bill Powers.
"Black is the new Brown," read the burnt-orange-colored shirt recently pulled down by the online store Etsy. The $19.99 T-shirt featured a photo of Strong, the school's first black head coach, who replaced longtime coach Mack Brown.
"Pres. Powers is so proud of Longhorns for pushing back against racist, ugly t-shirt. It has no place here," the official UT-Austin Twitter account tweeted Tuesday morning. A spokesman confirmed the comments came from Powers' account.
The description of the T-shirt, which is no longer available, read: "After 16 years as head coach of the Longhorns, Mack Brown is stepping down to make way for Charlie Strong as the new head coach. Celebrate Charlie Strong's arrival in style," according to Gamedayr.com.
Strong, who was hired from Louisville on Jan. 5, has received a mixed welcome to the Lone Star State. As the Express-News reported, UT mega-booster Red McCombs criticized Strong's hiring as a "kick in the face."
McCombs recently apologized for the comments in an exclusive interview with the Express-News.
Twitter: @KoltenParker
Twitter: @KoltenParker