July 22nd, 2003:

Nikon is so damn smart, and yet not so smart at the same time.

They’ve annouced the D2H, a 4.1 megapixel Digital SLR camera. There are two exciting features. First of all, is a Nikon developed JFET Imaging sensor. Secondly, is an optional 802.11b module to allow the camera to instantly upload all images to an FTP server WHILE shooting.

At 4.1 megapixels, this is a great camera for photojournalists, sports photographers, and the like. Unfortunately, if I had to think of a particular group of photographers that would NOT use the 802.11b features, it would be this very group. Since they are usually on the field, on the streets they won’t really be able to use such a feature (unless they want to carry a RUNNING laptop in a backpack with them to accept the images. The REAL use for such a feature is in the photography studio. The photographer snaps a shot, and as he lines up for the next, the first one is already on its way to the server/desktop computer. It’s almost immediately ready for review on a computer monitor for editing or to use as a guide in order to correct the image for the second shot. However, MANY studio photograpers aren’t really interested in frames-per-second… they are interested in megapixels. At 4.1 megapixels, this camera is good enough for a low quality 8×10. 6 megapixels (like the D100) would have been better.

Regardless, the camera is very interesting, and hopefully hints at what will be available to the digital photographer in the future. Imagine all of those “photographers” running around at Amusement Parks trying to get you to buy pictures of yourself. With this technology, and a little programming, minutes after pressing the shutter release, your prints are sitting in a bin waiting for your purchase. And the quality would be much better than we get today.

I’ve been itching to get out of my own skin lately. It just feels like life is made up of only two things: work, and doing various things to ensure that I can live another day in order to work again. I have no excitement. I have no passion. I have no ambition. And, to make it worse, I don’t even like my job.

I’m slowly starting to understand how it is that interesting, intelligent people like my father, get into his situation. I’m starting to understand why he stays home on most Friday nights, and why, for so many years, his work was his life, and vice versa.

I miss the passion for knowledge that I had when I was 18. I miss staying up for hours pouring over the documentation for some technology that I had just discovered and learning its every facet, not because I needed to, but because I wanted to. I miss the large group of people that would go together to the coffee house almost daily, to sit and talk and share and learn — or just be silly. I miss meeting new people. I miss being proud of myself and my accomplishments. I miss being excited about projects at work.

And now, aside from Jess, everything in my life seems stagnant. When Jess and I decide to have children, that’ll add some more fire for a while. But, in the end, I’m sure I’ll be back to where my father is… which is almost where I am now.

I need life in my life. And I don’t mean that pseudo-life that most twenty- and thirty-somethings have: the life that brings them to bars or clubs every night of the week to drown their thoughts in alcohol and loud music while they look around the room and fantasize about the people they don’t know and probably never will. I need connection. I need substance. I need knowledge. I need friendship.

I don’t even know where to begin looking.