Geeks.com sent over for a review the Jazz Elite HDV-188 5MP HD video camera and a 2 GB SD card to go with it. This is a cheap digital camera selling at just $140 right now. It certainly sounds like a steal, but how good is it?

In the box we found the camera, a software CD, a Li-ion battery, a Quick Guide, a carrying pouch, a power adapter (100 – 240V 50/60 Hz), a USB cable, earbuds, an A/V cable and an HDMI cable. The camera is pretty small, weighs less than most digicams, and fits well in the hand. Unfortunately, the construction is pretty bad: the battery door is ready to give up and the LCD turning mechanism feels very flimsy. The “macro” slider too.

The HDV-188 has a 5MP sensor, 64 MB flash storage, SDHC support, NTSC/PAL and HDMI-out, and a rotating 3″ TFT screen. It also features digital image stabilization and a voice recording and mp3 playback mode. It has no optical zoom, only 8x digital.

The camera has a flash light and lens similar to the ones we see on some cellphones. There is no protective cap in front of the lens but a glass surface. It has an on/off button on the top but I don’t see anyone using that as the camera turns on/off automatically when you open the LCD. There’s a macro/normal focusing setting for the lens, a tripod hole on the bottom, astonishingly an HDMI port on the front, and a photo shutter button and a video record button on the back. Also on the back side you will find a rocker button that works both as a zoom in/out and a menu selector, along with a few more action buttons and the USB/AV ports.

It doesn’t take long to get used to the interface. There are QVGA, VGA, 720×480 and 1280x720p recording modes. There are also music and picture viewing modes. When you enter the main menu you can modify the exposure, flash light on/off, sharpness, white balance, stabilization on/off, motion detect (the camera will start recording automatically when detects motion) and night mode. The camera mode allows for multi-snap of pictures, self-timer and photo frame. All modes support a normal color mode, or B&W, sepia and negative. The main settings allow for camera sounds on/off (although there is a bug and the camera forgets that setting the next you restart it), format SDHC card, time setup, selection between NTSC/PAL, and support for 11 languages.

The camera records in h.264 AVI at 5 mbps when in 720p mode (1 hour of video in a 2 GB SD card, sample). Unfortunately, instead of using the much more common h.264 setup of MP4 and AAC, it uses AVI and the “MS ADPCM 22050Hz mono 88Kbps” audio codec that Windows Media Player and most of the freeware players didn’t support well (WMP and VLC had no audio even with ffdshow installed). Sony Vegas was the only application that I tried that was able to read both the video and audio correctly though! The video is recorded at 30.00 fps, but if you enable the image stabilizer the frame rate falls to 24.00.

In terms of visual quality in 720p mode, it’s horrendous. There is a lot of pixelation throughout, and if you start panning, there is even tearing in the video. I don’t see the point of including an expensive HDMI input on a camera like this. Now, the interesting thing is that if you record in 720x480p mode instead (2.5 mbps, can hold 2 hours of video in a 2 GB card, sample), the quality is much better than in 720p mode! Which leads me to believe that their 720p mode might be a marketing ploy, that is, being interpolated. Having said that, the audio quality out of the mic is good though. Better than on most digicams.

So the question remains, is this Jazz camera a better deal than an Aiptek or a Kodak HD camera at a similar price? In terms of visual quality, I would for an Aiptek instead. If I wanted both a pretty good digicam and an HD video camera in one, I would go for this Kodak instead (which also offers image stabilization while the Aipteks don’t). I would get this Jazz camera only if HDMI, image stabilization when in 480p mode were important to me. But its 720p mode is nearly useless.

Rating: 5/10

I am a bit bummed about the lower quality of Madonna’s new album “Hard Candy”. In my opinion, this is her worst major studio album ever. I don’t think that the problem is that she doesn’t know how to put a good album together anymore, but I do think that she doesn’t care as much. You see, that’s an album that she “owes” to Warner Bros. before she gets out of her contract with them and move to her new label family. I would not be surprised if I found out that she didn’t care much about this album. Testament to this is the fact that she did very little TV promotional work for this new album compared to the older ones. Except 1-2 interviews on TV, she appeared nowhere else.

So, I put together my own ratings for her major studio albums (rating all the songs one by one per album), and here’s what I came up with. Apparently I like her early album work and her 2000-era better than her middle “erotica” career and her latest one. Special thanks to JBQ who helped me put that chart together at Google Docs, as I am a complete buffoon when it comes to spreadsheets.

Deep down inside, I have a girlie side too (where the hell did it go? ah, there it is). This version of Madonna’s “Erotica” song really brings out my girlie, romantic, even sexual side of me. I always kinda disliked the original “dirty” version of Erotica, but this one, along with the choreography, touches me so deeply that makes me take advances towards my husband. Only to be crushed by him 3 seconds later: “I am tired tonight baby…”.

Oh well, there’s always the weekend!

I have this negative opinion for music artists who can’t write their own music, or at least actively contribute in the production of their own album. But once in a while, an album happens to be so good, that even if it’s put together by a label and it’s just “a product”, I can forgive all that.

That’s the story with Rihanna’s “Good girl gone bad” album. I don’t like hip-hop (we are mostly into alt.rock in our home), but damn, that’s a good dance and R&B album, plus she can sing. It’s much better than Fergie’s album, and also better than Nelly Furtado’s. Definitely a better album than Madonna’s “Hard Candy” which used the same producers too. It seems that Madonna got just the left overs from the producer’s creativity.

Best songs on the album: Umbrella, Push up on me, Don’t stop the music, Shut up and drive, Rehab, and Good Girl Gone Bad. Except 1-2 songs that are not super but still acceptable, the rest are very good too.

1. Umbrella 9/10
2. Push up on Me 9/10
3. Don’t Stop the Music 9.5/10
4. Breakin’ Dishes 7.5/10
5. Shut up and Drive 10/10
6. Hate That I Love You 7.5/10
7. Say It 6/10
8. Sell Me Candy 7/10
9. Lemme Get That 6/10
10. Rehab 9/10
11. Question Existing 6/10
12. Good Girl Gone Bad 8.5/10

Overall rating: 7.9/10

Best hip-hop/RnB album I ever listened to.

JBQ came from work and we were supposed to go shopping for the week, but he was so tired that he slept for 1.5 hours. So I took the time to sketch two more portraits, ‘The Vision’ of the Avengers, and Wolverine of the X-Men.

The android Vision was always a tragic and sad figure. I hope I captured that.

In this sketch, I hope I captured Wolverine’s angry, animal-like nature.

That’s it. I won’t be sketching again for another 10 years or so…

This is why I love “Lost”. It camouflages itself as an action drama, but all the geek elements are there, in the form of easter eggs and scientific-like mysteries that eventually will be big parts of the overall story. “Lost” is simply any geek’s dream of a TV series, and anyone who have stopped watching it is only because his/her not watching closely enough — or they are not geeky enough.

One thing you don’t know about me is that I can sketch. Not very well, but truth is, better than most people can. I learned sketching all by myself since the age of 4. I still remember the beating I got for sketching all over my family’s (expensive) encyclopedia when I was 7.

Since the last serious sketching I did was 9 years ago, not even my own husband has seen my work (which I have left back in Greece, and possibly the rats have already eaten it away by now in the cellar). A portrait of Captain Hook was my best work ever, which I completed during a cold afternoon of 1992 in Germany. After that, I did very little sketching and I pretty much stopped in 1999 (except for a quick attempt to sketch JBQ in 2002).

But today was the day. The Marvel announcements brought me some inspiration back, but I was afraid to grab the pencil back to my hands. After all, 9 years without sketching guaranteed a failure. Thankfully, I did better than I thought I would. I finished with a pencil, scanned it, and then used PaintShopPro to just add the colors. Here it is.

I’ve said many times that I love the Marvel heroes. The kick DC’s heroes asses real hard!

Zap2It now has many release dates from the upcoming Marvel movies: “Iron Man 2”, “Thor”, “Captain America”, “Avengers”, “Punisher”… I can’t wait for the “Mighty Avengers“, my all time favorite comics. I always had a crash on Hawkeye, and when he wasn’t looking, there was always the Vision. 😉

The only thing that bothers me is they keep rebooting the movie series a bit too much. The new “Punisher” movie uses a different actor than in the 2004 movie, and “Hulk” too. I much prefer a more solid universe where the cast is what it is, so it’s more believable this way.

Hopefully, the “Fantastic Four” will get a third movie too to finish up their trilogy, but this doesn’t look very possible now… At least the “Wolverine” movie is coming out soon!

The first full album of “Rantings of Eva” is out! It includes older songs from their EP and some new ones too. “Sirens” and “Fracture” are their best of their new songs, but “Bright Side” remains my all time favorite of their repertoire and one of my favorite songs of all time. Overall, an amazing alt-rock album that more people should know about. Help the band by buying it DRM-free from iTunes for $10 or from Amazon for $9. This album is my first iTunes purchase, even if I had an account for a while now. Overall rating: 7.5/10

A few months ago I published an interview with Dusty Watts, guitarist of ‘Rantings of Eva’.

Madonna is going hip-hop and 80’s funk with her latest album. She obviously got a bit jealous of the success of younger names like Rihanna, Fergie and Nelly Furtado and so she employed in this album producers that have worked with these singers, like Timberlake, Timbaland, Kanye West, and Pharrell. One by one, the songs of “Hard Candy“:

1. Candy Shop
A very primitive beat in my opinion. Repetitive and primitive. It doesn’t seem to excel at any point. I would have not included that song if that was my album.
Rating: 6/10

2. 4 Minutes to Save the World
The first single of the album is a good deal. It sticks easily under your tongue, and it’s quite dancy too. It gets a bit old after a few listenings though. Still, the 5th best song in the album.
Rating: 7.5/10

3. Give It 2 Me
The fourth best song in the album. Very trance, and with a dose of funk too. If this song doesn’t get you out of your chair to dance, none of the other songs in the album will. I somewhat dislike the rap part of the song though near the middle.
Rating: 8/10

4. Heartbeat
Except the chorus, which is nice, the rest of the song is un-singable. It feels like a test, that was thrown together just because they had a good chorus and needed to do something with it.
Rating: 6/10

5. Miles Away
The second best song on the album. It has atmosphere, it makes you “feel it” what she sings about. The only song with a heart and soul in the whole album. Possibly because she sings about a personal matter of hers so she feels it too when she sings.
Rating: 8.5/10

6. She’s Not Me
Terrible. Starts kinda ok, gets you acquainted with a disco/funk sound, and towards the middle it becomes weird — to say the least. Like it’s a different song. It just changes out of the blue, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Second worst song in the album.
Rating: 4.5/10

7. Incredible
Another primitive sound and beat. It’s listenable, but again, towards the middle changes its beat and it’s like it’s a different song too. It’s just weird. Yuck.
Rating: 5/10

8. Beat Goes On
A good disco/funk sound. No ugly surprises here. It really reminds me of the early ’80s disco songs. It’s a good track, but nothing special I can say special about it. It’s a good filler.
Rating: 7/10

9. Dance 2Night
Like the previous song, it’s a good listenable funk song. Pretty well done too, which makes you feel that you are back in another decade. Older people will feel nostalgic with this beat.
Rating: 7/10

10. Spanish Lesson
Worst song in the whole album. It’s a mass instrument mess. I don’t feel it at all. In reality, songs #6 and #7 are worse, but this beat actually had a potential and it seems that got destroyed during the production. And I can’t really forgive that.
Rating: 4/10

11. Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You
Best song in the whole album. It has a melody, it’s not random beats put together than some of her other songs. It has a melody and a rhythm, and doesn’t surprise you negatively.
Rating: 9/10

12. Voices
A very good song, third best in the whole album. It also has a grand melody, and some interesting lyrics too. “Who is the master and who is the slave” to “are you walking the dog or the dog is walking you?”. Good stuff.
Rating: 8/10

Overall, the album has 5 good songs, 2 “ok” songs, and 5 songs that range from mediocre to terrible. Compared to her previous album, “Confessions on a dance floor” (rating: 7.50/10), this is not as a strong of a release. Heck, some of her unreleased songs that never saw the light of day are better than some of these songs. Still, not a bad album compared to most other albums out there.

Overall Rating: 6.7/10