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In shockingly neat and somewhat disappointing news, Sony has released its new Micro Four-Thirds competitor, the NEx-3 and NEX5. With a full sized APS-C class CMOS sensor inside, but with the size of a point and shoot (without the lens), the Sony E-mount camera is truly revolutionary in form, taking the large sensor, small size camera to the next level, in a form factor that makes even the revolutionary Olympus EP1 step back in wonder. Housing an even larger sensor size than that of the Micro 4/3 format, meaning better image quality and low light performance, it remains hindered by Sony’s want to make it completely revolutionary. Instead of catering to the DSLR owner who is looking for a small format camera to compliment their current rig, Sony intends this model to fulfill the needs of the point and shoot enthusiast who knows absolutely nothing about photography, but would like better image quality. Sigh. This means that manual controls are sometimes as much as 4 clicks away in the menu system, for basic, but important things like aperture and EV compensation. Lame. I suppose there is always a trade off, and the dual ring control on the Nikon D90 I am fronting isn’t expected to land on such a small form factor that rid itself of anything that could possibly add size. Still. My Nikon P5100 has a function wheel. And its years old. Or take the Canon P90, which has two wheel controls on a size factor that is just bits larger than an average point and shoot. It looks great, but the Sony’s handling remains to be tested. (image courtesy of gizmodo)

Today I hit the chest with some 75lb dumbbells, a significant drop from the 100 lbs that I am used to. Furthermore, I felt just as good afterwards. I hit each set till failure, and it really felt like I nailed my pecs well today. Added that to the minimum 180 jackknives I am doing for my abs each day, and progress looks good. I am doing 3 sets of 60 reps, and then whatever after that. It seems to be hitting a bit lower than I want to target, but my abs are definitely being hit, so efficiency can be put aside for a bit.

Our spring class is taking off rather quickly, with a test this Thursday, and a midterm coming up, and reading galore. I have 3 chapters to read tonight, which should be fairly straightforward. Kind of boring, its the history of IQ testing, but some of the material isn’t too bad. A little dry, but tolerable.

I am erring on looking at the new 13 inch Macbook Pro. I like Mac OSX, am fairly bored with Windows, and I can’t really justify choosing the Lenovo X201 i5 128 GB SSD, vs. the Macbook with Core 2 Duo, free iPod, free Canon printer, comparable battery life, better video card, and marginally poorer PC Mark scores. With a build quality that even trumps the Thinkpad (IMHO), it makes a formidable challenger. I like the Thinkpad, but theres too much going on with the Apple. And build quality, my number one priority is just fantastic on both, but as said, I err with the Apple on this one, with the amazing unibody aluminum design.