As you might have noticed, I’m trying out different kinds of content on my blog lately. It’s all stuff I love doing, just interesting trying out new stuff. Next up on “new ideas” is “easter ales 2011”, where I thought I’d introduce this years crop of easter ale available in Danish supermarkets.

First up is Påskeæg, økologisk påskebryg by Thisted bryghus. It’s much like a traditional pils, so if you like a classic pils you’ll love this beer. It’s slightly sweet from the malte, but the hop taste is prominently bitter.

A bit too light for my preference in easter ales, but not a bad start on this short series. I’m usually a big fan of Thisted Bryghus, so I think I’ll stick with some of their other beers.

In this first video blogpost I follow up on my two blogposts from 2005, I show you how easy it is to put a Pentax m42 mount lens, one of the most popular kind of lenses from the 1950s up until the late 1980s, on a Canon EOS DSLR body. Back in 2005 I used the EOS 20D, now I use the EOS 5DmkII, but it’s just as easy.

The lens I put on the camera is a Helios 85mm f/1.5, second generation, meaning that it has a 42mm screw-mount instead of the original 39mm. The adapter is a m42 EOS AF confirm adapter that you can find on eBay for around $15.

A while back I bought an IRIScan 2, a little scanner that could be laying in the kitchen drawer to scan incoming bills. It’s not a very fast scanner, it doesn’t have battery for very many pages, but for incoming mail, perhaps some music scores and such, it’s quite good.

It scans to color JPEG which makes the files a bit large and gives many shades of white and black, and light bleed from the surroundings is actually a bit of a problem, especially in paper folds. But this is all forgiven with its ease of use: turn it on, insert paper, and it’s saved to either the internal storage, an SD card (my preference) or a USB key. The reason I prefer the SD card is simply I had it laying around, and it’s easy to take out and insert into a card reader.

The reason I use a card reader is simply that the device doesn’t transfer the images quickly off it. But if you’re not in a hurry, that’s even easier. When connected to your computer, it will only charge or transfer files, there’s no way to hook it up to a scanner program, and if you start scanning, it will eject the storage area first. This was a surprise to me, but no problem. The only problem I have with it isn’t even with the device, but with my iPad. For the iPad to recognize the images on the SD-card through the photo connector, you first need to rename the scanning folder to DCIM. It would be nice if either the iPad would look through more folders on the SD-card, or if IRIScan had a possibility of calling the folder DCIM. Then it would REALLY be portable scanning

All in all, I’m very happy with the device. I use it for incoming mail, and it’s quickly done. Please find attached a letter scanned that has not been processed in any way.

I’ve been looking for a great-looking and great-sounding speaker system for my Mac. And just so we’re clear: great-sounding is for classical music, and I expect equal or better than my Celestion/NAD system I bought for ~10.000 NOK when I was 15. My problem has been that either the speakers filled too much in my office space (3.5 m2), and/or they looked really bad.

My brother-in-law recommended BOSE, and specifically the Companion system. I didn’t find anywhere to hear them, but I took a gut decision and ordered one. They simulate a 5.1 system, and in that they actually do a quite good job. The tweet/high frequencies isn’t all that great, but if you’re playing computer games, watch movies or listen to something else than classical and jazz, I’m sure out of the box you’ll have no problem with it.

What’s funny is that I’ve grown used to them, and having set the equalizer in iTunes to boost the high frequencies a bit, they actually do a fine job. For sure, I still prefer my HiFi system, but it comes pretty close at a third of both the space and price. I still believe there’s room for great-looking speakers that are worthy of a low-end HiFi system (meaning the equivalent of a relatively cheap Denon receiver with some not too expensive stereo speakers) that can outperform the BOSE, but until they come around this is a quite nice setup. They don’t fill much and listening to Fontana’s Sonata Secunda with one of my favourite recorder players is pleasant. Not like a HiFi system where it feels like the performers are in the room, but still really nice. And for those occational games, the 5.1 emulation works great.

Like many of you, this morning I went on the Apple Store online and ordere my iPad 2. I’ve had a chat with many shop keepers today, both Eplehuset, Elgiganten and Humac. What seems to be the genereal consensus is that less than 10% of the iPads they had asked for have been delivered. So there is a major shortage. My idea was that Apple would prioritize their own channels, but my order from early this morning when they opened is scheduled for delivery in more than a month! So I guess I was wrong, and just like so many others I’ll just have to wait…