Miscellaneous Random Phrases, Part I

DV Dude saw this on a window in San Diego recently at "The Top of the Hyatt" lounge. If you are ever in San Diego, this is a great place to get a drink and see a killer view of the city. And the windows all through the place have various sayings on them.

 DV Dude saw these buttons while getting his passport picture taken.

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Nothing Can Prepare You For "The Chickening"

This is one heck of a Kubrick parody acid trip.

Nikon D500 4K

DV Dude got to hold one of these bad boys at CES.

Coming in March.

CES 2016: Freemont Street at 6:50 a.m.

While at CES, DV Dude stayed in old downtown at the Golden Nugget, and being the early bird that he is, got up at sunrise to take these pictures. Downtown Vegas is pretty quiet at 6:30 in the morning, except for the homeless people, of which there were plenty.

While I was taking this picture, an older woman, who just had been dropped off by a cab, came up to me and asked me what I was taking a picture of. When I said the sign, she wanted to know why anyone would want to take a picture of a sign... She also wanted to know what I was going to do with the photo. For personal use, I told her ... That totally bewildered her - you just take photos for yourself? We ended up having a nice conversation. Turns out, she is the longest serving employee of the El Cortez casino - been there 45 years. The only person who was there longer was the owner, but he's dead now.

 
Downtown Las Vegas has all these cool murals on the side of buildings, and this is just one of them.  

CES 2016: This and That

CES has come to another close, and for photography news, it was not much of a show. The exception was Nikon, who introduced the D500, D5 and a sports action camera. The D500 was bigger than I expected, but apparently it just a hair bigger than the D300s. The D5 felt like an absolute tank, a camera that was carved out of solid granite. You could break out of prison with a D5, using it as a hammer. The viewfinder was absolutely gorgeous as well. The big news for DV Shop readers is the D500 and D5 can record 4K footage. The D500 will be the more practical of the two, as the D5 can only record 4K footage for a few minutes, where the D500 can do the 29 minute clip. Take that Canon. 

I expected to see a lot more 4K BluRay players being annouced this CES, but only saw a few. Here is the Panasonic one, expected this spring for about $499. There will be about 100 titles available by years end in 4K.  

This caught my eye as I walked aimlessly in the South Hall looking for something of interest. Use your iPhone 6 as a walkie talkie. Why not use the iPhone to um, make calls or text? This is for when you have no cell phone coverage.  

CES always has an over-abundance of speakers - big speakers, little speakers, speakers in shapes that defy justification, but this speaker, from HiVi, was the most interesting looking speaker I saw this year. 

 

And finally, a sign of the times. Saw this at the Starbucks at the Golden Nugget.

DV Dude signing out of CES.  

CES 2016: Mr. Robot Edition

CES always has a a lot of robots, and here are some of them. The first one is called Megabeam, and was the biggest robot I saw this year.

 

This was the cutest robot I saw.

And what would this year be without a Darth Vader customer service robot? I'm sure the number of complaints goes down.  

 

CES 2016: TV Porn Edition

CES is the best place in the world to look at TVs, both for the new models coming this spring, and the prototypes that being worked on in the lab. Samsung has always delivered great eye candy at CES since I started attending, and this year was no different.

The winner of "TV Most Likely To Justify A Move To a Bigger House" is Samsung, with this absolutely stunning 170" TV. Pictures cannot do this beauty justice. People would just stand there and watch - mesmerized.

There were a lot of these type of demos all through-out CES, but Sony's was probably the most accurate. It is showing the difference between the current standards, and the new HDR standard, with higher dynamic range. You are going to hear a lot about HDR this spring from TV companies.

And finally, I believe it is LG who decided to show off this little beauty (so many TVs, so little memory). Excited about 4K? Just wait a few years...
 

CES 2016: Woofer Porn

CES in the North Hall is full of audio companies trying to out-do each other with their outrageous displays. My favourite this year comes from Orion, who put this 33,000 watt unit together. No wonder their motto is "Proud to be Loud."

I thought this looked cool. And yes, the colours change. 

 

CES 2016: Concept Car Porn

One of the most popular booths in the North Hall was for the new car company Faraday.

 As you can see here, it was hard to get in and take a picture.

Once you got to the front of the crowd, you were rewarded with what is obviously a concept car, with no hope of ever going into production.  

This is the Faraday FFZERO1 concept car. Not coming to a dealership near you - ever. And I have no idea who these Faraday dudes are, but they certainly got peoples attention. 

And one final concept car, this one from Mercedes. 

 

CES 2016: Toyota Concept Cars

CES is full of concept cars this year, but the most out-of-this world concepts were from Toyota.