Yup, it’s the hardest part. I’ve suffered through my last camera-less weekend at the golf course (he even suckered me into going twice on Sunday), and the PowerShot is making progress. Slow progress, but progress. The order processed Friday evening, shipped yesterday, and according to the UPS website, made it to Nashville as of about 0330h this morning. In a perfect world, that would mean I’d get it today (Nashville isn’t all that far from here), but we don’t live in a perfect world, so I’m thinking tomorrow is more likely. Oh–update! I just checked again and it scanned in at Louisville at 0714h. I know they’ll take some ridiculous, circuitous route and it’ll have to go through St. Louis or Indianapolis even though I’m closer to Louisville than both of those places, but at least I can track it and know it’s on the way. Yes, I’m pathetic and I need a life, and that’s just fine with me. I want my damned camera! 🙂

The live fish food Revolt-O-Meter goes off the scale!

“Can I feed (earthworms, flies, mosquitoes, aphids, etc.) that I found in the yard to my fish?”
Yes, but do bear in mind that when you feed wild critters to your fish, you have no way of knowing whether they have ever been exposed to pesticides or herbicides that may be toxic to your fish. If they have, and your fish get poisoned, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Aquatic insects, worms and larvae that come from environments where fish live could potentially carry disease into your tank.

“I have ants in the house. Can I feed them to my fish?”

Maybe, depends on the fish and the ants. All ants have honkin’ mandibles and some are capable of delivering a nasty (possibly even venomous) bite. Some fish are little. Some fish are big. You decide whether it’s worth the risk.

“I have (fruit flies on the bananas in the kitchen, fungus gnats in my potted plants). Can I catch them and feed them to my fish?”
If you do not use insecticides in the house, yes. Can you catch them? Well, good luck with that!

“What about gnats around the cat’s litter box?”
Uh…

First of all, you do know it’s not normal to have flies buzzing around the ol’ cat box, don’t you? Maybe a housefly that wandered in, but not flies as in plural, and certainly not enough or often enough that you consider using them as fish food. I’m going to guess they’re either drain flies or phorid flies, both of which breed in damp, decaying organic matter. If “damp, decaying organic matter” describes anything you have in your house, it may be time to consider doing a little cleaning. Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to check and make sure the cat is even using the box. Cats are fastidious like that, you know.
Jeezus!

Well, I’ve made up my mind for certain about the camera. Not that it’s going to matter ATM, because I’ve struck out finding an S3 locally and I have a suspicion that P will as well. He’s going to call around today (because I’ve exhausted my non-long distance area) and see whether he can find somewhere that’s got one in stock, but I know I’m going to end up ordering it and have to go another weekend camera-less. I did find one place that has the Sony H2, which is a nice camera, but unfortunately, a Sony, and I swore I’d buy no Sony products at all after the rootkit thang. Besides, I read the reviews for it and although it doesn’t have any more (or any fewer) “issues” than the S3, it has different issues, and they’re different in a way that doesn’t work as well for me as the Canon. I particularly don’t like the way it seems to want to make whites bluish sometimes. Side-by-side comparisons show the Canon’s shots looking much more the way I want. Anyway, I suppose that one more weekend won’t kill me….probably. 🙂

Well, here’s hoping that one more weekend won’t kill me, since P just emailed and there’s no PowerShot S3 IS to be had anywhere within reasonable driving distance, so I’m down to ordering. Still don’t know whether I’m willing to cough up the extra for next day shipping, though. Hmm.

When you wake up in the morning and the very first thing that comes into your head is:

“I don’t wanna be a cook or a fireman. I don’t wanna play trombone in a marching band. I just wanna be a Care Bear, like yoooouuuu!”

…you KNOW you need a holiday. 😆

Dumbass bloggers, stop wasting my electrons to warn me about an advert I will never even see. Anyone who wants the web in an even remotely bearable form has been blocking advertising since before the beginning of the new millenium, and that includes me. The last time I saw advertising on the web was when I installed Mandriva late one night and didn’t have time to edit my hosts file and install AdBlock Plus and Flashblock until the next morning. Don’t warn me every five fucking seconds about shit that isn’t even there. In fact, don’t even warn other readers about shit that is there because THEY CAN SEE THE ADVERTISING AND PROBABLY KNOW WHAT IT IS! You are arseholes…before, during and after the jump.

Wearable….where? 😆

Wearable wrist computer, vintage 1984

Just when you think things could not possibly get worse, your neighbor turns up with a giant (12″) bobblehead of Hank Williams Jr., dressed in black with a black cowboy hat and wearing big black aviator glasses, and puts it on the table. You know–the table that’s covered with a flowered vinyl tablecloth and is part of the entire dinette set on his front porch. It’s next to the sofa with the throw pillows crocheted in Shades Of Vomit. That table. I can’t take a picture ATM, but you’ve seen his front porch.

Here’s Hank. Use your imagination.

Okay…the camera is dead. Long live the camera. 🙂

We can’t afford $500 for the Lumix–that’s just not going to happen. What we can afford (sort of) is $350 for a Canon PowerShot S2. I’ll lose on “gross mpx” (5.0 versus 8.0) and start time is a second longer than the Lumix (1.3 versus 0.3, because the Canon’s lens does extend), but I’ll gain good movie capabilities because the S2 is a decent still/video “hybrid” with stereo sound, up to 640×480, 30 fps. I don’t do much video, but nice to have so I don’t have to carry two cameras if I want to do both; I can live with the 1 GB movie size max because movies aren’t really my thing, stills are. I gain a super macro mode that will focus to 0″ (yaaayyy–look out, ant eyeballs), and does a good job of it, and I’ll get lots of manual controls. Not manual focus, but according to the reviews, the auto focus is quite good, and even the Kodak’s auto focus usually understood what I wanted unless I was pushing its light limits. I get lots of buttons, too, not a kludgy menu that takes forever and a fucking day to navigate while the dragonfly or deer or whatever gets bored and wanders off. I don’t really care about fewer mpx because I almost never print anything anyway, 5.0 is quite adequate for my needs, and even with an extra second start time, I’m still way ahead of the 3+ seconds it took my old one to start. I wanted a black body, not silver, but I don’t see anything in the S3 that makes it worth an extra hundred bucks, and I’m not going to die because I have another silver camera. I still get the 12x zoom (plus 4x digital, but digital is worthless anyway), and I get a good Canon lens, plus an available adapter and some special lens options. LCD screen also flips and rotates, which is definitely a plus. Chuck in a 1 GB SD card and I’m still coming in well under the price of the Lumix alone, and it’s do-able, which the Lumix is not at this time. It is, though, a fair bit of money, so I’m going to think about it for a while before I actually buy it. I probably will get it, but if something costs over a couple of hundred, it’s worth putting some thought into it before shelling out the bucks. We’ll see, and I am in a much better mood than I was yesterday.

I actually may find a “dead” (non-functional power supply) Kodak like mine on eBay or somewhere, just to see whether the problem is the sensor, and whether I can fix (one of them). I took a quick look yesterday and it looks like a dead one costs around $10. It’d be a fun project, and it’d be nice to know whether I’m right about the bit that died. I kept my old Minolta, meaning to try to find a power supply for it and see whether it could be fixed, but never got around to it. Hm. Anyway, I won’t toss the old Kodak workhorse; it served me long and well. 🙂

Oh, wait–I lied. There is manual focus, but it’s not a ring, it’s a four-way controller. Hm. That should be interesting to learn; sounds like it’ll require a bit of manual dexterity.

Well, I found out today why I had so many blurry shots of stuff that I was sure I had in focus yesterday. The goddamn camera decided to give up the ghost. I think it’s the sensor; I have no preview in the LCD, which would still mean I could use the camera if I looked through the viewfinder (pain in the arse), but it gets even better. Even though the light on the body shows green (sufficient light for the shot), it flashes green (maybe not enough light) when I touch the shutter button, and turns solid red (not enough light) when I press the shutter (halfway or all the way). It is an old camera (bought in April of 2003), but it was the only fuckin’ one I had, and I wanted it to hold out until Christmas, when I hoped the fat man in red would come through with the Panasonic. The fat man in red doesn’t have an extra $500 ATM, and it’d be pointless to go buy a $250 camera that I don’t want, then still not have the Lumix I do want. Besides, if I had an extra $250, I’d find the rest somehow and get the one I want. So, I guess that’s the end of fun Flickr activities, and people will be waiting a long time for updated pictures of Mean and Pinchy, Shannon and IDNR. What a shite weekend this has been.

I like looking at pictures on Flickr. Some are good, some not so good and some damned good. Then, there are the pretentious arses who feel the need to use artsy-fartsy titles for everything. It’s a picture, not a painting, and even if you think you’re an artist, you’re not, you’re a photographer. I have an Ansel Adams print on my wall, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s art. It’s a photo. An excellent one, but still a photo. Paintings and sculptures that look like something are art (no, the pile of junked car parts that you welded together and called “Industrial Man” doesn’t look like anything, and neither does throwing paint on a canvas like a three-year-old with ADHD). Photography is just photography. Oh, and in case you were wondering, “performance art” isn’t art, either; it’s a desperate plea for recognition by an attention whore who lacks any real talent.

Then again, I suppose that pretentiousness is somewhat better than being a repressed serial killer, like the guy with the photo titled, “On the last day i took her where the wild roses grow” that features a mud (I hope) covered, apparently nude man, crouched in the grass, holding five dead roses (cultivated, incidentally, not wild) and staring off into space. Freak–did you strangle her after the last day?