Flat3D

It’s here!

My new camera arrived today, I must have ordered the blue (”Aqua Blue”) one instead of the silver(”Silver Steel”), or maybe they made a mistake. But I really don’t mind either way.

It’s pretty cool, charging its batteries at the moment. It’s not as easy to get around as the Fuji, but I will get used to it and be whizzing around in no time. also the BIG icons on the screen to tell you whats going on are a little distracting compared to the Fuji’s little smart ones, but again, I’ll get used to it!

I can’t wait to get it into action!

German spides?

If you have ever seen the tv show “pimp my ride” you will probably find the German approach refreshing:
check it out

Fuji is dead, long live Olympus!

From a real mountain in Japan to a pretend (intelly… intellictchoo… smart people might say “mythological”) one in ancient Greece! Just less than half an hour ago I became the future owner of an Olympus [mju:] 720SW digital camera! That’s the good news, the bad news is it seems the insurance only covers me for damage done by baggage handlers…:doh_tb:

Anyways, the little thing wasn’t the cheapest on the market, but with these things I always think it better to spend a bit more and get something a bit sturdier (I know the last one broke in a puddle, but to be honest it was the last drop and splash in a long line of drops, kicks, sit-ons, dousings, throws etc So it actually lasted pretty well) and at least slightly future resistant. It doesn’t have all the functions of my last camera either, for example it is only automatic, there are scene modes etc, but no manual settings adjustment. But this isn’t really a problem as I now have a fully manual camera I can use if I ever want to spend half an hour trying to figure out the lighting and guff.

The best thing about this new camera is that it is shockproof (to the extent that a camera can be without bright blue plastic and rubberised corners…) and waterproof to a depth of 3 metres and thats more than enough to cover me for videos and snaps of surfing and river-running with the guys, not to mention capsized shots of kayaker extraordinaire Big Andy L. in the pool for the fayc.com site next year! :thumbup_tb:

Nice!

Here it is in all it’s Japanese glory
Here it is on olympus’s UK site

Note, I went for the “Silver Steel” option (or as they call it in Japan “Shiny Silver” :bigsurprise_ee:)

(oops posted it twice, sorry to lose your comment Jonny…)

Rest in peace Fuji F700…

This morning I was taking Willie the dog for her (yes Willie is a girl) daily morning stroll around the rice fields across the road. We rounded the corner to see snow-capped Mount Iwaki outlined against a clear blue sky. So I got out my camera (the Fuji mentioned in the title) and steadied myself and prepared to shoot. I selected Landscape mode and ensured the flash was set to off. And I aimed using the nice viewfinder and with clownlike precision dropped it into a puddle. This was some feat as the snow was still melting and 6 inches right it would have landed in crisp melting snow, 6 inches to the left and it would have splatted into the mud. But as the law (said to be named for Captain Edward A. Murphy, a feckless (US) Air Force engineer who seemed to have an uncanny ability to seek out even the most unlikely of setbacks) deems, it found the puddle with unerring accuracy.

Of course I was slightly concerned, but not overly as this kind of thing has happened before with my camera and the worry and concern usually seemed to be unwarranted as the camera fired up and continued to function as normal. So I picked it up and the screen was blank, so I switched it off and dried it as best I could and brought it home. Once home I proceeded to thoroughly dry it before switching it on, as any good electronics engineer would. Once suitably dry I switched in on. The screen lit up, there was no sign of water in the lens or viewfinder, all was going well.
For some reason the camera was now in manual mode and so I reached up to the selector dial to switch it to Auto, a more useful mode all round for the amateur photographer, to find the switch already at the Auto mode. Some twiddling of the dial and switching on and off later and I was successfully able to diagnose the problem. The switch is broken. My once all singing, all dancing fully automatic digital camera has become a fully manual device.
Now technically this isn’t a problem in that it is pretty easy to take manual pictures with it, but in practice it takes an elephant’s age to set everything up for a decent pic (like I said, all singing, all dancing). So the upshot of this is I have a relatively useless digital camera…bah…

USA feel what it’s like to be british…

I say British because the English aren’t the world’s number one at football, cricket or rugby (although they won the last world cup, they haven’t performed so well lately), the Scottish don’t have the world’s best golfer (theres always debate on golf, but lets be honest), the welsh… what did the welsh invent? And the Northern Irish, if rioting was a sport we’d be at the top, but as it’s not we will have to join the welsh in the non-inventor corner.

Today was the final of the WBC, the World Baseball Classic, which is like the world cup of baseball. Now baseball isn’t too worldy a sport, there were only 16 or so nations competing in the first place. And while you could argue that the USA didn’t invent baseball and they just were fed up being laughed at for playing rounders and changed the name, we won’t be that mean and give them the benefit of the doubt. But the thing is that while the USA has the biggest baseball league in the world, so big that they call it’s ultimate competition the “World Series”, and while the other teams in the WBC all measured their teams strength and their chances of getting anywhere by how many players they had playing in the Major Leagues in the states, the USA didn’t make it past the second round after being beaten by Mexico and Korea and despite beating Japan (who went on to win the tournament, hence me, from the baseball-less side of the world, knowing that it even exists!).

So it beg’s the question… Are the United States of America turning British?!

I’ll leave you with that thought to ponder and hope that you won’t notice the delay on putting anything up about Irish Night or snowboarding… But watch this space!