New Things

Yesterday I finally got fed up with not having a digital still camera and went and bought the most low end digital camera I could get. I don’t want anything fancy, just want to take pictures of the dog and cat and things here and there, various body mods, etc. I lucked out, I ended up getting the Nikon Coolpix L4 for about $140 after taxes. It’s pretty sweet, and it has a Nikkor lens, which is awesome. Cameras are really only as good as their lens. It has some useful functions too, like face recognition for auto focus. You might be surprised to learn I’ve never actually owned a digital still camera before. So most of my pictures were photobooth shots of me. Since I got it I’ve been taking pictures of everything, Schrodinger, Mister, Mimi, Arthur, Mum, Mum and her art, Mum’s amarylis, my tattoos, my industrial, me, my shoe. Mister got pissed at me as soon as I used the flash on him and went under the couch in a huff for twenty minutes. He’s not so crabby about getting his photo taken now. Schrodinger is too quick to get a good photo of yet, except when he sits in the sun. Otherwise there are all these pictures of his tail leaving the frame, his ear coming into the frame, empty space where he used to be.

It’s nice having a camera, especially a small unobtrusive camera. It fits in my pocket, and it takes video MOS (that’s without sound for you non-film folks). Finally, next time I see something out of the ordinary I have a camera to take pics of it.

I’m doing the most tedious computer fixin’ today. I partitioned my hard drive AGES ago and then realized it was a bad idea (don’t partition the newer Mac hard drives, it’s just a bad idea for a lot of reasons). Then my dad gave me a 200gb internal hard drive which I promptly named Parker Posey, and finally I have something to back everything up on so I can de-partition my drive. So I’m copying EVERYTHING over to Parker, and it’s taking a long time because there are over 60 000 files on my drive. A lot of them are teeny system files which I probably don’t need to back up, but I am anyway just in case, because errant plists are tragic. So that’s what’s going on, and it is so boring, oh man, but I don’t even have enough room on my system folder to get my new camera’s software installed, so it has to happen, I can’t keep putting it off. So far just this year I’ve installed a gig of additional ram and upgraded the operating system, and it’s kind of nice. My computer won’t be obsolete for a while. Not until Leopard comes out in April anyway.

I went out to the AKA fundraiser last night, the art raffle. It’s kind of like an auction and kind of like a raffle, you buy tickets (five bucks each) and if they pull your name you have twenty seconds to pick the piece of art you want. It’s a really good idea, and I was rather giddy about it. My name got pulled twice and I ended up snagging the two pieces I wanted the most. The first is this oil on masonite painting by Bea Parsons of a sasquatch-like character, it’s really pretty! Oh man, it was my number one choice and I was so lucky that most people called before me overlooked it. The second one I got is a photograph of Clark Ferguson with his pet rat crawling out of his mouth. A lot of people thought it was kind of a weird picture, but I have an affinity for rats, so I liked it. Mom donated a beaded colour blindness test, which Clark ended up getting. I wanted that one, but mum and I agreed to trade my tech-y services for a commissioned colour blindness test with the number 14. I came out when I was fourteen, so it’s kind of my special number. I think I’m going to help her make a digital portfolio in exchange, but we haven’t pinned it down. I won art! I was so excited, oh my god. And we were surrounded by giddy undergraduate students.

Okay, now I have to go de-partition my hard drive, I’m so scared!!! I’ll be okay I guess. I hope. Everything is backed up fine.