Dragon V's Ramblings

OMG!!!

The Mountain Dew wall/window thing is so awesome!!!

Thanks. Believe it or not, it has yet to fall once since I finished putting it up. All the cans are just sitting on the window sill and they happen to fill it up almost perfectly. I'd say it's a fairly unique window treatment ;)

Yeah....it's pretty freakin' cool....

That is like my dream home..
*drools over the video game systems*

*puts plastic over games* ;-p

Cool though. This is my first dream home :). It's taken a while but it's more or less coming together nicely. I'll probably put up some more pictures of stuff in the next week when I finish (finally) cleaning and putting stuff away.

what kind of camera do you have/use? I want one, but I don't know what is good... I am looking to spend less than $200

Check these out from CNET.COM. I'm looking at the Canon Powershot A10. Not the best camera around, but good for the price and I like the compact size. And for most applications, 1.3megapixels is just fine.

Good Luck :o)

Is that they type you are using?

I use a fairly decent webcam attached to the machine. But i'ma get a regular digital cam soon...

Oooh! I can't wait to see the pictures it produces... I kinda want to get one before I go out to EP, so I have to keep in mind to get one that has a large capacity... Yeah right, for the amount of money I want to spend!

Actually on a lot of cameras the capacity is independant of the camera. Try looking for one that uses a smartcard or similar removable memory thing. Most of those will come with 8Mb of memory, but you can then buy up to like 128Mbs cards (or buy like 32 Mbs at a time etc... based on what you find you need and can afford). The nice thing is that those memory modules are tiny and relatively cheap so you can buy a couple and just switch them out when one gets full.

How do you know (or find out) how many pictures it holds? I like this one so far, very close to the one Dave mentioned.

The number of pictures it holds is basically Memory/Picture Size. Picture Size is determined by quality and actual size (e.g. 640x480 will use less space than 1600x1200). Different cameras claim different things, but for the most part you want to find a camera that has a selection of picture qualities/sizes and as much memory as possible. That's why I like the ones with removeable memory. I haven't seen any lately that come with less than 8Mb and even if that's a bit small, once you buy the camera you can use it as is for a while and later if you want to you can get more meory for it.

If you pick one with a standard memory card type (e.g. SmartMedia) then down the road, if you find that you need a better camera, or you decide to buy another one etc.. then you can look for one that uses the same memory and re-use the memory on the camera.

My old cam had 2Mb and could hold upto 32pics. I bought a 16Mb flash card for it and upped it's capasity to like 256 (and it could go upto 32Mb). 32mb costs like $40 or so...not bad imo

It looks like that one has a fixed amount of memory (not such a good thing) and the digital zooms tend to suck a bit. I've seen better cameras in your price range...

I am going to keep looking!

Hmm...that's actually very nice hehe...

*squeeking sound of my mind changing*

Don't go for it... Reviews weren't that great for low light... and the lens is fixed...

Check this it has a lot of reviews from a good cross section of folks (i.e. beginners, pros, middle of the road types).

With all the features out there, you might want to think about what kind of pictures you are likely to want to take (action shots, landscapes, random snapshots, lighting conditions (e.g. clubs, night etc...)) and then pick a camera in your price range that is strong in the stuff that you need.

When I bought my Macika a few years ago, I didn't find out that it took a long time (by camera standards) to take pictures and save them to it's disk. This isn't a problem for a lot of my work shots (buildings don't move around much ;), but it is a pain when I want to take pictures at a party or with friends because I have to wait like 15 seconds before it is ready to take another picture (but on the plus side it uses floppy's to save the pictures so that's cheap).

That's why I like the above site, the people who comment on the cameras have lots of different views and not allt he reviews are by really cluefull power users (which is kind of good I think).

let me know if you go mountain biking, man...! i'm sorta rarin to go, but don't know any places in el paso. :)

When did you go to EP?

i've been here since December...!

I didn't realize that...

I might go in the next few weeks/month once the weather gets nicer. Mostly I hadn't gone much because I haven't bought a carrier for my bike and it's kind of a pain to stuff the Trek into the back of Molly with all the stuff she normally has in her.

I'll almost certainly mention any plans to go in my journal :)

If you are looking for place to head out to, you can try the end of Redd Rd, north of I-10, or Arroyo Canyon (Rim Rd, right before it gets to Scenic Dr), and the Franklin Mts Park on Trans Mountain. The park has officially maintained trails, the other two places have trails that people have built over the last many years. I think several of the bike shops in town have maps of the Redd Rd and Arroyo Canyon trails. I know I saw some at the Bicycle Company on Mesa.

aww the memories:) your wall o' Dew reminded me of when at a friends house that everyone used to hang out at all the time, we had a "wall o' Faygo" and "boxes o' Faygo" when we ran out of the wall. if you don't know what faygo is, it is a really cheap but pretty good drink that at the time we thought only came in glass bottles. now that we know it comes in cans and plastic bottles, the still huge fanatics of the faygo shun the ones around us that don't care if we use a plastic bottle or can. now, i'm sure you wanted to here more of this, but i don't have anything else to say, especially now since i'm aware of my rambling. goodnight