Ritz & Wolf Camera file for Chapter 11
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D96HEULG0.htm
The Ritz in Crystal Lake has always been good. Decent prints, good service and knowledgeable staff. It's where we have our regular prints made, thanks to their online service.
Prices for equipment have always been on par with big box stores in the area but they can't compete with the likes of B&H and Amazon. We did buy our DSLR from them due to price matching Calumet though.
I'd hate to see this location go away.
Kid-proof digital cameras
For a long time if you wanted a digital point and shoot that could, at the very least, survive getting wet (rain, amusement park, spit-takes, etc), your choices were: Olympus & Pentax. Both had a line of waterproof cameras (up to 3m and 4m respectively).
Since then, though, Olympus has gone further to make this line more rugged. Their most robust camera (the Tough 8000) is waterproof up to 10m (~32ft), drop-proof from a height of 2m (~7ft), crush-proof, up to 100kg (~220lbs), and can operate in temperatures down to -10 deg C (14 deg F). (It should be noted that these are official numbers. I take my non-rugged point and shoot out into much colder temps and am not concerned).
In the rather tight digital point and shoot market, trends have shown up in clumps as manufacturers scramble to "me too" each other. (Witness trends like the megapixel race, or the megazoom race, or the rash of new "detection" modes: face detection, blink detection, smile detection, etc. There is also an HD Movie trend now that HDTV is so popular.) So it's rather strange that Olympus (and to some extent, Pentax) have been able to operate in this "rugged-ized" market for so long uncontested.
With this years PMA, however, things have changed.
Both Canon, Panasonic, and Fuji have joined in the fray and released "stronger" cameras. (Though it should be noted that Fuji has had a rugged camera in the European market for some time but it was not a consumer camera.)
Canon has released the D10
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0902/09021805canond10.asp
The specs seem respectable (waterproof to 10m, shock-proof to 1.2m, freeze-proof to -10 deg C, supposed super-bright LCD) but quite frankly, the design leaves a lot to be desired. A flash right over the top of the lens? If you think red-eye is bad with your current digital camera, just wait until you start using this model. Even with the camera running a "Red Eye Correction" function automatically after the image is captured, I have a feeling this camera is better used outside without the flash.
Fuji has released the Z33.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0902/09021705fujifilmz33.asp
It's a pretty standard point and shoot with the added benefit of being waterproof. But there's no mention of it being able to withstand being dropped or sat upon.
Panasonic has released the TS1
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0901/09012705panasonicft1.asp
Panasonic has made great strides with their point and shoots in the past two years and this entry seems in line with that goal. Waterproof and shock-proof it also features HD video in HVCHD format.
All in all it's nice to seem some more development (har?) in this market. Maybe it'll push older Olympus models into the used market at decent prices.
big river
I put Johnny Cash's "Live at San Quentin" album (the 2000 re-issue) in the CD player tonight while Nate and I were hanging out and playing.
After the first track, "Big River" finished, Nate, who had been quiet, (as he often is when listening to music new to him) suddenly said "He's real real happy."
That boy amazes me almost every day.
layers are key
Yesterday I walked for 2.9 miles during lunch and today I walked 3.6. On both days I was too warm toward the end of the walk, but today I had multiple layers (anticipating the frigid temps and wind) and so I was able to cool myself down without becoming cold.
Not much else to say, really. I'm a function before fashion guy but you knew that already.
happiness is
Happiness is...
- Having a couple reasonably non-frigid days and spending some time outside with Nate.
- Sharing ice cream and episodes of "The Closer" with
helloheather at noon on a Tuesday. - Starting your work week on a Wednesday and still ending it on a Friday.
fleeting
Today, on the way back from a fun "open gym" event in Cary with helloheather and Nate, (which followed the procurement of several new pairs of khaki's for work), a peregrine falcon swooped down, crossing from left to right, in front of our car and then up again into the trees.
I've never seen a falcon before in the wild and have rarely seen any wild raptors this close. The bird was only a few feet from my door as it gained altitude to land in the trees.
Beautiful.
an uneasy feeling
Last week the husband of a coworker passed away.
The next day the father-in-law of another coworker, passed away.
The grandfather of a friend passed away during the week as well.
On Saturday, my doctors house burned to the ground.
Today, a neighbors house was destroyed in a fire.
Thankfully, in both fires, no one was injured.
And so I hold Nate and Heather a little tighter when we have a family hug.
ignotus facebokus
How an update to my facebook page is made:
I linked my twitter account to facebook so tweets show up as updates and I don't need to spend any time updating two accounts with the same worthless information.
twitter --> facebook
I update twitter through IM. Because official IM from twitter is technically broken, I have to use excla.im which sends updates for me.
excla.im --> twitter --> facebook
I don't have access to IM from anywhere but home, so I use a handy interface to IM from using IRC. This is called bitlbee. I connect to an IRC server running bitlbee
bitlbee --> excla.im --> twitter --> facebook
Like any good geek, I connect to IRC through the irssi client
irssi --> bitlbee --> excla.im --> twitter --> facebook
And of course, I'm keeping irssi running through screen on a shell account.
screen --> irssi --> bitlbee --> excla.im --> twitter --> facebook
And how does one connect to a shell account? Why through an SSH client, of course! (In my case either Putty or SecureCRT.)
securecrt --> screen --> irssi --> bitlbee --> excla.im --> twitter --> facebook
All of this so that my facebook page can tell you how I watched "No Reservations" last night and it was Chicago and it was a reasonably good episode.
----
As an aside, if I'm using Putty, that means I'm running Portable Putty off of my flash drive which should probably be described as:
usb --> putty --> screen --> irssi --> bitlbee --> excla.im --> twitter --> facebook
wherein I talk even more about the weather
This morning on the train platform it was 0F and the wind chill was -15F. During my lunch hour walk it warmed up to 16F with a wind chill of around 2F.
Tomorrow it's only supposed to get up to 11F but then a rather rapid warming trend. 36 for a high then 42 and then, if predictions hold, it'll be 45 deg or warmer on Saturday.
This does not bode well for people living in flood-prone areas. And, baring any February snow storms, we'll be looking at brown grass and dirt for the next month. Oh well.
In other news, after essentially 6 weeks of being sick I'm finally going to the doctor. I think the lingering cold has turned into a full-blown sinus infection.