[thechat] RE: more pictures of Anchorage

[David McCreath]

My ISP officially sucks at running mail servers. We've had three outages
  this month, and there are some really freaky delay issues. So I'm
responding to messages that I saw in the archive. Note to self: set up
an SMTP server on that old box at home.

Rudy:

I'm still investigating that white stuff ... er ...

Ron:

I didn't want to sink too much money into a digital camera until I
figured out how much I would actually use it for anything besides taking
snapshots for the web. So ...

I went with an Olympus D-510 Zoom. It's a 2.1 megapixel and has the form
factor of a normal compact camera, so it's a good midrange between just
a snapshot, web-quality-only camera and a print-copies-for-grandma
camera. It also shoots QuickTime movies. I got a 128 meg memory card for
it, so I can get up to 45 seconds or so of video, and a PILE (250+) of
pictures, even at 1600 x 1200 (which is the default). The zoom is 3x
optical and 9x digital.

The only thing that I'm not crazy about is that I can't seem to set a
lower default resolution. Most of the time, I'd be just as happy
shooting at 1024 x 780. Of course, with that 128 meg card, it's not a
big deal.

I got it for $300 at CompUSA, because that was the only place in town
that had it. I'm pretty sure that large city in the lower 48 will have
it cheaper than that at some mega-electronics store.

You're in Houston now, right? We were down there last Christmas visiting
friends, and Katie walked to a gym to work out one day. The hotel staff
were flabbergasted. (I lived there twice, for year each time. That's all
I could take before fleeing back to Austin and the Hill Country.)

David