I've been using del.icio.us quite a bit in the past week. I like how it shows you who else has the same bookmark. I also like how you can do a global query by tags. I came across my first meta-bookmark today: somebody had bookmarked the photography tag. Seems like a great way to find other sites of interest!

I was writing a tool in python to automatically move images into a directory hierarchy based on the stored EXIF date...Everything was working great until I decided that I should run it on ALL of my images, even those which were already in the correct location. The program as written did something like this: - Oh, you want to move file /pics/2004-12-21/dscn001.jpg? Ok, where should it go? - Based on the date, it should be renamed to /pics/2004-12-21/dscn001.jpg - Does that already exist? Yup! - Do the SHA-1 sums match? Yup! - Therefore I must have copied the file there before, delete the original! That last step, by the way, was added to prevent duplicate images from accumulating all over my hard drive. It works great when the "source" and "destination" files are actually different! Good thing I've got backups. The only problem is that it takes forever to recover as they're all on CDs.

Yummy With the firefox extension, it's particularly tasty.

...Fridge Magnets? This reminds me of an idea Travis and I had for Massively Multiplayer Online Solitaire. One person would play a regular game of solitaire, and everybody else would watch. Of course, if you've ever watched somebody play solitaire you know that you can't help but suggest what their next move should be. So in the online version everybody would have a little pointer thingy that they could use to tell the actual player what their next move should be. We figured it would be pretty funny to have a few hundred of these pointers flying around the screen trying to get the player to do something! It still cracks me up thinking about it :) But maybe you had to be there...and a little bit of booze probably wouldn't have hurt either.

Much to my surprise, Mel expressed interest in setting up a blog! So without any further ado, allow me to introduce Mel's Musings.

Well, I finally did it. I bought a Nikon D70. A guy at Henry's made me an offer I couldn't refuse. If you live in Mississauga, I can highly recommend Lan at the Henry's just north of Square One. He took very good care of me and I left the store a very satisfied customer, and definitely willing to go back. So far I'm very pleased with the camera. It's lightning fast, and the first pictures out of it were razor sharp. Ok, maybe not the first pictures; it took me a few minutes to realize that autofocus wasn't enabled... Unfortunately I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, so all you get for now are the three images I've got up there now. More to come soon, I promise :) What happened to the Digital Rebel, the 20D, or the *ist DS you ask?

• Digital Rebel: Inferior build quality and a feature-crippled body. Come on, a plastic lens mount on the kit lens?
• 20D: Too expensive. I think my wife would have something to say if I bought the 20D...
• *ist DS: Not a great lens selection. For a little bit more $$$ I could get the D70 with a superior lens, more features in the body, and the way is open to all of Nikon's lenses and other accessories sometime in the future.

This is not to say that these cameras aren't great cameras. But for me, looking at what kind of budget I had for this, the D70 was a no-brainer.

Welcome to Erica Marie, the newest member of the Wong family!

So with the majority of my nintendo stuff sold ("why not all of it?" you ask? stay tuned....), I've got a great wad of virtual cash burning a hole in my virtual wallet and have been poring over local camera shop ads in search of the "Best Deal" for the Nikon D70. I've also been reading a few different photography forums online, and for the most part people seem quite happy with the D70. But as they say, every silver lining has a cloud. There have been a few reports that the D70 sometimes just stops working. Permanently. While the D70 hasn't been out long enough for any of the cameras to be out of warranty, this is a little distressing to say the least. It seems that there is no user error here - the camera simply goes to sleep one day and never wakes up again. What if this happens after the camera is out of warranty? What if this happens while on vacation? Since I had pretty much decided on the D70, I haven't been paying as close attention to the Canon 20D to see what serious issues, if any, have come up with it. There were some issues with firmware upgrades, but as far as I can tell they were mostly user error, and all new units have the most recent firmware installed. Compound that with the ever-increasing number of hot pixels in my 3 year old Coolpix 990, and the flaky battery contacts and I cannot help but start to pay more attention to the little voice inside that questions the long term reliability of digital cameras.

Ok, maybe I'm being a bit melodramatic, but I finally got around to putting all my nintendo stuff up for auction at eBay. I haven't touched either my gamecube or my GBA in pretty much a year, so I figured that I could try and sell them to raise some funds to support my current photography habit. (I've pretty much decided on the D70 - just have to wait for the cash to show up under my mattress one of these days) So if anybody is interesed, head on over to eBay and bid really high on some of the relics of my bachelor days :) While I'm at it, I think I'll dig out my old NES, SNES and N64 and see what those will fetch at auction...

Just got back from Calgary where we spent Thanksgiving weekend with my family. We went hiking up Johnston's Canyon in Banff, went to the hot springs, had a great turkey dinner, helped out Tim and Holly with their invitations, and generally had a great time with my whole family. It's been a while since we've all been together!