Just launched, the BB photoblog: Unpopped. Expect weird, wonderful or downright wanky images.

Notes on buying a new camera

So, I need a(nother) digicam. The family one is stuck indoors being used for family photos, now that we actually have a family. I had planned to save the cash for the inevitable DSLR next year (D200? dare I??), but the great light we get at this time of year has made me crumble. I need a digital camera with me: there, I said it. Film is a waste when you’re grabbing random, “experimental” shots on the offchance that something will look good. I wanted a good, cheap digicam - probably something a year or two old, maybe used. (Whadaya mean, “aren’t nine cameras enough?”)

What follows is the result of several weeks trawling eBay and DPReview with, so far, limited success (one broken A75). And now I’m almost ready to buy new and spend twice my original budget.

As an internationally recognised usability pundit who is often chased down the street, I’ve run out of corporate wallets to shake down so I’ve decided to pick on YOUR crappy little homepage to boost my self-esteem while grinding your’s into dust. Bear in mind that I’ve worked on all the big sites and, while they may have more staff, more at stake and far larger lovely, lovely budgets for expensive consultancy, that’s no excuse for foisting your effluent proletarian musings on the Internet and not expecting me to loftily disdain them. I spit on your lowly efforts, you worthless schmoe. Here are the top ten reasons you’re an ignorant bozo, as picked out by ME.

It’s October, which means it’s:

• one month to the release of the Doctor Who Complete “Series One” DVD box set;
• two months to the Christmas special and debut proper of David Tennant as the new Doctor Who;
• five months to series two!

BB hasn’t been this unfeasibly excited since the same time last year when, our better judgement notwithstanding, we were daring to anticipate the first series of the revival with some eagerness. How did it all go so right?

After enthusing about my Canon Powershot A40 in Part 2 of this article, I discovered something else it couldn’t do: it couldn’t handle a short drop on to the pavement very well, even when protected by a padded carry case. Half of the retractable lens cover failed to tract afterwards, although in fairness this didn’t stop the rest of the camera from working. But it seemed safest to buy a whole new camera (honest, dear), so I immediately started drawing up my list of requirements.

Recently published via Lulu, the vanity publisher for the 21st Century, is The Toycam Handbook (“Better living through plastics”), a joint effort by members of toycamera.com (tc). For $30, you receive 112 pages (approx. 1/4” thick at 9x6” size) of specs, tips and thoughts on using “toy” (plastic) cameras. Throw away that full frame DSLR! Become a bohemian hippy iconoclast! Or something.

I dunno, this seems relevant somehow. (Scored 89, since you ask.)

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m definitely almost probably certainly going to allow my Nikonians subscription to lapse early next year. That will also mean the loss of my main online photo gallery. If you’re worried that this will mean the disappearance of all those classic images (well, someone might care), you’d be right to worry because I have no intention of laboriously re-uploading them elsewhere. I have enough trouble keeping up with the new images I’m taking, without worrying overmuch about the old ones. If I get time, I might transfer some of the ongoing projects (Anglesey Barracks - which I still hope to revisit one day; Poppy; Abandoned tracks).

Here’s a Cfengine module written in Perl called module:tools, that creates a Cfengine policy file for updating software packages. If you’ve been wondering how to do this, it may point you in the right direction. Read on for the gory details and the necessary glue.

It’s actually quite easy to automate the configuration of a BIND DNS server using Cfengine, even one run in a chroot environment. It’s also a good illustration of the non-obvious technique for copying multiple files using Cfengine’s copy action.