When you're twenty-one you're no fun.

[reddragdiva]

• George Carlin's last interview.

• The perfect monument to George W. Bush.

• Colour my underwear important (courtesy sly_girl).

• Can I call it or what.

• DIY solid state drive. Put your desktop OS and apps on this and watch your system fly.

I have a new toy: a Fujifilm FinePix F20. I really wanted an F30 or F31fd — the miracle compact for low light — but they are going for stupid prices (was £125-150 new, going rate is £175-£200 second-hand on eBay) because the replacement, the F50fd, is mediocre rubbish owing to megapixel mad cow disease.

The F20 has the same sensor, body and optics as the F30 and slightly less whiz-bang. The old F10 is actually as good as the F20 or F30 for low light, but, as DPReview said, "the user interface appears to have been designed by someone with either a very cruel sense of humor or a serious sadistic streak." So when I spotted the F20 in the runout section of PC World Tottenham Hell, I checked prices online (£100-130 new, £70-80 second-hand on eBay) and grabbed it this morning for £70 new.

ISO 1600 sample. The 100% crop looks like a pointillist watercolour. Still better than ISO 400 with the Canon.

I'm the happiest girl in the whole USA! And I will be giving this new shiny toy a serious workout tomorrow at Vagabonds. "All those embarrassing photos of your drunken friends will be sharp, detailed and colourful"? We'll see! Who else will be along?

arkady secured a bit of work sysadminning from home, which pays for the camera (as I'm in the background supplying mentoring and Freda-wrangling) and a small dollie for her. And eating and stuff. I suspect I'll be sponging drinks furiously tomorrow evening.

Freda has been having a marvellous time playing with steer's old MP3 player. It looks like my work phone, so she holds it to her face and babbles into it, and finds it vastly amusing when I talk into it going "Freda? Hello? Hello, Freda!" Or when I pick up my phone and talk into it while she babbles into the MP3 player. And it has a speaker, so she can press the button on the front and it makes noise. I'll have to bring my old one back to life after all, 'cos this one's hers whenever she gets her hands on it.

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

dSLRs are much better. However, if you try to use a dSLR at a concert, you will be asked to delete your pictures or escorted out. For the most part, people who take photos with 'cheap compacts' can do so unmolested.

Meanwhile, famed duckspotter drplokta has been taking great pictures at 180 zoom or something with a Panasonic pseudo-SLR. Not, obviously, in low light. So it's very important to work out what you want to do with your camera before buying.