Digital Cameras

Following the break-in last Friday, I’m looking for a new digital camera. It has to have at least 3 Megapixels (preferably 4, or even 5), and ideally a good optical zoom (frankly, digital zoom isn’t worth the hassle) of at least 3x, preferably more. I’m not bothered what it uses as storage, but it’s got to be removable. I already miss my Fuji digicam, but I’m not overly impressed with the new designs and they look decidedly uncomfortable, and much as I fancy it, I can’t justify a Canon EOS 1Ds. I’ll be going to have a play with some tomorrow – so the question is this :

What do you use, and what do you recommend? Budget goes up to about £500, and at the moment Pentax are looking promising, with Fuji a close second if I can find one that’s comfortable. Pros, cons, recommendations – that’s what I’m interested in.

What do you mean you’re still here?

A survey from the Skipton building society has shown that some parents actually pay their grown-up children to leave the nest. It was only a small cross-section (530 parents, to be exact) but out of that, only a third of the parents ask for a contribution from their children towards household bills, and 90% do the cooking/laundry for their children still.

Are these people fucking stupid? Of course they are. If the parents insisted their little darlings paid for their keep, did their own cooking and laundry, they’d soon leave once they realised it wasn’t a cushy number to stay with mummy and daddy any more. OK, house prices are high, which makes it harder to go out in the big wide world, but it’s not that difficult – I’d reckon most of them stay with parents simply because it’s cheaper/easier than doing it all themselves.

Anniversary

A quick “Happy Birthday” to Haloscan (the commenting system used here (for now)) which is one year old today. It’s had it’s ups and downs, but still annoys me far less than Enetation still does, even when I use it on other people’s sites. Maybe it just doesn’t like Opera, but it’s slow as hell, which in fairness is one thing I haven’t been able to say for Haloscan.

51st State

Interesting piece in the Guardian about how Britain is losing it’s sovereignty to the US. Would we be better off if we actually became the 51st State? (I say “if”, I probably mean “when”) In fact, could we actually continue on in the way we do now if we were to fall out with the US?

Was that it?

Well, normality returns to the UK weather, and it’s pissing it down again. Typically, I have to walk across town to a meeting in a short while. A meeting with people I’ve never met, and I have absolutely no idea what the meeting is about, nor what they want.

Gee, that’ll be productive then.

Dead Letters

I suppose it’s not so much the contents as how the hell they were posted – a nice piece on the BBC about Belfast’s “National Returned Letter Centre” (although that doesn’t include the 280,000 letters every week that are lost or delayed in the UK). I’ve had stuff back from these people before, and I think they’re pretty bloody good for the most part.

I particularly like the idea that they’re the destination for all the UK’s letters to Santa. And that all the letters get replied to. We truly are a daft nation at times.

A house, A house, my kingdom for a house

Over at Whereveryouare, Vaughn has been having some thoughts about his hopes and dreams for a house of his own. Fair enough, I can understand that desire for a front door of his own, having lived in flats and shared houses. Personally, I have a different dream…

I dream of a day where I don’t have to deal with fuckhead landlords. I’ve been with my current bunch of clowns (no links, as they don’t even have answerphones, let alone email, websites, or anything remotely useful) for three years. In that time, I’ve not seen a single person from the agency – which is no bad thing. However, this includes the fact that to be legal, a property has to have a “gas check” at least once a year to ensure the safety of the gas system. One was done when I first moved in, and there’s not been one since.

After the break-in on Friday, I ended up calling the landlords on Monday morning to arrange a replacement window. (They’ve no answerphone or mobile, so I hadn’t been able to leave a message over the weekend) It was arranged that it’d be done yesterday, while I was at work – and I even arranged to leave the back gate unlocked in order to allow the glazier access. (They also don’t work weekends, or anything after 4 in the afternoon) When I got home last night – unshockingly – the window hadn’t been fixed. I called them up, and they said they’d let me know what was happening.

I’ve just called them, no phone call having been forthcoming, to be told “oh, he should be fixing it today”. That’ll be impressive, as the gate’s now locked up again – maybe he’ll climb over the wall, along with the sheet of glass and so on. I look forward to going home to an injured moron in my back yard. And the landlord’s attitude? “Oh well, you should have left the back gate unlocked so he could get in. You knew we’d be there at some time”. This is the back gate that was where the little bastards got access last time. I see a failure of logic – and my soothsaying ability predicts a shitty letter going off in the very near future.

In the meantime, I’m just going to dream of the day where I can simply get all this done and organised myself, not have to go through landlords, letting agents, or whatever – I know insurance companies will be just as annoying in their own way, but at least I’ll be able to sort it out without the use of keffing proxies who can’t find their arses with both hands and a flashlight.