Archive: August 5th, 2003

It looks like I won’t be getting an iPod after all.

Congratulations to Ronan on creating a crisp, clear design for Ben Hammersley.

I guess my design didn’t cut the mustard. At least, I hope that’s the reason that I didn’t win. The thing is, I never received any confirmation from Ben at all that he even received my submission.

Although Ben listed the submissions he had received, he made no mention of my entry (hence the comment in his blog from me). I sent two emails, the second one being a somewhat worried and nervous plea for a sign of life. Still, I got no response.

Oh, well. I guess he’s a busy guy, what with running marathons and all. But I would like to know if I was even in the running for that iPod.

Now I have to come up with an alternate plan. Maybe I should sit on a street corner with a sign saying "Will code CSS for Apple gadgets".

On the morning that Jessica and I were leaving Brighton I decided I’d chronicle every step of the way. When we boarded the bus to Heathrow airport I was already whipping out my digital camera.

That’s when I saw that the LCD display was completely white except for the top right corner where I could just about discern a portion of the scene in front of the camera. Trying to use the camera without the LCD display felt like taking pictures with my eyes closed. Of course I could just use the old-fashioned viewfinder but that seems to be "off" in some way and the pictures never come out quite the way I actually compose them.

Time for a new camera.

Luckily, I happen to be in America where electronic items are far cheaper than in England. Generally, you can just swap the dollar sign for a pound sign when you’re comparing American and English prices.

While I was in Baltimore, I took a trip out to the nearest Apple store. They had a good selection of cameras (and other goodies that severely tempted me).

I walked out with a brand new Canon S200 Elph. Dan recommended it highly so if it sucks, I’ll blame him.

It certainly seems to have a lot of powerful features but I think I’ll have to actually RTFM to get it to take pictures exactly as I want them.

I’ll have plenty of time and opportunity to test out the camera. I’m in Arizona now. The light is bright and the scenery is wide.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures from Baltimore. Some of them were taken with Jessica’s Fuji Finepix camera and some of them were taken with Dan’s Canon. See if you can spot which is which.