Nerd Curves?

I just saw a reference to Geek Physique in brithistorian's journal.

What a great idea, a fanish exercise group! Good job, MISFITS!

belated NCOD

Well, I didn't manage to come out to anyone on National Coming Out Day, yesterday. I would have had find a complete stranger to actually come out to, but I didn't think that was necceasary.

We hear
You'r queer
Tell us someting we don't already know.

Picture Time

My sister, Dana, is getting married in mid November, down in Jackson, Mississippi. She has decided not to hire a professional wedding photographer, and instead has asked Joe and I to help her take pictures. I'm happy to do this of course, but I fear that my little Canon PowerShot 400 may not be up to the task of taking good wedding photos. I also fear that no matter which camera I use, that I won't be up to the task of taking good wedding photos either.

I think I can improve my own skills, at least a bit, by reading up on wedding photography. I recall recently seeing a book on wedding photography at Best Buy, which I expect is intended for digital camera users. Alternatively I'll see if I can find a good book over at Borders.

As for the camera... currently the Canon Powershot Pro 1 is my top choice. This appears to be a great camera. Here are a couple reviews B&H | Amazon.com. Alternatively, the Canon Powershot S8 looks like a good choice, and it's a bit smaller. An even smaller choice would be the Canon Powershot SD550, which I've had the pleasure of using here at work a couple of times.

The reason I'm leaning towards the Pro 1 is that it is closer to a professional level camera, and would be a great opportunity for me to learn to handle SLR functions.

DIVX to Quicktime

For anyone that might want to convert their existing tv shows and other videos downloaded in DIVX format (sometimes AVI with DIVX encoading) into Quicktime  H.264  or MPEG-4 formats to watch on the new iPod Videos, I think this software will do the job: http://www.riverpast.com/en/support/tutorials/convert/divx/mov.php. Note that its for Windows.

Which itch to scratch?!?!

Ugh! Today is a bad day for my gadget itch.

I was already looking at getting a new digital photo camera this morning. (I'm still leaning towards the Canon Powershot Pro1, but I'm hoping to get advise from photoglh.)

Then Apple announced the new iPod with the ability to play video. Joe and I are already talking about taking his iPod Nano back to Best Buy and getting the new iPod for him instead.

And... I've had the Panasonic AG-DVX100A video camera on my dream wish list for a while now. This is a very good quality 3-CCD mini-dv video camera. This is the camera that I did video shoot training on, and I loved it. I've been trying to get my company to buy one... but they are majorly stalling right now (ugh... stupid budget!).

Lets not even talk about my desire to buy a new Mac for home use. The new iMac that was announced today looks very nice, especially for the price, but I still think I should stall until later in 2006 after the Macs with Intel processors come out.

I think I will have to be satisfied with a new iPod and a new photo camera. The video camera doesn't make a lot of sense for me to buy because I probably won't use it all that often personally. It makes much more sense for my company to buy it. Maybe if I found a REALLY good deal on one. I will definitly get more use our of the photo camera.