The Sturdy Soapbox

Your comments please

As you know, I need to replace my digital camera as cheaply as possible.  As well as keeping an eye open on E Bay,  I've found two cameras of a similar price which is £ 60.00, with similar spec.

Does anyone reading have or know of how good or bad these cameras are ?

Choice 1

Canon Powershot A 460

I like this one best from a design point of view and it is available from Amazon.

The memory it takes is SD whereas the Fuji took XD.

I checked the price of SD cards and boy are they cheap, two quid for a 2 Gig card.

Optical zoom is 4.0 and it's a 5 Megapixel cam.

Then we have the Olympus FE 210

That's a 7 megapixel camera but with a 3.0 optical zoom.

It takes XD media of which I already have several cards.

It's on special reduced from £ 99 to £ 59

My only experience of Olympus as a product goes back to the OM10 SLR circa 1980 which failed to impress because the auto sensor failed to differentiate between shades of white.

All I know of Canon is that the higher end cameras are making a big noise at the moment, but I really can't afford an EOS.

So, let me throw the floor open.  If you have an opinion, click on comments and let's hear it.

A little encouragement wouldn't hurt !

Just spoke with OBC who's gone off on a weekend jolly.  I told him I was thinking of selling my body over Darlo way to get some money for a new digital camera.  He said I probably won't get much of a camera for what I'd earn.  Some people can't half be cruel.

Cheered myself up with a loaf of Warburtons wholemeal bread when I was in town.  Not had a decent loaf of bread in the house for a week.  I've got my booty bag of meat, so all I am short of is spuds.  Not sure what I am doing over the weekend, but it won't be photography.

End of the road for me Fuji

It's sods law that things go wrong when you're in no position to put them right.  Fortunately, the lambasting I gave Asda on Monday must've done something, because the first time they had to refund my money, it took five days (despite the fact they promised 12 to 48 hours).  This time it took two days.

The latest calamity to befall me is the death of my Fuji S5000 digital camera.  It started to play up just before Christmas, when you are setting up a picture, the display breaks up a bit like TV interference and you can't photograph anything.

At Christmas time, it did it a couple of times and hasn't done so since.  I'd even got it in my head that it could have been a bit of RF interference from the wireless MoDown. 

Yesterday when it started playing up big time, I even powered the MoDown down (so to speak), but the interference was still there. 

I wouldn't rush to buy another S5000.  Don't get me wrong, it's been a great camera, but it does have a built in fault.  A battery soldered to the motherboard to maintain the date, time and settings which lasts 2 years.  Once that period passes, it goes flat and every time you change the batteries, it loses them.  Also, Fuji aftersales is not really geared to customers, so their repair service begins at £ 99.00 ($ 200).

Talk about built in obsolescence and a great plan to sell new product, rather than service existing.

Now, if the clown who says he can't pay for his RF scanner until Tuesday keeps his word, I can hopefully pick up something cheap off E Bay though S 5000's are fetching around a hundred quid.  I did see a S 3500 go for just over thirty quid last night.  Not many Canon EOS models kicking about at pocket money prices I'm afraid.

I was surprised to learn recently, that Konica Minolta pulled out of the digital camera buiness a while back.  The best film camera I ever had was a compact Minolta and back when I did my own developing and printing, my Durst enlarger had a superb Minolta lens.

I think I may have to go and sell my body over Darlo way, because I can't really be without a camera.  During the summer months I take one with me almost everywhere I go.  You never know when you are likely to see a soxer.

She's disgusted with me, what did I do ?

A particularly fraught morning on the buses beginning with some ill mannered old twat pushing in front of me to get on a bus with his pass which wasn't valid for use for another twenty minutes.  Despite what the driver told him, he wouldn't have it so the driver let him on. 

Bob the Butcher was on much better form.  A man came in and asked if he'd got pigs feet.  "No, it's just these shoes" he replied "they'm a bit tight".

He also went on to tell me how his brother in law died in the night and how he chose to read my text message telling him how Wally the Welder was sulking about being less famous than Bob and had gone off up the pub to drown his sorrows.  This news made him laugh out loud at his brother in law's bedside much to the amazement of the assembled family.  You couldn't write this into an episode of Frasier could you ?

On the bus coming home from Darlo (where I was run over by some homicidal Vicky Pollard and her spawn in a buggy), I got a call from OBC who just happened to be about a hundred yards in front of my busload of misery, on his way to work.  So I got off the bus early and came the rest of the way home as a passenger in the posh Volvo.  I had planned to get some bread in town, but I can do that tomorrow.

As OBC and I were sweeping majestically along, he was telling me something about Val, concluding with "She's disgusted with you".  Indignantly, I protested "I've not done anything wrong".

"No" he countered  "She's discussed it with you".  Talk about a Brian Rix farce.

At least I came home with a nice bag of meat, some fresh Rosemary and Sage and some rainwater for the carnivorous plants.  A successful morning's hunt.

Jobseeker stereotypes

I was frittering away a few moments and I found this write up on the 1992 Dudley earthquake, which runs very much along the lines of my musings this morning, right  down to the slanted comment on Elizabeth Duke.

At 00:54 on Monday 23rd September an earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter scale hit Dudley, West Midlands, causing untold disruption and distress.

Many were woken well before their giro arrived.
Several priceless collections of momentos from the Balearics and Spanish Costas were damaged.
Three areas of historic and scientifically significant litter were disturbed.
Thousands are confused and bewildered, trying to come to terms with the fact that something interesting has happened in Dudley.

One resident, Donna-Marie Dutton, a 17-year-old mother-of-three said: "It was such a shock, little Chantal-Leanne came running into my bedroom crying. My youngest two, Tyler-Morgan and Megan-Storm slept through it. My punter got dressed and left. I was still shaking when I was watching Trisha the next morning."

According to police however, looting, mugging and joyriding did carry on as normal.

The British Red Cross have so far managed to ship 4000 crates of Sunny Delight to the area to help the stricken masses.

Rescue workers are still sifting through the rubble and have found large quantities of personal belongings, including benefit books, heroin, and jewellery from Elizabeth Duke at Argos.

More famous than Wally the Welder

I just received notification from the Big Picture project people telling me that the picture of Bob the Butcher is now on the BBC Black Country website.  Here's the URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blackcountry/content/articles/2008/02/21/the_big_picture_black_country_galleries_feature.shtml

Later.

I just broke the news to Wally the Welder.  He was a little cut up and harked back to his five minutes of fame with his full page in the Express and Star where they described him as spending a lot of time in the bushes at Himley Hall.

Crestfallen by the news that a humble butcher from Darlaston is now more famous, he's gone off up the pub to drown his sorrows.  He's taken the news hard.

Clevedon pier sunset

Clevedon pier sunset
Originally uploaded by *Firefox

Found this on Flickr, the pier in my old home town of Clevedon looking more beautiful than I ever saw it. In another 4 months (hint to OBC), I may have the opportunity to see it once more if he needs ferrying down to his boat. I'm available !

Did the earth move for you?

Just had a call from Charlie Chalk.  I was busy on the PC applying for a couple of jobs that had come in via e mail alert.  Unusually for me, I'd not put the TV on this morning for the BBC news, because I am expecting a parcel and if I don't hear the door buzzer, I will have to go to the main post office and fetch it.

So, when Mr. Chalk asked if it woke me up, I had no idea what he was on about.  The earthquake measuring 5.2 on the sphincter scale.  I thought it was April 1st or something, but the newsfeeds are buzzing with it.

I am the sort of person who needs a good night's kip or else I am grouchy in the morning and even though I slept through the damned thing, I am not in the best of moods as it is.

It does give me the opportunity to crack the cheap joke about the earthquake we had a few years ago of which the epicentre was Dudley.  22 million pounds worth of improvements were caused.

There was also an e mail going round in the style of those disaster charity appeals.  "Three pounds will keep a family in cigarettes and blue pop for a week". 

It's quite common for infighting (as well as inbreeding) to break out locally.  There's the rivalry between us Yam Yams and the Brummies over the hill in Birmingham.  If you actually go to Dudley, the rivalry is more localised with the peasantry of Dudley looking down on the district known as the Wren's Nest.

I had a client who worked for Jaguar, who's work colleagues cruelly referred to her as "The Wrenna" despite her having moved away from the area years previous.

One thing that did make Charlie's day was getting a book of special offer vouchers in the post from Wetherspoons (the chain of pubs that sells cheap beer).  Because the beer is cheap and they open at breakfast time, they appeal to all those you used to see slouched on the benches outside Tesco at 7:30 in the morning drinking from cans of 8 percent cider.  Now they've got somewhere warm to go get rat arsed by 11am.

Charlie looks on this book of concessions as a sort of Godsend, a bonus to the weekly Jobseekers Allowance "Ooh look, you can get a curry and a pint for £ 3.95 he squealed gleefully".

I went in the one in Walsall with PMG last winter when there was snow on the ground and there were blokes in there in tank tops showing off their mis-spelled tattoos.  It's a bit of an education to be in such a place.  Mind you, the one in Wednesbury is a lot more upmarket, you don't stick to the carpet and there's less bling, because Wednesbury hasn't got an Elizabeth Duke counter at Argos.

I can just see it now, Charlie and Darlo arm wrestling on a Friday night over who get's the free bottle of Diamond White to finish the night off.

Brother humour

This is the drawing my brother did inside my birthday card.

Part of his weekly nag to get me to tidy up the flat, especially the kitchen.

His attention to detail suggests to me he's missed a vocation in life somewhere.

The little sparkly bits denoting the gleam of a clean kitchen.  The 30th March on the calendar suggesting this is when they are coming over for the much postponed meal from Christmas.

See what I have to put up with... 

Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while

Roz Doyle to Frasier Crane.  Priceless.