Eating slowly

I eat slowly. I take a bite or two and then come back later for more. Lots of small meals throughout the day is my preference.

This Mercola article I read today ties in with that. Eating lightly and giving my body time to digest it and then send the “I’ve got enough energy now” message seems to be a good idea.

This probably has a lot to do with why I’m not a big porker despite my sedentary lifestyle.

Out with the old, in with the discontinued [camera]

We used to have a Casio Exilim EX-S500. It did well by us. Very portable, okay pictures. Very good video. Then I took it to Weeki Wachee and Zip-Loc let me down (three bags, three soaked items.) The camera was not serviceable after that. We dried it and dried it. When I finally disassembled it, it was clearly beyond salvage. My biggest complaint about this camera was that you couldn’t change the zoom level while video was recording.

So today, at Ritz in Ocala, we got a Casio Exilim EX-V8, highly regarded by Ken Rockwell, that I’ve coveted for some time. But the S500 was good enough to make the EX-V8 unjustifiable. Until the S500’s untimely demise.

So far, so good. Turns out the EX-V8 even has a constant light for video! That’s something my Canon ZR-200 MiniDV camcorder doesn’t even do.

Regarding zooming during video recording, the EX-V8 does this extremely well. Not only does it have two speeds of zoom depending on how far you push the slider, it is virtually silent. I can’t hear it zooming at all. And the zooming is not in steps, it is smooth. And 7X!

This will be a great backup camera for photo work and a good primary audio recorder, taking the S500’s place, for business meetings and product review meetings with clients. Keeps folks honest.

The EX-V8 is not currently available direct from Amazon (only through Amazon merchants) and costs $244 from them right now. The Ritz store I bought it at had only this one and the floor model left and I’ve found none from known good sellers online lately. It is discontinued. The next one in this family (EX-V9?) may turn out to be fantastic but I doubt it will cost only $200 and probably (hopefully) won’t do anything I need better than the V8. I certainly don’t need more megapixels. Any improvements in video recording would be great, but probably not worth the extra money for me. But time will tell and this is a great camera for the money today. Did I mention 7X zoom? Nice.

Highly Recommended: HDClone

Yesterday I wanted to replace a drive on an XP Home box with a bigger drive. I didn’t own any tools (like Norton Ghost — media lost long ago) for doing this. This digg.com thread gave me a lead on HDClone.

I downloaded HDClone 3.6 Free Edition and used it to make a bootable CD so no files would be locked on the system drive I was copying. It went off without a hitch. HDClone made it totally clear what it was going to do and it did it well the first time. I have no complaints whatsoever. The new drive booted right up (I powered the old drive off) and that machine is running fine.

F4i license plate installed

Finally installed the license plate on the F4i this weekend. Had to drill and mount the plate mount as the Hotbodies undertail doesn’t come precut for this so you can put the plate anywhere you like on there or not mount it under the tail at all.

JZ did all the work. It looks great. Started and finished yesterday, Sunday.

Circular polarizer arrived

My Hoya circular polarizer arrived today. UPS put it in the US mail. The 67mm-to-77mm stepup ring arrived today, too.

The polarizer feels well made. It’s a little scary how exposed the glass surface is (it’s not set deep in its ring). But I’ll surely get used to it.

Polarizing filter

I’ve wanted a circular polarizer for my Nikon DSLRs forever. I even wanted one for my Olympus E-10. But this post from Jeffrey Friedl’s blog pushed me over the edge. The first pic (the table, pizza, glass of water) is all it took. Within about a week, I bought a Hoya 77mm Super Multi Coated Thin (no front threads) Circular Polarizer Filter from Amazon.com, fulfilled by Adorama, for about $85. Its price goes up and down. Right now (less than 12 hours later) it’s $115.95 so I bought it at a good point.

Wall-E

This afternoon, I took my daughter to her first in-cinema movie, Wall-E. We had a very nice time. She had her little popcorn-in-a-box with her little (huge) Coke and finished it all.

Frogger

I almost ran over an aligator on my motorcycle last night. Riding back on Ozello Trail after dark, the 3.5′ long gator cut in front of me and raced across the road, its legs pinwheels. It was very cute. I missed the end of its tail by about two inches.

A little ways down the same road, the was a frog leaping down the road toward me. I felt like a log in Frogger.

D200, suddenly

I saw a D200 on craigslist yesterday for $800. Looked like a good deal. I contacted the guy. Nice guy. Said he’d be in town (Ocala) the next day — Saturday, today — around 5pm. So I sold my very new D80 last night on eBay with a one-day auction. It sold today and I went and got the D200. The D200 is fantastic so far. Totally pristine. He’d had it a year and a half and said he bought it from someone else. So I’ll assume it’s about two years old. I’m stoked.

VPN, suddenly

We’re in C.R. now. The VPN back to the office hasn’t been working. I talked to two people at Bright House and they both confirmed that they don’t block any ports. They weren’t helpful. And today, unexpectedly, I was able to connect to the VPN. Nice! I hope it stays working. And it connects faster than it did from Holiday.