My old camera has long been a pain in the arse. Slow to turn on, short battery life (maybe 5 shots or so!), takes forever to take a picture, and even worse if you want to use the flash. I'd been talking up getting a replacement for a while. I'd done the research, I knew pretty much what I wanted, I just didn't have the cash at the time to follow through with a purchase.

Bolstered with good feedback on previous recommendations, I now own the Canon IXUS 75, and its very pretty. I haven't had a chance to take many pictures with it, but so far it addresses all the gripes I had with the old camera. Its got bucket-loads of extra features too. I'm going to have to start dumping shots into the gallery.

Watch out, this may yet turn into a photo blog...

Some years ago I retired my old, old bike for a shiny new mountain bike. Last week I upgraded that to a shiny new Trek 7.3 FX Disc hybrid (if the link doesn't work just click on the thumbnail above). Niaal from work just got one a week or two before for his birthday. He was very impressed with the improved performance over his cruddy old bike (which was like my old, old bike).

I agree. It's a very nice ride.

In addition to riding to and from work, we've been partaking in bringing in luncheon materials and sharing lunch between us. This is working out very economically - I haven't spent anything at work for the last two weeks! Which is good, because I can put that saving towards paying off the bike. It cost a pretty penny. Niaal got a really good deal on his bike through his dad, who knows a guy. It came all the way over from Sydney, and arrived at work in a cardboard box. I just bought mine from Anna at Bike Force down the road. Much less effort, but at a considerably higher cost. Oh well.

Good food + excermacise == healthy Chris. Even after just one week of riding into work I'm already feeling a lot better. Lets hope this trend continues.

I've had my old Sony Ericsson P900 for over two years, but about a year ago I started to realise what a mistake it was. Actually it might have been a lot earlier than that, but lets be generous and give it at least a year of happy service. Since then, I've been meaning to upgrade to something more suitable.

My main beef with the thing was that the text input was crap. When using the keypad, you had the option of using a munged T9 key system, or you could use the stylus and freehand it using their input notation (which admittedly was better than Palm's at the time, but its implementation was fairly limited). I found the keypad flip to be annoying so I removed it, which made usability better. But even then, to do anything with it, like a simple sms, you needed to drive it with both hands, which is time consuming as well as inconvenient. It also had a problem where the text input system would die after about a week, requiring you to reboot the entire phone to get it to work again. Most annoying, especially when you want to do a quick sms or jot a note down.

The other issues, like the retarded calendar, to-do and contacts system, meant that I wasn't even using the phone for the purposes that I bought it for: a combined PDA and Phone. So that meant I was carrying around a bulky brick that I was only using for functionality that was available in phones a third its size.

So when Marcus upgraded his phone I thought it was high time to look into upgrading mine. I originally intended to get the Nokia 6230i (the same phone Michele has), but after seeing the Nokia 6111 that Marcus bought I decided that I did like that one better after all. After a few disappointments trying to find the phone I wanted on a plan that suited me (I figured out that the Optus ‘yes’ 35 plan with ‘talk & text’ was the best that suited me), Marcus pointed out where I can get the handset and the plan I wanted.

So far so good. I’m still getting used to the T9 text input system, and not having a brick of a phone in my pocket, but they’re coming easily. The inbuilt camera is of surprising quality too (the processing presets are way better than my Sony P72). Perhaps my only complaint is that the alarm isn’t as loud as the P900. But being able to drive the damn thing with only one hand more than makes up for it.

The thumbnail above links to a montage of all the phones I’ve had in the past (possibly not all, and possibly not in the correct order).

Hot on the heels of the last post, here's a picture of the shiney new toy I just bought for my iPod. This little gadget allows you to listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. You also get a set of earphones with a shorter cable, but I prefer to use my own, clip-on earphones.

I bought the damn thing because it was getting annoying pulling the iPod out when on the bus or walking, when the volume was too loud, or the current song was crap. I went looking for remotes at the same time that Apple released these babies. Of course, it took over a month for them to finally be available here. Of course, it also being a radio is icing on the cake.

I read an article somewhere that Apple are getting much better at being secretive and surprising the market with their products. The cynic in me suggests that this is because they don't actually produce any of these new products before they launch them, so only Apple and the manufacturer exec's and pre-fabbers know anything about them. Which, of course, means that you have to wait over a month for them to make and ship the damn things before they actually turn up on the shop floors after.

Apart from the usual gripes about the crass commercialisation of the Christmas holidays, I actually enjoyed the Christmas break this year. I think more than anything it was a chance for me to sit back and unwind a bit, something that I haven't really had much of a chance to do lately.

The day itself was pretty uneventful, but against all odds it appears that we all tried to out-do each other this year with our purchases for each other, despite previous arrangements to make this a fairly low-key Christmas. I managed to pick up all sorts of useful stuff that I wanted (thanks to the Christmas list). Some more useful than others, but all appreciated nonetheless (I mean really, what use am I going to get out of a oversized novelty pencil?).

One of the problems with heading up to Mum's place for Christmas (or any time really) is that recently I've been falling asleep up there. Literally. Crashing on the couch and grabbing a nap for 1 or 2 hours. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad trend yet, but it seems entertaining enough for everyone.