dria.org

Turns out camera phones still suck (suck suck suck), and my awesome camera (DSLR, Nikon D70s) is still big enough that I just don’t carry it around me. Thus I need a small camera that I actually stash in my purse thing and have with me for those random moments I want to take photos of random crap I see in the real world.

Nikon (I am genetically-inclined to Nikon products, don’t bother trying to argue this with me) recently produced the Coolpix S50 which is totally badass. While it’s tempting to pretend I’ll get a Leica D-LUX 3, I just don’t have the intestinal fortitude to drop that much on a camera. So, instead, I’m going to get an S50 and be alternately verklempt that it has more megapixels than my D70s and doesn’t support RAW format. I’m sure I’ll survive.

Update: apparently the D-LUX3 isn’t $5k (I was thinking of the M8).

"Gaping void" -
Originally uploaded by Fearless Leader.

Hells yeah.

Every once in a while I stumble across some random bit of a web application that honestly causes me “surprise and delight”. Today was one of those days, and the thing in question is the shopping cart at the Panic.com Apparel store.

The concept is basic, simple, and brilliant — create a shelf at the bottom of the page to which the user can simply drag the items she wants. If she makes a mistake, simply drag the items off. When finished, there’s a nice obvious “Check out” button. It works extremely well, and they’ve gone so far as to add size bubbles to the items in your cart so it’s easy to check that you’ve selected the correct sizes. Very nicely done.

Here are some screenshots. First is the clear shelf:

This is dragging an item on to the shelf (you can’t see it, but my mouse pointer was over the little transparent t-shirt):

The last is dragging an item off the shelf — instead of just disappearing, it actually vanishes in a poof of smoke (exactly like the OSX dock, if you were wondering). Again, my mouse pointer was in the middle of the little poof of smoke there but my screencap cleared it:

Anyhow, kudos to the panic.com designers. I really like your shopping cart.

I’m not going to bother with recipes since these are all profoundly simple (if you want recipes, leave a comment).

* Salt + pepper pork tenderloin (pan seared then roasted)
* Creamy polenta (chicken broth + a bit of butter)
* Sauted garlic baby spinach

Yum.

Here’s a handy oil smoke-point reference: Oil Smoke Points. Bon appetite, etc.

Accidentally picked up Pokemon Diamond after lunch today. There are, for the record, now 493 types of Pokemon to collect.

Update: If you don’t know what Pokemon are, Wikipedia has more background here.