The FIL gave me an amazing gift for our 10th wedding anniversary. That was for keeping his gift to me from ten years ago still alive and kicking.
Alive she is and kicking (me) for sure, and that goes without saying.
In any case, he gave me an iPhone which he had got in India. Unfortunately that thing didn't work here as it was attached to a Vodafone carrier. So we sold it to a phone store here and purchased a new 3GS !!! The employer also decided that they would support the plan since I paid for the phone out of pocket! That was a winning deal...
This gizmo (inspite of reports that it overheats) is awesome. I have never owned an i-anything. This is my first attempt at owning an i-device and absolutely love this.
1. It takes great pictures and videos with 800x600 resolution (my Sony camcorder takes videos at 640 x 480).
2. Have downloaded all of 2063 songs in my music collection to the iPhone and it still has memory left!
3. Have downloaded Pacman, Hangman and Tic-Tac-Toe and can now amuse Jr. and the little one very easily for upto 20-25 minutes, thereby setting a new world record.
That was a photo taken with the 3GS.
Unfortunately the quicktime video's are not amenable to editing using Windows Movie maker and that is leaving me back in the stone ages. Picasa 3 seems to be able to direct upload the video without any editing possibilities, but youtube is down for maintenance, so hopefully you will see that video uploaded tomorrow.
Quicktime + PC = blasphemy AVI + Mac = blasphemy'
Using those two equations, one can understand how Microsoft and Apple complete the universal software laws.
All said and done, an all purpose amusement device, for a guy who is already amused easily!
ps. If you know of a good, free, virus and malware free movie converter to get the quicktimes to avi please let me know.
pps. If you know how to get the quicktime directly into Picasa or another free movie editor to put titles and credits and then save movie file, let me know as well.
Finally San agreed to get this photo posted on the blog!
(Had to do some research to figure out how to get an animated gif image to show up on blogger. It did not work first. It does not work on facebook either. . hope this works)
Thanks to all for wishing us on our tenth anniversary. A big thanks from both San and me.
The little one had a surprise present for us last week. When San went to pick her up on her last day of school (Friday), all the teachers huddled around San and started congratulating her. Further investigation revealed that the little one had announced to her class and all teachers that she was expecting a baby brother, soon!
We should have drawn the line at imaginary friends. Now it has gotten to a point of having imaginary baby brother. San clarified to the whole school that there are no baby brothers in queue and all the teachers started running away, embarrased. Well, they have learnt their lesson "don't trust the little one, especially when she delivers blatant lies with straight face"
The LO put on a sad face, got all teary eyed when scolded for spreading lies and said "but I really wanted a baby brother and I don't wan to be the baby in the house anymore"
That set the tone for the laugh riot that followed the rest of the weekend.
Here is the little one all interested in meeting her idol, Dora the Explorer at Universal Studios
Here is the little one scared of Dora after the initial rush and hug!
Posing for daddy !
Posing for daddy again..
and because we are an equal opportunity blog when it comes to posting photos, here is one of Jr. posing fabulously in front of the Universal Studios entrance.
That was an attempt at a pun, after San's request to try taking pictures with just the camera body!
I tried.. All I got was an overloaded CMOS sensor!
After some repeated pleading and researching, I found a lens for near 100 bucks which was
1. new 2. had some zoom as opposed to a 50mm 3. if possible a canon lens for the canon digital rebel xti 4. at least a f/3.5 5. an autofocus (EF lens)
and I got 4/5 on a New Canon EF 28-90mm f/4-5.6 III lens for <120 bucks from a local photo store!
Granted it is not a f/2.8 or a USM (ultra sonic) but the thing is great for the pictures I usually take!
Going to play with this lens over the long weekend..
and now for some pictures.
The first one is my princess photographed with the old S30 (the thing had to be taped at places to hold the battery, CF card etc. and the picture had to be cropped to get rid of the light spots, but still...)
and the second one is a photo taken today with the two of them posing for me
Some lens is better than no lens!
Just like that Cereal ad. which says "Kid tested, mother approved" why doesn't Canon come up with a nice lens that is "dad tested, mother approved"?
Have been busy at work lately. Also the girls are behaving at their worst when I get home! There has not been a lot of time for photography, considering the new camera and lena have been with me for 3 days already.
The indoor pictures (have not taken a lot of them) look great. Here is a picture of the little one, with absolutely no alteration.
The beauty of this camera is that it captures the scene, almost as you see it. Exactly same colors, light hues.
Friday, August 21, 2009 at 8:10PM 
