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Leah had a riotous birthday party recently, and she was, of course, lavishly showered with expensive, decadent gifts. Mel got a little jealous. She "accidentally" "dropped" her camera. It now takes all of its pictures as if out of the side of a speeding car. I believe it has fallen off our common reference frame, and is displaying the image as we whirl by, spinning on the Earth. This makes sense because Mel says the camera is dead, which means it has gone to a higher/better place, which is obviously in a different inertial reference frame. I am not sure if camera heaven is near Kolob or not, but wherever it is, they move much more slowly. I suggested we let Leah take all of our pictures from here on in, hoping that the shakings will be non-harmonic (can't remember what waves are called when they are off by a half period - help?), and render the image clearly.
I didn't win that little contest.

Luckily, the recognition program at work had a few cameras to offer so we wouldn't have to shell out for a new camera.
Unluckily, the recognition program at work had a few cameras to offer, so we shouldn't shell out for a new camera.
Luckily, we wouldn't have to listen to anyone shill us a camera, for which we would have to shell out. :) Sorry - had to say it.

Mel's requirement were few and simple, and thankfully straightforward.

Requirement: Have at least as many megapixels as the old camera.
Solution: Piece of cake - all of the offerings were in the range of twice the MPs.

R: not have to change batteries a lot.
S: potentially tricky, as I think most of the problem laid with our tired, worn-out not-quite-rechargeable batteries anyway. We ended up with a camera with a Li-ion rechargeable (not AA) battery. Can't be any worse, just more costly to replace.

R: be a compact or subcompact, no SLR-types for now.
S: easier done than said.

R: take movies with sound that are of high enough quality to post on the internet easily.
S: tricky. It turns out that this is actually 4 requirements in one:
1. take movies
2. record sound on those movies
3. have decent (very poorly defined requirement) quality
4. transfer easily to the computer and from there to the ever-confunding (think Happy Potter - confundus charm, not me misspelling "confounding") INTERNET [play scary, Halloween-eske music].

Meatloaf claimed the 2 out of 3 ain't bad. I was never able to convince my teachers, professors, bosses, or really anyone of that fact, so I will try for 3 out of 4.

I nailed 3 out of 4 of Mel's requirements, and on the 4th that I did not nail, I rocked on 3 out of 4 sub-requirements. I think that should really count for something.

Unfortunately, as with all of my exams and performance reviews, the single point I missed was worth ~60% of the test. I did get a little extra credit, as Mel did not want to have to spend $ on the camera, nor did she want it relegated to a birthday or Christmas present. She feels that a camera is a staple, like a well-fitting bra, diapers for Anya and Ryan, and Elmo for Leah. While I contest that last point, I will take my extra credit and run with it.

The problem with the movies is this. Canon signed some pork-rind ear-marked deal with a software provider to use their special software to transfer your images/movies from the camera to the computer. It does do some neat things, like allow you to edit the photos 9 ways from at least Tuesday if not Wednesday, make stills of movies and movies of stills, and a number of other things I will likely never want it to do. However, to ensure that I was subjected to their inferior software of choice, rather than simply letting me open the camera as a folder and transfer the files to the place of my liking, they wrote the camera software in a manner that ensures that if you take that route, the movies will be jerky, skip frames, and lose the sound. Well, if I do that, I am missing several additional requirements, so I use their software. Well, after auto-starting because it detected my camera, it proceeded to tell me that I had no camera attached to the computer. Oh, thanks. When I manually launched the application, I was able to successfully transfer the files once in three attempts (way below the Meatloaf standard and therefore unacceptable). However, the movies were jerky, skipped frames, and the sound was poor in quality. The video was poor, but that is because the lights were off as everyone except Ryan wanted to sleep. When I took a video earlier (never successfully transferred, lost in a vain, fruitless attempt to reformat the SD card), the image was quite nice. It also played back well on my (not worthy of the HDMI cables used which came with the camera) television. Sound and all.

The camera takes great pictures. I don't.
Canon PowerShot SD780 IS Digital ELPH
I shall prevail.

The blogging gremlins like you, readers, as the video plays more nicely here than on the conputer. Riddle me this.... Actually, don't. I'll just have to reply "coddleston, coddleston, coddleston pie," and I get really sick of saying that.