Random Thursday

To those banks who took TARP money and are now experiencing the not-go-gentle hand of the federal government’s regulation of executive pay, allow me to remind you of the old saying about lying down with dogs.

• Canon’s new S90 camera got a rave review from the Wired Magazine‘s reviewer, who called it “the best compact camera I’ve ever used.” It has some pretty impressive features, including a super-fast lens (f2), which is practically unheard-of in the “point and shoot” category. The fast lens means that the flash remain unused more often, which is a very good thing. My biggest complaints about my current P&S – a Sony CyberShot – are the washed-out quality of its flash photos and the difficulty of making manual adjustments to settings. At $430, this isn’t a camera for the budget-conscious, but the combination of image quality and features in a compact package make it one that I’m adding to my wish list.
• Another “wish list item” is Barnes & Noble’s new e-book reader, the Nook. Again from Wired, a list of five features that set it apart from the current leader in the field, Amazon’s Kindle. Debbie and I both have Kindles (I inherited her 1st gen model) and while we very much like the Kindle, the Nook does have some interesting features. Competition is good, and we’re thinking it might be worth getting a Nook for comparison purposes. The “book lending” feature described in the linked article means that we could still share reading material downloaded to the Nook.
• I’m as big a fan of shooting inanimate objects as the next guy, but I would never waste a bullet on a Hershey’s Kiss (or vice versa). (For one thing, ammo is too hard to find, nowadays.) But a brussel’s sprout? Well, that’s an entirely different matter. Regardless of your culinary preferences, you’ll surely agree that those are some seriously cool photos.
• A good logo is hard to find, and harder still to create. So it’s interesting to see how many companies and organizations change their logos. The cynic would contend that many (most?) of those changes are due to ad agencies and design firms needing to generate additional revenue. Regardless, here’s a website dedicated to keeping up with corporate identity before-and-after. Interestingly, one of the recent entries details how the city of Lubbock came up with its new logo (hint: don’t try to re-create the wheel, or, in this case, the windmill).
• I see that Janie has abandoned Twitter. She has some good reasons for why Twitter doesn’t do anything for her (many of which are similar to my reasons for neglecting Facebook). I still contend that this is an issue of “the right tool for the right job,” and we don’t all have the same “jobs” to do. I’m going to try to post more about this later, but I feel compelled to respond to a few of her commenters by saying that just because you don’t find value in something doesn’t make it valueless. As I’ve said before, if you try to use a hammer to paint a wall, you’re not going to like the results. [I confess that I’m still trying to figure out what I mean when I say that.]
• One of the drawbacks of moving from the world of corporate dronesmanship to the freelancing web design gig is that the pay is not…well…let me put it this way: I’ll never have to worry about the feds stepping in to regulate my pay. As things worked out, I took a significant pay cut to do what I do now, and the result is that we don’t have as much discretionary income to donate to charitable causes as we once did. On the other hand, what I can do is donate time and services, and that’s proven to be quite rewarding. I’m excited at the prospect of building a new website that will help to memorialize fallen West Texas peace officers, dating back to the 1800s. I’ll be working with the Midland County Sheriff’s Department, and I’ll try to share more details as we move forward with the project. (Update — much, MUCH later: this project never materialized, for reasons yet unknown. These things happen.)