We bought the Canon A70!

My dad was looking at buying a Canon A70 and I eventually settled on 7 Day Shop in the UK as they’ve the best prices. When I bought from them in the past I received my goods promptly and without a problem.
‘Course, I was sorely tempted to splash out on a 256MB USB keyring, and some more filters for my camera, and a new flash, and.. maybe after I’ve moved into the new house!

Later.. I don’t recommend 7dayshop any more. Read my 7dayshop review and please avoid them!

Around Cork..

Bush may not get a Cead Mile Failte when he visits Ireland! The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has asked that people not protest but that’s just pouring more fuel on the fire of discontent.
Don’t we live in a democracy?
(As an aside, note the maker of the rubbish bin this poster is stuck to? Quite a coincidence that a socialist poster should appear directly below his name!)
Later, it looks like Dublin City Council is refusing permission for groups to put up those posters. Anti-war bodies are calling it censorship. The Council says it’s a litter problem.

As I posted before, the girl holding this sign was reading a book. I like this “found” picture – she’s engrossed in her book and oblivious to the crowds passing by!
That closing down sale is lasting quite a while..

Boat on the Lee

For the last few days I’ve noticed that the boat used by the workmen on Saturday was tied up in the middle of the river. This morning I stopped and took some photos of it, and played around with a few tools in the GIMP.
I’m sure I used them before, but the “Colour Enhance” tool and “Filter Pack” are very useful for adding a little more atmosphere and feeling to a photo.
The steeple reflected in the river is Holy Trinity Church on Father Mathew Quay. That church itself makes an imposing sight, especially when it’s lit up at night!

I uploaded the last photo above to photoSIG too although trying to attract the attention of visitors there is quite difficult as “boat on river” photos are two a penny there!
Forgot to say, I’m still very impressed by the Linux 2.6 kernel. I had 3 2560×1920 images open in the GIMP, and I had modified each several times so that the undo-buffer was filling up nicely. Under Linux 2.4 my machine would have been unusable, but Mozilla Firefox (with about a dozen tabs on 2 windows), Xchat and Thunderbird all remained responsive and none of them were swapped out! (The machine has 512MB of RAM, so Linux 2.6 doesn’t work miracles, it just handles resources much better!)

What Digital Camera?

My father’s finally in the market for a digital camera. After many years using a Pentax SLR he has seen the light and wants to take the plunge into the digital world!
He saw that the Nikon Coolpix 3100 was available from Argus at a knock down price of €320 or so. I have no idea how good that camera is so I fired up Google to find out. A review of the camera compared it unfavourably to the Canon PowerShot A70. A review of that camera looks very promising, especially for my dad, who’s used to the manual controls of an SLR. Dpreview also compare the Nikon to the Canon which was useful. Looks like the Canon has the edge on picture quality.
Unfortunately, the Canon A70 is priced at €500 in Argus! So much for the two cameras being similarly priced!
This morning I asked the guys on for camera sites that ship to Ireland and the prices on technikdirekt.de, cam-ireland.com and even amazon.de are much better than high-street Irish prices. (Well, duh! Surprised? Nope!)
Here’s some more reviews of the Canon A70 for future reference from DCRP Review and Steve’s Digicams.