vogue

Fortunately there's not much vogue-ing going on in the house. C'mon.

The return of the Pentax spurred an SD card buy. And a tripod (well, I'd been meaning to get a replacement for ages and after talking to a colleague he pointed me to some cheap inexpensive Chinese models that are actually amazingly well made and solid. I think I should have gone for the carbon fibre however) And also a cheap remote. Little things that I've been meaning to get for ages but just never quite got around to.

As you can see, I didn't turn on the autofocus on remote option. Dur.

ICT for +1/3 today which raised some interesting questions about computers: they're currently covering different classes of computers - mainframe, personal computer, mobile phone - and +1/3 says his teacher told them that mini computers were like desktops. I think +1/3 didn't quite pick that up correctly 'cause in my book a mini computer is a now largely vanished intermediate between mainframe (multi-user, massive data) and desktop (single user, small data). Even the wikipedia article drips with ancient computing technology:

A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold for much less than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, the New York Times suggested a consensus definition of a minicomputer as a machine costing less than 25,000 USD, with an input-output device such as a teleprinter and at least 4K words of memory, that is capable of running programs in a higher level language, such as Fortran or BASIC.[1] The class formed a distinct group with its own software architectures and operating systems. Minis were designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching as distinct from calculation and record keeping. Many were sold indirectly to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) for final end use application. During the two decade lifetime of the minicomputer class (1965-1985), almost 100 companies formed and only a half dozen remained.[2] wikipedia

1970?! That's the kind of thing my father worked on at IBM...