re: package management: just went through that with Rails/Ubuntu. Ubuntu’s install of Rails couldn’t be found by RadRails, so i had to back that out and install it via gems…you get the picture. not pretty.

Coops: you’re actually the second person in a month to recommend that to me. going to have to snag that. interesting about the complexity; it’s obvious in retrospect, but i hadn’t really articulated it in that way.

Rafe: thanks. i didn’t mean to imply that was the only advantage, but frankly i don’t know enough about them to know what some of the others would be. that helps. my point and shoot *sucks* taking pictures at night. i’ve looked forever for some time exposure feature, but nothing doing. night pictures = out.

Mike: don’t know that i’ll be able to try them out; i think Membership Rewards only has either the Nikon’s or a Pentax so it might be the Nikon by default.

but interesting note about the quality disparity. i’m not used to having to retouch pictures, and don’t own Photoshop so i’m not sure if i’m ready for that aspect of it yet.

Joel: that’s awesome – i definitely will. it’s on emusic, which makes it easy. i always had a soft spot for Dread Zeppelin, so this should be interesting

Pat: very cool shot – it’s really not what i expected in a statue at all. seems like consensus is the DSLR is worth it.

For example, while in a church in Provence last summer, I was able to take a non-flash photo of a painted wooden statue of Joan of Arc. This image would have been very noisy with a point-and-shoot. Plus, with some point-and-shoots, you can’t turn off the flash. Oops. That’s not acceptable some places and some situations.

These days, there are some very nice back packs you can get to hold your camera equipment: much nicer than the over-the-shoulder old-fashioned type.

I love my Canon Digital Rebel. In fact, I’ll probably buy the new one for myself as a Christmas gift. I’ll still be able to use the same lenses!

I’d recommend trying them out in a store – don’t buy one of these on specs alone. There is a much different feel between Canon, Nikon, Sony, Lumix, etc.

Also, don’t expect that the first picture you take looks as good as your point-and-shoot. Often the DSLRs will require post-processing with Photoshop (arg, the only reason I still have Windows…). While the GIMP is nice, for doing a lot of work with pictures, it’s just not there yet…

In it he argues that ‘popular culture’ (tv, computer games, internet) has had a steadily rising cognitive load, what he calls the Sleeper Curve (from the Woody Allen movie) – interesting factoid I remember, IQ scores have seen a steady rise since the 50′s in lockstep with the rising culture (except they renormalise them every year).

And he does argue that long tail effects of cable TV, tivo, netflix, and the internet have all contributed over the years to the increasing complexity. He compares the story lines of Starsky and Hutch (required viewing when I was a kid) and 24 – S&H episodes were self contained, with only one or maybe two storylines, and can be watched in isolation, whereas you could watch a random 24 episode and still be entertained but the chances are you’ll have very little idea what’s going on in the 5+ threads.

In fact for me this increasing complexity is becoming a turn off – watching something like 24 or Lost require a commitment that is starting to feel too heavy (even with a PVR). When a new series of 24 starts you know that’s you taken for an evening every week, or a large chunk of disk space, and the enevitable avoidance of office spoilers and involvement in speculation as to why’s and what’s next. And that I know that I have to concentrate and pay attention to every little thing, whereas watching something like Top Gear or The Office, or The IT Crowd (or even reruns of Starsky and Hutch) I can just kick back, relax, laugh and enjoy. Maybe it’s just me getting old

Anyway it seems to me that the next evolution from 24 would be a story told out of order – perhaps randomly – so that not only are the n threads to keep in you head you have to piece together the timeline. Think Tarantino does 24.

Package management: it *is* troubling that everyone and their sister has a system to install modules now. It makes for a maintenance nightmare.