The Itinerant Code

Last night, this Nigerian lady stopped, looked at me and said:

"In a previous life, you lived in the Hawaiian islands."
"You think?"
"Yes. Absolutely. It fits you."

Interestingly, Ive heard this from several other folk before.

Until the other night, I had little interest in going back to Hawaii in the near future, but now I know what I'll be doing the next time I go.

Things come together when its time.
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For Christmas 2003, I got a gift certificate for the Ross stores. I dont remember what else I got (belts and underwear prolly), but I still have one thing - my Idea notebook.

Bill Veeck, the impresario and owner of the White Sox, used to have these shoeboxes full of scraps of paper with ideas scribbled on them. The instructions to his family were that these boxes were the first things to be grabbed and saved in case of a fire in the house, as "Ideas are the most important things.".

Aside from my identity papers, this little notebook will be the first thing that I'll grab in case of a fire or earthquake. I havent had the time or inclination to write in the book since I got a bay area residence, but the details of my life for the near future is scribbled in that book. It may be incoherent to anyone looking through that book, but it makes perfect sense to me.

Now Im back in the book, the time to to implementing those ideas arriving. It feels oddly comforting reading and writing in that little notebook...
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Now that ive stepped into the serious side with the purchase of the Nikon, with more equipment to come, i need to accessorize.

Let's see..

- Extra SD memory cards. Ive got a 1gb card in the camera, but I need larger memory to fully use the camera, to shoot RAW images.

Of course, that creates a cascading effect. Bigger cards = more files. More files = more storage needed. More storage needed = more hard drive drives and DVD blanks. And more powerful computers. Oy.

- Sensor cleaning kit. Back in the film slr days, a clean cloth and lintless swabs was all i needed to clean out the imaging area of a camera. But because a digital sensor acts like a dust magnet - everytime you take off the lens, dust will get in there. And the sensor is very very delicate. But it needs cleaning.

And I already can see dust in there.

- A camera bag. As much as i just wanna load everything into my messenger bag, sometimes you need a camera-centric backpack to carry your gear.

- Batteries. Oy. One of the things I like about Fuji's is that they take AA batteries. Practical. But the Nikons take a proprietory battery. The good news is that the battery lasts a long time - at least 500 shots. The bad news, theyre not cheap.

And hard experience has taught me to always carry spare batteries.

- An expodisc or grey card. Basically, to set color balance.

- Remote control. I used to consider this a gimmick, but long exposures require a smooth shutter finger to prevent vibration and blurry images.

This camera has no facility to use a shutter cable, but it will fire from a remote control.

Heh, in fact, if i program a cheap TV remote properly, that'll control the camera too.

This is basic stuff and a short list. Unfortunately, after this - with lenses, flashes, light meters and whatnot - its gonna get a lot lot more expensive.

But hey, thats why getting a camera like this is a serious investment.