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My god, what were you thinking?! Disclaimer: I do not have a perfect body. My point is, at least I cover it.

I’ve been taking tons of photos w/ the pencam lately, this time I’ve mainly been taking candid “life-shots” from the hip. So, most of them are bad, but the few that come out are interesting, or at least have a story behind them.

I can’t believe how bad some people dress. I mean, I dress like a slob, but at least I COVER my worst parts.

Girlie… …I have bad news for you: Wearing a too-tight shirt over an even tighter bra looks like shit. And if you have love-handles, cover them! Gross.

More photos that we took w/ the Aiptek Mini Pencam…   .:PHOTOS:.

Yeah, as if anyone could. (click for larger)

Yay! I just added a volume knob to my Aiptek mini/mega pencam! (ok, well, my better-half and I.)

It’s a teeny potentiometer from Radio Shack. We sawed little slits in the body for the prongs to slide down into.

We actually wired it wrong so that you turn the knob right to quiet it (instead of left), but we may fix that tomorrow.

It can turn all the way down, all the way up, or anywhere IN BETWEEN and that’s the best part, because I do rely on those quick-beeps because I often try to take another picture too soon. So now I can turn it so that just I will hear that, but the beeps won’t give me away when I am trying to be stealth.

I did this because the beep it made was so loud that it blew my cover at least once when I was trying to take stealth photos.

Here are some pix of how the knob looks.   (click for larger)

I did take more pix w/ my little $60 digital Aiptek Mini Pencam… .:PHOTOS:. . I just love this little toy cam. I just wish the focusing was better. I have to take several shots of one thing and then later on just save the one that’s in focus. But, for $60, you can’t beat it.

I just discovered something. The package my Pencam came in said Aiptek Mini Pencam. But then Pencam itself says Aiptek Mega Cam. I thought the Aiptek Mini and the Aiptek Mega were two different models. I’ve been referring to mine as the Mini Pencam, but now I’m not sure. The package said Aiptek Mini Pencam and then in little letters next to it it said “1.3 mega” (I assume for “megapixels”). Oh well, whatever.

I’m off to the Festival Of India!

I’ve decided that the Pencam isn’t all that stealth in a quiet place. It beeps whenever you turn it on or take a picture… so people turn to look. I was at the deli today and thought I’d take a snapshot of the demon wallpaper they have… …so I was around the corner in the hallway where the bathroom is, and I turned it on (BEEP!), took a shot (BEEP!), took another shot [for bracketing focus] (BEEP!), and in no time, both employees had come around the corner to see what the beeping was. I felt so stupid. “Uh, I like your demon wallpaper….” They were like, “uh… ok…” . Oh well.

I took some more shots w/ my Aiptek Mini Pencam today… .:PHOTOS:. .

I’m also taking pictures w/ my Elph and my beloved D60, too, but I’m in the process of consolidating webspace allocated to images, so once that’s done, I’ll post links to those photos later.

I also have some other “TinyCams”.

SP got a WWF (world wrestling whatever) “slam cam” I think it was called. Totally a toy. I don’t know what ever happened to that one. The intention was to use it on kites.

My Sony Clie has a built-in camera. It takes 640 x 480 pictures. This is pretty stealth since most people don’t expect you to be taking pictures of them when it just looks like you are checking the calendar on your palm pilot. Here’s a sample pic taken w/ the clie:

I’m so happy to find such a pencam following.

I joined a Pencam Webring.

Through that webring I found this site: Tiny Cams. I highly recommend this site, and I also recommend you follow the links on this page. He has some really good pencam links (info, galleries, etc.).

I also joined a Yahoo group for pencam entusiasts: Tinycams Yahoo Group

I took some more pix today w/ the pencam, but only yielded 2 really good photos, so I’ll wait ’till I take more before posting them.

I took some more photos w/ my Pencam (Aiptek Mini Pencam). Most of these were taken today, the first one was taken on Saturday. .:PHOTOS:.

Wow, my little pencam (Aiptek Mini PenCam) REALLY can take some nice photos … (click for larger) … It’s kinda trial-and-error, though. (see see my review) You have to guess the focal length and turn the focal-length knob without actually seeing it focus through a lens. So it’s really hit-or-miss. But wow, when it works, it works great! (The Aiptek Mini PenCam is a cheap, tiny digital camera that costs $60 at WalMart.)

Ok, now that I’ve had the Aiptek Mini PenCam for a while, (a week), I think I can write a review of it. Later on I’ll post a review to Epinions.com and maybe amazon (if they sell it). I love it. It was $60 at wal mart. I had wanted the one that takes sd (?) cards, but this one was cheaper (and in-town so I didn’t have to pay for shipping) and so far I have not needed any extended memory. I find that you have to experiment to figure out what’ll make a good shot. It’ll overexpose in bright light, and take black pictures in low light. Also, you have to manually figure out the “focal length”, but w/ practice it’s do-able. But in proper light and w/ practice, you can take pretty good pictures. The batteries lasted me about 9 days. Drawback: it gave me no warning. It said the battery was good, then all at once it beeped and died. No warning, so… carry around two spare batteries (I think it’s AAA) with you. Here are some samples (click for larger):
Because I’m a die-hard, I still always have either my Elph or D60 with me. But what’s nice about the pencam is that you can quickly, stealth-ily take a picture. The D60 is huge and heavy and definitely not stealth. The elph is small, but when I want to take a picture quickly, I have to take it out of it’s case, turn it on (which takes a good 1-2 seconds), then take the picture: and there is some delay between when you press the button and the photo is taken. With the Elph, I miss alot of shots. So, providing that the lighting is right and the focal length is set, the mini pencam is better for impromptu pictures. I’m having fun w/ it.

I was so tired and in such a cranky mood yesterday I didn’t even blog-surf or blog. Amazing. I just woke up so cranky, and very tired. Whenever I had a silent moment I just had daydreams of getting in fights w/ total strangers, basically expecting my day of running errands to be full of *ssholes. Turns out that my day of running errands WAS full of *ssholes, but not really more than any other day. The world is just simply full of *ssholes. Just… you know, stuff like you’re trying to decide which bag of salad to buy when some old fart moves RIGHT in front of you and stops! Stands RIGHT in front of you! I was so mad. His nasty ass right within pinching distance. Makes me sick. He stood there forever. I was going to say “excuse me!” but I just knew that opening my mouth would be a bad idea. I’ve had my fair share of people taking innocent sentences that I utter and making them out to be nasty when they weren’t meant to be. They can’t get mad at me for just standing there, especially when I was there first. And stuff like this gets on my nerves, too: It’s not enough that you have to drive a freaking gas-guzzler that is a hazard on the road (you can’t see through them or around them in order to drive safely), you have to take up three freaking parking spots? F*cker.

Here are some of the first few pix from my new pen-cam: … (click for larger).

Ugh, somehow I need to figure out margins (for my comments/permalink window), trackback, and categories. Why do I have so much trouble getting Moveable Type to work??? Ugh!

What a riot, I’m so excited. I got my little pencam last night and have been playing w/ it all day and it’s a blast. I’ll post some pix from it later. Then I go blog-surfing and land on one of my regular haunts (ciscley.frohme.org) and lo-and-behold, I’m not the only pen-cam freak! LOL!
Apparently there’s a “Best Pencam or Lo-Fi category” in the The 2003 Photobloggies, AND a Pencam Photographers webring (last 2 links via ciscley). I’m so silly, but I LOVE photography, and if I’m not carrying my D60 around, I have my Elph with me. I like to take photographic pictures, but also just silly life-pictures: things that annoy me, things that make me laugh, etc. So, this pen cam should be fun, and I’m not alone! Hahahahah.

I can’t figure out how to get TrackBack working, ugh…….

Happy, Yay. I went to Wally World, world of cheap plastic crap, and found a cheaper version of the pen-cam that I wanted! $60 instead of $80, and no shipping since it was in-town. I jumped on it. Figured what the hey. I’m having trouble w/ it’s software though, so I have yet to play w/ it. It’s the Aiptek MINI PenCam.

Found via LJC Blog, you can create your own wrestling character! (annoying free register/login, advice: register and login before creating your wrestler or it will be lost.) I created Super Pookie. (Click for larger) Fun! =:D

TechTV‘s Morgan Webb started a brand new Moveable Type blog. Go check it out and cheer her on!

This is REALLY depressing: “Pentagon has ordered 77,000 bodybags, compared with 16,000 for the Gulf War in 1991″… via FARK.com.

Ok, I need to go read one of my books now.

I want to get this little “pen camera“. It’s a little 1.3 megapizel digital camera that is somewhat pen-like and you can hang it around your neck. I already have a pricey Cannon D60 digital slr, and a killer small 2mp Canon Elph (both digital), but I want something that is more stealth just for my silly blog pictures. I like to take pictures of stuff that annoys me and then post pix and gripes in my blog. It’s fun. But people don’t like when you aim a camera at them (see this post). But if I had this little pen cam around my neck, it’d be less obvious, it hardly looks like a camera.

Like today, we went to an all-u-can eat pizza buffet and there was this family there… the parents were just sitting there stuffing their faces and talking, meanwhile their two little boys were SCREAMING and yelling and JUMPING up and down and BANGING the windows and climbing up over the booth into the next booth and jumping up and down on the booth and slobbering and getting crumbs all over the table that the employee had just cleaned and I just wanted to wring about 4 necks. I’d have taken their picture, but it might have started a fight.

The thing w/ the pen cam though is that there is no lcd screen so I’d have to put it to my face to take a picture. It might be just as stealth to use my existing Elph and use the lcd screen because then I could hold it down low and take a picture. I don’t know, I’ll have to think on it. The pen cam has no zoom either. Hmmmm.

And WHY do my permalinks have no margins?!?