Another new camera!
I finally made the leap from digicams to dSLRs. I had been considering buying Nikon's new D90 but couldn't quite bring myself to shell out the thousands of dollars required to buy it and a few decent lenses. However I was saved having to make such a momentous decision by Jason, who decided to upgrade from a D80 to a D300, and sold me his D80 at a very reasonable price.
The D80, although recently having been replaced and improved upon by the D90 is still a very decent camera, and having seen some of the amazing shots that Jason took with it, I knew it was in good working order.
As for lenses, well they don't come cheap. So far I have a 50mm prime and a very nice 80-200mm telephoto lens, both Nikon. Next in line will be a wide angle lens for scenic shots.
Check out some of my better shots on flickr here.

iLife 09!

For some reason, Apple saw fit to put a junk version of iMovie on my MacBook, and made me pay for the upgrade seperately. What's up with that Steve? I don't use video that often, but when I do it's nice to have a video editor that, at the least, gives me the ability to do things like edit the music track and change the video speed.
Anyway I went ahead and bought the 2009 version of iLife which also comes with an upgrade to GarageBand, iPhoto and iWeb. Of these four applications, the only really significant bonus in my opinion was in iMovie. iPhoto was pretty good before, and I don't see much difference in the new version. The change in GarageBand also seems small, but to be fair I haven't had a good look at the upgraded version yet. I do know that it comes with a guitar teaching option that sounds interesting. And iWeb? Don't need it. Pretty sure that Dreamweaver CS3 is miles ahead of it.
Unlike Adobe though, Apple makes their software affordable. Only 8800 yen for iLife compared to about 250,000 yen for Adobe Creative Suite...

Having Japangrish on the web may not be enough for some people. Now you can have Japangrish in it's analog form as well! Think about it. Now you can fall asleep reading Japangrish while curled up in bed, you can take it with you on camping trips to read by the fire, or you can study it during those longer bathroom sessions!

It was actually my youngest sister Liz (one of my biggest Japangrish fans) who went to the effort of making this book for me, and I received it as a gift for Christmas.

If anyone out there actually loves Japangrish enough to want a copy, let me know and I'll give you the ordering details.