| Got a great photo of a fuzzy, furry or feathered friend?
The Oregon Humane Society is looking for great pictures of cats, dogs, birds, rabbits, horses and other pets for its 17th annual Fuzzy, Furry and Feathered Friends Photo Contest. The contest is open until May 31, 2008. Winners will see photos of their pets published in the full-color OHS Magazine and will also receive great prizes from Pro Photo Supply and Canon. Prizes will be awarded for the best photos in the following categories: Top Dog, Top Cat, Top Other Animal (rabbit, bird, etc.), Funniest photo, Child with Pet, Me & My Pet, Editor’s Choice, and Grand Prize. "Me & My Pet" is a new category for 2008, and focuses on adults posing with their favorite furry or feathered friend. The Grand Prize winner will receive a Canon Rebel XSi Digital SLR Camera with 18-55mm lens.
Find your Digital Rebel's inner Holga
If you love the look of pictures taken with the Holga —those cheap, plastic cameras made in China—but don't want to deal with the oh-so-last-century idea of film, check out Holgamods' Holga Body Cap. Randy Smith, the man behind Holgamods, has taken the lens off a stock Holga and grafted it onto a Canon body cap that fits all of the Canon D-SLRs, including the Digital Rebel series, the EOS 5D Digital, the new EOS 40D Digital, and even the top-of-the-line EOS-1Ds Mark III (it would probably fit any of the more modern Canon film cameras as well). The result is pure plastic goodness without the darkroom. Like the Lensbaby (another of our favorite toys), the Holga Body Cap isn't an automatic lens. You'll need to shoot in manual mode, and set the shutter speed accordingly, but it's a lot of fun, and you end up those dreamy, variable-focus images that tell everyone you're just a little bit off-kilter.
A Look Back At The Future Of Electronics
I have a professional photographer friend who spent $25,000 for a digital camera back in the 90s. Now you can get great pro-sumer cameras for under $800. At CES, Sony debuted its $699 Alpha DSLR-A100. Like the Canon EOS Rebel XTi and the Nikon D40, this is a full featured camera with interchangeable lenses sold as a kit with a starter lens. The new Sony camera features a 10 megapixel sensor, the ability to take up to 3 frames per second and the support for ISOs ranging from 100 to 3,200. What that all adds up to is a camera that can perform well in a variety of lighting conditions. Also, like the competition, it has image stabilization which compensates for our shaky hands, especially when using a long zoom.
Casio introduced one of the most innovative cameras at show. It isnt an SLR, but the new Exilim Pro EX-F1 has a 12X optical zoom and what Casio says is the worlds fastest burst shooting performance.
the undercover economist
Gordon, a little more scientifically, used detailed listings from catalogs to measure both price and quality of clothes. Many economists still think that inflation is overestimated and we have therefore been getting richer faster than the official statistics show. But Gordon must have a point: If we have been getting rich that quickly, then our ancestors were impossibly poor. Gordon calculated that if the recent estimates of price bias are projected backward, Bruegel's peasant household would have had an income of less than $6 a year and been able to afford less than an ounce of potatoes a day back in 1569. That would have made for a different picture. The Undercover Economist appears on Saturdays in the Financial Times Magazine. Correction, June 6, 2006: The piece originally stated that Montgomery Ward's mail-order catalog was first published in 1893.
Author Bredenberg explores beating clutter
If you are one of those people who spent January neatly arranging your stuff in see-through plastic boxes and identifying the contents with a Dymo labelmaker, please go do something else. Alphabetize your spices. Clean the grout with a toothbrush. This story is not for you. This is a story about organizing for the rest of us. Especially those who are - let's be diplomatic here - "terminally disorganized," says Jeff Bredenberg. "Everybody wants an environment they can feel good about. Nobody sits around their house and says, 'How can I be more disorganized?' The fact is, a lot of people don't try harder because most organizational systems are way too complex." Riding to the rescue is Bredenberg, 54, author of How to Cheat at Organizing: Quick Clutter-Clobbering Ways to Simplify Your Life (Taunton, $14.95).
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