Posts tagged with "toys"

Powershot S410

The first, and hope­ful­ly only thing, I bought to cel­e­brate my new job was a Canon Powershot S410, in the dig­i­tal Elph series. It’s small enough for me to car­ry around in my pock­et, unlike my old cam­era, and is capa­ble of tak­ing 4.0 megapix­el pic­tures. It has a long expo­sure mode of up to 15 sec­onds, and cus­tom white bal­anc­ing. It can also take movies up to 320x240 res­o­lu­tion at 15 fps, which I’ve already had fun with at the Highlander Pub two week­ends ago. I decid­ed to go with some­thing com­pact for can­did snaps, instead of an SLR where I’d have to car­ry around an extra case/bag.

The Mont Blanc

I’ve been dream­ing of get­ting a Mont Blanc for years, ever since I tried one out at a jew­ellery store back home before I bought it for my boss. I loved the way it felt in my hand, the per­fect weight, the bal­ance, the shine, the smooth­ness of the nib, the effort­less­ness of the writ­ing, the click of the cap, the ele­gant but time­less design. A few years lat­er, I went for a sur­prise vis­it to my old work­place, and when my boss went to sign some­thing he pulled out the Mont Blanc, my Mont Blanc, from his blaz­er pock­et. That made me hap­py.

The thing is, I could nev­er jus­ti­fy buy­ing one for myself; I would always tell myself to wait until I could cel­e­brate my grad­u­a­tion or mar­riage. My boss was a busi­ness­man, so he could use a nice pen to sign his con­tracts. Every time I’d pass the Mont Blanc dis­play in the mall I’d check out what the most cur­rent series was.

While I was in Hong Kong, I found a lit­tle shop sell­ing them at very low prices.

Then I real­ized that I had already grad­u­at­ed.

I bought a jet-black Meisterstück Classique Rollerball with plat­inum fin­ish right then and there, and my god how sweet it is. I can’t imag­ine using anoth­er pen for the rest of my life. Sometimes I put my hand in my pock­et and then real­ize, “Holy shit, I have a Mont Blanc in my pock­et”. So far, this is the only thing that I can think of putting in my will.

Sometimes I’d walk the streets of Hong Kong and see a guy sell­ing fake Mont Blanc’s, a bunch of them clipped to a cheap felt board. It’s as easy to spot a fake Mont Blanc as it is to spot a fake Rolex. The price I got mine for in the lit­tle shop was cheap­er by more than $150 CAD than the price in stores here. I want to get it engraved with my sig­na­ture but it costs $120 to send to the Mont Blanc main head­quar­ters, which is fuck­ing insane (it’s a cool process though, where they take four of my sig­na­tures, then mix and match the best parts of each to come up with the engrav­ing). I sup­pose that for some­one who’s buy­ing a pen from the Meisterstück Solitaire Platinum line, $120 is almost noth­ing. I’m con­sid­er­ing my next Mont Blanc pur­chase as a foun­tain pen from the new super sweet Starwalker series Resin Line, but that’ll be some­time far into the future.

A Birthday Present

Dina bought me a plat­inum GBA SP! I can’t believe it; I actu­al­ly gasped when I fig­ured out what it was. It’s been a pret­ty rough day, so this was a real­ly nice sur­prise. I can bring it with me on my trip to Hong Kong so I can play on the plane. Now I want to buy so many games, like the sequel to Paper Mario on N64, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Fire Emblem, Tony Hawk’s Underground, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. There are actu­al­ly more I would buy if I won the lot­tery, but for now, I can down­load a few and upload them to my flash car­tridge with the link­er.

Laptop Excitement

There’s been a lap­top craze going around late­ly, with Tom’s pur­chase of a used Powerbook, Nick’s job financed Travelmate 800, and Wheaties’s gift financed iBook. All the recent lap­top pur­chas­es has made every­one else zeal­ous. Both Aaron and Trolley are think­ing about the pur­chase of one now, and I’ve already been sucked in.

Next week I’ll be order­ing a Sager 5680 note­book, which I’ll be replac­ing my cur­rent desk­top with. It has great specs, the only down­falls being a short bat­tery life (which I can live with) and a rather large size/weight (which I’m will­ing to deal with). I’ll be get­ting the P4 3.0 GHz HT proces­sor (woooo!), the 15″ UXGA TFT screen, the wire­less LAN, and 60GB hard dri­ve options. The best thing is that it comes with a ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro (Pro!) which has­n’t quite start­ed it’s prod­uct cycle in North America yet. I’ll be look­ing for­ward to dual head dis­play, being able to attend LANs with­out need­ing a ride, and pos­si­ble dig­i­tal speak­er out­put (which I have yet to take advan­tage of).

The Trip Home, Candellas, Amateur Astronomy, Etc.

The trip home was alright, watch­ing Men In Black 2 (not a very good movie at all) and tak­ing under five and a half hours. I like the fact that I can pur­chase a bus tick­et at any time, and not have to wor­ry about book­ing and reser­va­tions. I’ve always liked the idea that I have the free­dom to pick up and go when­ev­er I please. Of course, this only works when I have a guar­an­teed place to stay at the des­ti­na­tion.

My Candela’s came in last week. They are quite nice, although they look rather cheap dur­ing the day­time when they’re off. They give off a decent ambi­ent light when oth­er (more pri­ma­ry) lights are on, but are good at set­ting a mood when they’re the only things illu­mi­nat­ing a room. It’s a has­sle to always let them burn out to pro­long bat­tery life, since that means that I’m usu­al­ly going to bed with them on, and for some­one who wakes up from the first slit of sun­light pierc­ing the room, it can be an annoy­ing thing.

I found a great astron­o­my book for Darren, cov­er­ing every­thing from the small­est detail in pur­chas­ing a tele­scope, to the pat­terns the plan­ets make in their orbits. Astronomy is some­thing that I’ve always found to be mys­te­ri­ous­ly inter­est­ing, a seduc­tive past-time I’d be afraid to be con­sumed by. A few peo­ple I’ve talked to have felt the same way, although some with an even more severe emo­tion. I would have tak­en up such a hob­by as soon as I had the means to, if the area I live in was­n’t so unbe­liev­ably light pol­lut­ed. It’s as if the may­or wants to keep the lights in the city bright enough to have a con­stant day­time. I’m fair­ly sure that I’ll buy a decent tele­scope even­tu­al­ly, once I’ve set­tled down in a con­do and have a career.

I can’t wait to get back to my plea­sure box and begin fool­ing around with Movable Type. I just hope that my host can pro­vide enough flex­i­bil­i­ty for it to work.

When I got home, a stack of red envelopes and wrapped box­es were wait­ing for me. My pre­ma­ture exit at Christmas left gifts unopened and mon­ey unclaimed, quite a wel­come sur­prise. I got anoth­er $50 gift cer­tifi­cate for Futureshop, which will most like­ly be going towards Vice City as soon as it comes out. I haven’t played a very absorb­ing game in a while, the last ones being GTA3 or Neverwinter Nights, but my favourite is still prob­a­bly Half-Life. And with Half-Life 2 slat­ed for a fall release, well, I find myself becom­ing unhealth­ily excit­ed.

I’ll be split­ting a box of Onslaught with Darren today.