Wibblelog

My new camera arrived! I got me a Nikon D80 after like 6 months of deliberation. I was briefly tempted by the D300, and at one point was almost convinced to get a D40 instead, but finally settled on the D80 since the price difference between the D40 and D80 is less than the price difference between the $499 Tokina 12-24mm lens (which doesn’t work on the D40) and the $914 Nikon 12-24mm lens (which does) - and I want to get the Tokina.

I don’t really have any test images to post yet, as the lens I ordered still hasn’t arrived. The lens I’m using at the moment is an 28-80mm kit lens that I borrowed from a friend at work. Also, I have no idea how to use this camera. It took me an hour or so before I remembered that I can actually shoot at higher ISO than 200 and get useful results, even though that is one of the things I was most excited about when I decided to get a dSLR. I’ll get the hang of it eventually - I’ve just never used a Nikon camera much before.

(Update: it’s a 28-80mm lens I’ve got right now, not 18-80.)

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I originally intended this blog to be a food-blog, since I didn’t have much else worth posting. Having nothing interesting to say certainly hasn’t kept me from posting, but I thought it might be nice to start posting some of the recipes that come out of my kitchen at home. Jenny has a veritable treasure trove of recipes in her head, and I’ve started encouraging her to properly document them for posterity. Here are a few.

• Crispy Fried Tofu with Scallions and Ginger Sauce (also known as “#209″ to anyone who frequents Mandarin Wok in Champaign). This is our approximation of a golden favorite from that restaurant.
• Lobster Avocado Salad - this is an original from Jenny. I promise it’s good. If you’re initially freaked out at the thought of lobster and avocado together, I recommend getting over it. It’s great - at least in this recipe.
• Home-made Mayonnaise - This is just a simple mayonnaise recipe, needed as part of the Lobster Avocado Salad. Basically lifted from Julia Child’s book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Enjoy. Hopefully there will be more recipes to come. Let me know how it turns out if you try any of these.

(update: fixed the recipe links. Sorry about that.)

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The checkout guy at the local Blockbuster did me a favor tonight. He helpfully pointed out that I had rented five movies from them in the past seven weeks, and would therefore benefit from paying for their Upgraded Special Movie Card Thingie. This didn’t have the effect on me that was intended, I’m sure, because I’ve realised that I’m spending too much damn money at Blockbuster, and will instead now subscribe to Greencine.

(unless someone has a better suggestion, of course)

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Left my cellphone on the train this morning. Felt like an idiot. Unfortunately, it was still there when I ran back to the train to look for it. I was hoping for an excuse to get a different phone, because I absolutely hate the one I’ve got. I’m not sure there’s actually anything else on the market that I want to buy, though. I’d take an iphone if you gave me one, but I’d have to hack it to death to make it do what I want. Palm seems to be a dying platform. I’ve found Symbian to be acceptable but not wonderful - I used a Nokia E61 for about a year before getting my current WinMo device. The hiptop platform used to seem promising (I had a hiptop, then a color hiptop, then a hiptop2, then I had to switch because T-Mobile had absolutely zero coverage where I moved in Mountain View), but now doesn’t really interest me, especially now that Microsoft are buying Danger. Android devices basically don’t exist yet. Hopefully they don’t suck when they do.

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