Sunday, November 04, 2007

I've Got the Gimmes

So, I'm going to France a week from yesterday. And just recently, I've been hit with two distinct strains of I Want.

I want a new iPod. Mine died some six or eight months ago, and I've been doing without but for a little 1 gig shuffle, which I haven't really been using. But now the thought of an 8-hour flight and a 4-hour train ride without an iPod seems sort of grim. So I'm coveting a new one—the 80-gig Classic for $249, which is an amount of money I definitely do not have. Okay, I do have it—but not for this kind of spending.

What I'm going to do instead of buying a new iPod: Carefully pick some books, and bring my journal, and look at the flights as a chance to catch up on some of that stuff. I'll use my little shuffle to carry around a 1-gig playlist of the core stuff that I'll really want to take with me for the trains and for walking around. That's not a lot of music, but then again, I can pretty happily listen to a core group of ten or fifteen albums for a week.

I want a new digital camera. I lost the dock to mine, and it's sitting there all useless. The idea of not getting to take pictures of my week in France is kind of a bummer.

What I'm going to do instead of buying a new digital camera: Honestly, I think the best thing here is to do without. I'm definitely going to get a new iPod at some point—maybe I'll buy it for myself once I hit my $5,500 savings goal. But K promised to track down the stuff to make my old one work again and teach me how to do it (the dock is no longer manufactured, since my camera was bought all of a year and a half ago), so the only reason to buy a new digital camera would be a sort of Veruca Salt-y I want it nooooow! kind of a deal, and that's just dumb.

So the plan is to substitute and downgrade on the iPod issue, and just do without on the digital camera. Or perhaps my sister has one I can borrow—if so, that's icing on the cake.

9 comments:

Heather said...

Could you get a card reader (around $20) so you could take the card out of your camera and get the pictures?

Sasha said...

You should check out the refurbished ipods when you get around to buying one. If you aren't set on having the very latest model, there are fabulous deals. But you won't find that 80 gig classic there.

Also, it should be really easy get photos off your camera without a docking station. Like the previous noter said, a card reader should work and they are about $20. My laptop even has one built in.

Anonymous said...

Again, a card reader. Also, have you checked ebay and CL for the dock?

English Major said...

I know that a card reader is half the equation—the other half is a charger that will work with the camera (it's charged through the dock, which is proprietary, not a regular USB cable, and it's long since run out of battery power). And unfortunately, eBay, CL, and various camera stores have all been big strikeouts on the dock.

Anonymous said...

So wait: is K fixing it before you leave, or are you not bringing a camera?

Because, really, I can't imagine an incredible 20-something trip to France, an experience you'll never live again, without some sort of pictures. That's all you really have left, with your memories, in the years after. I'd say though that the odds are high your sister has a camera.

Yet still: I know I couldn't do it without some guarantee. I guess I'm a little bit of a picture freak.

Kudos on the being frugal, even in this area.

MindBoggled said...

Check out what kind of battery your cam takes---you might be able to get a separate charger for that battery type, rather than your cam.
Also, if things get desperate, you can buy disposable digital (or regular and develop to CD) cameras for pretty cheap and while it sucks that they are disposable and that you have to pay to get pics developed, you GOTTA have pictures from what sounds like an awesome trip.

PiggyBankBlues said...

everyone gave great advice. i would also add just bring along your own headphones. even if your ipod kicked it, most transatlantic flights have decent music and movie selections.

Jon said...

Are you familiar with HDR photography? If you do get access to another camera, it might be worth taking a little time to learn about it because it produces pretty nice-looking photos. The basics are that you take several pictures of the same scene using different levels of exposure. Then you use software to overlay the images and combine them so that the picture has more color and detail than any single picture. You can learn the software aspect later though!

Another really cool thing, especially for architectural photos, is panoramic photography. It's really, really easy to do with today's software. Basically you take multiple overlapping pictures of something like a building, then the software automatically combines them into a single coherent image. You can get cool pictures like this that would be impossible without a high-end camera with a wide-angle lens.

Anonymous said...

Well done. I think it's a great idea for people to post this kind of stuff along with the accompanying "this is how I'm solving my case of the gimmes." I think I'm going to do this on my own blog, actually. Thanks for the idea!