PDC Day 00 (A new camera)

While the day is just winding down, I managed to find the incredible toy district here in L.A. and replace my lost camera. L.A. seems to be broken down into districts. There's the bank district (where most of the office buildings and banks are, so appropriately named). The jewelry district where you can get the latest knock-off tiaras and whatnot. The fashion district where Gucci and Louis Vuitton clones are more prominent than a gaggle of Jango Fetts (okay, that's a geek reference in case you missed it). And then there is the toy district. Yes, an entire district where you can buy toys and electronics and pretty much every other odd and end (like a 50 quart (50!) pot which is great for cooking copius amounts of chilli, or small nocturnal marsupials; which I'm sure happens here all the time).

There are probably other districts (the overpaid Hollywood actors who starred with Kevin Bacon district?) the but it was there in the toy district where I found a suitable replacement camera for my stupidity. I was able to haggle for a new Olympus C-60 camera. Pretty nice with 6.1MP, lots of modes (auto, aperture mode, shutter mode, etc.) and got a 256MB card thrown in (to replace the crappy 32MB that comes with it). All this for $200USD so I don't really care where the guy got it from. It turns out to be better than my old FinePix camera, still uses the xD cards (which I'm happy with and plug right into my laptop) and has lots of great modes for taking better pics. Here's the first pic of the PDC swag that I got when I registered this morning.

There's a lot of great stuff here. First off the bag itself is pretty nice. Well built and lots of nice components and compartments. The only problem that I have with it (that others have commented on) is that it can't handle anything bigger than a 15" wide laptop. These days I think everyone is getting the 17" widescreen ones. Oh well, can't please everyone. There's some sweet stuff in the swag including a free subscription to Visual Studio Magazine (Thanks PDC!) and the even better wristband that's required for us to wear which will let us in Wednesday night to Universal Studios for a night of debauchery. Also included are some nice CD/DVDs including a pretty cool package of some Smart Client apps that you should load up and check out.

So the pics are back (at least until I lose this camera) and you check my Flickr blog below for all of the images over the next week. Hopefully I'll have the pics showing up on the group Flickr pool site but I've been a little technically challenged with my posts. Flickr didn't seem to be grabbing the images (even though I have the "pdc05" tag) and my blog entries haven't been showing up on the PDC blogger site (even though I'm listed as a PDC blogger). Whatever. Stay tuned for lots of great pics tommorow starting with Big Bill G. and the keynote speech (yeah, pictures of a billionare talking are not very exciting, but hey go with the moment).

Off to find some kind of nightlife. Feel free to bug me on MSN (bsimser@shaw.ca) if you want to hook up and make fun of the locals (after a few rounds of course).

PDC05
Flickr (new pics are up with my new Olympus! Hurray for the Toy District!)
Moblog (some new pics including me in my shower, stay tuned for blog tommorow on this)
Google Maps where I'm staying (Miyako)