This rarely happens.

As far as finance goes, I’m a rather tight person. But with the recent addition of EMA payments (and a lovely £100 bonus… just for going to college!), I’ve become a little more adventurous with payments. And since I live very far away from any decent shops (sorry, Cobbler’s Collectables), the Internet is the ideal medium to get a bit of retail therapy packed in over the weekend.

I started out by buying another Boom Bip CD and Book (the Life Gym or something like that) from Amazon. Which was a little taxing.

Then I realized I finally had the spending power to buy some more RAM for my laptop, so I went and got 256 MB of it from Crucial UK, who refused my payment and quickly received a phone call from me about it. The Russian lady was very helpful, if not a little incomprehensible. That was very taxing.

Finally I got something for free. Picasa 2, which is a truly lovely piece of free software (which still needs a bit of improving here and there) got a lot of my attention for the day.

However, it didn’t quite end that happily. I realized, through Picasa, that I had set a site a folder of “must print pics” which really are the cream of my crop. Varied, beautiful and personal (inspirational pictures of my gran), I really did have to print them. So I did, with an online printers found through Google who did a rather good deal if you were using them for the first time. 25 4x6 and 6 5x7 pictures later, and I was down a hefty £4 more. Now that’s surprising. I wonder if they’re any good?

Finally, I was playing around even more with Picasa and the now crippled Hello (what I use to post images to the site – it won’t publish anything large anymore… what’s the point in that, then?). I remembered Flickr, and wondered if that had any kind of impressive integration with Picasa. It doesn’t, really. But only a few minutes of using Flickr hooked me. It’s fantastic. It’s liberating. It’s the feeling I got when I discovered del.icio.us, but better, because it’s my content as well as others’.

Oh, the interest it sparked. It’s reaffirmed my love of photography, and is, in fact, so good that I went and bought a year-long Pro account almost immediately. For something like £25.

I really do have to say that something has to be very, very special to do that. Flickr is amazing, exciting and extremely well made.

Here’s to a good year of photography; high in detail, creativity, and quality.

Posted by Fin at 1/23/2005 04:17:00 am

2 Comments ~ Post a Comment

 Leon: Ha! You are hopelessly addicted to flickr now. It is fun though isn't it. I have to go now and check out your pics.

 Fin: I am. They've sucked me in...