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After over a month of waiting I finally collected my new camera yesterday.

I had to wait because the lenses I wanted were not in the country and I had to wait til shipments came in. Even then, the wide angle lens I was trying to purchase wasn’t available so i ended up with a somewhat cheaper lower specced lens. I did however get my good telephoto lens.

  Equipment list:

• Canon EOS 50D
• Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens
• Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Lens
• Manfroto 190XDB Tripod
• Manfroto 804RC2 three way head
• Gorillapod SLR Tripod
• LowePro Nova 140AW bag

Equipment reviews that I used to make my choice from:

• Canon EOS 50D – review from Digital Photography Blog
• Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens – review from The-Digital-Picture
• Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Lens – review from The-Digital-Picture

The-Digital-Picture website also contain sample photos taken with the lenses – made the choice a lot easier.

Now I need to get going with my photography. I have a willing subject in Kitty, and plenty of landscape shots I want to take. I will be posting photos on Flickr as usual and the best ones will get to my Red Bubble account where they will be available to purchase in various formats.

Last week I mentioned that I did not leave the world of PCs and Windows because I needed an easier interface. I’m a fairly serious computer user. I slogged my way through programs back in the early 90s, before Windows, when every program had a completely unique set of commands. F7 saved in Word Perfect. Why? Because that’s the way they designed it. Other programs had their own quirky commands. For me, Windows has always seemed incredibly easy and convenient, if only because of the universal command structure.

I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. Having lived through the Great Depression, my grandfather always thought an orange was a spanking good Christmas present.

You know what ultimately drove me away from Windows? I could never keep the blasted operating system clean. I would buy a new computer and delight at how Windows would jump onto the screen, wagging its tail like a puppy dog ready for a walk. “Where do you want to go today?” Six months later, booting was taking a little longer. After a year, I would pop into the kitchen for a snack while I waited for Windows to start. After 18 months I had a pattern pressed into my forehead from looking up to see if Windows had finally started and then lowering my face back down onto the keyboard.

A computer professional I know said, “You have to reinstall Windows every year or so if you want it to run well. I format the hard disk and start fresh. It takes me a day to reinstall software, update drivers, and all of that. But that’s just what you have to do.”

Yeah, well, I don’t have to do that anymore.

One man’s journey from the darkness, into the light, and then back to the darkness, which turned out to be not as dark as he remembered.

I wanted to buy a Macintosh back in 1991 when I sold a bunch of stuff and managed to scrape together $1200 for a computer. Sadly, that left me about $1200 short with nothing left to sell. So instead I bought a XT running DOS 3.1 with 256k of RAM, a 20 meg hard drive, floppy drives, and an amber monochrome monitor. I’ve been joined to my computer(s) at the hip ever since.

What tends to happen is you begin the journey with a Mac or a PC, and you stick with it. Mac people swear they would rather die than switch, and given how they line up like lemmings to buy whatever their Apple overlords tell them to buy, I tend to believe them. PC users, on the other hand, tend to be classic geeks and nerds, which is understandable because these are the sort of people who want to get into their computers - into both the hardware and the software. The Mac hardware and software are locked up tighter than an Amish maiden, while every PC I’ve ever owned had a case held together by its one remaining screw and 2 or 3 hard drives hanging out the side. The last PC I built had a spare CD drive in it, just so I could have somewhere to put my coffee cup.

And what a week is has been – with all sorts of amazing announcements, reversals and more on the Australian Domain Registration front with Bottle Domains and the auDA (Australia’s Domain Name Authority) slugging it out in the Supreme Court. This press release sum sit up well - auDA recklessness damages Australian domain industry

More Announcements:

Andy and Carrie Lee had their little baby. There was no sign of facial hair (fortunately!)

Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System due to ship April 28th

Exchange 2010 Beta Released

Office 2010 announced – official press release - Next Wave of Microsoft Office Products Will Redefine How People Work

Updated Version of Outlook Connector 12.1 Available

And some other news:

Translate Your Outlook Emails into Other Languages

Word Team Blog blogger Joannie Stangeland started up a vodcast series called A Writer's Guide to Microsoft Office.

Tonight the site WMpoweruser leaked the image of the Zune HD – and world is awash with rumours surrounding its specs and capabilities – looks like a device that is way in front of any Apple iPod products with rumours of HDMI, HD display, touch screen, HD Radio and WiFi.

Robin Good has a fantastic guide on How To Blog Anonymously And Maintain Control Of Your Personal Privacy. He lists techniques, tools and other strategies.

He also has written this one How To Embed And Display RSS Feeds On Any Web Page: Best RSS-To-HTML Publishing Tools – linking to lots of great tools.