Since we’re about to be new parents, we’re having to stock up on parental items. Diapers, outfits, formula, blankets, bedding, bottles, and booties. That’s Elizabeth’s department. I get the cool stuff: eye-gaugers, choking hazards, thrill rides, and gadgets. Naturally I started with the gadgets since I get to play test these items now.

Most every new parent goes straight for the digital camera, camcorder, or both. We’re no different. We got the digital camera (the Nikon D70) in February and I put it to good use. That’s my first [digital] SLR camera and I couldn’t have been happier with the purchase. We’re about to buy a digital camcorder and, again, this will be my first. Not knowing much about camcorders, I needed some solid info on the various models as well as some objective reviews.

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Online photo printing has hit a price war as of late. When I purchased my personal all-in-one photo printer (Epson RX5000 and I’ve loved it!) last year, I compared the cost of photo prints on it vs. printing photos at my local Wal-Mart. At the time, the Epson printer cost me approximately 10 cents vs. the 27 cents at Wal-Mart if I compared the cost of paper and replacement ink. If you didn’t get an iPod for Christmas, chances are you got a digital camera which has not only led to the price wars between both online and in-store printing, but it’s enticed other companies to enter the market as well.

While I have no affiliation with Wal-Mart, nor do I enjoy shopping at their stores anymore, then did have a great service setup in regards to their photo printing. Not only could order prints online, but you could have them sent to your local Wal-Mart for pickup. After learning more about their printing process, I realized I didn’t like the online-print option because I couldn’t order my prints on matte paper (non-glossy, fingerprint free photo paper). So, I would then take my memory card into my local Wal-Mart and use their FujiFilm kiosk to order my prints.

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When Windows XP died on me today, it took the Shuffle with it. My Shuffle is completely unformatted now. I had *all* my work files on there. Fortunately, I’ve been backing this little bugger up every week because when I got it, I read on the Apple forums that people were having a lot of problems with the Shuffle crashing and losing data. Music? I don’t care about that. That’s easy to restore/re-steal/rip/burn/whatever. Data? That’s a different story, especially when calculating the work I’ve done since my last backup.

I thought about tossing the device, then I thought about repairing/replacing it. My iPod Shuffle is only a month old, but according to Apple, if it was out of warranty, they would be happy charge me a $99 replacement fee (or $149 for the 1 gig version… notice how these don’t coincide with the current Shuffle pricing?).

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I happened upon a new collection of music that has nearly doubled my horde. I now have 20.2 20.6 days worth of non-stop, continuous listening pleasure. I’ll finish listening to all 7574 7740 songs (I just acquired more) about the same time I reach the end of the internet. I listen to a pretty diverse set of music. I have my favorites, but my tolerance levels are pretty high for genres most people I know wouldn’t consider. Going from oldies to 60’s/70’s to disco (haha, yeah right) to country (not-so-new, old, older) and even a little (very little) rap (hip-hop, R&B, rap… it’s all the same to me) and then to latin (salsa, mariachi, as little norteño as possible) and then some of my favorite, grunge & post-grunge. Nice, huh?

This post isn’t about all that. What I’m getting at is I’m really surprised at how much some artists sound like others, even if they aren’t trying to. I understand that some artists are admittedly influenced by their idols, like how Clint Blank sounds so much like Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam like Buck Owens, and Milli Vanilli like the guys who really sang for them. Ok, not so much that last part… I still want you to think I know what I’m talking about here! I’m not really referring to those. I’m talking about the ones that almost sound like a copy of others, but not in a bad way.

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