For a while, digital cameras didn't give up the goods as easily as they do, these days. If you wanted your pictures, you had to connect the camera to your computer through the serial port, then go take a nap or something. Your pictures would show up, eventually.
Enter the Sony Mavica line of digital cameras. With these, you could simply use a regular old floppy disk (I still dislike that term, as they're not floppy; their predecessors were) as the medium. When you're ready to upload the photos to your computer, eject the floppy and then stick it in your computer. Boo-yah!
This particular model is the SONY FD Mavica (if "FD" stands for "floppy drive," maybe they weren't ALL floppy-friendly) - MVC-FD200, to be precise. It has no optical zoom (CORRECTION: I recently realized that it DOES have optical zoom. 3x, in fact.), from what I can tell, but it's got a HUGE 2.5 inch lcd viewer on the back, takes 2.0 megapixel photos, and accepts both floppy and memory stick storage media. Toss in a rechargeable battery and a built-in flash (you can't always take those for granted - even today) and this thing was the shyt f'sho'!
Oh yeah. You can upload the photos via usb port, if you like. Nice.
These days, it's considered to be pretty out-dated. After all, computers, these days, are starting to ship without ANY floppy drives. More of'em are shipping with "universal" media slots, though, so you can use sd cards, memory sticks, etc. without purchasing adapters. Heck, one of my laptops has an external floppy drive that I can hot-swap while the other (a later model) doesn't have one, at all.
On the way home, though, I passed a coffee shop whose name kinda blew my mind. I tried to use my Treo 650 pda/phone to take a picture of it, but it was too far away. While I was still at the light, I grabbed my Mavica and took a quick picture. You know what else? I realized that I didn't need to have that usb cable OR an adapter with me to transfer the picture to my computer so I could share it with you all.
It occurs to me that my fondness for the Mavica isn't QUITE as nerdy as I once thought.
Okay, who'm I kidding? I AM a damned nerd, but a shameless one who knows practicality when he sees it. THIS thing is practical, so long as you're in an environment in which plenty of folks still use floppies.
Otherwise, you it's all about memory sticks, card slots, and universal adapters, baby. Damn. Now I'm all hot n bothered.
Anyway, here's the picture I was talking about:
That's right. They named their store "BAD ASS Coffee."
I'm sure SOMEone will call me racist for this, but if I were a bettin' man, I'd say these folks are Black. Anyway, more power to'em.
As far as the Mavica's concerned, I definitely recommend it, as long as you know what its limitations are.
Questions? Comments?
EDIT: I think THIS guy's probably the owner:
http://web.jet.es/unepelde/imgs/pf_sam.gif :p
2 comments:
racist??? nah...I would have guessed the same
Oh yes.
I was accused of this quite recently after suggesting that there was such a thing as a "Black community."
Ironically, this accusation was made directly after the accuser confused me with another Black man.
Oh well. I still say Samuel L. Jackson must be the proprietor. :p
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