Winter’s over and we’re back to our regular 75 degree sunny days, though it has been getting cold at night. It certainly makes it difficult to think about Christmas even though it’s only three weeks away! I can’t believe it’s December already. I really need to take a picture to send out for our Christmas cards. I’m thinking it will just be the girls because I don’t see us all getting a good picture together without a lot of digital editing taking place; there’s just too much motion going on for that sort. It’s really unfortunate, too, because the girls are absolutely the cutest things ever, as demonstrated in the video to your right. Jennifer and I were poking through some videos from her camera the other day, and there’s a couple of real crack-ups in there. I really wish there was a decent camcorder on the market that recorded compressed video and which did not also cost a zillion dollars or suck. It seems that the < $600 camcorders that use DVD or hard disk or flash cards as media have nowhere near the quality of $299 mini-DV camera. I need to do downloading in faster than real time, because there is absolutely nothing cool about waiting. Maybe next year.

Speaking of gadgets, I’ve been keeping my eye out for the next cool phone. My trusty Nokia 6600 has been everything I’ve wanted in a phone, except that it could use a better screen and camera, and I would like an external media slot. Nokia’s Symbian smartphones are the only ones I have seen that don’t either have a horrible UI (ie. Motorola) or are horribly unstable and/or locked down (ie. Windows Mobile, Palm). Thus, I only really care about new Nokia phones like the N80, which is like my phone, but adds a 2-megapixel camera with flash, secondary video conferencing camera, Wi-Fi, external card slot, and kickass screen. Nokia will also introduce a couple smaller models as well before my Cingular contract is up. I’m aware the iPhone is supposed to come out soon too, so I will wait to see what that looks like as well.