I’m looking to buy a new camera. Suggestions and comments welcome, preferably with links.

I want something light to take tramping, wide-angled enough to capture landscapes and fast enough to snap fantails. Good battery life wouldn’t be bad either, though I could always buy a second battery. I’m thinking of spending say $300-$500.

Some possibilities are:

Camera	Reviews	Prices	Weight	Mpix	Zoom	Focal	Batt	Timings 02S S2S
Panasonic DMC-TZ5	DPR SD	$479	245g	9.1	10x	28 – 280 mm	Li-Ion 300 shots	2.4s 1.5s
Ricoh R8	DPR	$459	166g	10.0	7.1x	28 – 200 mm	Li-Ion 270 shots	1.8s 1.6s
Cannon A720 IS	DPR SD	$289	250g	8.0	6x	35 – 210 mm	2xAA 400 shots	1.8s 1.7s
Cannon SX100 IS	DPR	$367	316g	8.3	10x	36 – 360mm	2xAA	2.5s 1.6s
Cannon S5 IS	DPR SD	$460 $489	550g	8.0	12x	36 – 432 mm	4xAA 450 shots	1.7s 1.7s
Fuji S8000fd	DPR SD	$378	325g	10.0	12x	33 – 396 mm	4xAA	3.2s 2.4s

This is a great recipe for Lamb Shankets (#1 on Google).

I did the preparation the night before, then left it cooking while I was at work.  After 11 hours on low temp it was well cooked and extremely tender.  The meat fell apart when I tried to get it out.  Tasted great.  Spicy bacon is good too.

and eating.
Had the Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 ship party today. Driving carts on the Auckland Luge and drinking, the perfect combination Responsibly we did the driving before the drinking. We had a nice meal at the Long Bay Restaurant too.

The photo is thanks to Michael. As you can see I was having a great time. Pity you can’t see have fast I was going!

Took my cat Oliver to the vet. This really requires a car. I considered taking the bus, but the bus rules say:

Guide dogs and guide dogs in training are allowed to be carried on buses, if under the supervision of their care-giver. Other pets are not allowed.

Simon suggested “Just say he’s a guide dog.” and “When they say no, he’s a cat say yes, but the blind people can’t see that.”. Also by cat years Oliver should get a senior discount.

Oliver has arthritis for which he is getting monthly Vetaortyl injections, and his kidneys are failing so we’ve changed his diet to Hills Feline K/D, and have just started him on Fortekor tablets.

I’m not sure how old Oliver is, but he’s getting on. He was a full grown cat when he turned up and moved in over 12 years ago.

We released Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 today.

New features include:

• WinPE is now included – and is the default pre-OS
• DeployAnywhere for hardware independent restore
• Hot image creation
• Secure decommissioning
• VMDK support – create and restore
• Native Linux versions of the tools
• Linux pre-OS included as an alternative to WinPE and DOS
• PQi and V2i support
• Re-orderable task actions
• Better support for running scripts
• Better support for Sysprep

This presentation describes the new features in more detail.

It will be interesting to see how GSS2.5 is received, especially for me the new Linux tools. I see Microsoft recently added Linux support to their MOMS product as well.