Christmas Wish List: New Camera

Every day in December (work schedule permitting) I plan on posting one thing from my official DevilDinosaur Christmas Wish List (patent pending). Why? Because I can.

Boy do I really want a new camera. My kids are probably as cute as they're ever going to get right now and the amount of quality pictures I have of them is frighteningly low. Basically I'm rolling with a camera phone right now which is ok for pictures under good light but if I have to use the flash everything comes out really washed out or everyone has zombie eyes. And forget about it if the kids are actually moving, which is like 99% of the time.

I'm not 100% sure I want to go the full DSLR route. First of all they're incredibly expensive so lets just stop right there... However Panasonic, Sony and a couple other manufacturers make a few cameras that sort of bridge that point and shoot to DSLR gap. That might be right up my alley. Costco had one for sale the other day for about $300. I don't know, it's still a lot of money to spend when I'm trying to save up for a new car but I feel like if I don't do something quick my kids are going to be teenagers and at least 70% less cute than they are right now.

Incredibly Links

Behold The Oldsmobile Expression, The Incredibly Ugly ’90s Car With A Built-In NES. Ugly? This thing is sweet. If this was available right now, I'd be one of the first in line. It has third row rear facing seats, rear facing seats. It could have a Colecovision built in and I'd still want one.

The Secret Lives of NYC Mega-Projects, Revealed By One Photographer. Pictures of huge construction projects like these always bottle my mind grapes. A few of these double so given the fact that they're underground. I don't even understand how Manhattan stays standing, there's like an entire mountain dug out underneath it.

We Can't Let John Deere Destroy the Very Idea Of Ownership. Hey there, here's something that's not particularly good for your average consumer. The basic gist is that a few larger companies are using copyright law to say that you only KIND OF own the things you've bought. Sure you bought the tractor, but all the software that runs it John Deere really owns and you don't have the right to touch it.

But I don't buy tractors, so why should I care? Well the same argument can and will be made for cars, phones, computers, baby monitors basically anything with a chip. Imagine having to take your car to an authorized GM dealer because a regular repair shop can't legally hook up a diagnostic computer. Welcome to the future!

Live From The MTV Movie Awards: Who Won? Who Lost? Who Is Ansel Elgort? This is a bit late but it's still pretty funny. Seriously, are the MTV movie awards still a thing? Kids don't care, adults don't care, who cares? One guy in LA named Donnie?

Rumor of the Day: Marvel is planning a Ms. Marvel TV series with ABC. Disney/Marvel has zero plans of slowing down, right? They have about 7 movies in the works right now plus 4 shows on Netflix, an Agents of SHIELD spin off and now a Ms Marvel show? It's getting to the point where I can't keep up. I just finished Agent Carter a couple weeks ago and I'm like 3 weeks behind Agents of SHIELD. I haven't even started watching Daredevil. Where was this glut of superhero stuff when I was single and kidless?

Oh yeah, Ms Marvel is SUPER RAD. I hope this show gets made. If it's half as awesome as the comic it will be a giant hit.

Links! Links! Links!

The 'Evolution' of Sexy: Every Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover Ever Interesting read about how the Sports Illustrated covers have changed over the years. I went with Elle Macpherson here instead of the usually reliable click bait of Kate Upton. Elle was the cover girl of the first Swimsuit Issue I remember. You could almost see her nipple, can you believe that?!

Story Time; My high school had a subscription to SI for the library (along with a bunch of other magazines) this was pre-internet times so people still read magazines. I remember one year when the swimsuit issue came out one of the librarians took a sharpie and drew full swimsuits over all the models so you couldn't see an centimeter of skin. They even put a caption on it that said something to the effect of "sorry boys!". It was the craziest thing I had ever seen. It's like they were trolling all the horny 15 year olds brave enough to look at the swimsuit issue in public. Why not just throw away the issue?

World War 2 bomber art. This was posted on reddit the other day and I thought it was fascinating. They're photos one redditor's grandfather took during World War II in the China-Burma-India theater. I had no idea some of them were straight up nude pictures... or that there were so many puns.

Star Wars toys photos look more realistic than the real Star Wars. Finnish artist Vesa Lehtimäki aka Avanaut takes pictures of his kids toys then shops them into real world pictures to create some pretty amazing images. It also makes a pretty strong argument against 3D modeling when it comes to the next Star Wars films.

The 1975 Mighty Marvel Calendar works for 2014. Did you save your 1975 Mighty Marvel Calendar? Well good news, you can reuse that baby this year. The bad news however is that you're probably a hoarder. You might want to look into that.

33 Beautiful Abandoned Places

This post on Imgur of the 33 Most Beautiful Abandoned Places in the World is really something else. I really love the bobsled track and the fishing hut in Germany. The hut really reminded me of a spot in Skyrim. I'm not sure what that says about me.

Normally this is one of those things that I would save for a links post but I'm thinking of taking a nap instead.