FujiFilm Finepix JV210

If you're looking for a 'cheap-as-chips' digital camera, this one (original price £150) is available new on ebay for under £50 including p&p.

It comes with a 14MP sensor, 3x optical zoom and a rechargeable battery. You can even capture videos with it. You'll need to supply an SD card, but you can get a 4GB version for under £4 (inc. p&p) from Amazon.
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Henry Miller on Practical Creativity

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.

2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’

3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.

4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

5. When you can’t create you can work.

6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.

9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.

10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

via Brain Pickings

Free Font - Amaranth

Font Squirrel has this quirky postmodern sans serif available to download in regular, italic, bold and bold italic.
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5 colour scheme web apps

Design & Dev reports:

Colour is one of the most important aspects of any design. And since colour has such a massive impact on your viewers, it’s important to know your theory.

Warm colors give off a fiery message, while cool colours can provide a more calming effect. Analogous colour schemes, often found in nature, are comforting, while complementary colour schemes have a more energetic feel.

Here’s 5 Web apps to help you find the perfect colour palette for your next design.
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Pansonic Lumix DMC-GX1 - Review

Digital Photography Review has published a comprehensive review of Panasonic's top-of-the-range micro four thirds compact.

Summary of Conclusion:

The GX1 is a camera that gets a whole lot right. If the combination of small form factor and high number of external control points are priorities, the GX1 has to be at the top of an enthusiast's wish list. You'd be taking advantage of the highest quality image sensor available for the Micro Four Thirds market and buying into an extensive range of high quality optics including fast prime lenses.

The GX1 is a very capable and solid, but not ground-breaking camera that does a very fine job at what it sets out to accomplish. Panasonic has addressed almost every criticism of its early generation G-series cameras in a package that, when paired with its collapsible kit zoom is among the most pocketable cameras in its class.
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Painting with sound

The New York Times reports: [edited]

Like a 3-D take on Jackson Pollock, the latest work by the artist Martin Klimas begins with splatters of paint in fuchsia, teal and lime green, positioned on a scrim over the diaphragm of a speaker. Then the volume is turned up.

For each image, Klimas selects music — typically something dynamic and percussive, like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Miles Davis or Kraftwerk — and the vibration of the speaker sends the paint aloft in patterns that reveal themselves through the lens of his Hasselblad.

The resulting images are Klimas’s attempt to answer the question “What does music look like?”

via kottke
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HoverBar for iPad 2

Twelve South reports: [edited]

HoverBar hangs iPad 2 beside your Mac, letting you use iPad as a secondary, touchscreen computer.

The flexible HoverBar arm positions iPad in a place where you can keep tabs on Twitter, stocks or partake in a FaceTime chat.

As a bonus, you can use HoverBar separately to float iPad 2 as a micro workstation, a handy kitchen mount or as a tool that elevates iPad, creating a whole new way to interact with apps.

Price: $79.99
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Olympus OM-D E-M5

Digital Photography Review reports: [edited]

With the launch of the E-M5, Olympus harks back to one of its most fondly-remembered camera systems - the Olympus OM range of 35mm SLRs. For reasons of clarity, it should be stated that this isn't a continuation of that line - the OM-D models won't be SLRs and are based around Micro Four Thirds, not OM lens mounts.

The camera is built around a 16MP Four Thirds sensor, almost certainly the same one seen in Panasonic's DMC-G3. The company has also totally reworked its built-in image stabilization system. The new design is described as 5-axis (translational movement vertically and horizontally, and rotational movement around 3 axes), in contrast to the previous system that only corrected for up/down and left/right rotation.

Price: $999.00 (body only)
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Free Font - Flavors

Flavors is a handwritten/novelty typeface available from Font Squirrel.
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Panasonic DMC-TZ30

Digital Photography Review reports: [edited]

Panasonic has updated its range of travel zoom cameras with the DMC-TZ30. It is the slimmest 20x zoom camera on the market. Its lens covers a 24-480mm equivalent range and features the company's latest Power O.I.S stabilization.

The high-speed 14MP MOS sensor allows autofocus taking as little as 0.1 seconds, and it can shoot at up to 10 frames per second (5fps with AF-tracking). It also has GPS and an updated mapping function to show photos on a map with greater detail. The usefulness of this and other features is increased by a touchscreen.
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