Nikon COOLPIX S3100 14 MP Digital Camera with 5x NIKKOR Wide-Angle Optical Zoom

Nikon COOLPIX S3100 14 MP Digital Camera with 5x NIKKOR Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and 2.7-Inch LCD. Slip this ultra-slim, ultra-light COOLPIX S3100 camera into your pocket and you’ll never miss a memorable moment. At an incredibly slender 0.8 inches and just 4.2 ounces, it goes wherever the fun is—the beach, the mall, your best friend’s house. It comes in seven attractive colors—silver, black, red, yellow, purple, blue and pink. And you’ll love its One-Touch HD Movie function, which enables you to watch the action with family and friends.

The COOLPIX S3100 isn’t just the most stylish and convenient camera you’ll ever own, it’s also the smartest. Consider our Smart Portrait System, which includes amazing advantages like our Smile Timer that automatically releases the shutter when your subject smiles, and Face-Priority AF, our latest face-finding technology that detects and focuses on up to 12 faces. Blink Warning tells you when a subject may have blinked—and alerts you to re-take the photo.

Product Features

• 14.0-megapixel CCD sensor for superb image quality
• 5x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom-NIKKOR Glass Lens
• 4-way VR Image Stabilization System
• 2.7-inch (230,000-dot) display
• EXPEED C2 for enhanced image quality and processing speed

Technical Details

• Brand Name: Nikon
• Model: S3100 Purple
• Optical Sensor Resolution: 14 MP
• Optical zoom: 5 x
• Width: 2.3 inches
• Height: 0.8 inches
• Weight: 0.3 pounds

 

Nikon COOLPIX S3100 14 MP Digital Camera with 5x NIKKOR Wide-Angle Optical Zoom

Nikon COOLPIX S3100 14 MP Digital Camera with 5x NIKKOR Wide-Angle Optical Zoom Lens and 2.7-Inch LCD. Slip this ultra-slim, ultra-light COOLPIX S3100 camera into your pocket and you’ll never miss a memorable moment. At an incredibly slender 0.8 inches and just 4.2 ounces, it goes wherever the fun is—the beach, the mall, your best friend’s house. It comes in seven attractive colors—silver, black, red, yellow, purple, blue and pink. And you’ll love its One-Touch HD Movie function, which enables you to watch the action with family and friends.

The COOLPIX S3100 isn’t just the most stylish and convenient camera you’ll ever own, it’s also the smartest. Consider our Smart Portrait System, which includes amazing advantages like our Smile Timer that automatically releases the shutter when your subject smiles, and Face-Priority AF, our latest face-finding technology that detects and focuses on up to 12 faces. Blink Warning tells you when a subject may have blinked—and alerts you to re-take the photo.

Product Features

• 14.0-megapixel CCD sensor for superb image quality
• 5x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom-NIKKOR Glass Lens
• 4-way VR Image Stabilization System
• 2.7-inch (230,000-dot) display
• EXPEED C2 for enhanced image quality and processing speed

Technical Details

• Brand Name: Nikon
• Model: S3100 Purple
• Optical Sensor Resolution: 14 MP
• Optical zoom: 5 x
• Width: 2.3 inches
• Height: 0.8 inches
• Weight: 0.3 pounds

 

How Does a Godless Communist Become an Islamist Role Model? The extraordinary journey of Che Guevara

Benghazi has fallen – the headline screamed. You could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a WWII flick. The world, after all, is witnessing something historic!

Can a city ‘fall’ to its own people? Yes, when the people are facing a public enemy, albeit one who is their President. An unrepentant Gadhafi is using force – air power, mercenaries – to put down the protestors. How far will the Jasmine revolution go? None can predict but the vulnerable countries have much in common.

 Like a perfect storm, a confluence of factors is shaping this cascade of revolution: ossified petro-dictators, relatively high per-capita income, a youth bulge. Sociologists have long predicted that countries in which men aged 15-34 make up more than 15% of the total population face a high risk of unrest. The demographics of Maghreb and Mid-east countries are swollen with young men who are now leading the protests of the past weeks.

The Arab revolution, starting with Tunisia, then Egypt and now roiling Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, has the world riveted. And people – writers, journalists, analysts, foreign policy wonks – are all attempting to figure who triggered the revolution? Was it the vegetable seller in Tunisia who immolated himself and stirred the seething passions of his countrymen and women? Was it Wael Ghonim, the Google executive incarcerated by the Egyptian police who fired the imagination of his people? Or was it the people – young, disillusioned, wired – the Facebook generation that demonstrated to its elders that it was possible to dream and share those dreams via the internet, and organize online the execution of those dreams as well? 

It is human nature to give a recognizable face to an uprising, a momentous occasion, a big event – that’s how people commit things to memory. Remember the sailor kissing his nurse-girlfriend in that iconic WWII victory kiss? Or the naked girl with peeling skin running from an air strike who became the face of the Vietnam War? History is replete with individuals whose names summon historic events: Gandhi – Indian Independence; Mandela – Anti-Apartheid; Rosa Parks – Segregation…

Amongst the faces on display in Tahrir Square was that of Che Guevara. Che was in a locket around a woman’s neck and on an another’s headband. He was reborn as a Pharaoh and a Yemeni man held up his image on a poster as he called for the resignation of President Saleh. Moroccan protestors held a banner featuring Che during a demonstration.

Just how does a godless communist become the Islamic world’s foremost role model? Why does the image of Che give voice to the frustrations of the Arab youth?

At some point in our lives, each of us has seen Che – that iconic image by Alberto Korda was on a wall poster in a friend’s hostel room, on a fading T-shirt of a class rebel, in Warholesque psychedelic posters, in the Oscar-winning Motorcycle Diaries, on postage stamps, as tattoo, or graffiti…

Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born in Argentina, trained as a doctor, and was a key figure in the Cuban revolution. While studying medicine he undertook two long journeys on a motorcycle covering 10,000 miles in which he saw practically the whole of South America. This was to fundamentally alter his worldview – two observations impinged upon him: the economic inequality of the region and the role of US hegemony in bolstering the ruling elite. If this resonates with the situation in the Arab world today, you’ll begin to glean why Che is relevant six decades later halfway across the world.

Iconic image by Alberto Korda

 He started work as a doctor but continued to be deeply troubled by the poverty around him. A meeting with Fidel Castro, who was seeking to overthrow the dictatorship of Batista in Cuba, was to set him on the path of a guerilla leader and a Marxist revolutionary.

Che Guevara’s life is the subject of several books, essays, films. Suffice to say that he packed such extraordinary events in the less-than-four-decades of his existence that he continues to be the wet dream of Hollywood scriptwriters: an impassioned address to the UN during which time there were two failed attempts on his life, feted by French intellectuals such as Sartre and Beauvoir, travelled to Congo to help export the revolution, execution by the CIA in the forests of Bolivia – all before the age of forty. 

Jon Lee Anderson is a writer who discovered the hidden location of Guevara’s burial while researching his remarkable book, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. He has covered several conflict zones in the world including Afghanistan and Iraq and says that he “kept bumping into Che”. He saw the photo of Che in the wallet of an Afghan Jihadi and Che’s book in the jungles where the Burmese guerillas were holed up.

Che Guevara, the intellectual, revolutionary, guerilla, physician, diplomat, military strategist packed several lives into one and died under mysterious circumstances. His allure has grown with time and diffused across the world. His first wife Hilda said in her memoir that Che wrote a poem which he dedicated to one of his patients, an elderly washerwoman, in which he made “a promise to fight for a better world, for a better life for all the poor and exploited”.

Che, the man and myth, represent an aspiration for a better world, a more just world. This wish transcends religion, ideology, geography and time. Governments would do well to heed that.

How Does a Godless Communist Become an Islamist Role Model? The extraordinary journey of Che Guevara

Benghazi has fallen – the headline screamed. You could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a WWII flick. The world, after all, is witnessing something historic!

Can a city ‘fall’ to its own people? Yes, when the people are facing a public enemy, albeit one who is their President. An unrepentant Gadhafi is using force – air power, mercenaries – to put down the protestors. How far will the Jasmine revolution go? None can predict but the vulnerable countries have much in common.

 Like a perfect storm, a confluence of factors is shaping this cascade of revolution: ossified petro-dictators, relatively high per-capita income, a youth bulge. Sociologists have long predicted that countries in which men aged 15-34 make up more than 15% of the total population face a high risk of unrest. The demographics of Maghreb and Mid-east countries are swollen with young men who are now leading the protests of the past weeks.

The Arab revolution, starting with Tunisia, then Egypt and now roiling Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, has the world riveted. And people – writers, journalists, analysts, foreign policy wonks – are all attempting to figure who triggered the revolution? Was it the vegetable seller in Tunisia who immolated himself and stirred the seething passions of his countrymen and women? Was it Wael Ghonim, the Google executive incarcerated by the Egyptian police who fired the imagination of his people? Or was it the people – young, disillusioned, wired – the Facebook generation that demonstrated to its elders that it was possible to dream and share those dreams via the internet, and organize online the execution of those dreams as well? 

It is human nature to give a recognizable face to an uprising, a momentous occasion, a big event – that’s how people commit things to memory. Remember the sailor kissing his nurse-girlfriend in that iconic WWII victory kiss? Or the naked girl with peeling skin running from an air strike who became the face of the Vietnam War? History is replete with individuals whose names summon historic events: Gandhi – Indian Independence; Mandela – Anti-Apartheid; Rosa Parks – Segregation…

Amongst the faces on display in Tahrir Square was that of Che Guevara. Che was in a locket around a woman’s neck and on an another’s headband. He was reborn as a Pharaoh and a Yemeni man held up his image on a poster as he called for the resignation of President Saleh. Moroccan protestors held a banner featuring Che during a demonstration.

Just how does a godless communist become the Islamic world’s foremost role model? Why does the image of Che give voice to the frustrations of the Arab youth?

At some point in our lives, each of us has seen Che – that iconic image by Alberto Korda was on a wall poster in a friend’s hostel room, on a fading T-shirt of a class rebel, in Warholesque psychedelic posters, in the Oscar-winning Motorcycle Diaries, on postage stamps, as tattoo, or graffiti…

Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born in Argentina, trained as a doctor, and was a key figure in the Cuban revolution. While studying medicine he undertook two long journeys on a motorcycle covering 10,000 miles in which he saw practically the whole of South America. This was to fundamentally alter his worldview – two observations impinged upon him: the economic inequality of the region and the role of US hegemony in bolstering the ruling elite. If this resonates with the situation in the Arab world today, you’ll begin to glean why Che is relevant six decades later halfway across the world.

Iconic image by Alberto Korda

 He started work as a doctor but continued to be deeply troubled by the poverty around him. A meeting with Fidel Castro, who was seeking to overthrow the dictatorship of Batista in Cuba, was to set him on the path of a guerilla leader and a Marxist revolutionary.

Che Guevara’s life is the subject of several books, essays, films. Suffice to say that he packed such extraordinary events in the less-than-four-decades of his existence that he continues to be the wet dream of Hollywood scriptwriters: an impassioned address to the UN during which time there were two failed attempts on his life, feted by French intellectuals such as Sartre and Beauvoir, travelled to Congo to help export the revolution, execution by the CIA in the forests of Bolivia – all before the age of forty. 

Jon Lee Anderson is a writer who discovered the hidden location of Guevara’s burial while researching his remarkable book, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life. He has covered several conflict zones in the world including Afghanistan and Iraq and says that he “kept bumping into Che”. He saw the photo of Che in the wallet of an Afghan Jihadi and Che’s book in the jungles where the Burmese guerillas were holed up.

Che Guevara, the intellectual, revolutionary, guerilla, physician, diplomat, military strategist packed several lives into one and died under mysterious circumstances. His allure has grown with time and diffused across the world. His first wife Hilda said in her memoir that Che wrote a poem which he dedicated to one of his patients, an elderly washerwoman, in which he made “a promise to fight for a better world, for a better life for all the poor and exploited”.

Che, the man and myth, represent an aspiration for a better world, a more just world. This wish transcends religion, ideology, geography and time. Governments would do well to heed that.

February 2011 - Photo of the Month

Cormorant

They are coastal rather than oceanic birds, and some have colonised inland waters - the original ancestor of cormorants seems to have been a fresh-water bird, judging from the habitat of their most ancient lineage. They range around the world, except for the central Pacific islands.


They are fish-eaters, dining on small eels, fish, and even water snakes. They dive from the surface, though many species make a characteristic half-jump as they dive, presumably to give themselves a more streamlined entry into the water. Under water they propel themselves with their feet. Some cormorant species have been found, using depth gauges, to dive to depths of as much as 45 metres.

February 2011 - Photo of the Month

Cormorant

They are coastal rather than oceanic birds, and some have colonised inland waters - the original ancestor of cormorants seems to have been a fresh-water bird, judging from the habitat of their most ancient lineage. They range around the world, except for the central Pacific islands.


They are fish-eaters, dining on small eels, fish, and even water snakes. They dive from the surface, though many species make a characteristic half-jump as they dive, presumably to give themselves a more streamlined entry into the water. Under water they propel themselves with their feet. Some cormorant species have been found, using depth gauges, to dive to depths of as much as 45 metres.

Stacy | Sneak Peek

Stacy | Sneak Peek

Life Updates

House:  We are set to close on our house (the one I posted about on Feb. 2) on March 11!  In less than two weeks, we will be the owners of a WHOLE BUILDING.  Wow.  We just bought a new (well, "new" to us) dining set today, as we had no stable chairs and needed a china cabinet in which to store our dishes.  We plan to "camp-out" in the house for a few weeks while we clean it, paint most of the rooms, and lay tile in the kitchen and the basement den.  It's so much easier to do all that stuff before there's a lot of furniture to work around... or so we've heard.

Fertility/Kids:  I took Round 5 of Clomid last week.  Still at 100mg.  I'm staying fairly positive by reminding myself how difficult it would be to move during first trimester exhaustion....



I did contact the Agape social worker in Birmingham yesterday to let her know we were interested in becoming foster parents.  She replied today with an application and let me know that training classes could start as early as the end of March!  Training would be 10 weeks, and I assume the home-study would also happen during that time.  We could be only a few months away from caring for one of God's precious children!



And last but not least....

The other week I went to Curves as usual, only to find over 30 pages from Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition plastered all over the mirror.  I immediately felt my face get hot.  It was distracting to work out with all those women staring seductively off their pages, especially while realizing how many men would be lusting over the same pictures in their own copies.  How many men would fall into the deep pit of s*xual addiction because of these pictures?  Almost everyone I know who's struggled with p*rnography began their battle with photos more innocent than these--undergarment advertisements in catalogs, etc.--yet here they were, in public, put up in a business founded by Christians and run by Christians.  I just got angrier and angrier, while the women around me chuckled and thought of it as a joke.  How could I say anything?  I'm already quite an anomaly there (and everywhere else, for that matter), and I didn't want to ruin anybody's fun.  So I left.



But I didn't stop thinking about it.  I went back on Friday, determined to explain how offensive those images were to me in as loving but firm a way as possible, and they were gone.  I was relieved, but I still felt like I needed to pursue the subject.  Before I could, I heard people discussing it already.  Apparently someone else had quite firmly but also quite unlovingly said how they didn't want to feel pressured to look like those perfectly airbrushed seductresses, especially not while working out, so take them down or else.  I threw in my two cents, mentioning how they had been rather offensive on a moral level (though not in those words exactly), and my view was immediately dismissed.  I went to the bathroom and started crying.  I couldn't help it; it's a very sensitive subject for me.  I came out, reminding myself that many people just don't understand the effects those images can and do have on the majority of men (and women, and their families), determined to continue my work-out, but the sweet lady who works there could tell something was wrong, and realized that her words had hurt me.  I explained things more fully, and she was truly sorry for it.



I left that night feeling better about the whole thing, but also quite discouraged.  If older, Christian women can't see the damage that even soft-core p*rn has done and continues to do to our men, what hope do we have?  What do you do in situations like this, when someone offends your morals unintentionally and/or is completely unaware of the sin which they are encouraging?

Life Updates

House:  We are set to close on our house (the one I posted about on Feb. 2) on March 11!  In less than two weeks, we will be the owners of a WHOLE BUILDING.  Wow.  We just bought a new (well, "new" to us) dining set today, as we had no stable chairs and needed a china cabinet in which to store our dishes.  We plan to "camp-out" in the house for a few weeks while we clean it, paint most of the rooms, and lay tile in the kitchen and the basement den.  It's so much easier to do all that stuff before there's a lot of furniture to work around... or so we've heard.

Fertility/Kids:  I took Round 5 of Clomid last week.  Still at 100mg.  I'm staying fairly positive by reminding myself how difficult it would be to move during first trimester exhaustion....



I did contact the Agape social worker in Birmingham yesterday to let her know we were interested in becoming foster parents.  She replied today with an application and let me know that training classes could start as early as the end of March!  Training would be 10 weeks, and I assume the home-study would also happen during that time.  We could be only a few months away from caring for one of God's precious children!



And last but not least....

The other week I went to Curves as usual, only to find over 30 pages from Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition plastered all over the mirror.  I immediately felt my face get hot.  It was distracting to work out with all those women staring seductively off their pages, especially while realizing how many men would be lusting over the same pictures in their own copies.  How many men would fall into the deep pit of s*xual addiction because of these pictures?  Almost everyone I know who's struggled with p*rnography began their battle with photos more innocent than these--undergarment advertisements in catalogs, etc.--yet here they were, in public, put up in a business founded by Christians and run by Christians.  I just got angrier and angrier, while the women around me chuckled and thought of it as a joke.  How could I say anything?  I'm already quite an anomaly there (and everywhere else, for that matter), and I didn't want to ruin anybody's fun.  So I left.



But I didn't stop thinking about it.  I went back on Friday, determined to explain how offensive those images were to me in as loving but firm a way as possible, and they were gone.  I was relieved, but I still felt like I needed to pursue the subject.  Before I could, I heard people discussing it already.  Apparently someone else had quite firmly but also quite unlovingly said how they didn't want to feel pressured to look like those perfectly airbrushed seductresses, especially not while working out, so take them down or else.  I threw in my two cents, mentioning how they had been rather offensive on a moral level (though not in those words exactly), and my view was immediately dismissed.  I went to the bathroom and started crying.  I couldn't help it; it's a very sensitive subject for me.  I came out, reminding myself that many people just don't understand the effects those images can and do have on the majority of men (and women, and their families), determined to continue my work-out, but the sweet lady who works there could tell something was wrong, and realized that her words had hurt me.  I explained things more fully, and she was truly sorry for it.



I left that night feeling better about the whole thing, but also quite discouraged.  If older, Christian women can't see the damage that even soft-core p*rn has done and continues to do to our men, what hope do we have?  What do you do in situations like this, when someone offends your morals unintentionally and/or is completely unaware of the sin which they are encouraging?

Rock, Paper, Scissors...

Rock...
Paper...
Scissors...
SHOOT!!!
Yeah, I do the version with "shoot" at the end.
But, THIS GAME MAKES NO SENSE!!!
I mean,
I get how Scissors can beat Paper.
I get how Rock can beat Scissors.
But,
HOW THE HECK CAN PAPER BEAT ROCK?!?!?
I mean...
IT'S A FREAKIN' ROCK!!!!
And yet flimsy little (sharp) paper can beat it.
Much less by simply COVERING the dang rock!!
Really, people, really?
Rock would beat the crap out of paper!
Seriously,
Next time someone throws a rock at you,
Hold up a piece of paper and watch it "protect you".
Yeah...
No.
NOTHING BEATS ROCK!
ESPECIALLY NOT PAPER!!
Well,
Dynamite might beat it,
But that's a whole other idea...
Oh,
And dragons,
Fire,
Storm,
Nothing,
And some other junk can destroy it, too.
Yeah, we play Rock, Paper, Scissors EPICALLY!
So much fun...
8D

Rock, Paper, Scissors...

Rock...
Paper...
Scissors...
SHOOT!!!
Yeah, I do the version with "shoot" at the end.
But, THIS GAME MAKES NO SENSE!!!
I mean,
I get how Scissors can beat Paper.
I get how Rock can beat Scissors.
But,
HOW THE HECK CAN PAPER BEAT ROCK?!?!?
I mean...
IT'S A FREAKIN' ROCK!!!!
And yet flimsy little (sharp) paper can beat it.
Much less by simply COVERING the dang rock!!
Really, people, really?
Rock would beat the crap out of paper!
Seriously,
Next time someone throws a rock at you,
Hold up a piece of paper and watch it "protect you".
Yeah...
No.
NOTHING BEATS ROCK!
ESPECIALLY NOT PAPER!!
Well,
Dynamite might beat it,
But that's a whole other idea...
Oh,
And dragons,
Fire,
Storm,
Nothing,
And some other junk can destroy it, too.
Yeah, we play Rock, Paper, Scissors EPICALLY!
So much fun...
8D

THE PARTY'S OVER ..... IT'S TIME TO CALL IT A DAY .....

It is now time to draw a line under my birthday. I have milked it for all it's worth and it's now time to call it a day. ......but, not before I tell and show you all, some of the things that I have been getting up to over the last month..........

First, it was dinner at ' The Sun ', a local restaurant ..........

Then, it was off to Harrods in London..........

We went straight to the Food hall and to ..........

The Champagne and Oyster Bar. We made the most of that stop and then it was off to The Royal Albert Hall.

We had tickets for the Cirque du Soleil.

Opposite the Royal Albert Hall is the Albert Memorial, built by Queen Victoria, in memory of her beloved husband.  One of Mr. Home's relatives had something to do with the design or building of if but, I'm not sure which part he was involved in !!

I also went to see 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'. It was brilliant..... funny,  fantastic music,  quite rude and a whole lot of fun.

Then, it was dinner at 'Brown's' ..... I won't bore you all with the finer details of all the meals that I have consumed over this past month.

Oh, another restaurant that I went to. This is Smiths of Smithfield. We went there with our children. It is one of John Torode's restaurants....he of Masterchef fame. It was lovely and had the most wonderful view of St. Paul's Cathedral and The City.

I then went to The Champagne Bar at King's Cross, St. Pancras. This was to start off a few days stay in London.

We stayed in an hotel very close to Buckingham Palace. It was just a short and lovely walk through Green Park to get to .....

...... The Ritz, for tea.

This was our waiter and the man sitting down to the right was there with his wife,  for his 80th birthday !

They bring tea and sandwiches and the most delicious cakes you ever did see. The middle tier is empty and they bring warm scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam when you've finished your sandwiches. They are the most wonderful scones you have ever tasted in your life....and, I've tasted a few in my time !!

They then surprised me with a birthday cake and everyone sang Happy Birthday !!

Said cake is then put in a beautiful 'The Ritz' box for one to carry home. How lovely was that ?

As we were so close, we thought that we would just pop into Fortnum and Mason. I used to work in this area and always went into Fortnum and Mason to buy Christmas present's, especially for my Mum and Dad.

We finished that day off by seeing 'Wicked' at The Apollo.

Had to go and have a look at Anthropologie of course.

The wall's are a living wall of lush, green plants.....

.......... it is just worth going there for the displays alone.

Back at the hotel, it was time to get ready to go  .....

Back past Buckingham Palace ( with a little wave to Her Majesty as we passed !!)

down a little Mayfair cul-de-sac to .....

* The Icebar * !!

Self explanatory, I think !!

Cocktail's in ice glasses ....

That's me in the cape that they give you to keep the chill off.....and gloves that are on elastic, just like you had when you were little, to hold your glass with. Not the most flattering of outfits but, nessessary ! It was great fun and we met lots of people from all over the world.


Then, down to the restaurant, 'Below Zero'  to have dinner.

Well, I'm partied out for another year..... although, maybe just one more glass of Champagne wouldn't hurt !!

image 1 - via visualize.Us, image 36 - via go london, image 37 - via daily news, image 39 by Daniel Jackson..... all other images by me.