I took a fuzzy snapshot using my Pentax OptioWP of my coffee table, to test a new SD card.

Even a fuzzy picture has a story.

It’s a pine coffee table, which is the only solid wood furniture which I could find at a reasonable price. It was bought at IKEA alongside a LOT of other furniture and assembled for me by some nice Russian dudes. The red circle on it is a coaster, also from IKEA. The logic at the time was that now that I was getting surfaces to ruin, I ought to get some coasters to protect them.

To the left you can see a copy of Better Software [ 1 ]. A year later I’m still not through that one magazine, and I have a years worth of subscriptions which haven’t even made it out of their plastic bags. You can’t tell, but the magazine is resting on top of Write Great Code: volume 2 [ 2 ]

At the bottom you see Programming Ruby [ 3 ] [ 4 ] (second edition) which has a neoprene camera case on it for my Pentax OptioWP and which I ordered especially from Australia. Hey, I wanted a case.

The green thing on the left is my lizard bottle opener keychain thingy, which I’ve never used even once and since removed it. It was pretty beat up, and some of the paint had worn off. For the longest time I thought it was anodized that colour. The keychain also has a compass on it, because for the longest time I wanted one. I was given it by a nice Caribbean lady running a military shop. Weird combination. It got removed from my keychain when I simplified it.

Next to the keychain is a comb. I’ve always carried one. I think even further left is my wallet; it seems wallet-like.

At the bottom left of the pickaxe (Programming Ruby) is a top I’ve had since I was a kid. I got it in a cereal box. It rocks, and is one of the more oddly entertaining things I have. People just grab it and idly play with it without being prompted.

To the right of the pickaxe are peanuts. I like peanuts. Roasted peanuts, however, I do not like. These are the first roasted peanuts I’ve had in memory. Ok, beyond memory.. probably the first in over a decade. Yuck.

Also featured is the Dell DJ Ditty and scattered notes with my blue medium point Paper Mate pens (which I adore), all to be threatened with obsolescence by my Sharp Zaurus SL-series. Heck, even the camera I was using might be.. except all of them are good at what they do, and the Zaurus is clunky at best at taking notes, listening to music on or taking pictures with — if I even had a camera CF card for it, which I don’t. Well, nearly a year later and I’m still not using the Zaurus. Sigh.

To the right (the red writing) is a business card from the last place I bought a curry chicken and potato roti from. It wasn’t very good. It’s being held by a clipboard which I’ve had for years. For some reason, the simple clipboard is an object that I’ve always had around, as it’s so much easier to use than a binder. On the clipboard is some paper from when I decided to buy a LOT of lined paper, because it was real cheap. Like 33¢ for a pack of 250 sheets. I call that stuff “rainforest paper” [ 5 ]. Years and years later, I still have a small trunkfull of it.

See, even a fuzzy picture has a story.

Footnotes

1. was https://web.archive.org/web/20060316001246id_/http://www.stickyminds.com/BetterSoftware/magazine.asp[ ↩ ]
2. was https://web.archive.org/web/20080830062122/http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1593270658/[ ↩ ]
3. (Programming, Ruby) [ ↩ ]
4. was https://web.archive.org/web/20080704172632/www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/index.html[ ↩ ]
5. There was a glut of cheap paper around the time of one of the “think of the rainforest” fads in the 90s. [ ↩ ]