The concerts last weekend were, of course, good times. I picked up a decent amount of swag, including vinyl from both Saturday Looks Good to Me and Of Montreal. However, to listen to it meant I needed to get a new turntable. I broke my previous one when Bronwyn and I moved to our current apartment. I was hooking it back up, but accidentally used the wrong AC adapter and fried the circuits. I had been meaning to get a replacement, and the new records from the weekend were a good reason to finally get around to doing that.

I opted for the Numark’s USB turntable so that I could turn all my analog stuff into mp3s. Haven’t installed the software yet so I don’t know how well that works, but I’ll let you guys know once I’ve done a few records. I’m on a 30-day trial membership of Amazon.com’s Prime service, which offers free two-day shipping, so I ordered the turntable on Sunday, it shipped Monday, and arrived today. It would have arrived yesterday, but nobody was home to sign for it, so I had to stick around this morning to wait for the delivery. Not bad turnaround, though. If I ordered more stuff off of Amazon.com, it might actually be worth it to me to pay the $79 a year for that quick of service.

Now you know when you pull out an old coat, reach into the pocket, and find a $20 bill you had forgotten all about? I had something similar happen when I pulled out my crate of records that had been collecting dust since my old turntable broke. Last year, Of Montreal put out 2000 copies of an double LP full of remixes off of Satanic Panic in the Attic and The Sunlandic Twins called Satanic Twins. I thought I had missed out on getting a copy and was ready to pay to download the mp3s off of iTunes (they’re one of my favorite bands so I will happily pay to support them). It turns I do actually have a copy that had remained unopened because I didn’t have anything on which to play it. Score!

Another toy that I picked up two weeks ago (the reason I started my Amazon Prime trial membership) is a new point-and-shoot camera, the Canon Powershot G9. I needed an alternative to my DSLR that I could easily throw into a bag without having it take up the entire bag, and my old point-and-shoot – a 2.1 MP brick by Olympus, was ready for an upgrade. This camera is absolutely freaking awesome. Fantastically sharp and beautiful images, great color reproduction, and easily accessible manual controls. And with optical image stabilization, an f/2.8 lens, and a fairly usable 800 ISO (even a passable 3200 ISO) it’s a great low-light camera which is perfect for me. Plus it takes an external flash so I can share the same system for both it and my DSLR. Here’s a few photos I’ve taken with it:

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