Zoom Error

Normally, I like to take pictures on my phone, and trasplant them to this blog via the wonderful world of the wide, wide web (wwwww). That's why I like a phone that takes pictures, but I'm not too bothered about other fancy stuff like games, GPS or tiny rude films your mates send you involving a man named Mr Hands who is apparently dead now, which is perhaps not surprising considering what he let horses do to him . . .

But I negress.

Other than photomagrams, I just use my mobile for talking (sometimes to people) and for grammatically correct texts, which may take longer but I'll be damned to the cold, cold recesses of literary darnation before I type "c u l8r".

I wonder what they read in literary hell? Probably Heat magazine and A Kestrel for a Knave. And any recent Ben Elton books. (Please may I have my money back for Blind Faith, Mr Elton? It was worse than sticking salty pins in my eyes. No offence.)

.

That's a very Anglocentric reading hell list, so you'll have to make up your own if you exist in another country.

.

Anyhoo (that's to seduce any readers from across the pond. See, I might spell colour with a 'u' but we still speak roughly the same language, so finish your corndog-flavoured sasparilla and read on), I like a phone with a camera and that's about it, but even those have limitations which can be a bit frustrating when you see a perfect blog photo opportunity whilst meandering the malls of western England:

.

How often do you come across a chap in an electric wheelchair with a knife stuck through his cranium? Less than once a week, I'm sure. Look at that. It's still got blood on it. Rather than tell him he ought to get that seen to, I thought "Photo opportunity!" and immediately produced my phone. Unfortunately, it was blurred, so I'm forced to describe it to you, which sort of defeats the object of pictures really. They're supposed to paint a thousand words, but this one is only saying about 450.

This is a pity because, well, it's totally a bloke with a knife through his head. I wonder if it had just happened and he just hasn't noticed yet, or if it's been there for years and he's been told by doctors that it's safer just to let it lie, and not to pick it.

.

He could be a bit like Iron Man where the shrapnel in his heart made him stronger because of the strangely rejection-proof electromagnet in his chest that kept the conveniently iron-based shards from piercing his ventricles, with the handy side effect of powering his super-suit. Only here it's a knife through the brain and the electromagnet is provided by the NHS so it's only powerful enough to activate a motorised shopping trolley.

.

Either way, no one in the joke shop he was sat outside seemed bothered, so I thought I'd better mind my own business as well. If it's a new injury, he'll notice it at the end of the day when he finds it hard to take his hat off.

.

So occasionally, if I remember, I like not to have to rely on a secondary function of a mobile communications device and take a proper camera out with me. Not proper as in having film in the back and complicated figures inscribed all over it like magic runes, where you nod wisely in discussion with real photographers and pretend you know what focal length and aperture settings are. Just a Fuji which you point at something, press a button and get a pretty picture in the window at the back. That's my kind of proper.

.

Imagine my dissapointment when I got this message on the back of my Finepix:

.

Zoom error? I thought that was something I got on the motorbike after opening it up on a cattle grid, resulting in the back wheel skipping like a merry bunny and every sphincter I own fluttering like Bambi's eyelids. Apparently, it's also a technical term on your camera for . . . er . . . summat's wrong.

.

I gave Fuji-san the once over and, using my extensive technical abilities of hardware diagnosis, think that the following might be the problem:

.

It's stuck faster than my ability to find an amusing simile for a stuck digital camera lens.

.

There's a possibility that this could have happened following what I like to think of as a positive interaction with gravity.

.

When I dropped it.

.

Nice though it is to see Newton finally vindicated, this does mean I now have to purchase a new digital camera. Either that or get a better phone.

.

I wonder if they do cameras which you can phone and text on?

.

C u l8r.