It’s that time of year again. So it’s snow­ing here at WoPSR​.net and the Magic Spe­cial Buy Me Stuff for Christ­mas Happy Fun­time Wow Wish­list Hat™ is back. I also moved the links from the right side to the left side and added a Flickr wid­get to the right side. It shows the lat­est three pho­tos I’ve uploaded to Flickr. Click­ing one will open it in a light­box. If you click on the head­ing, “Flickr”, it will take you to the Flickr page, which has a full gallery. You can even­tu­ally get to my actual fac­tual Flickr page on Flickr’s servers by click­ing on images in the gallery.

I’ve set up a Flickr account because I need a safe place to store all the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of pho­tos I’m going to take this Christ­mas. I am going to Italy for two weeks: Decem­ber 19th through Jan­u­ary 1st. I will visit Rome, Flo­rence and Venice, with day trips to Vat­i­can City, Pom­peii, Orvi­eto, Pisa, San Gimignano, Assisi, Siena, and Maranello, where the Gal­le­ria Fer­rari is. I will be doing all the clas­sic touristy stuff — climb­ing the Duomo at the Flo­rence Cathe­dral, vis­it­ing the Sis­tine Chapel, tour­ing the Roman Cat­a­combs, pos­ing like an idiot in front of the Lean­ing Tower of Pisa (here are some exam­ples), and rid­ing in a Venet­ian gon­dola. Except in win­ter. At Christ­mas­time. Which is not the tourist sea­son (exclud­ing Catholics who like to go to Vat­i­can City around that time of year).

I’ll be tak­ing along with me my new spiffy Christ­mas present to myself: a nicely equipped DSLR package:

• Body: Nikon D90
• Wide Zoom: AF-​​S DX Nikkor 18-​​55mm f/3.5–5.6G VR
• Tele­photo Zoom: AF-​​S DX 55-​​200mm f/4–5.6G ED-​​IF VR
• Fish­eye: AF DX Fish­eye Nikkor 10.5mm f/2.8G ED
• Sticks: Man­frotto 055XPROB
• Panorama Head: Nodal Ninja 3 MkII w/​RD3L 6–8-30 Rota­tor & EZ Lev­eler II
• Geo­t­ag­ger: di-​​GPS Mini 3L-​​SD90

You will notice the fish­eye and the panorama head in there. I plan to make some lovely panoramic pho­tos of the very best things to see in Italy. I will be using PTGui Pro to make the panora­mas. I prob­a­bly won’t make them until I get back, though, because they require quite a bit of pro­cess­ing. If you see one in the Flickr, con­sider your­self very lucky.

(For the petty tyrants at the FTC, I didn’t get any­thing for free. I paid full price for every­thing myself. Any­thing good or bad I have to say about any prod­ucts men­tioned here should be taken as the remarks of an ordi­nary con­sumer, not of a paid reviewer.)

I will prob­a­bly review some or all of the cam­era stuff when I get back, after I see how well it performs.

Pisa Pho­tos (I didn’t take those photographs):

1. Starts with a Bang » A Free-​​Fall Follow-​​Up
2. All Things Kendall + Car­olina » Tradition!
3. Starts with a Bang » How Sta­ble are Skyscrapers?
4. Royal Navy » RFA Cardi­gan Bay » A Group Visit to the Lean­ing Tower of Pisa