FujiFilm FinePix XP120 Review

Last updated on November 11th, 2020 at 02:31 pm

One of my roles as a parent is to provide a better life for my children than my parents could for me. And we’ve done okay so far—the older one’s already visited four countries, the younger carries a Bluetooth speaker around like it’s his own personal device, and with new toys coming in regularly, the world’s pretty much their oyster!

But it’s not all about the things you receive—I want to give my sons plenty of opportunities to develop themselves as well, and it turns out Fujifilm Canada presented a perfect opportunity to do it!

The FujiFilm FinePix XP120—For When You Want to Teach Your Kids Life Skills Without Worrying About Them Breaking Stuff.

Just as many parents start their kids on piano at a young age, I wanted to give the boys early exposure to a skill I know well and introduce them to the world of photography.

Making Memories Aplenty with the FujiFilm FinePix XP120!—XP120—What's in the Box?
I wish my first camera looked like this!

I remember getting my first camera around 12 years old, a little green toy camera that introduced me to the world of photography and the stories it held. And I wouldn’t know it then, but that’d take me down a 20-year path that’d teach me how to develop my film. Own more than 15 cameras as I continued expanding my skills. It’d even help me build it up as an integral part of my life as a blogger, expressing myself not only through words but meaningful visuals as well.

My boys—though still very young—already show an interest in the art, trying their hands at posing and storytelling to see how it unfolds on the LCD screen. I think they’d love to get more hands-on with equipment to mould their ideas into reality, but who in their right mind would trust a three-year-old with a camera? They’re fragile. They’re complicated. And they’re expensive. Sadly, all things considered, it looked like my boys need to wait years before they can handle one themselves.

Or do they?

The 2016 100 Wrap-Up, Part 3: The 28 Things Left Over

Last updated on March 20th, 2021 at 08:39 pm

And we’re finally here—the 28 items that either just didn’t make the cut to come back after 2016, or got tabled for future Casey to handle somewhere down the line!

The more I do these, the more I realise I can’t do everything today, and so I work harder to focus on what’s in front of me so I can give myself the room to manage future challenges!

But hey—if there’s something on this list you think you can make happen sooner, feel free to let me know at palmer.casey@gmail.com and we’ll see what we can do!

Without further ado, here’s The 2016 100 Wrap-Up, Part 3: The 28 Items Left Over!


The 2016 100 Wrap-Up—What I MAY Do, But Not Necessarily in 2017

2) Win a vacation for my dry cleaner

One thing I’ve learned as a blogger is that while it’s all too easy to get high on yourself when you have successes, you also need to keep realistic. Though many great things have happened in my #BloggerLife so far, I don’t have the clout nor the contacts to conjure a vacation from thin air. Not yet, anyway. This is one I’ll pursue awhile, yet.

The 2016 100 Wrap-Up, Part 3 - The 28 Things Left Over — The Toronto Argonauts' First Game at the New BMO Field (Go Argos Go)

4) Take Eric to a sporting event so he can stop complaining about getting left from sporting events

After hitting a Toronto Argos game last year with a few buddies (and by association the Canada vs. Slovakia World Junior Hockey Championship game I was at just before the new year), I may have promised my buddy Eric that I’d take him to a game sometime. This would make the 2017 list, except I have no idea when I’ll find myself invited to a game next, so we’ll get back to this one eventually.

12) Do the CN Tower Edgewalk

By this point in my life, this one’s more of a “nice to do” than anything else. I’ve climbed a mountain. Backpacked through Europe. I’ve shot guns, ridden roller coasters across the continent, and gone face-to-face with black bears in the wild. I wouldn’t do the CN Tower Edgewalk to chase a thrill—I’d just do it because it looks fun to do! One day I’ll be a tourist in my city and give it a try!

24) Find the time to pack more lunches for work

This should be a given—with our access to fresh ingredients in Ontario, there’s little reason why anyone should eat takeout meals on a regular basis. Yet here we are. Eventually, I’d love to consistently bring lunch to work every day, but it seems so hard to squeeze it in between everything else going on in this phase of our lives. But who knows—maybe we’ll find a way!

25) Clean up and optimize my Pinterest account (I still have that copy of Pinterest Savvy lying around somewhere)

Many say Pinterest is still super relevant in an age dominated by Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, but I’ve failed to make great use of the account I’ve had laying around since forever. Sometime in the future, I’d love to take my copy of Melissa Taylor’s Pinterest Savvy and apply it to a killer content strategy to introduce my site to people who might not discover it otherwise!

28) Clear out the bookshelves to prepare for Baby #2

So far, my boys’ books and mine manage to coexist peacefully on my old Bombay bookshelves, but the time will come to thin the collection down to what’s still relevant to make room for the Seusses and Munsches of the world. But we’re really good at purging—new things rarely come in the house without us sending out two to Value Village or a friend who might need them more, so I haven’t had to lock horns with this issue yet.

TELUS | The Lenovo Moto Z Review

Last updated on November 10th, 2020 at 12:07 am

“You need a Moto Z.”

— Casey Palmer to basically everyone he talks to, gushing over how awesome his phone is.

In the beginning, I wondered what was so cool about a phone without a headphone jack.

TELUS x The Lenovo Moto Z—Moto Z Front and Back ComboWhen Apple announced the iPhone 7 in September, people lost their minds—what’s the point of having a device with access to millions of songs if you can’t listen to them? Buy wireless earbuds, they said. Change up the charging port with a dongle, they said.  It took a feature everyone knew so well and did away with it—for a number of good reasons, mind you (waterproofing and Bluetooth redundancy to name a couple), but for all the negative hoopla they got about it, people failed to note two things:

  1. We must embrace better methods to make better phones, and
  2. That Apple didn’t do it first.
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