Jen and I are both Mac people…for many reasons that won’t be discussed in this post! But Jen has a 12″ PowerBook with only a 30GB hard drive…it’s crazy that iPods can come almost three times that size…Jen’s hard drive was almost completely full and I just didn’t understand why. I had gone through the hard disk but never saw anything that stood out as a wast of space. I even convinced her to FINALLY delete her Deleted Items from her Entourage, but even after deleting nearly 1000 (not kidding) e-mails it barely made a dent.

So I went on to Mac Update and found a program called WhatSize…it’s free and does a fairly quick scan of the hard drive and lists all the computer files in order from biggest to smallest. After this it made it very easy to figure out the culprit on Jen’s computer. A 9 gig file that was a support file to an application she didn’t have anymore! Oops. Needless to say that after deleting this her computer had all the elbow room it needed! If you have a Mac this is a must have program.

Some of you may know that I am into photography. I have really enjoyed having not just one beautiful subject around the house, but two! When Jen’s sister came to Paris to visit I had her bring me a new lens for my camera. It’s one of the cheapest (both in make and price) Canon lenses…the 50mm 1.8f, but it takes beautiful pictures. Virtually every shot that I have from the past three weeks is with this lens and it by far surpasses the quality and sharpness I get in my other lenses.

Last night I was talking w/ my dad (who blogs here) on skype video and while we were on a break from our chat I went to grab the power chord for my computer. I was pulling it up off the ground and it caught the neck-strap of the camera which pulled the camera with lens attached onto the hardwood floor. When I heard the plastic pieces jingle across the floor I looked back to see two things: My camera wasn’t in pieces, but my lens was. My brand new, cheap, but excellent lens was in two pieces. You can imagine…I was not pleased. Thousand of beautiful pictures of my daughter and wife would never be realized through my new favorite lens.

I got back on the video with my dad and was having a hard time conversing because I was not happy and preoccupied with the two lens pieces in my hands. I am not a fix-it man because most things I fidget with aren’t fixed in the end. But God’s grace shown upon me this moment and I was able to put the lens back together! I really couldn’t believe it. And the even better part was it still worked when I put it back on the camera.

So here’s my quick review of the Canon 50mm 1.8f:

Amazing glass quality in a relatively cheap lens. Super sharp images (see below). Unfortunately, cheap also describes how it is made. But overall I would recommend this lens highly…if you can manage not to drop it. Also does really well in low light and the 50mm fixed length makes for greater use of creativity as there is no zooming…what you see is what you get.