My gear had been stable for quite some time. The most recent newcomer was a Garmin zūmo 220 in January of 2012 and the newest camera a Nikon D5100 acquired the preceding September. The way the image capturing devices in the lineup were used had developed into something a little different than what I originally anticipated but it was all good. The D5100 is small for a DSLR but it’s still pretty big. When I’m carrying it my primary intent is, more likely than not, to take pictures. On the other end of things, my mobile phone is almost always with me and can be used when I’m not planning to take pictures but an opportunity — or need — appears. In between was a Lumix DMC-FZ8 originally purchased, back in July of 2007, to be my main camera. It went into service as the “big” camera in partnership with something more pocket-able. But the FZ8 fit into a belt bag and, while too big for a jeans pocket, into jacket pockets rather easily. After a DLSR started filling the big camera “I’m definitely taking pictures” role, I came to think of the FZ8 as a smallish camera that was easy to have with me when I thought I might want to take a picture. It became the workhorse camera for concerts and presentations where I wanted to grab some decent photos but did not want to be obtrusive.
It was a comfortable situation but it couldn’t last forever. In September the FZ8 died and I immediately became painfully aware of just how much I’d come to depend on it. On one hand, improvements in technology made smartphone photos equal in quality — in certain situations — to those of the Panasonic camera. In fact, although the spec is often misleading, my Samsung Galaxy 4 has nearly twice the pixels of the FZ8, 13 MP to 7.2 MP. But in terms of usability there is no comparison. There are few things more obtrusive or less stable than a smartphone held out far enough to compose a photo on its brightly glowing screen and very little as frustrating as trying to do it in bright sunlight. I even dug out the old Nikon Coolpix 3200 just to have a small camera with an eye-level viewfinder but that was far from satisfactory. I can hardly blame the decade old Nikon, though. I had become accustomed to higher quality images and, more importantly, less shutter lag. The 3200 was usable as a stopgap but it was a rather poor one.
There was no great urgency but I did start looking about the Internet once in a while for a replacement for the dead FZ8. The problem was that low priced cameras with eye-level viewfinders were pretty much a thing of the past. Offering only LCD screens for framing photos make them closer to a smartphone than to my idea of a camera. The latest in the line of FZ8 successors was the DMC-FZ70 which originally listed for $399.99. While that was very much in line with what I had paid for my FZ8 and the FZ5 it replaced, I had bought those as primary cameras and I wasn’t comfortable paying that much now for what would, from the very beginning, be an auxiliary to a Nikon DSLR.
The camera is no longer available from Panasonic and I’ve found postings about it being discontinued dating back to July of last year. Apparently there were bunches of these in the pipeline because even today I can find plenty of them for sale on line. Prices range up to $325 despite the last price on Panasonic’s website being $299.99. Panasonic may have lowered the price around the end of November because that’s when I noticed prices from some sources starting to dip below $300. On a day in mid-December it occurred to me that some brick & mortar stores might have the camera available to look over. I quickly learned that Best Buy carried the camera but was obviously closing it out. The store nearest to me had none left but the next nearest did. The closeout price was a wallet tugging $150.
At $400 the camera specs are impressive. At $150 they are almost unbelievable. Topping the spec sheet are the 16.1 megapixel sensor and the industry leading 60x (20-1200mm) zoom lens. Other impressive numbers are the 100 to 3200 ISO range (1600-6400 High Sens mode) and 4 to 1/2000 second shutter speed. Unfortunately those aren’t the camera’s only big numbers. Its 1.34 lb weight is about twice that of the FZ8. Its 5.12 x 3.82 x 4.65 inch dimensions are 15% to nearly 50% larger than the FZ8. I feared that size would be a problem and holding the camera in my hand in the store did nothing to alleviate that fear. The bargain basement price did.
Of course what the bargain basement price really did was cloud a problem not eliminate it. The FZ70 did fit into my belt bag but getting it in and out was nowhere near as easy as popping the FZ8 in and out and getting it into any of the jacket pockets that had held the FZ8 was simply impossible. For many people, the Panasonic DMC-FZ70 would be the ideal camera. Sadly, I’m not one of them. As I write this, it remains in my possession but its spot in the rotation has already been taken by another Panasonic camera. I’d love to make someone a very good deal on a very good camera and may soon actively pursue doing that on eBay.
For something that did not even register on my radar a month ago, the concept of mobile-friendly websites has grabbed a lot of space on this blog in the young 2016. The first post of the new year led to me realizing that mobile devices should not simply be ignored. The second post discussed a little of what I had learned and described the first steps taken to be mobile-friendly. And this, the fourth post of the new year, is a report on reaching a milestone on the road to mobile friendliness.
The milestone I speak of is having a home page that passes both Google and Bing mobile friendliness tests. That’s it at the top of the article in desktop (actually laptop) view and at the left in smartphone view. It is the biggest change to the website’s front door in at least fifteen years. It retains most of the flavor and function of the previous version but is simpler and scales down a lot better. About the only things missing are the RSS feeds from Route 66 News, Roadside America, and American Road Magazine and the randomly selected road trip photo and link at the page’s upper right. Both came with a lot of overhead and I don’t recall anyone ever complimenting me on either. I personally really liked the random picture thing, however, and have kept it alive with a “Done Deeds”-“All Trips”-“Random” menu item. The Google ads also seem to be fairly high in overhead and, although I’m hanging on to them for the present, I will be keeping an eye on them and they could go missing.
There are a few pages that may never be truly mobile-friendly as Google and Bing see things. Among these are both Oddment and Road Trip index pages. While changes have been made to make text on the pages readable on mobile devices, the table displays overflow smartphone screens in all directions and require zooming and/or panning to view. There are schemes, using pop-ups and such, to make tables slimmer and more mobile-friendly. I don’t really like any I’ve seen and am firmly of the belief that the conversion effort would not be justified for either of these tables. While they might not be officially mobile-friendly, and I have no quibbles with either Google’s or Bing’s criteria, they seem quite usable on my smartphone and I don’t consider them overly unfriendly.
The Clickable Collage is another page which is not officially mobile-friendly. Containing a single photo from every completed road trip, it allows the individual photos to be clicked to access the journal for the associated trip. It was formerly available through a link below the randomly selected photo at the home page’s upper right. It is now reached through the “Done Deeds”-“All Trips”-“Collage” menu item. Although I don’t expect everyone to experience the same memory stimulation I do when viewing the collage, I have to believe that it is most impactful when seen in its entirety. Of course this is best done on a full size (whatever that is) screen where the total view is also actually usable. Making this collage fit a small screen by forcing it into one or two very tall columns just seems wrong and more irritating than impressive. It is clearly not a natural fit for smartphone screens but it can, like those index pages, be viewed and used by panning. It can also be zoomed to fit but, while this view of 
Puckett’s Grocery & Restaurant is the target of this trip but there will be some stops along the way. Puckett’s is in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee, which, for me, is a little beyond Nashville. I have Music City evenings planned for the Bluebird Cafe and the Grand Ol’ Opry at Ryman Theater before my evening with “America’s Route 66 Band”, The Road Crew, at Puckett’s. You know the saying, “When you come to a Road Crew in the Fork, take it.”
Again I must confess to a purloined photo gracing yet another My Wheels post. My car did not have the highly visible dual exhausts or fancy wheels of the pictured vehicle nor did it have the unseen 350 V8 and 4-speed floor shift. Mine was a 307 V8 with a 3-speed automatic. However, my car was, just like the one at right, a Cortez Silver 2-door with — and this is important — black vinyl top. It is the only vinyl topped car I’ve ever owned and one of very few I can even imagine owning without some level of embarrassment. While I doubt everyone agrees that the vinyl covering looks pretty good on this car it’s apparent that I’m not alone in thinking so. There are many full restorations of third generation Nova coupes that include a restored vinyl top. And that includes some high-end 396 Super Sports.
I didn’t do it on purpose, Jim. Honest I didn’t. But, as has happened a time or two in the past, mentioning a problem in a blog post was enough to get some insight from blogger 
I revisited the Google testing tools and paid a lot more attention to the suggestions. There was some good news. The vast majority of my website is very simple so that adding just one line (to set a mobile viewport) to a page allows it to pass Google’s mobile-friendly test and makes it look better. The page shown at the top of the article reappears at the left with that one line added.
I made a couple more trips this year than last but they were shorter and resulted in less total days on the road. That naturally caused a slight drop in pictures posted to the journal but pictures in the blog increased so that there was not a significant change in the total number of new pictures. In addition to the 52 regular weekly blog posts, there were 14 reviews, 9 road trip links, and 2 miscellaneous asynchronous posts which adds up to just three less blog posts than last year. Three of the new blog posts generated enough traffic to make the top five. The most popular new blog post concerned a little ol’ high school reunion. Once again there were no new posts in the non-blog top five.
So what’s that mean? One possibility is that a change in the way statistics are compiled or visits detected resulted in an artificial drop in the numbers and I can produce some arguments both for and against that theory. The “for” ones are the weakest. What seems more likely and less palatable is that the numbers don’t lie and readership has truly plummeted. Jim Grey, a friend and popular blogger, recently posted an article he called 
No. That’s not my Vega and that’s not me. It’s John DeLorean in the August 1970 issue of Motor Trend where he was singing the praises of Chevrolet’s new small car. The editors were singing right along with him and even adding some verses of their own. A month later, Car and Driver and Road & Track joined the choir. In February, Motor Trend named the Vega 2300 their 1971 “Car of the Year”. All this for a car that today has a reputation just slightly better than Yugo.
I could’t find any pictures of the dark green 1971 Kammback that I bought in the summer of 1974 so I took to the internet. I didn’t have much better luck there. This black & white photo of what is identified as a 1972 model is the best I could do. The shortage of photos surprised me but so too did the abundance of early praise. I can’t explain the absence of decent Kammback photos so maybe my surprise at that is justified. My surprise at the praise isn’t. In fact, what those magazines said about the car — great handling, sporty looks, comfortable ride — is exactly what I thought of it forty years ago. I was surprised only because I had forgotten.
It has been three decades since the slogan “Wander Indiana” came and went but I’m going to do just a tiny bit of that over Christmas. The first day, with plenty of that Indiana rain, has been posted.
