Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Canon 30D error 99

Thought my digital camera had come to an untimely end--"error 99" showed up each time I tried to take a picture. Internet search revealed much doom-and-gloom, ranging from people who had cleaned the lens contacts to those who'd shipped the camera off to Canon for minor fixes to disembowelment (not forgetting being without favourite camera for far-too-long).

So I read the manual.

Who knew. There is a separate "time/date" battery which is cleverly hidden inside the main battery compartment. And it has an active life of "about five years". About as long as I have had this dear camera.

It cost me about 5$ to replace... and five minutes finding the info in the manual.

For anyone else who wants to know what might be causing Error 99 without buying a new camera: Canon 30D user manual (copy)

EDIT--a few hours later. So much for that smug fix... it is failing again. Back to Error 99. It was worth a try...  Can I go camera shopping now???

UPDATE: it cost $250 for Canon to fix it--it was the shutter assembly. Customer service told me what to do, how to ship, completed the data with me, and it was back home, safe, fixed and ready-to-go in under a week. They may have done themselves a dis-favour, as I didn't run out and buy a new one... but it's given me more time to save up for the Canon that I really want next!

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

What's in, what's out

Half-way through digging the third vegetable bed. Planted it with baby aubergine/eggplant plants and a row of tomatillos. I have no idea what I will do with tomatillos, but the seed packet looked cool. Also planted two rows of purple gladiolis, because I felt guilty that I hadn't found a place for them yet anywhere else.

Planted out the sweetcorn seedlings in a block not too far from the potato beds. Discovered that no matter how sprouted the potatoes from the supermarket are, they won't continue growing when you plant them. The proper seed potatoes are, however, flourising in their straw beds. Removed the supermarket spuds and planted green and yellow courgette/zucchini plants instead.

Planted cucumbers and kobacha and butternut squash plants against a neat folding trellis that I found at Lowes, plus a couple of the cucs on the bank where the pumpkins were last year. Found a strange mass of baby plants near the peas in the first vegetable bed. They look like baby pumpkins or squash but I don't remember spilling about fifty seeds in one place. Oh. That was where the pumpkins sprawled too. Maybe one left its seeds behind last year?

Planned where the tomatos will go. Fixed some more sprinklers, again. Moved a little more compost, but there's a lot more to move.

That was a good weekend but I feel like I'm running to catch up with a train that has already left the platform. Temperatures are already rising into the high eighties/nineties (farenheit) and the broccoli and lettuces and rocket won't like that one bit.