It's an odd thing about this time of year: there are certain classes of item which, if you buy them for yourself for completely non-Christmas-related reasons, they still feel like Christmas presents if bought in late December.

Last week my old low-end digital camera finally gave up the ghost, after a prolonged battle with internal injuries sustained some years ago due to my own incompetence. <f/x: moment of silence> So today I wandered into town and treated myself to a new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX10, which cost about the same and is approximately an order of magnitude more functional in every possible way.

At least, if you believe the manual. I haven't been able to actually test it yet, because its battery has to be charged for two hours before first use. This is possibly contributing further to the feeling of it being Christmas swag: I've now got that feeling of small-child Christmas-morning impatience, when you dive out of bed at about six in the morning desperate to go and start opening the presents, but your parents for some reason keep telling you to wait while they finish doing all sorts of pathetically unimportant stuff like getting dressed. But-it's-not-fair-why-can't-I-play-with-it-NOW!