'Image Too Large To Display'

i have a Canon PowerShot A520 digital camera. it's not the greatest digicam in the world, but it fulfills most of the basic requirements of digital photography. for the most part it has behaved itself. the only issue i have had with it in the past was its snobbish intolerance of not indubitable SD memory cards, by haughtily proclaiming "Memory Card Not Readable".

during our recent trip to Chicago, this dinky little device threw a new tantrum. after taking a picture, when i tried to review the image on the camera itself, it shrunk the image to a postage stamp size, and announced "Image Too Large To Display". what the #%&@?! since when did cameras start taking pictures bigger than they could display?! it actually got better - i took out the memory card and slid it into its slot on the computer to see if i could download the pics. on trying to open one of the pictures, the computer promptly hung. when eventually it shook the cobwebs out of its head, it gave me a very interesting nugget of info. apparently twelve of the pictures were each 4Gb in size. at four gigs a pop, these would have to be super high resolution snaps where even specks of dirt would show up on the picture! of course, the biggest irony is that the memory card itself was only one gig in size.. no wild guesses that the data on the card was corrupted.

it's feb. 20th today, kurt cobain would have turned 41 today were he still around. would he still have been making grunge music? who knows. one thing for sure is that he would have been pretty shocked at what passes for music these days. also, it's taken a few years, but it appears finally the stigma surrounding his death is wearing off. memorial concerts have been organized, his hometown Aberdeen changed its welcome sign, the album 'Nevermind' has been inducted to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry (reserved for historically significant recordings), a memorial park and youth center are being planned too. RIP Kurt.