Tripods and non-tripods

Camera with tripod attached

Below was copied from the Internet, sorry I didn't keep track of the source, so if you happens to be the source, please excuse me.  I can't help but to copy and paste it here -- this is so true....

"I was looking for one of those small, cool tripods that folds up like a road map and you can carry it in your back pocket. Wait, I just realized 50% of the people reading this think a road map comes on Google or is inside their GPS and are completely puzzled about how you would fold it up. So I’ll tell you:

You see, children, once upon a time, maps came on a sheet of paper bigger than the windshield of your car but folded neatly into a little square the size of a Kindle. Maps couldn’t even say things like “Turn right in 200 yards”; you had to actually look at it and figure out where you wanted to go. But if you opened it up to look at it while driving, the map would cover the windshield and you’d have a wreck. On the other hand, if you weren’t driving, you rarely needed a map.

This presented quite a dilemma. Amateur travelers would steer the car with a knee while wadding the huge sheet of paper so they could see the area they were interested in. (This is what we did before we had texting-while-driving to distract us.) Real professional travelers had the skills of a one-armed Origami artist and could fold the map so the small part they were interested in was on top, while never taking their left hand off of the steering wheel. This was back when men were iron and ships were wood, though. Such skills do not exist today – except in certain little tripods that can be folded up to be about a foot long. 

But, I digress. A lot."

And of course these days, we use THIS:

We don't need those stink'g tripods anymore.....