Getting used to a new camera

Recently I finally got myself a new camera with 12x optical zoom and slightly more than 14 megapixel. The camera is: Canon PowerShot SX150 IS

At the moment I am still trying to figure out what is the best way to get blur free photo indoors when triggered by a timer and putting an object in front before the photo gets taken. Doing outdoors photos has turned out to be very nice for animal photos where I could not get very close with my previous camera with its 3.3x zoom. The new camera has many new features that I have not really used much including colour selection which makes some rather interesting effects.