Okay, so it's a nice summer evening outside, Andy Murray's doing a convincing job of beating that Richard Gasquet bloke on the TV, and apart from my dental pain (which for the first time today, due to my super-strength ibuprofen wearing off, is shooting up the side of my jaw and into my ear/temples) I'm in a pretty good mood :).
I've had a nice productive summer day, I've fixed the bike's electrics and booked the mot for thursday. I've done some more work on a couple of 3D projects, have been to the park with my nephew and generally had a nice time chilling out on my day off.
Well, looks like the two blokes have equalised, and it's a nice quiet day outside (apart from one bloke randomly letting a firework off), it's not broad daylight out, more narrow daylight, but still there are plenty of people about :).
So, what have I been up to? well, I went shopping yesterday so I could spend some money. Despite work underpaying me by about £60 because they can't decide whether I should be paid or not for my day in hospital, I still have some pennies to spend so I went and got a nice new bracelet and a couple of new t shirts. When we got back, my presence was er, requested, so my sister, nephew and I went strawberry picking at the local field, which was a lot more local than I thought it would be. I'm having some later - nothing like food you've picked yourself.
So yeah, not much to report, I'm still waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in, but I've had a pretty cool weekend, nice and laid back, which was good :). Let's see how the tennis goes.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
You think Anbesol's good? Try IV Sedatives!
08:29 Okay so that title's a bit optimistic, considering it's a whole new experience that i'm not particularly looking forward to, no. Today is the day.
I'm sat here waiting for my mum/lift to finish her social visit to her old workplace, it's looking like its going to be a nice day, but I'm kinda worried that I'm not going to have the ability/opportunity to enjoy it. I've finally got to go into the dental hospital in about 90 minutes, to have the remainder of that troublesome tooth removed, and based on past experience, I'll be happy when its over.
The sun's beaming in, too much in fact, the radio's on with some police bloke explaining how shootings in the city are up but we're still all safe because the police work really hard to protect us, the car's getting uncomfortably hot and i'm trying to get this down while struggling to concentrate against the radio and the screaming schoolkids walking past, and the cars rumbling past etc, admittedly there's not really a lot to say at the moment. I've taken the usual anti-dentist precautions, my chain, my watch etc (read my older blogs if you don't know what I'm on about hehe), but I'm still not relishing the idea of coming out of the hospital all woozy and disoriented and high and stoned.
So what have I got planned for the rest of the day? Nothing much, go to hospital, get operated on, get injected with lots of drugs and stuff and then go home and sort of pass out in my bedroom, possibly on the floor. While I've still got my faculties though, I'd like to talk about something else that's kinda caught my eye.
I've noticed that any interaction between a human customer/client/self important twit and a company/provider/whatever, has turned from a simple "i want xyz product please" "that'll be xyz price, thanks". to a ridulously "customer service" based saga of "customer satisfaction" calls, buzzwords, artificial professionalism, simpering and patronising letters that don't really do much except annoy the customer, and offer them opportunities to contact the company by phoning other people who are paid - as much as they hate having to do it - to be patronising and positively dribbling with artificial enthusiasm, and I, if no one else, am sick of it.
I'm sick of "experience enrichment" and "customer satisfaction" and "service questionnaires", nuisance phone calls by my finance company every 2 months to ask me if i'm still okay because I haven't missed any payments yet.
From the other side, I'm sick of asking callers if we're allowed to ask them if they enjoyed dealing with us, despite the fact that we don't provide a service to those people. I'm sick, in short, of this "the customer is always right" crap.
And so I am proposing a new web campaign that I shall probably get someone else to consider and then forget as soon as I realise I have better things to do:
http://www.iamnotacustomeriamahumanbeing.org
Okay so the URL is a bit on the long side, but by itself it kinda explains where I stand on the issue.
Most importantly though what I want is to be treated like a person and not some kind of omniscient demigod by the poor guy in the shirt and tie who is paid to fall over himself everytime some idiot walks within a couple of aisles of him. For me, just because I'm in his store, just based on the possibility that I might buy something, that poor kid is handed targets and given training classes and taught how to behave to "maximise satisfaction". He expresses concern that this behaviour is unnatural and abnormal, "no, it's customer satisfaction" leer his bosses.
So in the name of "customer service", in the name of someone i've never met or spoken to going out of his way to check that he's met all his vigorously enforced targets at my - and his - expense, every single time I go to any shop, I've got to deal with some poor kid who's being turned into a customer service zombie, against his will, his head filled with buzzwords and Key Performance Indicators, and if i complain then a different set of protocols kick in and this poor kid and I again have to go through the same macabre ridiculous dance - if I'm reasonable, he suddenly goes into customer service overdrive "oh my god how cruel of us to expect you to pay, how can we apologise to you?". If I'm unreasonable, he goes into suicidal mode, against all common sense, against all expectations of what would constitute "normal behaviour" he starts "Objection handling".
Objection Handling, to give it two capital letters it really doesn't deserve, is management's way of pissing off the troublesome customers while simultaneously keeping them away from the people that actually make the rules, by handling such duties to the younger more inexperienced members of staff - kind of like throwing a person in front of a lion to make sure you get away unmolested. If the younguns don't like this? Tough, you're management, you pay them, they're under your heel and you can crush them with all manner of "factfinding meetings" if they object to being abused for a living.
09:05 Well, my mum's back now, so we're one step closer to going into the torture chamber.
Still, hopefully these drugs will be nice and I won't feel a thing, but I doubt it. I have to admit, writing a blog on the move is a novel experience, even if due to Sheffield's famous pothole system, i'm struggling to get everything down properly. Oh well, my typing's probably still better now than i will be after I get out after being pumped full of stuff, (bloody hell there are so many speed humps about here!!!) so I might as well get as much down as possible.
Returning back to this horrible customer service debacle though, I can't help but feel that the notion of being seen to do your job properly, of making sure your customer is happy, has become an end to itself that in some cases actually takes precedence over actually doing your job properly. The best kind of professionalism comes from having confidence in your ability to do the job properly. The worst kind is completely unconnected with ability at best, and at worst is detrimental to the same. I don't want some company's customer service policy force, say, the camera store's sales guys to be so far up my arse that they can't get on with selling cameras to other people.
Well, I spose I'll piece this together later because I'm not really making sense.
09:14 and we're at the computer store, gonna hover round there for a while until the time comes to go to the hospital. Later.
09:31 Well, now we're scouting round for a parking place. Predictably, there's nowhere to park so around we go, again and again. I have to admit, while "scared" is the wrong word, I am now getting distinctly nervous about the whole thing, and despite assurances that I'll be too busy being drugged up to be in any kind of distress, I'm not looking forward to this at all. And I'm pretty hungry too. MAybe I can get something to munch after I come out, depending on the procedure. Besides the literature about being sedated says "do not make any important decisions". How then, can I decide what KFC I want? ;)
Well, it looks like we've found somewhere to park, nothing to do but wait and worry I spose. And wait while we keep going forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards, trying to crab our way sideways into this teeny tiny parking place. We've been at it about five minutes now.
09:38, well, time to get out and go into the hospital. I would say "wish me luck" but by the time you read this i'll have finished it off. So I'll wish me luck instead. Good luck, me :).
I'll be a happier person when I get back to you, though probably somewhat stoned too :p.
11:33 I'm somewhat stoned. Not a huge amount, I still know right from wrong, I still prefer KFC to McDonalds, but, as I was advised I would, I am slurring my words, pausing halfway through my sentences when I forget what I'm talking about. My coordination is a little impared, so I'm tripping over the odd thing, ya know.
So I got into the hospital, up to where we were, and to give the place the kudos it deserves, the crappy waiting area is gone, replaced with a two room gleaming shiny waiting area, still troublingly filled with that... clinical smell that afflicts all medical practices and hospitals I sat down and watched the occasional person walk past with the same tight "i am not worried" expression on their face. I was quickly called in and asked how I felt, which i answered: "Halfway between nervous and scared".
I sat down, answered a few questionsm signed a form saying "I agree etc etc" and it started. I had a blood pressure check,
Then out came a needle "you may feel a little scratch, like a cat scratch". It went in, and then it went in some more. "Yes,
I can feel that cat scratching right there" I said as the anesthetist kaughed.Ultimately though, it was only a few seconds before i felt my mind closing in. Not a loss of concentration as such but the thoughts themselves seemed "heavier", sluggish, like it was hard to hold a thought into my head long enough to articulate it. And though it may come as a disapointment for those of you who like all the gory details, I don't actually remember much of the operation. Thanks to the sedative, I hardly remember a thing - it's like being half asleep you don't really realise what's going on, which is cool :).
11:49, now I'm at the co op so it's time to get out and spend money on scrumptious yummy thingies.
And that's all that happened today. Now I have a mouthful of medical thread, I've already had the residual bleeding and the substantial soreness, but other than that I've spent most of today relaxing, watching wimbledon, eating ice cream etc, it's
been a nice chilled out afternoon. And now I've finally got this sorted, I'm off to bed :).
I'm sat here waiting for my mum/lift to finish her social visit to her old workplace, it's looking like its going to be a nice day, but I'm kinda worried that I'm not going to have the ability/opportunity to enjoy it. I've finally got to go into the dental hospital in about 90 minutes, to have the remainder of that troublesome tooth removed, and based on past experience, I'll be happy when its over.
The sun's beaming in, too much in fact, the radio's on with some police bloke explaining how shootings in the city are up but we're still all safe because the police work really hard to protect us, the car's getting uncomfortably hot and i'm trying to get this down while struggling to concentrate against the radio and the screaming schoolkids walking past, and the cars rumbling past etc, admittedly there's not really a lot to say at the moment. I've taken the usual anti-dentist precautions, my chain, my watch etc (read my older blogs if you don't know what I'm on about hehe), but I'm still not relishing the idea of coming out of the hospital all woozy and disoriented and high and stoned.
So what have I got planned for the rest of the day? Nothing much, go to hospital, get operated on, get injected with lots of drugs and stuff and then go home and sort of pass out in my bedroom, possibly on the floor. While I've still got my faculties though, I'd like to talk about something else that's kinda caught my eye.
I've noticed that any interaction between a human customer/client/self important twit and a company/provider/whatever, has turned from a simple "i want xyz product please" "that'll be xyz price, thanks". to a ridulously "customer service" based saga of "customer satisfaction" calls, buzzwords, artificial professionalism, simpering and patronising letters that don't really do much except annoy the customer, and offer them opportunities to contact the company by phoning other people who are paid - as much as they hate having to do it - to be patronising and positively dribbling with artificial enthusiasm, and I, if no one else, am sick of it.
I'm sick of "experience enrichment" and "customer satisfaction" and "service questionnaires", nuisance phone calls by my finance company every 2 months to ask me if i'm still okay because I haven't missed any payments yet.
From the other side, I'm sick of asking callers if we're allowed to ask them if they enjoyed dealing with us, despite the fact that we don't provide a service to those people. I'm sick, in short, of this "the customer is always right" crap.
And so I am proposing a new web campaign that I shall probably get someone else to consider and then forget as soon as I realise I have better things to do:
http://www.iamnotacustomeriamahumanbeing.org
Okay so the URL is a bit on the long side, but by itself it kinda explains where I stand on the issue.
Most importantly though what I want is to be treated like a person and not some kind of omniscient demigod by the poor guy in the shirt and tie who is paid to fall over himself everytime some idiot walks within a couple of aisles of him. For me, just because I'm in his store, just based on the possibility that I might buy something, that poor kid is handed targets and given training classes and taught how to behave to "maximise satisfaction". He expresses concern that this behaviour is unnatural and abnormal, "no, it's customer satisfaction" leer his bosses.
So in the name of "customer service", in the name of someone i've never met or spoken to going out of his way to check that he's met all his vigorously enforced targets at my - and his - expense, every single time I go to any shop, I've got to deal with some poor kid who's being turned into a customer service zombie, against his will, his head filled with buzzwords and Key Performance Indicators, and if i complain then a different set of protocols kick in and this poor kid and I again have to go through the same macabre ridiculous dance - if I'm reasonable, he suddenly goes into customer service overdrive "oh my god how cruel of us to expect you to pay, how can we apologise to you?". If I'm unreasonable, he goes into suicidal mode, against all common sense, against all expectations of what would constitute "normal behaviour" he starts "Objection handling".
Objection Handling, to give it two capital letters it really doesn't deserve, is management's way of pissing off the troublesome customers while simultaneously keeping them away from the people that actually make the rules, by handling such duties to the younger more inexperienced members of staff - kind of like throwing a person in front of a lion to make sure you get away unmolested. If the younguns don't like this? Tough, you're management, you pay them, they're under your heel and you can crush them with all manner of "factfinding meetings" if they object to being abused for a living.
09:05 Well, my mum's back now, so we're one step closer to going into the torture chamber.
Still, hopefully these drugs will be nice and I won't feel a thing, but I doubt it. I have to admit, writing a blog on the move is a novel experience, even if due to Sheffield's famous pothole system, i'm struggling to get everything down properly. Oh well, my typing's probably still better now than i will be after I get out after being pumped full of stuff, (bloody hell there are so many speed humps about here!!!) so I might as well get as much down as possible.
Returning back to this horrible customer service debacle though, I can't help but feel that the notion of being seen to do your job properly, of making sure your customer is happy, has become an end to itself that in some cases actually takes precedence over actually doing your job properly. The best kind of professionalism comes from having confidence in your ability to do the job properly. The worst kind is completely unconnected with ability at best, and at worst is detrimental to the same. I don't want some company's customer service policy force, say, the camera store's sales guys to be so far up my arse that they can't get on with selling cameras to other people.
Well, I spose I'll piece this together later because I'm not really making sense.
09:14 and we're at the computer store, gonna hover round there for a while until the time comes to go to the hospital. Later.
09:31 Well, now we're scouting round for a parking place. Predictably, there's nowhere to park so around we go, again and again. I have to admit, while "scared" is the wrong word, I am now getting distinctly nervous about the whole thing, and despite assurances that I'll be too busy being drugged up to be in any kind of distress, I'm not looking forward to this at all. And I'm pretty hungry too. MAybe I can get something to munch after I come out, depending on the procedure. Besides the literature about being sedated says "do not make any important decisions". How then, can I decide what KFC I want? ;)
Well, it looks like we've found somewhere to park, nothing to do but wait and worry I spose. And wait while we keep going forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards, trying to crab our way sideways into this teeny tiny parking place. We've been at it about five minutes now.
09:38, well, time to get out and go into the hospital. I would say "wish me luck" but by the time you read this i'll have finished it off. So I'll wish me luck instead. Good luck, me :).
I'll be a happier person when I get back to you, though probably somewhat stoned too :p.
11:33 I'm somewhat stoned. Not a huge amount, I still know right from wrong, I still prefer KFC to McDonalds, but, as I was advised I would, I am slurring my words, pausing halfway through my sentences when I forget what I'm talking about. My coordination is a little impared, so I'm tripping over the odd thing, ya know.
So I got into the hospital, up to where we were, and to give the place the kudos it deserves, the crappy waiting area is gone, replaced with a two room gleaming shiny waiting area, still troublingly filled with that... clinical smell that afflicts all medical practices and hospitals I sat down and watched the occasional person walk past with the same tight "i am not worried" expression on their face. I was quickly called in and asked how I felt, which i answered: "Halfway between nervous and scared".
I sat down, answered a few questionsm signed a form saying "I agree etc etc" and it started. I had a blood pressure check,
Then out came a needle "you may feel a little scratch, like a cat scratch". It went in, and then it went in some more. "Yes,
I can feel that cat scratching right there" I said as the anesthetist kaughed.Ultimately though, it was only a few seconds before i felt my mind closing in. Not a loss of concentration as such but the thoughts themselves seemed "heavier", sluggish, like it was hard to hold a thought into my head long enough to articulate it. And though it may come as a disapointment for those of you who like all the gory details, I don't actually remember much of the operation. Thanks to the sedative, I hardly remember a thing - it's like being half asleep you don't really realise what's going on, which is cool :).
11:49, now I'm at the co op so it's time to get out and spend money on scrumptious yummy thingies.
And that's all that happened today. Now I have a mouthful of medical thread, I've already had the residual bleeding and the substantial soreness, but other than that I've spent most of today relaxing, watching wimbledon, eating ice cream etc, it's
been a nice chilled out afternoon. And now I've finally got this sorted, I'm off to bed :).
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Technological Woes...
After getting pissed off with my stuttering and failing Geforce 7900GT that finally gave up the ghost after two years of overheating, I surfed overclockers for a new card.
Now Nvidia seem to have this bizarre numbering thing going on when it comes to their cards - I'd always assumed that the higher the number, the better the card. So with that in mind,
8500GT with 512mb Ram > 7900GT with 256mb Ram.
Right?
Wrong.
Unfortunately, the only reason I know it's wrong is because I fitted the 8500GT and went back to playing my favourite games. Or tried to go back to playing them, because to be frank, the 8500GT is so slow, it's not even worth buying it for running 3d studio max on - that's right, a 3d modelling program requires more performance than this thing can give.
So who does buy a 3d graphics card with 512mb of ram, geforce no less, and doesn't want to play games on it? Quite a few people apparently because there are even worse cards like the 8400 for sale, which seems to be just powerful enough for word processing.
Admittedly, there's nothing wrong with the card, it does the job it says it does on the box - which is not the same as the job it says it does at overclockers: "smooth gaming with the future DirectX 10 games". You have got to be absolutely kidding me. This thing won't even run Star Trek Legacy without fitting and starting like an epileptic at a disco (find that comment offensive? Good, if you're the sort of person who finds stuff like that offensive then you deserve to be offended), and that's about as graphically intensive as Unreal Tournament 3's USER MENU!
"Unbeatable Performance" How the hell do they put that on the box with a straight face, knowing that the card is not as good as one that went out of date over three years ago??.
I'll tell you - on further inspection, the only place on this box that says "8500GT" is the sticker that's been slapped on the front. Looking online, it looks like they use the same boxes for all their cards, and the only thing that changes is the stickers, so essentially, not only have overclockers regurgitated the same crap they use to sell all their cards - good AND bad - but this box is just repeating the lies. "Double Your Performance With SLI" SLI MY CARD?! Jesus Mary and Joseph on a pogo stick, who the hell would buy two of these wastes-of-a-pci-slot to SLI them together and still get less power out of the pair than out of a 3 year old £25 Geforce 7900GT?! Am I missing something here?! That's like fitting two 1.1 litre engines in a car, when you could get a 6 litre v8 for a quarter of the price!! Geez, are people that stupid? Er, I cut it close by buying this damn thing, but I would never buy TWO of them, good god!
I'm going to have a quick look round, seeing if there are any settings i need to enable to get the card to do the job I bought it for but I think it's gonna be an ebay jobbie. It had been in my computer for less than an hour and a half before I decided that it needs to be replaced. So if you're looking round for a graphics card to grace your computer, a card that looks good but doesn't actually require you to buy any games to take care of any of its processing power, the 8500 is the one for you, and I have one for sale right here, at cost, £46.99, many thanks.
Oh, Its not all bad luck with technology by the way, I took my clothes out of the drier one morning this week to get ready for work, inside the pocket of one i found a little cf card pouch with "sandisk" on the side.
"oops" I thought, opening it to find my 4gb 60x lexar card in there. That thing had been through a 75 minute 40 degree C wash cycle, and then through a 2 hour cycle in the drier at about 50C.
I stuck it in my camera out of sheer optimism, and snapped a few photos. Did it work? Ha.
Well, yes it did actually, it worked fine. So I'll put that one down to luck :).
Have fun, I'll be in touch.
Now Nvidia seem to have this bizarre numbering thing going on when it comes to their cards - I'd always assumed that the higher the number, the better the card. So with that in mind,
8500GT with 512mb Ram > 7900GT with 256mb Ram.
Right?
Wrong.
Unfortunately, the only reason I know it's wrong is because I fitted the 8500GT and went back to playing my favourite games. Or tried to go back to playing them, because to be frank, the 8500GT is so slow, it's not even worth buying it for running 3d studio max on - that's right, a 3d modelling program requires more performance than this thing can give.
So who does buy a 3d graphics card with 512mb of ram, geforce no less, and doesn't want to play games on it? Quite a few people apparently because there are even worse cards like the 8400 for sale, which seems to be just powerful enough for word processing.
Admittedly, there's nothing wrong with the card, it does the job it says it does on the box - which is not the same as the job it says it does at overclockers: "smooth gaming with the future DirectX 10 games". You have got to be absolutely kidding me. This thing won't even run Star Trek Legacy without fitting and starting like an epileptic at a disco (find that comment offensive? Good, if you're the sort of person who finds stuff like that offensive then you deserve to be offended), and that's about as graphically intensive as Unreal Tournament 3's USER MENU!
"Unbeatable Performance" How the hell do they put that on the box with a straight face, knowing that the card is not as good as one that went out of date over three years ago??.
I'll tell you - on further inspection, the only place on this box that says "8500GT" is the sticker that's been slapped on the front. Looking online, it looks like they use the same boxes for all their cards, and the only thing that changes is the stickers, so essentially, not only have overclockers regurgitated the same crap they use to sell all their cards - good AND bad - but this box is just repeating the lies. "Double Your Performance With SLI" SLI MY CARD?! Jesus Mary and Joseph on a pogo stick, who the hell would buy two of these wastes-of-a-pci-slot to SLI them together and still get less power out of the pair than out of a 3 year old £25 Geforce 7900GT?! Am I missing something here?! That's like fitting two 1.1 litre engines in a car, when you could get a 6 litre v8 for a quarter of the price!! Geez, are people that stupid? Er, I cut it close by buying this damn thing, but I would never buy TWO of them, good god!
I'm going to have a quick look round, seeing if there are any settings i need to enable to get the card to do the job I bought it for but I think it's gonna be an ebay jobbie. It had been in my computer for less than an hour and a half before I decided that it needs to be replaced. So if you're looking round for a graphics card to grace your computer, a card that looks good but doesn't actually require you to buy any games to take care of any of its processing power, the 8500 is the one for you, and I have one for sale right here, at cost, £46.99, many thanks.
Oh, Its not all bad luck with technology by the way, I took my clothes out of the drier one morning this week to get ready for work, inside the pocket of one i found a little cf card pouch with "sandisk" on the side.
"oops" I thought, opening it to find my 4gb 60x lexar card in there. That thing had been through a 75 minute 40 degree C wash cycle, and then through a 2 hour cycle in the drier at about 50C.
I stuck it in my camera out of sheer optimism, and snapped a few photos. Did it work? Ha.
Well, yes it did actually, it worked fine. So I'll put that one down to luck :).
Have fun, I'll be in touch.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Shopping - can I call it that?
Well, I'm here in my nice warm room, my new if searingly bright 22 watt flouro light is busy burning the paint off everything, crumpling papers, evaporating my drinks, melting anthing made of plastic, and generally doing what any object brighter than the sun does to spend its free time.
So what did I did this afternoon? Who gives a stuff? let's skip that.
I got home from work and ended up being taken to Meadowhall with my sis, ostensibly to get a father's day present (more on this later). After a while it ended up being a general shopping trip, so I ended up getting a cool new things.
Course, first place, I went to was the O2 shop to check out the Iphones there. Rumour has it that they're gonna be PAYG in the UK before long, though the cost is something that still seems to be hotly disputed on various sites, with one side arguing that the new model is miles better value, and are provided as part of a much more flexible more versatile service (PAYG instead of contract), while the other side argue that "they're apple, they've got 'I' in the name, they're gonna be twice as expensive as they should be".
I spose time will tell which reality comes true, though the quick release of the Iphone Mk 2, the what, "3G Iphone" or something like that, has come hot on the heels of the original and is filling a seat that is not so much still warm, as still occupied. The novelty of the iPhone has only barely begun to wear off, and already Apple are pushing newer models down our throats. The optimist in me says "hey this's progress, better technology, cheaper prices", the cynic says "they want their money twice, the cheaper it is the more they sell". Either way, the owners who clamoured to be the first to get their hands on the hot new iphone are now left in the cold with something that is being deliberately called out of date and inferior.
Still, happened to me with my camera, tis just the price of being in the technology race i spose. After visiting the O2 shop, one of the places I went to was along to the local camera store (despite swearing I'd never set foot in there again - they seem to have had a change of staff) and ended up staring lovingly at the lonely Nikon D3 - my gaze following its countours while my fingers lovingly traced its outline on the glass that kept it safe from my prying attention... Ahem.
Not quite, but still, it's a sexy piece of kit, but sleek, it is not.
The D3, on first inspection looks like a complete and absolute whale of a camera, huge, overweight, overpriced, incredibly complex, it's everything that you don't think of when you decide to buy a camera. It's not slick, it's not cool, it's not sleek or sexy, in fact i'd go so far as to call it ugly. bulbous, ugly, prodigious, the D3 is a workhorse, without ornamentation, without any fancy acronyms, without any superfluous features or acoutrements, the D3 is a workhorse in the same way that a volvo tractor cab is a workhorse - expensive, powerful, ugly, does the job again and again and again, keeps going and going and going and going...
But man, that thing was so damn huge, I'm amazed anyone can carry it around their neck all day! That said though, the D3 is a beast, absolute incredible beast, you won't get much better, and if a camera needs to do it, the D3 probably does it. Bloody hell, it makes my £1000+ of D200 feel cheap and plasticky by comparison!
But then it would do that, being nearly £2500.
I still want one though, but I spose like any tool, there are times when you're doing a job that you don't need to use it, and I spose the D200 fills the gap the D3 leaves open. I spose I'm in two minds about the D3. It looks like the fat ugly unwanted cousin of the D200, it looks like those self obsessed bodybuilders that spend so much time on looking like they've had a foot pump shoved up their arses, that they've forgot that there's nothing inside (used solely as an example, a mate of mine is a bodybuilder, and I only take the piss out of him occasionally). But despite its ugliness, I want the D3 for what it can do, I spose the intricacies of its performance are lost on any non-photographer, but it is one hell of an advanced piece of kit. The d3 is proof positive that cameras these days are as much about electronics and computer code as they are about mirrors and glass.
I did kinda lead myself away from the whole O2 thing with this self indulgent textual orgasm about the D3 though, the one thing I forgot to mention is that my favourite youtube guy, Armake21 (no link as you won't find anything), a guy whos job was to review shitty games, lose his temper with them, generally raise a laugh and criticise things, has (after being deleted by Youtube) reappeared in the guise of "Nicotinealien". And it was one of his very very random videos - this one in fact - that I left playing on a couple of the iphones as I walked out of the 02 store, admittedly to a disappointingly delayed bemused reaction from the staff. So yeah, glad he's back.
I went to a health store who advised that if i MUST drink 2 litres of coca cola a day (diet coke - normal coke is about 800 calories per 2 litres or something) then I should probably have calcium supplements to offset the phosphoric acid eating me to bits :). Well, along those lines.
Also topped up on my creatine and protein supplements.
Where else did I go? Well, to Game, my friendly local games supplier, where I bought a couple of bits of software just to stop me getting bored (1) (the second was some kinda (actually fairly decent) train simulator). Yes I was that bored. I suppose its a lads thing, wanting to drive big heavy powerful bits of machinery.
Now my parents have been having a more than a few domestics recently, in fact to me it seems that they're increasing in magnitude and in severity. I used to think I was imagining it but now I'm honestly not sure. Now my parents are deciding to cancel the 2 week holiday in venice that they've both been looking forward to for ages, because they can't stand the sight of each other, which is why they've been married for 30 years.
So for this father's day, I decided to force the issue somewhat, with my dad's fathers day gift.
A 200 odd page guide to the city of Venice.
A push in the right direction I feel.
One place I went before we disappeared was to the local toy store, and I saw something that I fancied getting for my nephew. They call em hoverdisks.
Imagine a foil balloon 36 inches across and shaped like a flying saucer, you're along the right lines. The only real difference is that these balloons have rigid edges (provided by internal poles) that ensure the balloon bounces - instead of crumpling - off hard objects, walls, rocks, etc.
There's only so many words with which I can describe what is essentially a variation on a balloon.
These things used to be something ridiculous like £10 a piece, now they're £1.50 a piece. They're amazing, they're filled with air, and weigh next to nothing. You can balance the things on a finger and my nephew? he loves em!
So, what did I buy? Well, if you didn't read above, a picture is provided below, where you can see everything :). I do include them as links too but I like to have the odd photo visible on my blog page as it breaks the text up.
One thing I didn't mention is the music and beer.
I'm currently sat here listening to my very very cool new album which I thought I'd get because I'm random like that, there are a lot of good tunes on it including one, La Nina Mecanica that completely took me by surprise. Why?Because for some random reason it has a 20 second sample of Rammstein's "Morgenstern" in it (specifically 3:14 to about 4:00 -will be different on the album version) . I spose that's kinda like George Orwell's 1984 including some of the lyrics of "God Save The Queen", and I'm referring to the talentless tuneless shit version, not the national anthem. Completely different types of work by completely different artists, still manage to find their way into the weirdest places.
The last thing I did today was to get some beer, noticeably some guinness, on account of the Irish decision to stick two fingers up at the EU. In this country, we were denied a referendum on something that became deeply unpopular with us as a result, and to see the Irish band together by choice and refute and refuse this "lisbon treaty" both for themselves and on our behalf, is cause for celebration, I feel.
So now I'm off to enjoy my beer, listen to tunes and relax. I've been doing a lot of reading recently, maybe I'll catch up on that.
Oh yeah, here's the picture - my shopping :)
So what did I did this afternoon? Who gives a stuff? let's skip that.
I got home from work and ended up being taken to Meadowhall with my sis, ostensibly to get a father's day present (more on this later). After a while it ended up being a general shopping trip, so I ended up getting a cool new things.
Course, first place, I went to was the O2 shop to check out the Iphones there. Rumour has it that they're gonna be PAYG in the UK before long, though the cost is something that still seems to be hotly disputed on various sites, with one side arguing that the new model is miles better value, and are provided as part of a much more flexible more versatile service (PAYG instead of contract), while the other side argue that "they're apple, they've got 'I' in the name, they're gonna be twice as expensive as they should be".
I spose time will tell which reality comes true, though the quick release of the Iphone Mk 2, the what, "3G Iphone" or something like that, has come hot on the heels of the original and is filling a seat that is not so much still warm, as still occupied. The novelty of the iPhone has only barely begun to wear off, and already Apple are pushing newer models down our throats. The optimist in me says "hey this's progress, better technology, cheaper prices", the cynic says "they want their money twice, the cheaper it is the more they sell". Either way, the owners who clamoured to be the first to get their hands on the hot new iphone are now left in the cold with something that is being deliberately called out of date and inferior.
Still, happened to me with my camera, tis just the price of being in the technology race i spose. After visiting the O2 shop, one of the places I went to was along to the local camera store (despite swearing I'd never set foot in there again - they seem to have had a change of staff) and ended up staring lovingly at the lonely Nikon D3 - my gaze following its countours while my fingers lovingly traced its outline on the glass that kept it safe from my prying attention... Ahem.
Not quite, but still, it's a sexy piece of kit, but sleek, it is not.
The D3, on first inspection looks like a complete and absolute whale of a camera, huge, overweight, overpriced, incredibly complex, it's everything that you don't think of when you decide to buy a camera. It's not slick, it's not cool, it's not sleek or sexy, in fact i'd go so far as to call it ugly. bulbous, ugly, prodigious, the D3 is a workhorse, without ornamentation, without any fancy acronyms, without any superfluous features or acoutrements, the D3 is a workhorse in the same way that a volvo tractor cab is a workhorse - expensive, powerful, ugly, does the job again and again and again, keeps going and going and going and going...
But man, that thing was so damn huge, I'm amazed anyone can carry it around their neck all day! That said though, the D3 is a beast, absolute incredible beast, you won't get much better, and if a camera needs to do it, the D3 probably does it. Bloody hell, it makes my £1000+ of D200 feel cheap and plasticky by comparison!
But then it would do that, being nearly £2500.
I still want one though, but I spose like any tool, there are times when you're doing a job that you don't need to use it, and I spose the D200 fills the gap the D3 leaves open. I spose I'm in two minds about the D3. It looks like the fat ugly unwanted cousin of the D200, it looks like those self obsessed bodybuilders that spend so much time on looking like they've had a foot pump shoved up their arses, that they've forgot that there's nothing inside (used solely as an example, a mate of mine is a bodybuilder, and I only take the piss out of him occasionally). But despite its ugliness, I want the D3 for what it can do, I spose the intricacies of its performance are lost on any non-photographer, but it is one hell of an advanced piece of kit. The d3 is proof positive that cameras these days are as much about electronics and computer code as they are about mirrors and glass.
I did kinda lead myself away from the whole O2 thing with this self indulgent textual orgasm about the D3 though, the one thing I forgot to mention is that my favourite youtube guy, Armake21 (no link as you won't find anything), a guy whos job was to review shitty games, lose his temper with them, generally raise a laugh and criticise things, has (after being deleted by Youtube) reappeared in the guise of "Nicotinealien". And it was one of his very very random videos - this one in fact - that I left playing on a couple of the iphones as I walked out of the 02 store, admittedly to a disappointingly delayed bemused reaction from the staff. So yeah, glad he's back.
I went to a health store who advised that if i MUST drink 2 litres of coca cola a day (diet coke - normal coke is about 800 calories per 2 litres or something) then I should probably have calcium supplements to offset the phosphoric acid eating me to bits :). Well, along those lines.
Also topped up on my creatine and protein supplements.
Where else did I go? Well, to Game, my friendly local games supplier, where I bought a couple of bits of software just to stop me getting bored (1) (the second was some kinda (actually fairly decent) train simulator). Yes I was that bored. I suppose its a lads thing, wanting to drive big heavy powerful bits of machinery.
Now my parents have been having a more than a few domestics recently, in fact to me it seems that they're increasing in magnitude and in severity. I used to think I was imagining it but now I'm honestly not sure. Now my parents are deciding to cancel the 2 week holiday in venice that they've both been looking forward to for ages, because they can't stand the sight of each other, which is why they've been married for 30 years.
So for this father's day, I decided to force the issue somewhat, with my dad's fathers day gift.
A 200 odd page guide to the city of Venice.
A push in the right direction I feel.
One place I went before we disappeared was to the local toy store, and I saw something that I fancied getting for my nephew. They call em hoverdisks.
Imagine a foil balloon 36 inches across and shaped like a flying saucer, you're along the right lines. The only real difference is that these balloons have rigid edges (provided by internal poles) that ensure the balloon bounces - instead of crumpling - off hard objects, walls, rocks, etc.
There's only so many words with which I can describe what is essentially a variation on a balloon.
These things used to be something ridiculous like £10 a piece, now they're £1.50 a piece. They're amazing, they're filled with air, and weigh next to nothing. You can balance the things on a finger and my nephew? he loves em!
So, what did I buy? Well, if you didn't read above, a picture is provided below, where you can see everything :). I do include them as links too but I like to have the odd photo visible on my blog page as it breaks the text up.
One thing I didn't mention is the music and beer.
I'm currently sat here listening to my very very cool new album which I thought I'd get because I'm random like that, there are a lot of good tunes on it including one, La Nina Mecanica that completely took me by surprise. Why?Because for some random reason it has a 20 second sample of Rammstein's "Morgenstern" in it (specifically 3:14 to about 4:00 -will be different on the album version) . I spose that's kinda like George Orwell's 1984 including some of the lyrics of "God Save The Queen", and I'm referring to the talentless tuneless shit version, not the national anthem. Completely different types of work by completely different artists, still manage to find their way into the weirdest places.
The last thing I did today was to get some beer, noticeably some guinness, on account of the Irish decision to stick two fingers up at the EU. In this country, we were denied a referendum on something that became deeply unpopular with us as a result, and to see the Irish band together by choice and refute and refuse this "lisbon treaty" both for themselves and on our behalf, is cause for celebration, I feel.
So now I'm off to enjoy my beer, listen to tunes and relax. I've been doing a lot of reading recently, maybe I'll catch up on that.
Oh yeah, here's the picture - my shopping :)
Monday, June 02, 2008
Bees don't taste of anything (except fur!)
Okay, so, I've had a fairly sedate day. The hard drive for my laptop arrived yesterday and I've just been spending the time since, getting the laptop up and running. Time consuming and tedious, but not taxing, and now I've got the laptop back up to full functionality, yay go me, ready for more photo trips. Just a case of replacing the hard drive and getting the software whacked back on there.
So I've been spending time at the gym, that is taxing, but it's fun as well, and it's kinda rewarding and relaxing at the same time to get myself all worn out by bettering myself, getting fitter and stronger with each visit. I've been running a lot recently as well, and last nights run was fantastic. I don't know why, I just seemed stronger this time round, I was definitely faster. It was like I got tired later, was able to surge forwards faster, I remember being surprised at just how fast I could move, and how long I could keep it up.
I had a little excitement on the way back from the gym though, I wander down to the park on the way home and start running. I get maybe 30 meters passing the bees and birds and other euphemistic combinations of animals, when the latest in maybe a dozen buzzy type creatures spots me.
It heads on a fast curve that must have put its head out through its arse, and with the evident urge to kiss me (that's what must have caused it!) it flew straight smack into my mouth - which was partially open at the time, what with me running and everything.
I felt the smack, I heard the bang, and then felt the damn thing buzzing around, followed quickly by a - did it? - yes, the damn thing stung me.
I physically spat the poor creature out, and watched it spiral down to the floor in a "wtf just happened?" type way. I didn't chek whether the thing was okay, as I felt something vaguely like the sting still stuck in my lip (it wasn't).
So for those of you who wondered why people ate insects, as the title suggests, bees don't taste of anything, except fur. And stingyness. Hope it was okay anyway, cool little industrious creatures, bees.
So there you go, in several hundred words "I've been to the gym and then ate a bee".
I've never been one for brevity.
But hey, i'm kinda getting tired now, but I'm busy watching FBI files so I figure I'll watch this, go to bed, or something like that.
Have fun :).
So I've been spending time at the gym, that is taxing, but it's fun as well, and it's kinda rewarding and relaxing at the same time to get myself all worn out by bettering myself, getting fitter and stronger with each visit. I've been running a lot recently as well, and last nights run was fantastic. I don't know why, I just seemed stronger this time round, I was definitely faster. It was like I got tired later, was able to surge forwards faster, I remember being surprised at just how fast I could move, and how long I could keep it up.
I had a little excitement on the way back from the gym though, I wander down to the park on the way home and start running. I get maybe 30 meters passing the bees and birds and other euphemistic combinations of animals, when the latest in maybe a dozen buzzy type creatures spots me.
It heads on a fast curve that must have put its head out through its arse, and with the evident urge to kiss me (that's what must have caused it!) it flew straight smack into my mouth - which was partially open at the time, what with me running and everything.
I felt the smack, I heard the bang, and then felt the damn thing buzzing around, followed quickly by a - did it? - yes, the damn thing stung me.
I physically spat the poor creature out, and watched it spiral down to the floor in a "wtf just happened?" type way. I didn't chek whether the thing was okay, as I felt something vaguely like the sting still stuck in my lip (it wasn't).
So for those of you who wondered why people ate insects, as the title suggests, bees don't taste of anything, except fur. And stingyness. Hope it was okay anyway, cool little industrious creatures, bees.
So there you go, in several hundred words "I've been to the gym and then ate a bee".
I've never been one for brevity.
But hey, i'm kinda getting tired now, but I'm busy watching FBI files so I figure I'll watch this, go to bed, or something like that.
Have fun :).
Friday, May 30, 2008
New car? New legs!
Well, I can't remember what I wrote in my last blog, so I'm going to read it now to find out where in my oh-so-exciting life I got up to... Ah yes, bitching about work.
Well I'm gonna leave that out - obviously I have more to bitch about now than I did before, but who cares. Work is crap, there's a support group for it, it's called "life" and they meet in the pub.
So, my sister's passed her test and got a car, yay. What's to sy, it's a big thing to have happen to you, your first car, but I have to admit I can't think of much to say on the subject, she's picking it up fast, and the other day she picked me up from work and we had a nice razz round.
I'm pleased to say that I've started running again AGAIN, after yet another hiatus to give me time to be lazy. This time I'm running two miles a day instead of 1.1, and if I stick to grass and suchlike I should be just fine, which is cool, as I am really really really getting sick of civilian life.
Other than that, nothing has happened, so to be honest I don't even know why I wrote a blog, it's certainly taken up 10 minutes of my time that I didn't have to waste. But hey, life is like that, it's not all action and excitement I spose.
Take care, I'm off for a shower and an early night :).
Well I'm gonna leave that out - obviously I have more to bitch about now than I did before, but who cares. Work is crap, there's a support group for it, it's called "life" and they meet in the pub.
So, my sister's passed her test and got a car, yay. What's to sy, it's a big thing to have happen to you, your first car, but I have to admit I can't think of much to say on the subject, she's picking it up fast, and the other day she picked me up from work and we had a nice razz round.
I'm pleased to say that I've started running again AGAIN, after yet another hiatus to give me time to be lazy. This time I'm running two miles a day instead of 1.1, and if I stick to grass and suchlike I should be just fine, which is cool, as I am really really really getting sick of civilian life.
Other than that, nothing has happened, so to be honest I don't even know why I wrote a blog, it's certainly taken up 10 minutes of my time that I didn't have to waste. But hey, life is like that, it's not all action and excitement I spose.
Take care, I'm off for a shower and an early night :).
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The Ball's Rolling Again...
You may have ntoiced that both my motivation and the momentum behind my Army application has been pretty non existent of late. With the weather improving there are so many cool things I could do like go places and take photos of stuff, and go to other places and take photos of stuff, and suchlike. It's great in the short term, but thinking about it, I don't want to be a call centre monkey for the rest of my life, and when winter draws in again I don't want to be stuck inside at home, or inside at work, and have nowhere but those two places to go.
So we're back on. I've got my motivation back, and I'm once again training towards my application. Especially now that my ex flatmate Sean has gone in as a communications engineer, I can't let that little sod have all the fun now can I ;).
I've still got a job to go to at the moment, which is a surprise considering the fact that not only have the company been handing discipliniaries around like sweets, just to make sure all the managers are kept in practice at management things. Not only this, but the company have ever so kindly decided to "restructure", putting 140 mid-level managers, most of whom have been there 7, 8, 9 years, out of a job. In a couple of cases, families where the husband and wife work at the same company are now in real real real financial trouble, that would make my latest episode of skint-ness look like a kid losing his pocket money, so that's really sucky for them.
Fortunately for me, I only know three managers that are affected by this, and two of them are absolute dickheads. So while I'm not exactly gonna say "woo", it's slightly slightly slightly less sucky that those two are going.
So what else have I been up to?
Well I traded a laptop for a motorcycle. By this what I actually mean is that my laptop computer spontaneously failed, never to be coaxed into life again (needs a new hard disk, even recovery software can't touch it, grr I want my money back etc :P), but after sticking a thread up on a bike forum, I have finally managed to get my bike working after many many months of being off the road.
The problem was water in the fuel. Half a litre of the stuff swirling around at the bottom of the tank, clogging the fuel filters and wetting the plugs. No wonder the damn thing wouldn't work, so yay, go me, my bike now works again!
We come now though, to an altogether more disturbing subject of discussion:
Fashion, the contrived artificual demand for certain types of clothes, has turned again, it seems, and to use Eddie Izzard's explaination of fashion (2:40 onwards), most of the people around work are so Cool, Cool, Hip and Groovy that they're within nanometers of crossing that line into full-blown Looking Like A Dickhead.
There are two specific things that jump out at me. First of all, there's an almost exponential proliferation of these studded belts. You have two kinds of these, the first ones which have usually been the preserve of alternative, emo, mosher, whatever you want to call them, groups of people, which is fair enough, but now those are beginning to spread everywhere.
These, I can live with.
The ones that get on my nerves, are these ones with slogans "studded" into them. The majority of them seem to be along religious lines, "Jesus saves", "Jesus Loves", "I love Jesus" etc.
Now there are two reasons that these annoy me. First of all, people are wearing them because it's fashionable, not because they believe in Jesus (I'm an agnostic/athiest fundamentalist apparently, according to some christian dude - I'm not religious in the least), so people are kinda getting preached at, by people that don't even follow the values of Jesus (happens all the time, just go to any church), So not only does this annoy me, but the second one, is that some of them are just ambiguously funny.
Seriously, I see the slogan "Jesus saves" and my mind fills in the blanks, "Jesus Saves, Score still 5-2". Yep indeedy.
Now we come to the other thing.
Smurf Hats.
No. Really, I'm not kidding.
I don't know whether some simian gangster in the town center of Nottingham or Medway or whatever decided it was cool to get a beanie hat and have it perching on the top of your head with the top traling down behind you like a wooly pony tail, and the companies just cottoned onto it, or whether the companies just screwed up the measurements on their latest product design and released a load of beanie hats that are 30cm long.
By accident or design (and bearing in mind that this isn't one of those villages conveniently and cleverly built half a day's walk from the nearest water supply, so if we don't like what we have we CAN just throw it away and replace it, or even send it to one of those villages) a whole bunch of people seem to have bought these things and are now putting them on their heads, with the result that the top half of these hats is dangling down the back of their heads making even the coolest and hippest studded-belt-clad youngster look like a bloody smurf.
The first one was an eyebrow raiser, the second one was a double take, now I'm entering rolling-eyes territory when I see these things, because they're spreading like the waistlines of the latest entrants to this lazy-ass job, of which there seem to be a fair few, despite the rolling programs of restructuring and redundancies and general "the-industry-is-in-decline-but-we're-still-on-top-but-let's-pretend-we're-not" crap. Apparently some of our managers went to other companies to look how they do things - yes, read it again, some of the managers from our company, the most successful in the industry, went to less successful less skilled companies, to learn how to do things.
This explains why every day, that place becomes a little bit more like a Dilbert strip I spose.
This is the company that two weeks before the first of two bank holidays in the same month, announced it was slashing overtime (the rate for working bank holidays) from 300% to 150%.
while simultaneously bringing an end to the £150 bi-annual attendance bonus.
Can you guess what happened?
Yep, that's right, on bank holiday monday we had about 8 staff in. The rest were quite sick with inconveniently sudden and acute ailments. And you know what? They got away with it, and I'm glad they got away with it too. Because frankly, [company] moves its employees around like chess pieces, and f**ks its employees around like AT&T is alleged to f**k their customers around. Our company really is one of those where the customer is always right. And now, that's becoming a problem, because now the customer is so right that we drop our underwear and bend over while simultaneously pleading "What is thy bidding, my master?" every time one of the suit-jacketed arseholes walks into the room.
The customer is so right in fact that senior management are running around like headless chickens trying to keep the customer happy, middle management are running around like headless chickens trying to keep senior management happy while looking for another job at the same time, and the junior managers are trying to stomp out bushfires and put down riots from the staff, while trying to show loyalty and concern for both the managers above them and the staff below them.
The staff themselves, the customer service battery chickens, have had enough, and the planning department are literally reorganising certain staff member's lunch breaks, because they're worried that if enough disgruntled and angry "customer service" agents get together in the same room, some kind of critical mass will be reached that can only result in a situation in which the fire brigade is called, the ambulances are called, and something horrible gets left on the customer liason manager's desk. The whole reason we stopped having our annual get-together with the client is literally because after a few beers, the client staff and our staff, were ready for and in some cases resorting to, punchups in the street.
And all the while, the calls keep coming, made by happy cheery clueless muppets, ignorant not only of the trouble they are directly causing, but the suffering and anger and hatred they are indirectly causing simply by existing as a source of income to the much vaunted (and much hated) customer.
We are not a happy business, but still we try. Feck knows why.People keep leaving, I suppose eventually there'll not be much of a business left.
But who cares, by the time the business goes down the pan, I'll be sitting inside 60+ tons of air conditioned tank, laughing my arse off at the entire industry and the idiots, the unmotivated bored angry idiots like myself, who are mostly too apathetic to leave it all behind.
Oh well, I've got things to do, like sit about and be bored, so now I'll go and get on with that :).
Have fun :).
So we're back on. I've got my motivation back, and I'm once again training towards my application. Especially now that my ex flatmate Sean has gone in as a communications engineer, I can't let that little sod have all the fun now can I ;).
I've still got a job to go to at the moment, which is a surprise considering the fact that not only have the company been handing discipliniaries around like sweets, just to make sure all the managers are kept in practice at management things. Not only this, but the company have ever so kindly decided to "restructure", putting 140 mid-level managers, most of whom have been there 7, 8, 9 years, out of a job. In a couple of cases, families where the husband and wife work at the same company are now in real real real financial trouble, that would make my latest episode of skint-ness look like a kid losing his pocket money, so that's really sucky for them.
Fortunately for me, I only know three managers that are affected by this, and two of them are absolute dickheads. So while I'm not exactly gonna say "woo", it's slightly slightly slightly less sucky that those two are going.
So what else have I been up to?
Well I traded a laptop for a motorcycle. By this what I actually mean is that my laptop computer spontaneously failed, never to be coaxed into life again (needs a new hard disk, even recovery software can't touch it, grr I want my money back etc :P), but after sticking a thread up on a bike forum, I have finally managed to get my bike working after many many months of being off the road.
The problem was water in the fuel. Half a litre of the stuff swirling around at the bottom of the tank, clogging the fuel filters and wetting the plugs. No wonder the damn thing wouldn't work, so yay, go me, my bike now works again!
We come now though, to an altogether more disturbing subject of discussion:
Fashion, the contrived artificual demand for certain types of clothes, has turned again, it seems, and to use Eddie Izzard's explaination of fashion (2:40 onwards), most of the people around work are so Cool, Cool, Hip and Groovy that they're within nanometers of crossing that line into full-blown Looking Like A Dickhead.
There are two specific things that jump out at me. First of all, there's an almost exponential proliferation of these studded belts. You have two kinds of these, the first ones which have usually been the preserve of alternative, emo, mosher, whatever you want to call them, groups of people, which is fair enough, but now those are beginning to spread everywhere.
These, I can live with.
The ones that get on my nerves, are these ones with slogans "studded" into them. The majority of them seem to be along religious lines, "Jesus saves", "Jesus Loves", "I love Jesus" etc.
Now there are two reasons that these annoy me. First of all, people are wearing them because it's fashionable, not because they believe in Jesus (I'm an agnostic/athiest fundamentalist apparently, according to some christian dude - I'm not religious in the least), so people are kinda getting preached at, by people that don't even follow the values of Jesus (happens all the time, just go to any church), So not only does this annoy me, but the second one, is that some of them are just ambiguously funny.
Seriously, I see the slogan "Jesus saves" and my mind fills in the blanks, "Jesus Saves, Score still 5-2". Yep indeedy.
Now we come to the other thing.
Smurf Hats.
No. Really, I'm not kidding.
I don't know whether some simian gangster in the town center of Nottingham or Medway or whatever decided it was cool to get a beanie hat and have it perching on the top of your head with the top traling down behind you like a wooly pony tail, and the companies just cottoned onto it, or whether the companies just screwed up the measurements on their latest product design and released a load of beanie hats that are 30cm long.
By accident or design (and bearing in mind that this isn't one of those villages conveniently and cleverly built half a day's walk from the nearest water supply, so if we don't like what we have we CAN just throw it away and replace it, or even send it to one of those villages) a whole bunch of people seem to have bought these things and are now putting them on their heads, with the result that the top half of these hats is dangling down the back of their heads making even the coolest and hippest studded-belt-clad youngster look like a bloody smurf.
The first one was an eyebrow raiser, the second one was a double take, now I'm entering rolling-eyes territory when I see these things, because they're spreading like the waistlines of the latest entrants to this lazy-ass job, of which there seem to be a fair few, despite the rolling programs of restructuring and redundancies and general "the-industry-is-in-decline-but-we're-still-on-top-but-let's-pretend-we're-not" crap. Apparently some of our managers went to other companies to look how they do things - yes, read it again, some of the managers from our company, the most successful in the industry, went to less successful less skilled companies, to learn how to do things.
This explains why every day, that place becomes a little bit more like a Dilbert strip I spose.
This is the company that two weeks before the first of two bank holidays in the same month, announced it was slashing overtime (the rate for working bank holidays) from 300% to 150%.
while simultaneously bringing an end to the £150 bi-annual attendance bonus.
Can you guess what happened?
Yep, that's right, on bank holiday monday we had about 8 staff in. The rest were quite sick with inconveniently sudden and acute ailments. And you know what? They got away with it, and I'm glad they got away with it too. Because frankly, [company] moves its employees around like chess pieces, and f**ks its employees around like AT&T is alleged to f**k their customers around. Our company really is one of those where the customer is always right. And now, that's becoming a problem, because now the customer is so right that we drop our underwear and bend over while simultaneously pleading "What is thy bidding, my master?" every time one of the suit-jacketed arseholes walks into the room.
The customer is so right in fact that senior management are running around like headless chickens trying to keep the customer happy, middle management are running around like headless chickens trying to keep senior management happy while looking for another job at the same time, and the junior managers are trying to stomp out bushfires and put down riots from the staff, while trying to show loyalty and concern for both the managers above them and the staff below them.
The staff themselves, the customer service battery chickens, have had enough, and the planning department are literally reorganising certain staff member's lunch breaks, because they're worried that if enough disgruntled and angry "customer service" agents get together in the same room, some kind of critical mass will be reached that can only result in a situation in which the fire brigade is called, the ambulances are called, and something horrible gets left on the customer liason manager's desk. The whole reason we stopped having our annual get-together with the client is literally because after a few beers, the client staff and our staff, were ready for and in some cases resorting to, punchups in the street.
And all the while, the calls keep coming, made by happy cheery clueless muppets, ignorant not only of the trouble they are directly causing, but the suffering and anger and hatred they are indirectly causing simply by existing as a source of income to the much vaunted (and much hated) customer.
We are not a happy business, but still we try. Feck knows why.People keep leaving, I suppose eventually there'll not be much of a business left.
But who cares, by the time the business goes down the pan, I'll be sitting inside 60+ tons of air conditioned tank, laughing my arse off at the entire industry and the idiots, the unmotivated bored angry idiots like myself, who are mostly too apathetic to leave it all behind.
Oh well, I've got things to do, like sit about and be bored, so now I'll go and get on with that :).
Have fun :).
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Weight off my shoulders...
Okay, so after a couple of weeks of very frugal living, my ebay escapades are beginning to provide me with much much needed mon-aay. Admittedly I've made a loss on everything I've sold, because the odd quirk of ebay is that when you buy, you pay more than it's worth, when you sell, they pay less than it's worth.
I'd suck as a stock market trader.
But who cares. I shifted some crap I wasn't gonna use, and it made me enough cash to not have to hold up pizza delivery guys in the street or whatever. "Stand and deliver, your pizza or your life" doesn't have the same ring to it, especially since when I worked pizza delivery, I used to give that stuff away for free anyway.
But yes, my money woes are not exactly over, but they are fading, and with more money on the way I should be good to go right up until payday, at which point I'm not going to blast all my money away at stuff this time.
Well work's been its usual mediocre stuff. I've had my usual arguments with the managers, they've been handing round discipliniaries like sweets as usual (not me this time), and I actually followed my manager's advice and decided to be more objective about my job. I wrote a list of fors and againsts to decide whether this place is right for me. You can view it here if you've got the time to waste. Me? Well being my non-motivated self, I just kept putting the more annoying callers on hold and writing a little bit each time until I'd got it finished.
It's not all been bad though. I've decided to get another bike. And after the disastrously high figures quoted by my ex-current insurer for anything larger than a pushbike, I've gone to one of those price comparison places, which gave me a quote some 75% cheaper. Which means something like this, or if I'm lucky, something like this, are actually in reach, moneywise. I'd rather have the VFR (second bike), because at the weekend you can take the panniers off and go out to play. But it is more expensive, to buy, run, repair and insure.
Photography wise, I've had a busy week. Went back up to Manchester Airport with a mate, and set all my stuff and gubbins up. Yes, that is the camera connected to the laptop. The software I have means that the camera dumps the images straight to the hard drive, which gives me up to 20 gig of storage space before I need to start shooting to the CF card inside the camera. I've got 2 CF cards just to be on the safe side.
Pretty Woman (G-VROY - Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400) made a return to the airport, not only giving me some shots of her landing, but taxiing right past us some hours later before heading off into the sky again. It seems she visits manchester at least twice a week, so I should see more of her in the future. She's a magnificent aircraft, huge too, like an office building on wheels!
It was a very very productive day with me shooting over 750 photos! It took 5 hours to shoot them and another 8 hours to develop them. Meh. Still, I got some great pictures, so there you go :).
And now I'm off to sit about and do nothing for a bit. I like doing nothing, it doesn't require energy, or qualifications or thoughts.
Still, my nephew's coming round shortly so I suspect that period of idleness will be shortlived.
Have fun!
(Here's some pics from monday for ya)
I'd suck as a stock market trader.
But who cares. I shifted some crap I wasn't gonna use, and it made me enough cash to not have to hold up pizza delivery guys in the street or whatever. "Stand and deliver, your pizza or your life" doesn't have the same ring to it, especially since when I worked pizza delivery, I used to give that stuff away for free anyway.
But yes, my money woes are not exactly over, but they are fading, and with more money on the way I should be good to go right up until payday, at which point I'm not going to blast all my money away at stuff this time.
Well work's been its usual mediocre stuff. I've had my usual arguments with the managers, they've been handing round discipliniaries like sweets as usual (not me this time), and I actually followed my manager's advice and decided to be more objective about my job. I wrote a list of fors and againsts to decide whether this place is right for me. You can view it here if you've got the time to waste. Me? Well being my non-motivated self, I just kept putting the more annoying callers on hold and writing a little bit each time until I'd got it finished.
It's not all been bad though. I've decided to get another bike. And after the disastrously high figures quoted by my ex-current insurer for anything larger than a pushbike, I've gone to one of those price comparison places, which gave me a quote some 75% cheaper. Which means something like this, or if I'm lucky, something like this, are actually in reach, moneywise. I'd rather have the VFR (second bike), because at the weekend you can take the panniers off and go out to play. But it is more expensive, to buy, run, repair and insure.
Photography wise, I've had a busy week. Went back up to Manchester Airport with a mate, and set all my stuff and gubbins up. Yes, that is the camera connected to the laptop. The software I have means that the camera dumps the images straight to the hard drive, which gives me up to 20 gig of storage space before I need to start shooting to the CF card inside the camera. I've got 2 CF cards just to be on the safe side.
Pretty Woman (G-VROY - Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400) made a return to the airport, not only giving me some shots of her landing, but taxiing right past us some hours later before heading off into the sky again. It seems she visits manchester at least twice a week, so I should see more of her in the future. She's a magnificent aircraft, huge too, like an office building on wheels!
It was a very very productive day with me shooting over 750 photos! It took 5 hours to shoot them and another 8 hours to develop them. Meh. Still, I got some great pictures, so there you go :).
And now I'm off to sit about and do nothing for a bit. I like doing nothing, it doesn't require energy, or qualifications or thoughts.
Still, my nephew's coming round shortly so I suspect that period of idleness will be shortlived.
Have fun!
(Here's some pics from monday for ya)
Friday, May 09, 2008
Summer Partay!
Well, after eating a fantastically awesome meal of mum's best pasta cooking, I had a little nap.
I woke up bout 8:30 to the regular thump thump thump of someone having a party. Lots of happy excited voices etc, someone was having a fun time nearby.
After a little bit I decided I fancied a little wander about, and it'd be interesting enough to see where the party was. So sure enough after a little wander about, I find a garden full of happy cheery people, plenty of flowing beer about, happy kids and loud music. Cool, so people are getting into the swing of things.
Including me it seems, summer looks like it's gonna be a nice one. Having been conscripted to do the front garden, I spent all day yesterday out in the fantastically fantastic sunshine while listening to the radio - was a nice day's work actually. The fact that I got rather badly sunburned doesn't detract from it at all, maybe it's a sign of the weather to come :).
Other than this, I have been mostly broke, I spent the available money, right enough, I'm usually pretty good with budgeting.
What I didn't budget for though, was an unexpected import duty bill for £45. Basically that has really messed my finances up, and now I'm living on literally £3.50 a day. Oh well, when I get paid I should be okay :).
And now I'm off to enjoy the summer :).
I woke up bout 8:30 to the regular thump thump thump of someone having a party. Lots of happy excited voices etc, someone was having a fun time nearby.
After a little bit I decided I fancied a little wander about, and it'd be interesting enough to see where the party was. So sure enough after a little wander about, I find a garden full of happy cheery people, plenty of flowing beer about, happy kids and loud music. Cool, so people are getting into the swing of things.
Including me it seems, summer looks like it's gonna be a nice one. Having been conscripted to do the front garden, I spent all day yesterday out in the fantastically fantastic sunshine while listening to the radio - was a nice day's work actually. The fact that I got rather badly sunburned doesn't detract from it at all, maybe it's a sign of the weather to come :).
Other than this, I have been mostly broke, I spent the available money, right enough, I'm usually pretty good with budgeting.
What I didn't budget for though, was an unexpected import duty bill for £45. Basically that has really messed my finances up, and now I'm living on literally £3.50 a day. Oh well, when I get paid I should be okay :).
And now I'm off to enjoy the summer :).
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Tripods and Tepees
This was written on the 3rd of May roundabout 2pm. I'm kinda falling behind in my blogging for a couple of reasons, hope to be on track soon.
Right now, I am sat in probably the most uncomfortable typing position in the world, inside a 3x6’ tent. I’ve got carpet burn on both elbows and I’m sweating like I’m in an oven. The temperature in here must be 30c. My nephew’s here accompanying me.
We’re sat inside a little makeshift tent, made out of one camera tripod, and about 8 or 9 sheets, quilt covers, quilts and towels, and I’ve got to admit I’m pretty happy with it. Sure we don’t actually need protection from the elements because we’ve set it up in the back bedroom (which is why it’s so damn hot!) but my nephew loves playing dens, so here we are, surrounded by little battery powered LED lamps, children’s storybooks, star-shaped pillows, little flags, and of course, camera equipment.
It’s a nice little setup.
This is the second day in a row that the den’s been put up to keep the little guy happy and while I’ve got to admit that if I hear “twit-twoo-thatmeansitsbedtime!” (usually at the rate of once every thirty seconds) one more time I’m gonna scream, he seems to be having a good ol’ time of keeping himself amused with his nice den.
Yesterday we went to the park to feed the ducks. Looks like we caught them a little late, that evening though, as they were all down the far end of the lake/pond/whatever, and were completely disinterested in both my camera, and the bread which my nephew threw at them in almost full slices.
It was a nice walk in the park though, the sun was shining, the birds were singing etc, and after last year’s floods and this year’s mediocre weather, it’s really, really nice to walk in your stereotypical green meadow type area.
So what have I been up to other than being dragged around by my nephew for the last two days (He’s fantastic in small doses, but constant exposure quickly leads to high stress etc etc.)? Well, I’ve been mostly receiving things from ebay, including my new flash unit for my camera.
And a very sparkly thing it is as well, the manual’s some 120+ pages long, so I went online and looked for a tutorial to learn how to do the things I wanna do. Looks like I’m probably gonna end up getting another flash unit sometime soon.
I shipped my old lens, and my new 50mm lens arrived, so I’ve been itching to go out and get some use out of it, but we’ve not really had the weather for it.
One other thing I would like to add.
You may remember from my previous blogs, my mentioning of an artist called “Phil” who I used to see regularly up at the pub.
Well a couple of weeks ago, he was taken into hospital for some kind of operation or something, and he didn’t come out again. Thursday was the day of his funeral, and it was very well attended by dozens of bikers. The world has lost a very talented artist, and a genuine guy.
Well, time to go; we’ll prolly take my nephew out round the park again or something. That’ll be cool.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Spring Rain...
Well, okay, it's not exactly "tomorrow" but I'm lazy like that.
I'm sat here in my warm comfy house, while the first of what is supposed to be many squalls pelts down outside.
So what is going on with all the spending then?
Well, when I went up to my bro's and had a look at his autofocus 50mm lens, I never realised that you can actually pick them up pretty cheaply. So I ordered one, for £52, and it arrived today from Hong Kong, only 3 days after ordering it - that's fast. The reviews rave about it, it's apparently a VERY good lens for the money. And it looks good too - it's the most modern lens I own.
My old 50mm lens is sat in a box, well wrapped, ready to be shipped down to Middlesex. I had hoped to ship it today but it seems I have to wait in for a bed to be delivered (I didn't order it). The guy finally paid for it, and a bloody good price he got for it too. Yeah, I made a loss on that one. Still.
I've ordered a few other goodies too. An SB800 flash, 1gb of memory for my laptop, and a USB 2 card for my laptop. I've also ordered a memory card for my cam, a USB cable to replace my annoyingly short one, and a little spirit level thing so I can get my camera straight when I'm shooting things. I've put a couple of things up for sale too, and if I can sell them I might get another new lens.
So that's it really. I had a load of beer on saturday night, but to be honest, I didn't really enjoy it. I think I'm losing interest in beer now.
Still, life goes on :).
I'm sat here in my warm comfy house, while the first of what is supposed to be many squalls pelts down outside.
So what is going on with all the spending then?
Well, when I went up to my bro's and had a look at his autofocus 50mm lens, I never realised that you can actually pick them up pretty cheaply. So I ordered one, for £52, and it arrived today from Hong Kong, only 3 days after ordering it - that's fast. The reviews rave about it, it's apparently a VERY good lens for the money. And it looks good too - it's the most modern lens I own.
My old 50mm lens is sat in a box, well wrapped, ready to be shipped down to Middlesex. I had hoped to ship it today but it seems I have to wait in for a bed to be delivered (I didn't order it). The guy finally paid for it, and a bloody good price he got for it too. Yeah, I made a loss on that one. Still.
I've ordered a few other goodies too. An SB800 flash, 1gb of memory for my laptop, and a USB 2 card for my laptop. I've also ordered a memory card for my cam, a USB cable to replace my annoyingly short one, and a little spirit level thing so I can get my camera straight when I'm shooting things. I've put a couple of things up for sale too, and if I can sell them I might get another new lens.
So that's it really. I had a load of beer on saturday night, but to be honest, I didn't really enjoy it. I think I'm losing interest in beer now.
Still, life goes on :).
Friday, April 25, 2008
Cash haemmoraging alert!
I'm just leaving myself a little note here so I can look back mid month and laugh: Congratulations me, I've used a £60 mouse on a £70 desk to spend £293 in 5 minutes.
Still - I've spent more in less before, and I am owed money by more than one person and I have stuff to sell on ebay too etc etc etc.
More to follow tomorrow :).
Still - I've spent more in less before, and I am owed money by more than one person and I have stuff to sell on ebay too etc etc etc.
More to follow tomorrow :).
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Blog Value Pack! 2 for 1!
Chapter One - Cat Fighting!
Disclaimer: Animals were harmed in the making of this blog. Not by us though, and not by any life form capable of being prosecuted. (He's fine now, and has been checked out by a vet).
So, it's 6pm, I'm laid on my nephew's trampoline with my hands behind my head, listening to the birds singing, basking in the sun almost like the cat on the grass next to the trampoline, and staring into the blue sky.
I'd been asked to move some stone chippings from my sister's old house to her new one. She's had to move out temporarily so they can refurbish her house, and so after a pretty damn painless move (not like the last one where I had to do everything to the garden short of dig it up with heavy machinery and start over) we've got everything sorted and she's all settled in. My nephew's trampoline and his playhouse are set up in the garden, and we're all relaxing outside.
My mum's driven home, leaving me to spend some time with my sister and nephew, and my nephew's roaming around the garden and his playhouse, I'm lounging around on the trampoline, my sister's doing work on her laptop on the garden table. It's turning into a nice day.
Throughout the afternoon, my nephew and I had played on his trampoline (I was playing on it to keep him happy. Okay, I was playing on it because it's fun too).
Tommy, the black and white cat, was on his lead secured to a post in the garden. He wanted to explore, but we didn't want to lose him so he has a little harness and a lead to stop him from wandering off. For an hour he happily roamed about and ate the grass, sniffed the plants and generally practiced looking cute and curious.
After a while we decided to swap and let Tigsy - a brown and black tabby cat who is tommy's litter-mate out into the garden, so Tommy goes back in the house, and Tigsy comes out on the lead. My nephew kept occasionally going inside and leaving the door open, so I had to catch Tommy (who evidently loved being outside) and return him to the house.
Later on, it gets colder. We've brought the cats in and are now relaxing inside. It occurs to me that we've not seen Tommy, and during a search of the house, I realise why as I find both the hallway door and the back door to the garden open. The little dude's wandered out, and despite half an hour of looking, was nowhere to be seen. He's apparently done this before, so we left a cat box outside for him, and ordered some food.
I spent the next two hours wondering what he was up to, and I realised that while I don't get on with cats in general, I took a liking to Tommy and Tigsy because they're both cute and sociable.
Anyway. Time passes, and while we're eating our food we suddenly hear this loud miaowing/screeching outside. Evidently two cats that don't like each other. One of them is Tommy. We both leap up from our food, my sis runs outside and comes back in carrying a struggling Tommy, who is soaking wet. Evidently he's so psyched from his fight that he is scared of/wants to attack everything.
We lock the doors as my sis cuddles him, we're glad he's okay, and we're glad to have him back.
He moves in my sisters arms, and with alarm, we both notice that he's left a bloody fur print down my sister's arm - he is hurt after all!
Of course, what should we do? The vets were closed, the PDSA was closed, what were we sposed to do with this injured cat? Tommy calms down, and gives my sister the opportunity to examine him - a small injury to his back right paw, he can still walk on the leg and the bleeding has stopped. We both kept an eye on him as he walks around quite happily, occasionally licking at his leg, but still frightened, jumping at every sound.
Tigsy comes in to check on him, and starts sniffing him. Tommy sees Tigsy sniffing him and calms right down, glad to be home and back in the company of his litter-mate.
And then Tigsy's lifts his tail straight upright, the fur standing out on end, making it super bushy and 3 times the size, and starts emitting the most alarming howling/whining noise I've ever heard him make, his eyes constantly fixed on Tommy's. Tommy responds in kind, by doing the same, and starts spitting and hissing. Uh oh.
Anyway we get the cats seperated, and while we're checking if Tommy is ok in the kitchen, Tigsy's sat on the stairs making this weird noise.
The two cats have got to live together though, and in the abscence of any advice from the cat charities (out of hour, no one to talk to) we determine that we've got to get the cats back used to each other. Tommy stinks - we notice that he's soaking wet, because not to put too fine a point on it, it looks like the other cat has pissed all over him, making him stink of enemy-cat. We rub a little pet shampoo foam over his back, taking care to keep clear of his leg, and the howling from Tigsy subsides a bit.
We get both of them on a lead, I've got one, my sis has the other, and keeping them close and under control, we let them first see, and approach each other.
Again, both start howling and hissing at each other, but this dies down as they get used to each other again.
Over time, we let them get closer, and they howl less and less and become more accustomed to each other. Eventually, Tommy sits down almost next to Tigsy, who responds by going to sleep.
We let them both off the leads, ready to seperate them if there are any problems.
Tommy goes straight over to the corner and starts relaxing, while Tigsy roams around the living room. He roams round close to the chair, turns round the corner, and there's Tommy.
Both cats freeze, and we both intently watch Tigsy gingerly walk up to Tommy, ready to stop any fighting.
Tigsy starts sniffing Tommy intently, while Tommy sits there and lets it happen.
And then Tigsy starts licking him - literally, he's there licking Tommy's forehead, almost as if he's welcoming him back to the house, and identifying himself as a friend. Tommy growls a little bit eventually, and Tigsy responds by wandering off and sitting down nearby. Seems we have peace at last.
I went home after this, but according to a phone call this afternoon, Tommy has been examined and is recovering nicely. Both he and Tigsy are getting on as well as ever now, and life seems to have returned to normal.
So what else have I been up to? It was my brother's birthday a couple of days ago, and we all decided to go to Pizza Hut to have a nice family celebration. Of course, as always happens, my mum waited until I was totally skint (had no money) before announcing that it's my brother's birthday in xyz number of days - three days before payday. I remember though that my brother asked me to order something for his camera a while ago, and while I never received the full order, I kept one half of it (they kept my money - meh). Operating on the basis that something is better than nothing, I grab his impromptu "present", and off we go.
What followed was a nice family night, less of a birthday party and more of a family occasion. It turns out my bro never did buy a screen protector - my present to him - so hopefully this one will come in useful for him. Of course I felt a little guilty that that was all I was able to offer him, especially since ht and his fiancee had bought me two lovely presents for my birthday, but I did mitigate it by remembering the "Buy the laptop or don't buy it, I don't care, and I'm not lowering my price" attitude he gave me before I bought my laptop. Seemed more than a little mercenary.
Still, I bet it was a disappointing birthday for him, which is sad, but seems to be for the par in our family when you consider how crappy my birthday was. Still, will keep my eye out for something I think he'll like - it would make a nice random surprise for him to get a belated birthday present :).
My ebay auction turned out to be a disaster. I bought the lens for £35, and put it up for auction with a Polariser Filter (value approx £15) included. I was very pleased as the price went up and up, at £30 with several hours to go. I figured that it would at least get to £50 and let me buy my new lens. I drifted off to sleep, having been up all day, and woke up later. The first thing I did was check the clock - 02:30am. The auction would be finished by now, time to check how much I'd made.
With horror, I saw that the final sale price was £31.30! There was no last minute bidding frenzy, in fact no bidding at all for the last three hours. Every time I want to buy something, bidders are snapping at it like bloodthirsty sharks, and something triples in value every 10 minutes! My lens when I bought it went from £6 to £35 in the last five minutes, why didn't this happen with mine?!
The thing is now that the bloke doesn't seem to be interested in paying for the damn thing.
Good. Hopefully I can relist the bloody thing and get a proper price for it.
Meh.
Still, I took the camera out today and got some good snaps of the local ducks again, so hopefully a few of those will have come out okay. I'll see to them later.
And now I'm off to drink Fanta and watch The Bill.
See ya.
And now we come to an entry I wrote a few days ago. I just never got round to uploading it because I'm lazy like that.
Chapter Two - "Kickass Brio" (Friday 18th April, 2008)
So I’m sat here on the makeshift bed we’ve put together for my ickle nephew, in the now almost completely refurbished spare room. Yep, I booked a day off work so I could go to a hospital appointment, and I seem to have spent the majority of the day moving, transporting, redistributing and otherwise relocating household junk - plenty of it mine – from the spare room/bathroom, to the loft.
I went along to my hospital appointment fairly quickly though, in the same seemingly ramshackle (admittedly it is having major renovation work carried out on it at the moment) building.
I was asked to wait, this time in the corridor outside the waiting room. As a good ten or twelve of us sat there in this dimly lit drywall lined corridor, I mused on the paper sign stating “please bear with us while renovation work is taking place” – or words to that effect.
I was seen surprisingly quickly; that is, I’d not got my arse on the seat before I was up again, and had a pleasant chat with the anaesthetist.
I then came home, sunk a can of hyper juice, and got on with building my nephew’s favourite toy.
See, my nephew is a big fan of Brio – a wooden train set type thing. You purchase the track yourself and build the track in any form you want – it’s kinda cool, you can build any track you want.
Now, the saying goes that “Model trains are like boobs. They’re meant for children but sooner or later, grown men end up playing with them”, and I suppose that’s the case here. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t pushing the trains around making brum brum noises or anything, but I did, as I always do, take great pleasure in building the largest and most elaborate tracks that I can. I like beating my own previous creations in terms of size and complexity, and the bigger the track, the happier my nephew.
So as I was saying, I’m sat here right now, my nephew is intently playing with the track, so far we’ve had “train races”, and “train rescue”. I’ll be right back – I’ve got to tag along while he finds something to do elsewhere. Whatever he’s doing, it sounds noisy.
Right, normal operation has been resumed; he’s distracting himself with a playmobil fire engine and a big toy crane that I used to play with when I was a kid. All in all, it’s pretty relaxed. We’re both chilling out in the nice new room, him with his train, crane and fire engine, and me with my laptop and my camera.
The urge to play with toys doesn’t dissipate with age, it seems.
What else have I been up to? Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time duck shooting – that is, photographing the ducks. I’m really happy with four of the photos, so that’s good. I’ve put my little 50mm lens up for sale so that I can buy a more modern Autofocus version of the same lens, and I also intend to get an SB800; A very sparkly speedlight. It kinda surprised me when I had a look at one at my bro’s house. Turn the speedlight on and it powers on with the same high-voltage whine that defibrillators make. I had to resist the urge to shout “clear!” before triggering it.
I’m also looking at selling an engine from one of my old bikes. It’s worth maybe £250/£200, so with some luck, I’ll also be able to buy a Nikkor 18-200 VR lens. You know, the one actually designed for my camera. [Edit, 25th April - no you won't be able to buy that lens, it's over £400! You must have meant the 55-200 VR.]
But hey, my life is so interesting right now that I’ve run out of things to update you on, so I’m gonna carry on chilling out here, and will no doubt end up chasing my little nephew round until he tires out and goes to sleep.
See ya!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Any object, small or large, can be photographed subjectively, all you need...
Sorry, I was trying to come up with a witty title - my box of witty titles is getting rather empty these days. I was looking for inspiration in my new book. Yes, that's right, my book "ebay shots that sell" finally arrived! Yay! Or not.
See, Half of you when you read the title will think "Photos that sell! It's a book about how to sell photos" which plenty of people do on ebay. The other half of you will think "It's a book about photos that make selling products easier". Half B, you're thinking too deeply about things, lighten up.
What arrived was a very sparkly very nicely done book with well over 150 pages, dedicated to helping you get the best out of ebay, using your cameras to help you shift whatever it is you want to swap for money. Which was great.
Unfortunatley, what I ordered, or what I thought I'd ordered, was a book all about how to take the sorts of photos people find appealing, and how to sell those photos online for money. I was basically looking for advice on making money with my camera.
Which leads me semi neatly to my second subject of the night - the trip to the airport passed off perfectly. We got there around 8am, parked up and went out back to set up the kit. No sooner had we got out the back than out of nowhere, over 110 tons of Boeing 757 flew at 160mph more or less past my nose.
What followed was four hours of photographic heaven, these massive aircraft would fly over at maybe 500 feet or so, tops, so close you could see which windows had had their shutters pulled by sleepy passengers, and which ones hadn't. Aircraft landed literally every 2 minutes or so. Every now and again it would go quiet but only until the jet wake of aircraft taking off on the second runway scissored past us, shockwaves cutting the air in half, like invisible bullets shooting past us. Every now and again we'd hear a roar, louder than thunder, and watch as yet another massive aircraft climbed into the sky. I noticed that with one 747, despite the incredible size and weight of the thing, it climbed into the sky in a slow graceful manner, on a constant slope, giving us a view right down its back, almost daring gravity to try to pull it back down again.
I'd noticed that for the first two hours of us being there, there were no 747's. This surprised me, because we were at the UK's third busiest airport. When I asked though, my mate told me that there were no 747's yet because they only used the largest aircraft on the long haul flights, and the aircraft on those flights, typically from the US, hadn't had time to arrive yet.
Eventually though, my mate called me back from my wild photo taking spell, and pointed at something 10 miles out heading towards us. He told me that he could tell it was big, by the way the aircraft behind it was hanging back extra far, to avoid being caught in its wake. As it got closer, it became clear that there were four engines on this one, not two like the others. A 747!
So, I legged it down to the far end of the beer garden, almost at the airport boundary fence, set the camera to continuous high speed shooting and with a couple of bursts, took six or seven photos of this thing as it came over the trees, roaring past me with its flaps down, and touched down on the runway almost out of sight, but certainly not out of earshot. It passed me close enough to read the name on its fuselage; "Pretty Woman" (link is NOT my photo - I'm getting better, but I'm not that good yet!), and she definitley was.
In other news, I've bought myself a laptop, yes, a nice new (not new, first released in 2004) Toshiba Satellite A30. I've got it running okay now, got all the software I need, and some more memory on the way soon to cure its feets and starts. Not a bad asking price for it either, so that's worked out pretty well too. I can now view my photos as I take them, on a 15" screen.
Well, that's just about it, there's other stuff that's happened of course, but this is all about my life at the minute that I want to look on and remember, the rest I'd rather forget at this point, thankyou very much.
I'm going to leave you with some (some better than others) photos :). The first of which will of course, be "Pretty woman" - this is one of mine, in fact, all of them are, and I'm quite happy with them :).
What's going on with this formatting? I'm not sure. They should let you put tables in or something.
But, before I go, have a look at my sparkly (it will be sparkly eventually) laptop :).
Bye! :)
See, Half of you when you read the title will think "Photos that sell! It's a book about how to sell photos" which plenty of people do on ebay. The other half of you will think "It's a book about photos that make selling products easier". Half B, you're thinking too deeply about things, lighten up.
What arrived was a very sparkly very nicely done book with well over 150 pages, dedicated to helping you get the best out of ebay, using your cameras to help you shift whatever it is you want to swap for money. Which was great.
Unfortunatley, what I ordered, or what I thought I'd ordered, was a book all about how to take the sorts of photos people find appealing, and how to sell those photos online for money. I was basically looking for advice on making money with my camera.
Which leads me semi neatly to my second subject of the night - the trip to the airport passed off perfectly. We got there around 8am, parked up and went out back to set up the kit. No sooner had we got out the back than out of nowhere, over 110 tons of Boeing 757 flew at 160mph more or less past my nose.
What followed was four hours of photographic heaven, these massive aircraft would fly over at maybe 500 feet or so, tops, so close you could see which windows had had their shutters pulled by sleepy passengers, and which ones hadn't. Aircraft landed literally every 2 minutes or so. Every now and again it would go quiet but only until the jet wake of aircraft taking off on the second runway scissored past us, shockwaves cutting the air in half, like invisible bullets shooting past us. Every now and again we'd hear a roar, louder than thunder, and watch as yet another massive aircraft climbed into the sky. I noticed that with one 747, despite the incredible size and weight of the thing, it climbed into the sky in a slow graceful manner, on a constant slope, giving us a view right down its back, almost daring gravity to try to pull it back down again.
I'd noticed that for the first two hours of us being there, there were no 747's. This surprised me, because we were at the UK's third busiest airport. When I asked though, my mate told me that there were no 747's yet because they only used the largest aircraft on the long haul flights, and the aircraft on those flights, typically from the US, hadn't had time to arrive yet.
Eventually though, my mate called me back from my wild photo taking spell, and pointed at something 10 miles out heading towards us. He told me that he could tell it was big, by the way the aircraft behind it was hanging back extra far, to avoid being caught in its wake. As it got closer, it became clear that there were four engines on this one, not two like the others. A 747!
So, I legged it down to the far end of the beer garden, almost at the airport boundary fence, set the camera to continuous high speed shooting and with a couple of bursts, took six or seven photos of this thing as it came over the trees, roaring past me with its flaps down, and touched down on the runway almost out of sight, but certainly not out of earshot. It passed me close enough to read the name on its fuselage; "Pretty Woman" (link is NOT my photo - I'm getting better, but I'm not that good yet!), and she definitley was.
In other news, I've bought myself a laptop, yes, a nice new (not new, first released in 2004) Toshiba Satellite A30. I've got it running okay now, got all the software I need, and some more memory on the way soon to cure its feets and starts. Not a bad asking price for it either, so that's worked out pretty well too. I can now view my photos as I take them, on a 15" screen.
Well, that's just about it, there's other stuff that's happened of course, but this is all about my life at the minute that I want to look on and remember, the rest I'd rather forget at this point, thankyou very much.
I'm going to leave you with some (some better than others) photos :). The first of which will of course, be "Pretty woman" - this is one of mine, in fact, all of them are, and I'm quite happy with them :).
What's going on with this formatting? I'm not sure. They should let you put tables in or something.
But, before I go, have a look at my sparkly (it will be sparkly eventually) laptop :).
Bye! :)
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
More sparkliness
Okay, so a few things have happened since my last blog entry.
Pork rinds for one - last time I hadn't eaten any pork rinds, whereas now I've just eaten a packet of them. They were very yummy, but have left me feeling slightly ill. All that saturated fat.
My phone too, that's changed. The glass front of it has somehow been smashed, so I've had to order a new front (not as expensive as you'd think) to replace it. Which is fair enough, I like my phone, it's a nice slim handset and while other phones come in and go out of fashion, this one seems to have a timeless look about it, it's a design that never really becomes unfashionable.
I've also been throwing money at my photography, which devours it like a great big money devouring thing. One of my latest presents is my new lens. An old, but very very fast 50mm lens.
By "fast" I mean that the lens lets more light in over a given period of time, compared to other lenses. This means that the sensor doesn't have to be exposed to the light for as long, which means that exposures are much shorter. How "fast" is my lens? On a decent sunny day, it will happily allow me to take photos with exposures as short as one eight-thousandth of a second. This is fast enough to freeze the rotor blades of a helicopter in flight, fast enough to freeze aircraft propellers or car wheels.
I've also bought a rocket blower, in addition to something else that arrived only a couple of days ago.
As I mentioned in my birthday blog, you saw that my brother very kindly and thoughtfully bought me a lowepro micro trekker. a fantastic lil camera rucksack that allows me to take my camera gear here there and everywhere. However, my enthusiasm for photography has overtaken my available storage space, and it was only a couple of months before the microtrekker was not only full to capacity, but too small. This isn't a deficiency on the micro trekker's part - it was designed to be small, compact and easy to carry, and this it certainly is. But with a camera body with battery pack, six (at least seven before the end of the summer) lenses (count em folks!), two books, a rocket blower, and (by this time next month) a notebook computer and an SB800 speedlight, the little micro trekker found its capacity outmatched by the sheer amount of kit I own/want to own. Then there's the problem of carrying the tripod. A dead weight weighing nearly four kilos. While it's true that I could lash the tripod back to the micro trekker, it would be like carrying round a heavy and unbalanced letter P on my back.
So I went to 7dayshop and bought one of lowepro's largest models, the Compu Trekker AW. This much larger bag arrived a couple of days ago, and has vastly increased capacity. Not only is it designed to carry the tripod on its back, it's also capable of carrying a notebook computer and all the necessary cables. I've stuffed it full of all my camera related stuff and I'm still using only maybe 55% of the internal space of the bag. Plenty of room in there for lenses and a speedlight, and the tripod goes down the back of the bag without any problems at all. Ish.
Anyway, I've got to get all my stuff ready for tomorrow's photoshoot. That's right, tomorrow I'm going out with a mate, he's bringing his camera kit and I'm taking mine, and we're going to one of the local airports. There's a pub right next door to one of the taxiways, and the wings of the larger aircraft literally pass over your head while you're stood in the beer garden.
(56k warning, LARGE image!) View from the balcony of the pub, looking towards the beer garden. So we're taking our camera gear there, and want to get there nice and early so we catch all the international morning traffic (first time anyone's ever gone out with the intention of actually CATCHING the traffic eh?). Hopefully I should get some decent photos.
So now I've got an hour of cleaning all my gear, charging all my batteries etc etc.
Will post again soon, later! :)
Have some pictures. My computrekker all locked up and ready to go, and just how much free space there is inside :).
Pork rinds for one - last time I hadn't eaten any pork rinds, whereas now I've just eaten a packet of them. They were very yummy, but have left me feeling slightly ill. All that saturated fat.
My phone too, that's changed. The glass front of it has somehow been smashed, so I've had to order a new front (not as expensive as you'd think) to replace it. Which is fair enough, I like my phone, it's a nice slim handset and while other phones come in and go out of fashion, this one seems to have a timeless look about it, it's a design that never really becomes unfashionable.
I've also been throwing money at my photography, which devours it like a great big money devouring thing. One of my latest presents is my new lens. An old, but very very fast 50mm lens.
By "fast" I mean that the lens lets more light in over a given period of time, compared to other lenses. This means that the sensor doesn't have to be exposed to the light for as long, which means that exposures are much shorter. How "fast" is my lens? On a decent sunny day, it will happily allow me to take photos with exposures as short as one eight-thousandth of a second. This is fast enough to freeze the rotor blades of a helicopter in flight, fast enough to freeze aircraft propellers or car wheels.
I've also bought a rocket blower, in addition to something else that arrived only a couple of days ago.
As I mentioned in my birthday blog, you saw that my brother very kindly and thoughtfully bought me a lowepro micro trekker. a fantastic lil camera rucksack that allows me to take my camera gear here there and everywhere. However, my enthusiasm for photography has overtaken my available storage space, and it was only a couple of months before the microtrekker was not only full to capacity, but too small. This isn't a deficiency on the micro trekker's part - it was designed to be small, compact and easy to carry, and this it certainly is. But with a camera body with battery pack, six (at least seven before the end of the summer) lenses (count em folks!), two books, a rocket blower, and (by this time next month) a notebook computer and an SB800 speedlight, the little micro trekker found its capacity outmatched by the sheer amount of kit I own/want to own. Then there's the problem of carrying the tripod. A dead weight weighing nearly four kilos. While it's true that I could lash the tripod back to the micro trekker, it would be like carrying round a heavy and unbalanced letter P on my back.
So I went to 7dayshop and bought one of lowepro's largest models, the Compu Trekker AW. This much larger bag arrived a couple of days ago, and has vastly increased capacity. Not only is it designed to carry the tripod on its back, it's also capable of carrying a notebook computer and all the necessary cables. I've stuffed it full of all my camera related stuff and I'm still using only maybe 55% of the internal space of the bag. Plenty of room in there for lenses and a speedlight, and the tripod goes down the back of the bag without any problems at all. Ish.
Anyway, I've got to get all my stuff ready for tomorrow's photoshoot. That's right, tomorrow I'm going out with a mate, he's bringing his camera kit and I'm taking mine, and we're going to one of the local airports. There's a pub right next door to one of the taxiways, and the wings of the larger aircraft literally pass over your head while you're stood in the beer garden.
(56k warning, LARGE image!) View from the balcony of the pub, looking towards the beer garden. So we're taking our camera gear there, and want to get there nice and early so we catch all the international morning traffic (first time anyone's ever gone out with the intention of actually CATCHING the traffic eh?). Hopefully I should get some decent photos.
So now I've got an hour of cleaning all my gear, charging all my batteries etc etc.
Will post again soon, later! :)
Have some pictures. My computrekker all locked up and ready to go, and just how much free space there is inside :).
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Drunk as a skunk...
Ever wanted to know what I did after many many alcoholic drinks?
It's not that interesting I'm afraid. Despite the fact that at this very moment I'm having trouble convincing my eyes that I do in fact own only one LCD display, despite the fact that I am convincing my brain that those sparkly 3d cinemas are old hat and my monitor isn't displaying two lines of text at the same time, I am managing to have a good time.
I am sitting watching many music videos which are invariably german in origin, singing alone where I can find the lyrics (i'm surprisingly good at singing german), and that's about it really.
No drunken rant, no political speech, nothing interesting i'm afraid, just me, drunk, and more boring than usual.
Have fun. I'd say I am, but it remains to be see until tomorrow, whether it was worth it.
So what else is on the cards?
Rammstein's normally taciturn and introvert guitarist, Richard Z Kruspe has formed his own band. This is definitley old news. But I don't care because frankly, anyone who keeps abreast of the news and current affairs has better things to do than to waste time on my random ramblings of shite. His band, Emigrate, seems (on the face of it [that means "after hearing one tune"]) to be fairly English oriented. There's something I like about this video, it kinda puts me in mind of Gary Numan.
Either way, if one fantastic band can turn into two fantastic bands, that's good, very good.
I'm off now, to drink more until I can think of something useful to say.
It's not that interesting I'm afraid. Despite the fact that at this very moment I'm having trouble convincing my eyes that I do in fact own only one LCD display, despite the fact that I am convincing my brain that those sparkly 3d cinemas are old hat and my monitor isn't displaying two lines of text at the same time, I am managing to have a good time.
I am sitting watching many music videos which are invariably german in origin, singing alone where I can find the lyrics (i'm surprisingly good at singing german), and that's about it really.
No drunken rant, no political speech, nothing interesting i'm afraid, just me, drunk, and more boring than usual.
Have fun. I'd say I am, but it remains to be see until tomorrow, whether it was worth it.
So what else is on the cards?
Rammstein's normally taciturn and introvert guitarist, Richard Z Kruspe has formed his own band. This is definitley old news. But I don't care because frankly, anyone who keeps abreast of the news and current affairs has better things to do than to waste time on my random ramblings of shite. His band, Emigrate, seems (on the face of it [that means "after hearing one tune"]) to be fairly English oriented. There's something I like about this video, it kinda puts me in mind of Gary Numan.
Either way, if one fantastic band can turn into two fantastic bands, that's good, very good.
I'm off now, to drink more until I can think of something useful to say.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
News Blackout... Or "Blackout News"...
Or even "cab elk no stu w" which the online anagram generator insists is proper English.
Yes, I'm sat here in my cold, dark and drafty room, in almost complete darkness. I'm not complaining though, I've got my hangover water, and my Admiral's Pie. So I'm in a generally good mood today.
Why am I sat in complete darkness? Well it's to do with this Earth Day thing. The general idea is that major cities around the world turn off all unneccessary electric lighting and equipment from 8pm-9pm local time. It's one of those symbolic gestures, though I daresay it should amount to a pretty cost saving for the cities as a whole.
I joined in, turning out my lights and all my electrical appliances (excluding the computer, obviously) not because I believe that humankind is going to singlehandedly destroy a four and a half billion year old planet, but because in general I approve of green technology, as long as it doesn't negatively affect me. This despite our (soon to be ex) government's policy of taxing anything not-green into oblivion, regardless of the fact that other much larger much more polluting countries have no pollution legislation or interest in energy efficiency whatsoever.
I've always seen our country's stance on climate change as being like the cat that stands in the bear's path while the lion sits idle, but nevertheless, I approve of symbolic gestures in general, so here I am, in the dark.
So what did I do today? Actually, and in a manner that's completely unlike me, I woke up at 4am, rolled over, went back to sleep, woke up at 07:40 and got out of bed. I left for work nice and early, taking the opportunity to have breakfast on the way to work, I relaxed when I got at work, had my cup of coffee and everything - it's been a pretty laid back and easy going kind of day. I worked. Well, I sat in my chair, mumbled and stared at my screen, so officially I worked, which when your boss isn't SUPER hot on facts and figures, is pretty much the same thing.
I came home to discover that one of my ebay presents has arrived - I got paid on wednesday so I went on a (random but inexpensive) spending spree, ordering a few little odds and sods that I kinda wanted. So what arrived today?
A lens reversing ring (ebay item). Yay, go me. Basically it's a piece of metal with a screw thread on one side, and an F mount on the other. It cost me four quid ($8 at current exchange rate). For a thin, lightweight and almost insubstantial piece of metal.
I felt kinda taken for a ride, until I actually put it on my camera and gave it a go.
Well, it definitley does the job. Wow. If only £4 could go as far as this little piece of kit in every job.
Just a little note to tell you all that I accidentally closed firefox while typing this - thank feck for automatic backups!
This thing has given my camera capabilities it didn't have before, it has essentially taken the place of a dedicated macro lens costing over a hundred times as much, and while a dedicated lens might produce better results, I don't have £400 to kinda spend on something I won't use that often.
But yeah, I came in from work, opened my package, and started playing around with the camera. Out come the gems collection, and hey, out come the photos. It's a decent piece of kit my camera as I say about 8 times a day. Light goes in one end and decent photos come out the other.
So here's my camera set up with the lens reversing ring - notice that you can hardly see the ring itself, but how all the lenses are the wrong way round on the camera. Notice how the huge lumbering hulk of a camera is focused on a tiny little jewel parked next to a ruler, the sole purpose of which is to highlight its tinyness.
I figured that for macro photography, the best subject was my gem collection. the little yellow thing in the photo is an 8mm citrine. Under the power of the lenses though, it became so easy to turn it into something spectacular.
Well, kinda spectacular, see, one of the bitches about lens reversers is that the lens has no connection to the camera, so there's no autofocus, there's no apeture control (at least not from the camera's point of view) in laymans terms, once you put a lens on the wrong way round on a camera, the camera can't help you - you're on your own and the photos you take, you take without help from the camera's focus or light sensors.
I took one photo as a kind of reference guide, just to show you how small these stones actually are. Here, you can see how tiny this stone is (Yes, the ruler is incredibly out of focus - one of the problems with macro photography is that when you're taking photos of really small things, you lose all of your depth of field - this basically means that it's impossible to get more than a tiny area in focus).
Once I'd got the practice in, I started playing around, got a few more gems arranged together and took a few photos until I came up with some good results.
Yes, I'm sat here in my cold, dark and drafty room, in almost complete darkness. I'm not complaining though, I've got my hangover water, and my Admiral's Pie. So I'm in a generally good mood today.
Why am I sat in complete darkness? Well it's to do with this Earth Day thing. The general idea is that major cities around the world turn off all unneccessary electric lighting and equipment from 8pm-9pm local time. It's one of those symbolic gestures, though I daresay it should amount to a pretty cost saving for the cities as a whole.
I joined in, turning out my lights and all my electrical appliances (excluding the computer, obviously) not because I believe that humankind is going to singlehandedly destroy a four and a half billion year old planet, but because in general I approve of green technology, as long as it doesn't negatively affect me. This despite our (soon to be ex) government's policy of taxing anything not-green into oblivion, regardless of the fact that other much larger much more polluting countries have no pollution legislation or interest in energy efficiency whatsoever.
I've always seen our country's stance on climate change as being like the cat that stands in the bear's path while the lion sits idle, but nevertheless, I approve of symbolic gestures in general, so here I am, in the dark.
So what did I do today? Actually, and in a manner that's completely unlike me, I woke up at 4am, rolled over, went back to sleep, woke up at 07:40 and got out of bed. I left for work nice and early, taking the opportunity to have breakfast on the way to work, I relaxed when I got at work, had my cup of coffee and everything - it's been a pretty laid back and easy going kind of day. I worked. Well, I sat in my chair, mumbled and stared at my screen, so officially I worked, which when your boss isn't SUPER hot on facts and figures, is pretty much the same thing.
I came home to discover that one of my ebay presents has arrived - I got paid on wednesday so I went on a (random but inexpensive) spending spree, ordering a few little odds and sods that I kinda wanted. So what arrived today?
A lens reversing ring (ebay item). Yay, go me. Basically it's a piece of metal with a screw thread on one side, and an F mount on the other. It cost me four quid ($8 at current exchange rate). For a thin, lightweight and almost insubstantial piece of metal.
I felt kinda taken for a ride, until I actually put it on my camera and gave it a go.
Well, it definitley does the job. Wow. If only £4 could go as far as this little piece of kit in every job.
Just a little note to tell you all that I accidentally closed firefox while typing this - thank feck for automatic backups!
This thing has given my camera capabilities it didn't have before, it has essentially taken the place of a dedicated macro lens costing over a hundred times as much, and while a dedicated lens might produce better results, I don't have £400 to kinda spend on something I won't use that often.
But yeah, I came in from work, opened my package, and started playing around with the camera. Out come the gems collection, and hey, out come the photos. It's a decent piece of kit my camera as I say about 8 times a day. Light goes in one end and decent photos come out the other.
So here's my camera set up with the lens reversing ring - notice that you can hardly see the ring itself, but how all the lenses are the wrong way round on the camera. Notice how the huge lumbering hulk of a camera is focused on a tiny little jewel parked next to a ruler, the sole purpose of which is to highlight its tinyness.I figured that for macro photography, the best subject was my gem collection. the little yellow thing in the photo is an 8mm citrine. Under the power of the lenses though, it became so easy to turn it into something spectacular.
Well, kinda spectacular, see, one of the bitches about lens reversers is that the lens has no connection to the camera, so there's no autofocus, there's no apeture control (at least not from the camera's point of view) in laymans terms, once you put a lens on the wrong way round on a camera, the camera can't help you - you're on your own and the photos you take, you take without help from the camera's focus or light sensors.
I took one photo as a kind of reference guide, just to show you how small these stones actually are. Here, you can see how tiny this stone is (Yes, the ruler is incredibly out of focus - one of the problems with macro photography is that when you're taking photos of really small things, you lose all of your depth of field - this basically means that it's impossible to get more than a tiny area in focus).
Once I'd got the practice in, I started playing around, got a few more gems arranged together and took a few photos until I came up with some good results.
This was the best I think. The largest stone is only 10mm across, the smallest only 4mm. Those lenses sure do a good job of capturing all the detail.
Well, now Im off to spend more time on my computer, and start my *holiday*. Okay, I spose I'd best explain.
I had to go to hospital on tuesday. Hmm where to start. The beginning I spose, the beginning is always a good place to start. Well skipping a load of random rubbish, I've got to go to hospital to have my jaw operated on, remember?
So we finally find this place. It's down a backstreet - sure this's the center of Britain's fifth biggest city so there are a lot of backstreets, but I was still kinda worried. The other buildings, as if in a cartoon, seemed to lean inwards at the top, the traffic was non existant...
I got in and handed in my paperwork and they sent me up the stairs - polished, tidy stairs reeking of the unique brand of "clean" that only hospitals (even our MRSA infested hospitals) contain, I worked my way to a waiting room - essentially a corridor that had been squared off with a couple of partitions that looked like they were in the process of being replaced, with a couple of desks and a few chairs shoved in there. No natural light, only the insipid yellowy green light of the hospital's corridor lights. Every now and again, we'd hear a rumble as the lift/elevator/whatever rumbled up past the floors.
I sat there for about twenty minutes, watching random people come in some go off into some bright doorway filled with natural light, in the manner of one leaving purgatory for heaven (I am not religious! It was a metaphor). Eventually my turn came and I was led out of this almost Harkonnen medical waiting room, past rows of clean sparkly dentist's chairs.
I sat opposite a consultant, an austere scary dude in his late forties or early fifties, who I expected to basically ask me in polite terms "what do you want, what are you doing here"
Actually it was a lot better than that, he explained that loads of people request sedatives when having dental operations (particularly ones that involve scalpels being taken to their gums and drills being taken to their jawbones!) so it's nothing to be ashamed of. Besides it's nothing i've not done before.
He tells me that "You won't be under general anaesthetic, you will be sedated. It's a needle in the back of your hand, and it doesn't put you to sleep, but it does make you feel like you've had eight or nine pints of lager". I spose my yooffull appearance must have convinced him this was a suitable comparison. At least I'm young to somebody.
Either way, you're given a nine-can reward for a needle in the hand? I'll have two. Maybe three.
I hope I don't come out of that place drunk.
anyway, he got me in the dentist's chair remarking "don't worry we're not going to do anything today".
Do I look worried? Well, probably yes, but still. Get off my case.
So I took tuesday off, chilled out, got home, chilled out more. Then I had to work four days in a row - which for me is a lot because i work four days a week - two on, one off, two on, two off.
So now I've booked a week off to get myself back to my normal lazy lifestyle. I've got a few more pressies to recieve from ebay, so I can't wait.
And as a final note, my mouse started working randomly today, seems the trouble is in the charging, not in the using. Maybe I can keep it afterall.
Well, now Im off to spend more time on my computer, and start my *holiday*. Okay, I spose I'd best explain.
CHAPTER TWO
So we finally find this place. It's down a backstreet - sure this's the center of Britain's fifth biggest city so there are a lot of backstreets, but I was still kinda worried. The other buildings, as if in a cartoon, seemed to lean inwards at the top, the traffic was non existant...
I got in and handed in my paperwork and they sent me up the stairs - polished, tidy stairs reeking of the unique brand of "clean" that only hospitals (even our MRSA infested hospitals) contain, I worked my way to a waiting room - essentially a corridor that had been squared off with a couple of partitions that looked like they were in the process of being replaced, with a couple of desks and a few chairs shoved in there. No natural light, only the insipid yellowy green light of the hospital's corridor lights. Every now and again, we'd hear a rumble as the lift/elevator/whatever rumbled up past the floors.
I sat there for about twenty minutes, watching random people come in some go off into some bright doorway filled with natural light, in the manner of one leaving purgatory for heaven (I am not religious! It was a metaphor). Eventually my turn came and I was led out of this almost Harkonnen medical waiting room, past rows of clean sparkly dentist's chairs.
I sat opposite a consultant, an austere scary dude in his late forties or early fifties, who I expected to basically ask me in polite terms "what do you want, what are you doing here"
Actually it was a lot better than that, he explained that loads of people request sedatives when having dental operations (particularly ones that involve scalpels being taken to their gums and drills being taken to their jawbones!) so it's nothing to be ashamed of. Besides it's nothing i've not done before.
He tells me that "You won't be under general anaesthetic, you will be sedated. It's a needle in the back of your hand, and it doesn't put you to sleep, but it does make you feel like you've had eight or nine pints of lager". I spose my yooffull appearance must have convinced him this was a suitable comparison. At least I'm young to somebody.
Either way, you're given a nine-can reward for a needle in the hand? I'll have two. Maybe three.
I hope I don't come out of that place drunk.
anyway, he got me in the dentist's chair remarking "don't worry we're not going to do anything today".
Do I look worried? Well, probably yes, but still. Get off my case.
So I took tuesday off, chilled out, got home, chilled out more. Then I had to work four days in a row - which for me is a lot because i work four days a week - two on, one off, two on, two off.
So now I've booked a week off to get myself back to my normal lazy lifestyle. I've got a few more pressies to recieve from ebay, so I can't wait.
And as a final note, my mouse started working randomly today, seems the trouble is in the charging, not in the using. Maybe I can keep it afterall.
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