Thingomy.co.uk

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this — and a lot has been going on.

The first of the 2 camping trips was … interesting.

It was a little badly organised form the start — they decided on a venue 2 days before leaving, hired a minibus and arainged for another car to go and 5 people to go on a train. I was on the train, and I was told what time to be at the station. Only when I got to the station did I ifnd out that the venue (knockongoroch farm) was a little outside Aire — IE the middle of fricken nowhere.

We were to be picked up by said minibus at the station.

After changing trains in glasgow, we got to Aire station at about 2200, black dark, pouring with rain. We got a phone call:

“ah sorry guys you’ll have ot catch a taxi … the car broke down, and the minibus is upside down in a river”

10 minutes later realisation set in that this infact was not a prank, and it was actually real.

We found a taxi rank, and persuided a taxi driver it was worthwhile. £40 he said, fair enough, it’s a bit of a tight situation we’re in, and there are 5 of us.

We drove for a long time, then pulled up at the end of a road “It’s a bit rough, so I won’t go up, but it’s a couple of hundred yards up there round the corner” he said.

So (2300 now BTW) we walked round the corner and found a bunch of houses, no camp site, so we scratched out heads for a bit, called the folks at the camp who told us to look for a wooden bridge… the hell? We also heard from the folks in the car, they were in a tow truck heading * towards * the camp site — nutters.

We eventually went ot a house, and knocked on the door, a very nice lady came to the door and siad “knockenwhere? … oh there… you’re a long way from there… … that’s about 16 miles…” she game us tea, and offered for us to camp in the garden over night. slight problem, we had a 3 man tent, and 5 people.

As near as I could work out, the back wheel of the minibus had missed a bridge after a corner, and went over sideways, noone was significantly hurt, unless you consider a £750 insurance excess hurt.

The people in the car spent 6 hours in the middle of the night walking in the “200 yard” road to the camp site, with no torch. They arrived at 5AM.

From there it improves very little, but that’s most of the noteworthy stuff. I had always used the polacy of having a plan B, but will be taking it more seriusly form now on.

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The second camping trip was much more boring, involving lots of water, and a fire that wouldn’t burn.

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Beltane happened eventually It was very wet — we lost significant quantities of kit to water damage, all of mine was ok, but it wasn’t good.

The rain caused significant issues with actually filming too, rain spots, foged and rained up glasses/viewfinders were a running theme, many shots were lost due to this.

Due to the above distractions a lack of time practicing before hand and some bad decisions, my results were moderate at best, 24ish “good” images, only one of which I’m really proud of. see here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thingomy/sets/72157604867745859/

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I’ve been suckered into shooting some marathon/walk thing up the west highland way — it also involves the middle of nowhere, running theem here eh? It should be good, but if I do the bit I think I will be doing, it’s going to involve a 13 mile walk with camera gear, and camping gear for 2 nights, I’m not sure whether I’m up to it, but I’m willing to give it a stab.

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Final point, and the reaosn I started this somewhat long post — I assembled a panoramic from NZ.

It’s taken from the top of Sky Tower Auckland:

This along with some other stuff I;ve done recently has shown me that I have lost all of my photoshop abilites.

A couple of years ago I switched from Paintshop Pro to Photoshop, on the understanding that Photoshop was better, in doing this switch, I lost all of my PSP abilities, and never actually gained any with Photoshop. I havent used any of these skills since then so have been lacking in practice.

I am now unable to do simple tasks like correct white balance, or deforming a selection. That is without a vast quantity of arsing around, googling, frustrating experiments, and very sub standard results. The worst bit is, I normally can’t remember which tools exist for a given job, and even then I don’t understand why it didn’t do what I wanted it to do the first time, and when it does work it seem to be a complete unexplainable accedent; so I’m not even learning while working.

The panoramic above was built using 84 images of 2.5MP each. I was only able to get the software I use (Hugin) to do part of the job, so it’s really rough, with hard image borders everywhere. with any kind of luck I can perfect the technequedo some more interesting stuff with it in future.

I am currently looking for a flat in Edinburgh.

I will consider anything, including people also looking for a flat, to go as a group.

I have a few posabilities, including some that only start in june, and would be very interested in somhing that would work between now and then.

San fran was good, saw alcatraz, did the cable car thing, then hopped on the train down the coast, worked really well with driving up the coast, only it was much quicker.

In 8 hours I fly to Aukland

Nothing else much going on here.

Having spent the morning packing, in anticipation of going on the boat tonight[14 hour overnight ferry from home to civlisation] I have come to the conclusion that either i’m taking too much stuff, or the bag isn’t big enough…

With all the stick I’ve been getting from a list of people about not taking a cabin, I decied to stump up a third of the price of a basic new lens (£20) to get a bed for the night.

Well, I should finish packing.

Oh hell, now the cat is sitting on me, licking my arm, drooling all over my keyboard, and giving me involuntary piercings.

Programming Can Ruin Your Life

This is a really interesting artical, stolen from del.icio.us/heliomass

Well the credit cards arrived — all 3 of them.

The TSB one turned out to be 2 cards on the same account, so I am now armed to the teeth.

On the assumption that one of them works — (is that a silly assumption?) I am now good to go.

Well — Why are we here?

I have started this blog ((weB LOG – diary that is on the internet)) so that I can successfully keep people up to date while I’m on holiday [for those of you not aware, I’m going on a 5 month round the world trip to America, New Zealand].

I was going to use LiveJournal but as some of you know already it has it’s problems for that sort of thing, so I decided to go all out and get a WordPress sit of my own.

Things aren’t perfect around here — the theme is a little off, and some f he stats gathering stuff still doesn’t work. The image displaying stuff is a little broken — it works, but doesn’t exactly display useful stuff. but as it is right now, It’s usable.

I would like to say that I am only going to post stuff here if I think that people are actually reading it. I will be measuring the interest by the number of comments, so if I don’t get at least some comments, the posts are going to slowly spread out to the point that it’s a waist of time.

For those viewing this on LJ (you know who you are) I’ve done a yoda, and will be continuing to crosspost using black magic.

For anyone interested, there is an email subscription system such that anyone can sign up their email address and have all new posts sent out to them automatically, to anyone who registers this accessible through their profile. If you just want an email update with no extras, see the box in the red bit. I recommend that people sign up as they can post comments though.

I have heard some really nasty roumours that the Bank of Scotland has been outsourcing call centers to some random third world place called yorkshire…

on a more serius note, I just relaised that my credit card expires while I’m in NZ — this is a pain as it won’t really be feesable to have my mail redirected there.

I called the bank and they told me that if they were to send another, that it would come with the same date on it. They told me that there was no way they could sort it. Only after I sugeted canceling the card and applying ofr a new one did they agree that there was actually a way to do it — screw that — I’d likelly end up with no card at all.

So I went into a branch, and I was — after a short conversation — told to go to the TSB round the corner.

The TSB’s competers were down, so after filling out a form I have given up hope that they are competent enough to get it right at all.

I have however applied for an MBNA card and within 12 hours I’ve been told that it’s been accepted (pending some further paperwork…)

Right — I have made an entrance into the world of WP — it’s an odd environment, and I have not yet fully gotten used to it.

The skin is a little off at the moment and needs work, but all in all, things are usable.

Please read the ground rules page before going any further.

Any feature requests are more than welcome.

2 images with captions should be above