Pen...

Using a mouse is so old school these days...

Age...

Is a funny thing. Some numbers are more comfortable than others. This one feels just a little too big...!

35mm...

I saw these a few years ago, and had forgotten about them, until W found them on the Internet again yesterday.

Now I have my EOS 40D, I have most definitely moved to digital, but there is still a place in my heart (and more importantly my cupboards) for good old 35mm slides. And this is a fantastic way to display them.

To be fair, I haven't really had a good enough wall to put them on before now, but they are great, and maybe I shall have to look at them again...

London...

Once a year, it is great to go down to London for a weekend and sample some of what it has to offer. This year, the weekend consisted of the Tower of London (fantastic history lesson); Les Miserables at the Queen's Theatre (excellent show, superbly staged); the welcome chance to catch up with some friends; and the really superb Wildlife Photographer of the year exhibition at the Natural History Museum.

We caught this at the same time last year and it is full of absolutely superb photographs from around the world. There are some really talented entrants who have spent days and weeks getting these photos in adverse conditions. But there are also fantastic photos from the UK, for me a highlight being of a bird nesting in a traffic light in Glasgow. There is also the really annoying younger age groups where ten year olds get fantastic photos of game on safari with their E0S-1D cameras, but I shall skip over this...

The inner geek in me is also delighted that most photos have the camera, lens and settings stated next to the photo, which helps to explain how the photo was obtained. But most importantly, there is a little paragraph explaining the situation in which the photo was taken. I really enjoy looking at photographs, but to me, the context in which the photo was taken is also important and can add greatly to the enjoyment of the photo: a picture of a beautiful mountain landscape is one thing, but if it is also explained that it was at the end of a tiring 3 day walk, then that adds context as to what you see.

Anyway, for me the best context was for this photo by Paul Nicklen of a seal underwater with a penguin in it's mouth. The context reads:

'From the first time I got in the water with this massive female leopard seal in Antarctica, it seemed to attempt to communicate with me. Every day, it would offer me penguins, dead and alive, like this chinstrap. When I kept refusing to eat the offerings, it looked agitated before going to get me another penguin.’

It is a weird and wonderful world out there...

Doug Walker...

Must keep up with posts, if I'm going to make them: always seem to be just a little later than is polite...

Anyway, in the middle of April I saw Doug Walker playing at a gig in town: he is a friend of a friend (though I've never met him before) and he appears to be on the verge of fame having had his record played on Radios 1 and 2 and as a result getting a fancy record contract for his troubles.

And as well as being a very nice guy (based on a 2 minute chat and the say so of aforementioned friend), his music is excellent.

It would be very nice to see him go far, sounds like he deserves it...

Tour T-Shirts...

You know you are getting just that little bit older when after a gig instead of buying a t-shirt that you would proudly wear out for the next few weeks, you end up with a very nice golfing umbrella...

At some point, it will be tour cardigans...

Holidays...

It was only a couple of months ago that we were in New Zealand. It was summer, the weather was fantastic: warm, sunny, dry. The scenery was amazing and the highlights for me included the Rob Roy glacier and the West Matukituki Valley, Mount Tongariro, the Routeburn Valley and Lake Pukaki approaching Aoraki, Mount Cook.

A couple of months back into the world of work and it is tempting to complain that we need a holiday. We don't of course, not really. It is a shame that it seems like a long time ago, like a distant memory. But, the real world beckons. And although we are home in the usual humdrum routine, it has to be said, the photos are there, the memories are great, and overall life is good...

Incompatibilities

Obviously I understand the need to ensure that different software versions are compatible, which is why it is frustrating to have spent the last three days finding out about incompatibilities with MySQL 6.0 Community Version. That is 3 days overall, having also eaten, drank, gone to work and watched Doctor Who in between you understand, not 72 hours of solid annoyance time. Still...

Having installed MySQL6.0 on localhost and installed WordPress2.5 to work with it, I noticed that some of the WordPress features weren't working as they should: you couldn't display draft posts for example. I put this down to possible WordPress issues and moved on to getting WordPress to work with the Simple Machines Forum (SMF) 1.1.4 forum using the same database (to mirror the operation of our server). It was here that I discovered that I simply couldn't get the forum to work with any MySQL database, which was odd, as I had managed to install it a while ago on my laptop. So I started to debug the PHP, and it was then that it clicked: it all worked with MySQL 5.0, but not with MySQL 6.0. Couldn't find anything on the Internet to confirm this, but a quick uninstall of 6.0 and install of 5.0 and it all works swimmingly. And both WordPress and SMF use the same database. Brilliant!! But so much hassle ...

On a related note, to install MySQL 5.0, it is necessary to install it at C:\MySQL\ rather than the path the installer suggests. Otherwise there is a whole load of pain to go through to configure it. Instead, go to C:\MySQL\bin and type 'mysqld-nt.exe --install', then 'net start mysql' and it is all up and running. That simple... And only three days work (obvious caveats apply) to get it working....!

Windows Live Writer

So you write your post here on your PC, publish it, and it gets sent to the Internet. But surely you could do all this from your browser (where you will have to check your post afterwards after all)? Yes, you don't have to sign in and out every time, and there is a very handy spell checker...

Seems quite a nice idea, whether it gets used or not is a different matter...

Possibly the Best Beer in the World...

Available only in summer in New Zealand. A good reason to visit...