Another survey, another news story filed under “No shit, sherlock”.
Today’s gem is that apparently staff in a pharmacy don’t give advice as good as a GP, and gave ‘unsatisfactory’ advice in one-third of the cases. (Which might sound impressive, but let’s not forget that’s only in a sample of 101 pharmacies)
But it’s hardly surprising, is it? At the end of the day, the people selling the drugs in a pharmacy are shop-assistants. That’s it. They’re not health professionals – in fairness, they’re not even health amateurs – and anyone with any common sense wouldn’t treat them as if they were. Asking a pharmacist/ (Edited, as I was wrong to say pharmacists) pharmacy assistant for medical advice (one scenario in this test involved a customer saying they’d had diarrhoea for two weeks since being abroad) is the equivalent of asking a member of staff in Tescos what the best diet is.
As always, if you ask advice from amateurs you should expect to be misinformed. Simple as.
So, the photography course was actually OK last night. Happily, the first ten weeks will be based around the technical side of things, so that’s me satisfied – and the course covers things like focus, depth of field, apertures and the like.
Following on from that, we’ll be doing more about photography, and then digital manipulation (or non-manipulation) of the images, and that’s cool too.
Of course, it would have helped if Norfolk Adult Education had actually sent out the workbooks that were meant to be being used for the entire course, but the course tutor will be chasing that up today, so hopefully by next week’s session, we’ll all have the books.
The other bit of weirdness is that the course was advertised online as being for only four people. However, there are actually ten people doing it. Admittedly, I’d thought that four was going to make for quite a small and intense class, but I didn’t have a problem with that.
All told, it looks like it should be interesting though. I’ll know more once the workbook comes through, of course, but yes, for the moment it looks promising.
Why is it that whenever I hear about “the war in Afghanistan”, I’m immediately reminded of the film “Wag The Dog“.
It’s most distracting.
Tonight’s the first night of the photography course I signed up for a while back. Quite honestly, I’ve no idea what to expect – I know what I’m kind of hoping for, but whether that’s what will actually happen or not, I don’t know.
What I’m hoping for is to get a better grounding in the basic terminology and techniques of photography – things like Depth of Field, Apertures, and the like. I use these techniques when I’m taking photos, and I suppose I’ve got a rudimentary understanding of apertures and f numbers – but I don’t understand how f-numbers work or why they are always f4.2 or whatever, rather than just f4 .
I’m also hoping to have to do at least one project or portfolio, to build up my motivation again on that score. I know that I haven’t taken anywhere near “enough” photos this year, it’s just somehow ended up being at the bottom of my list, supplanted by work, business, writing, D4D™ and many others.
So that’s what I’m hoping for. What the course will actually be like, I don’t yet know. I’ll start finding out at about 7.30 tonight. And I’ll write more about it once I know more.
Why is it that whenever you’re overtaken on a motorway or dual-carriageway, it’s never by a sports car, or anything that looks like it should be overtaking everything? Instead it’s always the Minis, or Ford Mondeos.
Just, why?
A quick self-reminder post : Interface Design guidelines.
More people should read this – it makes sense, despite being a bit geeky.
We’ve finally received confirmation from Anglian Water that we are now allowed to use our water again.
This farce has only been going on since mid-April.
About fucking time.
