Display
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Bugger. After less than a week, the display on my new phone has a scratch on it.
Entirely my own fault – I have a nasty habit of just shoving my phone in a trouser pocket, along with keys, change, whatever. Of course, this does mean there’s a tendency for metal to interact with glass phone display in a way that’s not complimentary to the phone.
So, in a fit of protective glory, I’ve bought a case for the phone. I normally don’t bother, but well, the display’s kind of useful on the phone, and I’ve got it for another 11 months or so, so I’d best take a bit of care of it.
Hyperactive
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »This week is one that can only be filed under either “Insane” or “Running Round Like a Fuckwit”. I haven’t decided which, yet.
Yesterday was mentally busy. Tonight involves going out with Herself for a meal and cinema. Wednesday is The Last Lesson Before The Test (eek), Thursday I’m seeing Dead Can Dance at London Forum (which used to be the Town and Country Club, back in the days), and Friday may just involve collapsing and doing nowt. Alternatively, it may involve something I simply haven’t remembered about yet.
The weekend’s not looking much better – another journey to sort out someone else’s video (their old knackered one is being replaced by one of our old working ones that’s been outmoded by TiVo and Sky+) which if I’d had a brain-cell I’d have done yesterday, only I forgot. *sigh*
Wrapped up in there too is seeing a friend who’s just had a new baby, churning out a newsletter and press-release for the charity, and a bundle of other things too.
Posts may be somewhat less than usual this week. Or they may be more prolific. It’s a toss-up.
Flickr
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Resolutions, Thoughts 9 Comments »David asked why I didn’t bother using Flickr to display more of my photos. The simple answer is “because I never got round to it”.
The supplementary answer comes down to other things, including stuff to do with certain resolutions of mine. For a range of reasons, I’m not happy with passing copyright (or even potentially passing copyright) for my photos/images on to Flickr. Or anyone else, in fact. If I keep them hosted on d4d™ as I do now, then the copyright stays with me. Maybe that’s control-freak-esque, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. But it’s part of what I feel about Flickr, and the rest of the online photography stuff.
I rarely (if ever) leave the full-size images anywhere accessible, even on d4d™. They normally stay at 800×600, or perhaps 1024×768 if you’re lucky. Yes, they can be downloaded by people who look at d4d™, and that’s fine with me – I’ve posted them here, and it’s the only place they can be got from. I – for want of a better word – allow them to be used for that purpose from my site. With Flickr, they can be picked up by anyone, with no real link back to d4d™, other than user-name etc.
During 2005 I’m going to be seeking out some commercial opportunities and outlets for some of my photos. I’ve got some ideas already, and there’ll be more things happening. I just don’t want there to be any issues where anything I submit has been publicly available elsewhere previously. In some ways d4d™ suffers slightly for that – for instance this weekend there were a couple of photos that worked beautifully, but because I intend to see what I can do with them commercially,I’m not putting them here. There’s a balance to be drawn somewhere in all that, and I’m still working on managing to draw it.
So – I may try out Flickr, and indeed I’ve sorted myself out an account. But where I’ll use it, or what for, I don’t yet know. We’ll see. In the meantime though I’ll keep using the photos page on d4d™ for some, and this page for others.
Time will tell.
Prints
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: Photography Leave a comment »When we got back on Sunday, I ordered some prints of the favourite shots from the weekend from Photobox. They arrived this morning, and they’re great.
It’s easy to see how they’ve managed to keep getting awards for excellent service.
Birthday
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: General 3 Comments »Today is the birthday of Herself.
So Happy Birthday from me – although she’s already had the pressies and so on.
Yesterday
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: General 3 Comments »Yesterday was a “day off”. For those not in the know, a “day off” involves far more running round like a silly bastard than anything else yet discovered.
Yesterday involved :
- Picking up the van we’d hired for the day
- Back to the house, load up, and go to the dump with the first load
- Dump run complete,back to the house, and load :
- Sofa
- Rocking chair
- Double bed mattress plus two divan bases
- 3 75l bags of Compost
- two tables
- Electric fire
- two or three other bags of stuff
- fridge
- freezer
- Deliver the double bed to friends in Reading
- Drive to the parents, and deliver the fridge
- Drive to Herself’s grandfather’s place, and deliver the rest
- Having unloaded, load up two single beds plus divan bases
- Drive to local “house clearance” place, and drop off the beds and bases
- Back to grandfather’s place
- Drive back to Bracknell
Nice easy day off, as you can see.
Upgrading Cameras
Posted: Mon 4 April, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Thoughts 6 Comments »As I wrote a while back, I’m thinking of upgrading cameras at some point soon, and going for a digital SLR (DSLR), most likely either a Canon EOS 20 D or a Fuji S3 Pro.
However, weekends like the one I’ve just had leave me with a dilemma.
When I can churn out images with a quality like those posted yesterday, and do so on a regular basis, with my £400 Fuji S5000, then can I justify spending upwards of £1,000 on a new camera, plus lenses etc.?
I know that a DSLR will give me more creative control, and both the prime candidates have a higher resolution than the camera I’m working with, but well, can I justify the cost?