Socks Appeal
Posted: Sun 31 July, 2005 Filed under: Animals 2 Comments »Oh Dear.
Herself has just chucked away a selection of manky socks, which is fair enough. They’re clean – but old, tired, and in need of chucking away. However, Hound has found them in the bin, and they’re now scattered all over the house, where she’s been playing with them. She particularly likes them when the socks are still bundled in pairs, as it means she can also undo the bundles, but once they’re undone, she likes playing pulling.
When doing this, I can actually lift her front feet off the ground completely. I’m currently debating the wisdom of trying to lift her completely off the ground, and how she’ll handle that…
Memory
Posted: Sat 30 July, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 4 Comments »It’s just occurred to me, while dong some online shopping that I actually know the number to my Switch (sorry, Maestro) card off by heart. I don’t even need to take the thing out of my wallet when I’m doing online purchases.
Does this mean that a) I need to get out more, b) I really should do less online shopping or c) I’m really rather sad with the things I can remember ?
Competitive
Posted: Sat 30 July, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Photography, Resolutions, Thoughts 1 Comment »Part of my Resolutions this year was to start working harder on my photography stuff, and to both enter more competitions and build up my portfolio. All of these things are now happening, slowly but surely.
Currently, though, I find entering competitions to be quite a demoralising experience. Last month I sent off one I’m particularly pleased with (and, in fact, that we’ve had printed up and framed for the house) of The Hound, taken when we were in Somerset earlier this year. I sent it in to Amateur Photographer‘s “Amateur Photographer of the Year” competition as part of their “Pets” category, and – I can’t deny – I was optimistic. Technically it’s pretty much spot-on, except for the fact it can be a victim of the “it’s not an SLR” snobbery occasionally evidenced in AP, because I took it with my Fuji S5000. But there’s been no alteration to the image at all – no curves adjustment, or white-balance alterations. Not even a crop to make the photo better – that’s how I took it, and as such, yes, I’m bloody pleased with it.
The results were published from the Pets round this week, and of course it came nowhere in the top 30, which is all that’s published in the magazine. And while I can see why some of the images won, there are others that I simply don’t rate at all, and wonder how they were class as winners.
Photography is a horrendously subjective discipline at the best of times, and I suspect that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of entries in each round. I don’t want this to sound like sour grapes, because it isn’t – I’m not going to throw my toys out of the pram screaming “It’s not fair!”. I just wanted to write out some thoughts about the entire thing. I’m not going to stop submitting photos I’m proud of – in fact, there’s two more competitions that I’ll be entering this weekend – and I’m not going to stop working on building a portfolio.
But yes, sometimes I do find it demoralising, sending off stuff I’m pleased with or proud of, only to see it fail to even be rated. Maybe I’ll learn to harden myself a bit to this sort of thing, I don’t know. For now, well, we’ll see.
Flat Battery
Posted: Fri 29 July, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 1 Comment »Yet again, my cordless mouse battery is reporting that it’s flatter than a hamster hit by a juggernaut. I don’t know why this time, as it was definitely left in the cradle overnight to recharge. Cordless mice and keyboards are a pain in the arse – it’s lucky I’m OK at navigating round most things on the computer by using keyboard shortcuts.
I guess that shows I’m quite a sad old techie too. But ah well, things could be worse.
However, it may be obvious, but I have to say that trying to do stuff in Photoshop without a mouse is an absolute pain in the knackers. This has been my learning experience for the day.
Validation
Posted: Fri 29 July, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »Well, I’ve banged on about it enough – and particularly in recent conversations with a few people both at work and in other commercial stuff – so I’ve finally got round to ensuring that this page on d4d™ validates against the W3C’s CSS and XHTML standards.
And lo, it does. I’m sure there’ll be odds and sods where I still fall over (the one that readily springs to mind concerns when I add images into the main part of d4d™) but as a general rule of thumb I’m now compliant with all the guidelines. Which is nice.
In other semi-related news, I’ve heard through the grapevine that Stinky from my employers last year has been making a rabid arse of himself, getting all militant and bullshitty. I’m really pleased I’m no longer working there, because I’d have to be listening to his ranting every day. Even worse, he’d probably be waving his arms about while doing so, and there wouldn’t be a nose-peg handy for dealing with the resultant olfactory offences.
So – always best to look on the bright side of these things!
(Oh, and yes, I do realise that the rest of d4d™ still needs some work before I can get site-wide validation – particularly the older photo pages and rants etc. I’ll get there one day soon, promise.)
Industrial
Posted: Fri 29 July, 2005 Filed under: Music, Thoughts 2 Comments »(I suspect I know who will be able to answer this, but I may be surprised)
Walking home last night after work, I was listening to a bundle of tracks by RevCo (or The Revolting Cocks, to give them their full title) which were a real blast from the past, and it made me start thinking. Well, I’ve got 20-25 minutes walking, the brain goes off on some strange tangents. You know how it is.
Anyway. What I was wondering was “What’s happened to all the decent industrial bands of the 90s?“. I know Al Jourgensen from Ministry is still going strong, but what’s happened with bands like KMFDM, Pig, Pigface and so on?
I used to listen to a whole bunch of the industrial stuff – Ministry, KMFDM, Pigface, Chris Connelly, Murder Inc., RevCo, Skinny Puppy, SkateNigs and so on, and probably a bundle of others that haven’t stuck in the memory quite as much. And yes, Nine Inch Nails too, although I’ve never quite seen them as Industrial per se. But most of them seem to have disappeared, or perhaps I’m just out of touch?