Photo-Geekery

One thing I want to get done fairly early this year is to get some big – and I mean poster-size – prints of some of the photos I’ve done. Now, all these photos are done on a digital camera, and as such don’t have negatives. What I want to know is this : can anyone recommend somewhere that’ll do good prints of digital images, ideally from a CD, and is capable of doing them to a decent size?

I’ve had a couple of things suggested, but they sound like a complete pain in the arse.

The first option was to get a photo-print done to about 6″x4″ or even 7″x5″, then get a negative made from that so that it can be blown up to the large size I want. Of course, that’s through the shonkmeisters known as Boots photo centre, so I’m sure there are better options out there. I’ve looked at Photobox‘s services, and they seem pretty good, but I’d be interested to know if anyone’s used them, or has any recommendations of who to go to.

Shameless – Channel 4, Tuesdays 10pm.

After a small amount of fanfare, and a middling amount of advertising, Paul Abbott’s latest drama Shameless hit the screens last night. Abbott has written a huge number of successful TV dramas now, so anything new by him is likely to hold promise – and Shameless doesn’t look like it’ll be breaking that reputation.

Set in a run-down Manchester council estate (and yes, I do keep on thinking “I know that place” – I think I can even identify most of the location for the estate), it features the Gallaghers, six children whose mother left years ago, leaving them in the care of the father, Frank, and the eldest daughter Fiona – who does far more to keep them all together than her father, who mainly appears to drink himself comatose. Most of the other children weren’t really detailed in the first episode, although “Lip” appears to be the other main protagonist, along with his gay-but-not-out brother. There’s a lot of other plot-threads still to appear, I’m sure – but Shameless looks like it’ll be worth keeping an eye open for.

Um.

Do you ever have one of those days where there’s loads of things you want to say, but none of them seem to be working out quite right? All the ideas are just rattling round, clamouring for some form of escape, and yet every time you try, they just come out looking like (and sometimes smelling like) shite? Well, today’s one of those days.

I’ve already hit the “delete” button on Blogger more times today than any time in the last month – maybe I’m getting more self-critical or something, but I suspect it’s more likely that I just know that what was being written was utter utter shite. There will be stuff written here today, I’ms ure – but for now it may just get written off as “shite night, no writing skill at all, so don’t hold your breath. Besides, there’s a blogroll over there…”

Kilroy Silk

Google’s obviously getting hit lots for anything to do with that Kilroy-Silk weasel. As such, I currently come up third for Robert Kilroy Silk Prick – and oh lord I hope that’s an epithet, not a request for images – and seventh for Robert Kilroy-Silk bastard. Yahoo lists me first for Robert Kilroy Silk webpage too.

I’m glad I issued a rapid disclaimer to the theory that he’s a bastard. I’d better not call him a cocksucker. *Grin*

A special room in Hell

So, Harold Shipman has been found hanging in his cell – so sad. This man has never shown any remorse – and in fact continued to deny his crimes at all. There aren’t many who I find myself hoping that there’s a hell for – but Shipman is one.

Roast.

Cadbury’s Creme Eggs

Last Wednesday, during my post about the finale of the Festering Season, Gordon asked “what do I have against Creme Eggs?” I was going to write something about it over the weekend, but quite honestly, I forgot. So – here goes.

I don’t have anything against Creme Eggs per se. They’re revoltingly sweet and sticky, and put diabetics at risk of insulin coma just by walking past them, but there we go – that’s a personal viewpoint. Some would call it a taste thing, except everyone knows I’ve got no taste anyway. The TV adverts are incredibly annoying, but again, hey ho. Most of the time I can avoid them.

In fact, it’s more about the advertising than anything else – or more accurately, the marketing of them. No sooner has Christmas disappeared over the horizon (and not a moment too soon, so far as I’m concerned) than the TV adverts start to happen. The hoardings appear, and the little teaser adverts. Easter’s not until the 11^th April this year, so that’s near as dammit four bloody months of advertising for yet another consumer-fest. And in between we’ve still got Valentine’s Day – although that’s still a rant for another day.

So no, Gordon, I don’t hate Creme Eggs themselves, just the marketing wazzocks who foist them on us from January 1^st each year.

Flak and Character Assassination

Oh, the joys of working for local authorities. Talk about blame culture. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to work with such a bunch of jobsworth responsibility-dodging fadge-lickers.

Each week, the council’s chief exec publishes his “briefing” on the events of the week as a Word^® document on the council’s intranet. It’s wank, and no-one reads it. Recently it’s been made more “reader-friendly” by adding a photo of him to the document. Part of the problem is that apparently it’s beyond the skillset of the chief exec’s secretary – or the PR department – to put the photo into the Word^® document themselves, so it’s down to the web monkeys to do it. (i.e. me, or my manager – and it normally falls to the manager) God knows why, but the secretary and PR department won’t take any responsibility for it.

Last week, my manager was off sick, so it was down to me to put the briefing on the intranet. No worries. The secretary sent down the image, and the document. Lo and behold, 30 seconds later the two were married together, and five minutes after that the entire thing was on the intranet. Rocket science this ain’t. All’s well, and I naff off home for the weekend.

This morning it’s been like a scene from the Dambusters, there’s been so much flak flying. The PR department has decided that “the wrong photo” of the chief exec was used, because he looks smug and complacent as though he’s smiling, while the briefing has a message of condolence for a member of council staff who died over the christmas break. Big focking deal, I hear you cry. But of course it’s the web department that’s taking the flak – and I’ve never been exactly great at taking the blame for other people’s idiocy and incompetence. Today’s no different to normal on that score. Luckily, I’d kept the email with the photo attached, and have been able to say “not my problem – they sent it, I stuck it on”. Cue the next period of flak-flinging.

At this point, my sense of tact rather went out of the window. I wondered aloud why the secretaries can’t add the picture in themselves (along with mutterings suggesting “well, my pet gerbil can manage it, so why can’t they?”) and thus take responsibility for the entire document (and yes, that does answer the question) as well as a rather vocal suggestion that perhaps the head of PR could be replaced by a badly-trained mongoose, which would almost certainly do a better job.

This one could run and run…