Yak & Natter

It was my birthday yesterday, and I had a very nice day indeed thank you. Richard bought me lots of photography toys (a new tripod, and a couple of books [1],[2]) which will keep me out of mischief, and I got some lovely presents from other friends and family.

We went out for dinner at the Regency Restaurant, which was pretty good, although La Fourchette is still my favourite seafood restaurant. We then headed off to meet Jeremy for a drink at the 3JBs, probably the last time I’ll ever go there as their customer service was appaling – we ordered glasses of wine, which tasted like vinegar to us, and they then refused to replace them. All in all a good birthday (although less surprises than last year .

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Yesterday I had a text from Heather saying that she was going to be appearing in Hove Crown Court (she’s a barrister) and were we around for a coffee. I was and so after she’d done her barrister stuff, Heather and I met up for a coffee, and then we toddled off to Lucy’s for lunch (where Richard joined us) and then we decided to head to the Grand for a bottle of champagne before Heather had to head off back to London. One of those “it just happened” kind of afternoons. Lovely.

My Sloppy project has a write-up in PC-Pro magazine, issue 104 (June 2003, cover headline: “Can you ditch Microsoft”). Jump to page 207/208. One day you might see it in the Real world section of the magainze’s web site. But not for a month or so, I’d guess.

When we were at my folks house at the weekend I collected a couple of old cameras to play with. One is a Baldawerk Baldixette and the other is a Coronet Conway Popular Box Camera. I’ve tracked down some reasonably priced film from 7dayshop and so I guess I’ll be experimenting with film and digital over summer.

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We spent Easter weekend in Hull visiting my parents, and managed to fit in quite a lot – a Hull City match (we won!), some touristy stuff as well as setting Dad up with a new PC. As usual I took heaps of photos, so I’ll get around to processing them sometime soon.

Update: The photos are now up here.

We went round to see Paul and Tess’s new house last night, and very lovely it is too. We were in no rush, and they had no other plans, so we ordered a takeaway curry and sat and had a very lovely meal. Now we don’t order takeaway food very often as we often find the quality suffers, but the Nishat Tandoori had some lovely dishes (it does Goan and Indian so there were a few interesting variations). And what is even better, is that it’s only a couple of streets away from our house. Smashing.

Congratulations to Karl. He ran the marathon in 5hrs 26 minutes yesterday. He says he’s got some really lovely blisters to show for his day, and can hardly walk. But he did it. Well done! You can still sponsor him here and help the British Lung Foundation. There’s a photo of him with his medal here.

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If you were the driver of this car, please do get in touch and let us know how you managed to park it on the railings outside the library in Brighton.

Last night I went to the camera club again, and again it was interesting. It was a competition, with an outside judge, Jean Holmwood. The categories were “creative” as well as open sections for the Intermediate and Advanced groups. The creative slides included some that had been obviously digitally manipulated, and then created as a slide. At least one of these was manipulated, and displayed to full screen and then photographed with slide film (he hadn’t noticed that one of the photoshop icons was on the image – that was a bit of a giveaway really . It got me to thinking of other ways you could do this. Then I came home and started reading a magazine I’d bought the other day “Digital Photographer” for “enthusiasts and Pros”. On the letters page is a letter asking just that, how to get a digital file onto slide. The answer appears to be that there is a firm based in Nottingham, Viva Imaging that will do that, and if you look for photo labs in your area, check them for “digital film recorder” services. So, at least I know that when I feel confident enough to submit images to these slide competitions, at least I will be able to do so.

One of the photos I took of the West Pier fire is on the BBC web site as part of their “Taken a good picture lately?” set for the week of 29 March – 4 April. Take a look at it here. I’m really rather pleased about that, although it’s a bit odd that they didn’t email me to tell me, I just happened to take a look and saw it.

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