Fixed Computer

As much as I wanted to just buy a new DELL from the DELL outlet, after buying an engagement ring buying anything scares teh crap out of me. So I did the obvious first and took my case off. Inside was about 3 inches of dust, 13 birds nests and a snake. So I got the vacuum cleaner out, vacuumed and tried to be careful not to suck off any jumpers, and reinstalled XP onto a new hard drive.

Goodbye Vista, welcome back XP. (Oooh, how fast my new PC is!)

Now to reinstall everything. Luckily I've kept my Lightroom backups up to date.

Broken Computer

My computer is broken. It's some hardware failure, Vista is so crap the blue screen literally is just a blue screen, doesn't tell me anything. I've only managed to get one minidump out of it and it told me nothing that it's a "hardware failure", but I can't pin it down any more than that as it was only a minidump.

I'm gonna strip it down as I've a feeling it's heat related, seeing as it's at its most stable when it's first turned on. Check the fans, make sure the memory is still seated etc. I may also check in another hard drive and re-install XP just so I have a clean system to diagnose with.

I just bought an engagement ring, I can't afford a new PC as well, not for about another 3 years anyway.

Miserable

The weather has been so bad this October, I was really hoping for a spectacular autumn, and all we have is rotting leaves on boggy ground. It's so depressing. And the other day I had to spend about 4 hours outside trying to coax one of our kittens back inside who escaped, then I got freezing, and then soaked and covered in mud when at one point I laid down in the mud which was once our garden trying to coax her through the hedge.

All I want to do is go to Westonbirt to take a picture of the trees. I guess I'll just wait and go on my birthday and do the Enchanted Walk again. And try to capture Autumn next year.

So far this month, I think in fact I have not even taken one photograph. But I have run 19.45 miles, and burnt in the region of 2,669 calories. I don't think I've lost very much weight, maybe a kilos or two at most, but to be honest the scales fluctuate so much I have no idea what I weigh. But running is easier now so it must be doing some good. Although with the evening being so very dark now it's hard to run my normal route which takes my up a lane and through trees with no street lights. It's completely pitch black. I'll have to take a torch with my next time so I don't have to walk just so I don't run into anything!

The other day I did buy some skin tight lycra tights because it is so damn cold. I'm no Linford Christie I guess, but they are still embarrasing to wear without shorts. I also bought almost the most expensive pair of socks in the world because I had a problem with my foot. They were £8 a pair. My last socks I got from JJB Sports and were like £2 for a pack of 5 or something. But they are cotton and the trouble with cotton is it absorbs sweat and swells. The problem I had was pins and needles in my left foot after about 3 miles. The internet told me this was either too tight shoes, or a problem with my ligaments which a hamstring stretch would help. So I am doing extra stretches before and after running, and I have these new socks. They're are pretty comfortable, and make a huge difference to running just wearing them. So far also I've not had the circulation problem also, but my long run isn't until tomorrow morning so will see then.

I don't care how cold it gets, I just hope November is brighter. What I wouldn't give to see some snow this December too.

Good idea?

Just done another run, a short run. I'm not sure it was such a great idea as we are dancing tonight, but I picked a short route so hopefully my little legs keep working 'til the end.

2.49 Miles, 31 minutes, Heart average 163. Don't know how many fig rolls that is.

I don't know if this is an improvement on last time. I felt loads better doing it though even if I didn't run faster. Had a couple of stops to stretch to work out the cramp in my legs, but I ran for what felt like a much greater percentage of the time, albeit perhaps at a slightly slower rate. And I forced myself to keep running to the house right at the end for some distance - longer than I ever have before.

Now just got to get the Jive out of the way. D'oh!

Challange

I challenge anyone to read the post below.

Sorry I'm pissed off, and I'm drubnk.

Death to my Mac

rant on

I've finally had it with my Mac, I'm bootcamping XP MCE onto it again.

I originally setup my media center just before Christmas 2006. There was a lot on TV that we wanted to record and we were going to be away for a week. So I figured, "Hey Microsoft have some media centre doobery that can record TV, so let's install it from my MSDN subscription and see what it's like." I was sure that came under 'test and development' so I order a huge hard disk, setup my Shuttle XPC with MCE and bought a little USB TV tuner and the MCE remote.

The Shuttle was an old model, some Athlon variant, but it was quite a good PC - I used to use it to play two characters at the same time in SWG. But since I quit the game it was just gathering dust.

It all worked well to be honest, and soon we recorded pretty much everything we wanted to see over Christmas. MCE "just worked", it was Windows so adding it to the network was no problem, we could remote desktop if we needed to administer the machine, and we could SMB to the machine to copy to and from. And I took the opportunity to start ripping my CDs as MP3 so they could live on the media PC.

There were two downsides. Firstly the Shuttle XPC, at least my version, is noisy. Sure the fans are temperature controlled variable speed, but there are several in the PSU, case and graphics card. It's only really a gentle hum but it's a bit irritating. We lived with it for about a year anyway. The second problem was that the 'diversity' stick with two tuners could only actually record one program at a time. I couldn't get any support from the stick manufacturers because we were using MCE. They point blank refused to offer help because a) the card was recognised in Windows and b) we were not using their software. It was Pinnacle by the way. So for a long time I remained mystified as to why as soon as it attempted to record the second programme the first one stopped. I just put it down to the fact my Shuttle was slightly under spec and MCE can't encode two MPEG streams at the same time. It became a feature.

A few moths ago though my beloved Shuttle developed a bad case of fan rattle. Initially it was possible to just tap the case and it was stop, but eventually it became terminal. Time to replace the PC.

I looked around for fanless or quiet PC. There are many suitable PCs, but frankly some are grossly expensive. I wont say overpriced, but they are expensive none-the-less. So it was hard to find a suitable machine at an affordable price. Until I started to read about the Mac Mini. It was a pretty decent spec, by all accounts very quiet, and not too expensive. And bootcamp means one can run Windows. Perfect I thought.

So the Mac Mini arrived, I installed Vista onto it, and set it to look at my 1TB server with gigabytes of music, images and videos. For the first two days it was perfect. I never even touched Tiger or Leopard or whatever MacOS X is called, the machine was virtually silent and I it all just worked in shiny Vista goodness.

I want to say though Apple have really messed up with the Mac Mini in my opinion. In the version I'd bought, they had removed the dedicated graphics processor and replaced it with an on board GOU. Maybe this was to save money, I'm not sure, but at the end of the day it means to do cool graphic stuff, it needs to burn the CPU. Vista MCE contains a lot of moving graphics, and the Mac Mini turned from a "silent" PC to a hairdryer. It was an incredible noise. wtf?! Most of the time I wasn't even using the thing, I just had it at the MCE start screen. But notice the background colours change in Vista MCE? Yes, that is what was burning the CPU cycles and turning my little machine into a noisy behemoth. It took me several days of frigging in the registry to find the undocumented settings that let me turn off all the graphical crap and allow the machine to idle in peace. Playing movies still caused the problem, but at least when not using it, the machine was quite. Which I could live with.

Sadly my happiness was short lived. A few days later I started getting problems. Playing MP3s would randomly pause for about 30-60 seconds between songs. No that's not correct, it wasn't exactly between songs, it was more like 15 seconds after the next song had started. There was no reason for it I could determine. We had a 100 Mbps connection and the machine was just playing MP3s. Then weeks later the entire media library just disappeared. Network access was still good, and exiting Media Centre and going into Media Player showed the library was intact, but Media Center just didn't list any songs or images.

I managed to get the media library back, but the MP3 pause was still causing problems, it still could not record two channels at once and there was some other problem with the videos. Then I'd had enough. "Vista is rubbish. It must die. There must be a better way."

But do I go back to MCE 2005, or Mac OS?

Now Apple have a pretty good rep for graphics. People evangelise about how great it is and how they could never use a mouse with two buttons again. Freaks. But Apple do some things really well, so sure I'll at least investigate the possibilities. So what does Mac OSX offer?

Well to put it bluntly, frack all. Sure they have "Front Row" so it you want to try to work out how iPhoto works and import photos into the library without copying them into the machine, and you don't actually want to record TV, it works quite well. I mean it plays MP3s like a charm. But recording TV was kind of the reason I originally got a media centre.

Apple make AppleTV though, can this help? Well so long as you don't actually want TV then it works great. It's like Front Row in a box. Fantastic. But I can buy some TV shows after they've been broadcast apparently. I knew that aerial in the loft would come in handy. I'll pay for something the day after I could have watched it for free.

Lots of friends recommended I look at XBMC, and I did, right at the time they announced that Mac OS support was being dropped from the main project and branched into a different code base maintained seperatly. Because of organisational disagreements. Or, the developers on the two projects hate each other and can't get along. Meh, stupid GPL bedroom project.

But wait, there is a company called Elgato that make EyeTV, and it looks really cool. I mean this software looks like the dogs bollocks. Okay so there is no free electronic programme guide like MCE has, but everything else looks great. So I order a copy, restore the Mac Mini to its full OSX glory and prepare to rock and roll.

And how I loved it at first. The simple MacOS Front Row remote with like six buttons is cute. And it works well with EyeTV, just as soon as you realise that to stop watching TV to have to navigate the menus to the library, then recorded TV, then just play something, then open the menu again, go to the extra options and "stop" the playback - because for live TV the only option is to record it not stop it. Not really intuitive, but it worked. And it worked 100% of the time, not 20% like the Elgato remote with it more numerous but unlabelled buttons. And EyeTV doesn't play MP3s, so adding the Front Row option meant I had to VNC onto the machine and open a console window and type some voodoo magic to make the menu option appear. Fine, it's a Mac, there is no registry, they do things "differently", I can live with that.

So I had a PC that could play MP3s, couldn't display my pictures, I had no idea how to make it display any of my XVids or DivXs, I had no idea how to play APE or OGG music, but it could record TV. And the recording was really good, much better than MCE. The fan would spin up to half speed while recording, and half speed when playing back. Unlike MCE which would silently record but run the fan at full speed on playback. And the quality was brilliant.

But you know what EyeTV couldn't do? Programme guide! You'd think that was kind of important for a device that recorded the TV. In its defence it does comes with a 1 year free subscription to some service I have to start paying for next year. But about 5 of the channels it has completely the wrong listings for. Five US for example is some German film channel. BBC News doesn't exist despite the fact I can watch it etc. But worst, and which is intolerable, is that for reasons best known to itself it decides to stop recording some shows, record things I've never asked it to (even on different channels) and repeatedly starts recordings far too early or late missing the beginning or end of a show. I've now had to take to recoding the program before and after the one I want just to be sure I actually get something, then it's not guaranteed, I still occasionally get the odd random program it's decided to record for an unknown reason.

I suspect part of the problem is because I am not using the proper GUI, I'm trying to use the TV mode EyeTV menus. But you know why? Cos I'm using a fricking TV! I don't have a keyboard or mouse, I have a remote control with only 6 freaking buttons.

EyeTV is probably a lot better if you can use the main dialog. But I can't. And what else? The freaking dialog is larger than 800x600 anyway. I'm running my Mac onto a standard CRT television. It's not a computer monitor, it's not HD, it's just a TV. At 800x600 EyeTV looks reasonable, but the main GUI doesn't fit onto the screen. For weeks I was convinced there was no search function because the edit box is in the upper right hand corner, just off the edge of the screen. So to use that dialog I have to come upstairs, boot up my computer, run VNC and try to work out what the IP address has changed to, connect to the PC in super slow mode and drag the UI around the screen trying to access all the dialog buttons. In MCE you just search the free EPG from the sofa using their remote.

But what has put the nail in the coffin is the other day it told me there was an update, which I promptly downloaded, then came upstairs because it was asking for my password whihc I can't type using 6 buttons on the apple remote. But I forgot my password because it is different from the password VNC uses so after 3 attempts EyeTV crashed, and the machine is left with a broken EyeTV install because it could not cope with my not knowing my password. EyeTV is seemingly uninstalled in preparation for the new update which never installed. Great. I suppose I could find the CD and put it in the machine and use VNC to log on and reinstall the old version then redownload the latest version and get it to patch again. But I can't be bothered.

So I'm going back to MCE 2005. Vista MCE didn't work, for whatever reason. And Macs just are not designed for a headless media environment. Sure if you have a keyboard and mouse connected, and a resolution greater than 800x600 it probably works better. Or if you only use iTunes and don't need to watch or listen to anything in a non standard codec and actually record TV through an aerial it's probably good enough too. But for my specific needs it just doesn't work.

It's a pity because some things a Mac does, it does very well. But it's not fool proof, it's not necessarily user friendly, and sometimes it just doesn't work at all. I'm hoping MCE 2005 won't have the same problems Vista did on this PC. MCE 2005 on my old PC was great, it was just the PC that let it down. If it doesn't work then I don't know what to do. If only Virgin Media (cable) was available here.

/rant

Running

Aaarg, what a run. Well for me anyway. Last week I resolved to walk into work twice, so Wednesday and Thursday I did. Monday I had to give Pixie and lift and Tuesday it was raining and on Monday I had left my coat in the office. Friday I had to be in work for 5am as we were travelling up to Leeds.

So I walked in on Wednesday and Thursday. It's just shy of 2.5 miles each way the route I take, so it was pretty good exercise. Then on Saturday I had to pop into town to get Tahini paste so I walked then too. I reckon I've walked about 13 miles this week.

This morning I woke up fresh. Yesterday I didn't, I was up at 4am, drove over 500 miles and didn't get home until 8pm. I was tired on Saturday.. But today I was fresh and decided to go out for a little early morning run.

It was actually an amazing feeling. Today I was actually running! I didn't get to the corner puffing and panting requiring medical assistance, I kept on running. I kept on running past the sports centre, past the shops, past the park. It was almost like a Forrest Gump moment, until nearly a mile later I did stop. Now you might think that 1 mile is pretty poor, but then you might also not find size 36 inch jeans tight (I swear the reason is Pixie shrank them in the wash).

The pause was only brief however and I managed a really good distance before I decided to walk a little way. By that time though it was hard to keep my heart rate under 180, even on gentle inclines, which I don't really want at this stage. So it was a bit of run walk trying to stay in the 160-180 zone.

In the end I managed 3.5 miles in 43 minutes, with an average heart rate of 165. According to Map My Run I burnt about 600 calories which sadly in context is only about 9 Jacobs Fig Rolls. So I can eat another 7 and still feel good about myself. Yay!

Will have to see if I can keep up the resolve next week and build up the miles.

Yorkshire Weekend

Fire Extinguisher
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

Just came back from a nice long weekend in Yorkshire staying with my girlfriend's parents. It's quite a long drive, took nearly 6 hours there and a bit shorter coming back, but was most enjoyable.

I downloaded over 660 images from my memory cards (around 5GB), so I have lots to go through. I don't imagine I will actually be uploading anywhere near that amount. Some of these images will be duplicates, same subject from a different angle, blurred, blown out or too far underexposed to rescue. Or just rubbish. But my hit rate is getting better so I might be able to get a good return.

We were in Yorkshire for 3 and a half days. The first morning we went to Nunnington Hall, which is National Trust. Not much scope for photography in the house but I did get a couple in the garden. The vast majority of pictures however came from a session of what I call Guerilla Photography or Guerilla Shooting from a narrow boat. Basically standing on a canal boat and just shooting anything that looked interesting as we cruised past. I don't know if the term guerilla shooting actually means anything other than this, but I've using the term for this meaning.

It was quite a good exercise for me because it was so fast paced. It's not just a question of putting the camera on high speed and waving it around randomly. In fact, I forced myself to shoot on single frame only, and to frame the image before I captured it. Also because I shoot exclusively with manual exposure it meant I had to make some quick decisions as we cruised through light and shadow. Luckily we did turn the boat so I always had two attempts to capture something, or explore it with more angles, assuming I remembered it on the return leg. But it was very fast paced as the boat never stopped and if you saw something you had to make a quick decision about how interesting it was, what was interesting about it, then how to capture it then quickly set an exposure that would allow you to do so.

I realise the D80 has auto exposure, but to be honest I think it's crap. It isn't 100% reliable so it's no good for me. And I'm getting better now at just seeing a scene and dialing in an exposure that is pretty close to begin with. And using Lightroom, pretty close is often good enough.

Rusty

Teddy Mouse Picnic
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

My name is Jamie, and I've had a teddy bear for the last 31 years.

That's what I imagine I'd say at a teddy-bears anonymous meeting. Do people use their names at such meetings, isn't it meant to be anonymous?

You see I'm a hoarder. I hoard everything. Just yesterday I was ruthlessly trying to sort out some paperwork and I discovered I have kept every insurance renewal form, every cover letter, for every policy I've ever had on any vehicle. Why?

And when you combine hoarding with anything that has sentimental value, however remote, it's really, really hard to get rid of it. So Rusty just lives on the shelf. I don't need him, I'm past the days when I lie awake scared of the dark, I just can't get rid of him.

Today I wanted to take a picture of him. Not actually this picture, this was probably my plan...hmm, F I suppose. For plan A I wanted to try something new.

I read about a technique called Focus-Shift on the Strobist blog today and it seemed quite interesting. To be honest I didn't really appreciate the cited example, I didn't really understand it and the lack of definition on the keys bothered me, but technically it is quite something. I had an idea for a shoot with Rusty, that's the Mouse's name by the way, sitting in a chair by the fire with a glass of whisky. Only Rusty is only about 16 inches high or so, and a normal chair would just look, well big. It would look like a teddy bear left on a chair. And I wanted something more realistic looking.

Oh who am I kidding, a stuffed mouse sitting on a chair by the fire drinking whisky? Perhaps I'm deluding myself that it could look like anything other than a teddy bear left on a chair.

Nevertheless, I thought that perhaps I could use perspective to make a closer to the camera Rusty look the right size for the chair. The focus shift technique could then be used to bridge the focal gap between the two objects. The chair and drink in the background, illuminated by the light from the fire, with Rusty somehow suspended closer to the camera lit briefly by a strobe pulse.

Okay it sounds stupid perhaps, but I had hoped it work work. Sadly however I couldn't get the first to light correctly, I think perhaps one of the gas valves is blocked so I had to think of a plan B. Plans B though E also proved to be problematic to implement so I just sat Rusty up on my desk and shot him from my chair.

Running

I started running again last week, and this morning I was out in the mist trying to get a few miles in. I "ran" a little over two miles, I was hoping for more, but it's definitely above the curve I'm trying for. My breathing felt much better, and managed to keep my heart rate over 170 without feeling like I wanted to die, but the problem was my legs. About half way I started getting really bad cramps and the lactic acid was really burning. I stretched a bit at the half way point and tried to recover a little before tuning back for home, but I had to do a large proportion of walking on the return trip.

Last year I was hoping to do the Taunton Half Marathon. I started my training last November and I think I was doing some quite respectable distances given the fact hippos don't normally run all that well. But at Christmas I had some awful illness which knocked me out, literally, for two months. After that I was never able to recover my fitness enough to be able to carry on training, so I just let it lapse.

Hopefully I can keep it up and join the running club (in what November?) and see if I can get some fitness and lose a bit of weight to boot. I think the Taunton Half is around April time next year so hopefully I can be ready for it.

Maximum Inefficiency

Pixie has joined a choir recently, so she decided it would be a good idea if she could have a piano to play some of the music she needs to sing. Play it in the right key and all that. I've always wanted to play myself actually, so I didn't object when she suggested. And indeed we both agreed upon a rather nice new Yamaha electric piano. It has graded keys, which are apparently like weighted keys but don't have weights in them so the whole thing is much lighter. And brand new it was only about £150 which is what we'd be happy to pay for a decent one on eBay. So we found the keyboard we wanted, added the mains power supply (because Yamaha don't actually include one with the keyboard), and added a book because we are complete novices when it comes to music. Well me more so because I am not the one in a choir.

The place we found it for sale was actually only in Bristol. At first I was quite happy to collect it myself if we ordered, but they only charged £6 for UPS which is probably cheaper than it would cost me to drive there and back anyway. So sure, let's have it delivered.

Trouble is, apparently the keyboard isn't in stock, so they have decided to part ship. On Tuesday, the mains power supply came in a small box. Via UPS. Today this arrived, again by UPS, in its own box. I'm half expecting them to ship the keyboard in parts too, maybe black keys in one box, white in another etc.

I don't really mind the wait, I'd happy to wait a week if the item is not in stock, I understand there is a certain cost implication for holding stock of electronic items that could be superceeded tomorrow. But surely there is a better way to ship it?

Holy Cow

Chase Jarvis and Kung Fu. Need I say anything else?


Okay I will. Some of the stills can be found on Chase's site.

Enjoy!

Oh by the way...

Random Vandals
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

Don't you just love surprises? They are so, well unexpected.

Yesterday at work my Boss asked me if I'd shoot his son and friends for a magazine article being written which included them. I don't think it is going to be solely about them as such, but they are going to be mentioned in it. They have a band called Random Vandals, and evidentially their music had been discovered on MySpace and a couple of their tracks are going to be included on a compilation CD released by the magazine, so they need to supply a photograph to use with the article. I forget who they said the magazine was, the name meant nothing to me, but I'll try to find that out.

This was yesterday:

"Fred needs some pictures of his band. Can you take some?"

"Fine, when?"

"Uh, well they're just coming to the door now actually."

Okay, well I don't have my camera and personally I'd have preferred slightly more time to prepare. But okay. Let's try something.

Luckily (I suppose) I didn't have my camera and the memory card in the work camera failed and the shots I'd taken were all lost. Not that I minded too much and the work camera is about 50 years old. It takes acceptable images, but it's a frig to use. And it only shoots JPEG. And I'd hate to have had to rely solely on those images. Okay so they only want one image and it's probably be printed at an inch square. But I have my own standards.

So today I brought my D80 and a couple lenses and was all set to try again. There was some graffiti in the park which has caught their eye, so we headed over there and I had them line up and tried a few different poses.

I've never done an assignment photoshoot like this before, but it was quite good fun actually. I read somewhere, or maybe it was on a video, that when you shoot portraits of normal people they can be intimidated by a camera so to get a more natural look you need to get them used to the camera and try almost to get them to ignore it. So I tried to talk to them about the band, what their roles were, stuff like that. And keep shooting while you're talking. Seemed to work quite well. Although they probably thought I was some crazy out of touch old man. They even tried to explain to me what MySpace was. Okay, I'm not that old okay?

They've played a few local gigs but the venue that they play at most often has closed down and since they've recently had exams they haven't played a gig for a while. I think I may keep my eye out for them in the future though.

So this is my first proper assignment. It was fun and I don't think the results are bad. And I'd like to try it again.

Making Visual C++ 6 apps look cool

Visual C++ 6 is what, 10 years old now? But there are a lot of good reasons to still develop software in Visual Studio 6 because it lets you do things that Visual Studio 2005 et al. cannot do. Or perhaps you just have an existing project you do not want to convert.

But one of the drawbacks to VS6 is the programs frankly look ugly. Sure you can still add a manifest if you like, but the default dialog font is MS Sans Serif (at least on US/English systems) which is hideous and doesn't lend itself well to supporting wide character sets. See, this looks gash. It works well enough for standard English programs but won't work if you try to use a non Roman character set (e.g. Kanji or Chinese). Sadly to fix this you need to edit the resources manually.

There are three main things to check and possibly change. First you need to load your resource script (.rc file) into your favourite text editor. Notepad works fine. Find the dialog resources. They should read something like this:

IDD_DIALOG1 DIALOG DISCARDABLE  0, 0, 186, 90
STYLE DS_MODALFRAME | WS_POPUP | WS_CAPTION | WS_SYSMENU
CAPTION "Dialog"
FONT 8, "MS Sans Serif"

The first things you need to do is change the dialog font from MS Sans Serif to MS Shell Dlg. MS Shell Dlg isn't a font, it's a mapping to the system font which is probably Tahoma. Now this value will actually be ignored unless two other conditions are met. Firstly, the dialog template must be DIALOGEX instead of DIALOG. Secondly, the dialog must have two additional styles, so you should add DS_FIXEDSYS which will include them both. So you should end up with:

IDD_DIALOG1 DIALOGEX DISCARDABLE  0, 0, 186, 90
STYLE DS_MODALFRAME | WS_POPUP | WS_CAPTION | WS_SYSMENU | DS_FIXEDSYS
CAPTION "Dialog"
FONT 8, "MS Shell Dlg"

Note that if you edit a dialog in the IDE it might lose the DIALOGEX template. It will keep the font and the styles, but you may need to re-edit the resources by hand then have the IDE reload them if you want to move controls about. Also the IDE won't render the font correctly so sometimes you have to "guess" how big a control needs to be to contain the text you need.

Then you can add your Common Control 6 manifest and your program will now look cool. Goodbye 1998, Hello 2008.

There are still sometimes that dialogs will look wrong, especially related to property sheets. Some types of MFC property sheets (and other MFC dialogs) use DIALOG templates so property pages may not always display correctly. And by using DIALOGEX you are effectively preventing your software from running on Win32s on Windows 3.x. But I think the benefits outweigh those limitations.

Google Chrome

Okay I don't know if this has been a secret until today, or if I am just completely out of the loop. Well I guess, how exciting can a browser really be? But OMG, this Google Chrome is freaking cool.

Download it now and use it.
Read the really cool comic to learn more.

Seriously it rocks. And it's fast. Download it!

I've always used Internet Explorer to be honest. It's easy to access, I'm familiar with the icon, and it starts faster than any other browser I tried on my system. I did at one point toy with Firefox after all the hype, but it starts slower than IE on my machine. And I use the internet for work, if I need to go to wiki to look something up, or more commonly visit MSDN or one of the Microsoft blogs I just want to go there. But IE7 is a bloat monster and it's hardly stable. And the fact IE7 screwed over the Google toolbar, which was the most convenient way to search pages, really pissed me off. I don't blame Google for wanting to write a browser just to get back at them. And there were so many things IE7 did that were stupid. But I can't deny, IE7 was always there when I clicked the button. And some things you have to live with. Don't you?

But I read the Chrome comic and I instantly though this sounded great. So I've been sitting here all night just hitting F5 waiting for the Chrome download to be brought live again. It installed in less than a minute. It looks uncluttered. It's blindingly fast. Okay there are a couple things that don't look quite right, My Ebay is barely readable as the text is too small and some other websites only rendered the toolbar and no page, which a refresh fixed. But there's only a couple of things it did a bit strange and so many things it does right. Straight out of the box.

Holy crap and it's spell checking in blogger for me, cos I don't spell too good always that's a mighty fine feature!

Did I mention incognito mode?

I tell you, IE8 will have to be pretty freaking good to compete with this.

Evening barbeque

Light of my life
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

Summer this year has been so horrible. I think the dullest August since records began, and already the wetest when only half way through the month. So it was nice that my Sister called me up yesterday and invited us over to see her and have a barbeque. My Dad was staying also so we all went over at about 1845 ish.

The evening was really nice, it would have been good to have gotten there a little earlier to make the most of the sun, but Pixie had to work on Saturday so we got away as early as we could have done.

Ideally I'd like to have not had to drive either so I could have had a few glasses of wine. But as it was I just sat there in the sun on the patio and drank ginger beer. Everyone else had wine, but nobody rubbed my nose in it.

The sun went down, we lit some candle on the table and we consumed various flame roasted goodies. Prawns, salmon, chicken, burgers, vegetables etc. Served alongside a big bowl of salad and some rolls and butter. It was all very nice.

To finish off we consumed vast quantities of strawberries, cream, pinapple cake and I make some more snickerdoodles. This time they came ot perfect as I make smaller balls and baked them on two trays.

At least we had one nice summer evening this year.

Mango Chicken

Mango Chicken
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

Picture of the Mango Chicken dish, from the Chinese Food Made Easy recipe book.

Ching can cook

Pixie just cooked me another fantastic meal. Following her success last time, I bought the book so tonight we had another go at one of the recipies. We thought the look of Mango Chicken (sorry no link, can't find recipe) which was basically a chicken breast, fried with chillies, mango, pepper and pineapple juice. Tasted absolutely divine. Personally I'd hav preferred a little more chilli, but saying that my fingers are still burning from deseeding the little guy, and I'm a bit worried what to touch.

Pictures to follow tomorrow. Hopefully.

And remember, when cooking Chinese, "Don't worry about the frames!"

Birthday Flowers

Flowers
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

I have to thank my Mum for these beautiful flowers. Um, well no I don't have to thank her I suppose because they were sent to my girlfriend, not to me, but you get the idea.

It was Pixie's birthday last week, and these arrived then. I promised my Mum I would take a picture once the "big flowers" has opened. I literally have no idea what they are. You know, I'm going to guess and call them Lillies. Any they opened up yesterday so I thought it was a good time for a thank you photograph.

Anyway they are really beautiful, although it's hard to find a place that is both safe from kittens (*remembers when they smashed two wine glasses and knocked over half a bottle of sparkling wine when I was trying to cook a romantic meal*) yet make the flowers accessible. We compromised with the book shelf. It's not ideal. but then with 6 little kittens nowhere is really ideal. Except maybe in the attic!

It's actually quite an odd feeling when flowers arrive for your girlfriend and you know nothing about them. You want to think the best, "Oh I bet that was...." and try to think of someone safe, but there's still a doubt. Maybe it's someone she met at work? Maybe from an old flame? And then you're all set to smash the flowers there and then and have a blazing row about her being unfaithful.

But this time I was able to hold my temper until I discovered they were some my Mommy. And that's okay, so I gave Pixie a kiss and put the flowers in a vase for her instead.

Kitten Claws

We have 6 kittens.

We never chose to have so many, and we would prefer not to have so many. It's very expensive to buy food, vet bills etc, and with so many bottoms it's very smelly work cleaning up the mess. But we adopted a feral cat who became pregant before we were able to get her to the vets, so now we are inundated with her kittens. A huge litter. It was actually 7 in total, but we've only managed to get rid of one.

Although they are very affectionate, our kittens have very sharp claws, and each has 5 claws on each of 4 paws. Usually it's not a problem, perhaps they'll pad on your face in bed, or pad on your legs occasionally, but usually it's manageable. But they've developed an annoying habit of jumping on things, including people. If I am in my chair, I have to be careful if my arm is on the arm rest because they will jump up, with claws extended. Or they'll bypass the arm of the chair altoghter and try to jump directly onto my shoulder from the floor. Or *shudders* they'll wait until the morning when I'm just wearing my boxer shorts and I'll go downstairs to feed them breakfast and they'll try to jump onto my back - my naked back!

About 10 minutes ago I was just downstairs, and Pixie was upstairs doing something. I called to her to ask a question, and I stood at the bottom of the stairs talking to her at the top. About half way up the stairs, about in line with my head, was a kitten. I noticed the kitten shift position slightly. As if it was preparing to jump. To jump down the stairs. Or rather to jump across to the other object that a few feet away at about the same height. To the flesh coloured object that was making a strange sort of talking noise.

The next thing I saw was a kitten flying through mid air, legs out, claws extended, straight for my face. Now I know what they must have gone through in Aliens.

Perhaps we feed our kittens too much, perhaps we should add valium to their feed to calm them down a bit.

Tune in next week, for "When kittens attack!"

Spell checker

I wish blogger had a spell checker

Pizza Recipe

Today I shall show you how to make a pizza like this. This is something I do fairly regularly, it's not very difficult, and it doesn't really take a long time so long as you plan ahead. I shall assume you've never made bread before so I'll explain the whole process in detail. So please excuse me if you feel like I'm teaching you to "suck eggs."

I know there are like 6 million varieties of pizza available in supermarkets or takeaways, but there are many reasons to make your own pizza. Firstly you get what you want. You don't have to pick off anchovies or mushrooms, or regret paying a £1 surcharge to simply add a teaspoon of sweetcorn. Next you know the quality of the ingredients. If you want prime fresh chicken breast from a local farmer, that's what you use, not reformed 3 month old chicken beaks from Brazil. Lastly, bought pizzas are frankly small. You want a good quality pizza topped high with your favourite stuff right? Not a skimpy thing that is mainly cheese and a few slices of topping.

So for this pizza we're going to have a bit of a fruit and some chicken. The fruit will be pineapple and banana, and the chicken we thought of doing tandoori style, because we found a really nice spice mix. The spices are mixed with Greek yogurt and a little lemon juice. We just need to mix these together and set them in a bowl for a little while. The spice mix we used was a Schwartz one, with coriander seed, cumin, garlic, chilli, ginger, cardamom, onion, bay, star anise, cinnamon, clove, salt, pepper and "spices". The chicken breast came from a local farm, in fact the other breast was used in the Chinese chicken and cashew recipe.

Next we're going to make the dough for the base. This is a very simple recipe I got from the Leiths Baking Bible. You must buy this book for your library if you like baking, it's really good. The base is on page 542. This is a 'dry' dough you can work by hand, and is good for thin bases. If you want an authentic pan pizza though you'll need a mixer with a dough hook as the dough will be too wet to work by hand.

For this dough you will need

• 200g plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 10g of fresh yeast
• pinch of sugar
115 ml of lukewarm water
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil

If you don't have fresh yeast, you can use 5g of dried yeast or 3.5g of quick yeast. Dried yeast is the stuff that's needs to be activated in water before use. Quick, or fast action, yeast is the tiny granular sort that can be added directly to flour. Sometimes this comes in little sachets, or in larger bags. I use the quick yeast for ease. Lukewarm means somewhere between 35 and 39 degrees Celsius. If the water is too hot the yeast will die. If it's too cold then, well you'll just be waiting longer. The salt, sugar and oil are all important. The yeast will need both the fat and the sugar to grow. And the salt is there to add flavour, but also to keep the yeast in check because it will inhibit yeast growth a little.

I tend to mix all the dry ingredients together, make a well, then mix the oil with the water and pour it in and mix it together. You can add the oil before the water, or afterwards if you prefer. You will get a slightly different base texture depending how you do it because oil will tend to coat the grains and can affect the development of gluten. Gluten is the thing that makes dough and bread chewy. We are relying on the yeast to form these gluten chains in the dough.

You may have noticed I am using Canadian Very Strong White Flour. The "strength" of flour relates to the amount of protein in the flour, and how well the gluten will develop. Low protein flour will not produce very much gluten. Now this might be good for making biscuits or quiche, but it's not good for bread. So we need a flour with a lot of protein, or a strong flour. It just so happens that the very best flour comes from Canada, because it's colder there than in winter than it is in the UK, and the ground temperature in spring will affect the grain. There are some excellent British flours available though, just make sure the protein is between about 12%-15%.

So once we have combined our flour, yeast and water we need to knead it. This will help to spread the yeast, fat and sugar around the dough and also help to align the gluten chains as they begin to form. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until the dough changes texture and becomes more, well dough like. You might need some extra flour depending on the liquid. If the dough gets too sticky just put a little flour on your hand or on the board and keep working. Kneading is quite easy, you basically flatten the dough with the heel of your hand and push away from you. Then fold the dough back in half toward you, and rotate it 90 degrees and repeat. You can use both hands if it's easier, or just use one. To be honest I found it easier with just one because this was such a small piece of dough. If you find it easier to know if you are kneading correctly, you could add a few herbs or some black pepper to the dough (not to the flour!) As you work the dough you should see the grains disperse and when you think they are spread evenly about the dough then so will the oil, sugar and yeast be. Once the dough is sufficiently kneaded, we can just form the dough into ball, and put it back into the bowl. Cover the bowl in a clean wet cloth then just leave it somewhere warm. At this point I put the oven on to somewhere near 200 degree Celsius, so I just leave the bowl on the work surface nearby. It doesn't need to be hot, it just needs to be warm and comfy.

So once the dough is taken care of, we can make a start on the pizza toppings. I decided to grill the chicken so this can go under the grill now. It doesn't really take very long, maybe 15 minutes. The pizza only needs to be in the oven long enough for the cheese to melt and brown, so anything that needs cooking should be cooked before hand. The chicken came out like this.

Also on this pizza we shall be having some red pepper, pineapple and banana. So we can chop these up while the chicken is cooking. Banana might sound strange for a pizza but it's really nice. In fact there are many fruits that taste good on pizzas. Again the beauty of making your own is that you can include anything you want, even if you could never buy a pizza like this in a shop.

After cooking our chicken and preparing the fruits, and taking pictures, I think our dough has probably had enough time. Ideally you want it to have doubles in size, probably this will need somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour. Personally I don't think you need to worry too much, it's a pizza base not a loaf of bread. It does taste better if the gluten chains are well formed but if you're ready for the dough then go ahead and use it. You first need to "knock back" the dough, which basically means compress the air out of it. The first rising of bread is only to develop gluten. If you're making a loaf you do the same thing, but then let the dough rise a second time in whatever you are going to cook it in. This second rising gives the bread it's shape. Since we're making a pizza we don't need it to rise, so we can just make a large disc. You can use a rolling pin if you like, I did. But if someone is watching feel free to whirl it around your head. Actually joking aside sometimes it does help to throw it between your hands just to stretch it out.

I should have mentioned earlier, than when I preheated the oven I put my "pizza stone" in. This is just a large ceramic disc, about 1cm thick that just absorbs heat. This is what I will be cooking my pizza on. By now this is very hot. What I generally do is to actually prebake the base for a few minutes. I prefer this and I find it easier to manage the pizza. I just take the stone out of the oven, drizzle a little oil onto the stone then put the pizza base onto it. It will sizzle a little. Then just pour a little more oil onto the base and pop it into the oven for a couple minutes. Just to give it some colour and firm it up a little.

This is a personal preference. I just find it easier to prebake the base slightly. I find firstly it's easier to apply the tomatoes to the base this way, and I have real trouble trying to make the whole pizza and then slide it in one piece onto the pizza stone when it comes to cooking it. Either way, whether the base is now cooked or still raw you need to add your tomatoes. I've just used tomato puree here. It's okay, but I prefer passata. Again though I do it for convenience. I can keep a tube of puree in the cupboard for years, and once opened it can live in the fridge forever. Bought passata only last a couple days and there is far too much in a jar for one pizza.

Once we have sufficient tomato coverage then, we can add the rest of our toppings. As mentioned previously, when you make a pizza feel free to go while. You don't have to use a teaspoon to measure the toppings, just pile them high!

And of course you can add any cheese you want. I prefer the mozzarella that comes in balls, the kind in a bag with water. You can try to chop this if you like, but I've just gone for the torn approach to match the rustic base. Red Leicester is another good cheese to use because it has good melting properties and it's a fun colour. But use whatever you like.

Next we just pop the little fella into the oven until it's done. I don't know how long this will take exactly. It depends how think your cheese is, and how melted you like it. It probably takes in the region of 15 minutes. Just keep an eye on it while you clean up the work surfaces and when it's looks right, take it out and serve. Garnish with some black pepper and some fresh basil. I also added a little dried oregano.

Enjoy!

Pizza!

Pizza
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

As a special treat I made a pizza for Pixie. I thought that after my recently failures I would try to redeem myself and take some decent photographs. (None of my fish, chinese chicken or shorbread photos are up to anything).

This pizza was a "tropical" one with tandori chicken, pineapple, red pepper, banana and mozzarella. I photographed the whole thing from mixing the dough to plating up (as shown.) So I intend to upload the whole thing when I have a little time.

It's pretty easy to make a pizza this way.

Stay tuned...

Photographing Food

Good food
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

Photographing food can be a tricky job, if you want it to look good. Pixie made a really gorgeous Chinese Stir-Fry last night and I tried to take a picture. But the food was plated up and I was eager to eat it before it got cold, so I didn't really want to hang around while I setup my lighting gear. But see, without it the food just looks like, well brown mush on rice. The food was so good I could eat it every day, but this picture just wouldn't even make me read the recipie.

Anyway we've been watching Ching-He on BBC2 lately, in her "Chinese Food Made Easy" show. This is worth note alone, given the amount of TV we watch, or don't as the case may be.

Pixie decided to make a Chicken and Cashew Stir Fry. She hardly even let me "help" she was so inspired! Anyway, it was so, so good. We did our rice like this and the cashew and toasted sesame worked so well together.

Next time, oh there will be a next time, I'll get lighting setup before the food is ready and capture it and eat it while it's still hot. But for now this will just have to serve as a reminder of how not to photograph food.

I could be who?

40 Commando Royal Marines
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

On Thursday the 31st of July, 40 Commando Royal Marines exercised their right to parade through Taunton town center. This happened at lunch time so I took an early lunch and went out to watch, and see if I could get a few pictures.

It was a fantastic parade, with thousands of people lining the streets and I got some great images. Well great for my standards anyway. I posted them up on flickr and managed to get nearly 500 hits in one day!

So come Tuesday I figured I could snd my photos into the local newspaper, surely they would have a page for readers images right?

Well sadly it turned out that Tuesday was too late as they had already layed out the Marines page, but the lady promised she would forward my images to the sub editor, although it was unlikely they would use them. She could however add them to the website if I liked. On Wednesday however, I got a curious email from the gazette telling me one of my images "was on the front." On the front of what? Surely not the paper? Surely you just mean "home page" right?

Anyway, come Thursday morning I stoppped of at the paper shop on the way into work, and low and behold, front page!

Well this was fantastic news. So I bought two copies, one to read and one to be copied by monks onto high quality archive paper, then covered in clear resin, dried, smoothed and locked in a climate controlled bomb proof safe. My partner sent the image to her parents, who evidentally were also quite impressed. I saw Pixie after work, all bright faced, saying her parents said I "could be the next David Bellamy!"



Thank you, I think.

Taunton Flower Show - Day 2

Rain
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

Today was a much nicer day. When I became a member of the flower show they sent a letter asking for volunteers. I thought I'd give it a go, it's only 2 hours after all and Saturday I had no plans anyway. So I figured I'd offer my help.

For some reason I got put down for two shifts though, even though I had asked for only one. Still, didn't really matter I guess, and I'm not one to rock the boat and complain, I always prefer to do it just to spite them and then moan about it to friends and family.

So I turned up at 8:30am and made my way to the Ash Medows field where I would be helping. There I met Derek and Dave the two senior stewards, and received my fluorescent "Steward" jacket. Let's park some cars!

It was probably more exciting sounding then it really was. I stood at the end of one row, a car came towards me, I pointed to Dave and he guided it into a space. Rinse and repeat. It wasn't event hat busy, mostly the traders parking up before the 10am opening. From about 9am to 10am we had some really heave rain, but Mike and Linda were kind enough to lend me a spare umbrella. About the only excitement was when we had a rush of cars, I believe it was 4, one had a trailer so Mike and Linda helped him park over by the hedge out of the way, Dave took another to a space up the row and the last car, a lady with a bad leg, wanted to park closer to the exit. I took an executive desicion to start a new row and parked her there.

At about 10:40 two ladies relieving us Velma and Margaret arrived early so seeing as I'd started early myself, they took over and I was able to go watch the lumberjacks in the main arena. Sorry, I meant axe men. Or where they log men? Or forresters? I never did understand why they didn't like to be called lumberjacks. But it was well worth it - a fantastic display of, well, using axes. Or and a big saw. And then Pixie turned up having rode the bus in, and we went for lunch.

Obviously my previous moxie (earlier initiative) proved successful and upon my return for my second shift I was promoted to senior steward, got a new tabbard and a radio! Some people might just say this was because Dave wanted to go for a break, but I know the truth. And for that half hour Sue had to do my every bidding because she was just a Steward.

I really should have abused my position and at least sent her off to get me a cup of coffee before Dave came back, because I then lost the precious senior steward tabbard, and was demoted back to steward. At least I got to keep the radio.

But it didn't matter because by then the sun was out and it was hot and lovely.

So I worked another hour and a half until 5pm, then headed off to the arena, as the show was closed down, to retrieve my pictures. Failure had earlier left me bereft, but today was a nice day.

But after 4 and a half hours my feet are sore and I need a shower.

Taunton Flower Show - Day 1

Ambassadors of morning
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

I'm rather indignant today. I entered 8 images into the Taunton Flower show and only one, this one, had anything said about it, and that was highly commended. I suppose I should be pleased with that, being my first attempt and all. And I'm certainly don't mind losing out to better pcitures. But some of the judging was farcical. Some winning images clearly were better, some better images were similarly ignored, and some of the winners were just wrong.

The winner in the "legs" category for example wasn't even the correct size. Don't get me wrong, it was a really nice image but the rules clearly stated the image should be 8x6 inches and that image wasn't. I didn't realise rules were optional. The second or third placed image was a lady wearing read shoes. Nice composure but frankly hideous lighting, her legs where almost completely blown out by what looked like an overpowered on camera flash, and there were awful shadows on the background. Even the judge called it a cliché.

"Feathered friends" were all birds images except mine. Mine was completely ignored in favour of a picture of a pair of ducklings and a couple of pigeons or something similar. I wish now I'd trawlled my image archive for some more obvious images. I must have a hundred pictures of ducklings.

The image posted here of the River Tone lost out to a picture of French Weir. I have to admit it was an interesting angle, but it wasn't that good. I can't remember the other images I was so inspired by them.

One of the other winning images, although an interesting composition, appeared to have been printed on toilet paper with a inkjet printer. So much for spending £20 having mine printed by Peak.

I realise it's only a provincial flower show, but had I understood the categories were to be taken litterally, image quality didn't matter so I should just have my images printed at Tescos, rules on image sizes were optional, perhaps I would have entered different images.

Royal Marines

40 Commando Royal Marines
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

Today Taunton town centre was closed off for a drumhead service in tribute to 40 Company Royal Marines. The event began with a march through the town by the batallion, from Station Road to the Parade. The service was held outside the Market House.

It was absolutely an amazing experience to be there, and to be part of the crowd. There were hundreds, if not thousands of people lining the streets throughout the town, it was very hard to find a good place to shoot from. It was also incredibly humbling and moving to see the young Marines march past, to see their injured comrades, to see the bereaved families of those marines who did not return from Afghanistan, and to see those old veterns pay tribute to those that have taken their place.

The marines were roundly applauded as they came up North Street by all around, as they were again after the service as they marched down Corporation Street.

You can see more of my images from the day here.

High Dynamic Range

Someone was asking the other day about HDR photography, or high dynamic range. This is a process whereby you take several photographs of the same subject with varying exposures, then mathmatically combine them to produce an image with greater dynamic range.

What is dynamic range? Well the simplest way to describe it is that amount of detail that is exposed correctly so that it can be seen (i.e. that isn't blown out or completely black).

Have you ever looked at a beautiful sunset and tried to photograph it, only to find the sky is a beautiful red colour, but the foreground is in silhouette even though you could see it when you were there? Or it's a beautiful summer day, with a clear blue sky and you try to photograph someone, and they come out correctly exposed but the sky is blown out? Or that film camera images always seem to look nicer than digital camera images? Well that's because the human eye has a much greater dynamic range than a camera, and film has a better dynamic range than digital. And essentially the greater the dynamic range the more detail in the image. So what we see isn't necessarily what we are going to capture with our camera.

True HDR

But here is where the maths come in. We can actually take multiple exposures of an image and combine the best bit from each. To do this I use a piece of software called Photomatix. This comes in PC and Mac formats, and is pretty cheap. And it works well.

Firstly you need to take your source images. I always start with RAW, but in theory you could have multiple jpegs. You need at least 3 images, with varying exposures, but you can have up to 5 or 7 or even more if the light dictates. I generally do 3 though at +/- 2EV, that is 2 stops below and 2 stops above the metered reading.

You can do a little processing such as setting the colour temperature, but I mostly just leave them as they are. If you modify one though you ought really to modify the others in the same way. This is why I generally leave the images as they came from the camera.

You then load them into Photomatix and let it create the initial blend.


Notice the image will look utterly wierd. This is because at this point the image has a higher dynamic range than your monitor is capable of displaying. You can move your cursor around the image to reveal things. You will see the bightness adjust just like the human eye would as you move around the image. It's good here to check for noise or any artifacts that will ruin the final combine. If all looks good though, you can tone map and compress the image into something your monitor can handle. In the image above I have focused in on the window detail which show the detail of the brickwork inside the building even though on the large view this is completely black.

When you do this there are many different options you can choose from. It can be a bit trial and error because until you have processed the image you won't know 100% what it will look like.


Ever again the loupe is focused on the interior detail through the window. This view gives you a pretty good idea what the image will end up like, but it could still be a long way away. It could eaily be far too bright or far too dark. So this is where the trial and error comes. Basically you just have to pick some settings and try it. Then look at the end result.


If you like this image, you should then save it, either as a 16 bit TIFF or an 8 bit JPEG. If it's not right though, try to go back and fix it. Photomatix has the highest dynamic range and colour depth to work with. If you save the image you're locking that compressed view down, so you can only work with that set amount of data. If you try to fix any images in Photomatix this will yield a better final combine, although it will be much more work to do this.

Eventually though you'll have something you are happy with. At this point I would then run any shaprening, cropping or tweaking you want, to create your final image. Here is mine


I just did this quickly as a test, I think the end result it slightly 'overcooked', the blue is too saturated for my liking although the brickwork colours better resemble the glourious summer sunset we had that evening. I may revisit this image and spend an hour or so on it.

Pseudo HDR (Tone mapping)

There is another technique you can create better images from just a single file. Usually people use RAW images for this. In theory you could use a single JPEG. I tried this although it's debatable how much of an improvement it made. You could spend time doing this, although I can't say that it would be worth it. However with a RAW you can extract several different 'exposures' and save these. Then load them into photomatix, tell photomatix what the EV differentials are (in 1/3 EV increments) then process as above.

Actually I do things slightly differently. I begin by teaking the image in lightroom to the best of my abilities. I'll crop, rotate, and adjust contrast, saturation and levels to make it look as good as I can. For example


Then I'll save three 'exposures' from that point and combine these in photomatix


Again I try to do as little processing afterwards as I can, and prefer to try to get photomatix to create the image correctly in the first place. The results can be quite pleasing however.

Designing user interfaces

Today I have mostly been designing a new user interface for a piece of software we have. I like doing this, and I think I am quite good at it. But designing an interface is not trivial, and the more one knows about computers the harder it can be to design a good interface. That is because the more familiar you are with how software works, how different applications are written, and what is going on behind the scenes in the operating system, the more you anticipate how software is going to work. You can know instinctively what will happen when you click a particular button, even if you have never used the software before.

This can pose a problem when one is designing software, because the developer may make assumptions that a user will be able to drive a piece of software because it seems obvious to them that if you click here then whis will happen. But this makes a huge assumption on the users' knowledge and skill level.

You may love them or hate them, and you may be a fan of Vista or not, but the trusth is Microsoft do know how to right software. Whether or not they succeed is another matter, but the do know how to do it. And they have studied it at great length. They have infact come up with guidlines on how to write a good interface, and the things you need to keep in mind.

Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines

Melancholy

Melancholy
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

Tonight was a lovely day, and the evening was looking really pretty. So I decided we should go to Lydeard Hill so I could get some shots of Pixie as the sun went down. Trouble was, we left too late and we didn't reach the summit in time. Besides, it started to cloud over towards the horizon so the sun was getting obscured anyway.

So we turned around and headed back to the car park. On our way though I noticed quite a nice patch of sky above the tree line I thought I'd go for so I quickly pulled out the camera and fired off a couple shots just to get the exposure right. Pixie sat on the grass waiting to be called into action. I think this just turned out really well though, considering it wasn't planned as such. Looks nice in colour too, but I prefered it black and white.

Silly me can't hand hold a portrait postition at 1/25th obviously. I'll have to work on that.

Exmoor Ponies, Day One

Finally I managed to get up to go to Exmoor! Woooo.

Well I suppose I can get props for that, but sadly the pictures didn't come out as I wanted. Basically the light was too poor, and there was too much cloud cover for what I wanted. I'm thinking for the shots I want I might need to wait until a cloudless night, although when that will be I would hate to guess. I tell you though, I can't do too many starts like a month.

I left the house today at about 03:50am, and headed up to Winsford Hill. This is quite a nice place that good commanding views across Exmoor. I figured this would give it a good chance of picking up the the morning sun and give some really nice backdrops. Another good point about this location is that the 1,760 acres of heather moorland are home to the "Anchor" herd which is quite a large herd of Exmoor ponies. And the more ponies the greater chance of spotting some.

There are actually two peaks of interest in this location, Winsford Hill proper and Draydon Knap. You can see the peaks and the route I walked overlayed on the following map:


I started at Draydon Knap becuase it has a better car park. There are only limited areas where a non high ride 4x4 can comfortably go. A saloon car like mine tends to scrape the underside on the rocks in certain places so it's not all the much fun.

I found a small herd of ponies, two foals and about 5 mares spread about. As the sun came up the light was absolutely fantastic. The sky went though so many glorius shades or red, yellow and orange. Well, the very small strip below the clouds did.


The problem with the clouds meant that the light level was very low. My telephoto isn't the fastest, and is f/5.6 at 210mm. An f/2.8 will have to wait because it's too much money. So at f/5.6 I was struggeling to get any better than about 1/6 second at ISO800. That's pretty slow, and grainy. I only had my monopod with me so camera shake has been a problem, but the ponies are not stationary so even their small movements, let alone when they were actually moving, has been a problem. Also the high ISO has caused a lot of noise, and the low light has caused a lot of problems with the auto-focus. It was forever hunting which take about a second to go from infinity to close and back out again.

This is a rather good image compared to some that I collected.


Eventually the ponies decided they didn't like where they were, or perhaps they didn't like me, and moved off to north down into the valley. That lost the angle I wanted and it was even darker anyway so I didn't follow. I scouted around for some more but seeing nothing moved the car up to Winsford Hill proper and looked around there. I found another few keeping close to the road, and I followed those for a while. They headed off into the heather so I went down to Spire Cross, then across to the Caractacus Stone. Seeing nothing I made my way back in a round about sort of way to the car.

Low and behold, as I neared the punch bowl I found a group of maybe 25 ponies. I'd lost the colour in the sky by then but I thought I'd try and get something. It's a funny thing about the exmoor ponies, or maybe this herd in particular. You can drive right up to them on the road, so close that with the windows down you could probably touch them. But get within about 200 yards on foot and they decided they want to be somewhere else. And the noise I was making with waterproofs on they could probaby hear me coming from a mile away.

So here is a group that was already well underway by the time I had gotten close enough for a picture:


This was quite a nice group really. They decided to head roughly south from their position so I was able to intercept them and close the distance pretty well. I got pretty close at times:


As we neared the road, I was able to get some really nice angles and use the terrain to sneak up on some. But the lack of adequate light still caused a shutter speed problem. I think this could be really good if he had his head still or I could have used a faster shutter.


I did get one really nice capture though I think. I'm quite pleased with this, although I had to HDR process the image to get the colours ricer and get some light back into the image. I basically underexposed it by quite a lot (1/50 @ f/5.6, ISO 200) because I was concious of the noise and I wanted to control the shutter more. I figured a dark image is easier to lighten in photoshop than a light image can be darkened so I'd hope I could bring it out.


I gave up shooting at about 7am, which meant I could be home by 8am. Time for a quick nap and then some breakfast! I got just over 100 exposures, and I've probably culled about 20 or more so far. I'm just going to see if there is anything I can recover from the others.

Next time I'm hoping for a little less cloud and a little more more light. I might also take some carrots or suger cubes or something. Or I'll get some camo gear and crawl around on my belly. I really need to work out how to get closer to those ponies.

Where people meet

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I met Pixie. By a "long, long" time I mean 4 years ago on 17th July 2004, and by a "galaxy far, far away" I mean Brighton. Let me explain.

Pie Crust

Okay a little background. Well okay, a lot of background. I just love Star Wars. I've owned VHS copies since they came out and watched them I don't know how often. And played so many of the franchised computer games. I can't begin to image how many hours I played X-Wing, B-Wing, Tie-Fighter and Imperial Pursuit as a boy. So back in 2003 I was absolutely enraptured to learn that a starwars MMO was coming out! Even though at the time I had no idea what an MMO was, I knew it was a computer game and it has Starwars dammit! Star Wars: Galaxies had been born! If I was going to break my MMO cherry, then this is surely the way to break it.

Forums appeared and as the game was developed more of the world was revealed to me. I read about adventures in the Dune Sea, combat with monstrous beings, player communities, traders, Rebels, Imperials, spies. And the ever present hint of secret Jedi-ness lurking in the shadows. I was excited, nay aroused, as week by week, more features were added and more beta stories appeared on the forums. And believe me, what really sold it to me was a story about fishing. The first fishing expedition. I was, excuse the pun, completely hooked.

So as soon as I could I pre-ordered from the States, I'd even have paid for the guy tio stand in the queue and by a copy when the door opened at midnight, and ten have it chilled and air freighted over. I waited patiently for the release date to arrive. And in due course, a DHL man arrived with a huge box demanding some exorbitant amount of import tax. "Here, take my wallet, just gimme the box!"

And thus began a series of late nights, followed by 4 hours stints in bed, followed by work, then home to repeat again. To mix a metaphor, I was grinding my day job just to get home and fire up the game. It was unhealthy. But boy, back then it felt sooooo good!

Thus Gorja La'Tau was born, forged on the harsh plains of Talus. He became a warrior! I was Rebel scum.


The beauty of Star Wars Galaxies to me, was the flexibility of the class system. It's something no other MMO I have tried has had. And something SWG sadly lost in 'upgrades'. When your character was born into the game, they were nothing, but they could be anything. The only limits on what "Class" you were, where your own desires (within the confines of the game mechanic "skill points" of course). I toyed with several professions, as my whims changed, combat, crafting, healing, but always I kept my dancing skills. People always used to laugh at me that I played a Star Wars game but most of all I enjoyed the dancing. But it was fun to unwind doing it.


I had known a nice lady called K'Vera in the game since almost the first week I had been playing. She had a band called Talus Moon. I learned tips and tricks from her. And we even met in person. Here we are in Bristol:


Sometimes I really think I am Mark Corrigan. I'm the one on the right.

Eventually however the game really started to piss me off. The game wasn't as much fun as it used to be. There seemed to be continual changes and a general overall degredation of the immersion. So in typical Nostromoo style I packed my bags, sorted my affairs and decided to quit. Well, not without going out with a bang! I decided to go to Coronet City, visit the cantina (which is like a bar) and strut my funky stuff. And then quit. Always leave them wanting more, see?

Cooked apple filling

So after that brief *cough* background story, we come to the title of this post. Where people meet. Back in those days, I was Gorja. Or rather, he was me. I made him that way. He was lost, and to be honest I was lost.

So there I am in game land, alone, when all of a sudden there's someone else there. As pixels go, these were pretty cute. And wait, did she just /wave at me? Maybe I'll try a ..... /wink! Ha! Interaction. She's probably a man though, most of them are you know.....

Actually she wasn't, and she was very sweet and fun to talk to. So we did. She was an Entertainer, and I was an Entertainer. I danced, she played, or someone else played and we both danced. And I forgot I was going to quit. I was lost, but then I was found. And instead of quitting we both joined Talus Moon instead.

And inevitably, Talus Moon had another get together, this time in Brighton. And this was the first time we met in person:


Did I say I was Mark Corrigan? That's a Barbour jacket you know, and I'm not a farmer. Do you know how old I was there?

So where do people meet? Well some meet through friends, in bars, in clubs, in supermarkets. Some meet on train station platforms. Some actually meet in "cyberspace". It's strange how people meet. There are many stories.

Custard

So it was 4 years ago. The 17th of July 2004. There was an Edward Hopper exhibition at the Tate gallery, so I'd invited "Sassira" to join me in London. She likes art right, everyone likes art. We're just friends. Friends go to art galleries in London all the time. What's wrong with that? It's just an Edward Hopper exhibition. If that's all it is, we can board our trains afterward and never speak of it again. But if it's not......nah, don't get carried away. It's just an Edward Hopper exhibition. We'll meet, have a very pleasent discussion about Nighthawks, then slowly drift apart again like passing ships.

So as depicted in glourious 640x480 camera phone colour goodness, we met for the first time without the company of friends:


And we had a good time. We saw the painting, and talked about Edward Hopper. We had lunch. We talked some more. We walked back to the station though Hyde Park. And we held hands. And we got to the station. And we kissed.

And for the entire journey home I thought about it. We spoke on the phone. And I was happy. Across the table on the train Fred was happy too, although we didn't talk much:


Fred got off with his owner in Swindon. I stayed onboard.

So that's how we met. A chance encounter in a virtual bar. A 3D computer animated representation of the greatest science fiction franchise to have existed. Had I decided to leave a week earlier; had she decided to come in a week later; we never would have virtually met. And without virtually meeting, I would not have met her at all.

Coffee and mints

After London of course I met her again at her home:


And we had a baby!


Oh wait! No, that hasn't happened has it. That was just a baby I was holding.