Thursday 29 November 2007

Walk, work & annoying

Actually got up early enough this morning to have breakfast with Ben so that was good. After Ben went to school I tried re-stitching the high res pano at took near the top of Devils Dyke ages ago, to see if it would still have visible differences in exposure between the different images. It took ages to stitch & blend, so I just went on the pinternet while it was doing that.

After about an hour and a half Moohar came back from her job (I Tom-Hink she went shopping as well) so me & farthner went on a walk, starting out from East Carlton Country Park and then towards somewhere like Billesden? I looked on google earth but all the village names seem to have disappeared for some cheese-un. We got home pobasquish about 1.15pm.

When we got home I checked my work email & I had got an email with a few days worth of work, so that was good in that I can get some money but bad in that it means I have to do work instead of getting other stuff done. Then I ate lunch.

After lunch I tried to upload the gpx tracklog file for the morning's walk from my gps to my PC, but it wasn't there. I decided to just get on with my work work and that I'd look into why it was empty later. I did work for a while, then had to go and get Ben, then did more work, then had dinner.

After dinner I did the washing up as usual, then I did some more work. After a while I checked my gps, and it seems somehow it had managed to turn off the tracklog feature. Extremely annoying! I turned it on again and hopefully it won't forget. Copied the pics from my camera to my PC, wrote this and then carried on working until about 10.30pm when I went to bed.

Food
Breakfast: Nesquik cereal; cup o' tea.
After walk snack: 2x Malted Milks; plain chocolate digestive; coffee.
Lunch: Chicken Tikka sandwich spread sandwich; cheese on toast; 2x clementines; cup o' tea.
Afternoon snack: Hot Cross Bun with butter; coffee.
Dinner: Battered fish with vinegar & black pepper; potatoes; peas with butter. Pudding was chocolate cereal cake. Coffee.
Supper: Clementine

Tuesday 27 November 2007

Panos, pogs & Soviets

Over the spleenkend I bid & searched for some soviet stuff on spleenbay, played on Mario galaxy a bit more, bought some more Belgian pogs on spleenbay and sorted pogs.

On Monday I filed pogs (my order of 500 Ultra Pro pog packets arrived on Saturday) and processed 3 panos from my walk from Devils Dyke to Brighton which I did ages ago.

Today I processed some more panos from the walk from Devils Dyke to Brighton.

It rained all day, so I got wet when I had to get Ben home from school.

Also, one of the flash radio triggers I bought off spleenbay broke even though I only used it once, a wire had broke inside so I soldered that back. I've also got a gokos flash thing off spleenbay that lets me use PC cords with my sunpak 383, so I can now trigger that using the radio trigger.

I won an auction for a Soviet coat, so that was good, although expensive, item was $26, but shipping about $56, so £41 overall. US post has got really expensive since UPS increased their prices. Still, prices for postage for Soviet items from Ukraine sellers are nearly as bad.

Food
Breakfast: Nesquik cereal; grapefruit marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Beetroot sandwich; ½ Cheddar cheese with Mediterranean style salad sandwich; delee cranberry (or sumat similar) sponge cake (like a muffin); apple; cup o' tea.
Afternoon snack: Plain chocolate digestive; coffee.
Dinner: Kebab with chilli sauce; potatoes. Pudding was another delee cranberry sponge cake Tom Hing. Coffee.
Supper: Hot chocolate milk; Plain chocolate digestive.

Friday 23 November 2007

Cold Ashby

This morning me and rad went on a walk near Cold Ashby, which was appropriately named as it was very cold. We were originally going to go on a walk somewhere else, but the road was closed. It was nice weather today, whereas the rest of the week has been rainy & cloudy. The ground was still wet and muddy on most of the walk. After the walk we stopped off at the Battle of Naseby viewpoint for a few minutes to have a look.

When we got home we had lunch. At the end of lunch when granny was getting up, Moohar said to granny "Do you want to put your tissue in the bin before you leave?" and Granny said "Do I want to get in the bin before I leave?!?" and she said that Moohar was very cheeky for asking her if she wanted to go in the bin. I just laughed and then granny said "thank you david for supporting me". Then Moohar pretended to cry and granny said "really, laughing at me". It was totally funny, especially why would Moohar ask her if she wanted to get in the bin? When I told Yumpt when he got home he said that it was like what would happen in a dream.

After lunch I cleaned my monitor with a wet wipe and re-calibrated it using the Spyder2. Then I went on Mario Galaxy, and I managed to get the last green Luma and also enough stars to fly to the center of the galaxy. At 3pm I had to go and pick up Ben from school, and after we got home I went on Mario galaxy again, trying to get the stars from the green luma Trial galaxy. After that I went to the center of the galaxy, and me and Ben took swap goes to beat Bowser and I think Ben beat him on his 2nd go. Yumpt came home just as the credits were starting, when they had finished and I had saved we put Guitar Hero 3 on which Yumpt got today and we all had a go on that, and Ben was even raddisher than me!!

After that it was dinner time so we ate dinner then I had to do the washing up as usual. After dinner just went on photo websites then went to bed.

Food
Breakfast: Grapefruit jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheese on toast; Peppered ham with mustard sandwich; 2x cherry tomatoes; pear; satsuma; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Battered fish with malt vinegar & black pepper; peas; potatoes. For pudding we had sultana cake with custard.

Sunday 18 November 2007

SNoow

Got up, had a wash etc. then woke up Ben to have breakfast with him. After breakfast went on Wii fitness.

Went on my comp for a bit, working on a pano from Seaford Head. Went to Church, granny wanted to go so we were late since she gets up quite late. It was raining so I drove to the Church and then Me, Yumpt and Ben went into church while Moohar drove the car to the Sainsbury's car park to park. After Church Moohar said me, yumpt and Ben could run away so we did, it was still raining so I pulled my coat over my head like Ben does with his jumper for the chicken dance. Quite a few people saw me so that was skilk 103.2. When we got home we had to wait for age-cheese since we don't have a key.

After church, did more pano editing, then ate dinner. After dinner did more pano editing, then ate tea. After tea did more pano editing and finished the Seaford head ones. It started snowing, which was skilk 103.2. Then Yumpt asked me to put some different songs on my ipod that he's borrowing to listen to when he walks to/from work. So I started itunes, but then it had to determine gapless playback information for all the songs in the itunes library (27938) so it made my PC totally slow while it was doing that.

So I couldn't do any proper work so I just copied across the pics from my D200 that I took recently and found that I had left it in JPEG mode from when I tried making a timelapse, also I had left the ISO set at 200 from the walk I did with rad the other day. I don't think I took any pics after that walk that mattered about the ISO being 200 though. Annoying about not shooting RAW, although hopefully not too much of a problem. I organised the pics into relevant folders, but couldn't do much processing (mainly exposure blending a couple of panos) because itunes is making my PC too slow.

Also, I am currently using Everest Ultimate edition (demo) to monitor my CPU temperature and for quite a while it said the temperature was 81-82, which had me worried (it's normally between 35-45 and the CPU was hardly being used at all), but now it says 1 so I think Everest must just be broke. Glad I didn't pay any money for a rubbish program, although would be useful it worked since then I could overclock and check it doesn't make things too hot.

Unfortunate-la-piece-of-cheese, although its still snowing it looks like the snow on the ground is thinner and sad bad rad de pad dad said that on the weather it said that most or all of the snow will be gone by tomorrow morning. Typical Bipical!

Also today, as per normal I went on the pinternet loads, mainly just photography websites while waiting for PTGUI to stitch, Pano2QTVR to process panos, & Photoshop to load/save.

Food
Breakfast: Grapefruit marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Curry with rice. Orangeade. Pudding was a slice of cheapo shockolate chicken swiss roll and also some raspberry ripple ice cream. Coffee.
Tea: 2x Cheese on toast; mince pie; satsuma; cup o' tea.
Supper: Mince pie; hot chocolate.

Thursday 15 November 2007

Poggin', photos & panos

I haven't done my blog in a while, so here's an update on what I've been doin lately:

Friday
The weather was nice so I went on the same walk I went on (the Friday before?) nearly to Foxton Locks, and took some photos of the Autumn trees there that I had previously posted to the Photography critique group on Flickr. I tried to use the advice I had been given on the group to improve the photos i.e. shooting lower and getting nearer. I took some photos with both my 18-70mm and 10-17mm fisheye lenses. When I got back home and looked at the photos I think I got too low with the 18-70mm lens, and obviously while I got closer with the fisheye lens it looked further away due to the large FoV.

A large amount of pogs arrived in the post. Ben came home from his week away on a school trip, so he helped me sort some of the new pogs when he got in.

Saturday & Sunday
Finished sorting the pogs into piles of each type (not into number order though). There was over 1000 pogs, which is why it took so long. Also, I cannae remember when I did it, but I added more detailed descriptions to my photoshelter photos, just getting info off wikipedia etc. about the subject of the photo.

Monday
Processed the pictures I took on Friday and also a few other pics I had taken recently. Uploaded a couple of the new Autumn trees photos I took on Friday to the thread on Flickr to show the results.

Tuesday
Processed the first pano from Portsmouth, it was quite a lot of work fixing stitching errors, levelling the pano and patching the nadir. Obviously my skills in using a monopod for panos aren't that great. By lunch I had got quite a bad headache so I went to bed after lunch. Got up at 3pm to get Ben from school, then by the time we got back home my headache had gone so we did more pog scanning/sorting.
While not doing other stuff I looked at high speed photos and how to take them - quite interesting. It seems the best way to do it is to make the high speed flash trigger yourself, which again looks quite interesting although complicated since I can't remember any electronics stuff. I went on maplin.co.uk and added some bits to a basket. Hopefully it will save the basket until I actually want to order. I think I will need to get a book or sumat on basic electronics to learn the basics before I try to make a flash trigger.
There was also a Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 VR lens going for about £300 on ebay, which is very cheap. Luckily(?) I managed to resist from bidding and I will try to do macros cheaper with reversed lens / diopter lenses / extension tubes.

Wednesday
Processed the 2nd pano from Portsmouth, which again had quite a few errors & problems, not as bad as the 1st one though. Did some research on extension tubes and it seems that Kenko are the best as they allow AF (with non AF-S lenses) and adjustment of aperture on G type lenses (which all of mine apart from the 50/1.4 are).
My e-Sata hard drive that I bought off ebay recently doesn't work so I took that to the post office to send it back.

Thursday (today)
In the morning it was frosty so I went out in the garden and to the piece of grass across the road to try and get some frosty macro photos.
Processed 2 panos from Portsmouth, started on a third one but it's really messed up with loads of rope all over a ship that doesn't match up, and the ship is spread over 3 shots.

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry crisp; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Smoked ham with mustard sandwich; 2 x apples; banana; kitkat; cup o' tea.
Afternoon snack: Plain chocolate digestive; ginger biscuit; coffee.
Dinner: Chicken pie; green beans; potatoes. Pudding was flapjack. Coffee.

Wednesday 7 November 2007

Processing photos

The last couple of days I finished processed the photos I took on walks last week and also processed about 3 panos.

Today I went on a walk with dad in the morning, the weather was very flat grey overcast, cold, dark and windy so I tried not to take any photos since processing the photos takes quite a lot of time and its a waste if the photos come out rubbish anyway. I did take one photo, although I haven't put it on my comp to process it yet.

In the afternoon I filed some pogs, and then about 5pm it was dark so I started scanning pogs. Then we had dinner, after dinner I scanned more pogs, then watched Autumn watch, and then scanned more pogs again.

Food
Breakfast: Golden Grahams; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Pilgrims Extra Mature Cheddar cheese sandwich; prawn cocktail flavour crisps; pear; banana; sultana & raisin cake; twix finger; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Green beans from the garden; pasta; cheese sauce; peas; fried black forest ham (like bacon); chicken nuggets; ground black pepper. Pudding was 2 mince pies that Moohar had just cooked.

Sunday 4 November 2007

Walking & processing photos

Time to update my blog!

The past week I have been going on a few walks and processing some of the photos that I took, also sorting pogs, scanning pogs and filing pogs.

I also worked a bit on my pog website, but I don't know enough PHP to make the menu work, as the menu is meant to be dynamically created by the script reading the directories of the website, then turning these into a menu with the same structure as the directories, and directories with the actual pog scans in should be links to change some variables and so change the text and images displayed in the main content of the page. I will have to read up on the basics of PHP and progress from there until I am able to do this sort of thing. Unfortunately, I still have about 500 or so images from recent walks and probably about 70 or sumat panos to Ben loves Po-cess pit, so it will pobasquish be a while until I can learn PHP unless I just get bored of Intel Pentium Processor-ing photos & panos.

On Friday evening I was checking me spleen-mail and I got an email from Photoshelter to say I had been accepted?!? I checked into their website and all my pics had been accepted. I can only guess that they are receiving so many submissions (they had a note on their website to say that as it comes up to launch date they won't be able to send messages about acceptions and rejections for images because they have so many to try and go through in time for launch date) that they just looked at them very quickly and approved them. While I am extremely happy to have such an unexpected surprise as being accepted and all the images being accepted, whether anyone will actually purchase one of my images after the service launches is another thing. I still need to log in again and set prices for licensing of the images and stuff like that.

Yesterday I submitted some of my photos from a walk to Foxton I did during the week to Digital Photo Forum, Digital Photography Blog, Deviant Art and the Photography Critique group on Flickr to try and get some feedback on how I can improve my photography and PP, so far I got comments from all apart from Deviant art (surprise, surprise). I would say the feedback on Flickr was the most useful, then Digital Photo Forum, and then Digital Photography blog. Feedback from all of them was useful, the comments on Digital Photography blog didn't give any suggestions for improvement, but its still useful to know whether people like a photo and why.

Today Ben went off on his school trip to Norfolk for a week, so me and Yumpt had to stay home instead of going to Choich and take him and his bags up to school for 12pm.

For the rest of the day I just processed pictures from a walk me & rad did last week and also played on Wii sports a bit with Yumpt and beat him at everything (boxing, golf, bowling).

Food
Breakfast: Golden Grahams; Cup o' tea.
Morning snack: Malt loaf with butter; coffee.
Dinner: Chicken & Vegetable cup o' soup; toast; cob with butter; salad; bacon quiche. Coffee.
Afternoon snack: Toffee Muffin; cup o' tea.
Tea: Cheddar cheese with salad sandwich; apple; scone with squirty cream & strawberries; cup o' tea.