Saturday 29 December 2007

Finished work, pinternet, sleepy & walk

Yesterday I final-chee finished the work I was given to do over Christmas, although I'm still waiting for a couple of people to get back to me about a change of address and I may need to chase them up if I don't hear back from them.

The rest of yesterday I was feeling too sleepy to do any Javascript learning so I mainly went on photography websites, catching up on what I'd missed since Sunday, and also watched most of Waynes World with Ben & Yumpt, and episode 1 of Arrested Development with Yumpt. I ate a boost while I watched Waynes World - delee!!

Today I went out on a walk with rad & Moohar this morning along a muddy canal bank which was quite sloped towards the canal and thin and slippy, but I didnae fall in. When we finished, we went into the farmhouse where we parked as Rad knew the people there and they gave us a cup o' coffee and some Christmas cake, so that was nice.

When we got home we ate lunch, and then after lunch we watched the rest of Waynes World. After that me, Yumpt & Ben went on a walk to the postbox because Moohar had said that Ben had to get some excercise. Since I am skill I wore my dressing gown, although my hands got dead clod because the dressing gown doesn't have any pockets.

Then me and Yumpt watched a couple more episodes of Arrested Development while Ben & Moohar put mattresses down the stairs and slid down them.

After dinner I just sorted & edited the photos I took this morning, then went to bed.

Breakfast: Coco Pops; cup o' tea.
Morning snack: Christmas cake; coffee.
Lunch: Ham sandwich; lamb & Moroccan spices flavoured crisps; Clementine; banana; Montana chocolate biscuit; cup o' tea.
Afternoon snack: Some dried Filipino fruits; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Burger in a bun with lettuce, cheese, tomato, tom ketch. Pudding was creamy fruit yoghurt & a chocolate covered crinkle crunch. Coffee.

Wednesday 26 December 2007

Popa Chimbo

Lately I have been mostly working, I even worked most of Christmas today.

For Christmas I got:
pants & a dressing gown from Moohar
Money & an ear/nose hair trimmer from rad
Wierd Al - Straight Outta Lynwood & some happy hippos from Shaz
A box of chocolate biscuits from Ben
Money from grandad
Freezepop - futurefuturefutureperfect from Yumpt

For my Birthday I got:
Money from Moohar
some electronics bits to make a sound flash trigger from rad
2 x The Go! Team albums from yumpt
Pog soccer game that I already had from Shaz
Skips Milkcaps & Happy Hippos from Ben
Money from grandad

My Russian hats arrived, so Ben wore one and I wore the rabbit fur one with my East German coat to church on Sunday, and people said my hat was dead good.

Also, I bought a zigview S2, which arrived next day, unfortunately I bought the C version, which I think is meant for fullframe cameras when I should've bought the B version for 1.5x crop cameras. You can zoom in on the C version so that the screen is filled with the image, but the quality isn't very good, which makes focusing hard. I don't think the quality of image on the B version is that great either, but should be better than the zoomed image on the C version. I think I will try and get a B version when one comes up on ebay at a reasonable price, and hopefully I should then be able to sell the C version for around the same I paid for it.

One of the interesting features of the zigview S2 is that it should be able to trigger the camera shutter when something changes on the screen e.g. if an insect flies in front of the camera. I need to buy a Nikon 10 pin shutter trigger lead for it, but if it works well hopefully should be able to get some photos of insects in flight, which would be nice.

On my birthday me & ben did a plasticine animation which was quite skill & fun. On Christmas day I had to get up early and went to the early Christmas service rad was doing at 8.30am at Kibworth. Yumpt, Ben & Sarah (who came home on Chimbo eve) were too lazy to get up so they went to a later service at a church in town.

Today (Boxing day) I went on a walk with rad & Moohar near great Bowden, and near the village there was loads of people having a boxing day walk with their dogs, but when we got away from the village and into the fields we were the only ones. A horse tried to eat us which was annoying.

When we got back home I went on the pinternet and then we ate lunch. After lunch I did some work, then played magnetic darts (that Ben got for chimbo) then watched Shrek 3, had dinner, then finished watching Shrek 3.

Food
Breakfast: Blueberry wheats; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Cheese on toast & cheese on seedy bagel; clementine; grapes; swiss roll; caramel rocky; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Turkey, mayonnaise, iceberg lettuce & tomato sandwich; flavoured rice. Pudding was Christmas pud with custard & cream. Cup o' tea. Chocolate biscuit.

Monday 17 December 2007

Processing photos

Well, not done a lot since my last post. I did a bit more javascript work, although haven't done any for the last couple of days. I processed the photos from the walk I did with rad the other day and also the folder that was already in the 'Needs sorting' folder. I found that the other folder was from when me & rad went on a walk near East Carlton on 29th Nov, and when I got home from that walk the gps hadn't recorded a tracklog.

Well, I processed the photos from both walks over the weekend, and today I renamed them and also managed to geo-code the East Carlton pics using Robo-geo and google earth. Luckily I could remember they way we walked, took photos with identifiable objects at reasonably regular intervals and also the paths are quite clear on google earth, so I think I was able to geo-code them pretty accurately.

I also filed away all my swaps of pogs that I hadn't filed yet, this took quite a long time as I had to make some more pogtainers out of toilet rolls, tissue paper, cardboard boxes and sellotape.

I went on the pinternet quite a bit today and yesterday as well, catching up on some photography websites.

Hopefully I will have time to carry on learning javascript tomorrow, although I might get given some work work to do.

Food
Breakfast: Chocolate oat crunch cereal (cannae remember what its called); cup o' tea.
Morning snack: Nice; choc chip cookie; coffee.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with iceberg lettuce sandwich; about 3 cocktail tomatoes; small banana; pear; clementine; caramel rocky (yum!!!); cup o' tea.
Afternoon snack: Nice; choc chip cookie; coffee.
Dinner: Bacon quiche; peas with butter; potato. Pudding was mincemeat sponge with custard and a small bit of whipped cream. Coffee.

Thursday 13 December 2007

work, javascript & pogs

Had a bit more work to do over the last week, so did that. Also started reading about AJAX with PHP, but it seemed a bit advanced for me so I decided to re-learn javascript since I only learnt a little bit of it before, and that was probably in 1999 and I haven't really used much since then. So I have been learning a bit of basic javascript, which hopefully should be useful, especially when I start to learn the less absolute basic stuff.

Also, been sorting pogs, scanning them and filing them, nearly done now. I also got my fixed e-sata drive back from the seller quite a while ago now, and copied my pictures on to it. I hooked it up again yesterday to copy across some more pictures, but it wouldn't let me and said it was write protected! I did some internet searching and it seems that this is a problem with Vista (maybe just Vista x64) when using e-sata drives. The problem stems from a user not inherting modify/write permissions even when they are an administrator.

A few people had posted on forums about this problem, but either hadn't had any replies or were given useless advice such as to tick 'modify' for 'users' in the security tab on the drive properties. You can't modify the file permissions when they are write protected! Luckily, one of the posters had said that their drive worked fine when connected via USB, just didn't work properly when connected via e-sata. So I connected the drive via USB, and modifying the permissions worked okay. Then re-connected via e-sata and it worked fine.

So I've finally got the drive working okay. I don't think I'll buy any more new drives from ebay sellers, although the technical support for the first drive they sent that failed was fine, I had to take it to the post office and pay for the postage to send it back, whereas with a well known company like Dabs.com I think they arrange for their own courier to pick up faulty products, so is cheaper and easier if the product is faulty. I don't know if a lot of external hard drives are fault or if I'm just unlucky - out of the 4 I've purchased 2 have developed faults straight after being first used, and another has developed a fault over time. Only the Maxtor drive has worked since being bought, although that has still got corrupted and had to be reformatted a few times.

Today I went out on a short walk with rad this morning, we went over the other side of Harborough behind the housing estate near the Industrial estate, so that was nice since I haven't been over there before. The housing estate was very like where we live, except quite a lot bigger. The ground was still quite frosty, which was lucky because it would have been really muddy otherwise. The field we walked up had ice all up the tractor track we were walking up so you had to be careful not to slip over. It was quite cold, but the weather was nice. Near the end of the walk we got chased by some bulls. It seems that lots of farmers breed cattle that chase you round here.

On the walk I used my LowePro Slingshot 300aw bag for the first time, and it worked reasonably well. It pulls up to your front to let you access the camera very easily, but when you push it back to your back it messes up your coat a bit. Not much of a problem though. I found that even though it's quite easy and quick to get your camera out the bag, it's still not quick enough when walking with someone else and they can have walked quite far ahead of you by the time you have put the camera back in the bag and straightened your coat out. I think it would probably be best to hold the camera in your hand and then put it in the bag when you need to use your hands for something else like blowing your nose or going over a stile.

I got quite hot on the walk, and taking your coat off would be quite hard with the slingshot. I think you'd need to take the slingshot off and put it on the ground, then take your coat off. On my old bag it had plastic clips for holding a tripod, and I always used the top clip for holding my coat when I wasn't wearing it. The slingshot doesn't have this feature, so there would be no where to put your coat and you'd just have to carry it in your hands. Luckily it does have a couple of plastic bands called sliplock bands or something similar, designed for you to clip special Lowepro sliplock cases to. I have just run a spare clippy thing I had through one of these and it seems like it will now hold my coat okay. The slingshot won't hold a tripod or monopod like my old bag could. I guess I could sew some bits on the side of the bag to hold a 'pod, but I don't really want to damage the bag and its possible resale value when I haven't used it much and decided how useful it is. My old bag would dig into my back a bit, so hopefully the slingshot won't do that. It didn't today, but I had a jumper and thick coat on, so my old bag wouldn't have either.

When I got home I copied across the gpx file (yes it did work) and the pics I took. I also found there were already some pics on my comp and I had somehow forgotten to process and these pics hadn't been deleted from the camera's memory card either. After that ate lunch.

After lunch I sorted pogs, got Ben home from school, sorted more pogs and then had dinner. After dinner I sorted pogs and scanned some in. Then I spent the rest of the evening typing this rather long blog.


Food
Breakfast: Marmalade toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Lunch: 3x small sausage rolls; cheddar cheese with iceberg lettuce sandwich; 2 x clementines; orange penguin style biscuit; cup o' tea.
Afternoon snack: Choc chip cookie; custard cream; coffee.
Dinner: Breaded fish with vinegar, salt & black pepper; peas with butter; mashed potatoes; mushrooms. Pudding was angel cake. Coffee.

Tuesday 4 December 2007

Michael Buerkin'

Saturday I worked from 9am-12am trying to get my work work finished, I didnae though. I did finish listening to the Lynyrd Skynyrd discography though, lots of songs are on multiple albums so I heard lots of them up to 8 times.

On Sunday I just relaxed. Ben completed Mario Galaxy, so now he has to complete it again as luigi. I also got eveneux's christmas lists and went on spleenbay to try & get their presence.

On the day of the Moon I finished off my work (didnae have much left) and the auctions for Moohar's & Ben's presents finished so I had to bid on them & pay for them. I also set up an account with amazon.co.jp, I wanted to get the Animal Forest (Crossing) film on DVD, but it came to like £25 inc. P&P and they wouldn't let me buy from an Amazon marketplace seller so I didn't get it. The rest of the day I spent processing panos, I did one from the church where I only had my monopod and used ISO1600, which I think came out quite well. The only problem is the windows are all blown out (apart from the stainglass one which I made sure I took an underexposed shot of).

Today I just edited a pano and also went back to one I was working on yesterday and edited that a bit. Also got a headache, and my mouth has been hurting all day and its painful to eat food, all because I bit my cheek while eating breakfast a few days ago. In the evening I scanned some pogs.

Food
Breakfast: Nesquik cereal; cup o' tea.
Lunch: Ham with mustard sandwich; apple; clementine; shortcake with jam in the middle; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Shepherds pie; green beans; carrots; gravy. Pudding was lemon pud with custard. Coffee.