Holiday planning

This morning I finished off my article I was writing yesterday evening for my photo tips website. Considering that I had most of the article written in 1-2hrs yesterday, it seems quite amazing how finishing it off took most of the morning. The time was mostly taken up finding relevant CC licensed images on Flickr to illustrate the article, and then there was also getting / checking links and html, spell checking, and proof reading.

In the afternoon I read the instructions for my Olympus LS-5 sound recorder, I didn't read all the instructions, but enough to work it. I did think of going out before dinner to photograph the Christmas tree in the town centre (assuming it's still there), and also using the recorder to record the sounds there. But it was so windy I thought the wind would blow the tree about too much, so wouldn't be great for a photo / pano.

When setting up the recorder, one of the things I was wondering about was what sound quality option to choose. I found this article here: 16 Bit vs. 24 Bit Audio - Discussion of the mysteries behind bit-depth, sample rates and sound quality, which suggests that 44.1Khz 16bit should be good enough for most purposes. It does advise to use 24bit quality if you have it available (the LS-5 goes up to 96Khz 24bit), but considering I am only recording natural sounds, not music, I think 16 bit will suit me fine. In fact, I may well go for MP3.

Then the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening I was looking at possible locations to visit on a holiday to Ukraine / Transnistria / Moldova later in the year. So far I only looked at Ukraine places. Probably we will visit Kiev, south to a central industrial area, south to Crimea, along the coast, then up to Odessa, on to Transnistria and Moldova, back into Ukraine to Chernobyl, then to Kiev for the flight back home. Lots of places in Ukraine look nice, so I'm not sure exactly where we'll stop or how long we'll stay for.