Google plus is so unorganised

Most of this morning I was trying to record a quick (2 minute) photoshop tutorial video. The first time I recorded no audio was recorded. I made a few checks to make sure that audio was being recorded, and it worked okay (despite not changing any settings) in my short test recordings.

So I tried to record the video again, but the PC became so slow and laggy it was impossible. After doing some more testing, I found that whenever audio recording was enabled in the screen record (MS Expression Encoder), then the PC would become really slow.

I tried a few different things, but couldn't get it working okay, so I posted in the EE forums: Extremely slow and laggy with audio enabled. Then I tried out some other software called Webinaria. This worked reasonably well, but has a max FPS rate of 15fps, and generated a nearly 9GB file (probably would have been 100-300MB in Expression Encoder). After editing the file and exporting it as an MP4, I also found that there was a small skip (in the audio and video) part way through the video.

In the afternoon I tried out the Wray 3¼ in. Supar Series III lens I bought from ebay a week or so ago. I wanted to test it for UV photography, which meant adding a filter to the front. It doesn't have a filter thread, and I didn't have any filter rings small enough to fit it.

I cut up a toilet roll and wrapped this round the outside of the lens, then sellotaped it to act as a collar round the lens. I took a piece of cardboard, then cut a hole out of the middle for the lens to 'see' through. I taped this to the toilet roll collar. Then to use filters, I just held the filter up against the cardboard front.

This meant that the filter threads were pressed up against the cardboard. Without this, the filter glass would have been pressed up against the lens.

The lens is actually quite dirty, despite being described as a Clean lens. Unfortunately the dirt seems to be inside the lens, as well as possibly a scratch. However, optical performance seemed fine. UV performance was similar to my 80mm/5.6 EL-Nikkor, i.e. there was visible focus shift. Here is a UV-Vis diptych:

When viewed at 100%, I noticed that there were a few mites on the flower. Clare reckoned they were probably dust mites. I couldn't find any 'normal' images of dust mites online, they all seem to be electron scanning microscope style photos. According to Wikipedia they are about 0.5mm in size, so this seems about right.

Although they are probably all over the house, in my clothes etc. anyway, I still didn't like actually knowing they were there on the flowers. The flowers were going over anwyay so I threw them away. Now I keep feeling like there are little dust mites crawling all over me.

In the evening I watched an episode of Dai Rangers with Billy (as usual), and did some sculupey. Today I made the body for Santa Marx, which used up most of a packet of red newplast. And I didn't even make him fat.

I also helped out Peter with his computer so he could scan an old photo.