| Things I Saw Yesterday |
[Jul. 6th, 2008|11:52 pm] |
I saw some interesting flying things yesterday, at RAF Waddington's airshow:
Click for more photos, as-yet uncaptioned due to woeful ignorance; photography generally ropey as usual.
The Vulcan was a magnificent sight, and all the more for it being her first display flight since restoration. There were plenty of other examples of airborne engineering to be seen too, even though I don't know enough about aircraft to have recognised most of them; I got a few nice pictures out of it, though, and shall learn from my mistakes. All in all, a fun expedition! |
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| More Adventures on a Sunday |
[May. 18th, 2008|10:46 pm] |
Today saw the PCCGB holding their annual Photographica fair in London, and I toddled along for a browse as I did last year.
I still probably shouldn't have done that. I appear to have bought:
( Today's purchases )
Also as with last year, the afternoon was spent supping the odd pint or few with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) samj and pndc in nearby pubs. A good day, all told, and a welcome break from the never-ending pile of work. |
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| RIP Humphrey Lyttelton |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|10:58 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  sad | ] |
When I saw the I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue tour in September, Humph closed proceedings with a performance of We'll Meet Again. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
Rest in peace, Humph; I bet you've got them laughing already, wherever you are. I wish I could think of a suitably witty quote, but I'm coming up blank... |
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| I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell |
[Nov. 23rd, 2007|07:40 pm] |
Just a quick edit; judging by some of the out-of-band reactions to this, I caused rather more concern than was intended! It's not all that bad, to be honest; the various minor side-effects are, as ficlogic points out, of the "one bloke in the test group had the trots so we'd better put that in" variety. So I'll be fine, I'm sure, but felt the need to have a bit of a grumble. Apologies for any consternation caused.
Hey look, an update! I haven't posted one of these in a while -- well, a rant about Visual Studio about two months back, but I hid that one soon after since it made no sense. There's no real reason behind my lack of posts, apart from just forgetting to post until the time has passed.
One of the things that I meant to post about and didn't dates from early August. I took a trip up to Edinburgh, to try and exercise a camera or two and see the sights. It was an interesting weekend -- got to have a look around and caught the start of the Fringe, even if it did rain continuously. However, as I drove up on the Saturday morning, I became aware that my left eye was a bit unhappy; it kept trying to close, and was stinging a bit. It got a bit better over the course of the weekend, but as soon as I arrived home I rang the eye hospital and arranged to get it looked at ASAP.
Turns out the corneal graft I had early last year had suddenly decided to start rejecting; it wasn't anywhere near as bothersome as the three rejections I'd had in the right eye years ago, so I'd hoped that wasn't it. Turns out that after eighteen months the eye had got fed up of the stitches irritating it, and had started to grow a blood vessel out toward the cornea in an attempt to dissolve them. This disturbed the graft enough to trigger a rejection. Ironically, my consultant had been considering taking the stitches out several months previously, but since the graft had been utterly trouble-free up until this point it had been decided to leave well enough alone for a few months longer.
Of course, since I'd been through several episodes of graft rejection before I knew the drill, and also knew that it didn't necessarily lead to a graft failure. An intensive course of steroids is the routine, along with antibiotics at first to make sure it doesn't get infected. Luckily I was sent home on a gradually-tapering course of steroids, rather than admitted for a week like before! By mid-September I was taken down to three drops a day, with an appointment to review the dosage a month later...
... and then with 24 hours' notice, the hospital cancelled that appointment due to staff illness, and promised to rebook and let me know in a few days. Ten days later I gave up waiting and gave them a call:
Ah, yes, you have an appointment booked for January 11th
Uhm, I think you'll find that's for a different department; I really need one sooner to review this course of drugs, as I'm told staying on them too long can cause problems.
So, 8.30 this morning saw me at the hospital for the six-week-overdue checkup. The good news is that the graft is looking absolutely fine, and so the stitches will come out once I've been weaned off the steroids completely. The bad news is that the prolonged course of steroids has caused the pressure in the eye to rise a few mm-Hg above the level they consider safe, and since stopping the steroids abruptly isn't an option I need to take another set of drops alongside them to try and reduce that lest the graft is disturbed again. This seemed reasonable enough -- and then the doctor explained why he was asking questions about my general circulatory and respiratory health.
This second drug is, I'm warned, known to cause asthma in people with a susceptibility to developing it -- and there is a correlation between keratoconus and instances of both asthma and eczema. Not to mention the other possible side-effects listed in the information leaflet; the highlights include diarrhea, vomiting, hives, palpitations, excessive sweating, "curvature of the penis" and a loss of sex drive. The latter is perhaps understandable, given the preceding list!
Wish me luck. |
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| Rock on! |
[Jul. 9th, 2007|01:04 am] |
Just got back from Metallica's gig at Wembley Stadium -- and I'm relieved to say, they still know how to rock!
The setlist, as I remember it, and in no useful order:
- from Kill 'Em All: The Four Horsemen, Whiplash, Seek and Destroy
- from Ride The Lightning: For Whom The Bell Tolls, Fade To Black, Creeping Death
- from Master Of Puppets: Battery, Master Of Puppets (the full version), Disposable Heroes, Orion
- from ... And Justice For All: ... And Justice For All, One
- from the black album: Enter Sandman, Sad But True, The Unforgiven, Nothing Else Matters
- from Reload: The Memory Remains
- from S&M: No Leaf Clover
I think that's it -- for those of us who tend to prefer the earlier albums, it was one heck of a set! Interesting to note how their recent albums (for values of recent encompassing a decade now!) were not represented; especially noticeable that there wasn't a note from St. Anger. Load cropped up as a quick burst of a riff from King Nothing, I think leading into Orion -- I must admit I'd been sceptical about Robert Trujillo when he joined the band, but after hearing him do justice to that masterpiece I'm sold. We were, of course, asked to applaud the late, great Cliff Burton afterwards.
I think I might even have a couple of photos that are worth stashing somewhere. Will have to check those out in the morning. Wembley Stadium looked stunning, though, especially when the arch was lit up against the dusk. |
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| Adventures on a Sunday |
[May. 21st, 2007|11:09 pm] |
Yesterday, I ventured forth into the wilds of London, or to be more specific the RHS's Lawrence Hall on Greycoat Street. Now, whereas I've been there a few times in the past for matters botanical (my father likes to attend their annual orchid show), on this occasion it was in aid of Photographica -- the PCCGB's camera collectors' fair.
I really shouldn't have done that.
To be fair, I did manage to show some restraint, so the really drool-worthy stuff like the Canon EF and the pristine New F-1 did not become part of my collection. I could quite easily have spent some serious money, but I kept my shopping simple:
- An AV-1 body -- the only A-series body I didn't have an example of, so it was simply a matter of choosing the one in the best condition
- A 35mm f/2.8; originally I only put it on the front of the AV-1 because it was sitting next to it on the stall and I wanted to check the camera out, but it struck me as a very nice lens so why not?
- A 35-105mm f/3.5, to replace the one I've had for ages that appears to have stopped working properly (stops down to about f/20 regardless of the set aperture, useful!)
- A 135mm f/2.8, impulse buy because it was next to the zoom and the chap knocked 20 quid off if I bought them together. I have a 135mm f/3.5 already, but it's stuck wide open!
- ... and a Asahi-Pentax 110 SLR, which is a very cute ickle baby camera. Just hope Boots still stock 110 film in Banbury!
( Shiny! [cut for your friends-page-layout-preserving pleasure] )
Anyway, after wandering around between the tables covered in shininess like a kid in the proverbial store, I naffed off to a pub. There, a pleasurable few pints were had in the company of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) ongen (whose blog appears to have disappeared) and pndc (who suggested the pub based on rumours of obscene etchings, and was not disappointed.)
All in all, a very good Sunday -- made a change from the usual dozing in my armchair. Now to see what joys the rest of the week has in store... |
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| Yet more shiny toys for the collection |
[Apr. 26th, 2007|11:03 pm] |
Last Saturday, my father and I spent a very enjoyable day at Silverstone watching a VSCC race meeting. I was quite pleased that dad enjoyed himself, as it's not often we spend much time together doing things like that.
Anyway, this came about in a somewhat convoluted way. A friend of mine suggested it because her mother was working there, and would be able to bring along a set of half a dozen Canon cameras that were part of her late husband's collection (which numbered some 3,500!) The majority of said collection been sold already, to collectors and enthusiasts of the various manufacturers etc., and I'm known to be a bit of a Canon fan so I was offered the six.
So they now have a new home in the sideboard in the study -- you can probably just make them out as (from L-R) an A-1, an AT-1, an AE-1, an AE-1 Program, an AL-1 and a T50. This brings my total camera purchases in the last 12 months to a somewhat worrying ten; the others being the T80, EOS 10, Canonet and EOS RT.
Having given them a quick once-over, they seem to be in very nice condition overall. The A-1 is particularly nice, looking almost untouched. The light seals on the AT-1 could probably do with replacing, as could the mirror cushion in the AL-1, so I ordered myself a nice selection of foam and plan to check that out at the weekend, seeing as the parents away and I'll have the place to myself -- need something to keep myself entertained!
The only downside, of course, is that I now have an example of all the A-series SLRs except one -- the AV-1. I suspect this omission may have to be corrected before too long! Perhaps I ought to wait until I've put at least one roll of film through each of the new ones, though.
In rather less jubilant camera-related news, however, last week saw me finish the first roll of film through the EOS RT I bought recently. I got the prints back on Monday, and it's not too happy. Several of them are underexposed by a stop or two, which surprised me since it metered some similar scenes perfectly; the clue came when I realised the packet of photographs was not as thick as usual. Inspection of the negatives showed a dozen frames that were nearly completely unexposed, save for a narrow strip at the bottom -- hello, sticking shutter! When it arrived I'd spotted a small amount of the sticky black goo endemic to early EOS models, but lacked the gear to test the shutter at the faster speeds; a tad unfortunate, so I'll try and clean it (oh so carefully) at the weekend. Failing that, I can either have it repaired by someone who knows what they're doing, or attempt to dismantle it down to the shutter and remove the offending piece of rotten rubber -- not a job for the faint hearted, and given the RT's chief selling point rather risky -- one ding to that mirror and I can kiss it goodbye!
Anyway. That's enough rambling on about cameras for now. Will probably mutter further about how my adventures in camera repair go over the weekend! |
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| Vroooooom! |
[Apr. 24th, 2007|07:11 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Tom Waits - Orphans: Brawlers - Road To Peace | ] |
So, yesterday afternoon I got a call from the car rental place to remind me that they'd need the Fiesta back by 9 - 9.30 this morning, as my insurers only provide a courtesy car for 14 days. However, I'd be more than welcome to extend the hire for 20 quid per day. Oh, wait, it might help at the point to mention that the "three to four days" the bodyshop had anticipated the repairs to my motor would take were up a week ago last Friday, and in the meantime a variety of reasons had been given for the expected completion date to slip back by one or two days at a time.
"Bugger," thought I, "last I heard it ought to be ready today but they were just waiting for one last part." Naturally, on Friday afternoon they were just doing final checks, so I guess they found a bit missing that had escaped attention previously. But ho-hum. No part in sight at 4.30 yesterday, so do I extend the rental (costing even more, and tempting that sod Murphy out from hiding again), or get ferried around by my mother for (hopefully only) today? A conundrum, and one that I only really resolved first thing this morning -- I didn't need to go anywhere apart from work today, so I dropped the courtesy car back with my mother following on to pick me up.
However, the rental place is handily about a hundred yards from the bodyshop, so I thought I'd take a shufti -- especially since my mother rang to say "I've had to park just up the road and I can see your car in front of me." Popped my head into reception and asked if there was any news "seeing as I was just dropping the courtesy off anyway", and tried to ignore the feeling that the staff were suppressing exasperated sighs and slightly-off looks. Hey, after a fortnight I wanted my car back ASAP! Luckily the replacement fog-light surround had arrived on the delivery van I walked past to get there, so they fitted that whilst I waited, took my money, and waved me on my way.
I have a happy car again! Bodywork looks perfect, the steering is no worse than it was when I got it back from Seat themselves after my run-in with malicious turds a couple of years ago (which leads me to suspect the issue there is nothing to do with the steering geometry :/), and even the alloy wheel's been resurfaced -- shiny! Might take me a day or two to get used to it again compared to the heavier and higher Fiesta... |
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| All the news that's fit to ignore |
[Apr. 12th, 2007|11:35 am] |
Since I said I'd mutter randomly as-and-when rather than just when I feel like grumbling, some random comments on the current state of affairs in baljemmett's little world:
- The car's at the bodyshop having its indignities corrected; dropped it off first thing on Tuesday, and it's also have the damaged sill repaired (that was due to a whoopsy on a tight corner with high kerbs in a car park in Cork.) It'll hopefully be back in my driveway tomorrow...
- In the meantime, I'm pootling around in a little Fiesta -- it's actually surprisingly fun, and appears to be one of the posher Fiestas (or so my bruv tells me!) Very tempted to take it for a quick spin up the M40 and see what it can do when it's not meandering around Banbury's maze of roadworks.
- I now have not just one, but two flaky laptop power supplies. This is making dozing in front of the TV and IRC quite tricky, as now neither laptop will charge unless the cable is wedged just so. *growl*
- Watched the The IT Crowd, Version 1.0 DVD last weekend; the show takes me back to the halcyon days of running my old school's network. Utterly superb presentation, with menu animations styled after Spectrum games, and the option to show 'l33t' subtitles incorporating various bits of nerdery. I was rather surprised to recognise bits of the disassembly of ARIES.SYS (from the now-infamous Sony/F4I rootkit), as well as lines from a bash.org quote; time to de-geek myself, I think.
- The finale of Life On Mars on Tuesday was highly enjoyable, and seemed a fitting end to the series. One scene did provoke a sudden yelp of recognition, as the background music was I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You from Tom Waits's 1973 debut, Closing Time. Doesn't take much to impress me, obviously.
- Finally, this page that Google discovered whilst I was looking for a docking station for my laptop introduces a new range of Dell laptops -- the Labreastudes -- as well as the verb 'rebuttemble'. Go go gadget find-and-replace!
I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I'll have bored you enough by now, I'm sure. Back to trying to understand nonsensical bug reports... |
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| I found a duck! |
[Mar. 10th, 2007|07:41 pm] |
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Due to bumbling incompetence, I found myself in Warwick this afternoon with a camera slung over each shoulder; it was getting a little late, and I fear most of the pictures I took will turn out disappointingly, but I did find some nice light down by the river. Some of the local wildlife was ( quite happy to be photographed: ) |
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| My first (and also utterly pointless!) poll |
[Feb. 13th, 2007|11:20 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | nonsense, polls | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Tom Waits -- Blue Valentine -- $29.00 | ] |
On the principle that if ewx can do it, so can I (except with less style or success, I suspect)...
Poll #926676 Heartbreak never sounded so good
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllShe sends me blue Valentines... That's why I... And... Charlie, I'm... And, of course, the traditionals:
Oh, and listening to Tom Waits in general and Blue Valentine specifically might well be considered cliché when it's the 14th in a few minutes and I'm hurting, but it's cathartic, damnit! |
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| Teach yourself touch-typing, now with free insults! |
[Feb. 9th, 2007|04:13 pm] |
Just got home, having decided that a) I was in no fit state to get any real, quality work done today, and b) the sudden appearance of extra snow could mean trouble getting home if it didn't ease off. After all, I found it a bit tricky getting to my meeting yesterday morning, and nearly got stuck in the car park -- wasn't keen to repeat the exercise! So I'm sitting in front of the fire with a coffee.
However, when I got through the front door and went to put my briefcase in the study, I found my father trying out some teach-yourself-touch-typing software; he's tried to learn several times, and has finally decided he would settle for unlearning some of his habitual mitsypes. Anyway, he suddenly stopped and read out a message that had appeared: "Take a look down at your hands, you should find you have eight fingers and two thumbs. You are typing like you have ten thumbs."
Nice.
The weekend starts here, I guess; we'll see how it goes. I haven't particularly enjoyed any of the weekends that I haven't seen _sugar_babe_ in the last couple of years, so I guess I'd better find something to occupy myself with and keep me from dwelling on things. Oh, and apparently my brother is contemplating driving home from Bristol in order to get his car MOTed! |
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| That's all, folks |
[Feb. 8th, 2007|05:16 pm] |
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Well, Jo just told me that things have changed and she doesn't really love me any more, so there we go. Going to be feeling a little lost for a while; with luck, though, I shall not spew forth reams of depressed posts as I did last time. |
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| My ears recoil in horror |
[Jan. 31st, 2007|03:47 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | random | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Radio 2 -- Steve Wright unfortunately -- where are my CDs?! | ] |
The pain, oh the pain!
In other rhetorical-questions-posing-as-news, why is it that whenever there are unannounced roadworks on the main road between town (where the barbers are) and the village (where the office is), there are also roadworks hiding right behind the junction for the clever short-cut across the back roads? Bah. Mind you, ( the car's getting old... ) |
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| New toys again! |
[Nov. 10th, 2006|02:29 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Del Amitri -- Getting Drowned Out By The Fans, Bugger | ] |
I'm currently watching OpenVMS install itself on our shiny new Itanium machine (which arrived last week). Taking delivery of the software this morning was a bit of a throwback to my days working with NetWare -- a box stuffed with real, printed manuals, although the stack of floppy disks has been upgraded to a nice leather/vinyl/something wallet containing a handful of DVDs and CDs. Somehow it isn't quite as impressive when you just download the OS install ISO and get pointed at a few HTML pages for docs...
... good grief, my journal entries even bore me. The rest of my ramblings I shall leave for another time! |
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| Everybody's talking 'bout the good ol' days |
[Oct. 31st, 2006|12:09 pm] |
Copying and pasting from IRC because I'm lazy:
<BaljWork> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6100016.stm
<BaljWork> "Mr Robinson said the growth of booby-trapped video codecs was just another example of how hi-tech criminals have moved on from the old days in which a virus only travelled by e-mail."
<cheesey> Is it just me that feels terribly old when people refer to email viruses as 'old'?
<BaljWork> I'm going to have to break out DISKCOPY and that Brain-infected floppy I have in my desk at home. We'll show them the old days
<cheesey> Thankyou for saying that.
<cheesey> I was thinking very much along those lines ;)
In other news, the office is gradually getting tidied up, and work is keeping me incredibly busy. And tired, for that matter, so although I keep meaning to post a proper update I haven't got around to it yet. Soon, soon I say! |
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| What a day |
[Sep. 29th, 2006|11:12 pm] |
So today's plan was to take the car up to Coventry to have a new radiator fitted, and work from home during the day since it's easier to get a lift back to Coventry from here rather than the office. Made sense, I thought.
Unfortunately, about half an hour after we got back from dropping the car off the heavens opened, and the village lost power for several hours. I couldn't really bother people for another pair of lifts to/from the office, so staying at home it is. So today was pretty much a write-off workwise -- I did get about half an hour in after collecting the car, so did achieve the day's major objective, but none of the minor tasks I wanted to finish before leaving for my week off.
But on the plus side, I have a _sugar_babe_ sitting here, firstly to celebrate my birthday (24 today!), and secondly for a week of lazing around -- starting with another miniature IRC meet in Oxford tomorrow, then a week in Devon. I get to get back into the kitchen for a week, woo!
Catch you next week, folks! |
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| Oh, now I'm annoyed |
[Sep. 17th, 2006|04:58 pm] |
So, over the last few days I've been getting rather grumpy with LiveJournal because I'd refresh my friends page, it'd load the text, but then some userpics would fail to appear and it'd time out if I followed a comments link or a cut. I'd put this down to high load at the LJ end, perhaps related to the recent change to a new site style.
Anyway, I just tried to pull up a Google map of Oxford to check the name of a street -- there's a coffee shop I wanted to suggest as a rendezvous point for an IRC meet in a couple of weeks. So, stick Oxford in the box, fine, zoom in a notch -- and only half the map loads. There's a nice diagonal pattern of tiles that didn't load, so it looks a problem with a connection timeout again. Odd.
Checking the router's logs quickly to see if my connection is suffering from Generic Suck of any sort:
2006.09.17 16:55:13 **SYN Flood to Host** 192.168.0.3, 1656->> 64.233.183.93, 80 (from ATM1 Outbound)
2006.09.17 16:53:11 **SYN Flood to Host** 192.168.0.3, 1570->> 204.9.177.18, 80 (from ATM1 Outbound)
... SYN Flood on my outbound interface? Pardon? The man from nslookup he say:
18.177.9.204.in-addr.arpa name = livejournal.com
93.183.233.64.in-addr.arpa name = mt.l.google.com
Bugger me. My own router is deciding I'm trying to DoS LJ and Google. Now to scour the manual to see if I can turn that particular piece of firewall goodness off. *growl* |
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| Productive few days... |
[Sep. 7th, 2006|09:17 pm] |
Well, I've had a productive few days recently -- have spent three days at a customer site migrating their system, and providing some user education. Turns out that they weren't using our software for much because the bloke who had responsibility for it left without any form of handover, and so nobody knew anything about the software, what it was doing for them, or how to tweak it to do what they want. Anyway, they're now happy bunnies, and so I get to go back to the office and file a few bugs tomorrow.
However, more excitingly, when my UK-based boss and I were leaving the site this afternoon, he reached into his passenger seat and produced a small padded camera bag and a carrier bag bulging with bits. These had been given to him by my Switzerland-based boss at a recent meeting over there, for passing on to me; they contain a handful of photographic filters, some DIMMs and random OS installation media, a new mobile phone, and a 1990ish-vintage Canon EOS10 along with flashgun and a 100-300 f/5.6 L lens. Shiny! I shall enjoy playing with some of these soon; no doubt some of it will keep my occupied next week when we have relatives visiting... *cough*
Oh, and in a fortuitous piece of timing, I tested the telephoto lens out with my DSLR body and an eclipse of the moon. Woo! |
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2 (28.6%)
annoyed
