…I promise. In the meantime, here is the testcard a photo of Oustreham port at dawn.
I like the way that my rather knackered Nokia, struggling with the low light conditions, has produced a fine piece of pointillist art.
North Korea in pictures
A fascinating set of photographs of North Korea (albeit with slightly flawed translation of captions) via the linkbunnies. The original article has much longer captions but these are only useful if you can read Russian.
Reminds me of Fraser’s North Korea expedition.
Rowing
We stopped in West Cove, Co. Kerry, because we saw a sign that said there was a bakery selling pastries and ice creams. We never found the bakery – instead we found a small cove with a pretty quay and a handful of houses. It was almost deserted save for a few blokes going off to harvest mussels and this chap, rowing his way across the bay in his yellow boat.
Killarney National Park
Lough Leane, viewed from Muckross, in the evening light. Stunning.
Off-road buggy
Fording a stream on the beach at Ballinskelligs, Co. Kerry. Buying the expensive all-terrain pushchair proved to be a worthwhile investment as we explored one of the cleanest, most peaceful and beautiful beaches I think there must be in the British Isles. Mind you, I’m sure that salt water and sand do nothing for a pushchair’s longevity.
Video question
Here’s a question for all of you who know about this sort of thing. My camera can record video in Quicktime .MOV format and I’ve used it to record Tom. The problem is, I’ve held the camera in portrait position (as Tom, when being held by his mum, is more vertical than horizontal).
When we play back the video using Quicktime viewer on the laptop, we can see him beautifully and hear his gurgling noises wonderfully. However, we see him beautifully in landscape format – he’s on his side. Nowhere in the Quicktime controls (I’m using the free download, not the Pro version) is there a "rotate" control.
Any ideas for either:
- a player that can view .MOV files and rotate them (preferably a free player), or
- a player that can play other formats and rotate them, and a converter to convert from .MOV to the appropriate format (can Windows Movie Maker rotate? if so, I have that, but need a (preferably free) conversion tool).
Suggest-o.
Superman pose
Dreaming of being a superhero?
Lord of all he surveys
Monty on the roof of the Global Headquarters.
Lacking fruit
What a fruitless day. A large chunk of it was spent trying to track down the correct brake parts for Hels’s car – ultimately I gave up searching the interwebnet and went to my local garage where they, helpfully, assured me that they were as confused as I am and suggested that the best thing to do was to take the old ones off and take them as patterns to a motor factor. Hmm.
After that, I went seeking some transparency film. Call me old-fashioned, call me a luddite, but don’t call me late for tea (very old family joke – sorry). "Why do I want transparency film?" I hear you ask. Well, the answer is that you don’t want it, I do. The reason is that I need to update my slide collection that I use when I’m giving presentations, particularly with new pictures of some of the plants that I look after in my work. But does anyone sell transparency film any more? Nope. Finally, I tracked down a particularly obscure old-fashioned photographic shop in a particularly obscure corner of NearbyTown (which is obscure in itself) and purchased two rolls of Konico-Minolta 100ASA film – not my preferred brand (always been a FujiFilm kind of guy), but given a choice of that or nothing, that will do.
I’ve also purchased a new (25 year old) lens for my (equally old) Olympus OM2N – my current one is not in the best of health and, for the sake of ten quid, the new one might just be better. Of course, the camera is not technically mine, as it really belongs to my brother, but as it has been in my possession for a considerable number of years now and he hasn’t asked for it back, I’m claiming squatter’s rights.
Subsequently, I’ve discovered that the camera had a part-exposed roll of film inside. So I’ve squandered the remaining frames on pictures of plants, of Tom and of the cats (Monty is so much better at posing than Treacle) and dropped it into Boots. I’ll be able to collect it on Saturday and, as I’ve asked for a CD of scans, you might get to see some pictures from it too. Of course, since it must be at least three years old, there is no telling what is on the first 23 frames of film. I suspect that it may well feature ex-girlfriends, which could make it, um, interesting. Hels has already said that she will delight in destroying any such photos as soon as possible. I’ll keep you posted.
