Last week, I bought a camera to replace my Acer. Although I wrote the following blog about it, I never actually got round to finishing it to what I would have liked, but here it is anyway…

Both of my regular viewers can’t have failed to ntice that I’ve been blogging more and more about the slow demise of my trusty little Acer camera – the pocket-sized photomaker that has travelled with me everywhere in the last 5 or so years.

After much umming and ahhing, I decided to upgrade to a Canon Pwershot A480 (and thanks to regular commeter Marko for spotting it £20 cheaper than what I was originally going to pay).

It was reserved from the Argos website Wednesday night, and picked up on Thursday morning, and it was a lot easier than I imagined. I’ve stayed away from Argos for buying stuff, mainly because I didn’t like their “check-in” system – I’ve been there in the past to buy something, only to find when I got there, it was out of stock. Obviously, this has happened with many other things, in many other stores over the years, but it seems a lot more of a piss-take when you visit a shop, type the product you want into a computer, only to find that “Computer Says No”…

I was happy to find that they have some type of “reserve” option on their site, so you can reserve items, visit the local store and then pay for the item when you get there. Many places probably do this, but it’s the first time I’ve ever used such a system. As much as I love technology, I absolutely despise “self service” checkouts, to the point where I refuse to use them.

I arrived, just after 9AM to find that the shop was empty, meaning that I was able to… *shudder*… use the “self service” checkout, pay for it via a card, pick it up and walk out in under a minute. The trip to the town was probably the quickest I’ve had, with only a stop off at Home Bargains to pick up some cheap cans of coke, before I headed to the bus stop.

It’s the first time I’ve bought a camera from an actual shop, so to celebrate this fact, I wanted to make a video of its arrival.

I’m all for a bit of bandwagon jumping, so I thought it would be a bit interesting to create an “unboxing” video. Normally, these are for expensive “Squee! I got one!” products like a new version of the applezPhone or the uPad, but as I don’t actually have one to unbox, you’ll have to make do with a “Cheaply priced camera from Argos”…

I do apologise for the fart. I don’t really.

I’m pretty impressed with the camera so far, even though I’ve not had chance to make use of it properly. Thursday was the first day back to work for me, so although I’ve had a little play, I’ve not looked at it properly. The first image taken was this…

… which was taken during the recording of the unboxing video. I’m not going to create a gallery about my test shots like I did with the Acer, instead I’m going to leave that up to Flickr. Of course, this doesn’t mean I won’t write a bit of a review about it.

One thing I already love about the video is the macro mode, it’s certainly impressive. This close-up of a hawthorn flower should show you what I mean…

Obviously, the 500px version there isn’t up to much. Click it, view it as original, etc. It’s stunning. The detail of the droplets, small cobwebs, etc, is something that my full-size Canon can’t accomplish with its stock lens. The other macro photos in that set also show off the strength of the camera.

As I mentioned in the previous post, presuming anyone actually took the time to read it instead of just looking at the pictures, Daddykins and I had agreed to replace the door, and after buying the materials, there was no going back….

I couldn’t actually believe it was happening. A DIY project between me, Daddykins, several pencils and a hacksaw. Things were bound to go horribly wrong.

I’ll be honest. the only thing that went wrong was the laptop. I’d set it up, with the webcam, to take a timelapse of the goings on from the comfort of my window. Unfortunately, the camera gave up the ghost after about an hour.

Between 3PM and 7PM, we had successfully constructed a door.

Please excuse how I look. I was knackered (Daddykins did the measurements, I did all of the manual labour), but that is a complete door. I’ve not felt pride like that for a long time, and I’ve not enjoyed actually doing anything like that for a good few years.

Amazingly, the door survived the night, and the next day came the completion of the door frame. I got to use the mallet (and a screwdriver) to knock out the old rotten wood. The job didn’t last long, as the wood was considerably more rotten than it looked. So were the nails. Rusty, rusty nails.

I avoided the tetanous-needing nails, and moved onto the woodstain. I have never had a good relationship with paintbrushes, as anyone who has seen the Mercuryvapour Office Space can testify. I gave up painiting the doors in this particular room the moment I realised I couldn’t actually reach the top of the door without needing a chair. For six years, this painting project has remained incomplete, and considering the fumes from the gloss paint turns my chest into some kind of pulmonary alveolus graveyard. Luckily, the fumes from this soupy-looking product didn’t bother me. In fact, it looked a bit too much like a can of tomato soup…

I managed to complete the task, with minimal damage to my clothes, and the door was properly stained. This, unfortunately, gave me another chance to pose in front of the camera

There are so many things wrong with this picture. My awful pose was worse than the last one (though my man-tits are less prominent), I’m wearing a baseball cap (I never wear headgear as a rule, but I really didn’t fancy an incinerated scalp), and you can see the partial mess I’d left behind. At least the door was an impressive shade of “red”. Well, saying that, my neck was redder, but you’re not seeing a photo of that.

Just typing that into a keyboard can guarantee that in the next few hours, I shall have one of the little blighters land on the back of my neck. If that happens, you can guarantee I’d scream a lot more than if it actually stung me, for you see, I’ve managed to get my first sunburn of the year. In fact, this is the first time for as long as I can remember, I’ve actually made good use of my three days off. I shall use the media of Twitter to help you keep track of the past three days.

2010-05-18 11:34:10: Started walk

After going to bed at 7, and waking up at 9:30, thanks to Daddykins on his rig, and me not turning my speakers off, I thought I’d get up and make use of the day. I demolished some oven chips whilst watching Homes Under the Hammer. The sun was cracking the pavements, so I thought I’d walk off the chips, along with the night before’s kebab wrap.

As you can probably gather, I left the house at that time, and headed along the coast road and up “Hart Road” towards Hart Village.

2010-05-18 12:09:10: Mmm, farmy

This tweet referred to the overpowering stench of shit that filled the patch between Clavering and Hart Village. It was a hot spring day, and the smell of some nearby horses wafted around the place.

Oddly, this was my last tweet of the walk. Instead, I had to work out where I was going to go once I’d reached Hart Village. I could head home, or I could risk crossing three lanes of traffic, and head off to photograph the nearby turbines. Despite them being there for many years now, I’d never actually been near them.

Thanks to Google Streetview, I knew that the journey would be pretty uneventful, except for the afore-mentioned road crossing. I headed up the road that would take me towards the turbine, only to be infiltrated by the locals….

Next stop was the road I feared. I almost felt like King Canute, as when I got to the road, it was entirely empty, and I could quite happily stroll across the carriageway without fear of getting squashed.

I was happy to find that when I got there, the field the turbine was in, was growing oil seed rape, meaning that it gave everything a lovely yellow colour…

The walk back seemed to take for ever. I’d slightly misjudged just how far it was from Mercuryvapour Towers. Turns out, it’s a 5-mile round trip. I think I can safely say I neutralised those chips.

The rest of the day was spent in bed after watching some telly. Daddykins commented about repairing “the door”. For anyone lucky enough to have received a guided tour around Mercuryvapour Towers, you’ll know that the “games room” has had its back door hanging off for several years after a storm snapped it in half. I’d be interested to see if this would come to fruition.

2010-05-19 09:06:28: Off to the flea market. There is a strong smell of rapeseed in the air.

Well, I can’t keep away from the flea market, as much as I try. After waking up stupidly early on Wednesday (5AM), I headed off to the market of fleas. I’d spent the previoous hours changing the music on my phone. I realised, mere minutes into the walk, however, that I should have avoided “Now 40″, as my ears bled along to the sound of Steps.

The walk took me along the scenic vistas of Raby Road, along York Road, and then to the flea market. CDs were purchased, so were records. I couldn’t help myself. I have bought some cheese in the past, but this is pure, ripe Stilton of the highest order…

It cost me 50p, and to be honest, after playing it, I like it a lot more than I thought I was going to. Clare Torry is (only) known for Pink Floyd’s track “Great Gig in the Sky”. Apparently, everyone who purchased her album from Amazon bought it on the strength of that Pink Floyd track.

2010-05-19 09:48:51: On bus home. Flea market poor

On the way home, Daddykins texted me asking if I had my keys. Without a single hint of sarcasm (that was sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell), I replied “Yes. Let me know if you still want to attempt door this afternoon”. Imagine my shock and horror as, at 1PM, we actually went on the search for some wood. Or, at least, some material that a door could be constructed of.

Imagine my horror when these materials were actually purchased…

We were about to attempt DIY on a scale never attemped before in the ground of Mercuryvapour Towers…

EDIT: Fixed webcam photo as it was broked.

I’ll tell you what. Several free beers, that’s what! Well, lagers anyway. Thanks to Kris at work, I’m in possession of several cans of the frothy stuff, and all because he doesn’t drink the stuff, and they run out of date at the end of the month. Trust me, they won’t last until the end of the month. They’ll struggle to last the end of the day. To show my gratitude, I’ve dug out the webcam, and am now creating a time-lapse of me drinking them, which I’ll probably stick on Youtube at some point.

While I remember on, unfortunately, it’s bad news for the webcam on this site, I’m afraid. You may remember that it used to catalogue my entire life for many years. Unfortunately, since I have now upgraded to Windows 7, my Logitech Quickcam 4000 simply will not function on it, which means even though it’s not actually done so for many years, it’s never going to return. And considering that I rarely use this site now for anything remotely “recent”, I can’t see me investing in a Windows 7 compatible model. It’s a bit of a shame. I always trusted Logitech and their “futureproofing”. Unfortunately, it seems that I was wrong to do so. I can’t even get the driver to begin installation, although I did get the “setup” screen by changing a command in the setup.ini file.

While I’m geeking about computers, I might as well make a mention of the newest hard drive in my 1TB commection. I have 4 drives at 1TB. 2 internal ones in daily use, and 2 external ones to back up the internal ones. Buying a new drive was an easy decision for me to make, especially as someone I know lost pretty much his entire life when his hard drive died in his laptop. The trip to Maplin also involved the first trip to the store formally known as the Euro Trade Warehouse, now called usave. Those of you who followed the blog before the mass purge earlier this year will remember some of the classic things that has been purchased by the Percivals, such as the radio toilet roll holder…

You’ll not be surprised to find this still gets regular use, as a toilet roll holder, clock, and radio when somebody is in the bath. Altogether, this was a worthwhile purchase, and one that we have had for over 6 years now. This means, however, that the plastic’s started to turn yellow, which means it doesn’t look as fresh as it once did…

Anyway, back to the other days’ Euro Trade Warehouse usave purchases. I didn’t get that much, to be honest. Instead of coming out with a black binbag full of tat, I came out with a few huge crates to store my tat in, for you see, next week will see the 2010 edition of “Life Laundry”, where I go through the stuff which I’ve hoarded over the years, and bin as much of it as humanly possible. I’ve got plenty of stuff to chose from, and after only an hour at it, I already had a load of stuff landfill-bound. There’s also the fun prospect of actually cataloguing what I’ve got, and which box it’s in for future reference, should I actually need any of it again.

One thing I did avoid buying in Euro Trade Warehouse usave, were these “specialist” knives…

Oh, and while I remember, yes, yes, I know I haven’t updated much. That beast of a thing called “a life” is keeping me away from the computer. You may find I’m a little silent on everything at the moment, even flickr. In fact, that image you see above is only the 6th image (5th photo) I’ve published on there in 2010. In fact, let me know you a little league table of what I’ve done over the years. Here’s a quick rundown on previous years stats…

Jan/Feb 2007, 176 photos.
Jan/Feb 2008, 612.
Jan/Feb 2009, 68.
Jan/Feb 2010, 5.

I blame the weather, I really do.

This time of year seems to come around too quickly. It is mere hours until this blog enters its ninth year, and as you’ve probably realised over these years, it’s also the time of year when I post the least. This is a combination of being insanely busy at Employment Palace, and the fact that nothing ever seems to happen in October. Ever.

But, it’s November now, and exactly a month before the conclusion of the “Before I’m 30″ section of the site. Ugh. Something did happen a couple of weeks ago, which I personally couldn’t believe, and it happened in Asda… I started blogging about it, but didn’t finish it, because I was so filled with rage, that if I’d have gone any further with it, I’d have smashed something…

I’ve truly had it with Asda. Today was the last straw, and I shall never step foot through the doors of their sorry organisation as long as I draw breath.

“Well, I’m not going to serve him either because I know he’s going to give them to you”…

That’s where I stopped typing! Needless to say, I walked out without the beer, and . Quite unbelievably, for anyone who knows me, I have stayed out of Asda since that incident, and now, I can’t see any reason to ever go back.

There WAS one reason. It was the only place I knew which stocked “Tymbark”. Now, I’ll not be surprised if you’ve never heard of it, as it’s Polish. That’s Polish, as in, it originates from Poland, and not the cleaning product. My dietary habits, no matter how bad they are, have yet to see me consuming Mr. Sheen. It is a fantastic blend of cherry and apple juice, which was stocked in Asda’s “Ethnic” aisle.

Whilst in Tesco the other day, I was delighted to find that they also stocked the very same product! Therefore, I officially have no reason to ever stagger through the doors of Asda again!

Right. Erm, that’s the first thing. I’ve actually forgotten the reason why I was going to write this post.