I’ve started typing this entry at 05:46 in the morning, so you’ll have to decide where it’s early or late. For me, it’s late, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything reasonable. In fact, the last post was regarding the Tall ships, which have come and gone. In something that’s becoming a bit of a tradition, here’s a partial post I wrote….

The residents of the quaint little fishing village of Hartlepool can breathe a sigh of releif, as the town slowly returns back to normal following the Tall Ships “festival”. Regular viewers will notice the lack of updates regarding this particular event, that’s because, as I mentioned, I was in Employment Palace 3 of the 4 days, meaning I was only able to pick up one of the 4 main days. No fireworks for me!

The weather actually began to change. the gloomy skies were, for the first time, being replaced with bright sunshine. Of course, this didn’t last long, and before we knew it, we were once again running for the shelter of the vacant tents. It was at this point I noticed Craig had texted me

…. and, that’s where I left it, suspension fans! You’ll never find what the text contained, or whether Craig made it. Actually, he didn’t. I’ll cut to the end of the day, as it was weeks ago now, but after most of the ships had sailed out of the port, me and Gary headed up to Crimdon for a view up there…

A unique view that will probably never be repeated again.

Right, that’s the end of my Tall Ships coverage. Well, OK, not quite. I’ve got possession of Andy The Iridium Fan’s “Tall Ships” archive. He was lucky enough to be down there all four days, and also get hold of a photography pass, meaning there’s 3,768 photos for me to go through… watch this space.

Photo opportinities have been few and far between, thanks to a few reasons. My complete laziness, “Just Cause 2″, and the weather. I’ve not even been out to get any sunsets recently, though I did attempt a bit of sunset photography with ATIF the other week. Unfortunately, the sunset was an abortion, so we just hung around until it got dark, and tried a bit of long exposure in a field… wait, that sounds wrong… we sat in a field and took photos of each others equipment…. hang on, that sounds worse… look, this is what I mean…

Actually, the rest of the set turned out quite good too, you can have a look here

20th August saw me obtain a few plastic crates from work, in the vain hope of being able to sort something out of my record, CD and tape collection This is something that is ongoing (i.e. not started yet). though one of the crates has already been filled with old videotapes.

The 22nd August saw the end of an era. Yes, it was the last ever gig of “Accidents By Design”. I wouldn’t say I was their only fan, but I’ve been to as many gigs as I could possibly attend, fighting my way through rain, hail and snow. Here’s some video of their last ever gig.

Part 1
Part 2
Part3
Part 4

Parts 1+4 have feedback noise on them, unfortunately, thanks to a dodgy guitar pedal left by a previous band. Had a great day overall, and the sunburn I thought I’d end up getting wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.

Two sets of photos on this one, firstly, mine hosted on flickr, and ATIF’s which are hosted on here. Despite the lure of cheap beer, with some of the money going to charity, I didn’t touch a drop.

EDIT: Ooooh, seems I missed a couple of things out of this post. Just had a comment from Jamie S, as I failed to mention he actually turned up for Pitch Invasion. I mentioned he didn’t turn up for the Tall Ships, but he broke his 100% record for not turning up to stuff, by er… actually turning up.

The first time he didn’t turn up for something was when we were going to Middlesbrough to see Wheatus. Which, in some type of weird juxtaposition of the present and the past, I received this email from someone who you may remember as “Poolieboydave”…

Alright

Odd how these things crop up! I still check the blog weekly!

Bloody hell, three readers!

Well, it’s the first time for a good few years that I’ve actually been able to get out and photograph the June 21st sunrise, though I almost never made it.

Through some stroke of odd luck, I managed to bag a 2PM – 2AM shift, meaning I would return home in good enough time to judge the weather, and whether it was worth taking the walk to a decent vantage point to catch the sunrise. After I got home, I was a little tired, and thought that the walk simply wouldn’t be worth it, so instead got the big Canon, and the tripod out, and began to take photos in the street. Admittedly, these weren’t up to much, and sadly, it turns out that my camera remote has bitten the dust, so I won’t show any on here.

Onme thing I did capture, however, is my own sign that the summer had started. If I’m awake, I watch it every year, yet this year was the first time I had actually photographed it.

Yes, it’s the instant that the streetlight outside of Mercuryvapour Towers extinguishes. I must have sat there, with my finger over the trigger button for about 10 minutes, waiting for the trademark clunk of the photocell’s relay clicking over, and the sudden lack of artificial light in the vacinity.

Shortly after, I decided that the cloud cover wasn’t bad enough to ruin a good photo oppportunity, donned the new pocket Canon, and headed off into the general direction of the fields. Well, I say fields, it’s been a housing estate for about 8 years, but there’s still a bit of undeveloped land which gives you a good view of any possible sunrise. I thought I was too late from the view of this photo…

I knew I only had a few minutes to make it to higher ground. I power-strutted like I’ve never strutted before, to the tune of “Don’t Go” by Yazoo. I am happy to report that I made it to higher ground before it was too late…

Admittedly, it’d have been better if those streetlights weren’t there.

On the way home, I did manage to photograph one thing which has been in existence for the majority of my childhood, but is soon to disappear behind a wall of ivy, are the old cricket stumps I used as a child. You’ll have to forgive me if I get a little reminiscent here, but I know one rather quiet troll reader who will no doubt get a shiver down his spine by viewing these…

Here’s a closer shot after some of the ivy had been removed….

Finally, here’s s shot if you were stood in the ‘crease’.

A place I wouldn’t see very often, as I was shit at cricket, and used to receive unfair bowls from Chad, such as “grass cutters”. Chad, you will note that many of the features we used to use have been removed. It’s no longer possible to lose a ball in “Carl’s bush”, and that the impossibly rare 100 runs for hitting Ringwood’s garage can no longer be achieved. A 6 or 4 can still be earned by hitting it up his driveway, though he’s not lived there for many years since Mrs Ringwood died. I can no longer hit a ball into Kevin’s pond (Kevin, you may remember had more than a passing resemblance for Ex-Tottenham footballer Vinny Samways) thanks to a growth of elderberry to the left of where I stood, and the fact that the pond disappeared years ago. The pile of rubbish is pretty much where we bowled from – the house is currently empty and undergoing renovation, hence the rubbish.

And on that note, I’m off to bed. Morning!

If you have a cameraphone, or other type of cheap camera, you may have accidentally taken a photo like the following one I took on my mobile…

Notice how the car in the shot appears to be skewed. That’s because some cheaper cameras, like the one in my phone, don’t take a photo immediately you click the button, they instead “scan” the image and actually take a photo one line of pixels at a time over a few milliseconds, meaning that if you (or the object you’re taking a photo of) are moving, then the image can become oddly distorted like that.

One thing I mentioned to include in my previous post, but… erm, forgot, is that my Canon A480 camera doesn’t have any trace of this “rolling shutter” phenomenon. I’m sure you’re looking at the screen, wondering what the hell I’m on about. Here’s an interesting article which I’m sure I’ve linked to before.

That is all.

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.

Oh my. That was an hour of my life I particularly don’t want to get back. Firstly, my past call at work was a shite one from some idiot who didn’t really have an issue. THEN I return to Mercuryvapour Towers to find that I’m sharing my room with someone. Or something.

I enter my room and look at my blinds. I notice there’s a shadow on them, as if some type of insect had landed on them. Presumably it was simply a huge moth, resting on the blinds, getting charged up from the amount of daylight shining through the window on this “fine” spring morning.

I check the blind to make sure it was a moth. “Wouldn’t it be awful if it was a wasp that size”, I chuckle to myself. I take a look at the creature….

Yellow. Black. Yellow Bl..oody hell.

I carefully move the blind back, and get my shitty little legs out of there as quickly as possible. My call for some fly spray was answered when I burst into Daddykin’s room (who was asleep, by the way), gibbering like an idiot, He let me know there was some downstairs in the kitchen cupboard.

I run downstairs, grab the can, only to find there was only a little bit left. Would there be enough? Luckily, I remembered there was some in the bathroom too. Not much again, but two sprays are better than one. Back into the room I go, relieved that Mr. W Asp was still firmly attached to the blind. I spray like I’ve never sprayed before. The window showing between the gaps in the blind turns a milky white as the insecticide spurts out of the can at a rate of knots.

The little bastard falls of its perch, lands on the windowsill with a sickening thud, and begins writhing in agony. I could hear it coughing. The spurt of milky white liquid doesn’t stop (oo-er!) and I’m determined to not leave go of the spray until this fucker stops moving, or my fly spray runs out. Eventually, it stops moving, or at least its actions make it look like it’s not going to jump off the windowsill and sting me in the ear canal.

I was finally confident enough to move towards it with the camera…

The bottle lid is there to try and give you a sense of scale..

I took a couple of photos a few minutes after I started typing this blog. I was a bit shocked to see that it had actually moved from the position I had left it in. Presumably this was rigor mortis setting in, or something. It was definitely dead by this point.

Here’s another photo of it, taken on a yellow and black floppy disk. I didn’t spot the concidence until I took the photo.

As much as I hate them, they’re really quite beautiful, and I’m sure it’d look a lot better if it wasn’t dripping with oily, smelly goo.

I have a feeling I’m going to have trouble sleeping today. After all, how did it get in here? My door will have been closed for most of the time (Senta is in heat, and, as long-term readers of the blog know, Sam likes to “practise watersports” on my bed during this period (DYSWIDT?)) and my window hasn’t been opened, meaning that this beast would have been in my room for a considerable period of time. What if there’s another one in here, watching me type? What if that one was the little one? What if “Daddy” wants revenge? Apparently, according to Wikipedia, only male wasps can sting. I think I’ve mentioned that before.

Something that ISN’T mentioned on Wikipedia, is that dead wasps make a truly sickening sound when you try to cut them in half with a 10p piece. I tried this before taking the little bastard into the bathroom and dropping it into the toilet.

It sank, by the way.

Whilst typing this post, I found this list of the Schmidt sting index. Sounds… er, intere-sting. Hohoho.