I now have a Nikon Coolpix 5200. And it is wonderful :-)

A few quick snaps around leamington, not post processed other than rotating the images.

Initial impressions are that it’s exactly what I wanted – tiny, light, producing very good looking images, and very responsive to use (feels a lot quicker than the canon Ixus cameras). You don’t have a lot of control compared to the “enthusiast” cameras, can’t set an apature manually for example, but that’s not what I want this camera for. For anything that I’ll be shooting with this, I just want maximum depth of field, so that is fine.

So today, I saw someone (who looked like an international student) driving onto campus. Fair enough. But they were driving from lakeside. For f*ck’s sake.

Follow-up to Cycletour 2004 from Group IV

I’ve finally had the tranny from my holidays developed, and started scanning some of it.

Here’s the Gallery

It’s interesting how most of the pics are sunsets this year, compared to last – cycling all day, only photographing in the evening :-)

More to follow as I get through scanning and processing it.

Writing about web page http://southparkstudios.com/games/create.html

I didn’t feel it was appropriate to reveal the people I work with in too much detail :-)

I was just getting into my car at the supermarket. It was dark, the orange glow of the streetlights contrasting with the cooler tone from the light in the car. I put down the heavy shopping bags in the passenger seat, and paused a moment with the door still open. A gust of wind blew through, cutting through my jumper. I watched as it caught the hair of a lady pushing her trolley along. I could hear the trees rustling, swaying in the breeze.

And I knew what the wind meant.

It meant that summer had left. Soon, I wouldn’t awake to the warm smell of a fresh summer morning, rather to the crisp, moist aroma of dry leaves lying on the street.

I thought of a movie, where at the end the heroine delivers a monologue about moving on, about the future as a highway. I thought about times I’d lain outside, staring at the stars. I thought about a time when I’d stood in the rain and held someone I loved. I thought about the dusty smell of africa and about the unearthly midnight sun in the arctic.

I thought about arriving at university. I thought about how far I’d come since then. How much I’d changed, and how much the world had changed with me. I thought about all the eager young children who are about to start at university, thinking they’re adults now. I remembered how I’d felt the same, all those years ago.

Around me, people were rushing, going about their lives, putting shopping away, returning trolleys, talking to each other, listening to the radio.

And I closed my car’s door, and drove home.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/cll/skills/personalacaddevelopment/learningstyles/

My learning style

• You have a strong preference for being an Activist


• You have a strong preference for being an Reflector


• You have a moderate preference for being a Theorist


• We could not give you a preference for pragmatist

Your strongest preference was found to be: Reflector (68%).

As usual, I don’t fit particularly into any box. I’m a bit of everything, and I believe that this is probably my strongest skill – flexibility. I work in the way which is most appropriate for the task at hand.

Writing about The Decelerated Learning movement from Autopoiesis – Soft[ware] Subversions

Rob writes in his blog that there is something to be said for not rushing the educational process. In his follow up post (specifically about eLearning technologies) he says that

But here at Warwick we like to take our time, do things properly.

But do we? Warwick, amongst other universities, have been very proud of having a few extremely young students – children really.

I feel that these kids have missed the best parts of their lives. They’ve missed childhood, the whole “teenage” thing, and they’ve missed the important parts of their university time – i.e. the whole social thing, and learning to be an adult.

One wonders if the parents of such children want them to do it for prestige, and the universities accept it for the PR.

Writing about A Small Picture from Hollyzone

Good Idea. I shall continue the theme, using the Mini-Mizer.

I would go ahead and draw myself, but sadly Holly’s artistic skills put me to shame. So on with the geekery.

There’s sadly no way to get the bleary-eyed look that comes from spending all afternoon scanning negatives and working on the images in Photoshop.

And yes, I really do need a haircut.

I was browsing the photography books in Waterstones today, when one in particular caught my eye: Life Magazine’s 100 Photographs that Changed the World. Looking through, all the photos included were important images, most were excellent. But I wondered how many of the images had actually changed the world? [The images I have included here are not directly from the book, but are equivalent images that I have found on the web]

The events that they portray may have done, but I’m not convinced that that is a result of the image itself. Take this example (left) of the Challenger shuttle disaster; the impact of the accident on manned spaceflight cannot be denied, but I don’t believe that was a result of the image of it. And this is true, in my opinion, for most of the images included.

But this image (right) stood out as an exception. This is once case where the image itself made the difference. It’s a still from the video tape showing the LA police assaulting Rodney King – I think in this case, if the video hadn’t existed none of what followed would have happened.

I don’t doubt the influence of photography on public opinion, perhaps as best demonstrated by the work of photographers such as Don McCullen in Vietnam, but how many individual images can be said to have changed the world?

Writing about web page http://www.voxamps.co.uk/products/tonelab/tonelab_se.htm

I am now the proud owner of one of these monsters.

I decided that it was time to replace the ageing Digitech RP-6 that I’ve been using for almost 10 years (good pedal for the time, but the electronic sound of it bores me now), so I had a look around what was on the market. Had a look at the Boss GT-6, but felt that it was full of gimmicks, not too much for a musician. So I got one of these, from iMuso.co.uk.

Mmmmmmm.

It’s excellent. Really good sounds – the presets are ok, but as ever, it’s once you start making your own patches that you get the sounds how you want them. I can’t comment on how accurate the amp simulations are – I’ve never played through most of the amps it models (c’mon – how many people have actually played on a Dumble?), but they certainly sound good, and distinctly different. To quote a review on harmony-central:

I now have Two Fenders (Bassman, & Blackface Twin), Four Voxs (AC15, 15TB, AC30, 30TB), Six Marshalls (JTM 45, Plexi 50, Plexi 100, JCM 800, JCM 900, Modded Marshall), Soldano SLO100, Mesa Rectifier, Dumble Clean and OD, and an Acoustic Simulator at toe tap … I just saved over $30,000 in vintage amps for $599.00.

And it’s HUGE. And heavy. And comes with it’s own gig bag (!). And it’s got a real, old-fashioned triode valve glowing away on top. Which is dynamically reconfigured depending on the amp that it’s modelling. Which is kinda cool.

There’s a definite learning curve with this thing; it’s massively flexible (2 channels on each patch, so you can switch the amp and cab over if that takes your fancy. Also, a quick Control switch that you can assign to anything useful – tap delay, pedal on/off, modulation on/off, whatever). Once you’ve worked out how to get around it, it becomes second nature. I’m impressed with how much control you have.

Happy purchase.