Daily Archives: Wednesday, 1st July 2009
New Stuff at Tiggercam
Tigger wants me to mention that there are some new pictures on show at Tiggercam.
Frozen in Time
Not bad…
[1] With tasteful literature in the background
Weight Report – 1 July 2009
Mutter. Back up again today.
I still can’t persuade myself to walk to work, but I’m still doing well on the one sarnie only at lunchtime. It was getting seriously hot while I was out to get that sarnie, so I didn’t stay out long – I really don’t like getting too hot…
Of course, that was followed by loads of rain, thunder and lightning, and it seems my house had a power cut while I was at work. Nothing seems to have been upset by it, though, other than having to reset the clocks on my oven and microwave.
A Few Canon 5D MK II Pictures
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve got a new camera and a rather tasty new lens to go with it. As with any new camera, it’ll take me a while to get used to it, and I’m sure I’ll get better with practice, but here are a few pictures I took yesterday lunchtime. The cloud cover was a bit on the grim side, but that great big bit of glass and that scary sensor managed to pull out a lot of detail.
Here’s a flower:
I took that one as a quick test of close-up focus and aimed for a shallow depth of field.
Here are some nice reflections on the Tyne:
When viewed at full size[1], there was a bit of colour fringing on the curve of the bridge, but nothing that couldn’t be removed in Lightroom, otherwise it’s a rather pleasing image.
One of those inevitable views of the Tyne Bridges:
There’s a huge amount of detail here – take a look at the largest size.
And a view along the river from the Gateshead Millennium Bridge:
Again, some nice detail and reflections.
I’ll be getting more practice with the 5D over the next few weeks. Watch out for loads more pictures!
[1] A quite large 5616 x 3744 
Off the Rails Again
Oh dearie me. History repeats itself, and it would seem to have gone for the farce option this time.
You might recall that in 2007, GNER, the then operator of the East Coast Main Line, found it couldn’t pay the government the huge amount of money they’d bid for the right to run the service, so they had it taken away from them and it was handed over to National Express. Well, guess what? National Express can’t pay the ludicrous amount of money, etc, etc
BBC News: National Express loses rail route
In a trading statement, National Express said that the “challenging economic environment” meant it was seeing fewer passengers on the East Coast Mainline and “significant” levels of people downgrading from first-class and full fares.
That couldn’t have anything to do with how high first class fares have become, could it? Or the removal of the restaurant car from a lot of services[1]? Even standard fares are too bloody high. And while they do have lots of actually very good discount fares, these only work if you can be absolutely sure of catching a particular train, and generally don’t need to travel at peak times, which makes them quite useless to the regular business travellers who used to fill the first class carriages.[2]
However, it seems the government might have learned something. They’re not putting it out to tender again and they’re not going to offer it to whoever promises the most money based on random number generation predictions of future passenger numbers. Nope, the service is being taken into public ownership. Come on guys, do the rest of the rail network now!
[1] Hint: people who’ve paid a hideous amount for a first class ticket are quite likely to enjoy a good meal with proper table service on their way home in the evening. If they can’t have that, they might just get a plane instead, which could well be cheaper…
[2] I miss that. It was so much more comfortable, and the dinners were nice…
No More Primeval
I missed this report at the time, but I think it’s still worth having a good mutter about:
BBC News: Primeval axed after three series
It seems that ITV has totally run out of money, and while it’s still allegedly planning to make some programmes that don’t involve Simon Cowell and premium-rate phone lines, Primeval is off the list:
High quality drama remains a key part of the ITV schedule, although our current focus is on post-watershed production
Or, to put it another way, we’re not going to finance anything that uses expensive CGI. The production team are apparently not at all happy, and I imagine the cast are a wee bit peeved, too. I certainly am. 
This probably makes sense in the parellel world where modern TV executives live, but a show that managed to pull in respectable audience figures in an early evening time slot that isn’t actually Doctor Who should be something they’d want to enourage and promote, but it’s much easier to view it as a cost to be cut.
Let’s hope that another broadcaster picks it up. The BBC or Sky could handle it quite nicely, I’m sure…
Related posts
Firefox 3.5 Has Landed
Well, it’s been a bit delayed. So much so that its version number increased from 3.1 to 3.5 while it was waiting to be released, but never mind that. Yesterday, Firefox 3.5 was released to the waiting legions of web-browsing geeks and even other computer-using people who’ve been told what to do by a friendly geek.
Most of the changes this time are not really visible – it’s mostly about improved performance and faster rendering, which is always welcome. Upgrading is as simple as selecting “Check for Updates” from the Help menu[1] and agreeing that you do want the new version. If any of your add-ons are not compatible, it will tell you what they are and automatically disable them before starting Firefox 3.5.
As it happened, only two of the extensions I currently use were listed as incompatible, and I was able to persuade those using the usual editing trick.
I haven’t noticed any majot differences so far, but I was having some internet issues last night[2], so I haven’t actually done much browsing since installing 3.5. But it seems harmless enough…
[1] Note: all references are to Mac OS X. It’ll be somewhere similar on Windows and Linux
[2] A quick reboot of the cable modem was needed to make things behave
