No, not the Sherlock Holmes story featuring a nasty jellyfish, but one of the stone lions that guard Newcastle’s Chinese Arch. I’ve taken a few pictures of these beasts before, so this time I thought I’d try something different. I used a quite wide aperture of f/3.2 to get a shallow depth of field, and let the E-P1 take care of the rest. A little bit of a crop and a contrast boost was all this one needed:

The Lion's Mane

More pictures soon. Ish.

That’s a big drop today, which is a good start to the month.

Today was a remarkably bright and sunny day, which was a pleasant change after a lot of dull, grey, wet days. I went for a lunchtime walk around some parts of Newcastle I rarely visit, taking my Olympus E-P1 and its lovely 17mm lens with me. I took around 60 pictures, some of which have potential, and I’ll be revealing those over the next few days. In the meantime, here’s a sample:

Dark Age Laptops

This is part of an art installation thingy in Newcastle’s Thornton Street. It’s a strip of metal that runs around the pedestrianised part of the street, containing a mixture of texts from Roman times, the reign of Charles I, and err, text messages sent on the day of the 2002 Newcastle – Sunderland football match. Given the reference to laptops, I’m guessing this is from one of the last of those. I’m guessing it refers to illuminated manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, but whatever its creator was thinking of, it’s a lovely turn of phrase.

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus, or Happy Saint David’s Day if you prefer.

I remember to repost this every other year or so:

Today is St David’s Day, national day of Wales. Just thought I’d mention that. If I could remember more Welsh, I’d say something more detailed, but I’ll just have to settle for the deep, profound statement:

Dydw i ddim yn siarad Cymraeg

Which, I think, says it all.[1]

[1] OK, I’ll be nice: it means “I do not speak Welsh”[2]
[2] Assuming I didn’t mistype anything….

That’s Windows users in Europe who haven’t changed their default web browser from Internet Explorer, and who have automatic updates turned on. Last time I looked, those were the default settings, which tend to be left that way be people who either don’t know or care about using something less icky[1] to browse the web, and who haven’t developed appropriate levels of paranoia about Microsoft’s updates.[2]

So, thanks to Europe’s finest legal minds[3] and Microsoft deciding not to keep fighting a silly and pointless battle[4], those customers will have an update pushed at them which will ask them which web browser they’d like to use. Now since anyone who actually understands the question is more than capable of, well, downloading and installing as many browsers as they like, this seems a bit silly. Not to mention being likely to make people think they’ve picked up some malware, since they’ve been educated to not install anything that pops up on their screen offering to make their computers better.[5]

While I would love to see IE (especially its older versions) disappear, this is a very silly response to the alleged problem. Personally, I don’t have a problem with Microsoft including their browser with their OS, any more than I do with Apple including Safari with Mac OS.

BBC News: Microsoft offers browser choices to Europeans

[1] Technical expression
[2] I’m going to reboot in five minutes unless you click this button. What? You’re getting a coffee? I’ll reboot right now. You did save all your work, right? OK, here goes….
[3] Or not. I’ve no idea who gets to work on such things, but I do have a vague suspicion that having IT skills or knowledge is not a prerequisite for the job
[4] Note: Firefox got a quite respectable market share though word of mouth and, well, being quite good. Opera didn’t because despite its small and noisy fan club, most people who try it can’t be bothered with it. Guess who did the most whining about big bad Microsoft?
[5] Removing malware from people’s computers is such fun!