Hmmm, up again today. And that’s a morning weight, as the evening figure would have been adversely affected by the wee drinkie I may have accidentally had after a late finish at work. I had a bit of a walk at lunchtime with the Fujifilm X-E1 and the 55-200mm lens which arrived this morning. At the long end, that lens is the equivalent of 300mm on a full-frame camera like the Canon 5D Mark III, but in a delightfully light form. Here’s a picture taken from the Tyne Bridge:

Watching

That’s been cropped down to concentrate on the pigeons, and given minor tweaking in Lightroom. This one needed a bit more work – it’s a closer crop, and adjustments have been made to reduce some excess brightness. It’s also been cropped a lot.

Do you like butter?

Just showing that long lenses aren’t just for things at a distance…

Here’s the walk (if you click the map you’ll see the fascinating distance details)

Friday Walk

More photos to come!

What? Another episode in the Great Terry Pratchett Re-read-athon already? Well, I did say I had a bit of a backlog, and this is where I catch up with my reading so far.

Maskerade picks up the story of the Lancre witches. Well, two of them. Magrat is far too busy Queening to work with Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, and that’s a problem. You need three witches to work together properly, and without that third witch to moderate her, Nanny’s concerned that Granny’s power could force her in on herself and lead her to become something like the notorious Black Aliss, who before some damn kids stuffed her into her own oven was the kind of witch who

turned people into gingerbread and had a house made of frogs

The witches decide that a local girl called Agnes Nitt is the ideal candidate. Agnes prefers to be known as Perdita X, and has gone to Ankh-Morpork to become an opera singer, which leads us into the main theme of the book. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, The Phantom of the Opera with the knobs turned up to, ooooh, about 152.

More fun is involved with the slight problem of Nanny Ogg’s book which has been published in Ankh-Morpork. It includes some of her more, err, interesting recipes, and has been selling rather well. Granny thinks that Nanny is owed rather more than the three dollars she’s been given, and this prompts the witches to go to the city. This is, of course, a Cunning Plan on Nanny’s part to get Granny to meet Agnes Perdita and recruit her.

At the opera house, amongst many other extreme characters, Agnes (OK, I’ll stop doing the name thing now) meets Walter Plinge, a young man who is quite blatantly Frank Spencer. And much fun follows. There’s the Opera Ghost who’s quite harmless, apart from killing a few people, a mystery in the cellars, more confusion and misdirection than the average opera and as you might guess, it really isn’t over until… well, you’ll need to read that bit for yourself, won’t you?

I’ll give a small selection of quotes to give a bit of a flavour of the book. Nanny admits to Granny that her recipes might not be altogether innocent

“Weeelll, they starts out as Maids of Honour,” said Nanny, fidgeting with her feet, “but they ends up as Tarts”

When the witches first meet the publisher of the book, Granny insists that Nanny should be paid.

“She wants a little bit of money for every book you’ve sold.”
“I don’t expect to be treated like royalty, said Nanny.”

Grone, etc. It’s been clearly established that Granny rarely uses actual magic, and that much of her power comes from the use of headology. It’s important to understand that this isn’t the same thing as psychaiatry:

A psychiatrist, dealing with a man who fears he is being followed by a large and terrible monster, will endeavour to convince him that monsters don’t exist. Granny Weatherwax would simply give him a chair to stand on and a very heavy stick.

But the best bit is Granny talking about how she can’t do Bad…

“The trouble is, you see, that if you do know Right from Wrong, you can’t do Wrong. you just can’t do it and live. So… if was a bad witch …”.

She mentions some of the things she might do if she was bad, then gives a chuckle. And happily sets off to do what’s best. Which is not something you want to get in the way of at all.

All good stuff, and some quite serious signs of Granny’s growing power, which is always fun, so long as you’re not in the way of it. And you’ll never look at opera the same way again. You might think it’s all a bit silly, but it’s much sillier than that…

Up again today, mutter, mutter.

I’ve had another look at the photographs I took in London, and done a bit of tweaking. This is an edit of the raw file version of the front of St Pancras which was included as an untouched JPG in Tuesday’s report[1]. I’ve made the shadows lighter, the highlights darker, and generally twiddled a bit to show rather more detail:

St Pancras Revisited

And this is a view of some construction work. I liked the forest of cranes set against the sky:

Going up!

[1] Any suggestion that Tuesday’s report was retrospectively posted on Wednesday will be unconvincingly denied, of course.

It’s time to start catching up with the Great Terry Pratchett Re-read-athon. I’ve got two books on the desk ready to post about, and I’m about halft way through the next one, so I’d better get on with it.

Interesting Times features the return of Rincewind, and is a sequel to The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. Some time has passed, and Twoflower (that tourist who caused Rincewind so many adventures) has returned home to the Agatean Empire, which can best be thought of as a Chinese culture with the knobs turned up to about 35. It’s a strictly regulated cultured, ruled by the usual warring families and so on and so forth. In order to keep things strictly controlled, a suitably evil leader wants to have a dangerous opposition to suppress, and works quite hard to create one. This being the Discworld, this doesn’t go too well.

However, copies of Twoflower’s memoir of his trip are circulating and inspiring a lot of people with tales of “The Great Wizzard”. And so, the Empire demands that the “Great Wizzard” is sent to them. Once it’s realised that the only person who spells wizard that way is Rincewind, he’s magically dragged back from the island he’d been happily marooned on and subsequently sent to the Empire.

And much of the usual fun and games follow. Cohen the Barbarian is back, accompanied by his Horde (a few other octogenarian barbarian warriors and a schoolteacher) and with a Cunning Plan to steal something quite substantial.

We learn some interesting things, like the magical Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which is

Named after the wizard Sangrit Heisenberg, and not after the more famous Heisenberg who is renowned for inventing what is possibly the finest lager in the world.

Cohen tells Rincewind about how rule-driven the Empire is, to the point that you can’t go to the privy without a piece of paper…

“Well, as a matter of fact I myself -”
“A piece of paper saying they can go, is what I mean. Can’t leave your village without a chit. Can’t get married without a chit. Can’t even have a sh- Ah, we’re here.”

As Rincewind’s arrival in the Empire involved him arriving at high speed, not to mention a canon disappearing at the same time, people were quite impressed:

“I saw him, I tell you! A legion of soldiers collapsed with the wind of his passage!”
The wind of his passage was beginning to worry Rincewind as well. It always tended to when he was frightened.

And sooner or later, it had to come. Rincewind, who never could do actual magic, is put in a position where he has to cast a spell:

Quanti canicula illa in fenestre

Which would seem to be something about asking the price of a small dog on display in a shop. Or “how much is that doggy in the window?”, perhaps. Waggliness of tail not specified.

As always, lots of jokes, lots of silliness, and the usual mix of serious points being sneaked in. Good fun, and it’s always a joy to have Rincewind back.

Down a bit today by the time I got home. Today’s walk was from the hotel to the office and from the office to the station, so not quite as impressive as yesterday.

I was staying in a Travelodge this time. Not my preferred variety of hotel, but OK for one night. The breakfast wasn’t as good as I generally prefer, but the view from my sixth floor room wasn’t bad. The following pictures were taken though a not all that clean window, and I haven’t made any adjustments. Here’s a general view of the London skyline:

London Skyline

And here’s a closer view, at the long end of the 18-55mm lens on the X-E1:

St Pancras uo close

I think I”m going to have a lot of fun with this camera…

Slightly up today, but that is a first thing in the morning weight, as I went to London today. I walked from King’s Cross to the office, had a walk to a future office location and back, then a walk from the office to my hotel which was beyond Kings Cross, rather than close to the office as is more usual. After that I took the Tube to a more central location, met a friend for dinner[1], then got the Tube back to King’s Cross and had a walk back to the hotel, which led to the quite high step count for today.

As I got back to the vicinity relatively early, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures with my shiny new X-E1 which insisted on travelling with me. Here’s one – this is an unmodified, straight out of camera JPG.

St Pancras

A tweaked version may appear somewhere later…

[1] Hi Martin 

I had a couple of issues with the beta of Lightroom 5 – one was it sometimes crashing when I imported a GPX file into the maps module, which was a bit irritating. The other was a problem with the format of EXIF data when images were exported. While Lightroom was apparently following the standard, it was doing it in a way that stopped some of the data being picked up by some other software, including WordPress. That’s why photographs I’ve posted here over the last couple of months have lacked the camera name in that block below them. But now the final version is here, the data is as it should be. Woo, hoo.

Up just a wee bit today, never mind, etc.

I had a short walk at lunchtime, to give the X-E1 a bit of a test. The light wasn’t all that good, but I managed a few shots. These are unaltered JPGs from the camera. Processing may follow later…

Queen Victoria looks as happy as ever:

Still not amused

And it looks like the celebrations are over…

After the party

More to come…

Yes, it’s time for the next book in the Great Terry Pratchett Re-read-athon. Actually, it’s somewhat past time, as I’m starting to develop a backlog, so I’d better get right on with it.

Soul Music could be considered a sequel to Mort and Reaper Man, or a follow-up to Moving Pictures, if you look at it from the right angle. Or you could just settle back and enjoy it.

The story involves a young bard from Llamedos, which you can think of as Wales with the knobs turned up to 13 – perpetually wet and full of bards. It may have been influenced by Dylan Thomas’s Llareggub, and knowing Terry, probably was. Imp y Celyn, whose name roughly translates as “bud of the holly”, gravitates to Ankh Morpork, buys a slightly strange guitar in One of Those Shops, and the next thing you know there’s an outbreak of Music With Rocks In.

As with the little matter of the Moving Pictures, this involves a nice line in leakage, what with being on a mission from Glod, and some cringe-inducing gags

“Right,” said Buddy, “but if you went out there now and asked who the most famous horn player is, would they remember some felonious monk or would they shout for Glod Glodsson?”

and some useful etymology, where a footnote[1] explains where the word wizard comes from

From the Old wys-ars, lit: one who, at bottom, is very smart

Talking of the wizards, they get a bit involved in the whole mess, which I’m afraid leads to Archchancellor Ridcully saying

“Let’s go home. I’m not sure I’m that interested in music any more. It’s a world of hertz.

But weaving through all this is the story of Susan, who is Death’s granddaughter. Errr, well, if you recall Mort, where Death’s adopted daughter settled down with his apprentice, well, they had a daughter, who by the usual way of things on the Disc, has inherited some attributes from her grandfather. Which is useful, because Death has one of his periodic bouts of having an existential crisis, and wanders off, leaving Susan to do the job. Which leads to problems with Imp y Celyn (or “Buddy” as he’s become known.

And talking of Buddy, there’s a running gag through the book of people thinking he looks elvish. So it shouldn’t be any surprise where he ends up working after all the chaos is over. And for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t get it:

Nice.

I’ve been playing with the beta for a while, and It’s been working nicely for me. The final release is now available for purchase from Adobe. Creative Cloud subscribers can just grab it as part of their package.