Photography

The Bangor University Summer Ball took place over this weekend, headlined by Athlete, and I was there taking photos. This was a pretty hard going test, primarily on the amount of time I was on my feet, with the camera in my hands - around 9 hours. One of the things I like most about the Nikon bodies is that they just feel so at home in my hands. The D2x isn't light by any measure, but, after that amount of time to still not feel like my wrist is about to snap is pretty impressive. I was also dragging all of my lenses around with me and various other stuff in my Lowepro AW100 bag - again, this caused me no issues at all - no pain in my shoulders or anything. So, all in all, a good night. The processing took me a fair while to do - the results are available at http://photos.garysmith.org.uk/ball08/

Whilst I do some pretty big file transfers around my home network (mainly photos and video) from the laptop to the file servers, I've always left these going in the background whilst I'm doing other stuff, so never paid too much attention to how fast or slow these are. In recent times, I've changed the setup of the network here, such that the network is now split into two. The servers are split away, and the only way of connecting them now is powerline ethernet converters. I'd purchased a pair of these from Solwise, the pair costing about 50 quid. Put them in, and forgot about them.

I was transferring some photos today and noted that they're only giving me about 250KB/s. My first port of call was the consideration that the access point (Cisco Aironet 1231 with a G card) or the laptop were being a bit odd. The access point is on the other side of the powerline segment, so it was a possibility. Taking it right down to the point of the laptop being directly connected to the powerline converter still giving roughly the same speeds.

I then took the laptop and connected it directly to the switch (a Cisco 2950) which has the servers hanging off it and saw speeds around the 5MB/s mark, more towards what I was expecting.

I'm now running a test of 700mb, rsyncing from the laptop. In both instances, the same fileset will be used. In the first instance, I'll do it using the powerline segment, in the second instance, I'll do it without the powerline segment and report the results back here.

...and the first set of results, with the laptop connected to the powerline segment are: sent 709976661 bytes received 3320 bytes 271554.78 bytes/sec

...and the second set of results, without the powerline segment: sent 709976661 bytes received 3320 bytes 4264144.03 bytes/sec

So, what, nearly 16 times slower with the powerline in. I think it's safe to say that if you're doing large file transfers, you don't want to be using powerline. I know there's issues of how long the link is/how new the cabling is/blah so you may get better results if you're not having to go as far.

I've been utterly crap at keeping the blog up to date recently, so what better time to look back on the year, and also conveniently put everything that I've not put on here already, er, on here.

December is, as is now standard for me, panto season. It's been a little bit more busy this year as December also saw the first data return to the Welsh Assembly Government for the University. This was a little bit stressful as most of the providers had either forgotten, sent in incorrect data, or submitted their data late. Lots of late nights and whatnot, and it was in on time, and I'm pretty happy with what we've sent. I'm also working on some new stuff for the website which includes media management and a Health & Safety system. All of this will only be visible to the providers, so not something for the general public. This is all tying in to a presentation I'm going to be doing to the other University techies on what I've been doing for the past year, how it's all come together, how it works and whatnot. I've got a few ideas for the presentation, but not started writing it yet. Panto - I said I wouldn't take that many shows this year as I'm fairly tired, and also it's not really financially viable at the moment for me (I get paid less at the theatre than I can justify). So I only ended up taking 20 shows this year (I think I did about 40 last year). Sioned still thinks that this is far too much. Ho hum. Only a few more left to go, then that's it for another year. Christmas was spent at my Mum & Dad's, and was rather enjoyable this year. Sioned & myself received some very nice gifts, there was excellent food, and the company was good.

October and November saw me working on an interesting project for another department in the University which caused a hefty political argument, eventually seeing the whole project canceled. Fortunately, I think I've come out on the other side without too many battle scars.

The department within the University that I was seconded away from (Work based learning within the School of Lifelong Learning) has slowly been making more and more people redundant. The have a contract with the Welsh Assembly Government which is typically renewed each August. This year (August 2007) the renewal was, financially, much lower than in previous years. This put a large amount of pressure on to the department. As a result, in March, the department will begin the final wind down. Students currently on program will be moved to other providers, and remaining staff will either be made redundant, or, where possible, be re-housed elsewhere within the institution. What does this mean for me? The department I'm now working for (Canolfan Cymraeg i Oedolion) has funding for a further three years. After this time, we either get more funding or I'm looking at redundancy. We're in a pretty good position within the institution, and within the country as a whole. Hopefully it should be ok.

The summer saw Sioned finding out that she's pregnant. We're going to be having a baby in late February/early March. Sioned is feeling poorly pretty much constantly, and seems to have a pretty much endless set of appointments with various people within the medical profession.

Also over the summer, we got rid of the Saab and now have a BMW 3 series diesel. In some ways, I still prefer the Saab, in others (especially the economy), the BMW is a nicer car. Ok, it hasn't got the pickup that the Saab had, nor the top speed, but it's still just as nice.

March this year saw us getting married, and then heading around Western Europe in the car. Absolutely brilliant time, really enjoyed it. Germany is a brilliant place, especially the Nurburgring.

I've also started playing in the Bangor pool league - I've got a win rate of 50% which is pretty decent, I think, for someone who's only just started playing. We're a new team to the league, so to also not be rooted to the bottom of the table is pretty decent, too.

As posted on the blog, I changed from my slightly-long-in-the-tooth Nikon D100 to a D2X. I've used the new body in anger a few times now, and it's a joy to use. Over the last week, I did just over 1000 exposures in a few hours and the battery is still over half full. The images it produced, in quite a few cases, required very little processing/colour correction. It's a brilliant piece of kit, although as you'd expect, the noise at anything above ISO500 is noticeable. I gather this is well corrected in the Nikon D3. Hmm... ;-)

This year also saw the purchase of my Macbook Pro. I'm really getting on well with it now - there's quite a few shortcuts and the like which, once you get to know them really do increase productivity. The machine was, within a few days, my main development/production machine, and has since stayed there. It's a brilliant bit of kit. It's been dropped once and - as you'd expect, hasn't suffered any illness as a result of it.

I think next year is going to be a whole lot different.

I've been using a Nikon D100 for a few years now, and it's given me some absolutely amazing results, and I'm really pleased with it. That said, it does have limitations. When I bought it, it was an old(er) bit of kit, already being in some respects superseded by the D70. The D100 had been given a hammering and has done sterling service, having done a good few gigs, the honeymoon, had a pint of beer chucked over it - and that's just off the top of my head. Recently it's been giving some banding, a sign of a possible shutter failure. These things happen. It's regarded as a consumable part. I'd been starting to feel like I'd outgrown the D100 for a while now, specifically being bound by some of the limitations on it (ie the way it talks to the SB800 flash I've got, the number of FPS it can do, the AF areas, etc). I'd been lusting after a D2x for some time, but not been able to justify the outlay. So - when a chap I know mentioned that he was looking to sell his, and the result of lots of overtime sitting in the bank, it seemed like a good opportunity. I'm *really* pleased with it. The amount of fine tuning one can do is breath taking. I took some sample images outside the office at lunchtime, which are up at my photo site. Some of the detail being brought out in the shots is spectacular - the beads of water, as well as what's shown in the background in some of the other photos is - well, as I say. I'm impressed.

No updates for a while, so it's time for one of those mega updates that come along every now and then. Working from today backwards...

Today has seen me moving the rack from its previous home upstairs in the office to somewhere else. This involved de-racking everything, taking the rack apart, huffing it all down two flights of stairs and then putting it back together in its new location. The UPS (3u APC 2.2kVA) weighs far too much. Managed to do it all in about 5 hours, which wasn't too bad. The reward, after sweating buckets was a nice bath, a glass of coke and a pack of marshmallows.

Yesterday we headed over to see Joel, Nicky and their kids for their summer barbecue. We needed to give the new car (see below) a run out - we'd also not seen them since the wedding, so it was good to catch up with them.

Last week, we took delivery of a new car. We'd sold the Saab due to it starting to become a bit impractical before the Eisteddfod, and since then I'd been borrowing a jeep from Sioned's Dad. Due to the miles I'm doing now, a diesel was required - so we're now the proud owners of a BMW 3 series diesel - photos here. This also involved seeing a couple of cars which... weren't quite up to scratch. I'd originally been looking at Mercedes C220 CDIs. Myself and Sioned's Dad went to see one in Bradford which was - for want of a better word - a bit of a shed. For the money, it had surface rust, knackered wheels and stained seats. Nice. We then went to see a BMW 3 series diesel in Nottingham. You'd kind of hope that a diesel engine (well, any engine really) would have oil in it. Not this one. Plus (bearing in mind it's a diesel) hadn't been serviced for around 30000 miles. Ouch. We walked away in both cases. I'm rather pleased with the one we finally bought.

I've been working from home a bit during the two weeks since the Eisteddfod, mainly due to being horribly knackered after it, and mainly because it had given me some good ideas about where I wanted to go with the website that I've been working on. Most of this has come through to fruition now, with a nice enquiries management/CRM bolted on which does some bespoke functions, as well as building in some other things which we needed. Pretty productive all in.

Over all, the Eisteddfod was pretty successful - and I rather enjoyed it, much more than I did the one in Swansea last year. I also did some followspotting work there, which involved actually sitting on the rig. I love doing work like that :-) The Internet connectivity didn't get much better during the week after my previous post - we were lucky to see more than half of the day with any connectivity, much less anything capable of uploading photos/videos. Whilst traffic shaping there was obviously a taken (since it was being run with ADSL as the backhaul), you'd still hope for some form of upstream bandwidth.

During the Eisteddfod (well, before actually - but I'd not been able to put my finger on what it was) the D100 suffered a shutter failure. It's not a total failure (yet?) - exposures faster than 1/320th see a black banding appear over the image. Fixation want £180 to replace this. In other news - Nikon have announced the D3. 9fps! 9! My god.

In other news, Mum & Dad are up this weekend - it'll be good to see them again. They're staying overnight as well, which means we'll be able to do a few more bits with them than usual.

The A55 stretches all the way across North Wales, from Chester in the east, to Anglesey in the west. Coming along this road, as you pass Llandullas and head towards Colwyn Bay, many people would see the landmark 70 Degrees Hotel sat high above them on the cliffs. It's a building regarded by many as a local landmark, telling them that they'd not be much longer on the road - an early "welcome home" type of thing. The hotel was a 70s design, and didn't really receive the love and attention it deserved - quickly falling out of favour, and soon became derelict. It's long been boarded up, with signs on it announcing that it was for sale. The site became a haven for drug use, with areas hidden away from site. I'd been up there before and found possible entrance points, but the possibility of having my (not inexpensive) camera nicked was something that had put me off.

Heading east along the A55 late last week, Sioned and myself noticed that there was significant work taking place - the site was being demolished to make way for new housing - 56 new residences (apartments and houses). We went up the next day and I spoke to some people on the site who agreed to let me take photos of what was left.

I've tried to capture some of the design of the building - many of the internal and external walls, as well as the stairs, for instance are set at 70 degrees instead of the "standard" 90, which gave the hotel its name. For instance, you can see it here: http://photos.garysmith.org.uk/p41456611.html.

There's split opinion on if this is a good thing - in some ways, the hotel was perhaps giving a bad name to the area. Whilst locals regarded it as a landmark, people from outside the area would've seen it for what it was - an eyesore, which was greeting people as they entered north west Wales.

I've had my D100 for a while now, and one of the things I've never been able to work out is how to "reset" the folders that the photos are written to on the CF card. Whilst I've not managed to go "round the clock" with it yet, through various uses of the camera, I'd ended up on 111ND100. This isn't really a major problem, but one of those minor niggles.

In the playback menu, there's a folder designate option - this is used to decide where the images that are shown are taken from (for instance, you can use this as a back door to hiding photos). This option, unsuprisingly, doesn't do what I was looking for.

I played about today as I had a few spare minutes - this works. There's probably another way of doing this, but this works for me. Take the CF card out of the camera. On the CSM menu, go to File No Seq (on my D100, it's option 5 of the CSM Menu) There's three options: Yes, No, Reset. Select reset, and then press right. With the CF card out of the camera, stick it into an external reader/writer and delete the existing folders on it. Put the card in to the camera, and take a photo - it'll be called 100ND100\DSC_0001.JPG.

It should really be possible to do this with the card in the camera and without having to delete the existing folders... but it's not (or so it seems)

I've neglected the blog a bit of late. I usually try to write the interesting (well, to me, anyway) stuff I've been doing. I've been feeling a bit "Meh" of late, and not really been up to much, and what I have done hasn't been that interesting anyway. Or, at least, it didn't/doesn't feel like it.

On the work front, I've toned down on what I'm doing with the theatre as I'm absolutely knackered. Having said that, a desperate (ish) phone call over the weekend is seeing me working there tonight. That, and I've got a few bits on the go at the moment (designing and implementing a client management/stock management system for a small trader near where I am, which should also entail some ongoing support for them), as well as some ongoing projects in the University. I was on an interview panel last week which recruited a new System Information Officer for my old post within the University. This doesn't mean an immediate end to the contract I'm doing there - if anything, it's going to ramp up for a few weeks whilst the new chap gets bedded in, and then will start to drop off in mid-August to September time. My other main contract with the University is term-time only, so will be coming up for a rest in a few weeks time when the term finishes.

I took a brand spanking new Mercedes C200 CDI out last weekend (ie not the bank holiday weekend) for a test drive as we've pretty much decided that's what we're going for (well, it'll be a C200 or C220 - there's not much in it. Same engine, just the C200 is chipped down). The toss up was between the BMW 320d and the Mercedes C200/C220 CDI. The Mercedes won it for us as they just feel that bit nicer. It seems to pull sluggishly compared to the Saab, but then the Mercedes is a diesel, and also doesn't have a turbo on it. On the subject of cars, the front left tyre on the Saab had a valve failure last week. Trying to park the car with half the pressure it should have (usually has 33PSi, but had 14 in it) was an odd experience. Turn the wheel and nothing happens.

We've bought a new kitchen! Delivery is next week (Tuesday). Sioned has been muttering for aeons that she's not happy with it. The arrival last week of a new Smeg FAB32NE4 pretty much cemented that we needed a new kitchen to go round it (how does that one work then...?) We managed to get the price down from a mere £1037 to £410. Again - how does that one work then?

This weekend (bank holiday - yay!) saw us have some friends over on Friday evening for the first barbecue of the season. The evening went on for a good while, before people left at around 2330. Ace. Sunday saw Mum & Dad up for the day and the traditional visit to the Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza. Unfortunately the weather had turned on the Sunday - up until then it was top notch, with Friday and Saturday (as well as the days before) nice and warm. Sunday was overcast, damp and drizzly. The original plan had been for another barbecue, but this wasn't to be, even after we'd spent 30 quid on food for said grilling.

Yesterday saw us shopping for a new telly. Not that we need one, but we thought it'd be rather nice. We're a bit restricted on how big we can go at the moment - the largest that'll fit in the gap being 32". Could we find something with a decent colour reproduction in that size? Hell no. Well, not at a sensible (ie <£900) price. We're not too fussed about 1080p at the moment, but even so - a contrast ratio greater than 1200:1 would be nice. Apparently achieving real black in anything 32" or lower is unheard of. Ho hum.

Fotopic moved house yesterday. I drove over to Wakefield and met up with Joel, Nicky and Keiron. After a couple of hours rest there before the driving and the work started, we left Wakefield at 1700 with Nicky driving down to London. Arriving at Docklands at around 2000, we headed for food at Pizza Express. Whilst here, Joel received a call from Clara.net, the current hosts of Fotopic asking what was happening about routing. Nice and on the ball. We left Pizza Express and went straight to GS1 and started de-racking the gear, getting it loaded on to trolleys and taken down to the cars. Small problems with paperwork not having been passed between people slowed us down, but no major problems. We left GS1 at 0030 and hit the road. Minor GPS problems involving tinted windscreens later, we picked up the A12 heading north at 0100, arriving at Fotopic's new home in Leeds at 0345 (a good run, those of you that know UK geography will agree *cough*)

Re-racking there, we didn't come across any major issues. I put in all of the network cabling and tried to keep things relatively sane, even though in an environment like that it won't last for long. Everything was back just before 9, and we left the building at around 10.

I decided that rather than getting some sleep at Joel & Nicky's that it'd be better to drive straight back and go straight to bed there, but only do a couple of hours sleep, instead catching up tonight. We'll see how well that one works out.

After dropping the D100 near to the end of the honeymoon, I found I'd got a massive amount of dust on the CCD. I was concerned that the fall might've actually damaged it, but this wasn't the case. I popped to Cambrian on Saturday and picked up a proper cleaning kit from them which set me back 20 quid, which is from a company called Green Clean. The kit is a wet and dry kit - 3 lots of wet, 3 lots of dry. If the dry doesn't work, give the wet one a go. Fine.

Absolutely amazing. One sweep with the dry stick and it's like new. Photoshop picked up absolutely nothing from a test shot I did afterwards.

Well worth it, says I.

A lie in was well needed, so getting up at 1145 wasn't a great problem for us. We immediately headed out and caught a bus to the U/S-Bahn station at Ohlsdorf to get to Hamburg hbf. We'd heard from some other Brits that certain parts of the train network wouldn't be running today, but weren't sure which areas would be affected. Sure enough, we were turfed off the train at Barmbek station. After a bit of asking around, we found we could continue our journey on the U2 line. That out of the way, we opted for lunch at a little bar/cafe thing right next to the station, before taking one of the touristy-sight seeing buses around the city. This took a good 90 minutes and showed us a fair bit of the place. Unfortunately, by the time we'd finished it, most places were closing up. It's worth noting that Hamburg is very much like the UK in that after about 1630 on a Sunday, there's very little to do in the way of going out. After the bus journey had shown us where things were, we took a walk around the Elbe and some of the more upmarket shops in Hamburg, before catching a train from Jungfernstieg back to the hotel. We headed back out again at about 7 with the intention of catching a cruise on the Elbe, but - as mentioned above, there's very little that actually happens on a Sunday night in Hamburg. Everywhere is deathly quiet. No boats were running a service at all. We'd originally intended to get something to eat on said boat, so since this wasn't happening, we took to looking around for somewhere to eat. Now, one of the problems we've found and as documented in previous blog entries - there's only so much eating out you can do. The Germans seem to love their Italian food. Walking down one road, we found 4 pizzerias within 150 yards. It's that bad. So happening upon a restaurant which wasn't purely advertising Italian food was something of a boon to us. The Hamburger Fischerstussen looked good from the outside. A vegetarian (me) being in a fish restaurant is quiet a thing, but they were able to cater for me. Sioned took the prawns and was blown away by them. Apparently they're the best she's ever tasted. A glowing recommendation. If ever you're in the area, give the place a look in. Portions are absolutely massive, too. After the meal, we went over to the Reeperbahn, as I suggested we would in the previous blog entry. Even this was incredibly quiet and gave the feeling that it was far less secure than the previous night had lead us to believe. On the tourist bus thing earlier, we'd noticed a rather large fun-fair at one end of the Reeperbahn which we hadn't spotted on our visit last night (we'd not walked that far), so we set a course for that. What a plae. It'd mind blowing, the size of it. We spent a good couple of hours there. Some of the rides would give the British H&S people a heart attack. I found a brilliant go-kart ride. 5.5hp petrol powered go karts on a track that goes up and over. Lots of mad overtaking, lots of silly crashes. Well worth the 3 Euro it cost. Sioned took a go on a pirate ship which left her feeling rather ill, whilst I went on a pretty hefty big wheel which gave some nice views across the city. We arrived back at the hotel at midnight. Tomorrow we're off to Berlin - our hotel is on the Potsdamer Platz, so on the divide between the former east and west Germany.

As a geek, I use my laptop extensively. It's with a huge amount of forethought that I decided my laptop had really had a hell of a thrashing over the last three and a half years. In that time, I've not once reinstalled the operating system (Windows XP Pro), instead carefully considering what was going to be installed and how it'd affect other things running on there. In that time, it's had a lot of abuse, having things such as QuarkXpress, VB .Net, Photoshop and many other intensive applications and suites installed, all of which have left their mark. So I decided to start again. A week on and things are pretty much back to usual. I took the important things out of documents and settings - my offline e-mails and so on, and took the plunge. I've not installed any of the software I don't regularly use (which did find me installing Powerpoint about 2 minutes before a training session was due to begin...) Other than that, the laptop does seem a lot happier, and it's a lot nicer to work on at the moment. I've pretty much got all of my sessions put back onto SecureCRT as well.

Last week we met up with the photographer (after our original photographer dropped us due to there being a number of pro-am photographers also in attendance). Nice lass, who's got a lot of good ideas. Looking forward to working with her as she's open to suggestion on what we want to do.

I went to Leicester on Friday night, primarily to sort some bits out hanging over from the IP regrade but actually ended up in the pub with Steve which was incredibly useful in having a sound off about all of the wedding guff. The people sorting our suits out phoned me today so that's one other thing ticked off the list as well.

We've been looking around at new cars recently after the revelation that we're spending about £250 a month on petrol for the Saab. We're paying huge consideration to a BMW 320d compact, which seems to return about 50mpg compared to the 25-28ish on the Saab at the moment. With the mileage I'm covering at the moment, it's a bit of a no brainer.

In other news, Formula 1 season starts this weekend. Yay :)

Went to see the Bluetones last night with Sioned - this was part of the Valentine's present that I'd got for her earlier in the week. The venue was one that neither of us had been to before - Central Station in Wrexham. Absolutely top venue, with really good people. I phoned them earlier in the day and asked about the possibility of taking photos there with professional level gear. Their response was "Yep, we're fine with it, as long as the touring company are". Cleared it with the tour manager when I got there, and managed to get some halfway decent photos, problems were generally caused by the lighting in there - far too much red, some of the photos would take me a fair while to sort out in Photoshop - perhaps when I get some more time I'll try and sort some more out.

Valentine's Day itself was pretty quiet for us - as getting a table anywhere is notoriously difficult, we elected to just have a meal in. We seem to be shopping pretty regularly as Marks & Spencer for food now, so, for me, it was feta cheese & herb parcels and potato gratin, whilst Sioned took a goats cheese tartlette with potato gratin. Rather nice it was, too.

CCIO has run a conference yesterday and today. Being on the other side of the fence is pretty interesting, as in another (and a previous life) I did tech work on conferences, so it's been interesting to see what it's like when the things you expect to be there aren't. I guess it also made me a lot more empathetic towards the people running the venue. On the subject of which, the Royal Victoria Hotel in Llanberis is an excellent place. They're staff there are helpful and pleasant, and did everything I'd asked of them (from a technical point of view) quickly. Top people. The bar there isn't bad as far as hotel bars go, although the cloth on the pool table seems a little thick in places :) I sorted out a couple of small issues they had with their Internet connectivity and left my details if they need any other tech work, so another potential client for me.

In photography terms, I consider myself to be quite technical - looking at photos and ascertaining how they were taken, what settings were used, how it was composed, and so on.
What makes a good photographer for me is when the photographer can take me away from asking "How?", but move to asking "Why?". This is a piece of work that's probably one of the most powerful I've seen for some time.

http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/

I took a night shot with the new VR 70-200 last night and noticed what looked to be a large amount of dust in the shot, as can be seen across just above the centre - it looks to be red and green lumps around the third turret from the left. Technically, it should never ever look like that - it should be the odd dot here and there, and hardly noticable unless you're taking long exposures of something bright.

I called my friendly local camera shop who told me it'd be about 45 quid and take at least 24 hours.

So I set about doing it myself. The D100 requires you to have a separate power supply, which enables a menu function to move the mirror and the curtain, thus allowing access to the CCD. The other way of doing it (as I did) is to set a 30 second exposure, whip the lens off, and the clean it that way.
After some hit and miss, I found the solution of putting a anti-static wipe wrapped around the end of a pencil (rubber band holding it in place), then gently dabbing at the CCD worked wonders. Ok, it took me about 90 minutes to get it perfect, but I'm pleased with the results.

After I'd done a sweep, I'd take a 2 second exposure of a bright white (gloss) door at ISO3200, with the lens pulled to infinity focus. This made any dust spots stand out like a sore thumb as they'd appear as black on white.
It's a real pain of a job, and hugely boring. I'm glad I've done it, but I'm not looking forward to having to do it again any time soon.

The panto has now been and gone. I am absolutely *knackered*. I can probably do all of my cues in my sleep. I'm looking forward to a good few weeks of recovering now, and spending a lot of time just doing nothing. Whilst time-wise it didn't seem to be that much work (probably 7 or 8 hours a day once we'd got well into the run), it seems so much more than that.

In other news, last week I took delivery of a Nikon VR 70-200 F2.8 AF-S lens. I mentioned a couple of entries ago about how nice the lens was when I trialled it at a camera shop. I used it in anger on Thursday night, and also Saturday night when I was taking photos of the show itself. My word, it's blown me away. Whilst the photos aren't available for public use, I'm hoping to be able to use it to its full potential sometime soon and put the results on the photo site. Some of the images it gave me from the shows are absolutely awesome.

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things with the University. My current task is beating a Win2k Adv Server into submission - If anyone has any suggestions as to why shared drives/directories wouldn't be visible to the rest of the network, please let me know :)

Back in Leicester again as it's my birthday today. Yay me. After having a brief lie in, I opened my presents, before heading out into town to sort out a few bits and have a look around the shops. I fancied having a look at Yamaha's new offering in the HD amp market (the Yamaha RX-V2700 as my current setup sees the amp controlling the entire room - when we upgrade the TV to a HD panel (1080i, natch) it'll cause some issues. This, coming in at 1300ukp, will be more than suitable. It sounds absolutely fantastic. I also bought myself a new pair of Alpinestar SMX 4 boots, since my old ones were a bit worn out. I'd received a 10% discount voucher from the local Hein Gericke, which saw them come down to a fairer price.
Kev and Steve then joined us for lunch at The Observatory, before we headed off back into town so that I could coo over some Nikon VR lenses, including the rather sexy Nikon VR 70-200 F2.8 AF-S lens. Fortunately the manager at the shop still remembers me from when I worked for le.ac.uk, so mentioned various discounts and the like from the advertised price. It's a gorgeous piece of kit - it focuses so quickly, and with the SWM it really is brilliantly quiet.

The rest of the day will see a visit by family shortly, before I head on out for a night in Leicester with friends.

A rather good day all in, thus far.

...or wave goodbye to December, since I've just had my call sheet. Effectively, December won't exist for me. Woo. Going on last year, I'll come out of it about a stone lighter, a lot richer, and absolutely knackered. Hopefully I'll have the mistakes made buying a certain person a Christmas present ironed out as well, this time around.

Steve & Marie visited us over the weekend - we went out on Friday night to Bangor where, conveniently, the Snooker & Pool Club (University Society) were having a social which we tagged on to for a while, before splitting off and doing our own thang.

Saturday was a day of getting Steve's suit sorted out before mooching around Conwy, then heading into town where there was a Celtic Festival on. Saturday night I was doing the out for Amazing Grace which didn't go too badly, nor take too long - I was in bed for 1.

Sunday - Steve & Marie left pretty early on, so I had a relaxing day - wound down after work the previous night. Today was another theatre day - Status Quo (and all their associated fans). As mentioned above, I've also got my panto shifts sorted out.

I'm also starting to feel old as I've found myself listening to Radio 2 increasingly over the last couple of days. This isn't a good sign.

Busy busy busy.

Kev visited this weekend, which was a somewhat welcome relief after a hair raising week last week, for various reasons.

o One of my old contracts (finished in February) e-mailed me asking me to do more work for them
o My current employer has said they want 4 hours per week from me after I move departments. More money, but more hassle.
o Human resources contacted me and said something like "You do realise you're not being seconded, and that this is a two year contract?". My response was pretty simple: "I'm pulling out". This, obviously, put the cat among the pigeons and it was sorted out pretty quickly. My contract for this arrived yesterday morning, detailing everything as I expected.
o Various bits of money are starting to turn up now, which is a welcome relief. I've sunk a fair bit of cash into a new project which is starting to come to fruition now. There was a period last week which was getting quite desparate, but, as I say, it's coming good now.

So, with all that, it was a nice break to do very little. The Conwy Food Festival was taking place this weekend. After picking Kev up from the train station, we went for a drive around and I showed him the local area - the seafront, and so on. We then headed back to the house to drop stuff off, before heading over to the snooker club for a couple of frames. From here, we went back out again. There wasn't much happening to do with the festival on Friday evening, but we stopped off at a pub in Conwy, before mooching back over to The Killer a bit closer to home.

Saturday was a bit odd weather wise when we got up - it went from raining heavily to nice and sunny three times in an hour. Me & Kevin took our chances and walked over to Conwy, primarily because I knew it'd be a real pain to park anywhere with the food festival - it's difficult at the best of times, but it'd be like nothing ever seen before. I was quite right. The whole town was absolutely packed. First thing we needed to do was get him measured up for a suit for the wedding. This was all done pretty quickly. We had a look around the festival and I got a few photos, whilst Kev bought a couple of bits and bobs. Back home again, and I decided to take Kev for a look around some of the lesser known (ie off the tourist beaten track) areas to see what some of the areas of beauty are like around here, which he seemed quite impressed with. His train out was at 1400, so that was pretty much it.
Fran, one of Sioned's friends (and bridesmaids) turned up just before Kev left. She stayed around for most of the afternoon whilst we did a few wedding bits and bobs.

Sioned and Fran nipped off in to town, so I took a bit of time out to sort out some more relaxing things - recompiling the kernel on profile (web server/login server/etc), tidying up some bits on sourcefour (fileserver) which needed doing, and making sure the UPS was happy and fed after it had a flid about its batteries recently.

Today has been a day of doing very little. We managed to get up at about 1130, before I sat doing nothing. The Snooker Grand Prix in Aberdeen started this weekend, so I've been catching up on the output from that, as well as The Brazilian Grand Prix taking place this weekend. I recorded the qualifying last night and watched that this morning over breakfast.

That's pretty much about it - as I say - a bit hair raising.

Just after lunch on Friday afternoon, I left the office early and headed off to pick Sioned up. We spent the weekend in York to celebrate her birthday on Tuesday. After a brief diversion to one of the University offices where I spent an hour or so fighting against the Nortel phone exchange which seems to be fatally knackered, we headed off on our travels.

We were staying at the Royal York Hotel which is an absolutely storming location. We couldn't ask for much better, really. Arrived there about fiveish, and Sioned decided she'd have a bath and generally relax. Me not being one for sitting about and relaxing, I wandered off out into York to get some photos and scout around to see what we could do later on. I arrived back and we went down to an evening meal at the hotel.
I'll save the rant about the meal for another time (possibly tomorrow). The meal itself was fine, but it certainly gave me a good chance to form opinions on certain things. As I say, I'll save that one for another time. After the meal, we headed on out to a pub called Coopers, conveniently located next to the hotel at the train station. As railway pubs go, it's pretty bloody good, actually. Not too expensive, not too cheap, and plays good music. And not too smokey, either.
From there, we moved further into the city itself, visiting various places including the Hole In The Wall (I reckon it's a better place than BITE suggest), until we happened across a bar/club called Cert 18. As we arrived, we looked at the posters outside where we were accosted by a couple of blokes who asked if we "liked loud music" - if so, we *had* to go in. With such a glowing recommendation, who could turn down the offer? The place seemed to qualify as York's only metal/goth/emo bar. The music was good, although we decided not to shell out the xc2xa37 per person to watch the band who were playing in the other room. Perhaps, really, we should've done.
A wander around the city saw us heading back towards the hotel, where upon arrival we were well and truly ready for bed.

And there the problems started. The hotel had recently been refurbished. It's really been done quite well, but since the building is listed, putting in air conditioning can be a little tricky. That's fine, but the room was unbelievably hot. As in, laying on top of the bed (ie no covers) and the sweat was pouring from us. Needless to say, I was a little tetchy on the Saturday, which Sioned noticed more than once.

Saturday rolled around and I gorged myself at breakfast, before we headed out to do numerous touristy things. First on the list was the castle museum. I have to say, it was absolutely excellent. Well put together and certainly held attention for the whole time we were there. Some of the exhibits there really did entrance me for some reason. After that we had a wander around the Shambles, before we went for a cruise on the river which took an hour or so. By this time, it was after 3 and we were pretty hungry (we'd spent over 2 hours in the museum). Thing with York is, stretch your arms out and you're touching a pub or somewhere that serves food, so we just stopped at the first place that looked like it was capable of serving decent food. This happened to be Plonkers a wine bar by trade, but also somewhere that serves decent food, although the hen party that was in there at the same time were... quite vocal, unfortunately.
Sioned kept saying that I should climb to the top of the Minster, or go on the Yorkshire Wheel, but the cloud was too low which would've meant some relatively poor photographs, so instead we headed back to the hotel. I suggested that we go over to Joel's party in Wakefield instead. A minor disagreement later saw us both hooning down the A64 headed for Wrenthorpe.

It was absolutely excellent seeing people that I'd not seen in *far* too long. Caught up on lots of things whilst Neil cooked enough food to serve the whole of Yorkshire on the barby, Ellie told us she wanted Santa to visit, and Ben hooned around the garden on his car. Ace. We could only really stay an hour or so as we'd got more things that we wanted to do in York during the course of the evening, so we soon hopped back into the car and headed back to the hotel.

Short preparations later saw us trying the Hole In The Wall (see previous day) for food. Unfortunately we'd missed this, so went to a cafe on the corner next to the Minster. Nice food, all things said. From here, we headed over to a pub called The Golden Fleece, which was conveniently located just over the road from the club we'd be going to later. Out of all of the pubs we'd been to over the weekend, this one would probably rank last. It just didn't really click with me for some reason. After a quick drink there, we headed over to Fibbers, where we caught the end of AKP who were actually rather woo. Unfortunately, the club itself seemed pretty dead. We gave it an hour or so before giving up and heading off. Problem being that it was now 2330 or so, and nowhere was going to let us in. So we did the only thing we could - went back to the hotel.
A previous minor strop at reception (no, it wasn't a proper strop - I know that it's a hotel reception so just conveyed myself in a normal manner) saw the appearance of a couple of fans in our room which made a whole world of difference, so much so that we didn't wake until 0900 when the bells from the minster woke us.

A short breakfast later, and we packed the car up and we headed over to the National Railway Museum, primarily so that I could have a go on the Yorkshire Wheel, which towers some 50m over York itself. Some pretty ace views, although I still think the one in Manchester is better. After that we had a quick look around the NRM itself, before picking the car up from the hotel and heading into York itself. Sioned had spotted a fairground ride the previous day outside the castle musem which she wanted a go on, and I'd said I'd go for a walk around the top of Clifford's Tower which was next to it.
From here, we headed over to York Minster. Sioned decided to, for various reasons, not follow me up the 275 obscenely steep steps to the top of the tower (mainly she doesn't like heights). Even though I consider myself relatively fit, I was knackered at the top. Stunning views though. After a slightly more leisurely climb back down again, we headed for Betty's Tea Rooms where we found a huge queue which, in the midday sun didn't really bode well. On the way back to the car we happened across a mime artist - quite oddly, or a mime artist I got talking to him about some of the stuff he's done and is hopefully going to go. Quite a nice bloke.

There's a rail tamping thing just gone by spraying sparks everywhere (nice smell of burning metal left afterwards which has just filled the house). I got some pretty spectacular photos of the sparks - no doubt, had I a bit more than a few seconds to set exposure and so on they could've been better, but even so, I'm not complaining:
http://photos.garysmith.org.uk/c994158.html