Surplus to Requirements

After 11 years with my current company I've recently found out that I am getting made redundant at the end of the month! It's something that has been on the cards for a while now so not a huge shock. I haven't got anything else lined up as of yet but will start looking properly next week once I've finished.

So, with that in mind I have been clearing out my desk out getting ready to leave!

As you can see in the picture below, my desk looks a little different (and a lot clearer) than it did in this previous post.

Google Street View UK

In the UK Google released Street View last week. This allows internet users to access 360-degree views of roads and homes in 25 cities across the country.

Once it appeared on the web the complaints starting rolling in according to various news articles. According to these articles, the complaints seem to mainly come from privacy campaigners but also from some individuals caught on camera doing all manner of things from emerging from sex shops to throwing up in the street!

To me this all seems a little strange seeing as here in the UK we have the most CCTV cameras and are one of the most watched nations in the world. If people are coming out of a sex shop or throwing up outside a pub in broad daylight then they should complain if people see them or photograph them!

Here are a few UK sightings that I've come across...


A bit of Banksy - Quite apt for this post I feel!
CCTV at googlesightseeing.com

Road Traffic Accident involving some bikes
Cyclist at googlesightseeing.com

Cardboard cut out or the real Stig...you decide
Stig at googlesightseeing.com

All images are Copyright of Google

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More Street View images

Top 15 US Street View sightings

Vodka Light

Macro Allsorts

Fingerprint Key

Some more test shots using the macro lens adapters.

Comic Relief Cathedral

With the tallest spire in Britian Salisbury Cathedral is taking part in Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day by turning its 404ft soaring spire red each night from Monday 9 March through to Red Nose Day on Friday 13 March. It hopes that everyone who sees the ‘red nosed’ Cathedral will be reminded of the comic relief message and encouraged to do something special to raise money for the charity. Read more here

Hope that everyone is doing their bit for charity today. I'm currently stuffed full of comic relief cakes :)

These shots of the Cathedral were taken yesterday evening...

Skiing 2009 - Part 3

Here is the final installment from this years skiing trip.

Love the Mixtape

Remember mixtapes?. Those were the days!

Macros With Canon 450D

You will see from my blog that I am interested in all things macro. In England the weather isn't often great so indoor macro photography can be good to keep out of the elements!

Previously, I have always used my Canon Powershot S2 for this photography as it has excellent macro and 0cm focusing supermacro functions but since buying a Canon EOS 450D DSLR I've been interested in trying that out.

Macro lenses can be very expensive but I have read some good things about a cheaper equivalent. These are in the form of lens adapters which screw on to the filter threads of an existing lens and provide various levels of magnification allowing closer focusing. I spotted a set of these on eBay for about £15 and thought I'd give them a go. The set includes 4 adapters ranging from 1x to 10x magnification.

Here is a close up of one of these adapters plus a few of my first test shots.

Pick up a Penguin

More fun with the DIY light box - This time with a stuffed toy. I will soon post some pictures of my light box setup...that will make you laugh as it's far from professional!

Creative Zen X-Fi

One of my Christmas presents was a Creative Zen X-Fi 16GB MP3 Player which is available from Amazon.

This is a great small flash memory based player with outstanding sound quality. It plays all the usual sound file formats (MP3, WMA, AAC5, WAV) as well as MJPEG, WMV, MPEG-4 (including DivX and XviD)video formats.

You also have the ability to to view photographs and the X-Fi even has a SD slot for extra storage or backup of photos to the main player. The only downside is that when a SD card is inserted it is seen as a additional storage so any music or files on it are not seen / integrated in to the main interface - You need to access it from a separate menu option. Hopefully this will be rectified in the future with a firmware update but is only a slight drawback (until I run out of storage space that is!).

The player also features wireless LAN functionality to connect either to Creative's content servers on the Internet or to your your own computer which can act as a media server using Creative's supplied software.

Battery life is excellent (over 25 hours in my non scientific tests!) and all in a package weighing in at just 69g. If you are in the market for a new MP3 player and are looking for something for its good functionality and excellent sound quality (as Creative players always are) rather than jumping on the iPod bandwagon then this is well worth a try.

Oh...and you can also customise the menu backgrounds etc to feature your own images. The pencil image below is one of my pictures featured in a previous blog post