This entrances me:

Cinco De Mayo Carnival from Andrew Curtis on Vimeo.

2683 images, taken with 1 second exposures every 2 seconds. I like the ride at 2:15. Full-size link.

I sometimes really wish that all fiction books of all genres for any people over the age of about 12 were simply filed alphabetically by author, because as Patrick Nielsen Hayden once pointed out to me, shelving by genre simply tells people the places in a bookshop that they don’t have to go.

I’d never thought of it like that, but it makes perfect sense. I expect this will now pop into my head every time I walk into a bookshop for the rest of my life.

This morning’s post delivered a bunch of cheapo close-up filters - essentially magnifying glasses for the lens - so I spent the evening finally taking my ‘abstract’ pictures. I lost any sense of coherence after a while, but I’m hopeful there’ll be something usable. Some of the digital test shots turned out ok:

I’m hoping the filters didn’t degrade the slide quality too much.

I’ve been panicking over my ‘Urban Landscape’ project today. I have a massive sheet of ideas, all of which are either too ambitious - recreating this effect - or too dull - traffic cones in various odd places. So just before midnight I jumped into the car, slapped my camera onto a dashboard-mounted-monsterpod and went for a drive:

These turned out better than I expected, and would certainly fit the ‘urban landscape’ remit. I took a bunch of shots on slide film, but the daylight balance means they’ll all be way orange. Still, they might do, and if they’re nearly ok I can always get some filters…

Warning: you might want to skip this if you’re squeamish.

I’ve never been bothered by blood. I’m not saying this to be macho - plenty of things do bother me - I’m just lucky that the sight of blood doesn’t affect me. So, donating blood has never been a problem. Today was no different, but an unexpected release of my blood did cause some trouble.

I hadn’t given blood for a few years, but after discovering the donation centre was literally two minutes walk I didn’t have any excuse. So this afternoon I trotted down, presented my little blue card and after the usual checks was happily excreting bodily fluids. I like to see what’s going on, so I watched the needle go in and the blood wind its way around the warren of tubes and containers, and it was apparently coming out pretty quickly. This wasn’t a problem, and once it finished the nurse told me I could go to the biscuit table without waiting, if I was feeling ok. Which I was, so I did.

I grabbed a cup of Ribena, at which point I apparently sprung a leak. I didn’t twig it for a couple of seconds, by which point I was halfway to my seat and a not insignificant amount of blood had dripped, well, everywhere. The nurses were there in an instant¹, and I got cleaned up while they wiped the floor down. I genuinely wasn’t bothered at all, but someone at the biscuit table fainted. Oops.

Walking home in a bloodstained shirt gives a teeny macho thrill, though. I’m not sure I should admit this. It’s not like there are many situations where it’s a good thing.

1. these people rock - every nurse I’ve ever met has been continually cheerful, caring and on the ball [↩]

I spent hours today trying to get Skype working. I needed it for this evening, but calls to the test number were robotlike and incoherent. I opened ports, punched holes in and disabled firewalls, enabled skype’s debugging modes, uninstalled other networking programs, reconfigured NAT and in the end replaced my router¹. Nothing worked, and I got more and more frustrated. I eventually discovered that SkypeOut was totally clear and free of error, so I figured I’d call a landline if necessary.

Come this evening: skype to skype worked perfectly. Afterwards I tried calling the test line again, and it had exactly the same problems. I think it’s that particular ‘number’. Oh well, at least I now know my computer’s networking configuration inside-out.

Just while I’m here, it might be a little quiet in these parts for a bit. It’s 2.5 weeks until deadline day, and I still have two projects left to shoot, 3.2 workbooks to put together and a 3k essay to hone. I haven’t picked up my guitar in a fortnight, I haven’t danced in almost a month, people are asking about non-existent birthday plans, which isn’t going to happen, and there’s other unpleasant stuff I’m trying to work through. Which isn’t to complain…well, I suppose it is a bit to complain. But the 23rd of May will see all the work finished, one way or another, and you know what else is due that day? Indiana Jones and the goddamn Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that’s what.

1. this has needed doing for a long time, so it was a good excuse. I swapped it for a Netgear DG834G, which is possibly the best ADSL router in the world - I’ve installed it for countless people as it Just Works Right [↩]

Here is the deal. Here is how it works. If you live in London, everybody does you a favour. We pretend like London isn’t where most interesting things happen, so you don’t have to feel embarrassed talking to people who live in Milton Keynes. This is how it is. We’re nice like that.

Here’s another thing. You live in London, where you’re surrounded by many interesting people. This makes you inherently liberal. We don’t nuke small-town we-hate-change-and-anyone-not-like-us Tories who infect the greener areas because we know that decent city-dwelling folk can appreciate the world’s eclectic nature without getting scared. Your votes cancel out the dumb ones. This is all part of the goodness that goes with living in the capital city.

People of London. If you were any part of this, the deal is off. I’d revoking your privileges. Get out. Seriously, this is not a drill. Once we find Charlie Brooker, and I don’t think it’ll be that hard, he’ll be round to pack your stuff.

Celebrate spring with a crazy little thing.

So you’re probably thinking ‘Rock Paper Scissors isn’t very interesting in the first place - what could v2.0 possibly add?’. That’s what I was thinking.

Here is the answer.

In flat on own. Must leave. Must find someone to play against. Via.

Since we started selling books on Amazon, we’ve had three complaints. Two were from people unhappy with the condition of their book, and both times the books were marked as ‘acceptable’, which is Amazon’s lowest quality rank. This doesn’t mean the rank contains anything that should be ‘bad’, but it does mean the book isn’t ‘good’. But, most people aren’t aware of this, and there’s no reason we should expect them to be. To make sure it’s clear, we always put an appropriate description in the individual item details. I genuinely think the first two complainants had unreasonable expectations, and it’s annoying when one ‘neutral’ feedback heavily affects our visible-to-everyone positive-feedback percentage score.

Today, though, the lady had a point. She’d bought the hardback and we sent a paperback. Fair enough. I haven’t yet figured out whether Amazon’s data is flawed or we messed it up, but whichever, the customer was justified in being annoyed. I refunded her as soon as I confirmed the problem, and braced for the probably ‘negative’ feedback, which would be a first.

She gave us a positive rating, with 4 marks out of 5. There was a problem, she said, but it had been sorted quickly and she’d happily buy from us again.

I am, frankly, astonished. Sometimes people are delightful.

I was looking for pictures of tightrope walkers this evening. Flickr kept thinking I meant ‘tight rope’, which brings up very different results. *shudder*. Still, I found some cool stuff, but kept being drawn back to this guy:

Now that’s street entertainment. There’s something about this shot I really like - maybe it’s that he looks like a visitor from the past, and I’ve always had a thing for Victorian London. Whatever, it simply rocks.

I like this shot too - yikes.

It’s three and a half weeks until my photo projects are due in, and I’m currently flailing in PrePanic, hoping to avoid a full-on FreakOut. My abstract photos aren’t going well. I wanted to do camera-tossing, but the results weren’t all that great. There’s literally one good shot, with another that’s ok, and I really need 3 excellent / 5 not-bad. If I want to progress I need to throw the camera higher, so it can spin more during exposure, on scenes other than my computer monitor. But with only 3.5 weeks, slide film being expensive to buy/develop and slow to process, plus the possibility of wrecking my film camera, I can’t justify continuing with that one. I took way too long to decide this, hence today’s flailing.

So this afternoon I set up an idea I had last night. Here’s how it turned out on digital, and I haven’t processed the results beyond converting them from RAW. In theory, the developed slide film should look the same:

I was really happy with this. It’s basically a straw in a cup of lemonade, backlit by a coloured flash. This was perfect. Pretty, detailed and definitely abstract, I could easily come up with a few variations. So I switched to my film camera.

Nope.

None of my film lenses will focus close enough. If I back off I get un-abstract-background in the frame, and obviously slide film can’t be cropped in post-production. Even my cheap-and-cheerful 300mm zoom, once I was standing across the room, couldn’t handle it. My digital lens can presumably focus on objects closer to the lens because of some smaller-frame-optics thing I haven’t figured out yet. Dammit! It’s so frustrating to have the setup in place and be able to get good results, yet not on the medium required.

</damian>damned old technology. Who uses slide film anyway? What’s the point? Grumble grumble.<damian>

I need a macro lens, or maybe some extension tubes…It’d be cheapest to hire the former, I think. The university may be able to give me one, but that’ll take some time. Hmmm. Shall figure something out.

I’ve been exhausted today, after a heavy weekend. A friend invited me to help install and configure a startup’s network, and both nights neither of us got to sleep until 0300.

The company had quite the setup: 24″ monitors, VoIP phones, a beautifully-sunlit open-plan office, Aeron chairs, the lot. Their building had network wiring already, and it was our job to get everything connected and talking to each other (or not, if you’re a VoIP phone and a PC). I’ve never configured anything quite so high-end before. We had Sawyer the 24-port gigabit ethernet switch (brawn, didn’t need to do anything fancy), Jack the 24-port fast-ethernet switch (less powerful, but needed to do clever routings) and Hurley the wireless router (wireless = the cool bit) all connecting to Kate the ultra-configurable mega-secure Cisco router (ultimately in charge, and physically under both the switches). Everyone needed internet access, and it all had to work via DHCP - all settings being supplied automatically once connected to the wall / wireless. Each component threw up problems at times, and it was quite the challenge.

As ever, the toughest problems were sometimes the fastest - denying intra-subnet communication took five minutes, despite being a major worry - while the insignificant things ate up time - the network printer Just Didn’t Respond, and took two hours to fix. At times we delved into Cisco’s formidable command-line-interface, and discovered various deficiencies in their generally ultra-swish GUI. We also ate a lot of muffins. And bon-bons.

By 0130 on Monday morning everything was wired up and talking to each other. It was quite the relief! Today we heard nothing until this evening, when a call said everything had run fine. This is pretty rare - there’s always something broken - and we’re concerned they’re using next door’s wireless.

There was a hell of a learning curve and the pressure got to us both at times, but it was great fun nevertheless. I’ve also grown quite fond of Cisco routers. You might need a degree in jargon to configure the things, but they’re seriously powerful toys.

There’s no reason for anybody to believe this, but I bought an enormous packet of strawberry bon bons¹ today, completely by accident. They were hanging over the supermarket conveyor belt, and something tall must have knocked them into my shopping. Actual accidental purchasing of bon-bons! Who am I to argue with fate? Nom nom nom.

1. incidentally, there are only so many times you can type ‘bon bon’ before the words start to look really weird [↩]

I’ve been tagged by Martin.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

The nearest book right now is Photography in Print, and p123 is an excerpt from Charles Baudelaire’s “The Salon of 1859″. The sentences are ambiguous, but I think this is reasonable:

In matters of painting and sculpture, the present-day Credo of the sophisticated, above all in France (and I do not think that anyone at all would date to state the contrary), is this: “I believe in Nature, and I believe only in Nature (there are good reasons for that). I believe that Art is, and cannot be other than, the exact reproduction of Nature (a timid and dissident sect would wish to exclude the more repellent objects of nature, such as skeletons or chamber-pots). Thus an industry that could give us a result identical to Nature would be the absolute of art”. A revengeful God has given ear to the prayers of this multitude. Daguerre was his Messiah.

Insufferable man.

Tagging (only if they’re interested, of course): Lil, Paul, Abi, Skuds…um.