Saturday, June 30, 2012

Whale wars Viking shores 2 (update)

Well in yesterdays episode the Sea Shepherd tieam were threatened by two drunk lads and had to call the police to be rescued.... Well perhaps threatened wasn't the right word, the drunk really just made a pain of himself (like all drunks)and the crew panicked and over reacted, if they'd been really threatened they could simply have put to sea (maybe change the name to docks shepherd?) well they do spend most of their time tied up in port.
They whinged about the police "nobody ever gets arrested in this country" maybe Paul Watsons glad of that, he didn't get arrested either, although to be fair he bravely waited till the warrent for him had expired before returning to the islands.
They tried very hard to stir up the local people, who seem very calm and placid to me, certainly not as excitable as the OTT crew of the sea shepherd who panic at everything.
Funniest bit of the episode was the microlight plane, they flew it around for a bit with the pilot saying how dangerous the islands were due to tricky winds, then they found out it's illegal to fly a microlight in the Faroes for just the reasons the pilot said earlier.   Maybe you should have checked first guys!

I'm sorry guys, I really do support your fight against the Japanese whaling, but the Foroes case seems very different, here the whale concerned isn't endangered and it's an important part of the locals diet.
Your people are doing you no good with the way they are behaving, they are carrying on like a bunch of spoiled students, you should be trying to win over the local people and get them on side, not piss off everybody who you meet, including a LOT of viewers, I haven't met anyone here (in the UK) who isn't disgusted with the behaviour of your crew. 
You'll never get international support if you start going around behaving like eco terrorists.

More news

It was said today by Labour leader Ed Miliband that British banks are "institutionally corrupt", well he doesn't need to tell us pore buggers, we've known for years that dodgy dealing went on.
He might like to take a look at the charges we "normal" folk get as well, not having the income of a cabinet minister I get overdrawn from time to time, then I end up paying £10 a day, bloody silly charge, how do they expect people who haven't any money in the acount in the first place to pay a totally unrealistic charge.

Friday, June 29, 2012

News

Well the Olympics are back in the news for all the wrong reasons again.
A block of flats has been chosen for an anti aircraft missile launching pad, and it seems the residents are not happy.  To be honest I wouldn't be in their place either.
First off you have a ton or so of rockets and explosive on the roof, then theres the army manning it going back and fro and the noise they'll make on the roof itself, and pesumably the added security will make it a pain for the local residents.
You have the risk of it being captured by terrorists themselves, or more lightly an accidential explosion or fire. (not forgetting the roof isn't designed or stressed to carry the extra weight.
For me though theres a much bigger issue.  If you do manage to actually hit a terrorist hijacked jumbo jet, shooting it down over a built up part of London doesn't seem a very bright idea to me, and make no mistake, these missles (starstreak and rapier) are not powerfull enough to blow a big jet to bits, just big enough to seriously damage it.
A fully laden jumbo jet weighs in at the best part of 350 tons, thats a bloody big hole somewhere if it comes down.
And another thing, heat seeking missiles don't actually work that well on planes coming towards the firer, and even less well if the plane is diving with the engines throttled back (which it may well be if it's diving on the Olympic stadium), so any missles fired may not lock on and in a heavly built up area hit other buildings, causing even more carnage.
Personally I'm staying well away for the Olympic games (too bloody expensive anyway) but mainly becasue it's a prime target, international coverage etc etc. Not for me mate, I'll watch it all happen for free on TV.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Whale wars Viking shores

Whale wars Viking shores.  I have been watching this program, and the previous few seasons of Whale wars.  While I enjoyed the Whale wars series, and really supported the fight against the Japanese whaling fleet the new "Viking shores" has a different effect.  Here the Sea Shepherd team really seem to be trying to provoke Faroese into a confrontation, and are trying to show them in a bad light.
As for the "covert" team bringing in the sonar thingies, maybe their idea of covert is different to mine.  Mine doesn't include wearing a sea shepherd sweat shirt with the logo plastered all over it and being met at the customs post by a camera crew... Very bloody covert!
Personally I'm now supporting the Faroese, these people who do kill pilot whales (non endangered) just for food, (an important part of their diet), seem very restrained with the sea shepherd people.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Xbox repair

Well I don't know about you but I'm fed up of buying replacement Xboxs for my children, these bloody things keep failing with the same faults all the time, why theres never been a proper class action suite against ripoff-osoft I don't know.  After all it seems unlightly that everybodies fails from the same problems just by chance, more lightly a design issue if you ask me.
Any way both ours have died yet again for exactly the same fault as the last 3 or 4, so this time sod it.  We had it apart and fixed the bloody thing ourselves. 
Actually it was quite easy, the hardest part was getting the casing off, once thats done 2 screw drivers (well one a torque bit 10mm I think) and a bit of care and bobs your uncle, 2 working xboxes. And we saved a few hundred pounds on a "repair" by the ripoff-osoft.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Under-performing civil servants

The goverment are clamping down on under-performing civil servants.  It seems the bottom 10% are to have only a year to improve or they may be sacked.
Of course some would say why leave the other 90% of under-performers alone, and some might even say why wait a year to sack the useless wasters, sack them now and replace them, plenty on the dole.  If they worked in any other business their jobs would be at risk all the time, only these "jobs for boys" morons would get a job for life even if they can't do it properly.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Design Failure

Design failure.  Yes what I mean is bad design, shampoo bottles that fall over and spill all the time because they are top heavy,  good job the designer doesn't make ships!

Mobile phones that do everything except make a call properly, and are so complex to use you need an engineering degree to use one   And how come back in the 1960's you could talk to a man on the moon, but now 50 years later I have trouble phoning the person in the next street?

Internet that keeps going off all the time, this isn't a third world conutry for heavens sake, why can't we make anything that works properly.

Pen drives (zip drives) lets face it they couldn't be much simpler. plug and play.... except that some have to play a bloody tune and put a box up on screen to say hello.  Why for Gods sake, I know the bloody things plugged in, I just plugged it in myself, even formatting it doesn't stop the bastard saying hello... maybe a hammer will!

Design crumple, I love this, we had crashes in the old days, people got out and walked away with a bent bumper and a broken light. Oh  no not any more... a 5 mph crash and your whole cars a right off, and the fire and rescue service (used to be the fire brigade) will have to cut you out of the remains.






Saturday, June 16, 2012

Prometheus (film review)

Prometheus by Ridley Scott.
A space ship lands on an alien planet looking for the people they think created life on earth, the film is a cracking good Si-Fi romp, with some stunning landscapes and special effects. 

Sadly the characters in the story don't really come across as very nice people, indeed even the female lead isn't really a nice person in the film.

For me there are several plot holes, not major but there are things going on that make no sense to the story, for example why does the robot poison the crew member?  Why the elaborate escape pod? How did the alien get into the escape pod? why is there only one "engineer"  left how did he avoid being killed? 
 For me these were slightly confusing, leaving me with the feeling I was missing bits of the story somewhere.
Waynes rating    7 out of 10    Worth a watch but not worth the £30 it cost me to see it in 3D

Weather

Well for the middle of June it's crazy here, more like the middle of winter, wet windy and horrid, it's not even that warm summer rain, it's flipping chiily with it.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Photoshop CS6 review

Well CS6 has been out long enough for a proper review (I don't like doing the beta versions)  Well first off theres not a huge lot new for photographers, but what there is, is good!
Theres a better content aware, including a content aware move tool, the crop tool has had a big makeover (not sure it really needed it but there you go.
The interface is changed to look more like elements, but probably the biggest change is the new camera raw process 2012, this is miles better, it can pull back seemingly totally blown skys etc.

The big question is can you justify spending £667 for the full version (around £180 upgrade) thats a lot of anybodies money for not a lot of new life changing stuff, up to you.

Fuji problems

I was recently given a Fuji compact camera fro a present, great! a carry everywhere camera thats nice and light, and with Fujis name it should be half decent.... Or so I thought.
I didn't notice from the first few pics of the dog etc that the lens was out of alignment, the right side of the image totally blurred, only when I took it to a waterfall with lots of detail did I realise just how bad it really was.
Off back to Fuji it went, 3 weeks later it returned, nice and sharp.... Well until you zoomed in and got got a totally corrupted image (not blurred)  Back to the shop I go and fair do's they replaced it with no hassle.  Well done Argos!  Might have been easier if you'd done that first time I brought it back though.

Cloud computing... cloud nine more like!

Cloud computing is the next big thing that won't work here in the UK, Why? Simple, because our internet is so unreliable it makes the internet in a third world country look good.
Just about everyone I know is constantly having problems with their internet dropping offline intermittently.
 


Monday, June 11, 2012

Communication?

What is it with big stores these days, none seem to have a proper phone number,  spent this morning trying to ring Argos to complain about a faulty product, all I get is an automated answer service with no option for problems or even a human at the other end, what a joke.
I'll never buy from them again.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Food photography 3

The last for now of the food photos, so I thought I'd leave you with dessert.

Food photography 2



Another food pic.

Food photography

Here are a few food photographs I took recently, these were taken under very difficult conditiond in a small area of a marquee kitchen.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Penrice Castle

I was lucky enough to get access to the Penrice estate on Saturday, so I took these pics of the castle there (or what remains of it)

Friday, June 1, 2012

Diamond Jubilee

This weekend it's the queens Diamond Jubilee, and to be perfectly honest I'm sick of hearing about it already.
The trouble is we have had the union flag (the union jack is a nickname) plastered over every bloody thing for weeks, that and the Olympics are getting on my wick as we say here.  Frankly I'll be dammed glad to see them both over.