War in Afghanistan at critical stage

The war in Afghanistan has reached a critical stage, U.S. General David Petraeus said Sunday.
Wow that will come as a surprise to all the soldiers fighting out there! I'll bet they had never noticed things were a bit dodgy, indeed they have been for the best part of the last nine years. Most would argue that things will probably not get much better either, Afghanistan has never been successfully invaded in it's history, even Russia with it's massive resources failed to bring it under it's control, the people there are proud and have a long history of fighting for their freedom, time is also on their side, it doesn't matter if it takes them 50 years they will wear down their enemy and drive them out.
Then there's the question of whether British troops should be there in the first place. 9/11 was the reason given, even though 15 of the 19 hi-jackers were claimed to be from Saudi Arabia (we haven't invaded there) and Osama Bin Laden seems long gone (even the video tapes have dried up) My guess is he died some time ago.

Rollerblading !

One of my less onerous duties this week was to
photograph a female rollerblading team, it was a
good laugh and they are pretty good at it too.
Here's one shots of Miranda trying to look "well hard!" and a pics of them towing each other.
Be afraid other teams... very afraid!

ACDSee pro 3 review

ACDCee pro 3 is the latest version of the software.
Now as any regular followers of this blog will know I LOVE my photoshop, that said I do use other software as well, Adobe lightroom for one and ... Yes ok I'll admit it I do use ACDSee as well. Now I find I use it as a follow up to lightroom for editing large batches, it's quicker and easier than the time consuming import and export with lightroom, for "tweeking" any images I'm not happy with.
The newest version 3 has quite a few changes, the interface looks a lot different to the old one, in some ways it's more like lightroom.
One feature I have loved since it first appeared is the light equliser, a sort of souped up shadow/highlight control, the main difference is that in ACDSee you have a load of sliders to ajust different tones rather than just shadow or highlights of the photoshop one , this gives much finer control in my opinion, something photoshop should adopt!

Technology, is it really better?

Technology, is it really better? The reason I ask is because in the last week two of my friends cars have developed "issues", they havent broken down as such but in both case the cars computers and telling them that theres a serious fault. Not a bad thing you say, it's telling you to get it mended before it actually breaks down, trouble is in a lot of these cases it's the computer that has the fault not the actual car.
This got me thinking back to my old Morris minor (a 1957 model) Apart from a major mechanical problem all the common easy bits that went wrong were fixable by the roadside with a few tools and a couple of cheap parts. A condenser, a fanbelt and a set of points would get you going, they were simple to fit (you could actually get at the engine) and you didn't need a hi-tech computer to plug-in to reprogram the bloody thing.
It worked fine for about a 100 years, then some bright spark (pun intended) decided to make things more complicated, now when your car goes tits up by the roadside your stuck, no chance of fixing it yourself, and god help if you have to buy a new "black box" for it.
You can pay a fortune, not a few pounds like the part for the old Morris. I know somebody who paid over £2000 for a new enging managment chip... well they would have but the car only cost them that so they gave up and scrapped it. Ands thats making things better?????

Moonlight and text messages

Well the moonlight part is easy, for reasons I won't go into here I ended up doing a walk around the Brecon Beacons in the dark, or at least in the moonlight, this shots taken from the highest point (Pen-y-fan) around one in the morning.
There was a lot of low cloud and mist about, at one point the mist came in and made finding your way tricky, although I know the area really well having spent years walking there so I was ok and didn't get lost.

Text messages are the invention of the devil if you ask me!
First off they have created a stupid new language of "text speak" with things like "R U" instead of "are you", secondly why in all that's holy do people text me when they know I'm bloody driving. I mean what do they think I'm going to do? stop in the outside lane on the motorway to read it, or struggle to get out my reading glasses and do it when I'm actually driving. Not only illegal but downright dangerous!
To make it worse my mobile phone doesn't just tell me I have a text message, or no, it goes into overdrive bleeping about every 30 seconds for EACH message! 4 or 5 messages and it drives you mental with constant bleeping.
If your driving down the M4 and see a mobile phone being hurled out of a Renault window one day theres a fair chance it's me!

Portrait of a mad man

The mad man in question is myself, so sort of a self portrait, the old pic is many years ago.

Long gap

Sorry for the HUGE gap in posts, I have been having some personal issues and my internet has ben off for a few weeks as well (lots happening)

Anyway back to photography, heres a sunset from this week to get going again, it's one of my personal favorite shots that I have taken in a while.

Wayne

NB No seagulls were harmed in the making of this image.