Awards!

Yipppeeeee! I just won a university photo competition, my prize being a £200 digital camera! I've missed having a small point-and-shoot as I gave mine to mum and dad at New Year so they could play with digital photos with their new Macbook. Unfortunately though, the one I gave them was a Japanese language model. You can imagine how they have struggled, technology not being their strong points as it is! Thus, I can give them this brand new English camera, and they can take great photos of the family to send to me when I'm in Japan - Hurrah!



I also won £30 in music vouchers for another couple of photos which won different categories - one of a rainbow over Sheffield, taken from the Arts Tower, and another of the Japan Soc Soran Bushi dancers performing in front of the Union.

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I'm also honoured and humbled to have have been nominated twice for the Chancellor's Medal. I'm not sure what to say about that, but thank you so much to the people who nominated me. I couldn't have done what I've done without your inspiration and enthusiasm. Thank you.

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To top it off, I've just had word from the library that the two library books I desperately need for my dissertation have come in. Yippeeeee!

OH OH OH and Bjork just emailed! She's coming back to play for us on the 2nd July! Yippppppppeeee (again)!

Off to the Society Awards now - Japan soc entered for 'Best National Society' - and we've been shortlisted!

Spring, Surveillance and coaching course call one

It's been a great day today. First off, it was the beginning of Warm Spring. You could feel it brewing over the weekend with the muggy rain. It's been an astonishing 72 hours, with a complete transformation of the trees in the churchyard opposite my house - just like that! Like a switch being flicked! This really makes me happy. 

After a late start following a late night studying I had a couple of classes in which I did pretty appallingly, due to not putting enough work in recently. It's ok though, I know what I need to do, and I'll do it, and everything will turn out great.

I'm about 10,000 words into my 7000 word dissertation. Actually enjoying writing that now! I think about half of what I write will end up as appendixes. Only two chapters to go.

Tonight I popped over to the university drama studio to take some publicity shots for a new play being performed by Theatre Two Point Oh, Surveillance (a CILASS funded project). It's being produced (directed? What's the difference?!) by a fellow CILASS Student Ambassador (Tom), and stars Laura whose photo I posted a few days back with that great smile of hers (and again, below, without the smile). What an amazing thing they are doing... talk about team building. After the performance I lurked backstage to edit the photos, a process that took about 45 minutes. It was fascinating, as whilst I clicked away in Lightroom I couldn't help but listen to the stage intercom, thus overhearing the team meeting. It reminded me of a fly-on-the-wall documentary, following the fortunes of a group of dedicated individuals who come together to do something incredible. There's drama and tension along the way, but the ultimate result is a great show and a wealth of character-building  experience.

Once home tonight I attended my first ever group coaching session, as run by TSI, the coaching company that I mumbled about a few weeks back (It took the form of a small group conference call). It was good. Obviously, I'm not going to (and never will) divulge any personal information about my coursemates, but just to say it's a very diverse group with some incredible people who have gone through very tough times, but are determined to change their lives for the better. It's a really positive environment, and the timing is just perfect. The coming weeks will see huge changes for me, with several important decisions needed. Having this resource to call upon will help a lot.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes for me once we get started properly next week.

I'd like to thank those of you who have contacted me with post-grad ideas. You've been tremendously helpful. Every day has seen me feeling increasingly grateful that I was not given the job I wanted. I'm not saying that that job (as CIR on the JET scheme) would not have been  a good thing - such a position offers incredible opportunities and I believe I would have been a fool to say no had I been accepted - but thinking about who I really am, and where my heart lies, well, it just doesn't fit.   

It's scary though - I'm really feeling challenged to think hard about where my passions lie, and being dared to invest in turning them into a tangible opportunity. I'm looking at taking a part-time position, enabling me to pay the rent whilst devoting a significant amount of time in starting my own business, and supporting *Twinkle* in hers. 

We'll see. The domain name is registered at least! 

Best get to bed anyway. Long day of writing tomorrow. I need to get this dissertation finished asap as I still have a tonne of stuff to conclude before my student status expires!

xxx

IBL Staff-Student Symposium

Full day of work today, from 8.30am to 4.30pm. I say 'work', but it was more like hanging out with friends. CILASS friends.

Today was the 2nd CILASS Inquiry Based Learning Staff-Student Symposium. Some people may remember me talking about giving a presentation via Skype from Tokyo at last year's event - well, this time around I was able to eat the free lunch as well.

I won't go into details here as I'll be blogging about it on the CILASS blog and will link to it. But I would like to share a few photos of the day.

Student Ambassadors modelling sexy CILASS T-Shirts


Got to the IC at 8.30am to blow up helium balloons with Barbara - that was FUN!



Laura, student ambassador co-ordinator and all-round wonderwoman was also on the scene to wake us with that smile of hers



Next, I moved to my station in CILASS 3, armed with Macbook and a VAIO to co-ordinate live blogging (limited success, I wasn't forthright enough) and the uploading of photos taken at the event - the idea was to see how quickly I could get photos from the symposium sessions onto flickr & tagged in order that they automatically display on all the screens in the place (its things like this that give me insane amounts of pleasure). Got about 250 photos up by the end of the day.

It was whilst sorting out the tags and things that Barbara and I came up with a stunning idea, inspired by thinking of those tourist spots where you stick your head through the holes in the big wooden signboards and have your photo taken so it's your face with some famous person's body. Well take that concept, and cross it with Disneyland, and throw in some tools for Inquiry Based Learning, thus creating an 'IBL Land' - albeit a bit smaller (i.e. as small as the glass-walled CILASS 1, which is about 2 metres by 3 metres in size).

Yes, this was a fantastic idea! We kitted out the room with an assortment of Sony VAIOs, Toshiba Tablet PCs, a white board and a big collection of impressive-looking books from the nearby shelves, all promoting the theme of Inquiry Based Learning.

Then, we put a sign up outside: "Come and get your IBL Photo taken here today!"

Students, "Doing IBL"



At one point I was dared to ask the Pro-Vice Chancellor (who was visiting for prize-giving) to come and have his photo taken in our IBL land - I did - and got the shot (although not realising how silly I am he was a little bemused at first).

Speaking of the Pro-Vice Chancellor and prize giving: I mentioned the other day that myself and my classmates had successfully nominated our tutor for a £2000 prize in recognition of all her amazing work in promoting IBL - today was the day that she was to accept the award. However, at the last minute, I realised that she wasn't there ...I gave her a call, and was told that she couldn't make it because she was in class - would I accept it on her behalf?



Later on, I presented her with the big bunch of flowers and award certificate: no doubt receiving them from me was almost as exciting for her as receiving them from the Pro-Vice Chancellor!

I'm so happy that she won. She really deserves it. In a way, I like to think of it as a thank you from all of us in our final year for all the work she's put in these last few years to teach us Japanese. (She's so modest though. When I took the flowers to her office it turned out that two of her closet colleagues didn't even know about it!).

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I'm comforted though in knowing that it isn't really the 'end' of any relationships. If I Look back over the past 12 years at the various places I've lived and the stages I've been through, all of those places and stages are still very much a part of my life, In this era of email, Skype & online social networks, it's not easy to lose contact. Classmates, CILASS colleagues, tutors & other friends - all these people won't suddenly dissapear from my life the moment I leave uni.

In a way, with regards to my language teachers this could be thought of as just the beginning. As my language develops during my time in Japan, so I'll be more inclined to contact them. That was one thing I enjoyed towards the end of last year, 'calling home' to Sheffield from Tokyo several times to catch up on the latest departmental news.

Ho hum.

I have about 13 days to finish my dissertation. I'll spend much of this weekend offline writing that. If you've sent me an email recently, thank you, I'll be in touch. Have a bit of a backlog at the mo.

night night xxx

Magical Jiggery Pokery

The random image thing on the right of this page is supposedly, er, random - so how can one account for things like the above happening? Here, I blogged about my mum's painting, and hey presto! It randomly appears on the right too! It's not as if it's unusual either, I've seen matches like that in the past, but the odds should be 14,762 to 1 (the number of images I have on Flickr).

Also, I know of friends who have reported random pictures of themselves showing up when they've checked the mumble, the chances of which are almost as slim as the above!

Is there magical jiggery pokery going on around here?

The Sun Sets

Right, everyday at around this time, the sun sets.

Funny that.

A great week for photographers

[apologies for lack of links - written from train to Sheffield on which internet is not too reliable (i.e. non-existent.) Google is your friend]

It’s been a productive journey so far. I’ve removed the yellow testicle from my patchwork jeans, after it was pointed out to me that it could also be mistaken for a urine stain. I’ve replaced it with some elephants, sewn on whilst listening to the latest episode of This Week in Photography (TWIP). I’m loving it, and I can feel myself progressing up the same learning curve as I did when I started listening to MacBreak Weekly last year. Before I started listening to TWIP I didn’t fully appreciate the flexibility offered by RAW, I never thought about my camera’s ISO settings, I was lax in my use of tags, and also assumed that when it came to megapixels, more = better (not necessarily true. To get more megapixels, the original sensor is simply divided up into smaller pixels, thus increasing the number of them but actually decreasing the overall surface area available for actively sensing the light due to there being more space given over to necessary gaps between the individual pixels).

It’s been a great couple of weeks for digital photographers, first with the release of Apple’s Aperture 2, and then shortly afterwards Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom 2 (Beta). Personally, I’m a Lightroom user, and I tell you, this new version is just lovely, I am so excited by it. Finally, we have completely non-destructive local editing, a real breakthrough.

(Local editing carried out in Photoshop on Jpegs etc actually changes the original image, meaning that if at a later date you want to undo what you’ve done in the past, you can’t. Also, you will get progressive deterioration of the quality of your image with every edit carried out. The beauty of working with RAW files is that the original data as seen by the camera sensor is never touched; changes are simply recorded in the form of meta data that is bolted on to the image. When you subsequently open the image, the computer refers to that meta data to see how it should interpret and display the original image. Until now, when it came to editing RAW files in Lightroom it was only possible to make changes to an entire image, such as increase exposure or contrast. Now, with local editing, we can apply such changes to specific areas of an image, thus, for example, shots which have a well-exposed foreground but a blow-out sky are no longer necessarily write-offs).

Both Aperture and Lightroom are available as 30-day trials – if you enjoy photography and have a camera that can shoot in RAW, you may want to give them a try. (As for which one to go for, it’s a matter of personal taste. Note that the Lightroom 2 is a REAL Beta version, and you may not be able to use that library once the Beta expires in August, so it’s just for playing, so you may want to download Lightroom 1.3 instead).

People who shoot in Jpeg haven’t missed out either, as last week Adobe launched Photoshop Express – the online version of Photoshop. It’s pretty good, a great example of the kind of slick online apps we’re likely to see a lot more of in the next few years. It’s works beautifully with Facebook albums (it had mine loaded in seconds), and will shortly be able to interact with Flickr too.

And now you can take photos in the past! Earlier today I watched David Pogue’s video report on the new Casio digital camera: it can shoot up to 60 frames a second – and will even take photos in the past if you happen to press the shutter just a bit too late! It sounds like science fiction, but it ain’t.

With these developments, and other cameras like Nikon’s D3 being released, it really is a tremendously exciting time to be getting into digital photography. The best thing however is that even the cheapest digital cameras are now capable of capturing great shots, meaning that anyone who wants to partake, can.

Anyway, the train is now approaching Derby where I catch a bus for Sheffield. Time for me to gather my stuff, and make the final leg of my journey to university, the last time I do so as a student.

A Day of Wedding Planning, and King Cats

Met this Cat King this morning. Never met a Cat King before. He was pretty extraordinary, had these piercing pink ears that pierced.



Having a cat seizure



Very productive day. Got a fair bit of translation homework done first thing. Then it was on to wedding planning: found a beautiful converted barn for myself and *Twinkle*, and then when they arrive *Twinkle's* parents and sister to stay. It'll be nice for the two of us to have a few days in a guest house alone in the week leading up to the wedding. Good location too - one field away from my parent's place (you can see the roof of the barn from mum and dad's bedroom window). And, the price has just been reduced by £75, making it highly affordable. I love staying in guest houses / hotels. It's such a treat, especially when one is with one's loving partner.

Then it was time for a Japanese grammar lesson - mum and dad are learning the basics in preparation for meeting *Twinkle's* family. They'll be using the excellent BBC Talk Japanese book and CDs, the same course I used 8 years ago. They know how to say "Good Morning" now, and understand basic sentence structure. What clever pensioners they are.

Next, it was off to the church where we'll be having our blessing, to check out how many people it can hold. Lovely place.





Following that I paid a visit to the home of the church warden. She was great, very helpful. Interested in international weddings too - my good friend and ex-steiner pupil Lorien and his Russian wife were married there not long ago, "Most beautiful wedding I've ever seen! She was so beautiful, I could hardly believe it!"

I've since booked the bar, confirmed the village hall, and found a good friend to help co-ordinate food. Oh, also visited a fantastic B&B (The Lawns) down the road where other guests can stay. Lovely lady. And, they have a glass-topped well in their house, floodlit inside so you can see the water flowing in 50 foot below - what a bonus! The final stop was a neighbour's house to check out their field which we hope to use for friends / family who'd like to camp.

This evening I attended an informal meditation session at the church. There were quite a few people there that I knew - including my parents. It was lovely. The church was dark except for a couple of candles and a light in the alter bit (that's the technical term). The vicar (who I'll be seeing tomorrow about the wedding) read a little story, and then played some relaxing music. It was not in the slightest bit 'religious' as such, rather, it reminded me of my CD by Andrew Weil (he of the World's Best Beard!

I'm not too well practised when it comes to meditation. Find it difficult to clear my mind. I tried tonight, but after 10 minutes I gave up, the image of *Twinkle* in her wedding dress was just too persistent in its knocking at the door to my mind. So, instead I spent the next twenty minutes reflecting on all that I had to be thankful for. A little risky in a church full of people that is absolutely silent (you could clearly hear when someone swallowed, and should someone have dropped a pin, I'm sure we would all have jumped out of our skins!). Thus, it's dangerous for me to think thoughts of thankfulness, as they tend to make me smile and laugh rather a lot.

Tomorrow will also be a good day. In addition to wedding planning, I'll be going to visit a dear friend who was my boss when I was aged 13 to 19. In a way she was a mother figure to me, and with her husband taught me a lot. He sadly passed away recently, and I was sorry to have not been able to see him to thank him for all that he had given me. I hope tomorrow to be able to express just how much she, and her late husband, mean to me.

oyasumi

Multicolour tadpoles

Yesterday, mum decided to take her easel outside and draw some inspiration from our pond life. Currently, it's playing host to thousands of tadpoles, who are happily developing the most extraordinary gills and reabsorbing their own tails.

Yesterday afternoon however, the tadpoles were in for a rude shock, as mother tripped over a paving stone and fell in the pond - taking her pots of paint with her! 

Well, there ensued a great commotion, the outcome of which is a pond now host to a huge swarm of multicolour tadpoles! 

More tadpoles on my Flickr account.

Mother. Not a tadpole.

Sunday morning stuff

Woke up feeling a bit sad today - is it due to the 'loss' of one hour as we enter British Summer Time? I think not, as it's no loss at all.

Decided to tackle the sadness and so went for a jog up to the top of Cole's Tump from where one can see most of Herefordshire. Beautiful. Then, coming down the hill I said good morning to two horses, one dog and a human, shared words of Spring and suddenly the sadness dropped away, in an instant. That's how quick change can occur! It is a lovely day.

Looking down Springfield Lane.


Checking my bank account a moment ago I found some payments to PTI Europe Region, and then corresponding refunds. I look online, and there's loads of references to such payments. Is it fraud? No. If you shop with Amazon, or AOL, or one of any other 40,000 companies that 2checkout.com process payments for then you too may find such debits on your statement as they have made a big boo-boo. See their website for an explanation.

I'm finally getting my act together re. applying for Lottery Funding for our publishing company, completed the proposal and application form last night. Should be about 6 weeks until we get the result. In the meantime, we need to finalise our entry for round two of the Business Creation Competition, deadline the week after next.

(thoughts flick back to photography)

I'm really impressed by Photoshop CS3's Photomerge function (File > Automate > Photomerge). Below is a panorama I took this morning from Coles Tump. Don't forget, when shooting panoramas it's essential you use the same exposure for all shots. Also, to help hide the stitches, try and overlap your images by at least a third, as I didn't do here!

tarra.

Second major photo shoot: Simon

I got a call early this morning from my agent asking that I ready my camera for another photo shoot for a major client. This was really exciting, and a major step up from my first assignment in February which saw me focus upon dead fish.

The photos are to appear in next month's Cosmopolitan magazine as a part of their series on the latest fashions for famous reptiles.

So, this afternoon, close-up lens loaded and batteries fully charged, I made my way to the studio at the end of the garden where none other than Simon the Slow Worm was waiting!

Yes, Simon the Slow Worm! I could scarcely believe that I had been lucky enough to be chosen from amongst the many professional photographers in the area to work with Simon, who is of course well known for his outlandish performance on the BBC's I'm a Celebrity With No legs!, and his stunning performance at last years Eurovision Song Contest.

Simon, he's such a tease...

I got through about 10 rolls of film trying to catch that legendary smile of his, but I think I managed it quite well. Oh, and he did his seductive contortion thing, with the tail flick that so famously caused Madonna to swoon during filming of Evita 15 years ago.


For the Simon the Slow Worm fans amongst the DM readership I've posted more images from the shoot here.

Tagging and my Photo workflow

This year I've started keywording my photos. Until now, I've simply renamed them upon import, but you can't describe all that much with a filename alone. 

This month I finally broke through the 20,000 photo barrier - that's 20,000 photos that actually mean something to me and are not blurred / underexposed / of nothing in particular. With such a large collection I've grown increasingly aware of how important it is to label them as accurately as possible. For example, a shot of *twinkle* may be called 'twinkle_in_london-1243.jpg' - but it also fits into categories such as 'people' 'family' 'holidays' '2008'. Unless I assign those keywords to it I'll only ever be able to find it with 'twinkle' or 'London'.

Until now it's not really been an issue; I'd either search by filename or simply remember which directory it was in, but as I start to do more with my photos so finding what I'm looking for becomes more difficult - thus my adoption of photo libraries (Lightroom for RAW images, iPhoto for JPEGS) and the adoption of keywording / tagging. 

It was only last autumn that I switched from shooting in JPEG to shooting in RAW, and this of course necessitated a new workflow. It took quite a bit of fine-tuning but I've got it sorted now. It goes like this:

1) Download RAW files from camera using Image Capture. These are kept in their own directory separate from all JPEGS.

2) Rename all RAW files with the excellent Renamer4Mac: I use search and replace, replacing 'DSC' with a name that describes each batch (this means that every photo maintains its original unique number whilst having a descriptive name)

3) Import in batches into Adobe Lightroom. This is the stage at which I assign keywords.

4) Adjust levels etc in Lightroom

5) Export full size JPEGS to iPhoto library

6) Export small JPEGS with watermark for upload to website via FTP, and to Flickr using the amazing Photonic. 

I really enjoy this process. I love organising, and I love adjusting the levels in Lightroom, (something that any camera that shoots in JPEG does on your behalf).

I've also discovered that when uploading to Flickr, Photonic will automatically convert your keywords into Flickr tags - very handy (except when you inadvertently assign some cat photos the keyword catering). Not only that, but Coppermine (the photo-album database that I use for this website) can also read those tags ...and of course, iPhoto picks them up too. 

I then back up my photos to two external drives and an FTP server (talk about anal...), before formatting the memory card in the camera (not the computer); this helps prevent corruption of future photo files.

This evening when musing over photo tagging, I started to think about how I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find blog posts. With about 750 mumbles in the blogger database, the only tool I have is Google - and that's a bit hit-and-miss. Thus, I've finally decided to start using Blogger's built-in-labels. I've not used them before now as they are not so user friendly when you're publishing on your own FTP server (each label becomes a unique html file which has to be republished every time you use that label, thus one blog could result in (for example) 10 files being published).

So far I've only had time to label this month's mumbles, and I may not bother do the other 700. We'll see.

Oh, and I've re-admitted non-registered commenters to the fold - a review of past comments has showed that the vast majority of anonymous commenters have actually left a lot of very helpful comments, rather than just banging on about how boring the mumble is. 

:-p

Anyway, I'd best be off to bed. It's been a long day.

After 14 years they rose again

Anne Tame the artist, at work

I'm back on the Welsh garden Project site today. It's good being here and doing some physical work. My hands smell of cow skin, and I have a delicious feeling of knackeredness. Thought I'd take advantage of the lack of rain and get the chainsaw out; spent an hour or so doing a circuit of the garden, dealing with the trees that were felled by the recent gales. With a new chain it makes for satisfying work, quickly cutting through broken boughs and branches to relieve the burden being felt by surrounding trees. It appeals to the tidyman in me too. I like natural-looking gardens, but I especially like tidy natural looking gardens. 

Opening the garage for the first time in a while, I smelt death. It was a strong smell, no mistaking it. It was rising from the corpse of a large rabbit that must have been chased in there by Taize the cat some time ago.

Coming back in at lunchtime I found that same cat sleeping with my pet penguin, Pepe.

What you lookin at?

The morning-after shot: The powerful Tom has had his way; Pepe is left with conflicting feelings regarding his own sexual orientation. 


After lunch, it was back out to clear up the polytunnel. 

But I wasn't really in the polytunnel emptying out last year's tomato plant pots. Instead, I was in that sanatorium in Japan with Naoko and Reiko, as described in Murakami's Norwegian Wood which I'm continuing to listen to, and liking very much. I love being read to. 

(I've just come across a source for free audiobooks at http://librivox.org. I'll give them a whizz as it's a while before I can get any more on subscription from Audible).

I'm pretty good at multi-tasking. As well as listening to a book and clearing up a polytunnel, I was wearing my 'new' patchwork trousers.

I found them under the bed the other night. They aren't really 'new', as I've already worn them for a couple of years, from early 1994 to 1995. I  got them when I was about 16, and had them coat my legs almost everyday during my year at sixth form college. I think they were supposed to attract girls as they have home-installed zips running almost the entire length of each leg. Unfortunately they didn't really work, and in the end I had to leave the country to lose my virginity.

Anyway, they still fit me, both in terms of waistline and length, so I think I'll give them another spin.

Righty ho, on with 'stuff'.

[edit] it has been pointed out that the cat has had his testicles removed, and thus it is unlikely that he was actually having sexual intercourse with Pepe, which is a bit of a relief as if they had become too close Taize may have taken advantage of his being a cat and eaten him.

Bank Holiday stuff

Every time I come back to my parent's house I make a point of a) eating mum's home-made chocolate cake, and b) sorting through the stuff under my old bed to see what of my belongings can be given away. As time passes so it becomes easier to dispose of stuff, and it's now reached the stage where all that's left is photos, 40 or so diaries (written when I was age 10 ~ 25), Main Lesson books from the Steiner School, and a large collection of letters from friends before the dawning of email. Oh, and the two amazing jumpers which mum knitted for me when I was about 7 years old, which I'm keeping for our girls (they WILL like dragons!). Come July, it'll be a case of packing these up and giving Yamato Kuro Neko (delivery co) a call - Sheffield Japan Society members being eligible for a discount.

When having a look for any boxes I may have missed last night I came across a camera bag: in it, the old Olympus OM10 that got me started in photography way back in the 18th century. I thought it had been chucked, and so was pretty happy to see it again. I was even more pleased to find the old flash unit that went with it, which, it turns out, works with my NIKON D40x DSLR. OK, so it doesn't exactly sync - I have to put the D40x on manual and compensate -but it fires. Can't use it at shutter speeds above 1/250 though as the flash fires too late and you end up with a section blacked out as the shutter closes (see example of various shutter speeds, from 1/1000 to 1/300 to left). But yeah, this is great as I've wanted a flash unit for a while now as the built-in flash tends to result in bland images, and new Speedlights cost a bomb. This one's got the 360/90 degree swivel so it can be bounced off any surface, resulting in a much more natural spread of light.

Just watching my *Twinkle* on skype. She's on the phone to a friend but left the camera on for me to gaze longingly at her. Happy. Haven't been in touch much lately so it's so nice to see her face again. Reassuring to know that I can understand almost everything she says despite feeling that my Japanese has suffered a bit since I left Japan. And reassuring to find that she's even cuter on skype than in my imagination (tee hee). What will she be like in reality I wonder?

You know I said recently that I'd be taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test test this year? Well, I've been thinking a bit more about this and decided that really, I'd like to enrol on some language course or have a weekly private class to ensure that I really do continue to improve. Also, I'd like to take some training courses of some kind. Exactly what kind I don't know. Some vocational courses. I feel that if I'm to make the most of this chance then I need some guidance. It's all very well having skills, but if you don't know how to apply them you're no better off than a hedgehog armed with an aluminium foil helmet being approached by the Wheels of Doom.

It's funny really, on the one hand I am sick of studying, but on the other hand, the thought of further study/training really excites me. I guess it's because I associate further training with almost immediate benefits to my family. Must be careful not to hide behind "needing more training" though.

Anyway, I'd best finish off this assignment that's due in tomorrow.

Tarra!

Orcop Skies

Garway Hill, as seen an hour ago



Meanwhile, they're selling the fields around our house for development...

Humankind vs. Nature

I dare humankind to create something as incredible as this:



ah, ok, so this is pretty close.

Remains of the Steering Wheel

The past week has seen my daily exercise routine somewhat curtailed by temporary responsibility for my friend's car (which as no doubt you are tired of hearing, requires a lot of attention). But this morning, the car park refreshingly free of flat tyres, yellow tickets or vehicles supporting such accessories, I was able to get back out to the park. 

It's a very exciting time of year for the park, with the trees starting to blossom, the hedges sporting some fashionable green leaves, the daffodils trumpeting their fanfare of yellow across a sea of last year's leaves.

But things must have been extra exciting during my period of absence, as look what is now parked in the middle of the football field!

Yes, a completely burnt-out car.

And how about this for a steering wheel? Perhaps a little hard to use when manoeuvring out of a tight parking spot.


I suppose in a way, given all that happened last week, I should have been surprised that it wasn't the car that I'd been responsible for sitting there in all its naked glory!

The ups and downs

I've been playing with my zoom lens. 1 second exposure, zoom out whilst the shutter is open.

This was yesterday...

Strange feeling of finality today. It could be due to my having taken part in my last ever SEAS open day, an event I always enjoy a great deal.

As with every time, it was interesting watching everyone file in. I saw myself, 4 years ago, doing just the same. Seems like 5 minutes ago, and yet, a lifetime too.

With that over, and everyone away on their Easter holidays, I feel like the rug has been pulled from beneath my feet. It strikes me how much I depend upon familiarity and routine for a sense of peace.  Perhaps what is disturbing me is not simply the fact that with the holidays my routine has been changed, but rather, it's the fact that although I remain in a very familiar place, somehow, everything is different. 

Hotplate

Despite being very fond of them all, I don't socialise with my classmates much. But now I'm not seeing them every day, I'm missing them.

Hokkaido

It's important that I have times like this, when suddenly life seems to have no meaning and nothing really matters, as without these experiences, I wouldn't be able to relate to others when they were having hard times. I can understand how people can feel that there is no meaning to life...

This is Today

I stopped writing at that point, as I felt too crappy. I think it was partly tiredness, partly the isolation, partly unhappiness with not getting things done that I'd wanted to get done. 

Oh, then the car got another puncture, had to change the wheel for the second time this week. I finally sorted out my parking tickets this afternoon. It was a bit of battle with the staff (who are in desperate need of customer service training), but eventually my appeal was referred to the department manager.  Comparing his reply to the correspondence I'd had with the clerical staff beforehand, I was struck by the differences between the two. Here he was telling me that my appeal was being rejected, but doing so in a way that actually made me want to pay, and feel good about it. The manner in which the clerical staff had dealt with me though made me feel like a piece of shit, and made it very hard for me to want to co-operate with them. What a graphic example that was of what the difference is between an inspiring leader and, er, someone who is unaware of how others are feeling.

After the ticket extravaganza had been dealt with I sent the manager the letter I'd written detailing the appalling customer service I'd received. I explicitly pointed out that this wasn't being sent in anger or pettiness, but rather, it was being sent in the hope that it would mean that others would not have to go what I had gone through (in the past week I've spoken to several university staff members who have had similar experiences to my own, so I know it's not a personal thing!).

Returning home I couldn't help but laugh when I opened my post: a payslip from the University of Sheffield for £123 - the EXACT amount that the two parking tickets had come to!

I love working for free...!

Anyway, my friend is home now, and the car is gone. Phew. More work than a baby.

Finished the audio version of Michael Palin's 1969-1979 diaries today, wonderful stuff. You know, I'd never truly appreciated just how popular Monty Python had been in the 1970s. With that book finished I couldn't resist but sign back up to Audible.co.uk; got £80 worth of audiobooks for £14.99 which I'm happy with. They'll keep me going for a while (I'll tell you about them in due course).

Went to the cinema last night to see The Bank Job. The acting wasn't superb and the story was pretty simple, but I enjoyed it as it was based on the true story of one of the UK's most successful bank robberies - the details of which are still protected under the Official Secrets Act. Why? Apparently such information could do a lot of to the damage to our royal family and government. We only have to wait another 50 years to find out the truth!

Tomorrow morning I should be receiving a phone call from somewhere in Indonesia. Or maybe it was Bangkok. I think an Anthony Robbins wannabe is going to try to sell me a $1000 self-development package. Eyes Wide Open Joseph, Eyes Wide Open.

I'm starting to regain a sense of clarity now my list of things to do is shrinking. It's good. It's all good.

love joseph

Remote control of camera (and parents)

Beautiful day today. I was up at 6am, and together with my flat-mate Ali headed out to Ponderosa Park.

I'll be off to the IC soon to start writing this dissertation introduction (the one that has been turned upside down by yesterday's discovery of some new legislature governing NGOs in Japan due to come into effect in December this year), and at lunch time will meet up with a Japanese friend for lunch, and picture taking. She needs a photo for the university web site: after two years of being the 'face of Japan', my *Twinkle* is being replaced ...and I'm participating in her banishment from the web site. Ohhhh the guilt!


Speaking of photos, this morning I discovered a remarkable capability my Mac has: remote control (via the Internet) of my digital camera. What is most remarkable is how easy it is to set up. You simply

1) Plug digital camera into your Mac via USB
2) In Image Capture, turn on Camera Sharing
3) On some other computer go the web address you are given by Image Capture.
4) That's it.

Once on that webpage, you can see all the photos on the camera's memory stick, download them to your computer, and even tell the camera to take another photo. Or, you can click on the "Monitor" tab in which case the camera will automatically take a photo once a minute, and the web page will auto-refresh.

Some mumblers may recall that I set up a similar system last year, but that involved creating an automator action and FTPing them to my server. With this, everything seems to be done locally.

The wedding plans really are coming along nicely now. Mum and dad have been just great. In fact it's been a bit like remote control with them too. I just fire off an email with an idea or question, and next thing I know I get a response confirming that initial bookings have been made. Ah, the wonders of the Mac!

OK, I'd best get on. Have a lovely day.