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A Sunny Saturday

May 22nd, 2010

I am a member of a website called Blipfoto, it allows you to upload 1 photo a day and only 1. Most of its users use the site as an online diary, documenting their life through photos. It’s USP is that you can only upload 1 photo and you really have to decide what photo to upload.

Some days it’s difficult to even find one photo to upload. And then there’s days like today, where it is difficult to choose as I took so many.

I ended up going with a photo of one of the hundred snails in the garden this morning.

Slithery Saturday

Here are some of today’s other photos.

A little announcement

May 19th, 2010

I’m not sure if there is anyone who reads this blog who doesn’t follow my Twitter or Facebook or Flickr or Blipfoto… but, just in case you missed what I posted on Friday, you may want to read this.

I think come June I’ll probably make this blog point to our new one for the year we’re away as I don’t see any point in having two.

Who to vote for?

May 4th, 2010

Who to vote for?

There’s a General Election taking place this week. Come Friday morning we could quite likely have a brand new leader.

But who to vote for?

Labour. They’ve been in power for the last 13 years, and the country is, I think we’ll all agree, not in a good way. But we’re on the road to recovery. Should we change the government and risk putting us back a bit? Or would a change do us good?

Conservative. On the surface I like David Cameron. He’s young(er), energetic and seems to say the right things. But he resembles a life insurance salesman. He’ll say all the right things to get a sale, but read the small print and you’ll realise you’ve been swindled.

The Lib Dems are probably my favourite. But there’s something about Nick Clegg. He seems like a nice bloke and all, but I have a feeling they’re not quite as well prepared, the sums might just not add up. He’s like a school supply teacher, would be a nice change but in the long run won’t do us any good.

And the SNP. Well where to start. I like most of their policies. Except their main one. Independence for Scotland? I don’t see them dropping that one in a hurry. No thanks.

Who to vote for? Can’t make up my mind. Thankfully I don’t have to decide. I stupidly didn’t get my name on the electoral register in time.

Women threw themselves in front of race horses for the right to vote. Countries are fighting because they don’t have the option to vote. And I foolishly didn’t put my forms in the free post envelope in time. I’m ashamed with myself, really I am.

This week in reading

April 18th, 2010

Dancing with the Devil
Playing with the Devil by skarpi on Flickr

This week’s edition of my what I’ve been reading on the internet is slightly different to last week’s. At times I may have to replace the word “reading” with “viewing” as a lot of it is quite visual. This week’s “This Week In Reading” is a “Volcano Special”.

You will not have escaped the news. A volcano blows its top in Iceland (not a rare occurrence) and as a result all aircraft in the whole of the UK, in fact most of Europe, are grounded (that is a rare occurrence).

Dr. Erik Klemetti is a geologist so he knows a thing or two about volcanoes. His blog titled Eruptions seems to be one of the best sources of information there is on Eyjafjallajökull.

The BBC are good at keeping us in the loop with their live volcano updates online.

The Yahoo Editors picked the best of the volcano images online. There are some truly spectacular photos in that set. But the best image of the week had to come from *ice on Flickr, a very rare photo opportunity captured on camera.

While you could smell the ash in Aberdeen during the week (smelt like blocked drains), you couldn’t see it. It’s too far up and too dispersed. From space however you can, and Nasa have a photo set on Flickr showing you trails of dust.

Sometimes I read stories and see pictures online that bring out a side of me that wishes I was back home in Shetland. Fellow Zetlander Tom Morton managed to achieve this on Friday after he posted a couple of images on his blog of the ash that had fallen from the sky overnight.

With all this fire, explosions, airplanes being grounded and dust clouds, it doesn’t come as a surprise to find that the Top Gear team had an involvement in all this. I predict that when the next series of Top Gear starts, it will turn out all these grounded planes was the biggest stunt the show has ever done (after the Richard Hammond crash stunt that is).

Best find of the week is the RaderVirtuel.com site. It’s a tracking site for planes. Except looking at it when everything is grounded you may as well just look a normal map because there’s not a lot going on.

The most unlikely headline of the week award goes to: “Showaddywaddy gig in Shetland cancelled because of volcano“. That’s the sort of headline you’d see on Mock The Week. Gutting for all concerned I’m sure.

And one final link. While the end to the airspace restriction doesn’t seem to be in sight, it may be worthwhile keeping an eye on every one’s favourite volcano.  My dad e-mailed me this link, a webcam at the base of Eyjafjallajökull. At the time of writing she was still grumbling away. Volcanoes are she’s right?

This week in reading

April 11th, 2010

Book collection

I enjoy reading newspapers and blogs far more than I enjoy reading books. Now I’m going to start sharing some of the articles I have enjoyed in a weekly blog post. It’s an idea I’ve nicked straight from James Cridland’s blog. Clicking on any link should open it up in a new window or tab, so get clicking.

The Digital Economy Bill was quickly passed through during the week with seemingly little thought put towards it. I often wonder if Peter Mandelson has ever used the internet?  If you’d like a quick run through of what this all means, Robert Andrews of paidContent:UK has given us this “Quick Guide To All 45 Measures“.

I don’t think any of us have escaped the news that this week the Queen dissolved parliament and Gordon announced a General Election.  This election will be the first proper social media election, and spreading like wildfire through Twitter this week were images from the website mydavidcameron.com, Photoshopping at it’s best.

In the week that Apple announced their latest update for the iPhone, Os4, Gizmodo report “How The iPhone Could End Up In Second Place“.  It’s a worthwhile article for any company that’s thinking about developing solely for the iPhone platform.

The Guardian is one of my most visited websites. It quite often holds the crown of being my web browsers homepage.

Their article “Spare a Flickr of sympathy for professional photographers” makes interesting reading.  In it it states that the popular photo sharing site now features billions of pictures by amateurs and squeezing income out of the photographic industry. I suppose I fall under the category of the photographer who owes everything to the easy shoot digital camera. But like every industry, times are a changing, and professional photographers need to get with the them.

It could be an interesting year for Bebo users. AOL want to either shutdown or sell the Social Networking site.  For me Bebo, in 2005, was the first site of it’s type which had proper mainstream appeal.  But it lost out to Facebook. Feature wise, privacy wise, and design wise, it was way out of the league of Facebook. I deleted my Bebo profile a long time ago. Most people I know now use Facebook.

What I’ve learned this week.  If you have the opportunity to name a ship, don’t name it Titanic. Surely that one was obvious? And if you are going to put your old redundant suitcases to a charity shop, check inside them before you let them go. And 2000 years after he rose from the dead, Jesus has decided to come back in a piece of chewing gum.  That story particularly got my goat.

If like me your a radio presenter who every now and again needs content for a quick link, the Daily Telegraph’s “How About That” section is an excellent resource.  And speaking of local radio presenters, back to the Guardian, “What I’m really thinking: The local radio presenter“. It’s all true.

The excellent Flight Level 390 blog continues to keep me longing to leave radio and become an airline pilot, while GERT on Blipfoto.com continues to keep me longing to leave radio, skip the idea of an airline pilot and get a job on the high seas instead.

So much reading, so little time. Thankfully Google Reader keeps it all in one place for me. Same time, same place, next week for more.