bikes and things

Scary stuff. I need to disconnect more and relax / read books / learn to concentrate again.

Yes y’all. Quite shocking and ultimately hilarious but you have to wonder if this is a spoof. Unfortunately it looks like it isn’t.

Also don’t miss the second instalment.

Via Lawrence.

Lovely to see the Quentin Blake‎ exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge last weekend. The museum is completely incredible and literally stuffed to the gills with art. Too much for us to take in but we’ll definitely be back.

We were both really looking forward to the exhibition but it was a little sad to only see one room of his work and also mainly work from the last five years. It would have been great to see some of his Roald Dahl work. I always remember his illustrations from those books, in particular George’s Marvellous Medicine which was read repeatedly to me by my father. My favourite line in the book being:

Grandma had a face like a puckered up dog’s bottom.

But still great to see his wonderful work and even his paint palette.

Great to get a weekend out of London. Plenty of food, beer, dog(s), great company, cycling and the usual trip to the centre of town. Bloody love it.

We managed to get a ride in the countryside with Snoopy which was great. We were worrying about tiring the dog out on the ride but needn’t have. As soon as he got back to the pub he still found the energy to play ball with everyone.

Top to bottom of the Heron Tower by Lawrence.

It’s far more rapid than you might think too.

I often get asked this and my reply usually is “How much do you want to spend?“. The discussion inevitably ends up with a Nikon mid range DSLR camera with a crop sensor. But then at this price range the kit lens is always going to be completely crap. I’m not the only one who thinks like this it seems.

I’d go further and suggest that you shouldn’t buy an SLR if you only ever plan to use its kit lens or an inexpensive zoom lens. Kit lenses and low-end zooms produce blurry, distorted, drab images — they can look decent on blogs or phones, but the flaws become apparent when you see them on big Retina screens or printed at larger sizes.

I always recommend that people buy a 35mm prime lens, which is roughly the equivalent of a 50mm lens on a full frame camera. Before I went full frame I had a D300 which I used a Nikkor 35mm ƒ1.8 which is a complete bargain at £150. It’s sharp, compact and unobtrusive, fast and is one of the best ways of improving your photography in my opinion. Whilst it suffers from a little vignetting wide open and a tiny bit of pincushion distortion these are both easily corrected for in the latest version of Lightroom with the tick of a box. It’s also one less thing to distract you from actually taking good pictures. Zooming around trying to improve the composition seems to be fatal to progression. Zoom with your legs and just take more bloody pictures.

A photography client recently asked for a file at higher res to use in a brochure. Sure no problem, just zip it, drag it to my DropBox public folder and then paste the link into an email for them. Then sit back and wait for the email saying thanks.

Except that didn’t happen.

Thanks for the email. I may be getting confused here but the link seems to take me to a guinea pig being interviewed…is it the wrong link?

The cold realisation of my stupidity dawned on me, followed by uncontrollable laughter. They must have thought I was mad as a box of frogs. Here’s the video in case you were wondering.

I feel like I’m turning into a miserable old git and seem to find more and more things that annoy the shit out of me in daily life. Most of them are entirely inconsequential and I’m sure I probably tut too but perhaps I’m turning into Victor Meldrew.

Maybe it’s weird but I think some of this stuff is important, it’s manners and little things like this have the opportunity to make the world better for others. So lets think of all the things that annoy me in an old man style. Maybe I’ll come back and add to this soon.

Tut!

People leaving their engines on whilst waiting outside shops.

People who don’t say thank you when you hold the door open for them – East Dulwich mothers I’m looking at you!

Middle lane drivers.

Waiting staff clearing plates before everyone has finished at the table.

The downstairs neighbours who bang the door every fucking morning.

The people who climb up your arse in any queue- come a bit closer mate and you read the rude Tweet I’m composing about you.

People who hog the pavement in a line of three – no worries we’ll get out of the way.

The playing music on the crappy speaker in your phone thing – leaky headphones also included in this.

The person who keeps their bag on the seat on the train when it’s packed.

Not indicating.

Dropping litter – makes my blood boil!

Staff in shops just holding out their hand – you wanna tell me how much it is buddy?

That’s it for now.

There’s an awful lot of crap on our streets. This and the fact that they’re dug up all the time and not repaired drives me mad. Superb series of images from Dave Morris highlighting quite neatly how it impacts on a street.

2014 LEJOG here we come! Can’t wait. Just need to get some rack mounts and some panniers. One end of the country to the other un-supported.