Marie Antionette's Plaything

One of the cottages built in Marie Antoinette's private village at the Petit Trianon at Versailles and built around 1784.

Cours Saleya - Nice

Armée de Terre

Look Up

The Final Frontier

I found these photos on the Astronomy Picture of the Day website. It is a cool site worth visiting. Not all of the photos are of this quality but there are many nice photos on the site showing space and man's exploration of space to date.

Foggy Morning

The view from my window this morning.

Kingston Dawn

Some photos I took prior to my morning walks in Kingston. Rising before dawn most mornings I had the opportunity to see some fantastic transitions between night and day. I took the oportunity to take these photos on the day that I was leaving.

Mona Resevoir - Jamaica

Some photos I took of the sunrise at the water resevoir near the university campus at Mona in Kingston, Jamaica. I went for a three mile walk around the resevoir each morning just after sunrise and thought I'd share the view that I was lucky enough to experience every morning.

Flowers

Photos taken in Oxford a few weekends ago. Click on the photos for a larger view.

More Goodwood Festival of Speed 2006 Photos

Below are a few more photos of the Goodwood Festival of Speed. These were taken by my father on a borrowed Nikon D50. I have to say that it is quite a nice little DSLR, but I'd still prefer a EOS 30D.

If you are wondering why some of the photos are in a strange panoramic format, it is because there were bales of hay in between the cars and the spectators which were perfectly positioned to be in every shot. I've cropped the bottom of the photos to remove the surpuflous hay.









All of the photos above were taken using a technique called panning. It is really simple to do, but takes a lot of skill to master. You set the camera to shutter priority or manual mode and select a suitable slow shutter speed, say between ¹/60^th of a second and ¹/125^th of a second. Let the camera select a suitable aperture or set one yourself if in manual mode. Then, here comes the tricky bit, you pan the camera following the motion of the subject at the same angular velocity as the subject. This keeps the subject sharply in focus, but the slow shuter speed, allows the movement to be captured as well. Try it yourself!



Not having a DSLR of my own I'll have to wait for my film to be processed before I can upload any of my own photos of the cars on the track. I do hope I managed to get a few good shots. I'll post some more photos of Goodwood then as well.

Kaiserslautern

I didn't really get to see much of Kaiserslautern. I arrrived a few minutes before kick off, had a beer and then walked to the stadium. However the atmosphere at Kaiserslautern was really good. It was a bit like a carnival with lots of (very drunk) people milling about, singing and dancing. There was a large square that had been turned into a fan area and there was a tremendously loud soundsystem which seemed to be filling all of the surrounding streets with music.



There was an huge disparity in the number of people supporting Trinidad & Tobago when compared to the number supporting Paraguay, so the streets were turned into a sea of red flowing towards the stadium.



The Fritz-Walter Stadion (named for Fritz Walter, the captain of Germany’s 1954 Cup winning side) is new and has great facilities. It was packed to bursting with people and the atmosphere at the beginning of the match was fantastic.



The match itself was a bit dissapointing, Trinidad & Tobago played with a lot of spirit but Paraguay was the technically better team, keeping their shape a lot better and sticking to their game plan. Both teams had a lot of opportunities to score. Paraguay scored about half way through the first half and after that made Trinidad & Tobago come to them trying to catch them on the break.

In the second half Trinidad & Tobago started very tentatively but then as the minutes ticked away decided to go for it. They made a lot of attacks but Paraguay's defence more or less had the measure of them.

Towards the end of the game Paraguay scored again and thats how the game finished.

The journey back to Karlsruhe was interesting, the trains stopped at every station and were like the tube during rush hour! Poor dutch guy who was sat opposite to us kept saying "its not normal" or "there shouldn't be this many people on the train" under his breath every few minutes for about an hour.

It took about two and a half hours to get to Karlsruhe because there were not any direct trains and we had to change in a few places. I didn't get back to the hotel untill just after 02:00. Just as I was makng myself ready for a well earned sleep the widlfowl on the lake in the zoo starting their dawn chorus! It was awful, it was very loud and it went on for two hours!

Impressionist Photograph?

Hmm, is it art, that's the question!

England vs. Samoa @ Twickenham

Samoa looked like they might make a match of it for the first five minutes, and they put up a good fight, but England was technically much better and won easily 40 - 3.

The 40 - 3 win is a new English record against Samoa and the team must have been very pleased with themselves due to their performance. The match was not without incident however. Lewis Moody now has the dubious honour of being the first England player to be sent off at Twickenham due to his rather unseemly attack on Alesano Tuilagi.

Here are a few [bad] photos from the match yesterday. It was freezing cold, but thankfully the rain stopped shortly after the match began, however the light levels were quite low and the camera I borrowed had a very limited zoom.

Reflections of the roof of the Waterlily House at Kew Gardens reflected in the pond.

The Waterlily House was built in 1851 to house the giant waterlily (Victoria amazonica). However, the plant never fared very well there, and in 1866 the house was converted to an Economic Plant House for medicinal and culinary plants. It was restored to its current state in 1991.

Dale Chihuly installations at Kew Gardens. Some of them really are quite spectacular and worth a visit to see. Many of them are subtle and well camouflaged in the flora so you have to keep your eyes peeled.

The biggest 'flower' in the world.

One of the most spectacular plants to be found in the wet tropics zone of the Princess of Wales Conservatory is the titan arum. With its huge flowering structure (inflorescence) rising some 3m above the ground and its single immense leaf, it certainly is a giant among plants, as its name suggests. Coupled with its characteristic foul stench, and the rarity of flowerings, this plant has always hit the headlines. - Kew Gardens website.

Well it wasn't quite that spectacular when I went to visit over the weekend, but then again it had flowered on 28 September! Still, I thought it would make a nice abstract photograph.

Upgrade

As many of you are aware, I have been experiencing problems with my PC over the past few months and decided that there was no use procrastinating any more, I was going to have to make some changes.

I made the decision to replace my CPU heat sink and fan to a larger more powerful model which should also be quieter, and in order to keep my case cool a few extra fans. Lastly I was going to replace my main hard disk drive as it was beginning to sound like a cross between a banshee and two duelling tomcats. This is the story of what happened...

I woke up very late on Saturday with a bag full of parts and very keen to get on with things; brunch be damned, I was straight into the cupboard for a screwdriver. Sat down with a cup of coffee and decided how best to proceed wasn't sure so I asked the cats for some advice.

After finishing my coffee (and consulting with the cats) I had a plan of action. I was going to remove some hardware which I never use any more, remove the two fans that I borrowed, replace the heat sink/fan combo, install the new fans, rearrange the two hard disks drives, install the new hard disk drive, do a sector copy of the failing disk, change over the IDE master and Slave settings for the devices and that'll be that.

Removing the now redundant hardware was easy, sure I had to disconnect a few cables and remove the front facia from the case (which was more difficult that it should have been and required the gentle use of a small hammer), but it only took about twenty minutes. Happy with my progress I had a quick fag break and another cup of coffee.

Next came the heat sink/fan combo. No problem removing the old one, installing the new one required what felt like motherboard snapping force and the use of a screwdriver but that wasn't too bad, only took five minutes. Turned on the computer to make sure everything was okay, watched the CPU temp for about 5 minutes to make sure that it was okay, and then switched off again.

Onto the fans. Nothing in life could be easier than removing a pair of 80mm case fans, done in ten minutes. Adding the new fans took a bit longer because of those damnable self threading screws. You need to apply an obscene amount of torque to get them screwed in tight. As I was working in quite a tight space, I had to use my left hand quite often, it was a bit of a pian. Once they were installed I noticed an extra 3-pin fan header on the motherboard - excellent, not I could monitor the speed of the one of each of the fans at the front and back of the case. To top things off these new fans have funky LED lights that give the case a nice glow when they are in use. Things were going swimmingly. Time for another fag break and another cup of coffee.

Rearranging the hard disks was a bit of a pain, I moved the upper disk down to the bottom of the drive bays because I had worked out that I would be able to leave an empty bay above each disk once they were all installed which would allow good airflow from the newly installed fans at the front of the case. Moving a disk into the bottom bay with a full length SCSI controller in front of it just wasn't happening so out came the controller, in went the disk, back in went the controller and than I realised the IDE cables wouldn't reach - arghhh! After rearranging the IDE cables I switched the PC on and made sure everything was okay, which it was. Somehow nearly two hours had passed, strange I though to myself, didn't fel that long.

Shut down windows - time to install shiny new disk drive. A quick check of the jumper setting and it slid in like a dream. Plugged in all the cables and switched on the computer. BIOS automatically detected the drive and windows notified me of the new hardware when it started. That's what I call progress. Onto copying the data thought I. I quick scan of the instructions for Norton Ghost and I was away. I selected all of the relevant options, copy master boot record, check for bad sectors, verify data, expand partition to fill new disk space, etc, etc. And off it went. Should take a few hours so it was time for brunch.

After brunch (about an hour) returned to view the progress and something wasn't quite right the status bar hadn't even started and the progress report said 2% completed. Hmm preparation time thought I, and wen't to watch some telly. Returned to view the progress after and hour and a half solid TV watching. 10% completed. 10% completed in two and a half hours! That’s two and a half hours!!!

It was now around five in the afternoon, and at the current rate it would be six o'clock on Sunday before it was finished. There were bits of computer lying all around, the cats were getting very friendly with the cables, and I was beginning to simmer.

Three hours later - a special kind of hell. Yes I was in a special kind of hell, the kind where you do nothing but stare at a monitor for hours hoping that the progress bar will move, feeling overjoyed when it does, and then realising that the tiny movement to the right took an hour. Thinking about all of the things you could be using your computer for, but can't because despite running for what feels like days, the hard disk copying is still at under 20% and its eight o'clock and the noise of the new fans that you were so happy with is beginning to drive you slightly potty. So potty that you think that there are two glowing eyes glaring at you from inside the PC case, tormenting you. Then you notice that everything in the house is pitch black and that you hadn't noticed because you have been staring at the progress bar, willing it onwards, knowing that it will take as ling as it takes, which is too long. All this time asking yourself "will the old disk last long enough for the process to complete?". Everything after that was a blur; I can't remember anything until...

The following morning. Wake up on the sofa at around eight to the sound of the neighbour hoovering with a killer sinus headache. Go to the kitchen to make a coffee, realise that that sound isn't the neighbours hoover. It is in fact my PC. Turn on the monitor and am greeted by Norton Ghost telling me that it is 100% complete, with no errors. Thank the Gods. All of them in turn.

Switched off the PC, rearranged the cables and jumper setting on all of the IDE devices, tidied up and tied up all of the cables, nice and neat. Turned on the PC, went of make my coffee. Came back and sat down to the wonderful message

Please insert bootable media...

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Two hours later, after replacing IDE cables, putting back the original IDE cables, rearrranging IDE master and slave devices, kicking the PC, and doing the dance of shame - twice. I finally get the bios to recognise all of the devices and the PC to boot. Finally we are getting somewhere. Windows boots, thank the gods, all of them in turn. Take a quick photo before putting the case back together.

Well, that was my weekend. The PC still sounds a little like a hoover, and despite my wishful thinking the new CPU heat sink/fan combo is actually a little less efficient at cooling the CPU (it is quieter though). But I now have a working computer again and it glows in the dark :)

I will probably disconnect some of those funky fans in an attempt to reduce the noise, there are six 80mm fans in there now, which is probably too much. But that is a project for another day.

Playing Pool Again

Went to play pool again yesterday, had fun as usual :) Here's a photo of Mark trying to figure out if he's been snookered by Martin.

Castles Made of Sand

Huge sand castle on Miami Beach. Like most things these days it has its own website at www.miamibeachsandcastle.com.

Who's for Lunch?

This little fella was only about 18" long nose to tail but his much bigger relatives were lurking around. Eventually stopped at a place selling gator burgers and tried one. It was like eating rubber, not recommended, and it didn't taste very nice either (a fact they try to hide by lacing the burgers with lots of pepper sauce).

Alligators are farmed in southern Florida mostly for their skin which is used to make shoes, bags, belts, wallets, hats, etc. The rest of the alligator isn't wasted and is used to make keepsakes for tourists. I spoke to the proprieter of one of the farms and he told me that farming meant that they went out into the swamp and collected newly hatched gators and moved them into a pen where they grow them up to about eight feet long.

The reason that they collect wild ones rather than breed them themselves is because it is extreemly hard to breed them in captivity and in the wild the newly hatched gators have a life expectancy measured in days. They get eaten by just about everything bigger than them in the Everglades, including other alligators.

Heading South the Hard Way

Something Fishy

Pancake Café

A traditional pancake café in Fethiye market on a busy Tuesday.

Cable Cars

The Table Mountain Cableway was opened in 1929 and today conveys some 600,000 people to the summit annually. It provides safe access and the trip takes about six minutes.

Jerusalem

In recognition of my pseudonym doppleganger I decided to post a few pictures that I took on a trip to Jerusalem many years ago.

The Dome on the Rock

The West Wall

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And whilst on the topic of Jerusalem, here are the lyrics of what many English people think should be the English National Anthem (as Wales and Scotland already have one but England does not). It is not a replacement for the U.K. anthem just something for the English to sing at sporting events :)

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen

And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills
And was Jerusalem builded there
Among those dark Satanic mills

Bring me my bow (my bow) of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spears o'clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire

I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my (my) sword sleep in hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land- William Blake

The words were written by William Blake (1757-1827) a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver; who illustrated and printed his own books. The poem is actually an excerpt from the preface to one of his "prophetic books", Milton (1804-8).

Blake (pennyless at the time of his death) was buried in an unmarked grave at the public cemetery of Bunhill Fields. Though generally dismissed as an eccentric during his lifetime, posterity rediscovered Blake and today he is highly rated both as a poet and artist.

Jerusalem was set to music quite movingly by composer Hubert Parry in 1916, who wrote the score in just two days. It was composed in the darkest days of the First World War for singing at a Fight for Right campaign meeting in London's Royal Albert Hall. Parry's original version is pastoral, quite sombre and serious but became a symbol of britishness and was used to raise morale extensively throughout the Great War.

The version by Edward Elgar, devised for the Leeds Festival of 1921 is better known and loved best by the British public. It was again used as morale booster extensivly duringthe second world war by the British. With its sweeping string lines, this is the evocative setting associated invariably with The Last Night of the Proms.

Cape Town

Swan

Leeds Castle

Feet

A foot (plural: feet) is a non-SI unit of distance or length, measuring around a third of a metre. There are twelve inches in one foot and three feet in one yard.

The standardization of weights and measures has left several different standard foot measures. The most commonly used foot today is the English foot, used in the United Kingdom and the United States and elsewhere, which is defined to be exactly 0.3048 metre. This unit is sometimes denoted with a prime (e.g. 30′ means 30 feet), often approximated by an apostrophe. Similarly, inches can be denoted by a double prime (often approximated by a quotation mark), so 6′ 2″ means 6 feet 2 inches.

In addition to the current standard international foot, there is also a slightly different U.S. survey foot, used only in connection with surveys by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, it is defined as exactly 1200/3937 m (610 nm greater than 0.3048 m).

The foot as a measure was used in almost all cultures. The first known standard foot measure was from Sumeria, where a definition is given in a statue of Gudea of Lagash from around 2575 BC. The imperial foot was adapted from an Egyptian measure by the Greeks, with a subsequent larger foot being adopted by the Romans.

Lunch?

The Fly

Queenstown Road

Queenstown Road is a railway station in Battersea, South London, between Vauxhall and Clapham Junction. There are 8 tracks but only 3 platforms (one of which in the photo above is not used). Now in a state of general disrepair the station is a short walk from Battersea Park station and Battersea Park itself. The entrance to the station still bears the original name of the station 'Queens Road'.

Jamaican Views

 Views from apartment in Ocho Rios.

 Mountains near Kingston.

Kew Gardens

The Palm House at Kew Gardens as seen through my eyes.

Both dramatic and elegant, its curvilinear structure is a classic example of Victorian design. Built between 1844 and 1848, by Richard Turner to Decimus Burton's designs. it was constructed to house tropical trees, shrubs and palms. The Palm House is world's most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure.

More Strange Fruit

After seeing Billie Holiday perform at the club, Café Society, in New York, Meeropol showed her the poem. Holiday liked it and after working on it with Sonny White turned the poem into the song, Strange Fruit. The record made it to No. 16 on the charts in July 1939. However, the song was denounced by Time Magazine as "a prime piece of musical propaganda" for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).

I would recommend having a listen to anything labelled "a prime piece of musical propaganda" if you can get hold of it, and I would also recommend listening to just about anything by Billie Holiday. But combining the two I would have to say that if you haven't heard it your life is not complete, so go out and find the track and have a listen.

If you are feeling particularly generous you can buy me Strange Fruit: 1937-1939.

Strange Fruit

I took this photo in 2003 whilst visiting Miami. The heat, humidity and very Americaness of it all reminded me of a poem by Abel Meeropol.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Abel Meeropol, Strange Fruit, (1939)

Aubergines

Olu Deniz

Visited Olu Deniz in Turkey earlier this year. Had a great time, loved the people and the atmosphere. I will write a little about the people and the place when I have more time, but for now I'll just say that I would recommend a holiday in the Fethiye area of Turkey to anyone.

Here are a few photos from my trip, I'll post more later.

Richmond Park

As seen through the eyes of my father.