Saturday, 26 January 2008

The road to nowhere

The road to nowhere
Nuff Said

Apple TV

Went to Tescos the other night to get a HDTV for the AppleTV and after discussing the options, decided on a fairly cheap one as it's in the bedroom. Got the thing home and after plugging in the 360, TV aerial & Apple TV, decided it didn't work. There was some digital noise on the highlights of the images. Thankfully, it's 8:30pm and they're still open so we ended up going back and getting a replacement. What a faff. Ever tried trying to put one of these things back in the box? Christ.

Anyway, I'm generally enjoying AppleTV, I've synched it up with music and photos, all good. The youtube access is great although entering searches is a pain with the fiddly on screen keyboard. Can't wait for the upgrade, this was the reason I took the plunge, youtube/flickr/music is pretty compelling to me.

Movie conversion to AppleTV isn't much fun either. It takes a good while, most of my stuff is DIVX/XVID so it has to be done. I've been using Nero Recode and it's very easy to forget the odd setting and screw the movie up at the same time. 1 click conversion from within Itunes please Apple! (I'm happy to pay for the required codecs!)

I need glasses. Rather than squinting at the EPG on Sky (big telly helped that), I'm now squinting at movie descriptions on youtube, ho hum.

Wednesday, 23 January 2008

Where did it go?

Well, it's been over a year since I started blogging so I thought a different template was in order. I started off quite well and it kinda tailed off due to Facebook, which I still rate highly. As always, I must try harder to keep the blog updated! (soz jim!)

Got a few bits to be looking forward to soon. GDC in mid feb, which should be great as usual, I'm also going to Holland for a couple of days in a week or so. I will, of course, be taking the camera, which I'm slowly growing into. After a brief foray into P mode, I'm back with Manual, I just love that meter! and feel more in control of exposure.

I've just bought AppleTV, the imminent software upgrade looks great and it's iTunes all the way at home so it makes a lot of sense. I'll be trying to convince the rest of the family that it's bye bye Sky, we'll see. Damn you 'high school musical"!

Thursday, 17 January 2008

Mountain Heart


Mountain Heart, originally uploaded by DirtyDeeds.


Iceland was truly inspirational.


The sheer scale of the place really gets things in perspective. Had a complete hoot with Martyn and Andy as we travelled to as many places as possible on foot and 4*4. Highlights would be swimming in the blue lagoon with a raging snowstorm from the neck up and a hot bath below, Gullfoss, Þingvellir in low light & the nights out. Have to mention the prices, ouch, if the cold doesn't get you, the tills will! £10 a pint :(

We had it all and it was good.

I've started uploading stuff to Flickr so have a gander.

On the general topic of photography, it's been great inspecting the pictures I took. I remember my reasons for taking each and every shot. It's not that they're particularly great but it's very satisfying to me to not only look at the pictures but to remember my motivation for pressing the shutter release. Evocative. Are the best shots the ones where everyone else! can see my motivation for taking it? I fear so, oh well, I got satisfaction...and hope to provide it.