Entries Tagged 'Misc' ↓

Got a Canon 5D mk II today. It’s a great bit of kit with some nice increments from the old 5D. Best of all though is the addition of a HD video mode. You can see the results here:

And the you can see them in super duper extra ultra rez HD here:

http://www.blockcopycoders.com/temp/charlie_test2.mov

Being able to use your SLR lenses is a massive boon, everything looks so nice it’s amazing. It is trickier to use than a standard HD vide camera, there’s not autofocus once you start shooting and the huge control you have over the image also means you can get a little overwhelmed by the options available to you. Even so I’m sure a bit of time will get me used to it.

In other news we’re off to Scotland next week, should be good to visit there but this time taking Suzey and Charlie. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a bit more with some pics and vids

It’s all been so hectic there’s just not been a chance to blog. Wanted to mention this, it’s BallzUp Lite, a great little iPhone game by G that’s now available on the iTunes Store. You can get it right here if you’ve iTunes on your machine.

If you have a Mac then there’s a playable demo on the Touchy Toy Stuff site right here. Congrats to G for getting his first game out there

Bit of travelling today. Away until Sunday and not surprisingly it’s very hard to be away from home right now. It’s all the fault of these characters:

We’ve made a good one there. It’s been a real treat seeing his personality continue to emerge over the last 4 months. Rather worryingly he’s showing a fascination with computer screens and has a favourite TV show. In The Night Garden is what the Telly Tubbies people did next and is similarly colourful, repetitive and continually baffling to its precursor. Shall we go by Ninky Nonk or Pinky Ponk asks Dereck Jacobi every episode. I still don’t know the answer to that and don’t think I ever will.

That said Charlie seems to have a crush on Upsy Daisy and even goes a bit radio rental when shown the babies In The Night Garden book Suzey got him. It’s amazing to see someone so young in scanning the book’s pages in rapt attention waiting for each page turn. All in all despite some difficult nights (Suzy gets the worst of this) and the vomiting and occasional screaming, he’s a constant delight

Travelling is made a bit easier thanks to my iPhone and the Genius function in the latest firmware update. I know I sound like a MacWanker but it is pretty ace. Genius allows me to select one track I like and then BY WITCHCRAFT a playlist is constructed of songs Genius thinks complement that choice. I’m a bit of a bugger for buying music and then not taking the time to listen to it so this has been perfect.

It’s like having your very own electronic music antiquarian taking you on a guided tour around the dark recesses of your music collection. I’ve been quite surprised to find out that, among others, I like Blonde Redhead and My Bloody Valentine a lot more than ever suspected before.

I don’t like fupping BATTLES though, Atlas pollutes every list for some reason despite being a terrible song which sounds those genetically engineered midgets in Bladerunner having a sing song. Anyway. Genius is mostly Genius, if you’re not an insufferable mac using iphone zealot already I would heartily recommend you to start being so.

So that’s my from the train blog update. The travelling right now isn’t for nowt. It’s work stuff but good work stuff edging us a little bit nearer to taking our company closer to where we want to be. There’s a -long- way to go (and maybe what we want will never happen) and this is just a little step mind but a step never the less

Sitting here at the isle of wight Garlic Festival watching a really terrible band singing a terible song where the chorus is ” These are the best days of our life”

I don’t know much about bands and that but I suspect that when you start out on the road of wild rock and roll you’re not hoping that you’ll one day end up headlining a Garlic Festival.

Oh well Alvin Stardust is on at four

I received the handlebar mount for my GPS yesterday and today got to test it out. It turns out my daily route is 10.1 miles. After a quick look around the web I found the site Everytrail.com that lets you upload your trip’s GPX file gives you some snazzy info about the speed and elevation changes over the journey all on top of a google map. I can even embed it here:

Week Day Cycle

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

Just slide the arrow along the bar and you can see me speeding down Mousehole Lane and grinding slowly up Burgess Road

EDIT

DOH! Does’t work in Livejournal, click through to my wordpress site to see it in action

As expected the inoculations weren’t very nice. The people at the surgery were great but whatever way you do it getting a couple of jabs in the thigh at the age of 9 weeks isn’t going to be anything but painful. Here’s the little chapper before:

And here just after

Poor wee chap, if either of us could have done this for him we would have. He soon settled down and within a couple of hours was back to his smiling best. Another set in a month’s time and it’s Suzey’s turn to hold him this time

Hoorah! Got some new inner tubes and fixed my bike yesterday which put me in good spirits today to cracked my 10 mile cherry. Here’s the route I took early this morning:

It didn’t help having to cycle through a fair bit of drizzle and a hangover. I really can’t do lots of beer any more. Last night out with Tony and Karl was excellent fun but as I get older the morning after consequences are getting more severe. It was pretty funny that Karl’s taken up cycling too, he’s further into it than me and did the London / Brighton in June. Fish suggested doing that next year and I could well be up for it.

In the meantime I’m now aiming for 15 miles by the end of next week. To help me stay enthusiastic I’ve now got a cateye cycling computer and ordered handlebar mount for the Garmin GPS Suzey got me last year That’s an excellent intersection of biking and nerding right there and should mean I can upload routes into google maps sometime soon.

In other news it may not be a great day today; the boy gets his inoculations later this afternoon and from what we understand it can be pretty grim for the litter fella. We’ve the calpol on standby but neither of us are relishing seeing him go through this. We’ve been told by a couple of people that once settled it’s not unusual for the baby to do a 12 hour stretch of sleep after but getting them settled can be pretty distressing. Fingers crossed for 2pm.

Today I should be blogging about how I’d managed a 10 mile run on the bike. I’d managed 9.1 miles yesterday in one non stop ride and it was pretty easy so today I was up for doing at least 10. Alongside that entry there should also be some fetching photos taken from the top of Itchen Bridge. Unfortunately instead there’s this:

A couple of miles and I drove over a rusty nail. Being a bit of an amateur at this I had no puncture repair kit or a spare innertube so it meant a two mile walk with the bike back home. Still got some exercise but wasn’t best pleased. Also not great is that I took my camera along and now it’s stopped being recognised by my computer when it’s plugged in. I think some of the bumping in the bag on the back of the bike broke it a bit Bummer. Off to the cycle shop tomorrow at 9 to buy the stuff I need to fix it.

Great run today and a couple of milestones for me. All of the rides so far have had a pretty long stop in the middle, usually to read the papers and stuff some Maccy Dees down my gob. Today there was only a minor stop at the Tesco Metro on the way back to pick up some bread and milk and all McDonalds got from me was a grunted expletive as I cycled past. Also good is I extended out the distance I’m cycling with new route:

This one is 6.8 miles and as is true of any route in Southampton has its fair share of hills on which makes for a nice mix of coasting and huffing and puffing. I felt really good after and it’s amazing to look back on only just over a week ago Mousehole Lane had me pushing my bike up it on foot while coughing out a lung. Now it’s really easy

My aim now is to try and get to 10 miles in the next fortnight or so. To help chart that goal I’m probably going to get a cycling computer this weekend.

Any suggestions what would be a good one?