2007 — 23 Mar: a week of holiday zooms by
The zoom lens image stabiliser is OK, but on a dull day, with fast-moving birds as distant dots in the grey sky, the necessary zooming and subsequent cropping (exacerbated by that missing tripod, of course) means...
...the results are not as excitingly crisp as I'd hoped. (But given the details: f/11.0, 0.002 sec exposure [1/500th sec], 300mm zoom [equivalent to 485mm in the 35mm slide world], ISO 200, maybe the lack of crispness is understandable?) However the Jessops own brand battery did very well considering how cold it was. There wasn't much flashing, though, come to think of it.
You can also find the pair of us here. We're still smiling, and still on speaking terms. Amazing.
Concrete reasons not to go shopping
On the way home yesterday we diverted to inspect the newly-built shopping centre "Castle Point" a little beyond Bournemouth. They had had to close before Christmas for reasons that became shockingly apparent... Now that I've seen the sorry state of the concrete, the car park surfaces, and all the scaffolding currently being used to prop up the upper sales floor (while stores are all open for business, of course!) plus the water evident in many places, I'd advise a wide berth for several months to come. It put me in mind of our great water bed disaster of October 2002, but that's another story.
They had a Virgin, however, so in addition to the copy of Scenes of a Sexual Nature that Mr Postie dropped off while we were out, I now also have the Simpsons 8th season.
You know you've retired when...
You get back from a leisurely trot round Southampton to discover a large package from IBM on your doorstep: Retirement Briefing File ("date as postmark"). At first glance (and before I give up and use it to start a fire) I must say I'd given no serious thought to bee-keeping1 or quilt-making!
Meanwhile, I see that Theodore Dalrymple, one of my preferred gadflies (is that really the correct plural, I wonder?) is at it again, most entertainingly, here. Check your blood pressure before following the link — monitus es.
Open Source Mac
Best link so far is here. (Windows version is here.)