Notes from Swindon – home of the Magic Roundabout
I sometimes write things as comments on other blogs that I’d like to note here as well. This was posted in response to this Bikeyface post. I’m blowing my own trumpet slightly, for which I hope you’ll forgive me, but I hope I make a point too.
Last week I was out cycling and I saw a guy pull up at the side of a dual carriageway and get out of his car. I stopped and asked if he was OK. He’d run out of fuel. He proceeded to open his boot and take out a plastic petrol can.
Tags: cars, Cycling, petrol, road-peace
I found out the other day that a guy I know’s wife is pregnant. It’s funny how, as a newbie parent myself, it’s so tempting to offer advice. I also had a conversation this week with someone else who was talking about the dilemma of offering this kind of ‘help’.
And the longer I am a parent, the more I believe that the best advice is not advice at all, its almost anti-advice.
So I present the sum of my parenting knowledge:
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So…after much deliberation, and with a hint of guilt, we put a deposit on a new car today.
It was not a quick or easy decision, but our old car is fast approaching 100’000 miles, is slowly generating a few faults, and with the arrival of Isaac, is just too small – once the buggy base is in the back of our current car there’s not room for much else. We’re increasingly making trips to see the in-laws down in Devon, and increasingly wanting to offer lifts to other people, sometimes other families who don’t have cars, so wanting a new car wasn’t just about us – it’s about family and friends too.
[Note: If you've offered to knit a hat, please head to the Hat Knitter's page - and THANK YOU!]
I had a message from a friend of mine. Let’s call her Amy (names changed for privacy). Amy has a friend not-called Bea and Bea has a 4-year-old daughter, Charlie. Charlie has recently been diagnosed with Leukaemia. Charlie has just started chemotherapy and her hair has started to fall out.
Amy knows that my wonderful wife, Sally, is a dab hand with a pair of knitting needles. So Amy asked if Sally could knit a hat for Charlie.
But Sally is mum to our 8-week-old son, and barely has time to make a cup of tea, let alone knit. It’s very much life-one-handed here at the moment!
So, I put a call out on Twitter. I have a few creative followers and was pretty sure someone would be up to the challenge.
The response was amazing! I mean, I know things have gone way more viral, but I had a mass of re-tweets, new followers, and, of course, offers of hand-knitted hats. The first within about two minutes from the generous and creative Jennifer Begg (@livefreerange).
The internet is AMAZING!
Enigmatic AND cool in a robot babygro!
It’s been a while. But with good reason.
If you follow me on Twitter or are friends on Facebook then you will know that we are now a family of three. Our baby, Isaac, arrived on 1st December and has been our primary occupation for the last 5 weeks.
This post is a bit of an explanation about why you’ve not “seen” much of Isaac.
I cannot tell you what a gaff it’s been to reinstate this light after having our ceiling re-plastered. I think this was the fifth attempt. Failures I recall are:
1. Not cutting a hole for the rose.
2. Running out of arm strength because I was too stupid to remove the glass bowls.
3. Wiring it wrong.
4. Not having long enough screws to reach the joists through the new, thicker plaster layer.
And this wasn’t even the thing that got me electrocuted…that’s a WHOLE other story!!!
Photographically, an unusual angle can turn a relatively simple object into a thing of beauty. Different angles gave different exposures. Here’s some different views:
Earlier today I tweeted as follows:
And…it turns out, several people were intrigued. So I ought to explain myself in full.
Tags: advice, breastfeeding, classes, counsellors, cycle, local, mentors, nct
In similar vein to the last pic, this one shows code. But it’s specific code. This is an email header: the writing on the envelope, the stamp, the ‘return to sender’, that gets you message from sender to recipient.
I’ve been working a lot with emails in the last couple of days, trying to find the best way to decode this complex structure.
The main challenge with this photo: not including any sensitive data!!
I’m seeing a lot of this these days. I’ve seen plenty of attempts at photographing code and I do find something beautiful in it. Not always symmetry, but patterns emerge and individual characters blend together into broader ‘brush strokes’ that appear.
But it’s not just static either: this is the engine room of that increasingly interactive place, the Internet!
The photo? I’ve seen these done with ultra-shallow depth of field, but I quite like it being deeper. It’s not a better effect, just different. The odd patterns created by capturing a screen on a digital camera bring texture too.
Here’s a gallery with another pic:
Tags: code
This is actually from a couple of days ago. I love sun-sets and sun-rises and am mostly of the opinion that they’re not worth photographing. They are beautiful, temporary, unique, ephemeral, and are better enjoyed in the moment. Plus, the photo never does it justice. However, occasionally I still try and capture it. On this particular day I wished I was atop a tall hill and could see for miles, but I tried to make the best of what I had: nice thirds, make a point of the telegraph pole, etc. not bad.
