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Friends in low places

Any idea what this is?

It’s a punt pole, with my camera attached to the end using a Gorillapod. Look, here’s a close-up:

And why, you might ask, would you want to do this?

Well, when my pal Bill Thompson organised this year’s geek punting picnic, PuntCon, I felt I needed to find a suitably geeky way to take a photo of the gathering. So I put my camera on a timer and raised the pole. It’s a bit tricky to aim, but here is at least a part of the group:

Many thanks to Bill (and everyone else) for a most enjoyable afternoon.

qsf

3 Jul 2008

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Photos

Agile Programmer

Michael took a nice picture of me on Monday.

Here are mine of him on Tuesday:

qsf

28 Jun 2008

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Photos

The Watchtower

qsf

8 Jun 2008

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The three roads to happiness

Public footpath signs

I’ve always felt that one of the things I’d miss most if I ever left the UK for, say, America, is our network of public footpaths. I’ve spent many a happy weekend afternoon on them, discovering places I’d never seen before.

An example from this afternoon for all you Cambridge residents. Where, within 10 miles of the city centre, can you find white limestone cliffs? You can’t see them from the road.

Quarry

They’re a lot more dramatic than they look here, too.

But as well as drama this afternoon, there was beauty:

a rose in sunlight

And history:

and cuteness:

But the cutest moment came near the end of my walk when, hearing lots of cheeping coming from the river, I went closer and saw a couple of swans and three cygnets heading homewards:

There was quite a current, and the little one were having to work hard to keep up.

But no, wait, I was mistaken. Four cygnets:

One had obviously found the current a bit too much and had to be given a lift.

They headed off in the evening sun.

And so did I.

More photos here.

qsf

3 Jun 2008

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Photos

Feeling powerless?

On Sunday morning we had a brief power outage at home. Everything went quiet, and my little electricity monitor, which normally shows a usage of somewhere around 1kW, displayed a number I hadn’t seen before:

All of a sudden, I understood the appeal of trying to generate your own power and get ‘off the grid’. It must be quite satisfying to see how low you can get this number in normal daily life.

qsf

23 May 2008

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Photos

Jay walking

I met a jay the other day as I was picking up my bike at Cambridge station. A cheerful chap – he dodged most of my attempts to photograph him… as I crept up on him he would flutter up in the air, circle round behind me, and land there. I’d turn around and creep in that direction, and when I got almost close enough, he’d take off and land back behind me again.

We kept this up for a while, until he decided that a passing sycamore leaf was more interesting than me, and started teasing that instead, at which point I headed for home.

qsf

16 May 2008

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The gorilla in the room

Michael and Laura today gave me a fabulous present. It’s a Gorillapod, a beautifully-designed device which lets you put cameras – or other things with similar mounts – almost anywhere.

Gorillapod on chair

Here it is on my bike handlebars:

We had fun today thinking of other things to do with it.

And I mounted my little Ixus on it and recorded video in unusual places. (Such as the view from the top of my head while walking home from lunch – I got to see what the world would look like if I were several inches taller)

If you need to find a present for someone with any interest in photography or video, I’d strongly recommend one of these. It’s fantastic. It’s also very tactile – a great stress-relieving executive toy…

UK readers can get them from Amazon.

qsf

11 May 2008

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Photos

A perfect day

A hot, beautiful, lazy day here today.

We walked for miles. England at its best.

qsf

25 Apr 2008

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Delusions of grandeur

I think my iPod has ideas above its station.

I got a new car today. It’s rather nice. And it has an iPod adaptor cable.

When I plugged the iPod into this gleaming tonne-and-a-half of throbbing sports-tuned German engineering, it said, “Accessory attached“.

Accessory attached

qsf

16 Apr 2008

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Tabitha cumi

Quite a few of my readers will know Seb and Abi Wills. They popped into the Ndiyo/CamVine office today with 12-day old Tabitha.
Seb, Abi & Tabitha

She’s very sweet.
Tabitha Wills

We did our best to impart a few words of wisdom to set her on the right path. Linux good! Yes! Windows bad!… that kind of thing. She’ll thank us one day…

Another great picture of her here.

qsf

27 Mar 2008

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Et in Arcadia ego

The ‘Grand Arcade’, Cambridge’s new shopping mall, opened its doors at 10am this morning. At one level, it’s just another shopping centre. But they’ve done a nice job of burying some quite pleasing stone- and wood-clad modern architecture…

behind the old shops on Regent Street:

There were pretty girls wearing Grand Arcade sashes, inaudible speeches by the mayor, and aerial acrobatics:

and there were balloons falling from the sky.

All mildly entertaining, but for me, the most amazing thing was the genius of the Apple marketing machine. I didn’t even go into the shiny new Apple store – I’ve been into plenty of those in other places – but hundreds of other people did. Dozens of new shops opened their doors for the first time today, but the centre was dominated by the long queue waiting to go into Apple and get their free tee-shirt. The Apple employees outside cheered and applauded the first customers to enter. People lined the galleries wondering what was happening and asking each other why this was the most exciting thing in the arcade. Sheer brilliance.