| Alienware Aurora | |
| Camera: Canon EOS 40D | Date: 29-11-2009 17:03 | Resolution: 1731 x 1206 | ISO: 400 | Exp. bias: 0 EV | Exp. Time: 1/60s | Aperture: 4.0 | Focal Length: 17.0mm (~27.6mm) | |
For any of you labouring under the myth that new computer hardware is smaller than old, please meet my new “mini” desktop! 🙂 If you’re struggling with scale, the monitor is 24″.
And what’s really scary is that this is the smaller model in the range. They make a big one, too!
I’ve just published some of my photos from my trip to the Venice Carnevale 2009. There are some more scenery and miscellaneous shots to follow, but if you like pictures of pretty ladies in striking costumes, look here.
This is an unusual book, being almost as much about the psychology of photography as its craft. There are better books about technique, but none I know better lead the reader to analyse his or her successes, failures and way forwards in photography. If you feel stuck or frustrated, unable to improve, or have ever thought "I can’t photograph anything here" then this may be just the book for you.
By a weird co-incidence, I watched "Ocean’s 13" the night before this book found its way to the top of my reading pile. Levien also wrote the screenplay for that film, which I enjoyed enormously, and I was looking forwards to a similar mix of complex plot and light touch dialogue in the book, but sadly I was to be disappointed.
Basically this is a book about a grim and serious subject – the kidnapping of children by organised peadophiles – and as a result it demands a rather grim and serious treatment. At the end there is hope for the boy’s parents and the detective, but therwise this is an unleavened slog which does not make you feel good about the world.
That said, the book is quite well written, and held my attention with its steady pace and well-drawn characters. I expect that readers who prefer their crime novels straight, rather than with Hiaasen-like comic twists, will enjoy it more than I did.
I feel compelled to write this post to highlight a stupid law which rather than constraining terrorists hands them victory.
In July 2008 my wife and I attended the Northampton Balloon Festival. An enjoyable time was had by all, notwithstanding a complete absence of balloons, occasioned by the British weather.
One of the highlights was a successful attempt on the world record for the greatest number of performers singing “Y.M.C.A”! This shot captures the scene:
OK, it’s not “Afghan Girl” or “Migrant Mother”, but I liked it, capturing a British Bobby policing his community exactly as required.
This photograph is legal. Had I taken it after February 16th 2009 I would have committed a crime. The stupidity of that law hands victory to the terrorists.
Andrew
Apologies for the state of the website over the last week – a problem with the hosting server. I seem to have worked around it for now, so thanks for your patience and those who alerted me to the problem.
My photography zone has been updated with images from my trip to Maine, Vermont and New York last autumn, and from the dramatic Winter weather in the UK. Photos from my trip to the Venice carnivale should start to follow shortly.
If you’re planning a tour of the American Southwest these brilliant books are simply the best possible guide to what to photograph, and how. In three volumes Martres guides you to all the photographic highlights of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. At the well known tourist spots he tells you what and when to shoot for best results, but he’s also not afraid to take you off the beaten path to some less frequently visited scenic gems.
I’ve just completed a photographic holiday following roughly the traditional “grand circle” route, and I couldn’t have got some of my most successful shots without these books.
I don’t often review films, but I think someone has to cut through the sycophantic hype and say it: Quantum of Solace is c**p.
This isn’t a Bond film, it’s like a bad entry in the Bourne series. Where is the elegance, the charm we should expect of Bond? Bond films have always traditionally leavened the action with humour and beauty. Both were spectacularly missing from this episode.
If you’re lucky enough to own either a waterproof camera, or a waterproof housing for your digital camera, you’ll have experienced the problem of trying to correct for the extreme blue cast of shots taken underwater.
The problem is that there’s little reliable advice on how to correct this. There are a few articles on the web, but I haven’t found any to provide a reliable and repeatable process which can be applied to “casual” underwater photography.
After a fair amount of research and experimentation, here’s my analysis of the options available, and a suggested technique which I have developed and which I haven’t seen documented anywhere else.
I’ve now created a separate category for photography-related blog posts, so if you’re interested you can track these separately
I’ve just spent two days at the 2008 Enterprise Architecture Conference in London. It was a very high quality event, with a range of speakers covering topics from pragmatic analysis techniques to how to manage knowledge through the life of NASA’s Mars programme, more than any single working lifetime.
Overall there was much less focus on technology (read SOA and modelling tools) this year, and a vigorous and renewed focus on business alignment and business architecture, which, if we can deliver, potentially places architecture where it should be, as the business’s agent.
But there’s a problem. Good business analysis is fundamental to this, yet several delegates bemoaned the current lack of good business analysts. User organisations often struggle to articulate and abstract their needs, and this feeds into all downstream processes. Modelled requirements are an increasing rarity, poorly substituted by imprecise verbal statements in Word or PowerPoint.
The problem is, of course, not unique to analysts, and may have common cause with the equal lack of architects. Senior architects and analysts both tend to have several big birthdays under the belt, and many learned their trade as developers, gaining both practical method skills and the experience of turning ideas into working code. (The majority of exceptions have other “making it work” experience, such as building networks or running data centres.)
But in the current world of ERP packages and large-scale outsourcing, many organisations no longer build anything themselves. The live classroom has been thrown away.
I have worked with a number of good, keen young analysts, but most work for large supplier companies who still have both well-funded training programmes and the breadth of work to build experience and a broad skill set. These guys and girls can do a good job, but at the risk of higher costs and potential conflicts of interest.
We already know that this may reduce organisations’ ability to ensure the right solution to their needs, or assure its quality. Recent observations suggest that organisations who forgoe getting their hands dirty in IT will also suffer an increasing difficulty in creating a clear, concise and structured statement of those needs themselves.
This is a cracking thriller, which will draw you in quickly and keep you turning the pages through to the final resolution. At its heart, it’s an "innocent accused of great wrongdoing on the run" tale, reminiscent of The 39 Steps, but set solidly in the noughties against the background of international high finance. This background is what makes it so intriguing, as the author intelligently and clearly explains how we have created markets in which a few men, motivated mainly by greed, can harm currencies, whole economies, or even conceivably the whole banking system itself.
List
Abstract
One+Abstract
Email me
Others
Thoughts on the World (Main Feed)
Main feed (direct XML)