Vindicated

The last few days have been days of vindication for me.


Not smugness, you understand, just a confidence building feeling that I knew how things were and how they would turn out.



My sad duty, yesterday, was to attend a funeral for a distant relative. A lady who had lived a longish and full life so more a celebration of life than comiseration over a life cut short.
Nevertheless a difficult venue for me so I distracted myself other thoughts on my journey to the service.
I predicted that "The Lord's My Shepherd" to the tune "Crimmond" and "Abide With Me" would be racing certainties for the hymns.

The other day, in my blog, I guessed that TD would have no opinion about my decision to try B&W film photography. Over a companionable coffee today he admits he's seen my blog and that he did, indeed, have no opinion.

Mentally I also predicted that he'd roll his eyes at my decision to buy a 28mm prime lens...

A week or so ago a few people thought I might be twitchy about sharing my house with two friends. I was quietly confident that it wouldn't take more than a couple of days for us to find out feet around each other.

Finally, this evening we introduced B to C. B's not at all sure he wants to meet someone new. He's not had a good day and he's tired and feeling a bit under the weather. I reassure him that he'll like C.

In all these cases I have been correct in my assessment.

These days I often lose confidence in instincts that have generally served me so well. When that happens I run around fretting and picking at things that can be safely left alone.

So these last few days have given me quite the confidence boost.

Hopefully enough for me to relax and enjoy the next few days before I start annoying people with my incessant need to unpick the fabric of the universe.


.

I should be committed

Well. That's it.

I've signed up.

I've committed to doing a Solo Photo Book Month project (SoFoBoMo).



What: Go look at the website and see

Why: A friend pointed me in its direction a few weeks back. I've been wanting something to give me a bit of photographic direction and a time-controlled project. No financial gain. Not a competition. Just something to do. Why not, indeed.

It's part of my quest to make me look at stuff differently.

These days I can turn out a technically competent photograph and when I don't I usually know what I'd do to fix the tecchnical problems.

But..and it's the big but...I still, relatively infrequently turn out a photograph that makes me think "that's an interesting way to look at that".

Only this evening a friend sent me an email with some suggested crops of pictures I've posted. As I look at his crops I marvel at how he sees my pictures so very differently to me.

He doesn't say "my crops are better than yours" he offers them as a suggestion for what he's seeing.

I could jsut keep taking pictures (and I will) and put some up for stock, others up in Flickr but a focus (pun intended) for my eyes will be a good thing for me.

So - thank you CJ for the suggestion and thank you TD for continuing to say "what about this".

...come on DrP...decide on your project and let's go.


.

Panic attack

Looks like my broadband connection is playing up.

It's been doing it for a couple of days now.

Coincidentally with the temporary lodgers and their computers moving in.

Three of us in one house, not being able to surf.

Panic broke out for the two of us who don't really understand this technology. The other of our number is, thankfully, a network engineer and so displaced his panic by diagnoosing the problem.


Fortunately, this house was long ago "wired": "the boy" having been no slouch in the geek department, himself.

In the electricity meter cupboard there was already a switch and patching sockets. In my workroom, there's a wireless router that takes the internet to the rest of the house by means of said switch.

Sadly, after the network engineer moved in, it soon became clear that the switch was rather beyond EoL (end of life)...it having failed.

So new switch bought, duly installed by network engineer; a couple of other minor niggles fixed and all should have been well. Unfortunately, around about this time the internet connection started playing up and the two non techies in the house started to complain.

Network engineer proceeded to do all manner of signal testing, analysis, diagnosis and more testing. It bothered him that the problem was intermittant and seemed to coincide with his arrival.

Nevertheless the final diagnosis was that it was a problem with the broadband provider.

Today all seemed well, initially but now once again the connection is playing up.

Now there's just me in the house.

As a last ditch proof I have eliminated the whole of the household LAN and connected directly to the cable modem.

Verdict? Well - initially had awful trouble making a connection...but just at the moment it's OK. I think...I think that the network engineer's diagnosis is correct...that it's an intermittant failure in the broadband line.

But how pathetic is this? I'm panicking that I'm losing my connection to the outside world. There are some people I only keep in contact with via the internet and I'm worried I'll lose contact. I'm sitting here, typing and already starting to feel potentially isolated.

It surprises me greatly just how reliant I've become on the connection. A while ago a friend had a similar broadband connectivity failure and they used the expression "frantic" to describe their discomfiture. At the time I thought that was a gross overreaction.

Now I'm not so sure.

I do hope this is fixed soon...

...please...


.

Vegetables as a metaphor for life?

I have some friends coming to stay with me for a while whilst they have some home improvements done.

I am the most appalling housekeeper, ever. Never been good at it...and I'm getting worse.

Cooking will be a communal event, in all likelihood, so I feel the need to bring my kitchen up to a bare minimum standard, despite my friends' protestations that I shouldn't go to any trouble.

This morning's work has been to clear out a cupboard and my fridge.


The cupboard had flour with a BBE 2005 date and sugar that dates back to the early cretaceous. You're getting the picture?

My fridge is full of vegetables and I have to wonder why I have so many in there.

They had such potential..either as a complete meal or as an occasional side dish. Nevertheless, I've allowed them to go beyond the point of no return.

Perhaps I expected too much of them. It certainly isn't their fault.

Still, there are some that are beyond saving so a small pile of rank veg were consigned to the compost heap. It's so sad, it's almost criminal.

There are some veg that are on the periphery of rankness...I don't think they're beyond saving but I think I'll have to modify my expectation for them. I hope all is not lost.

So - is this a a metaphor for my life?

Possibly...but more likely it's just a damning indictment of how crap I am at housekeeping.

People are Great

I'm shy.



Really, quite cripplingly shy.

It comes from not ever quite fitting in. Not at school, where I liked science over history. I liked classical music over pop music and I played the cello.

Not at work where I was more interested in doing part time study for a degree in computing rather than going out to clubs.

Until recently I'd been in a long term, happy, close relationship with someone who was also shy. We didn't really need anyone else. We had a very small, very select, very special group of close friends. It was good.

That shyness was a real handicap once I was on my own. Fortunately, I've a job that makes me have to "greet people" and it's my job, when they visit my office to make them feel at ease.

I think I'd told myself I didn't like people because other people, on the whole, weren't very nice. I think that was an imperfect remembering of being made to feel the outsider.

Things have improved for me, confidence wise, but I still have the odd relapse to scary intoversion.

Yesterday I was feeling really quite low having started the day listening to the appallingly sad stories of the firestorms in Australia.

I then stumbed over this on TED. So sickened was I watching the first 15 minutes that I sort of missed the point of the last bit a little. I shared it with a friend who feels stuff pretty deeply. It was countered with this. The message was clear - "cheer up - it's not all bad"

Since "the boy" died I've met several people whom I now consider to be pretty good friends. That's in just a little under two years. Add these to the people who were already friends and that's a nice community of people.

Variously they:
Suggest meeting for coffee...just cos
Send a hug by email just because my email to them sounded a little upset
They send links to photographs, to music, to videos or cartoons that I might like or that might make me laugh.
They offer to drive to my house from their just to give me a hug because they know I've just had a little melt down.
They act as "point man" for me when I meet up with someone new. They make sure I'm safe.
They offer to cook me dinner at my house when I'm likely to spend the whole evening doing a catalogue for an exhibition
They cook me meals, invite me to spend Christmas with them.
They have me visit them and take me out sight seeing and taking photographs...they share bits of their hometown that they love.
They share their love of photography, they take me out taking pictures and tell me what they can see.
They teach me about things they love - film photography, history, architecture, stone circles.
They lend me lenses just to see what they're like to use.

It's not a one way street...I do similar things for them.

None of us have to do any of these things. We do it bcause we want to.

The number of good people I've met hugely outweighs the other sort.

But this is what Philip Zimbardo is saying in the bit of the lecture I almost missed. People have a huge capacity for evil if they are put in circumstances that will encourage it...but on the flipside they also have capacity for great good.

In short. People are great...and it's a shame it took me this long to realise it.

On the bright side, if I hadn't taken the first steps, I might still not realise it

Without a Safety Net

Today I branched out a little.

I borrowed a film camera from a friend (Nikon F90x for anyone that cares), put a roll of black and white film in it and put it in my camera bag.


I'm a keen photographer and I like to think of myself as entirely non fundamentalist when it comes to media. Amongst my friends I can count exclusively digital, exclusively film and "a little of what you fancy" photographers. Until today, my "serious" photography has all been digital.

CJ says he likes B&W film because of the range of greys it can represent (in the digital world, we'd call that colour depth...and there is always a finite number of levels. In the analogue world that gradation is likely to be as near as dammit continuous and that's a good thing). It was following a conversation with CJ that got me thinking about my disregard for film.

DrP likes film because it's fun to play with. He switches between a high quality digital SLR, a film SLR, and a few less fancy cameras. He'll play with slide film and process it like print film just to see the weird colours happen (aka XPro). He encourages me in my experimentation.

DM raises a metaphorical eyebrow indicating he's not sure why I'm doing it since I've got a perfectly nice, high quality digital SLR. On my Flickrstream he indicates that he takes a dim view of playing with weird film processing stuff like XPro.

DrC shrugs non-commitally and indicates it's neither a good nor a bad thing but a matter of choice. Then pinches his dad's old film SLR and plots to run a couple of films through it just to see. He also tips up at the pub today with a handful of B&W film for me that he'd been given a while back.

TD hasn't expressed an opinion...well not yet, anyway. If he does, I predict it'll be "I can't be arsed with all that but, whatever". If he stumbles over an internet article that's relevant he'll likely send it because that's just the sort of thing he does.

MMcC positively encourages the experimentation and urges me to think about medium format if I really want to fall love with film.

These are all the people whose photographic opinions I trust most...but they don't concur. So what do I think?...ultimately, that's what really matters after all.

It scares the hell out of me. There's no way for me to check that I've got the exposure right immediately so I have to pay real attention to the settings and then work out, in my head, whether that's the exposure I expect. No more sloppy point, shoot and check the shot and then fiddle with settings.

Each shot I take will cost real money to get processed...so suddenly, there's a good reason not to approach this in my normal scattergun fashion.

Now today I took my D300 out with me and used the metering on there to double check what I was doing with the film camera. So I had a little safety net but I was still anxious every time I took a film picture.

So with all this stress, did I enjoy the experience?

Hell yeah. I slowed down. I used my technical knowledge to ratify my approach - not something I normally need to do all that much. I took about half the pictures I normally would, even though I was carrying two cameras and duplicating shots for testing purposes.

In the near future I'll take the film camera out on its own from time to time.

Time will tell whether the film enjoyed the experience...hopefully not too much time because I'm now excited to see the results.

Watch this space

Middle Class Apologist

I seem to spend a lot of my time being apologetic - not always out loud but apologising nonetheless.





I apologise for being able to work part time, whilst some of my friends and family work full time for only a slightly bigger salary than mine. Other friends have jobs they hate, or no job at all at the moment.

I apologise for not having a mortgage to pay.

I apologise for living in a nice house in a nice area of the city.

I apologise for shopping in Waitrose, having an organic veg box delivered and choosing Farrow and Ball paint over Dulux.

I apologise that I buy green coffee beans and roast them myself.

I apologise for not having children to worry about.

I apologise for having an elderly mother who doesn't need my daily attention.

I apologise for worrying about people who may or may not care whether I worry about them or not. These people may or may not care that much about me.

I apologise that all I do for my Big Issue seller is to buy a Big Issue when I feel there should be more.

I apologise that I don't drive.

My parents were very poor when they were growing up and when I was growing up. I have a strongly working class background.

For twenty-odd years two of us had a combination of good luck and hard work. Then stuff happened.

The upshot of all this is my current set of circumstances.

I like working part-time, shopping at Waitrose, roasting coffee, caring about people, not driving and I like my house.

I don't thnk this makes me a better or worse person than anyone else I know.

I can't deny that I'm irredeemably middle class (whatever that really means), but in my mind it's of no importance.

So why the hell do I keep apologising...and is anyone really asking me to?

Wittering on

Once upon a time letters and personal visiting would have been the sole ways that people would employ to keep in touch. Things were more formal I guess.

Today I was tied to the house because of the dratted snow.

VPN technology gave me a working environment identical to my desktop at work. I used email and text messaging to exchange information with colleagues.

I researched flights, hotels and train travel for a forthcoming business trip on the Internet.

I experienced Stephen Fry getting up, packing for a trip, making purchases in the airport and getting told off for still having his phone on when he was supposed to be boarding.

Later on I used Twitter to quickly (in 140 characters) tell people that I was working at home and what sort of day I was having.

A friend in Scotland used it to tell me and his other friends that he was snowed in and was planning a coffee whilst he considered his options.

The guy who sells me green coffee beans made me a Twitter contact and gently shamed me into cleaning my coffee machine.

At lunchtime I took some photographs and this evening I uploaded them to Flickr for other people to see and to make comments about (if they so choose).

I also used the medium of Flickrmail to chat to a fellow photographer about the snow and the fact that he could get out and take some pictures.

All the while, an email conversation between 6 people was kept going in short, pithy sentences, planning an evening out (that a couple of us didn't make). There were a couple of other emails later this evening too.

Tonight a friend pointed me in the direction of some architectural software tutorials that he'd found interesting and thought I might too.

I've exchanged internet-based cartoons with two people.

Tonight I've played Scrabble with two people exchanged some banter on Facebook and had gently mocking text messages from other people who were at the social that I missed.

So - all in all I've been in contact with

My boss; seven other colleagues; about 15 friends; two people from whom I buy things; one "celebrity" and one family member. 27 people in total.

The only person I actually met face to face was the veggie man but I feel as if I've had a day filled with the presence of people...and nicely so.

I've met all the colleagues I dealt with today - but that's not always the case.
Of the friends I mention:
Four I've never met
One I haven't seen for about fifteen years

Each of the media I've used today fitted the circumstances - email, text message, my blog, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook.

It has seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me but it is a world completely unfathomable to my ma (a spritely 82).

I'm typically an early adopter of technological hardware but a slow learner in the online services field. Maybe I should be braver and invite in the next big thing...whatever that is...

On pedantry

Completely random image...








A recent debate with a contact on Flickr who is a teacher of English (amongst other things); a discussion with a colleague today and a caffeine fuelled rant this afternoon has me wondering...

To be pedantic, or not to be pedantic.

Said Flickr contact includes in his photostream pictures of misused apostrophes.

I (and others) join him in his everso genteel raging against the perpetrators of this crime against the language.

Today there was a workplace epistle that used the word "unanimously" where the words "by a majority" should have been. My colleague says she's been waiting for me to read it and make a comment (yep, I'm really that predictable).

Also, I hear the expression "...even more unique..." used on Radio4. I grumble at the radio.

So I ask the guy on Flickr (being a professional an' all...whereas I'm more of a numbers girl) whether, in fact, if the meaning of the message is successfully transmitted does it really matter if the syntax, spelling and grammar don't quite cut the mustard?

His opinion is cautious...yep communication is important but he qualifies it with

"And yet I think there's a beauty to be found in a well-formed sentence, whether it's one of your own or one that you've read"

I've never met this chap but I think I'd like him...for he encapsulates my thoughts in an elegantly turned phrase.

However, I still can't help but wonder whether the arcane rules of spelling and grammar are the equivalent of Latin Masses and Victorian table manners. Are they a way for the elite few to make themselves feel superior to the ignorant masses?

Meanwhile, I'll sit in my elitist, smugness and thoroughly enjoy language well-used in engaging yet approachable writing...even when it's dialogue on the TV like this.

...and Moses saith unto Pharoah...

..."let my people go or there will be plagues...

That would be the plague of excessive news coverage of snow...and....and...errrr, a few inches of snow in the Capital.

So let's see...this snow was forecast nearly a week ago. True enough it's more snow than we've seen for a while but it wasn't exactly on biblical proportions.


Everyone, but everyone, is complaining that the capital ground to a halt with barely a bus, a tube or a train seemingly running.

For me, the amusing thing is to see a country so tuned to the idea of Business Continuity planning in terms of terrorist and avian flu threats get laid low by precipitation...and in a temperate climate too.

Business was badly hit today...I'm guessing there will be a lot of accusations flying around.

London council tax payers will likely rage about the lack of gritting, possibly even the lack of snow ploughs.

Problem is, there's never enough money to pay for everything. So do we buy snow ploughs, more gritters or anti terrorist measures like strategically placed concrete bollards?

That's the job of the Business Continuity planners. They should identify all the risks, weigh the impact and likelihood. Then they should look at costs of measures versus the benefits of the measures (or the cost of not putting that measure in place).

If you objectively measure impact/likelihood of terrorist action similar to that seen in 9/11 and 6-10 inches of snow falling the in the capital you might come up with view that snow ploughs are more important than anti-terrorist measures.

But would you like to be the one justifying that after the event?