So, what have I been up to since my last outing on this ‘blog thingy whatsit doodah?

Well, I spent 4 days on a course in Cambridge studying the Exim mail transfer program, being stuffed with good food by Robinson College and having a good time with similarly geeky sysadmins from UKC and Lancs, many of which were involved with the old Hensa/lancs.pdsoft archives.

Last week I was just trying to keep awake due to not sleeping well once the humidity went through the roof. Oh, and at work I was getting some machines ready so that one of our researchers could move up to Leeds.

This weekend was pretty well a wash out due to sinusitis which started on Friday evening. I spent most of yesterday afternoon sleeping with the telly watching the Grand Prix for me.

So, what are my plans for this week?

Well, other than continuing to prepare for the trip to Tromso (such as sorting out the medical travel card thingy and ordering a GPS unit), it’s work, work, work. The techical person from Q Associates is coming in to commission the expansion of our cluster. The additional 24 dual dual-core Sun galaxy x86_64 machines will more than double the processing power.

For the last week I’ve been down in Cornwall for a week’s holiday and it’s flown by.

Anyway, here are some edited highlights in pictures…
largish pictures

A mutual friend has just sent this e-mail out to the junk-not list..

Dear all, 

Please keep your fingers crossed for Alec Muffett, who has come off his
motorbike in France.  

The fireman said that he will probably live, but we know no more than that
currently.  

Mandy (his sister) and her husband Paul are Eurostar-ing out there tomorrow.

We will keep you posted when we hear more.

Graham and Rachel

I’m hoping that it sounds far worse than it really is.

Fingers (and everything else) crossed…

After getting not much sleep the night before last ‘cos the wind dropped out and it was too hot, last night was full of spectacular thunder and lightning for much of the night (continuously).

Having taken my iBook up to my bedroom I monitored the storms on the Met Office rain radar as they were being generated over the Oxford region and then wandered south-west. Oxford was at the boundery of a windy shear zone where the moist air from the continent, moving south-west, was hitting an atlantic stream which was moving north-east. I just wish it had met somewhere else.

Still, the ~12 hours of torential rain should have helped keep my garden plants alive. My apple tree is losing its leaves and a number of perenial plants are dying off.

No I have to go to work on reserve power. I think I must have ab IQ of about one and a half at the moment… just don’t let me anywhere near a root shell, that’s all I can say.

So, it’s coming to the end of another weekend.

This last week has been chocked full of conferences, mostly not ones I’m attending in any other capacity other than techical support. The first two days were the graduate mini-conference where 1st and 2nd year postgrads gave talks on thier research so far. (I got free lunch). Wednesday was a day off from conferences. Thursday was the IT Support Staff Conference, which I attended as an attendee.. and another free lunch (stuffed guinee foul with fennel stuffing, vegiatbles and salad followed by summer pudding and cream). Friday morning was the 4th year undergraduates’ turn for a conference, talking about their projects. It’s surprising how exhausting listening to talks is!

Anyway, add to this socialising on Thursday evening and the annual finalists’ party on Friday night and I was shattered by the time the weekend came around.

Still, my new big zoom lens arrived on Thursday, after ordering it Tuesday evening. I didn’t get to play with it at all until Friday lunchtime and it was only yesterday that I really had a good change to try it out, even if it was restricted to around my house.

Sample images

Today my new Nikon 80-400mm VR lens arrived in a big box.. within this box was a slightly smaller box (the actual Nikon box).. within this box was a case.. within this case was the lens. Although the lens is quite chunky, it’s only about a quarter of the volume of the outer box. What a waste of space.

Anyway, I’ve finally managed to fix the set-up on my PC after a failed install of Nikon Capture stopped all the Nikon applications working properly and the NEF (raw) picture format convertor from working at all.

Having done this, I downloaded the test images I took with the Sigma 28-300mm lens. Well, the lens is just about good enough to be usable on the 6 megapixel D70, but the D200 just shows up the poor image quality of the lens too much.

Tomorrow I have a photo session to do at the Departmental undergraduate finallists’ party. This will mean that I’ll have my cameras with me and I can check out the new lens at lunchtime. It’ll be interesting to see how the VR (vibration reduction) system works.

Ten years ago today I picked up the keys to my house.

It doesn’t seem like 10 years. So many things haven’t changed in that time but thinking back many things have. Such is life… the Universe evolves.

This afternoon I had a very enjoyable shop in Sainsbury’s. It was almost empty, it was easy to get a small trolly and the queues for the check-outs were short.

I think it was something to do with a group of strange men kicking an inflated bladder around a field on the continent, but I can’t be sure.

Well, after discovering that me repaired Sigma lens was defective I phoned up the company on Monday and they asked that I send the lens back and that they’d replace it with a copy of their latest version (which seems only different in that it has a DG designation painted upon it). So, off it went on Tuesday.

Yesterday I got a letter saything that they’d received my lens and that they’d send out the replacement when new stocks arrived. I expected that I’d have to wait a couple of weeks, but no. To my surprise a parcel arrived this morning.

Well, I do hope that this lens is actually usable. I’ll have to try it out over the weekend. Seeing that the weather looks fair, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem, other than having to do all those annoying household things such as mow the jungle and wash the kitchen floor.

Well, fingers crossed anyway. Whatever happens I don’t think I’ll bother sending the lens back if it is defective. I’ll just take the loss and put it down to a bad buy. At least I did get a few reasonable shots out of the purchase which look O.K. when printed out on A4 and put on the wall.