Staying the Course #7

Well THAT didn't work out...

Staying the Course #6

So much for the party... 

Staying the Course #5

NOISE.

Yeah, this place is way louder and kicking than where I've been this evening. 90's music dude!

Anyway this pub is the last before I head to the party... where I've been told the music is gooooood ;) 

EDIT 1: By the way, beautiful bar staff in this place :)

EDIT2: It's Halloween night so fancy dress costums are everywhere... I was served by Heidi, when she went off to sort out my order, had to tell Super Girl that I was being served, but damn! Did I love both of them!!

Staying the Course #4

Next pub.

Now this place, I have spent many an enyoyable time :)

I was also turned away recently by the bouncers due to, I guess, looking too pissed.

Either way, this pub has a special place in my heart as we have all gotten drunk and boogied to the best 80's and 90's music has to offer :)

Unfortunately this place simply can't draw the crowds like it used to, I remember when the dancefloor was so packed you had to plan ahead in order to go for a piss (the toilet was, well, hard to get to) now I can just get up and moonwalk there.

EDIT 1: I went for a piss but didn't Moonwalk there, Health & Safety stopped me.

EDIT: 2 lol, evan after they've played 'Thriller' there is still Horse Racing being shown on at least two TV's in this place... there, right there, is a First World problem folks!

Staying the Course #3

Next pub.

This one is slightly rowdier due to a heady mixture of it being an Irish pub and full of drunken RWC fans, Kiwis or Aussies notwithstanding!

This is a pub that I've boogied in regularly. They play some cracking music.

EDIT: Having said that, I think I've criticised the resident DJ here before about playing too much crappy Reggae stuff, he's just come in and seen me...

EDIT2: Oh yes, and I think this is the place where I caught my cold too!

EDIT3: No-one, touches my pint

EDIT4: Uh-ho, lights have been turned down, music a little louder :)

EDIT5: Better finish my pint and move on, a group of lads have come in and taken the table near me... they are all a lttle too 'refreshed' for my liking... in other words, they'll want the table I'm sat at, which will involve some hitherto conversation that I can't be bothered to engage in.

Staying the Course #2

Okay, so I've now moved to another pub. I'm on my own (everyone else has gone their various ways, including my brother who has gone to the party) and I need to kill a few hours then get a taxi to the party venue...

The pub I'm in is one I've been in many times before and one that I've blogged about before. To recap, it's the one where I feared for my life when watching England draw a group game that we really should have won... and because of that it raised the ire of a crowd that were too young and way-too-drunk!

Tonight it's quite chilled, probably wouldn't be if England had had been in the RWC final, lost or otherwise.

The thing about this place that intruiges me is that damned huge glitterball hanging from the ceiling above me, I've never had the chance to strutt my stuff here because we always go elsewhere to boogy... ah well, maybe some other time.

Staying the Course #1

Right, I've been invited to a birthday party, however, I need to kill time.

You see, it's a mate of my brother's but not one of his ex-school/uni/neighbourhood mates, no, this one was spawned from a mutual family/kids connection, i.e. they met at the hospital when their wives were in labour and now they've got at least one kid the same age so they socialise a lot due to that.

Now, I reluctantly came out to the pub today to join various family members (including my brother) in watching the RWC final (hence my last post), and my bro' tells me he's off to that party after the game.

I'm invited, but only later on, I presume that's after all the booked-meal-consumed/kids-taken-home stuff.

That leaves a large group of possibly very drunk fourtysomethings.

So order to stay the course I need to do a very strategic pub crawl...

RWC 2015

We've been shown a lesson in top quality Rugby today.

Congratulations New Zealand, commiserations Australia.

You have both shown the world how to play Rugby.

Back off holiday

Ahh man, I get back home from a cracking week in North Cornwall and go for a night out in my beloved home town.

Said town has a brand spanking new Walkabout Pub which has been converted from a rather pretentious wine bar... problem is, I still think some of the nobs from the previous place are still coming here... it's going to take a fair few Rugby games shown here to weed them out...

Holiday... erm, NO photography

I should have been following on from my previous posts and added some shots of the walks I did today however the vews, whilst spectacular in the usual Cornish style, didn't merit it when compared to the other pictures...

We walked around Tintagel Castle today, alleged birthplace of King Arthur. I say alleged because the information plaques posted around the place went to great pains to explain it as such. Despite that, clearly, someone important in English history resided there so it was worth the visit.

One thing to note, the stairs leading up to the castle are bloody steep and very tiring!

This is my last full day here on the North Cornish coast and I have to say that I have enjoyed it thoroughly. I must mention the Port William pub/hotel, it's very good with clean, comfortable rooms and very friendly, professional staff... the food is awesome too. A massive thumbs-up to St Austell brewerys from me :)

Back home to the Midlands tomorrow to plug myself back into the ratrace.

Holiday Photography #101

Not much going on during our morning walk so no interesting pics from that trip, however our afternoon walk took us to Boscastle, scene of the infamous floods of 2004. It's all been rebuilt since then and they've done an amazing job considering the carnage.

View down to Boscastle, the harbour is in the foreground

I took a walk up to the headland that's in front of the harbour entrance, it was a breathtaking view:

Late afternoon shot from Boscastle

We then got back to Trebarwith Strand where I was able to get some pretty decent sunset pics, this is one of them:

I had to stand on some slippery rocks with the sea sloshing around me in order to get this shot... some of the things we do for amateur photography!

Holiday Photography #101 - Macro Mode Montage

I've put together all the plant life I've taken in macro mode so far this holiday:

I love macro mode, with a decent camera you can really get some amazing detail, just shows how incredible nature's design really is.

Holiday Photography #101

Visited the Eden Project today and walked around their two Biomes - Mediterranean and Rain Forest. Seeing the word 'Biome' couldn't stop me thinking about Minecraft!

The Rain Forest Biome was the more interesting of the two in my opinion:

Some bloody big plants

Roul Roul Partridges

There was one hell of a diverse range of plant species ranged throughout the place and the carefully climate controlled environment had me sweating cobs within 10 minutes. It didn't have as much wildlife as one would expect for a rain forest-type environment but from what I could glean out of one of the workers there they only bring in the minimum amount needed in order to maintain the eco-system. For instance they didn't have any fish in the water because of the complexity of looking after fish and they don't really add anything positive. They did, however, have quite a few Roul Roul Partridges about, who didn't seem bothered by all the humans and quite happily wandered about pecking around for food.

There was a huge water fall at one end of the dome, which required a bit of a trek upwards to get to, it was worth it though:

Taken with a fast shutter speed

I couldn't stop myself messing around with the shutter speeds again :)

Taken with a slower shutter speed

The other Biome was considerably dryer and smaller, and had some interesting plants and birds:

Mediterranean Palm Tree

...and this:

A Common Chaffinch, amongst others...

It had other plant and wildlife, mostly birds, including Blackbirds and Robins, all that didn't seem to be too bothered by humans. They had quite a large exhibit of grapes growing, kind of made me wonder if they had enough to produce their own wine.

All in all it was a fantastic place to visit, well worth it... and their Cottage Pie was, to coin a Wayne's World phrase: 'Excellent!'

Yeah, well I won't be buying THAT game ever...

The latest game via Steam Greenlight, called One Life, locks you out of the game when you die in it, so you won't be able to play it again.

So I hand over £10, play it, die in-game at some point and I'm not able to reload it? What a completely, utterly stupid concept for a computer game, I may aswell send just send the devs a tenner and tell them to go do something useful with it, like spend it down the pub!

This is taking reality in gaming too far... there's a fine line between reality and playability, striking that perfect balance takes careful planning. This looks like it was decided on a night out whilst pissed-up and while I'm not averse to funny pissed-up conversations where, occasionally, some good ideas come up, this one deprives people of their hard-earned cash.

I'll be there'll be plenty of Steam refunds going on with that game.

Holiday Photography #101

Visited Bude and walked around the marshy nature reserve there... I was hoping to get some pics of Water Rails but unfortunately there didn't seem to be any around. Typical really, the rare birds never show up when you want them.

There were a few Herons around though, managed to get this one just as it was taking off:

...aaand we have lift off!

Holiday Photography #101

Here's another pic I took and this time I've played around with the Cutout filter in Photoshop:

Kinda looks like the cell shading effect used in games like Borderlands or Crackdown 2.

Holiday Photography #101

Here's another example of playing around with a slower shutter speed, it's tricky to get the right settings because you have to control the amount of light entering the camera, too much and the picture will appear too 'bleached' and with a slower shutter speed too much light is always the problem.

ISO, aperture and F-Stop settings all come into play in order to get an acceptable picture:

Water is a great medium for messing with slower shutter speeds... you need a steady hand though, I got lucky with this one although there is still some blur, if I'd had my tripod with me it would have been much better.

Here's another example:

Again, anything that is not water is slightly blurred despite my best efforts at keeping the camera steady, glad I'm not a heavy smoker otherwise it would have been a lot worse!

Holiday Photography #101 - St Nectan's Glen

Visited St Nectan's Glen today, what a place, steeped in history and religious significance it has a waterfall that simply takes the breath away...

Obviously I used it as an exercise to play with my camera's settings :)

Here is the waterfall in it's entirety, with a standard 'scenery' setting:

Now, here's a closeup of the lower part of the waterfall Photoshopped out of two with different shutter speeds:

The right-hand side of the pic is the one with the slower shutter speed and it's bloody difficult to keep the camera still when you're standing in a foot of water, hence the sightly blurry rocks and moss! If I'd had my tripod with me it would have been much better but I couldn't be bothered to carry it around. The left hand side is using the camera's sport mode which uses a very, very fast shutter speed.

You're supposed to come away from St Nectan's Glen with an invigorated spirit and a renewed sense of optimism and love... I'd like to think that everyone else who was there felt that.

Photoshop Exposure Filter

It's amazing how much a picture can change with just a small amount of tweaking in Photoshop's Exposure filter, take this picture I took:

No filter correction of any kind

Now look at it with the Exposure values added:

Filter values added

Even though the background loses some detail and becomes slightly 'posturised' the whole picture is brighter with more 'depth' and increased emphasis on foreground objects. So sometimes it's worth fiddling with the exposure control to see if you can get more out of your pictures.

Holiday Photography #101

Took pics of some more Cornish  plant life yesterday, I must admit that I'm not much of a botanist and only took these because, as a designer, I found the colour contrasts intriguing, haven't a clue as to the names:

Holiday Photography #101

Whilst out on our coastal walk today I caught a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision, tracked it and spotted a what I thought was a bird of prey perched on a tower of rock below me... even with my telephoto lens attached I had a hard time getting a decent resolution shot:

At the time we thought it was a Goshawk but looking at the picture the colouration is not quite right... after a bit of googling it's a Kestrel :)

Holiday Photography #101

Arrived on the North Cornwall coast and the discovered that the beach next to our hotel is simply superb... I could spend the entire week combing every inch of it... got some good photos too.

Spotted this little critter in a cave rockpool

Away from the beach I did my usual 'get a closeup of some plants':

...and I simply had to get a shot of this Alpaca:

A much needed holiday...

Finally off on a week's break to sunny Cornwall... much needed after all the bullshit of this year so far and I was getting punch drunk and snappy at work because of it.

We stopped off in Barnstaple for an overnight stay and had a nice a nice meal in an Italian restaurant called Giovanni's, I had a chicken risotto which was very nice.

Haven't seen much of the town itself but it's interesting to note that the taxi driver who took us back to the hotel told us that Barnstaple is a dying town with little to no new commercial opportunities and pubs closing left, right and centre due to, and this is his opinion: "all the people living here who are on benefits aren't spending their money in the pubs due to the Government's austerity cutbacks, they're probably getting their booze from the cheaper supermarkets and staying in...". It's crap even during the tourist season even though Barnstaple is right in the heart of Devon's major tourism triangle of Ilfracombe and Croyde on the coast.

Still, the Wetherspoon pub there looked pretty busy to me, as was Giovanni's, which I recommend to anyone who is visiting.

We're off down the Devon coast and into Cornwall today for a week's worth of beach combing, walks and wildlife photography where I will continue my quest for the 'ultimate snap' :)

The MET switches tactics

Apparently the Met have stopped casing the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Nice bluff... the moment Julian Assange steps outside to finally go get a fresh pair of pants they'll pounce, arrest him then wonder why the hell they didn't think of this £12 million quid earlier...

2001: A Space Odyssey

Just watched it, Blu Ray version.

I think that monolith was just a missed component piece of some furniture from a highly advanced alien version of Ikea. I bet the owner was pissed to discover it was buried under 40ft of dust on a dead moon...

...and what is it with that foetus at the end? I've never really understood that.

5p Bag Tax

When our Government announced that all shops in the UK will be charging 5p for plastic bags from the 1st October I thought at the time "No worries, I use my own for when I go grocery shopping..."

But the reality of it hit me when I went into my local town to get some non-grocery items... without a bag.

At first the concept of paying for plastic bag didn't even come into my mind as I strolled nonchalantly towards the shops, I mean, we're all so used to just being given a bag to hold our purchases... so it hit me in Boots as I walked toward the counter with a deodorant stick in my hand, I paid for it and quickly declined a bag as I thought "Ah well, it's small enough to fit in my pocket."

Then I went to HMV, and, browsing through the Blu Ray section, decided to treat myself to their offer of 3 Blu Rays for £20. At the counter as I handed over £20 the girl asked me if I needed a bag, I indicated that I would and she, rather apologetically stated that "They cost 5p" and "Would I like a small or large bag?"... so I found myself fishing in my pocket for 5p and guess what? I didn't have a 5p coin and had to hand over a £1 coin, to which she then handed over 95p's worth of change to weight my pocket down! Now, across the country, THAT is situation most people will find themselves in come Christmas time!

Clearly it will promote cashless payment methods even more now (I chose to use cash because I happened to have it in my pocket). That, or people will hoard 5-pence pieces.

Next, Poundland as I needed some spray bleach, conveniently I'd chosen a large HMV bag so I was able to use that when I paid for my items but what if I'd gone straight there without a bag? I'd have come out with my purchases and 95p in my pocket and that is simply a damned bizarre thing to have coming out of a shop like Poundland!

Finally I decided to get some lunch from Gregg's and, yet again, into the HMV bag went the sausage rolls. "I'm getting used to this." I thought. When I emerged from the shop I looked around and noticed that loads of people carried re-usable bags, "I guess they're all adjusting too!" I said to myself.

So I went home with one bag instead of three, there's environmental changes for the good happening right there folks!

It's not a major inconvenience as far as I see it, certainly not as much as our tabloid press has been banging on about it but it does require me to 're-adjust' my routine a bit. I've been told that some people haven't taken to it at all and staff have had items literally thrown back at them! That's not on at all, if you can't afford 5p for a plastic bag then you shouldn't be out shopping at all. Clearly it's a law aimed at improving the environment and that can only be a good thing.

I think this is as important as the law that banned smoking in pubs, that totally changed our lifestyles for the good and this will too.

Photography #101

I saw this wheeling around my place a few weeks ago so I rushed upstairs, grabbed my camera and took this, not many buzzards 'round this here parts...

FFS

Well that's us out of the RWC...

Well played Australia

Whoa!

Fuck me, stuck in a little posh style oasis.... I shit. You. Not, this place is majoraly posh compared to the usual pub related stuff I am used to ... bloody expensive beer though....

Out for a few sherberts :)

After one hell of a, well, hellish week I am out tonight to meet up with some old buddies of mine. To forget about work, to chill, kick back, sink a ton of beer and catch up on all the gossip.

I was up at 3.30am this morning, couldn't sleep, read for an hour, headed to work and was in by 6.30am, grafted all day, got super stressed and now I am tired, nerves are shredded, running on hopes and prayers and am hoping this evening will wash it all away... 

and I'll probably sleep until noon tomorrow!