Burning McAfee software is very simple – even your mother in law could do it:)
That’s all.
PS are you coming to the Philosopherontap Book1 Launch party on May 8th. Check it out here.
March 24, 2013
March 23, 2013
A day of inactivity
There is a jobslist which has been partially completed. It includes a trip to the tip for which I have little inclination. It is cold outside. The house is warm. I am contemplating a trip to Mansfield to buy a cricket bat, as one does. A boy has been taken to and retrieved from his piano lesson and his hair has now been trimmed to a length he considers respectable. Hundreds of invitations have been sent to the Book 1 Launch Party and some advanced orders have already been taken for the book. A lunchtime bowl of soup has been consumed, laced with hot pepper sauce in recognition of the freezing outside temperatures. It is warm in this room. Life has frozen in time. I am under no pressure.
St. Michaels Mount, Cornwall
I’ve just returned early from an unfortunately rained out holiday to Cornwall.
I had won a camper rental for a week as part of a competition, always nice to win something. Not that it happens often.
Whilst the weather was good, it was glorious, I got the opportunity to visit some of the touristy sites around Penzance and take some great shots.
The one below is definitely the stand out for me, so far anyway. It’s St. Michael’s Mount,just off the coast at penzance.
When the tide is low it exposes a walkway from the beach to the island itself. A place that would have captured my imagination as a boy. And still does to some extent as an adult.
I took five bracketed exposures using a tripod and layered them into an HDR with some minor adjustments. The clouds were just rolling in, loaded with rain. I could not have picked a better time for the shot(s).
March 22, 2013
Book 1 Launch Party – The Abandoned Sandy shoe and Other Chinks in the Curtains of Life
“Philosopherontap Book1 – The Abandoned Sandy Shoe and Other Chinks in the Curtains of Life” is being launched on 8th May at the Morning Star pub in Lincoln.
The event, which includes entertainment from internationally acclaimed jazz pianist Colin Dudman on the piano, is free of charge to attend although you can purchase a ticket which gets you an advanced order for a copy of the book which will be available on the night. You can also optionally make a donation towards the cost of the night. Donations of £10 or more will also receive a print copy of the book.
The book is going to be made available in two formats:
- The eBook will have approximately 220 pages containing 187 pieces and will be available for download from all the main online publishing platforms at a cost of £2.99.
- The print version is printed on demand and will also be available online. This version contains a subset of the eBook content with 44 selected pieces and will have fewer pages but will be ideal for people who still like to have a book in their hand. The cost of this version for delivery on the night will be £8.00 plus a small Eventbrite handling charge.
The Abandoned Sandy Shoe and Other Chinks in the Curtains of Life consists of observations, mundanities and maybe some deeper reflections. Many of the posts come in the form of poems. Many thousands of people write poetry but books containing poetry don’t sell millions of copies. It is also easy to find “poetry websites”. There is a lot of material out there. Having spent some time looking at this material the vast majority of it isn’t to my taste. I’m careful not to say it isn’t any good because one of the things about poetry is that it is often very personal to the author. Often written for the author without consideration of what others think of the writing.
I like to think that Philosopherontap is different. You shouldn’t look at this work as a book of poems. Apart from anything else many of the posts are not poems or do not fit into what classically might be considered poetry. All of the posts do provide the opportunity to stop and think. They are pieces to sit there staring at and not necessarily ones that would benefit from being read out loud to you by me. “Norfolk” for example is too short – ridiculously short some might consider. The “Function Room is Back” however, with more of a narrative to it might be worth listening to.
Some of the posts in this book fit with my philosophy of immediacy. We live in a fast moving internet dominated world where quick fixes are the order of the day for audiences with short attention spans. Some posts are therefore quick brain dumps and of the moment. Others such as “Sad Music” took me days to write. That one was important to get right for reasons you will understand after reading the poem and its accompanying spiel.
All of the posts in the book are available to read free of charge on this website. If you buy the book, however, you get the benefit of additional insights on each post – what the particular piece is about, perhaps what I was doing at the time or other comments. People ordering in advance for collection on the night will receive a signed copy and avoid paying the postage charges.
Order in advance for picking up on the night here or use the form below. eBooks can be ordered from the 8th May onwards. Hope to see you on the 8th:)
Strugglers
The bar at the Strugglers inn in Lincoln – home of the finest pint of Timothy Taylors Landlord you can buy.
March 21, 2013
salamis
Sounds like a version of an Arabic greeting – Middle Eastern language meets Italian food item. Eat and greet.
March 20, 2013
Jeff Brown and his band at the Phoenix Artist Club
Jeff did us proud at the trefor.net xmas bash held in December 2012 at the Phoenix Artist Club. Cool photography by Nick Pickles.
March 19, 2013
Station announcements
I have just invented two new and different ways of making train announcements at railway stations. The ideas came to me when standing around at Kings Cross station waiting for my own train to be announced. Announcements for other trains came and went but not my own. I found myself saying to myself “that’s all well and good but it’s not my train and I am therefore not interested”.
The first idea is that you should only be able to hear the announcements that affect you. I have no idea how to go about implementing this idea but that’s not my problem. I’m the ideas man – someone else goes away and makes it happen.
The second idea is that the accent of the station announcement should reflect the destination of the train and each of the stopping points along the way. This came to me when I noted that “Hull” was pronounced with a decidedly “correct” English accent rather than saying “Ull” as they do in that part of the world.
So a train going from London to Aberdeen via York should have announcements that start in Cockney, flow through a Yorkshire brogue and end up with a strong Scottish lilt.
Och aye!
Pudding
Can’t quite remember now where I took this pic though I could probably work it out from the metadata and a look at my calendar if I was that bothered. It looked good. It tasted good. By golly it was good.
March 18, 2013
March 17, 2013
Queenstown, New Zealand
I travelled to Queenstown back in may 2008. It was also the same time that I started screwing around with stitching panoramic images from multiple exposures.
It wasn’t until recently that I revisited the original raw images and decided to re-stitch them, and the results are much better than they were the first time, I have definitely come a long way with photoshop.
I took the cable car up to the top of the hill and took 55 images, 45 of which make up this stitched image. The mountains in the background are the Remarkables and the town in the middle ground in Queenstown itself. At the bottom right is the camper park that I was staying at.
Queenstown is a beautiful town and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes snow and extreme sports.
The blog has a maximum uploaded file size, so I’ve put a lower-res version of the image here. If you’d like to see the larger one click here. Be warned, it’s a 21MB Jpeg image that will require you to download it.
The river god and the god of the bridge
The river god lives under the old bridge at the narrow stretch of water just after the river comes out of the trees and meanders into the pleasant meadows of the valley below. The river god should not be confused with the god of the bridge who coexists under the bridge but is a different deity. The river god can roam up and down the river but the god of the bridge has to stay in the same spot.
The bridge was built by the villagers many years ago. It was well built of stone and brick and has stood the test of time. If anything its aged and weathered look improves the aesthetics of the bridge which is popular not only for the convenience it provides as a river crossing but as a picturesque addition to the head of the valley. The bridge god is quite content to live under the bridge and is equally happy to share the space with the river god who could live anywhere but likes the feeling of enclosed shelter the bridge provides.
There is no animosity between the two gods who as well as sharing the same space under the bridge also share the same community of worshippers, the descendants of the good folk who built the bridge.
The gods that live under the bridge have a limited set of responsibilities. The god of the bridge is solely responsible for the safe passage of people and animals across the bridge. The god of the river has a wider though similar set of duties. He looks after the wellbeing of the river, the animals and fish that live in and around the river plus to a certain extent the fertility of the meadows either side of the river. This duty to maintain fertility is shared with the rain god and the sun god who are mutually exclusive and do not talk to each other.
The river god is not always a nice guy and has been known to flood the village causing distress to its inhabitants but these occasions are rare and quickly disappear from the communal memory. Most of the time he is a good god.
The villagers have many other gods that they worship. We will from time to time take a look at these other gods so that over a period of years Philosopherontap will become a useful resource for those needing to know about the gods of various places. Although some gods have names the river god and the bridge god are not in their number.
Into the arms of Gonzalo Garcia
Now these are words to light up the imagination. Who is Gonzalo Garcia and who or what went into his arms?
He sounds like the hero of Mexican romantic novel. Picture him in his high-waisted jacket, tight fitting trousers and wide sombrero pulling his horse up below the window of the object of his affections; the beautiful Rosita, her dark hair falling in ringlets over a heaving bosom, denied to him by a strict and disapproving curmudgeon of a father. She climbs down a rope of knotted bed sheets and into his arms, riding off on the back of his horse, the outline of a tall cactus plant silhouetted against the full desert moon.
Nope, that’s not our Gonzalo. I know but I’m not going to tell you…