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just so you know, i'm going to attempt to upgrade the blog today, so apologies if things go wrong. i'll let you know when things should be done. expert weird behaviour in the interim !
update: things are taking much longer than i expected !
Our friend Ian put on a gig on Tuesday night. i was in charge of live sound, and audio and video archiving. unfortunately i stuffed up on the audio archiving (i can give you a load of excuses if you want), but i did manage to get some good headshots of the band.
i've been experimenting a bit more with people shots, so this was an ideal time to try a few different things. these have had quite a lot of post-processing.
i've created a little Dolly Varden page with Lightroom here if you want to see them bigger
here's an action shot of the band in motion. they were very excellent by the way.
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another day another thames path walk
more geocaching (three passed, three found)
more didcot power station
plenty more walking
even more didcot power station
more gorgeous scenery (this one spotted by kezia who asked me to take the photo
more pollution (and cheap boating gloves)
more lovely bridges
and more upmarket pill boxes
more pooh stick bridges (in fact this is home to an annual pooh stick competition which happens every year)
and plenty of lovely churches (although this didn't have any decent hassocks)
back to work today. humph.
it's half term week so i've taken two days off work so we can crack on with the thames path.
we picked up back where we started off in lower radley, this time heading for culham lock
i liked this stretch as there was lots of variety of countryside - woods, open farmland, a town (abbingdon shown above), posh houses on the side of river ... and geocaching opportunities
it was also nice to see didcot power station on the horizon for much of the walk. i love it's dramaticness and electricitynes.
usual signposts along the route so we didn't get lost.
we were joined by Mike and BR this time too which made our party to 8. here are some signs.
kezia befriended some snails about half way round so carried them the rest of the way. she liked their wigglyness.
ooh. another sign.
we're back to the path tomorrow to pick up where we left off.
mmm. think we might be getting hooked on this. we passed 4 geocaching points on our thames walk yesterday. we found two and failed on another two. the problem of doing them in the middle of a 7ish mile walk is that you can't stop for an hour and do a thorough search. but it helped break the walk up and was all good fun.
here is esther with one of the caches.
and here is a bridge where we didn't find one.
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we met this chap yesterday at the end of our thames path segment. He is walking the thames for the Institute of Cancer Research and kindly let me take his photo.
the weather has been so fantastic over the last couple of weeks (except for the rainy tuesdays). yesterday was particularly great and i loved every second of my walk from paddington station to westminster, taking in hyde park, green park and st james' parks.
by the way, do you use walkit ? here's the walk as they calculated it. if you live/work/walk in london you need the walkit website !
i was lucky enough to hear mr $100 laptop speak at a conference yesterday in westminster. here he is with his back to us.
i had a meeting near cambridge yesterday so i got up 3 hours earlier than i needed and got to Wicken Fen by 7.30am in the morning for an explore and a photo.
the windmill is a wind pump don't you know
i spent ages seeking the bird hides which were quite well hidden. after playing seek the hide for a while i found one and went in for a my petrol station bought prepacked chicken sandwich. the only birds i saw were 2 pigeons and a crow. oh well.
when i arrived i went the wrong way and ended up going on the adventurers' trail. although i didn't see many other adventurers. so it probably should have been adventurer's trail. am i being preposterophe ? that's a new word i just made up, combining apostrophe and preposterous.
eventually i found the nice boardwalk bit which lead to the windmill
but not before seeing lots of nice ditches
here's a final picture of the wind pump
we went on our first geocaching adventure yesteday but it was a bit of a disaster. we had a nice walk round a lake collecting clues to give us the final coordinates, but we must have gone wrong somewhere as the final location couldn't be found. oh well. we'll try another time !
still, we did find a mobile phone. after phoning the number marked 'home' and leaving copious details on how we would return it to the owner, a lady walked by looking around for something. and it was her phone. here she is walking away with it in her hand
and finally, here is the lovely meal tany and tonya provided before our adventurous began.
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one of my OU T189 course assignment pieces
i saw debbie mcgee at a train station yesterday. she kindly let me take her photo and was very nice.
lots of interest here. it seems more animals are arriving. except they aren't actually arriving right now, because if they were, that would be interesting and worth stopping to see.
so to make it clear, they've added the word "soon", but that still implies it's wait-able.
but then we see the children's play area and all becomes clear. we are being advised to get our kids to enjoy the play area before it gets too busy, as more unruly kids (ie animals) will be arriving soon.
at least that's how i interpreted it
all week i've been hearing of sightings of the new returned Wispa bar, and yesterday i found a newsagents who was selling them. he was charging 50pence each so i haggled and got a discount by buying 10. here they are in a carrier bag.
matt, the weblandlord, emailed me a picture of him with a wispa earlier this week. i asked him for a review and he said he was slightly disappointed as they were lacking their original girth.
i've put all mine in the fridge for tasting this evening. i'll let you know how we get on.
meanwhile you can enjoy them virtually here
here is the evolution of my scottish holiday beard over a 2 week period.
i was thinking of doing a post along the lines of 'why growing a beard is like global warming'
growing a beard is like global warming because if you don't do anything about it it'll get worse
growing a beard is like global warming because just admitting that there's an ugly problem staring you in the face isn't enough to solve the problem
growing a beard is like global warming because your own actions have a negative effect on other people
growing a beard is like global warming because it makes you all hot, itchy, scratchy and a bit stinky.
can you think of any of (better) reasons ?
(this last picture was taken in the evening after 2 long days of driving in a post-holiday traumatic state. the beard was removed shortly after)
remember interesting 2007 ? well, i've synced my live commentary to the photos
see here if the thing above doesn't work
thanks again to russell for letting me speak.
the little video with me prancing about is here
after a few months off due to the bad weather (this sign warns of flooding making walking dangerous), we were back on the path. it was just me and the ladies this time as jane's dad was ill, so i had no one to talk about computers to.
we picked up the walk where we left off in May back at iffley. a lovely little village south of Oxford.
a key feature of this section of the walk was the electricity pilons
and the fishermen
the main lock interest was Sandford Lock which has the greatest fall of water on the Thames (and an attractive pub, but alas we didn't stop)
it was a fairly short, but worthy stretch. weather nice and warm, and no moaning from kezia
i've booked a couple of days off work in October to do some more thames path walking, so hopefully we'll get the momentum going, although i think we're over a quarter of the way along now.
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