It was meant to be hence the irony and smiley, but so much bitterness

Don’t recall feeling like that in my younger days and was really happy when my poor old now departed dad could retire

Back to the more light hearted theme, seem to have developed a liking for heritage steam railways. Most are in lovely scenic places and serve real ale too along with very nice grub.

Went to the Worth Valley railway last week and was indeed a most pleasant experience, Ecclesbourne railway next which looks equally nice

Quick photo to whet the appetite

Not quite sure how i’m such a burden, eleven years before I receive a state pension.

Been fully employed for nigh on forty years, receive no benefits whatsoever and pay tax on pension payments.

checked your hand recently TT?

I’m a runner

It’s alright, no-one will be paying for the NHS within 10 years, so you’ll be having your hip replaced in a shed.

Do you think pensions are tax free then?

I have used ink from a company called Prink for many years

Firstly in an Epson photo printer and latterly in a Canon Pixma.

No problems at all and never experienced any clogging or fading, chipped too so get the full amount from each cartridge

Mrs Blackmore has a very nice voice

many (most?) don’t.

Landscapes, portraits and wildlife to name but three benefit from a tripod, in fact most forms of photography do

Can you use filters handheld or in fact take anything that requires a a longer exposure.

Guess all those photographers who use tripods have just been wasting their time and nothing a bit of insight couldn’t have remedied

Won’t be binning mine on the strength of your advice, but guess it takes all sorts

Don’t bother with a tripod. They are a right faff, and pretty pointless except for certain situations

This is perhaps the worst bit of photography advice I have ever read.

Spare battery and memory card, also sturdy tripod and head is in my opinion very important

Not sure if these have been mentioned yet, Tarja is by far the best of their three female vocalists

I bought an Asus IPS screen, from memory it was about 150 quid

Ran it on VGA for a while until I got a new PC, now connected via HDMI

Use it mainly for photo editing and found it to be very good, monitor calibrator is also a very worthwhile purchase

I have had a Jansport for years, all good apart from the cheap crappy zips.
Sent it back to Belgium three times for replacements under warranty, but given up with it now.

Back to using a Camelbak Hawg and for heavier loads a daypack with suspension system (forgot the name, but bought it recently in the Blacks sale)

Lib Dems promised a dry winter, even gave a written pledge to that effect

if you put a tub of lard up as a conservative in that area they’d get voted in

They did, it was called Boris

it’s waterproof on the 7D

Showerproof or water resistant would be a better description, definitely not waterproof though

How about Sigma 17-70mm

I thought the moguls used to be accompanied by music blaring out from a big mutha sound system all down the course

Bit surprised the BBC dared show Mr **** (common term for masturbate) competing in the ski jumping last night

I watched the mens event and Hazel Irvine apologised for the language when the two british lads were speaking afterwards
Pretty sure he said “huck” and guessing she thought it began with an “F”

Retired last October after 38 years with BT, latter years Openreach as a C3

Not bad employers overall, but there are some pretty awful 1st level line managers who will do anything to get their bonus payments
Watch out for the performance and attendance procedures, often used to manage(sack)people from the company.

Promotion is pretty much a non-runner so expect to remain at the same grade for many years. Pay is decent enough espcially if you can achieve what was the old Technical Officer grade (C3)

Join the CWU, again not great and in my opinion recommended acceptance of too many loss of terms and conditions, but better off in than out

Employe benefits ok, free broadband and if the price is right sharesave schemes are worth looking at

No doubt some businesses will squeal that they can’t afford it or more like they want to exploit people to boost profits

If you can’t afford to pay your workers a fair wage you shouldn’t be in business.

About time these companies paid up rather than the rest of us supplementing their profits via low income tax credits

FTTC, fibre to the cab and copper/alu to the premises

FTTP, fibre to the premises

Infinity has limit of approx 1.4km from cabinet, will still work at greater length, but with reduced speed. Line checker however may not let you order it if line length exceeds that stated above.

If fed direct from exch (no cabinet)Infinity is not curently available

Broadband also won’t work if fed by cable with loading coil or DACS present and no obligation to remove them au gratis. The latter does have an exemption figure of I believe about 8 grand, but if anything over that due to line rearrangement its either cough up the surplus or don’t have it

Interference or REIN has a myriad of causes, electric fences, strip lights, lifts, alarms etc etc. Check for yourself by tuning in a radio to 612khz AM/MW and you should hear noise if REIN is present.

Well, you must listen to music in a completely different way to me.. I have to like the music first!

I do like Kiss, but know they are not everybodys cup of tea amongst the rock/metal crowd.
Judas Priest made some great albums, but their live Unleashed In The East was very poor.

I meant a good example as in conveying the live atmosphere of the gig rather than tracks that had been edited and strung together.

Surprised nobody has mentioned this one, whether you like them or not its a very good example of a live album

Closely followed by

Does the 200 quid also need to cover a lens?

If so think you will have to revise your budget in an upwards direction

Never taken any video, but also assuming you would need something to keep the camera steady, so more money required.

Just out of interest would it need lighting and a microphone too?

Guessing its a problem with the shutter curtain being stuck

If so not worth repairing because it would require a new shutter assembly

Presumably you are paying the tariff for business lines, if so you could try claiming for actual financial loss

Retired last October three months shy of 55 after 38 years at the same company.

Fair bit of diy to sort out around the house combined with getting out and taking plenty of photos. Book up train tickets well in advance for great prices and catching up with all the stuff I didn’t have time for.

Had lots of grief with chronic cluster headaches for the last five years so when the chance of an early leaver deal came I jumped at it

Been a while, but never had any problems with Inghams

Not sure if they are still going, but Thomsons were fine too

DVD Catalyst 4 (paid version) Here[/url] quick and efficient

Put loads of DVD’s onto my wifes Nexus recently and all very painless for about six quids worth of software

I would say its a line fault given the noisy line (doesn’t always show up as a fault condition during tests)

Worth checking if you still get the crackly line when plugged straight into the main socket with internal wiring disconnected

All the wet weather and wind causes lots of problems with the line plant especially overhead.

Keep the engineer appointment and explain about the noise also try to insist they check all the relevant connections

Having worked 38 years for BT and Openreach before I took early retirement last October so its more than a unenducated guess

I donate each month to Water Aid, poor sods having to struggle every day getting clean water.

Wouldn’t mind going there to help, just a shame there are so many crazy bleeders lurking about, they even kill people who have gone to vaccinate

When she was young my daughter was mad about dinosaurs and there was a dinosaur magazine that came with a bone part of a model every issue

We bought every copy and subsequently finished the model, don’t think it was crazy expensive though and probably ran to about thirty or forty magazines

It’s that it’s a fantastic way to process and organise your images, that happens to remove the need for processing RAW files. You edit all images the same – raw or not.

I always found raw a complete pain when I used Adobe Camera Raw or other ‘inbetween’ RAW processing apps.

Very confused by your statement, LR uses a more fully featured version of Camera Raw and why would you want to to edit all images the same?

Yes you can just use presets, but they are not always suitable for individual images

Maybe I have just misunderstood and agree LR is excellent for organisation

If you wish to process RAW you could do far worse than get Adobe Photoshop Elements which comes with a raw editor built in.

Have to disagree with the opinions expresed on RAW thus far, only use JPG as thumbnails to view/delete then I process the kept RAW files. Prefer to use all the data that has been captured and just see processing as part of the picture taking process (like developing used to be)

Talk Photography as mentioned is a good place to start for a website

Hard work if the locks are manually operated ones and expensive, didn’t help that it peed down most of the fortnight when we went.

My missus prefers the Suchard chocolate pods, not keen on any of the ones that come with the milk/creamer pods

Sandisk recovery program if its one of their cards, if not Piriform Recuva usually does a decent job

Be sure to format the card in the camera, not on a computer

As said above new card would be the best bet

I use a washing up brush with some warm water, whilst still damp they get a good spraying of Nikwax Proofer

Looks like a good choice to me and even better there is 60 quid cashback from Pentax on the K-50 with 18-55 lens or 40 quid body only

Email received and replied to, hope it helps and enjoy your new camera

If you do buy new try and ensure you buy from a Pentax Pro dealer so you get two years warranty instead of the usual one

A while back I put together a guide on using manual lenses with Pentax DSLR’s such as camera settings and in particular metering

Email me if you would like a copy, think it explained the method quite well or at least so a few people said it did.