To make it look better? Seems fair to me. Nice pic too.

Well ,feel free to drop me an email – addy in profile. As a wedding tog, I've very little to do until April….

There are pro labs which will do this for you, but they will charge a small fortune. My local pro lab charges £1.60 for one low res 35mm scan.

If you've got a bit of spare time in the evenings, you could do worse than buying a flatbed scanner with neg scanning capabilities – I use a refurbished, top end Canoscan one which produces pretty good results from colour negs / transparencies. It'll do 24 negs at once, but takes about 40 minutes for a decent file size.

Why do you want to convert them to digital?

Wow! I'm rubbing shoulders keyboards with greatness!

Fly to Inverness and then stay at one of my Mum's cottages on Skye! I promise you'll love it!

SHAMELESS PLUG[/url]

Or Howling Wolf, or Sonny Terry and Browning McGhee (sp?!).

Yup – it's a chromatic harp – you use the slidey thing to get the sharp and flat notes, unlike a diachromatic 10 hole harp, where you need to 'bend' the reeds to get the forementioned notes.

Got a couple upstairs! Wouldn't have thought they'd be worth much 2nd hand but the last time I looked, they were about £50 new (prolly more now….).

why not learn to play it? Or can you already?

Part Time Job.

I was lucky, insomuchas I was a Scot studying in England so got my fees paid for me – took a huge amount of pressure off. :D

However, as a mature student, got no help from my folks (give or take the odd £100 when starvation set in) and so I worked part time. Like most students, I had a series of pretty awful jobs but couldn't have got by without them.

My D300s are set up to produce a fairly flat, un-contrasty and un-saturated jpeg. So yes, PP is always involved.

Tried raw for about half a dozen weddings but found it was just adding an extra step into my already long workflow. I get the exposure / white balance right enough of the time that I'm not worried about correcting afterwards (ooooh, get him….).

Regarding the 'honesty' or 'integrity' of an image, it's all pretty subjective and I do what I need to do to the photo to get the desired effect. The bride getting ready shots for instance; it's usually a very high key kind of a time – both in mood and in PP to reflect this.

Danger zone;

Yup – the stem's hated by pretty much everyone :D Including me, which is why it's for sale, following an unsuccesful attempt to hammerite it black….

The grips are these ones;Spank

But I wouldn't recommend them – they're pretty uncomfy after a long ride, even with gloves.

Airbase stem now for sale, but the grips and seatpost clamp remain. Gold pedals still there too, but on their last legs….

Love to come along – no longer in Edinburgh but closer to the Lakes than I used to be. I'll keep an eye on the thread….

In photoshop, go to File > Scripts > Image Processor.

Select the folder you want to resize – it doesn't affect the original images…. Then select the folder you want them saved to and the size you'd like them to be. If you tick the 'Resize to Fit' box, and enter the same value in the 'W' (width) and 'H' (Height) box (say, 800 pixels for web use) it'll make the longest edge on portraits and landscapes the same.

Set it away, and go get a beer.

If I'm using the images online, I usually then run an action on my new folder changing the resolution to 72 dpi.

Great tool! (not you). :-)

That's a pretty cool set of pics. Can't help wondering if the photographer's either a massive ape, or perhaps a tiny, wee, nerdy bloke? How does he keep from getting a regular kicking?

It's also all slightly predatory and intrusive – but like watching a car crash too…

Cheers – looooo-ooong exposure in the freezing snow but glad I took the time! It looked slightly different in the flesh – more like a giant hole in the clouds round the moon, but the long exposure allowed passing low clouds to 'fill in' the hole a bit.

Yup – you've got one massive chip on yer shoulder Sir. The world and its inhabitants can't be forced into your good / bad worldview.

Some MTBers are kind, pleasant people. Some are just c0cks. Some junkies are evil, bike thieving, granny mugging tossers, some are kind, pleasant people with a problem no-one is able to help them with.

For the record, as an MTBer, I can't help feeling you fall into the latter category.

One of my best and oldest mates is a smack head. He also runs a small, successful business and is a loving family man with three great kids and a lovely wife. He puts in eight hour days like the rest of us, pays his taxes and generally lives an honest and upright life.

I asked him why he hadn't tried kicking it properly (he's had a few abortive attempts) and what he's getting out of it. He reckons he's self medicating – he used to be a bit of a miserable, depressive bugger when we were at school and he is much more 'rounded' now. I still reckon he'd be fine without it now – it's been years since he was straight…

Anyhoo, my point is that he's been through the methadone programme, which just plain don't work – they have something like a 98% failure rate and most addicts just use the meth to supplement their habit – some vomit it up outside the chemist and sell it to other addicts to buy the real deal (I've seen this happen with my own eyes!!).

I have to agree with those who have recommended free smack at the tax payers expense BUT along with a sustainable rehab programme for those who want out. Drug related crime (and the related expense) would pretty much disappear, there'd be help available for those who wanted it and old ladies could walk the streets a little more safely.

What's not to like?

You could say the same things ^^^ about chubby people, selfishly placing a huge burden on the NHS….

I always think it's a bit odd, the way that everyone has to find someone to take the blame. Mkost dealers are small time addicts who peddle a bit to fund their own addictions. The guy up the chain from him is likely to someone in a similar situation with a bit more savvy.

Next guy up the chain probably owns a gun and never touches the stuff – let's agree to blame him.

I shouted "Iyah c***in' b@st@rd" at a six year old at work. I was fitting her skis to her boots and caught the web of skin between my thumb and fore-finger in the ski binding. D@mn that smarts!!

Fortunately her parents were at the other side of the (large) room and my colleagues just fell about laughing, after a swift, stunned silence…

Perhaps an indication next to user's names, of the time on the site, or number of posts would help people make a decision about dealing with them?

Nice set of pics – cheers for posting!

Not my mechanical strictly speaking, but my responsibility. 15 miles from the nearest town in Southern Ireland, three days into a three week camping / touring holiday with the girl I later married.

She did something odd with her gears and suffered the oft mentioned rear mech / rear wheel spoke interface. She managed to flag down a passing tourist bus full of (I think) Ukranians, who got her wasted on their national drink and delivered her and her bike back to the town we'd cycled out of that morning. I had to ride back – did I mention it was p1ssing down stair-rods?

Found a bike shop but the mechanic was away buying a pig. The old lady in charge didn't have a heat gun (the mech hanger was bent in about 60 degrees) so I sat on the pavement in the torrential rain, with a massive hammer and straightened it out on the kerb-stone, whilst my girlfriend, by now completely hammered on the Ukranian firewater sat in the doorway of the shop, weeping and mumbling about how sh1t her holiday was.

The next two and a half weeks have become one of my happiest memories though, so it all ended well :-)

First up, back up all your tracks (if you haven't already) on an external drive or perhaps several DVDs.

Personally, I'd buy a bunch of mailers and spend three nights getting the whole lot on ebay – register a creddly card and you can specify what time the listings are going to start – and ergo – finish. Perhaps a Wednesday evening, when folk are bored and sitting internetting? Spread the listings over a few weeks so you don't get snowed under and state in your listings that you post twice a week.

Lotta work, but better than sitting in front of the telly on cold, sleety, January nights…….

Most of the guys I knock about with now all live in the same town as they were born in. I sometimes feel a wee pang of jealousy – every time I go for a pint with one of them, they seem to know every third person, and they all have family close at hand too.

I got dragged all round Britain when growing up, due to stepdad's job. Didn't bother me at the time, and pretty sure it hasn't done me any harm….

Organic – I didn't go 'wow', I went 'HOLY CR@P!!'.

Any idea whose they are, or who the riders are?

I wear my helmet and a set of UFO elbow / forearm guards which are super comfy, but which also need adjusting now and again. I have a dodgy elbow from past falls so wear these almost every ride.

I do have a set of Race Face knee pads but find them pretty uncomfy so I rarely wear them. They also move around a lot (like, after every climb) so need constant fettling. Had a much more burly set of 661 knee / shin protecters before but it was like wearing some kind of torture device – the velcro straps constantly wedged themselves behind my knee and chaffed like billy-o.

Oooooh, careful there….. You wouldn't want to p1ss these guys off…..

Our plumber is a top bloke – he charges a flat fee of £40 and that's usually all it is! And he's an MTBer so we get to sit about drinking tea and talking about bikes. Grand!

Not strictly an autobiography, but Dervla Murphy's travelogue is an amazing and humbling read – totally engrossing.

Here it is here

Highly, highly recommended reading…

I started out by building up a skip-rescue bike for my then GF, now wife. We started out with some fairly gentle cycle touring / camping, first in Southern Ireland, then in Cornwall (a few more hills!).

This built her confidence and earlier this year she was out tackling the blue run at GT – it helps that the skip bike is long gone :-)

So maybe buy some panniers and go for a week somewhere with wicked scenery for a start…

8O

Want one for my pootling-about bike!

Wish I'd bought mine from the UK seller, rather than lucky_allan in HK – still waiting :-(

My class 6 memory card arrived today though :-)

I'm thinking of using it in conjunction with my compact camera (which also does vids) – perhaps have the compact on a tripod to cover all angles….

Just as an aside, what software are folk using (if any) to put their videos together? I have a copy of Roxio which I won in a competition – is it worth getting to grips with?

I just put my lock through my belt and one belt loop – works fine. The belt takes the weight, and the loop stops it sliding about.

Ha! No worries Monsieur Sparkle :D

Sorry again for the delay!

whilst correcting each others punctuation & spelling

Surely, "others" should be graced with an apostrophe…..".

Grammar matters too. I'm just saying….

Trail centres are much more fun with mates – wouldn't go by myself. All day, epic, natural stuff I do by myself – mostly because I haven't any mates into all day riding / pedalling up mountains.

I do worry though, that although I always try to let someone know where I'm going, and when I'm likely to be back, I almost always end up changing my route. Sometimes I'll get to the start of a trail which looks fantastic on the map, only to find it's a non-existent boggy mess, or I'll see an irresistable trail and head off on a massive tangent.

Not a problem if I'm riding near home, but potentially lethal if I'm up North….

8O

Again?

I watched a couple of spoiled brat teenage girls at Glastonbury, finding the limit of two policemens' patience. They were smoking a huge, and very badly put together joint – waving it around all over the place and generally acting like proper attention wh0res.

As two coppers went past, they waved the monstrosity of a doobie under the policemens' noses and cackled gleefully that they, "couldn't do nuffink abaht it, innit".

The police promptly nicked them, and one had to be handcuffed.

HA-HA!

EDIT – sorry for off-topicness…