"F*ck off hairy".

Stolen off the telly.

Just because.

Aaaaaw!

I seem to recall he's in the RNLI or somesuch anyway and can probably look after himself….

Already being discussed further down the page, but I'm also glad I got my claims in early – nigh on £2000 here too after four years of being a poverty stricken student.

Some will say I shouldn't have gone to uni if I couldn't afford it – I say I could have easily afforded it with my cr@ppy P/T jobs if I hadn't ended up paying ridiculous charges which always seemed to come off the day before my pay went into my account, thus landing me with hundreds of pounds of yet more charges.

OMITN – you have a good point, but unfortunately, it will always be those at the bottom of the food chain who will end up supporting those at the top. Those who, perhaps by no fault of their own (redundancy / mental health issues / poorly paid) will always find themselves short of a £5er at the end of each month, and get charged through the nose for their audacity.

New park? News to me! There's a set of dodgy doubles next to the skate park in Herrington Country Park and a set of jumps in the woods behind the monument.

The quarry is to the right of the monument as you look at it from the road side. Not up to much though TBH…

Paul – most of them are in the quarry next to Penshaw – a few are in the woods behind.

*Sniggers at cookeaa* I was actually just getting the exposure set up with the flash in that shot, but then it was better than the action one which followed!

The gnarly back-country of Sunderland.

Four week meandering tour of the West coast of Scotland, taking in quite a few islands. All on an ancient Trek, horribly overloaded.

The only tent I could get a hold of was a massive three man palace – must have been five kilos on its own…….

Also have a look at the Vintage V300 – won What Guitar guitar of the year a few years back, beating Martins costing three times as much.

I've had one for the last couple of years and it's a great instrument. A little dinky perhaps, but I have massive hands and no issues….

EDIT: Oh, yeah, and it comes in at around £100 – can't be bad!

I went for a Lee holder (much better quality than the Cokin one, and a set of Cokin X Pro* filters – they're quite a lot larger than the 'P' size but still a lot cheaper than the Lee filters.

Buy the best you can afford – you won't regret it…… The advantage of the larger filters / holder is that if you expand your lens collection (say, to an extra wide angle), your filter system will cope.

* Or is it Z-Pro…. Off to check….

Pain subsiding now – just for the record, rinsing it under the tap did help a little :?

Already been down the horrify-the-wife-with-vile-suggestions route (of the, "it won't burn your lips if you get it far enough down your throat kind"). And guess which daft ****t picked his nose about 30 seconds after posting…..

Do YA WANT A PIECE OF ME THEN?!! WELL?! DO YA!!!*

–

*Or maybe just, "sorry".

Maccy-D :oops:

Hardy's Crest Cab Sauv (£4 from Tesco, PSA half-price-wine!!)

Boys of the Lough – Sweet Rural Shade.

The quality of education these foreign students receive is, IME, somewhat questionable. I do stress, IME.

On my photography course there were several students from a variety of nations, some were very dedicated and did well, some less so. A couple really didn't seem to want to be there. Some of the work submitted was unbelievable – one guy regularly handed in images very obviously photocopied from books – the lecturers barely blinked!!

It annoyed the hell out of those of us who really strove to produce the best work we could, only to see photocopies and hopelessly sub-standard work getting the same marks as our work.

It also meant that these students thought they were doing great work when actually, they should have been kicked off the course.

grass-hopper behind the till puts it through back to front

Or as a variation, you walk up to a strangely quiet checkout and start unloading before you notice a 10 year old charity collecting bag packer at the far end…… Noooooooooo!

Guaranteed soft fruit under tins and bottles. And then you have to give them a quid or look like a twunt.

If you can find a D70s with the original kit lens (18-70mm) second hand, grab it. Or even just the lens – it's universally regarded as the best of the kit-lens bunch. Not massively fast in terms of apperture and throwing background out of focus, but a great zoom range and sharp as tacks.

Gave mine to my mum along with a D70 and really miss it….

Now in Cyprus, sadly :cry:

Cheese hums in the fridge at night. I was told that this was why the fridge makes a humming noise.

Once I was old enough to start questioning things, I asked why the cheese hums, and was told, "It's the bacterial action". Which actually makes a lot of sense. To a credible 12 year old…..

Been there twice. First age 12 on my paper round. Found a Reevox reel to reel tape recorder in a bin and took it home. Half way down King's Gate (steep Aberdeen hill) it swung round and banged my elbow. Went straight into a parked car, over the roof and hit the road hard.

Second was my fault too – not paying attention and ran into a car boot in Edinburgh. Woman was very apologetic despite brake lever scratches all over her boot….

When my little brother's much-loved pet rabbit got very ill, my stepdad told my brother he was going to put it out of its misery, and did he want to watch.

He proceeded to stand on the rabbit's body and shoot it in the head with an airgun, with my nine year old brother watching. Needed three pellets to finish the job with the rabbit twitching crazily in between pellets.

Still, bro is studying law at NW Uni, Chicago, so he obviously wasn't too traumatised….

The color of blue has the feeling of mysterious, unbelievable, introverted, cool, calm and snob.

:roll:

From that anvii website…….

:D

woody – only the 'sphere' field is shown on the lens packet.

Happily, found prescription in a drawer full of old keys, string, zip ties, and, very ironically, my lost glasses :lol:

Still going to order a spare pair though!

Ainsley Harriet (sp?!) was on telly a few years back shredding down the side of Kilimanjaro*

*either of the key names could be wrong.

Bah! Yup, that's what I thought. I remember coming home and putting it somewhere safe, but f00k knows where.

I don't feel bad about using glassesdirect as I pay monthly for my contacts and still need an optician for sight checks – my eyes are my livelihood…

Got a pair of army goretex (equivalent) boot liners off ebay for £5. They're a bit massive but do an amazing job of keeping your feet warm and dry – they come up a lot higher than sealskinz (think hiking socks).

No good for walking in – blisters ahoy, but perfect for riding and the odd bit of pushing and carrying.

Mine are into their third year of winter riding.

+1 on accupuncture having real and lasting effects. But it is pricey, and there's no point going to a couple of sessions, feeling a little better and then never going back. You really do have to stay the course.

I've mentioned my cure on here before, but, in a nutshell;

Woke up one day with severe radial nerve palsy (totally dead right arm). Went through the usual channels including months of physio, lost my job and my life seeped slowly away. Doctors told me the nerve damage was irreparable and I should get used to having one arm.

Eight months in and my relative (mentioned on page two) phoned me and told me to come down to Edinburgh for treatment. Did so – loads of accupuncture, heavy duty deep tissue Chinese massage and vile potions to drink twice a day.

Within a week of this, feeling and strength crept back into my arm. Within two weeks, I could pick stuff up and almost have a w@nk. One month later – total cure, almost up to full strength.

Not coincidence in my mind. If I'd been paying for it, it would have cost me thousands, but in retrospect, would happily have paid….

That's a really nice set of pics supersessions – glad I clicked through.

OP – you're very brave – as soon as I saw the thread title I knew there would be a riot.

There has been some sound business advice in amongst the trolling and shouting though…. A member of my extended family runs (one of?) the largest Traditional Chinese Medicine centres in Scotland.

She started off being driven from client to client in an old banger, practising mostly accupuncture. After perhaps six months of this, she took a room in a centre in Edinburgh, filled with other practitioners of various kinds (at the top of Cockburn St, Edinburgh). She just hired a room for three hours a day.

She made an excellent name for herself and opened her own clinic in a trendy part of Leith – if you live in Edinburgh you'll probably have seen it. She then filled the place with other practitioners, renting rooms out. Expansion followed and she now has clinics in most of the major Scottish cities, so it can be done, with a lot of hard work and good luck.

Just as an aside, I set up the Inverness clinic (sadly no more) during my Summer off at uni and was responsible for contacting practitioners and getting them to rent rooms. There was only one total quack that I met – she claimed to be able to read your dreams…… by telephone!! You had to phone a number costing £5 a minute and relate your dream to an ansaphone. She would then write out an analysis and send it to you. What a crock!!

My lurcher also hates swimming, but he's got a real OCD thing going on with shallow water. He'll spend literally hours standing up to his chest and snapping at the surface of the water – we think he's after the bubbles, but not sure!

No real adavantage IMO, unless you're looking for a particular 'filmic' quality like big fat grain in B&W images. I still use a lot of B&W and infra red film for the above reason, but I develop and print it at home, so not too pricey.

Never use it for any paid work though – digital every time! I'd love to shoot a whole wedding on B&W film, and then make the prints in my darkroom, but haven't yet persuaded anyone to bite :-(

One job I didn't metion in the high horse thread was that of selling overpriced mars bars and drinks from a trolley on a train – horrible job, but I'll save the details for the other thread.

Not a day went past without violence / abuse / theft. Both against me and the passengers. It didn't help that the trains involved were usually full of very drunken roustabouts returning to Glasgow after three weeks on the rigs.

The guards spent the whole journey hiding in their locked van or locked in with the driver – they didn't even bother checking tickets when the rig workers were on board. Can't say I blame them, but it meant the only visible person in a uniform was me, and I took a lot of stick from passengers who couldn't sit in their reserved seats.

I felt bad about it, but there was no way I was going to fight the good fight against drunken gorrilas – just not my job! Had to 'abandon-trolley' more than once and just let folk take whatever they wanted – some because they felt compensation was due, and some just because they could – and all that came out of my wages – didn't last long, and went down to be dismissed on my unicycle, just to show the boss what I thought of his joke of a job…. Whoops, wrong thread……..

Where to start? Most of the cr@ppy jobs I've had have been not too bad as there's several of you with the same very low expectations, so the conditions are 'normalised' to an extent.

As has been pointed out, the worst are those where you feel on a daily basis that your soul is being crushed by a moronic middle management monster, and there's no recourse to complain.

I've done the whole gamut of catering jobs, and kitchen porter is by far the worst, especially in an Aberdeen kitchen where the head chef behaves like a chav version of Gordon Ramsay, but without the calming influence of the cameras. There were BNP stickers everywhere, mainly depicting skinheads holding up nooses…..

But the worst ever was banquetting porter for a large hotel. I was taken on with the understanding that I would be paid £120 per week, regardless of the number of hours worked. I was told that most weeks would entail about 20 hours work, but that sometimes I'd be working 35 hours. Never once did I work less than 60, and it really was Work. The gaffer was a s0d of the first order and did literally no work. Ever.

When I finally handed in my notice (and worked it!) I had to turn up twice a week for the next few months and shout at the reception staff until eventually they 'found' my final month's wages in a tin, in a desk drawer. Yeah, right. Did get paid though – a minor miracle…

Yup – took out a loan to take advantage of matched funding by the local council – may be worth looking into grants and such – most local councils will give you a bit of cash – especially if you live in a cr@ppy area like me!

Here's the pics from my stag do in the house at Kinloch Rannoch. Gives an idea of what the place is like (well, mostly the pub…..).

Hope the link works

p1ssed up photos

Try here[/url] if you fancy somewhere a bit out of the way (just past Pitlochry).

It's a great house in the middle of Kinloch Rannoch. I've stayed there three or four times over the last few years, and yes, had my stag do there too!

It'll sleep 12 at a push – they also have other larger chalets up the loch a bit. Pub and hotel over the road (very nice, pool table too) and an outdoor adventure centre type place offering various activities for non-biking mates if needs be…

Fantastic riding straight out the door, and mindblowing scenery.

Bit By A Badger.

I'm sure I've related this tale here before at some point, but in essence; met a guy in an Inverness pub whose arm looked like he'd stuck it in a mincing machine. He told me that he and his pal had been camping in local woods at night and selling Kleen-Eze products by day.

So one night they heard the most God-awful shrieking and eventually crept out of the tent to have a look. Turned out to be a badger caught in a trap. The guy tried to prise open the jaws of the trap but the ungrateful badger set aboot him.

This guy's arm really was a state and he reckoned all the damage had been done in under three seconds!

Auto WB should work no problem. As Ski says above, it's down to the meter not the WB (WB just sets the colour temperature).

Also, I'm assuming that the OP won't have Photoshop, and probably is getting utterly confused by all the talk of jpegs NEF files and so on. I'm guessing he just wants a straight-out-of-camera snapshot.

I'd just stick the camera on manual and over-expose by a stop, stop and two thirds until it looks right.

EDIT: must type faster………